He screamed; “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” and slammed the blade of the shovel into the hard pack with all his might. The metal tip barely broke ground as the impact sent glassy shivers up into his forearms and biceps. He winced, forcing his eyes down, refusing to look at the misty image that he knew was there. “Just go away. Leave me alone. I don’t need your help.” He picked up the pace, ignoring the tearing agony that bit at his shoulders and back. But it seemed that the harder he worked, the less earth coated the blade. With each toss of the dirt the bags grew heavier, until his knees threatened to buckle. He sagged low, his shins scrapping the dust, and sweat running down his cheeks in streams.
He felt the presence dragging his eyes up toward the visage of the man. He tried to pull away, the muscles of his neck standing out like cords, veins bulging like thick ropes at the effort. But this was a war of wills, not physical strength, and he found himself peering into the mist, his breath gulping into his lungs. The shovel continued to pound, and the sacks to press down on his back. He was being crushed.

The mist seemed to clear for just an instant, and the face grew more distinct.

“Do you know me?” That question held such meaning, so much more than just the words. They held power and freedom and decision. Eternity rested between their syllables. The weight shoved down on him unbearably. He struggled to toss another scoop of dirt and cringed at the sight of the hole, so shallow and yet so incredibly deep. The dry dust choked his lungs, parching his throat with an unquenchable thirst. It reminded him of high school wrestling. Endless laps and grueling periods of grappling as boys strained against their physical limits, in a match of strength and endurance. He had beaten them all, and laughed. And he did it all himself. The coaches thought they had something to do with it, as did his friends, wrestling partners and family. They were fools. They had done nothing. It had been all him. It wasn’t them that had run the track, pushed the weights, sweated and fought and took the chance at humiliation. They had done nothing. The victory was his and his alone. He didn’t need anyone.

He staggered to his feet, muscles groaning in effort. He looked back at the man, a sneer curving his lips cruelly. But the image was gone, and the voice, the faintest of echoes. He pushed the shovel into the ground, grunting as the weight grew on his shoulders. “I did it!” he screamed past his clenched teeth. “Me. Only me.” And then he could speak no more, the pain was too great, the burden too heavy. A face flashed across his memory and he saw the past like a sweeping book whose pages form a moving picture.

The boy had been his only true competition. They had been friends for years, living just a few doors from each other on the same block. They were friends, but it was the State Finals, and only one from each weight class could go. Only the best and that was him. But they were close, and the coach liked Jimmy. He had liked Jimmy as well, but it wasn’t about liking, it was about doing it yourself and winning. So the practice had been hard and they were both covered in sweat and exertion and exhaustion, and the chance was there and the State Finales were only another week away. He had him in the half nelson half chicken wing and the pin was there, but so was State, so he had held off on the pin and instead twisted, just a little too hard, and felt the horrible pop that signified his assurance into the number one slot. It hadn’t been on purpose. He was almost sure of that. Accidents happen on the mat. The coach had gone out of his way to make sure that he didn’t feel bad about hurting his friend. But the look that Jimmy cast at him as they loaded him on the stretcher, and the fact that they had never really been friends after, wormed at his conscience now and then. Not often, really, just once in awhile. And the bags were so heavy that he felt his bones would be reduced to chalk beneath their terrible weight. But he wouldn’t give up and the hole went deeper and deeper.

“Do you know me?” A hiss on the wind.

He slammed the shovel into the ground. The heavy thud echoed by a shrill clang that grated at his nerves. It was a horrible sound, like metal on metal, but it too had a feeling of distance. He dug his feet into the sides of the hole, taking a purchase to allow him the strength to stay on his feet.

Jimmy’s eyes ate at him. He tried to push the boy’s face away from his thoughts. It had been such a long time ago, but the eyes stayed, and soon they were joined by others. He saw his father, a small man with stooped shoulders and a balding head. They were at the table of his childhood home. His dad was trying to reason with him about something, the subject was unclear. It could have been any one of a dozen such meetings, they had all begun the same and ended the same. His father would start by explaining what was expected or needed in the way of correcting his errant behavior, and he would end the meeting by mocking his father, or through intimidation. He always won. His father would fret for days about the encounters, until he relieved his pain by recanting to his son, his shoulders a little more stooped.

He remembered the day his father had died. They had argued the night before, but not in the kitchen. No, it was years later and they were hundreds of miles apart, but the conversation had been the same and the ending no different. He had shown his father who was right, and when the last good-byes were said, he had smiled at the defeat in his father’s voice. It was the final defeat. The man that had brought him into the world, taught him to ride a trike, a bike and later a car, was gone. Now his face weighed on him next to Jimmy’s. But he had been right, his father wrong. He remembered the satisfaction of triumph as he hung up the phone that night, and suddenly the conversation was crystal clear. It was the divorce. Dad tried to talk him out of it, to show him how wrong he was. How much his wife and children needed him. But his wife had grown heavy after their second child, and she paid so much attention to the children. The things that use to matter, took a back seat to her role as mother. She no longer cared for the nightclubs and the bars. She had become boring. And of course his business was doing so well, and there were women, women that were not boring. Women that still enjoyed the night and paid attention to him. His father pled with him for over an hour, speaking of Karen and his grandchildren and how much they meant to him. But he countered with the skill and speed of his youth on the mats, explaining how it was Karen that had changed, and how he had a right to live his own life and fill his own needs. His father’s voice fell silent, the phone connection blank except for the hum of imagined white noise.

He punched the shovel into the ground, Karen’s eyes, filled with tears, swimming in his memory.

“Do you know me?”

Agony bit into his thigh muscles with sharp red nails, the burden dragging him down. He fought it. “I don’t need….you…I don’t….need…”


His daughter started with cigarettes and beer, like so many kids. But that day, that awful day, her cheeks so sunken, eyes recessed into gray circles of flesh that bespoke months of malnutrition and narcotics. That day was the last day he had called her his daughter.

He winced at the shrill cry of iron slapping iron, and fought to throw the dirt over his shoulder. The straps of the bag bit sharply into his flesh with their massive weight, but he continued on, his work not yet done.

She had used the divorce as her excuse. Begged him for help, but he saw what his daughter had become. She was weak. She was like all the others, begging, asking for a handout, justifying her behavior behind a mound of excuses.

Karen turned to religion, asking God to save their little girl. That became her excuse, her crutch. She even asked him to pray with her for their daughter. She made him sick with her weakness. But the eyes… the eyes were there… Karen’s eyes, pleading, calling, offering. Amy’s eyes were there too. She had died seven years later of an overdose. His only daughter. He hadn’t seen her since that last day. He refused to attend the funeral, but her eyes… he still saw her eyes.

His legs kicked out, nudging the woman in the bed next to him, as he struggled to support the giant bags of dirt that draped his body. The sheets were scattered on the bed, but the woman did not awaken from her drunken slumber and he dreamed on.

“Do you know me?”

“I don’t want to know you!” he croaked past dry lips. “I’m not weak! I pay my own way! I don’t need you… I don’t want you.” And that was the crux of it. He was his own man, always had been always would be. He was strong. He was good. He pushed the shovel into the dirt, his arms like limp hunks of meat.

“CLANG!” The sound was piercing. The weight grew and grew on his back. He staggered and fell, the burden threatening to destroy his body, to make it one with the dirt. His pride forced him back to his feet and the shovel back into the ground… but that sound, it was so much louder now, and his chest was aching with each movement.

His granddaughter, the only child of his only child, was with her father. The man, an out of work, small time drug dealer, had never bothered to marry his daughter. They had lived together for a short time, nurturing each other’s habits. Karen had wanted custody of the girl, but the father, Randy, that was his name, had refused and the state gave him custody. He could have fought it. He had enough money, clout and lawyers to win. He even thought about it, when Karen asked for his help, but he wanted no reminders. The eyes were bad enough. The eyes and the memories. So he let him have her, and that was the last time Karen, his wife…no, his ex-wife, had spoken to him.

“Do you kn…”

He ignored the words. The words with their seductive, gentle pull that wrapped around his heart and mind, twisting his emotions with their promise of release and forgiveness and rest.

He squeezed his eyes tight, as though the action could block out the words, and scooped another shovel full of debt onto his shoulders. The weight of the world was riding his back. The weight of all his years and all his crimes.

He attacked the ground with renewed frenzy, steeling himself against the eyes… no the pain, it was the pain and the strain and the weight. He fought the battle of the mind, all the while feeling the growing number of eyes as their gaze dug at his back.

He remembered Frank, the partner he had cheated. A paper he had plagiarized in collage. The drunk driving charge he beat on a technicality. The baby he had talked his secretary into aborting. A word here a look there. A sneer. A wink. And the thoughts. Untold. Un-acted upon. Uncountable in their number. Adultery, deceit, murder, hate, seduction, perversion, pride, lust. An unending tide of fantasies threatening to drown him in their unstoppable, uncaring, selfish waves.

The shovel struck something that yielded beneath its tip with a soft “thunk” and he looked into the hole.

“Do you know me?”

The woman in the bed was not his wife. He had never remarried. She was the latest in a series of women that had been useful in satisfying his pleasures over the years. Each had thought there was a chance. That they were special, that he loved them or at least would come to love them. But they were nothing more than bed warmers. Human night lights to keep the monsters of loneliness at bay. When one burned out, he would throw her away. There were always more. Hopeless women that had been cast aside, or tricked into thinking that careers were more important than relationships, not realizing the truth until it was too late. Women with no protective barriers to save them from the reality of the world. Women ripe to be used.

Their eyes peeked out at him from the multitude of memories that clattered at his brain.

The hole.

He was deep in the pit. So deep, that the light of the sun could barely reach him.

“Do you know me?” The voice sounded less like a question; more like a demand, and for the first time he felt a sliver of fear stab at his heart.

The woman began to snore, a sound that penetrated the lairs of his dream. He clutched at his chest with his sleeping fingers, his face pale as the blood drained.

He looked into the hole.

There was dirt covering her face, her hair matted with clods and worms and beetles. Her eyes were open. Staring. As he knew they would be. She was so small, her little fingers curled into tiny tight fists. She accused him with her stare. He sunk the shovel deep, the blade splitting her forehead and crunching through bone. He wept as he did it, but he had no choice. His arms worked and worked and worked. He was powerless to stop. It was his job, his debt. An endless debt. A dark red line filled in where the shovel blade had been an instant before. The flesh of his granddaughter’s small head flayed wide, exposing bone and brain. The weight on his back crushed at him with the force of death.

She died when she was six and until this moment he had never known the abuse she had suffered from her biological father. Now he knew. He knew everything. The shovel continued to strike. Every blow was a new knowledge of the harm he had brought to this girl. Three fingers severed with one swipe, blood staining the cold earth. A slender arm gashed cruelly, and then the blade missed and tore a divot in the ground beside her face. There was another sound of flesh thinly covered and he saw his daughter, her once beautiful brown eyes, now the color of sludge, gazing up at him. She tried to shield her daughter with her arms but they were too thin. The shovel bit into her bicep and passed on into her daughter’s neck. Another face emerged from the hole, pushing up from the soil as if being born. It was a man that he had met once a decade before. John was his name. He would never have remembered it awake, but in the dream there was no deliverance in forgetfulness. He met John at a grocery store. They had talked. Just a few words, not more than ten minutes of conversation. But in that time, John had listened to his words. Over the years, the seeds planted during that conversation had sprouted into a mighty tree that cast a shadow over the truth. And this was the fruit.

His arms pistoned up and down as if he were an automaton, only the pain never stopped. Not in his arms, not in his back and not in his heart. Each strike of the shovel uncovered another sin.

The sun was gone from his eyes. The hole was so black and yet he could still see. He could see everything.

“Do you know me?” This time there was anger in the words.

The fear that suddenly gripped him was like nothing he had ever felt. He worked harder, slamming the shovel at the earth, mindless of the countless faces that were being uncovered. He was drenched in their blood and still he worked on, terrified that the voice would sound again. Out of the gore and dirt a ridge of forehead pushed into view, followed by cheeks and chin and eyes. His father’s mouth stretched into a terrible grimace of horror at seeing his son, standing above him. Shovel poised as if for the deathblow. That look held so much. It held the misery of the damned. It held recognition of his own guilt in his son’s plight. And it held accusation against his son for his own blood. Each knew responsibility for the other. First the father, then the son. A scream erupting from his parched lips, the shovel fell.

The hole grew deeper.

The woman’s snoring stopped, cut short by a choking cough. She untangled her legs from the matted sheets and padded naked into the bathroom, her eyes barley opened slits and her head an aching ball of sleep. When she came back to the bed she noticed that he looked strange. The after effects of alcohol were almost enough for her to let it go, but something about his pose made her take a second look before turning to her side and letting sleep work its magic. As soon as she saw him she reached for the phone, her fingers missing the simple combination of numbers twice before making out the “911” needed for help.

“DO YOU KNOW ME?” The words held the authority of thunder and the power of lightening. He cringed at the sound of them. His shovel tore into the ground with a renewed vigor spurred by shear terror. A multitude of faces gaped at him from the open hole. A horrible clot of memories, a lifetime of opportunities missed.

The pain in his chest grew to a burning ball of fire, the weight on his back so unbearable that he could no longer hold it up. He pushed every ounce of strength into his legs. He could not fail. Not here, not now. He had to show that he was worthy, that he was good. He forced his mind to the good things he had done in his life. The money he had given to charities. The years he had supported his wife and daughter before the bad times. The people he had helped. His good had to play into this. He had worked so hard. He was still working, the shovel pummeling the earth relentlessly, mindless of the limbs and faces and torsos it shredded, unheeding of the river of blood that soaked his feet and legs, and spattered him from head to toe. The scales must balance. His work must count.

With each stroke, the burden grew.

“Do you know me?” The light that struck him was blinding in its brilliance. It filled the hole with light so white that the eyes could not look upon it.
The bones of his legs snapped, grinding the cartilage to powder and forcing him to his knees. He was covered by the blood of his labor. The carnage of his deeds surrounded him. His eyes bled tears as he cried out; “Yes! Yes I know you! I KNOW YOU!”

There was silence, even the voices of his guilt held back. He waited for the sound of metal striking metal, a hammer slamming a nail through forgiving flesh. But it did not come. There was only silence. Like his silence for so long. His entire life was made up of silence. The call unanswered. He was strong, that was what he always said. He paid his own way and needed no one. Silence. And then…

“I never knew you, your debt is yours.”

The light was gone. The Son never to be seen again.

There was only the hole, with all the faces, and all the voices, and all the memories and all the knowledge. The hole that he had dug. The hole, his debt. And it would go on forever, because a hole just keeps going on, it is never complete, it just gets bigger and deeper, with new faces that are added as the centuries go by. Faces that he never even knew, but that his works continued to damn. Now and forever.

He made his choice. The debt was his to pay.

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