Two hours later he had nearly cleared the uprooted stones and he paused for only a moment to catch his breath. His heart was beating hard in his ears and sweat was gathering on his nose. He wiped it away and examined the site to find what was to be done next.
The root was coming from an elm tree, that much was clear. Beneath the patio had been gravel, which had been pushed apart by the rising roots; if he wanted to deal with it, the gravel would need to be moved and whatever below as well, to clear the way for the root to be pulled up.
He decided a hole would need to be dug, as well. It was all no good if the roots were just going to grow back in, so he would clear the space beside the patio as well.
John Paul walked to the shed and opened the doors. As he had hoped, he found a spade inside and took it out. The gravel didn’t want to allow the flat blade of the shovel through the stones, but he forced it in nonetheless and flung a shovel-full to the side. Then he took another, forcing the blade into the gravel. Then another.
He stopped again several hours later, when Henry came out to call him to dinner. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked at his hands. Hot, stinging blisters had formed on his hands. He realized, too late, that he should have had gloves for the work, but he ignored it.
“No, thank you. I’ll finish working out here.”
John Paul could see the doubt on his nephew’s face, but Henry didn’t voice his complaint. Instead, he turned on his heel and walked back inside. Jacob had come out into the back and had been quietly trimming hedges throughout the afternoon, and he walked past then.
“You really should take a break, mister Foster. That’s plenty of work for one day.”
He didn’t stop, though, and neither did John Paul. He pushed the shovel back into the dirt that he’d found beneath the gravel. He would only need another few hours, and then he’d be able to cut the damned root out and pull it. Then it would just be another hour or two after that to fill the hole back in.
He stopped more frequently, now. Once he had seen the state of his hands, the pain in his hands had become more real, somehow. Even still, he pushed the thoughts aside and after gulping down a succession of breaths he pushed the shovel back in.
This went on for a while, until he was more than waist-deep in the hole he had dug for himself, nearly long enough to lie down in, and he still had not found the absolute length of the root that had disrupted his back lawn.
As he stood, gasping for air, and leaning on his shovel, he heard a voice behind him, pleading with him to come in and eat something, but he ignored it. Very well, he thought. I’ll just have to dig a little more. He pushed the shovel into the earth once more.
Behind him, the gardener stepped into the hole and grabbed him around the waist. Though he was a burly man, and stood above six feed, John Paul found himself being lifted easily by Jacob and very nearly thrown bodily out of the hole.
John Paul looked at him, wild-eyed, and for a moment nearly scrambled back into the hole until Henry grabbed his wrist with both hands and held him back.
Jacob spoke up, pressing himself up and out of the hole as he did. “The roots will be there tomorrow, mister Foster. Eat now, for this much work you’ll need your strength in the morning, or you’ll hardly be able to get yourself out of bed tomorrow morning. We’ve got Thomas fixing you something up, and I’ll see to your hands while we wait.”
The Colonel felt the strength ebb out of his body. Whatever had possessed him to work with the fury that had pressed him through the day, it was gone now. He pushed the door open weakly and slumped into the first chair he came to. His stomach hurt from hunger. A moment later, Thomas came out to announce that he’d finished some food for the master of the house and set a plate down in John Paul’s lap.
He picked up the fork and his hands screamed in agony. He hissed with the pain and set it back down. There was a roll of bandages in the pack, part of a first-aid kit he’d put together, and he pulled them out and wrapped up his blistered hands instead of eating. Henry pressed him back into the seat and picked the fork up for him.
“Here, I’ll hold the silver for you. Just eat, now.”
John Paul was too tired to argue; he opened his mouth when Henry put the fork, some fish speared on the end, up to his lips. The taste was fairly good, but he hardly detected it. He wanted to sleep, or at the very least to go lie down. But the men gathered ‘round the room wouldn’t let him, refusing stolidly to listen to any protestations, until he’d finished it. Then they helped him to his room and closed the door for him as he undressed.
When he laid down, he could feel the soreness in every muscle; no matter how he turned, he was laying on another muscle he had over-worked. Eventually, he settled into a fitful sleep. He didn’t dream, or if he did, he didn’t remember it.
Chapter 10
The next morning, and the morning after, and all the mornings after that, he woke late. It seemed better than waking early, so much so that if he woke before he was quite ready he would return to sleep and hold his eyes shut as best he could until sleep took him again.
He did have work to do, but it seemed as if he couldn’t bring himself to do any of it.
First of all was the state of his hands, which seemed to take days to heal. He forced himself to hold his own utensils after that first night, but he couldn’t do it without pain for three days. He couldn’t take up a mattock and cut that root out. He’d been a fool to try to do it all in a day; he saw that, now.
He contented himself for the first day with reading in the parlor. That didn’t keep him occupied, though. Every time he turned the page, it seemed, he would be distracted by thoughts of Lydia. How was she handling things? Was she alright?
It was twelve days until he’d be able to go to the store, and who knows how long until he saw her again, even through her work at her family’s store, assuming they even continued to operate with the proprietor dead.
He didn’t only worry over her, of course. Sometimes he would be distracted by the description of a woman, and imagine that she looked like Lydia—the way she would wear her hair, or her clothes, or the curve of her nose, or of her cheek.
The time seemed to pass agonizingly slowly, and every time he thought of her it stood still until he was finished, as if the clock ceased to tick.
In the days that followed, he realized that even if he could not work, and he clearly could not, he could do something physical, at the least. He took to patrolling his lawn, and once he had completed a few laps he would go up or down the street a little ways, or perhaps going to share a cigarette with Mark as he took a break from cleaning the stalls.
And so, in that way, the time did pass.