The Verge of the Hill

A lone boy kicks the ball, first to one side of the house and then to the other.  Once he kicks it too far, and it flies over the edge of the hill, down among the workmen, many feet below, too busy to return it, indifferent, mildly resentful even, daring to be asked, although the boy is silent.

The boy stood above the ridge formed by the sand pit below, as earth machines undercut the hill, carrying away truckload after truckload of sand and gravel, to places the boy knew not where.

It is dinnertime.  His mother calls him in, but times being hard, except for a boy who has known no other, they eat lentil soup cooked with spinach from the garden and bits of ham, and home bread born from the oven to soak up vestiges of soup, a trick his mother learned years ago, to make the most of the nutrition there, of every bite.

The boy’s father eats silently, quickly, and hurries on.  Under lights rigged, turning night into day, he works two shifts now.  But the boy is not of an age to know that that is his fate.

This was his father’s land.  This house, built by his grandfather, planted high on the hill in prosperous, hopeful times, still standing, barely, shielding itself from the scene to the north with a narrow veil of trees, blind to what is coming.

After dinner, the boy returns to the crest of the undercut hill, trees precarious, a brow of grass ready to disengage, a precipice now, as hungry machines attack and retreat, again and again; the ball nowhere to be seen down below, lost.

Facing south, her favorite time of day, the boy’s mother, standing on the porch, the sun’s oblique rays warming her skin, witnesses alone a daily trick of nature; the sun nestling down among the soft fir trees for a good nights rest.

But facing north, at the verge of the hill, the boy buttons his jacket against the autumnal chill.  For the first time, the boy sees.