"Worms"

I call "Worms" a tale of soil and redemption. It appeared in 2009 in a lit mag I like, "Prick Of The Spindle." Sad to think that I would have allowed stories to be published in magazines I didn't like, but I have had a couple in publications I wouldn't be seen in public with. We'll no more of that, droogs.

Here's how the story starts. For the whole thing, click the link.

Had anyone ever sung this as a blues? “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, think I’ll go eat worms.” Yet he sang the song as a teardrop dirge dripped straight into the freshly-dug earth. It was good soil, rich, thick, black as charcoal, and he gathered a handful and gazed at it as if it held the answers.

Perhaps worms did. One, fat with life, grayish-pink and semi-translucent, waved its protruding flesh in the air as if seeking mooring, or saying hello.

“Don’t eat it, Dad!”

To the child he looked like the fly-eating Renfield, but Dad’s mouth was widened only in wonder.

“Earthworm’s are amazing, Johnny.” He lowered his belly and face to the ground like an abject slave before his master, delivered his words in a trembling hush. “They aerate the soil and–” his voice broke and crumbled into the hole.

“Are you gonna come eat?” The child knew the question was a gamble, and because he resented having to gamble, and because he was fearful, his tone cloyed. His dad shuddered, and the gamble was lost. “Are you gonna plant something new tonight, Dad?”

“The worm’s such a beautiful thing, John.” He was gazing with effusive reverence at the worm, which, as if conscious of the reverence and grateful for it, spiraled and tapped a dirt-caked finger. The dad chuckled in the hysterical fashion of an airline passenger once the plane has stabilized after a twenty-foot drop . The boy stood rooted there facing his father and inflated his shoulders with a long inhalation. He longed for his dad’s gaze, had missed it for weeks, but he feared it, too, for its desperation and lack of control. He wanted to climb onto his dad’s back, which was rounded like a turtle’s, to press his face against the black fleece, to hold on tight as his father rose up like a mighty island emerging from the sea, smell his neck, feel the bristles of his beard carving tracks of manhood in his tender cheek. The boy wanted to kick his dad, too, and this checked the impulse to jump on his back. The kitchen window slid open with an emphatic click. The boy was fully conscious of his mother watching him in silence but did not turn around. Then a psychic force like a hammer-blow crumpled him to his knees right next to his father, who smiled with gratitude but withheld his gaze.

“This worm’s our friend, John, like all living things. We’re all in this together, you know.”