Dig - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

A.S. King is the acclaimed author of many acclaimed books for young readers. Her novel Dig won the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award, and Ask The Passengers won the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The New York Times called her “one of the best YA writers working today.” King lives with her family in Pennsylvania, where she returned after living on a farm and teaching adult literacy in Ireland for more than a decade. www.as-king.com

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Part One: Introductions

Cast in Order of Appearance:

Marla & Gottfried

Two Dead Robins

Jake & Bill: The Marks Brothers The Snake

Marla & Gottfried’s Easter Dinner

April 1, 2018

Marla Hemmings is hiding neon-colored plastic Easter eggs in the front flower bed. Four feet behind her, Gottfried is hacking at a patch of onion grass with a trowel. He stops to watch two spring robins chirp from a limb.

“Do you think these are too hidden?” Marla asks.

Gottfried goes back to his onion grass. “They’ll find ’em.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“They always find ’em.”

Gottfried looks back at the robins. He thinks of a day back when he’d just learned to drive.Seventeen at the most. Did he say that out loud? Marla looks at him as if he did. He thinks it again. Seventeen years old. Driving that finned 1960 Dodge Matador wagon his whole family used to fit into for trips to the beach or his faraway track meets. Warm day, just like this one. Easter coming. The two robins dancing in the middle of the road. He thought they were dancing. Then he thought they were fighting. Then he knew what they were doing. Seventeen is old enough to know what robins do in springtime.

“I’m going to the side now,” Marla says. She adjusts her gardening apron, picks up her basket of gleaming plastic eggs, and watches Gottfried looking at the robins. “You’ll have to get the ham on soon.”

“Ham,” Gottfried says. “Gotcha.”

Marla shakes her head. She wonders sometimes if her husband is losing his mind. He only ever needed to go to work and mow the lawn. She raised five children and did all the work that came with it and she isn’t losingher mind.

The car was going too fast to stop. The robins were jumping up and then landing for another session, then rising again. By the time Gottfried got near enough to them to know he was going to hit them, he couldn’t slow down more than he had already. Thirty miles per hour to a robin is fast enough. Before he took the car home, he drove all the way across town to the automatic car wash. During the spray cycle he’d cried.

Gottfried never believed in the resurrection. Marla’s insistence on perfect Easter egg hunts since the kids were little annoyed him. Her obsession with them now that there were grandchildren was infuriating, especially considering their grandchildren were mostly grown—teenagers. When she asks questions like that—did he think the eggs weretoo hidden?—he wonders if Marla is losing her mind.

She says, “And don’t forget to peel the potatoes!”

He throws the lumps of onion grass into the woods that surround the house.

He goes inside and washes his hands.

He puts the ham in the roaster.

He empties a five-pound bag of potatoes in the sink and retrieves the peeler from the drawer. As he slices the skin off inch by inch, he thinks of the robins again and cries.

Jake & Bill can bring the snake out now

April 1, 2018

Jake Marks and his older brother, Bill, walk through the high school parking lot. Bill has his snake with him—wrapped around his neck and tucked into his coat. Jake has the look of skipping school on his face even though it’s a Sunday and a holiday. Could be a school day for all he knows. He gives no fucks. Jake never gives any fucks. It was once suggested that the school should rename the in-school suspension room the Jake-Marks-Gives-Zero-Fucks Room.

Jake’s just flowing in Bill’s wake. Six years between them, and the two act like twins, which is sad if you think about it. Either Bill is seriously immature or Jake is growing up too fast. Smoked since he was ten. Crashed his first car at twelve.

Part 1.1: Introducing the Shoveler and the Freak

Cast in Order of Appearance:

The Shoveler

Mr. ________son

The Shoveler’s Mom

Mike the Neighbor

Mrs. Second Grade

Penny & Doug or Dirk or Don

The Freak, Flickering

Half-Wit High School Bitches Kelly & Mika

The Freak’s Mom and Dad

The Shoveler’s Shovel

Bill with the Neck Tattoo

The Talking Dirt

The Shoveler: the Snowstorm & Mr. ________son

84 Days before Marla & Gottfried’s Easter Dinner

5:33 a.m.

My phone rings and it makes no sense that my phone is ringing because I’m in the ocean. It’s dark—storm coming in, threatening sky, and I’m trying to make it to shore ahead of the storm. It’s not a scary place, even though the waves are twenty feet high and getting higher. But I am at one with the ocean. Every time a wave rises behind me, I turn to look and then dip my head calmly under water until the wave passes. Then I walk toward shore until the next wave comes and I do the same.

There are people on shore, but I don’t know who they are. They seem worried about me, but I’m fine.

*** 

I picked up the phone. There was a man on the other end and it wasn’t my father.

It’s never my father.

“Hello?” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Is ______________ there?” I don’t remember the name—I didn’t even hear it when he said it. It was Sunday morning at 5:33 a.m.—I was still chest deep, walking to shore. He’d heard my answer—scratchy, tired and dreaming. He knew he had the wrong number.

“I think you have the wrong number.”

“This is Mr. ________son.”

“Wrong number,” I said again.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said. He sounded like he was heading to church. His voice was the choir. Soft, understanding, sorry. He hung up.

Before I fell back to sleep, I knew what his name was. I repeated it to myself a hundred times so I’d remember. But I didn’t remember it when I woke up. I ran through all the names. Stephenson, Richardson, Davidson, Hutchinson, Robinson, Johnson, Morrison, Nicholson, Jefferson. None of them were his name.

But he was somebody’s son.

 ***

I check to make sure the call wasn’t in my head. But it’s there on my recent calls list. 5:33. A call from 407-555-1790. Maybe it was the coast guard calling to make sure I got out of the ocean okay. Maybe it was just a guy trying to wake up his church buddy. Maybe they were going fishing after the sermon. Maybe they were going to rob a convenience store. Maybe they were going to visit a friend in the hospital. Maybe they were going to drive to New York City to see a show.

I don’t know how to stop the variables.

 ***

I know Mr. ________son wasn’t calling for my mother. No one calls for my mother. It’s not that she’s unlikeable; she’s just hard to locate. Today, Sunday, she’s trying to organize the kitchen. We moved in three days ago and she can’t find her big potato pot. This is a problem.

“Are you sure you didn’t use it for something?” she asks me.

“I’m sure.”

“I don’t understand where it could’ve gone,” she says.

“Still three boxes in the shed out back that we never opened.”

She sighs and frowns. “Those are all clothes. Not pots. I put all the kitchen stuff in kitchen...