By Liana Johnson
When Samantha was ten years old, she began to dig holes. Her parents, exasperated, asked why she ruined their nice front yard with the little cavities. Digging in the soccer field during recess got her sent to the principal’s office for creating a hazardous environment. The other kids at school didn’t care about safety, but they enjoyed messing with the girl who dug holes, like when they tossed her lunch box into one and then buried it.
Even as she watched from the window while her father repaired the damage and sprinkled a layer of grass seed on the soil, Samantha couldn’t explain what made her do it. She knew it must be wrong and wanted to stop, but she also yearned to dig a hole so enormous it swallowed the Earth.
One Saturday, Samantha grabbed her mother’s small gardening trowel and ventured past the dead-end sign in her neighborhood in search of a safe place to dig. She reached a solitary house with a wooden fence so tall she couldn’t see over it, even on tip toes, wrapped around the backyard. Samantha hadn’t met the owner, but her parents and neighbors called him eccentric. She never saw him around and thought of it as an abandoned house—the perfect spot.
Samantha began a new hole under an inconspicuous corner of the fence. She’d gotten the idea watching Homeward Bound the night before, when Shadow, Chance, and Sassy escape by digging a hole under a fence and then slipping out. She paused now and then to use her chipped tooth to scrape dirt from under her fingernails, then spat on the ground like a baseball player. With her hair tucked into a backwards cap and baggy shorts that showed her dirt-smudged legs, adults sometimes mistook her for a boy, an error that filled Samantha with pride because at the time she thought being adventurous meant being as much like a boy as possible.
She dug for a few blissful hours, her mind clear and her hands busy, before finally sliding under the fence like the animals in the movie. She hadn’t considered what she might find on the other side. To her surprise, she discovered more fences. Or rather, pieces of partially-built fences, like giant fabric swatch samples—all different sizes and colors, scattered around a shed.
A man wearing overalls emerged. “How’d you get in here?”
Samantha shrugged, stepping in front of the hole to hide it. “Why are there so many fences?” She glanced around, tempted to dig a hole under each one.
The man put his hands in his pockets. “I’m a fence builder. This is where I try out new styles and designs. Experimental stuff.” He proceeded to tell her a whole lot about fences, including his insecurities about people seeing them before he finished building, sanding, and painting. He didn’t seem to mind her seeing the works-in-progress. Maybe he thought kids’ opinions didn’t matter. Or perhaps he too thought she was a boy, one who could appreciate a good mess.
As he told her about the different heights of fences and the messages they convey to the world, his eyes wandered over her shoulder to the gaping hole she’d created. He blinked repeatedly like he’d short-circuited. Samantha followed his gaze, and then looked back at him, cringing. She must be in big trouble, now.
But then she realized the fence builder might be the only one who would understand her compulsion. Mimicking his stance, she put her hands in her baggy shorts pockets and explained, “I’m a hole digger.”
Liana Johnson is a writer living in New York City. Her work also appears in the South Shore Review. She has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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