Crawling in the Switch Hedge

                            

  Being a child was like living in secret. All the men were loud and rough. They would tousle his thick, red hair and tease him for blushing. The sandy loam of his grandparent’s world was burdened with  spurs and there was no sign of books but the worn Bible.

 The old wooden house made of planks the color of rain, with its rusty tin roof was foreign and foreboding.

 One day his Dad took offense and made him go cut a switch from the hedge out front. He’d had to go back because the first one did not suit.

 After ...  his freckled legs stinging, the whelps trickling tiny spots of blood , he returned to the hedge. While cutting the switch he’d seen the tunnels. So he angled through the scratching brush to crawl on his knees in that soot-dirty loam so they would not see his shame.

  It was cooler there and he could watch the smoke from the old stone chimney spiraling up into the cloud-bruised sky. He could watch his fantasies of honor and heroes escape the hardscrabble cavern of that dream dashed shack that seemed to eat these men who had once been boys like him.

  It ate them, then spat them out, mean at heart with sly grins and easy offense. Yet he loved them still.