The phone rings and a voice blares out without it even being picked up. “Shovel fight! Two minutes!”
I cram some half-rancid salami into my face hole and wipe my greasy lips with the back of my hand. I’m naked and I have to get ready. I pick up my good sweatpants from the floor and slide them on, run my hands over my rotund and hairy torso. I kick in the door to the closet and select my weapon. A light snow shovel with an orange plastic head. Not a very good choice but the only one I have.
I step out onto my porch into the brisk late winter air. The neighborhood is already out, enormous families clustered on sagging porches and screaming for blood. I hold the shovel head up, letting it rest on my shoulder. I stroll out into the middle of the street and turn to face the shovel fight champion, Dick Borghum.
His shovel is massive and heavy-looking, like the man who wields it. It is a gardening shovel with a thick, iron head. He snarls and walks toward me as I walk toward him. There is no walking away. Borghum is undefeated. His eyes are huge and bloodshot. “I’ll give you the first swipe,” he growls.
I grab my shovel firmly in both hands and take a massive, roundhouse swing at his face. The shovel hits him in the ear and the lobe falls off onto the pavement.
“Half-hearted! At best!” He bends down to pick up the lobe. I bring my shovel down on his massive back. He is unfazed. He tosses the lobe to the adoring crowd, takes his shovel in both massive hands and crouches down like a batter at a baseball game. I quickly take another swipe at his face. The tip of his nose goes shooting off to his right. He whips his shovel around and catches me in the ribs. All my wind is gone. Something has to be broken in there. I land a couple more blows, weakly. They only leave red marks on him. I turn my shovel and strike down with the side of it. A small chunk of his scalp comes off but there isn’t any blood. I suddenly have the feeling I’m not going to win this. The champion of Needham Avenue raises his shovel above his head and brings it down on the top of my skull. My head splits in half. Objects fly out: a small airplane, a fingernail clipper, some candy.
Haphazardly I begin spinning in circles, swinging my shovel around and around, as though this will ward him off. He approaches rapidly, swinging his shovel across my body. My torso splits open, unleashing more of these strange objects. Children rush down from the porches to grab up these seemingly incongruent items. Their mothers caution them to watch out for the swinging shovels. But I cast mine aside, a sign of defeat and surrender. My body is so split apart it’s hard to stand. Borghum swings his shovel at the approaching children, telling them to drop the objects. It’s like this every time. The children, most of them anyway, are so terrified they drop the objects as soon as they pick them up. A few mischievous punks stuff the objects into their pockets and run back to their protective mothers. I stare vacantly as Borghum uses his shovel to scoop up the small mound of objects and it occurs to me what they are. All my dreams, all my ideas, all hope and joy are now in the process of entering Borghum’s heavy burlap pockets. He’ll take them home and give them to his wife. She will prepare a nice supper with them and then, sitting down, they will devour all this mental content until they are full, only to defecate it out sometime the next day.
I do not even have the energy to pick up my shovel. I head back to the house, trying to hold my body back together. I suppose I’ll have to call the doctor. Once in the house, I reach down into my legs, feeling for more objects. Sadly, the left leg is filled with pain and the right leg is filled with depression. I do the same to my arms and find the left one filled with addiction and the right filled with madness. I put it all into the garbage disposal. And at the end of my right big toe, I find it, the one dream I’ve been saving. I pull a box of dirt from the freezer and bury the dream. Come spring, there will be many more and I’ll have to begin training all over again.
