Piercing
1
When the dust sits on the valley and the sun is in just the right spot, there is a feeling in the air that pierces a young man in two. It makes him question things a little. The calmness of a strawberry field at noon makes a young man go into fits. When the dust hits the strawberries in just the right way, that is when the young man begins to pierce. He is pierced halfway down the middle and experiences no pain.
A young man must lift his pick-axe and cause it to come in contact with the dirt. It must hit the dirt in just the right manner. The young man must feel the pick-axe grinding into the dirt and the young man must feel the pick-axe touching the berry roots in just the right way. There is only one way to perform this action and a young man must do it right. He has his whole life to perfect the task, and it is important that it be perfected. A young man does not have many duties but this sure is one of them.
This is when the piercing comes in. If a young man isn’t finding himself pierced, he is doing everything all wrong. If a young man is not going into fits, he has made a mistake. If he is not panting in the dirt and his mouth is not frothing and spilling all over the strawberry seed, there is something amiss and it sure better be corrected before things get far worse. If the townhouse chairman makes his rounds and sees a young man not having fits, there will be problems for the young man and the entire community. A young man does not step out of line and a young man stays pure.
A young man must examine his place in the world. Sun in the sky, clouds in the sky, air sitting just right, day turning into night. Check, check, check, check.
Chains cause pain to the skin of a young man, but that pain does not feel like the pain of failure: the pain of a duty-shirk. If a young man refuses to successfully carry out his task, he will feel a pain that starts in the heart and ends in the testicles, and peaks somewhere around the throat and mouth. A young man will feel a tremor in his teeth like a rabbit tenderly tearing carrot flesh while hawks circle. Failure is the worst thing a young man can do to his country.
The chains linked to a young man’s skin will scratch and scrape and cause pain, but it will mean nothing. The young man cannot move, but he does not need to. He ddoes not need his day in the sun.
Little Ivory Peckinpaw, a young man, put his pick-axe in the dirt and scooped out nine strawberry roots. This took about four minutes. He cursed the lord and scooped out five more. The sun was full and hot. The peak hour had come.
