Digging to China

70 There was a hill with grass stubble that shone with dew in the peeking morning sun. That hill would hide a project that would land four or five young boys— depending on attendance— in the heart of Mainland China.

The teacher claimed that if you were to tunnel through the earth you would eventually reach China.

We thought to dig straight down with hands and sticks like early man, a rubber-handled garden trowel if we were lucky, and pop our heads out somewhere new.

We didn’t know where or what China was or who lived there. We only knew the shape on a map and the little gold stickers that came hidden on the bottom of all our toys.

I couldn’t imagine how one place could have so many toys, and how happy the people there must be.

Each day we crept through the woods to a field, grappled by a rusting chain link fence, to crouch and dig with grubby hands and talk about things that children think are important. We wiped our hands

Kalen Schack

On each other’s shirts and pants And returned to class.

Our hole filled with water and orange autumn leaves during common rains and we moved On to other things—monkey bars and wood chips— Until our hole dried and we resumed.

Later that week we learned of Earth’s tumbling core and that we’d have to dig around it, so we started digging at an angle.

Our three-foot-deep hole was filled with soft soil by the groundskeeper one dozing afternoon while the sparrows swooped down on him and the caterpillars crawled on their creaking fences.

Later that year we learned that if we dug the tunnel to the other side of the earth, we’d end up drowning somewhere off the coast of Madagascar.

Fifteen years ago I learned that we wouldn’t have even made it past the mantle.

Sometimes I think about the four or five Chinese boys— depending on attendance— who thought they were digging straight toward us and that maybe our tunnels would have met in the middle.

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