Near the hutch …

As I wondered, stood, walked behind the shed, and sorted through the wood pile. Old fence posts, eaves, the lot, and a little door, with a back and sides and bottom, with shit on it.

I tried to remember. Had we had rabbits?

There was wire, too, off the front, and you could see where teeth had tried to chew it.

I couldn’t remember a hutch. I walked behind the sheds, searched, around the sides, the concrete ring where the pool had been, the fence line, where me and Jen had put up the ladder to get to Don’s. And there, in the back corner, the sawed-off bottom of four posts. The size matching the timber. I scratched it with my foot, and wondered.

Near the hutch …

Dead grass, cracking soil, and sand. In all these years, I’d never noticed, but there was a thin layer of sand, like it might’ve been a pit.

I ran to the shed, found a shovel, returned, and began. A foot down, two, then a metallic clang. I dug until the truck took shape: a Tonka tipper, rusted, but still operating. I dragged it from the earth, sat it on the ground, pushed it around, even put some sand in the tray. Trying to remember, sitting here, in my pit, running my hands through the soil, building cities, as the rabbit watched me, as Pop came out, sat with me and said, We should start a quarry.

And me, wondering what a quarry was.

I couldn’t remember, but it must have happened. A million things I didn’t know about, because they were too long ago. I reckoned I could stay in my sandpit forever: filling, moving, tipping, listening to Pop saying, These things can carry fifty tonnes. Maybe we could drive one? What d’you reckon, Clemmy? You and me?

I could see him, squeezing my hand, flicking sand from my face, and getting me ready for the world. No words. Just the noise of the factory, the flapping of wet clothes on the line, not-so-distant traffic, Sherbet playing somewhere.

I picked up the tipper and went in and showed it to Pop, who couldn’t remember it, of course. I placed it on my desk, studied how it opened and closed, the door, even, and how the steering wheel turned, and realised, Ron was wrong. There was no way to find out; no way to explain.

‘I can remember,’ Vicky said.

‘Bullshit.’

‘He’d just mowed the lawn, and bent over to pick a weed or something, and you pushed him and he fell, and then you jumped on his back: Giddyup!’

‘How can you remember that?’

‘And then I got on, and he carried us both.’

It might’ve happened, I thought, or maybe it just suited the moment. I breathed again, deeply, and saw the green world, and us kids, running around inside its borders.