What the Earth Cannot Hold
Every spring, when the air begins to ache for rain, the residents of Lucre Springs prepare their glass jars. Children are not allowed to participate. They are not allowed to listen or watch. The grown-ups write their secrets, their shame, their regrets, on scraps of torn paper, fold and seal them with wax, and place them in their jars. At dusk, they whisper the words into the jars, screw the lids on tight, and bury them beneath their porches, gardens, mailboxes, and windowsills. The earth, they believe, absorbs their guilt. Only then are they brought rain. Only then do their crops bloom. It has always been this way, since before they can remember.
–
Only, this year, the rain doesn’t come. Overnight, the dirt turns to husk, the wells empty, and the ground grows restless. One by one, the jars return. They push through cracked soil like bones through shallow graves, lids hissing loose. The townspeople hear whispers seeping from the cracks. The voices of their elders return to them, with old apologies, forgotten betrayals, confessions spanning generations.
–
Beneath the window of a small girl named Willa, there is a faint squeaking. She peeks beyond her drapes to see her father's jar, with the soft sky blue lid, shivering under the moonlight. Willa slips down the stairs and out the back door. Dry blades of grass gnaw at her ankles as she tiptoes across the yard. At the trembling jar, she sits criss-cross in the dirt, bracing it between her knees, and turns the lid until it sighs open. Her father's voice whispers to her from the jar. Of the kitten he squished under his boot. The kitten he told her had run away. A breeze pushes its way through the neighborhood, down her street, the voices of hundreds filling the air. Whispers speaking faster than the living can silence them.
–
The people are in their yards, digging new holes, trying to rebury their jars. But the jars come back, so the people dig deeper. The ground only spits them out faster. The whispers are mostly innocent at first. Greta doesn’t take her dog for enough walks. Sam didn’t give his seat up on the bus. The neighbors grow restless. This must be the cause for the drought.
“We have to be honest. They’re meant to be our deepest truths.”
But the whispers grow sharper and the words more serious.
Robert Mulch is cheating on his wife with his best friend Doug.
Meredith Rucker steals money from the sock drawer of her ailing mother.
Trenton Garble envies his neighbor’s garden so he pours bleach...
Trenton runs to his shed, grabs a hammer, slams it into the jar before the rest of the words can get out. Neighbors rush to do the same. Shattering glass is heard from yard to yard, but the words only grow stronger, louder. They cling to the air like smoke. Each awful truth becomes weather: never rain, only dark storm clouds crowding the skies.
They press their hands to their ears, but the confessions thread their way through.
—
The crops are dust. The wells are salt. One by one, the adults climb into the holes they dug as tombs for their wrongdoings, turning them into graves of their own. With each townsperson buried, the whispers grow fewer. With the last spade of dirt thrown over the last grown-up comes rain. Willa and the other children look up to the sky. The drops hiss against their parched skin. They pitter and patter against the splintered glass that litters their yards.
Leah Scott-Kirby is a writer based in South Lake Tahoe, California, where she lives with her husband, son, two dogs, a snake, and a chinchilla. Her work explores memory, longing, and the strange in-between places people grow through, often with a touch of the uncanny. She co-runs The Practice of Writing, a literary community devoted to craft, flash fiction, curiosity, and playful exploration.