Flora by Gail Godwin

myself. “Are you all right? Did you fall?”
    “Of course I didn’t fall,” came his voice from below. “I jumped. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, if this isn’t the mother of all foxholes!”
    I peered over the edge to see him dancing a little jig on the floor of the crater, his arms pointed skyward from the elbows, a silly, ecstatic grin on his upturned face. The crater was wider than I remembered from when Flora and I had seen it. Maybe because there was more light in it at this hour.
    “Come down,” he called.
    “No, I can’t.”
    “Yes you can. It’s fabulous down here.” He was still dancing the jig with a look of mad ecstasy. From where I stood above,the hair on his head looked like sharp little orange spikes sticking up in a field of flesh. For all I knew he might still have mental problems.
    “Come on, I’ll help you. See that young sassafras? Grab hold of it and swing down until you’re standing on the root below.”
    “I really can’t .” I wondered whether it might not be wisest to run away and leave him there.
    “You can, you can. Come on, it’s great!” He had stopped the dancing, and his sunlit green eyes glittered up at me. He raised his arms, beckoning with his fingers. “Trust me, I’ll catch you.” It seemed important to him that I trust him. He would dismiss me as a child if I ran away. My hand was already on the young sassafras. How did he know to call it that? I didn’t know anything but the limited world of my “strange childhood.”
    “Now keep hold of it and step onto the root—”
    One blue Ked on the root, then the other. Two blue Keds. What would Mrs. Huff think if she were watching me right this minute?
    “Now grab my hand and ye’re down.”
    My knees were wobbly, my heart was thumping, yet somehow I gripped his hand and was down.
    “Good girl.” He shook my hand before releasing me. “I’m proud of you.”
    The whole thing felt overdramatic. It was not that far down, really.
    “Now what?” I tried to act blasé, though I was still shaking.
    “What do you mean, now what?”
    “What do we do now that we’re in this hole?” I sounded just like my father.
    “What do we do?” he cried incredulously. “We admire it. Man, what I could have done with this hole. And I didn’t evenhave to dig it. It dug itself. Just imagine, all those days and nights and years since the uprising, since your father was sixteen, this amazing thing was quietly creating itself, slowly sinking and shifting and forming itself into this lovely shelter. Why, a body could set up housekeeping here. There’s spaces for little side rooms, and that lovely moss for the floor, even some little flowers for natural wallpaper, and twining vines for curtains. And smell the lovely earth odors, all the odors coming from the pores of the earth. And so dry. In a foxhole like this I would not have come down with pneumonia.”
    I was getting worried. Not only was I standing in a hole in the woods with a man I barely knew but he might be crazy. He’d admitted himself he’d had mental problems after the collapsed lung.
    “Well, I don’t think my grandfather had it in mind to create a foxhole,” I said, taking on the voice of reason. “Or even a future foxhole. This would all have to be filled in if we were going to fix the path.”
    Elation and playfulness drained from his countenance. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Your wanting to surprise your father. I got somewhat carried away, didn’t I?”
    “Oh, no … I can see … I mean, if someone’s just come back from having to dig their own foxholes in the war, this must seem like …” I trailed off, unable to think of a comparison. “I better be getting back,” I said. “Flora will be worrying.” For good measure I added untruthfully, “She gets really upset if I go out of her sight.”
    With relief I watched him reassume his adulthood. “Then, up you go,” he said, giving me a boost till my foot was firmly on the root. I grasped the slim trunk of