What Happened in the Yard

Her husband cut his hand off and wouldn’t tell her how it happened, and in the days after the hospital he was antsy, kept an eye over his shoulder. He said only it was sharp. She threw away the buzzsaw and the arch welder and the sander, and when that didn’t put him at ease she also threw away the kitchen knives. Still he didn’t sleep. At night he sat on the edge of the bed and stared out the window at the back yard, where the bushes had overgrown, and she asked, did it happen with the loppers? She didn’t recall him doing yardwork that day. She did recalled a storm that rustled the leaves over the ground and made it sound in the house all day like something whispered. She had dreams of things that looked in from outside, bright eyes in the windows like cats in headlights. They said do you know what he did? And she said she didn’t know and he wouldn’t tell her. After that when she went outside to take out the trash she tread quite softly and watched the mounds of earth below those bushes pulsate and throb as though something were about to break loose.