With its cargo of old dirt and red clay and cigarette butts, the wheelbarrow is picked up by its wooden handles and driven from one side of the yard to the other. Familiar work, an unfamiliar part of town. Business. A job. It’s still hot. The wheelbarrow is tipped, emptied, and returned to the hole. Another load. Again. More. And there is always more, and the wheelbarrow is tucked underneath the back steps for a promise of rain and because the bed of the truck is already overfull, tomorrow being another day.
In the yard and against the building: the hole; rolls of sod; raised beds; a plastic toy shovel; a coil of hose; two rakes (leaf, soil); a rain barrel; pebbles; worms; knotweed shoots, a small toy car; a stray threaded nut. (Later, mice dance in the moonlight between its upturned metal legs, clamber up its arms and slide down its painted tray over and over to the sound of the garden-level tenant’s radio, which has been left on for a cow-pattern cat that watches from the window.)
Bricks are laid carefully and alternating two by two out of the truck bed until it’s filled to the very top, but a lift, strain, and the load must be removed before the wheelbarrow can go and be unloaded and brought back for a second, a third, a fourth trip to the wet truck parked on the street (the driveway being inaccessible due to a large white van and its drunk and angry owner). A fire pit. Soon, perhaps, the wheelbarrow might carry cut wood, an offering.
Once upon a time the steel was shiny and fresh painted and new and the right handle had not yet developed a small split and its tire was not yet low and its axle was not yet missing a lock nut and while the edges of the tray has been chipped for years, because of a miscommunication, a recent drop, a fall, there are now three large scratches on the front side of its tray. Somebody had to go to the hospital. There were many concerns aired loudly about workers compensation on the drive home, about money, what was owed and what was fair. There was no concern about the rust beginning to form and bubble up behind the wheelbarrow’s red paint. A problem for later, if at all, if when. Why the tray was made of steel. Why the investment in quality things.
Mulch, pebbles for a walkway. Bags of concrete mix. A long time in the sun.
The wheelbarrow is loaded lazily into the truck, and as all the small trees and bags of soil and small smooth stones have been placed where they'll stay, it rocks side to side, back and forth just a little turning left, turning right, accelerating, coming to a stop in front of the store and then at the yard and it’s left in the back of the truck for a week, dry, resting on its side next to the shovels, a stray left glove, a bag stuffed with tools and rags.
It was not even overburdened at the time but simply through long use and a missing nut during a hard turn at an easy job that the axle was stressed just so and snapped. An unusual way to fail, it was said. (At least it didn't spill.) There was swearing but an idea to check back at the shop to see if there was not a replacement waiting in some drawer, some bin in the back. The wheel had come off and was tossed into the truck. The wheelbarrow itself stood slowly sinking into the ground where it was, since its load had been carried more or less far enough for shovels.
(The thing is that old hand tools can find a second life as antiques or decoration or when discovered by grandchildren looking to get back to roots and learn how to plane their own boards and bore their own holes, but a large wheelbarrow doesn't look so nice hung off a wall, and its destiny seems always to be scrap or some kind of planter, carrying, say, a small tree in perpetuity, a juniper, a Christmas tree.)
With no replacement in the shop and the shipping for a new axle being far too much and, after all, there being other wheelbarrows in the shed, the red wheelbarrow, robbed of burden and purpose is turned over, naked and all by itself beside the overfull shed, exposed to God and heaven. When it rains the water slides off uncollected, and the paint dries in the weakening sun, and the jobs are different now, and is that not a box truck bearing pallets of new material, new tools? But summer is so far away.
The wheelbarrow is taken in the pickup to a neighborhood a few miles away from the shop and set out on a patch of browning grass between the sidewalk and the street. Days pass. The wheelbarrow is loaded into a different, older, and in many ways worse pickup and driven off elsewhere still. More days. A different shed, buried under tarps, garden shears, a chainsaw, boxes, bags of wood pellets from last winter, a collapsed shelf, and, on occasion, a gigantic cat who can't be a stray because it’s so fat but also it has so many mats in its long gray coat.
A new axle, wheel, and tire, and the silver bolts shine in such contrast to the dull metal of the tray in the spots where the bubbled paint has been sanded clean. (There is another transaction, another trip in the back of a truck.) Then the fingernail polish used to touch up the paint nearly matches, too. Snow falls outside the windows of the workshop.
Beside the guinea hens wandering the yard and pecking for seeds and ticks and dirt, the wheelbarrow rests in the sun. The house is back from the road a little ways but not so far. The neighbors are not close but close enough. It is the same with the suburbs. The eggs the hens lay are small and hard and used mostly for cakes and enriched bread. The feed bags are loaded into the wheelbarrow on weekends from the trunk of a white SUV. The chickens are loud in the morning.
The wheelbarrow with its sound new axle is loaded with bags of fertilizer and feed and soil and plastic plant pots and the spring is so far dry in a concerning way, and during the workweek it sits in the sun in the middle of the yard as a platform for the chickens to roost and its handles dry further and a split grows and a fine layer of dust and grime and bird-shit cakes the bottom of the tray. It does rain, finally, but on a Tuesday, and as such a pool of yuck collects and is dumped out behind the chicken coop, and on the weekend the tray is sprayed down with the hose.
Summer: to the car and back. Wait. Spray. More trips. A conspicuous gap. Then again back and forth from the car to the coop and side yard and back. Time passes, possibility —
The split in the handle grows and creates a noticeable separation and is so pulled back together by rounds and rounds of white hockey tape that turns progressively gray. It’s getting cold and new insulation is installed for the chickens, an extension cord run from the garage to a heated water bowl. A small stockpile of feed and straw is gathered in a brand-new vinyl shed set on the far side of the driveway near the woods. The wheelbarrow is laid up against the shed.
A few years go by and the wheelbarrow rests upturned beside the empty coop in the yard of the empty house and a sign has just this afternoon been pounded into the front lawn with a large mallet. There had been a large truck that came and was loaded and then went. In the afternoon the wheelbarrow is directly in the sun, and the red paint threatens to fade. In the evening the weather changes. A family of mice scurry under the tray seeking shelter from the rain.