Photo by Jonathan Kemper on Unsplash
by Kip Knott
The hole I’ve spent thirty minutes digging is two feet deep and three feet round. The rectangular box I lay at the bottom makes the hole look like a clock, with the top of the box marking twelve and the bottom of the box marking six. Inside the box is time itself—fifteen years to be precise—in the lifeless form of Nestor, my Jack Russel terrier. Those fifteen years began the day my wife surprised me with him when I turned 60, and included my retirement, the deaths of both my parents, the marriage of my son, the birth of my granddaughter, and—just last year—the death of my wife. It took fourteen shovelfuls of dirt to create the grave, but now it only takes eight to fill it up. God only knows what I will do with the remaining six shovelfuls of dirt and the indeterminant number of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, or years that will make up the rest of my life.
Kip Knott travels throughout the Midwest and Appalachia in search of lost art treasures. His stories have appeared in Best Microfiction and The Wigleaf Top 50. His newest book of stories, Family Haunts, is available from Louisiana Literature Press.
