Somehow, I knew they were coming for me. That didn’t scare me one bit. I welcomed it. I would celebrate their appearance the way an old man greets the arrival of a city bus on a cold and rainy day. And I was pretty sure I had the proper fare.
Light kept filtering through the gaps in the weave. It flickered and came at me from different angles. Curious, I pressed an eye close to a hole.
I saw blotches of light traveling through the thick roots lining the tunnel. Some moved in neat little groups like a military parade, all lined up with perfect spacing one behind the other. Others tumbled like corpuscles or masses of bubbles rising through a tube. Some were just smears that rendered entire roots and branches temporarily aglow.
I had no idea what these things were, but they were damned pretty to watch. Each blotch was a different color, and some were just gorgeous to behold.
I relaxed my focus, and watched the reflected lights dance on the roots that bound me. These roots were uniformly dim, until I stared at one junction, and a patch commenced to glow from within.
It dimmed almost immediately, but with a little concentration I was able to bring it back, as if I had blown on some ebbing cinders. Concentrating some more, I was able to make it move up and down the shaft and divide into multiple patches like the ones I had seen below.
This extra light showed me more of what was going on inside the pod. Some of these roots were tapped right into my skin, like the runners of a parasitic vine into the bark of a tree. I peeled one off and found it to be a pad of finely hooked hairs like Velcro or those hitchhikers you get on your jeans walking through the weeds.
It told me I was part of Root, and Root was part of me. I belonged here in a way that I didn’t belong anywhere else.
I made another strand glow, and then another and yet another until the whole tangle lit up and I was awash in light of every color. I felt like a human Christmas ornament.
I heard voices below me. I twisted around and squinted through a slot. A man and a woman clambered up the sloped the passage. The woman wore a long, velvety dress in a paisley print; the man—a white shirt, dark vest and bowler hat.
They paused and looked up at me, their faces bathed in the glow I had created. I was speechless and self-conscious of my nakedness. They were the last creatures I expected to see in a place like this.
“Strange. What’s all this about?” said the man.
“It seems to be centered around this one pod,” said the woman. She squinted up at me. “There seems to be a boy in there. Yoo hoo! Are you the one making the roots glow?”
“Um … I guess.”
“What a show!”
“Quite the anomaly,” said the man. “What do you suppose it means?”
“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen it happen to such an extent.”
“Luther should be interested in this one. Shall we fetch him?”
“I don’t know. The Reapers are pretty thick in these parts. The boy won’t last an hour left alone.”
“So maybe we should free him.”
My skin tingled. It felt like little bugs were running back and forth beneath my epidermis. My vision grew hazy.
“Ahem. I wouldn’t bother. He already seems to be fading.”
“Oh, bless his soul! The kid’s just a dabbler.”
“A talented one, apparently.”
***
The screen door slammed shut and mom stood there in the door, bits of dried leaf adorning her hair, grass stains on her knees.
Her shoulders slumped when she saw me in the same spot on the couch. “Oh, whatever are we going to do with you James? You should have come outside with me. A little fresh air and sweat would have been good for your soul.”
I just smiled and wished I was back in Root, making things glow. And I wanted to meet those people again, whoever they were. They seemed like such a nice couple.
Chapter 7: Jobs
Sadly, my visitations petered out and then ceased. I’m not sure why. I felt no less miserable. Seemed that Root was sensitive to and repelled by even the smallest traces of hope, though any upticks in my optimism were imperceptible to me. Hints of Root still came to me in dreams, to remind me it was there, waiting.
Mom was forced to take a job. That put an end to my home schooling, thank God. I was already eighteen. I could read and write well enough to teach myself anything, or so I believed.
So I went out to Indian River State College and tested for my GED. I was shocked by how simple the questions were. I could have passed it when I was twelve.
Mom found a position in our local satellite branch of the Ft. Pierce public library. But her pay was poor and our finances were shaky enough that I needed to find a way to make some money, too.
I tried the fast food route first, but nobody was hiring. With the economy the way it was, the Burger King was staffed pretty much with all middle-aged folks. One guy flipping burgers even had a PhD.
Plan B was to try my hand at freelance yard work. So I took a Sharpie and made up a bunch of posters with ‘Moody Landscaping’ in big letters and my phone number pre-torn in strips along the bottom. I plastered them across any surface that would accept scotch tape or staples within a ten mile radius of the house. I offered lawn mowing, tree removal, bulb planting—anything involving dirt and plants. I wondered if Uncle Ed got his start this way.
And it worked. I started getting calls, dribs and drabs at first, but I was a hard and careful worker—and cheap—so word of mouth spread. Mom even let me take the ‘shrine’—dad’s pickup—to jobs, though she wouldn’t let me drive it anywhere else. I kept the bed loaded up with every garden tool that we owned, a gas can and a case of SAE 30 oil.
I ran into problems right away with one of the so-called ‘professional’ services because my rates severely undercut them. Their laborers couldn’t care less, but one of the managers got his hackles raised when he saw me operating on his turf. One guy came up to me and told me it was illegal to be operating without insurance.
I told him, I didn’t give a damn, to go ahead and sic the insurance police on me. But nothing ever happened. I’m sure he bad-mouthed me to my customers. Sometimes I wouldn’t get repeat business, but often I did.
I have to say that despite my lack of experience or training. I got pretty good at this gardening/landscaping thing. I had good instincts for what a hibiscus bush needed to stay green and bloom. Mom found it ironic because our own yard was the seediest looking one on the block.
I ran into Ft. Pierce high-schoolers now and then, particularly in the late afternoons when they were coming back from school. I tended to duck the ones who knew me, even Burke. I was serious about wanting to retreat from the human race.
The stickiest encounter happened in a yard belonging to the family of Marianne Barker—Jenny’s best friend. And it was too bad. They were one of my best customers. They gave me all kind of work and tipped above my asking price.
Marianne cornered me when I was digging a deep hole for a juniper. She was one of those girls who were like supermodels trapped in a fat girl’s flesh. She could be drop dead gorgeous if she could only lose twenty pounds. Even as she was, she was pretty intriguing, to those who remained capable of being intrigued, anyhow.
So … we chatted. And it was awkward. She would talk and I would grunt. She had me in a hole—a captive audience. And that’s how I learned about Jenny’s short-lived ‘romance’ with Jared, and the whole vengeance and retribution angle behind it.
But by that time, it didn’t matter to me anymore. My social pathology had advanced too far. I had become a sociopath, a misanthrope, a misogynist and a miserable excuse for a human being. I wanted nothing to do with people. I was no threat to society, only to myself. I didn’t want to hurt anybody; I just wanted to be left alone.
I pined for Root. But the ironic thing was, my pining was probably the thing that kept Root away. The little shred of hope that Root provided me was its own deterrent.
Being around plants was the only
thing that kept me semi-sane. The nice thing about plants was that their desires were consistent and predictable. All they wanted was a little fertilizer and water and light, and some protection from bugs. Their needs never wavered. They never changed their minds. And they showed you immediately what was wrong in the tone and color of their leaves, and in the rate of their growth. And they were good listeners to boot.
It took more than a single brush-off to shake Marianne. She cornered me again when I came to do her yard and the dang lawnmower wouldn’t start. She caught me in the shade of the driveway, parts scattered across the concrete as I tried to clean a gunked up air filter.
She hovered in the shade of her garage, needling me with this half-smirk, half-smile that was hard to ignore.
“She still mentions you, you know.”
“Well, tell her to get a life. We hardly knew each other.”
I felt behind me for a bolt I had dropped. She squatted down and handed it to me.
“Oh come on, James. Everyone knows you still like her.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “I don’t like anybody. Not even myself.”
“I don’t believe that one bit.”
“Why do you care? I mean, really. I’m just the kid who mows your lawn.”
“I’m a fixer,” she says. “I see broken things … people … I want to fix them. I used to rescue worms stranded on sidewalks after a rain. Still do.”
“I ain’t broke. Don’t need any fixing.”
A smirk overpowered her smile. “You looking at colleges?”
I huffed. “Why should I?”
“You’re smart, James. Smarter than most of the kids at school.”
“Mom can’t afford to pay for college. We can’t even manage our water bill.”
“So? You don’t need to worry about money. I’m sure you would qualify for financial aid.”
“Yeah, right. Like they’re just gonna give me money to go to school.”
“Well, yeah. That’s how it works.”
I peeled a layer of dried grass bits from the spongy filter.
“I don’t believe in organized education. The University of Florida isn’t gonna teach anything I can’t learn on my own.”
“Maybe not. But Duke might, or Princeton or Yale. You’re too smart to be digging ditches.”
“What do you care what I do, Marianne? I mean, really?”
And she just blinked and looked at me as if the answer should be obvious. I had become so obtuse and internalized that I had no idea some other girl could possibly like me.
“Now fuck off and leave me alone.” I stuck the air filter back in place and screwed the cover back on.
She went back inside her house, and I went back inside my head.
Chapter 8: Selective Doom
Mom went a little wild with the credit cards in the weeks after the funeral. Who could blame her? She was only trying to boost our morale with a little shopping and eating out. On top of that, she had a couple unexpected doctor’s visits and prescriptions that the insurance didn’t cover.
When the statements came, it was a little bit shocking how much it all added up to. We opted to pay our mortgage in full and just cover the interest on our MasterCard. Things settled down after that.
I had few needs compared to other kids my age, and even less now that I had turtled up and withdrawn from society. That helped keep the pressure down on our household finances.
Reading was my main indulgence, but I got most of my books from the library. Some of the staff found it odd for someone my age to be checking out so many books every week, until they learned that Darlene was my mother.
As far as literature was concerned, I gravitated to the dark, weird and antiheroic. I couldn’t stand stories relating the petty problems of rich people in suburbia, or macho cops or spies with talents superior to mere mortals. I preferred authors like Vonnegut and Pynchon and Boyle; Gaiman and Gibson and Mieville.
I still didn’t have internet access or own a cell phone, but I didn’t exactly miss having either. There was no one I really wanted to call or Facebook and I gathered that the feeling was mutual. Kids said hi if they saw me at the mall, but they always kept on walking. Not that I cared.
I saw Burke once, though, and he acted like if was invisible, or as if I had never existed in his life. Now that was different.
Marianne started calling me at home after I stopped coming over to mow her lawn. I stayed polite, but did nothing to encourage her. Not like I would call her back.
After a week of me not picking up the phone, she came into a CVS where I had gone to get some Tylenol for mom. I ducked behind a Pampers display, but she had already seen me.
“Oh give me a break,” she said. “Hiding behind the diapers.”
“I wasn’t hiding. I was … what are you doing here?”
“Don’t treat me like a stalker! I just came in to buy some pads.”
“I never said … I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Are you really that frail?” she said. “One girl snubs you and you drop out of the human race?”
“I never dropped in,” I said. “How could I drop out?”
“That’s insane.”
“And…? Your point is?”
“Jenny’s moving out of state.”
“I don’t give a— What?”
“Her dad’s getting transferred to North Carolina.”
I took a long slow breath. Marianne studied my reaction like Jane Goodall observing a chimp. I tried not to give her the pleasure of a visible reaction, but she was probably more perceptive than I gave her credit for.
“Cool.”
“Cool?”
My fake smile crumbled. I was surprised the news had any effect on me, but it did. The hollow place inside me yawned a little wider.
***
My landscaping gigs came too infrequently to help mom make a big enough dent in the bills. What savings we had were going fast. It didn’t help that I spent half my earnings at Sears on new lawn equipment.
Mom asked to expand her hours at the library but it just wasn’t happening. She kept hinting that we needed to sell dad’s truck, but she could never quite bring herself to pull the trigger. It was still her shrine to Saint Roy.
So I went to the employment office and filled out some job applications. I was shocked to luck into a position with the St. Lucie County Mosquito Control District. It was for minimum wage and no benefits, but it was steady pay and enough to help us get above water again.
She got so excited when I told her. We bought steaks and ice cream from the Winn Dixie to celebrate.
My new job turned out to be just as good as landscaping for getting close to nature, but with a hell of a lot less digging. And that was good.
Being outdoors got my head into a state that was calm, stable and sustainable. It was almost like meditating for me—cruise-control for the soul.
It cleared the weird stuff from my brain. I forgot what Root was like, or how I ever got so fascinated with it. Hallucinations. Delusions. Those were the only explanations.
I’d take long walks into the piney swamps outside of town applying toxic granules to the sloughs where some of the nastier mosquitoes bred. This bti stuff they had worked like magic. I would come back the next day and all of the larval mosquitoes would be dead but the polliwogs and whirligigs would be swimming around all happy and active. Day after day I would walk those trails, some of them more like tunnels under the vines, spreading my selective doom.
Sometimes I would try to make the tree roots glow on the strength of my will alone. It never worked for me, though. Sometimes roots were just roots.
Chapter 9: Pool Fish
I knifed through a patch of oleander tangled in kudzu, a bucket of guppies sloshing at my side. A vine snatched my ankle and I nearly dumped all my fish onto the spiky, drought-burned grass. Little green lizards scattered.
One could never be sure these houses were vacant, no matter how long ago the property had been foreclosed
. Sometimes die-hards and squatters hid in the basements by day and came up into the living spaces by night. Other homes got taken over by meth-heads looking for a place to binge. I approached with a commando’s caution.
I hung the bucket on a post and hopped a fence, retrieved it and strode across a trashed-out patio where the green sludge of an abandoned swimming pool awaited.
With these pools, it only took a week or two for the chlorine to burn off, and then nature took over. Algae blew in with the dust and leaves. Bugs drowned and rotted and next thing you knew you had soup.
Mosquitoes love soup. They dropped their eggs and took over these pools, getting in first before the predators. Give them a couple days and the water would seethe with wriggling baby mosquito larvae.
You can’t imagine the annoyance they inflicted across entire neighborhoods once they took wing, not to mention the brain-mangling encephalitis viruses they picked up from wild birds.
We couldn’t spray these pools because the pesticides broke down in the sun and made you have to spray again, over and over. The fish, on the contrary, settled in and gobbled mosquitoes for generations to come.
I walked up to the pool. Deflated and faded plastic pool toys were strewn across the red mulch beneath a row of dead palms. Claws scrabbled concrete. There was a gloppy splash.
I thought a dog might have fallen in and gotten trapped. I peeked over the edge. Sitting in the slimy water of the shallow end was a little alligator, maybe three feet long, its head elevated and wary.
“Say hello to Buster!”
I jumped and nearly tumbled into the pool. A young guy in a lawn chair sat watching me. He had a long-necked Bud in his cup holder and a couple of empties on the ground. His arms were covered with tats and he had gold bling hanging down the front of his black T-shirt. A blonde girl with silver studs all over her face lay conked out and snoring in a lounger behind him. He looked familiar, this guy.
“Hey!” he said. “You’re that mama’s boy. What was your name again?”