Uprooted

            It started innocently enough.  Noah actually caught his traffic window, made it home before six.  Jenny already had her jogging suit on: wind pants shimmying as she crossed the living room, sports bar snug across her breasts.

            “Quick run with me.  C’mon, please, my discipline’s shot and my legs are going to hell.” 

That was a lie, but he knew how she missed track, the leisure of college in general.  So different than their new, professional regimen: his e-commerce, her human resources.  What the hell, as he striped his shirt and noted his less-than-rock-hard midsection.  Quick mile, enough to get their hearts going, pull her onto the bed before she could made it to the shower.   It was his only kink: he loved the slight stink of her sweat, especially after a workout.

They went out the backdoor, that was the mistake.  A whole evening already planned in his head - run, nookie, pizza, maybe more nookie - all shot to hell with her one glance.

“Oh shit,” she pointed.  “I totally forgot the fence guys are coming tomorrow.  We’ve got to clear that out.”

Her finger aimed past the garage –  a cheap little detached one-car that seemed to cower away from the house.  She called it cute, but then she wouldn’t be the one tramping out to start the car in 6 a.m. January.   Behind this white-wooded shack, the ground dropped away in a steep hill, so that the far end of the yard was a break-neck ride into the neighbor’s picket fence.  The first twenty feet of the slope was a goddamn mess: a vine-drenched hump with broken brick and stone sprouting between the leaves, the remnants of a long-collapsed wall coming to crop.

Shit.  “Ok, we’ll get it when we get back.”

“No, we better do it now.  No outside garage light, remember?”

Garage light?  Hell, it’ll be daylight for another two hours, we don’t need to worry about that, as he hoisted the first brick.  Stack ‘em up against the eastern length of the garage, back and forth, each arm pulled long toward the ground with their clunky weights.  Damnit, wish we had a wheel barrel.  Damnit, I’m twenty-six, can’t believe I’m wishing for wheel barrels.  This won’t take long.  Soon run, then romp.

After ten minutes they found the first tree stump, or whatever the hell it was. Noah had hefted up a ten-pound stone; there was a ripping as the wall chunk shredded vines, and the stump was revealed.  It jutted from the ground like a foot-wide wart.  The tendrils that grew from it clung to the rock in Noah’s arm in stringy curtains.   He felt Jenny freeze behind him.  He didn’t have the luxury, he had to wrest the rock away from the vines before they yanked it back, covering the wart again.  As he stumbled back, the vines released the stone and instead slapped at him. 

            He was busy fighting the plant, so he didn’t hear her words.   He recognized the tone, though.  “What?”

            “I said, that stupid thing’s right in the way of where they’re gonna put the fence.” 

            Noah could hear the footfalls of their run and warm-down pattering away.   “Don’t they take care of those things?”

            “No, they’ll just put the damn fence right over top of it.  Damn it!”  She kicked at the creepers.  They rustled but refused to move.

            “Well, can we call them off?”

            “Noah, we can’t get the dog without the fence.”  The pout would be sexy, if there was any chance left it would lead somewhere. Nope, his evening was shot. 

“Well . . . wait a minute.”  He considered the dark green hill.  Now it made sense.  Squat-leaved ivy further down, but this thin-bladed groundcover (groundcover, your life now features wheel barrels, words like groundcover), this all grew out from that stump.  Mulberry or some other shit-tree, a pompous weed the old owners had sawed off. They hadn’t gotten rid of the stump, though, and so it had crept back to life, spreading like a stain.  Lazy bastards, they’d half-assed everything else, from the wiring to the plumbing, why not the lawn, too, and my god when did I become my father?

            He test-tugged on a creeper. Awfully strong for something so thin.  He double-wrapped a handful of vines and pulled.  A gratifying noise of striping as they sprang up a long line of dirt dribblets, and then tremendous pressure, an arrest, the vine taunt, taunting.   He yanked, and the recoil knocked him back.   A dirty bush of roots swung on the end, like a pendulum. 

            “Jen, get that claw-rake thing my folks got us for house-warming.   And the normal rake too.” 

When she returned, he took the claw rake and began ripping at the ground.  The vines flayed up in springs, like green pubis.  His swings grew wild enough that Jenny moved far to his side, trying to rake the segmented bits into a pile of sorts.  Even severed, they twined around the tools, clung fast against stubborn shakes.  When Noah lay down the rake to gather the vines in his arms, they curled around him in surprising jumbles and huge spirals.  He attacked again, grunting against the strain as yellow veins peeked through the ground in defiance.  The stump loomed before him, as if it swelled the closer he hacked at it.  Just clear enough of this back, break up the dirt, and we can squeeze that fucker out with a shovel, pop it out like a zit. Might not even take that long.

            Then he found the second stump. A root as thick as a brick and the color of bad meat snaked off the stump, to wind beneath more groundcover. He pushed the vines back enough to find the root snarled around yet another stump. 

“Oh!”  Jenny skittered back.

“What?”  Noah barked over his shoulder.

“Oh, I . . . nothing.  I thought that was a snake.  Looked like it moved.”

Noah stood slowly, glowering.  He fought the urge launch the claw-rake at the stubs, as if his native spear throw could pierce all three.

“We’re never gonna get all this out,” she whined.

“Get the shovel. Please,” he after-thought.  And after that, shut up, this was your goddamn idea.  So much for my relaxing evening.

But somewhere even deeper, he’d known his evening plans had changed when he’d yanked on that first vine, had felt them shift in his hands.   As he dug at the base of the stump, the black soil crumbled aside like millions of tiny marbles, round and hard and making rain-burst noises as he pounded.  Then the clouds of dirt lurched up, strung together with tendrils, grabbing hard and holding on, challenging the shovel blade.  He slashed at them with the claw, then reached down and got hold. 

The roots grabbed back.  For just a second, he felt the tendrils seize all the way up to his wrist, and then he put both hands into it.  Pop pop pop, like unbottoning a jacket, and the jaundiced towline grew another two feet through the ground.   He curled it up, dove his hands into the earth for better purchase.  A worm squirmed over his fingers, fleeing the conflict.  His elbows bent, his forearms throbbed, his knees bent and trembled.  And then he was dumped back on his ass.  Dirt showered around him from the frayed end of a root the width of his finger.

Two days before, he’d ordered a used heavy bag online for thirty bucks.  He’d planned on hanging it in the corner of the basement: something to pound on, to savage, to build up a sweat.   This was better; no caution or skill necessary.  No Rich Text Format back-slash bullshit.  No that’s-OK-don’t-worry-Jen-I’ll-take-care-of-its.  Fuck it, just seize and yank.  No clean-up, just pull goddamn it pull.  The salvation of yard work, without mortgage payments and marriage compromises and all the other things that seemed to have taken root in his life since college.  And just for once, goddam it felt good being the uprooter.      

He wheezed, vines snapped, time gasped and slipped away.    A tug-of-war; disemboweled chunks of his opponent littered the ground.  As the green mounds grew, Jen retreated inside for a garbage bag, then again for two more.     
           The ground around the first stump was like loose sand now.  He weaseled the shovel under something – the edge of the stump, please please – and pried.  The metal scoop slipped off with a twang, as if it had been nudged from beneath.  Noah whipped his head aside as the momentum sent the scoop at his face.  He spat dirt and curses.

“Noe, take a break, go get some water –“

“Fuck it, “ he replied, and launched himself back at the stump, jabbing the shovel like it were a lance.  The spade bit heavy slits, chopped blonde frowns across the bark.  An axe.  I need a wheelbarrow and an axe, chop this fucking thing to kindling and haul it to the roadside. 

A foot-long shoot trying to hide off the backside of the stump cracked and sagged.  Noah dropped down quickly, before it could get away, grabbed the branch with both hands.  It was cool and damp in his palms.  He gripped the branch like a lever and leaned in to it, then pulled back, like a lever.  Lat pulls, he told himself, just like lat pulls, except it wasn’t just his lats, it was his whole body thrown forward, then back, and over and over again.  The branch was flirting with him, giving a little more on each swing, and yet . . . and yet just when he was certain it would flying out, the dirt shifted, as if there was subtle movement beneath.  Probably the shuffling of his feet.

The branch gave up in anticlimax, simply dropping in the dirt with a sucking sound as most of its roots relinquished the ground.  Noah let a ferocious “Yeah!” and wrenched it up with one hand.  He impulsively flung it behind him, barely missing the garage window.

“Noah!” 

“Sorry.” He wasn’t, and she knew it.  And he knew she knew it, but this was married-hood, and do you want this goddamn thing out or not?

Jenny stood and stretched.  Her wind pants were spotted in grey-brown, and her sports bra bore an unattractive scratch of soil across the left cup.  “How much longer are you going to go?”

“I thought you wanted this shit out of here.” 

“Well, we got most of the bricks.”  She was trying for reasonable but only reaching whiny.

“These three are right in the way.”

“Noe, you’re not going to get those out tonight.  The other two are even bigger and twisted together.”

Her statement of defeat decided it for him.  “Well, let’s just see.  I want to keep working.  Take a break, go on your run.”

“Are you sure?” Moments later she was gone.

Whatever, let her go.  His fantasy now was for her to return with him lofting all three stumps above his head.   He would launch them at her feet, a gift for me lady, and then take her right on the plastic patio table.  Fuck the neighbors, he was uprooting.

Funny, how roots are actually the feet of trees. They looked much more like hands.  Brown twisted hands: three, four, seven of them clustering around him as he toiled, jumping up with his effort, reaching toward him.  He had ceased attacking the stumps for now, was working on clearing the cover away from the other stumps.   Had to break up the root structure if he was going to have any chance at these things.  God, they were strong.  As he pushed on them, they felt as if they were anchored for miles. 

When had the sun begun hiding behind the neighbor’s roof?   The ground was black with churning; shadows had crept in, helping the vines hide.  It was weird, how the root hands seemed to pop up on their own, even in areas he didn’t remember digging.  With the dwindling light,  Noah was going less and less on sight, guiding off fingertips, groping for those jutting strings, tough as piano-wire.  His diggings were leading further from the garage, back to the underside of an overgrown lilac bush. It too had been neglected, like every other goddam thing here, and so it’s branches forked out more like a tree than a shrub.  The branches forced him to crouch down more and more as he followed one particularly resistant root, as if he was being lured in with a long fishing lin-

Something was watching him.

He felt the stare rather than saw it.  The sun was totally down now, and the smoky-blue light of the sky blurred things at their edges.   Noah peered through the dusk. Grey lilac bark drooped at his face.  Beneath his feet, surrounding his head, everywhere were thin, wavery hands.   Stop it, you’re just tired.  And speaking of tired, where is Jenny?  The autumn had silenced the crickets, so all Noah could hear was the dim clatter of some neighbor’s television.  This made him feel even more isolated.  Nondescript voices in the air, and a hissing, a sudden hissing . . .

He spotted the lurker not two feet from him, on the other side of the bush.  Its coal-colored body wavered in and out of the darkness, even as it sat perfectly still, shoulders hunched.   The cat hissed again, spitting sharply, its whole body pointed at Noah.  Or what was behind Noah.

He turned and saw all the severed roots glistening in the scant light.   It took Noah a moment to comprehend that the roots were bleeding.  In the darkness he couldn’t tell the color, could only see a spreading like spilled liquid.  It seemed to seep up through the soil, pooling around the severed bits, dripping from even the intact hands – roots, the intact roots.  A shadow shifted, and the bleeding was hidden in darkness.

Noah hefted the claw-rake and slowly moved toward back toward the first stump.  He wasn’t as worried about the bleeding ground – that was simply a trick on his eyes, no other explanation for it, but something had definitely moved, he could hear a rustling.  He looked back at his watch-cat, for assurance.  The cat was gone.

A hand latched onto his shoulder, squeezed.   Noah spun and wheeled, some cry jumping from his throat.  The root-hands at his feet wavered, grabbing for his ankles, as a voice called his name in the darkness.  Shit what is it, I can’t see I can’t see!  He hefted the claw-rake, cranked back to swing. 

“Noah!” Jen screamed again. 

He sputtered out a breath, lowered the rake. “Shouldn’t sneak up on people!”

“Sorry, didn’t realize it was a capital offense.”  She returned her hand to his shoulder, his arm.  “Noe, you’re bleeding.”

He felt her trace a deep scratch the length of his bicep.  “I didn’t even feel it.”

“Come in with me.  You can’t do anything else.  The fence guys will just have to deal with it, or yank that shit out themselves.”

“Yeah.”  Now that the moment was broken, Noah felt as if all his energy had leaked out, spilled like that stain he thought he’d seen.  He couldn’t yank out one more vine, let alone go after those stumps.  He looked back at them as he followed Jen in, tried to ignore how they seemed perfectly lined-up, like the tips of giant knuckles.

No nookie, even with Jen’s workout scent in the air.   The harsh light of the bathroom revealed many more scars and scratchs, some bleeding more than the first.  His right arm looked like a meeting of flesh and roofing nails. 

“You didn’t feel all this,” Jen doubted as she swabbed with alcohol. 

No, he had felt no pain while it was going on, had never even seen the thorns that must have torn him up.  It was the same way with his just-now throbbing forearms, tightened shoulders.  He lay in bed next to her, already sleepy. Not at all the way he wanted to lay with her, but his aching back wasn’t up for it.  He had lifted weights enough to know that if he hurt now, he was really going to hurt tomorrow, and even more the day after. 

Being out digging had been like being in shock, or a trace.  He thought of the adrenaline stories you hear, the believe-it-or-not tales about mothers lifting cars off toddlers.  His personal favorite was the one about the farmer who got his arms ripped off in a combine and had to walk a mile home, just to dial 911 with his nose.  Noah could see him perfectly: a jagged torso on legs, jogging up some dirt track.  Seemed awful unfair, that poor figure bobbing without arms, when just beneath his feet lay thousands of arms – long thin fingers reaching for moisture, purchase, whatever secret goals they might have, stretching further and further down, thickening as you dropped, more twisted and strange.  Think how long they must be, how far sensation must travel, and if my shoulders just now ache, how long will it be before the giant beneath realizes I cut off his fingers –

Noah awoke to a noise.  At the window.  A scratching, nails against the glass, growing more insistent.  Noah stared at the ceiling, not daring to look.  The dream was still too present, and he knew what he would see: a rooted hand, it’s fingers dragging across the glass, let us in let us in Noah, we have to talk, shake hands –

Then the screaming began.  Both Noah and Jen bolted up at the sound: like an burned infant, yodeling.  Jen was thrashing back and forth, Noe, god, what is that, what is it, not knowing where to look.  But Noah stared straight at the window.

The cat was throwing itself against the glass as if in seizure.   Noah stood, began to walk toward it, froze as he got a better view of the backyard.  Ridiculously clear in the dark light: a ripple of dirt bearing down on the cat, sure as a shark’s fin.  A whipping, and suddenly tuber fingers were roping a cage around the cat, through its ears, out its flank.   The cat managed a betrayed look at Noah before the hand wrenched it from the sill.  

Noah felt the whole house lurch.  He dove back onto the bed, grabbed hold of a sobbing Jenny. “Honey get ready,” he said gamely, numbly.  “It’s time to run again, sprint in just a second, just a second . . . “

He was still saying this when the hand burst through the bedroom floor, huge enough to cradle the bed in its palm.