The Roots and Water

Everyone knows that during a freeze you leave your faucets running so the pipes don’t burst. You keep your thermostat at 55 degrees Fahrenheit ,and close all your doors and windows. Stay indoors if you can. Wait for the city to salt the roads before trying to drive everywhere. Wait for EMS to pry the frigid bodies of the homeless that litter the city from the concrete of the sidewalks and underpasses.

I worked hard at my studies. I wanted to be the best in any classroom I found myself in, and I always wanted to get at least above a ninety on each assignment I was given. And when I found a job, I maintained this work ethic, so as not to get fired. Not only that, I wanted promotions. I wanted to rise to the top by way of my own personal abilities. I did not want to feel stagnate, or like I wasn’t constantly setting myself up for success. I did not ever want to be seen as a failure. I did not enjoy my work. I have met few who do. But I enjoyed my apartment. I enjoyed the 401k plan. My company even offered full health and dental coverage.

I was waiting at the bus stop one evening when I noticed the man next to me grimacing. He clawed at his ankles which had swollen past the dimensions of the collar lining of the hiking boots he was wearing. Pus drained from open sores which penetrated deep into the flesh; it was as though somebody had intentionally carved out bits of this man. He was under the influence of meth, or some other stimulant, and he mumbled to himself as he gratified his desire to scratch the open wounds. I wondered where he was headed. What were his plans at his next stop?

I was from the exurbs. I had never come across a man in decay. The people in my neighborhood grew brighter, more sophisticated and respected. They had a will to carry out, to stay in exurbs. Not in the same houses they grew up in, or even the same neighborhoods, but in similar sprawling expanses of Mid-Century Modern style houses, each delineated from one another by stockade fence lines. We, I, would have kids of our own. We would nourish them as apple trees do with the fruit they bear.

I thought, “what a waste for this apple to rot” as I watched the man at the bus stop. He would sow no seeds. He would have no roots with which to drain the soil of its moisture and rise to the heights of the tree canopy. The horseflies would turn him into a festering vessel for larvae. There in the darkness cast by the branches and trees from above, he’ll dissolve into the earth itself. The dried, organic matter which is left on the surface will merge with the dust as the wind passes through leaving no trace of his being.

I detested this man and all the other vagrants who were content with turning to compost so long as they trade their lucidity with cheap thrills liquified and filtered into IVs. I never even saw these sorts of things in person: meth, heroin, crack. Me and my friends in college never sought these substances out. We’d have beers on night outs, but that was a social ritual.”Get drunk and show up to class the next day hungover.” These people had nowhere to be. They spend their days with their backs pressed against the wall ,so that they don’t fall asleep and waste their high. Me and my friends would joke about shipping them off to work camps. Your life is in your own making; that’s what I believed. I saw these junkies as feeble minded people who could not handle the basic obligations of life. This life is cruel, I could accept that, and they couldn’t. However, my interpretation of this adage changed when I met the boy with the black crater in the pit of his elbow.

He must have been no more than a junior in high school. He approached me trying to sell a George Foreman grill. I decided to play the adult and reprimand him.

“Where’d you get the grill?” I asked in a sarcastic tone.

“And why aren’t you in school?” I asked with more sternness and anger. Like that which I experienced whenever I thwarted the rules and expectations that the authority figures in my life had set for me.

“School? For what?” A smile crossed his face that indicated he was both amused by my question and the ignorance that enabled it to be asked of him.

That’s when I noticed his arm.

“So you got something better to do than all that ”

He smiled again, and he said he’d probably be dead before he could finish. I told him he could visit the doctor, but said he didn’t like their eyes, how they narrowed when they saw him. He didn’t like how they asked questions. Said he did enough research to know he was pretty much done. He didn’t need a doctor to tell him that.

It was his step-dad who shot him up with heroin the first time. He was twelve, but he instantly understood why his mom spent each day sitting on the couch caught in a perpetual cycle of slouching forward before pulling herself back upright. The thing with his step dad was meant to be a one time thing, but he quickly started collecting a few wads of tar from his parents stash when they were nodded.

He stole a variety of things to flip for cash for a period of time. He occasionally would snag an unattended purse or backpack and hope for cash or any variety of things which, again, he could flip for cash. At night he’d try car doors until he found the ones that were unlocked. He would check the center console and glove compartment for cash or jewelry. He sometimes even found drugs.

His mom walked out one day unannounced ,and he knew his step dad was not the caretaking type. So he took to the streets. Slept beneath overpasses. He used what money he had for a tent, a handgun (and two magazines), blankets, pillows, drugs, and a George Foreman grill. His use became more uncontrolled. The high was a means of inducing a dreamlike state where time became fragmented and where the sensibilities of man were lost. He had become untethered from our world. No desire for love or connection. He sat in his tent with a needle in his arm and his head hung between his knees.

“So why are you selling the George Foreman” I asked.

“I don’t feel hungry much right now” he answered sincerely

My father helped me put down a down payment for a house. I got promoted at work, so the mortgage wasn’t of much concern. It would be me and my fiancés future home. It would be our children’s future home. I built a back porch and set a grill out into the tool shed that was packed into one of the corners of our backyard.

I had some landscapers plant some apple tree saplings around the backyard. About two years in, there was a particularly rainy summer season. The leaves of the apple trees turned yellow along their edges. I didn’t think much of it until I was staring out my back porch, and I suddenly realized my trees had sparsely any leaves. They had all wilted and fallen to the ground beside the apples they had grown alongside.The apples were browned and already half eaten by insects. Dark sunken craters had formed at the base of the trunk and the bark became brown and coated in a discolored slime. My tree bore no fruit, no seeds, and would bear no future trees.

Water logging was the cause. The heavy rains flooded the soil which allowed for a phytophthora infection to fester in the roots. I installed some drainage tiles to get rid of the excess water and formed a stream that snaked itself between the apple trees. I was shocked to find that, from the weeds and little patches of dirt which littered the backyard, marigolds began springing up. Daffodils and clovers soon followed and the backyard. A veritable jungle had formed in my backyard.

I had been so fixated on the apple trees. I neglected to pull any weeds or seed the patches of dirt with grass. I was content to let the tree canopies conceal them with the shadows they casted. Any visitors would’ve been inclined to look up, anyway. They loved seeing the deep green leaves contrasted by the vibrant red apples. They were the type that loved vineyards and orchards, since they usually overlooked them while eating at the sort of place that serves duck.

The marigolds had become my favorite. They had sprouted from soil that once was so barren that it would leave your palms covered in dust if you were to plant them on the ground. They lay dormant, waiting for nourishment to enable them to live. They drank from the water they’d so long been deprived of, and their stems used the strength they were given to break through the top soil and rise and rise until they were ready to blossom.