Root (7 page)

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.