Root (6 page)

“
What’s wrong?”

She took a deep breath. “I was hoping … that
it would pass you by … that you could avoid it. But no. It’s gotten
to you, too. This is bad news. Real bad.”

“
Got what? What’s got
me?”

“
This thing that happens. These …
visitations. Our family … my side … we’re kind of prone to it.
Uncle Ed so far seems immune, but your grandmother had it. I’ve got
it. Had it for years.”

“
But what is it? What does it
mean?”

“
It’s … a skill, I guess. Maybe
curse is a better word. It’s sort of like an ability to see … the
other side … the darker side of our souls. I don’t quite understand
it, but … it kills me to have you go through it, James. You’re too
young to have to deal with such things. And once it comes … it’s
hard to break free. Therapy doesn’t help. At least, it did nothing
for me.”

“
Last year, when you wouldn’t get
out of bed, dad said you had the blues. But it was actually because
of this? You were having these visions?”

She looked up and frowned. “They’re not just
visions,” she said and stared at me with this deep and serious
look. “Sounds like you’ve only had inklings so far. You have no
idea, James, how … intense it can get.”

“
It got pretty intense last night,”
I said, studying her eyes. “Are you … all better now? Does it … go
away?”

A weary expression came over her. “No,” she
said. “I’ll never be all better. Once it gets to you, it has you
for life. You don’t want it to get that bad, believe me. So please,
please don’t let these trivial things bring you down. For Heaven’s
sake, it was just a beach party.”

“
No,” I said, staring at the dust
bunnies under my desk. “It was more than that.”

Chapter 6:
Glow-worms

We reached the mall a little before noon. We
had brunch first, ordering a la carte. I had Belgian waffles;
Mom—Eggs Benedict. We didn’t say much to each other at the table.
Mom chatted with a lady the next table over that she knew from the
library. I just sat there and shoveled food into my
mouth.

“
Feeling better?” said mom, after
her friend left.

“
I’m okay,” I said. “I was okay
before.”

She leaned closer and looked me in the eye.
“You know, you really should call that girl.”

“
Yeah. Maybe I will. When we get
home.”

“
James. If you want a cell phone,
we’ll get you one. Why don’t you have a look around? We can put you
on a prepaid, or some basic plan.”

“
Are you sure?”

“
Yeah. Why not? It’s
important.”

So she paid the bill with a credit card and we
split up to do our own shopping. I headed straight to the Verizon
store, knowing I should take advantage of mom’s offer. But looking
at all those phones just brought back the specter of yesterday at
the beach. I don’t even know why, but I had to get out of that
place.

On my way to Eddie Bauer—I was supposed to be
looking for a new pair of jeans—I got distracted by the Apple
store, and then Brookstone. After I had my fill of playing with
their gadgets, I went off to fulfill my duty, only I couldn’t
resist wandering into Barnes and Noble.

I poked around the manga racks for a while,
turned a corner and found Burke staring blankly at the General
Fiction.

“
James! Hey man, what’s
up?”

“
Oh nothing. Just … hanging
out.”

“
I gotta get a book for school,” he
said. “Fucking sociology teacher wants us to read something written
by an African author. Any African author. But just try finding one.
Hey, you wouldn’t happen to know of any, would you?”

“
Nega Mezlekia,” I said. “He wrote
‘Notes from the Hyena’s Belly.’ You’ll like it. Lots of action.
It’s non-fiction, though.”

“
Whoa, dude! You’re amazing! Mez—how
do you spell that?”

“
Just look it up under
hyena.”

“
Hey, how come you weren’t at the
beach the other day?”

“
Say what?”

“
The beach. Weren’t you supposed
to—”

“
Look at this burn,” I said,
displaying both of my ruddy profiles. “Does this face look like
someone who hasn’t been to the beach?”

“
Yeah, but, I thought you were going
with us. Jenny said she invited you.”

“
Oh man, you went with Jenny?” I
sighed. “I overslept. I tried to find you guys, but…. Where’d you
guys end up going?”

“
Vero,” said Burke.

“
Oh Gawd! I had no idea. I thought
you guys were staying local.” I sighed again. “Was Jenny
upset?”

“
Well … she was a little mopey at
first. She kind of holed up with Marianne, They went off by
themselves, whispering back and forth. It was … kind of awkward.
But then she met some guy, and that perked her up.”

“
Say what?”

“
There were some other Ft. Piercers
there. We kind of linked up with them. You know Jared?”

“
The pothead?”

“
Yeah. Well, Jenny … uh … Jenny kind
of … hooked up with him.”

“
Shit!” I stumbled into a table and
almost knocked over a stack of paperbacks.

Any facade I had been able to erect over my
outward feelings came crashing down. Moisture welled up in my eyes
and threatened to spill. My jaw trembled. I had to look
away.

“
Are you okay?” said
Burke.

“
Burke, I gotta go.” I wheeled and
head for the door.

“
Hey. Come on out to the park
sometime. Okay?”

***

The story of Jenny’s day at the beach only got
worse. I had to piece a lot of it together second hand and well
after the fact, mostly from her friend Marianne, but it seemed my
absence that day had triggered a nasty string of events.

When I didn’t show, Jenny indeed felt
humiliated. When Jared, oblivious to the situation, tried hitting
on her, she was flattered and receptive, in part I guess because
she wanted to feel better about herself and to get back at me for
standing her up.

The problem was, it was no one time thing. She
continued to go out with him for weeks afterward. And this guy
Jared was a total loser. I sort of knew him from hanging out at the
park. He was this acne-scarred, pothead who had dropped out of
vocational school. She couldn’t possibly be serious about
him.

The best I could figure, she was just
pretending to go out with Jared to make me feel jealous and try
harder. Problem was this ploy, if that’s what is was, had not only
punished my little mistake, she had crushed my spirit and made it
uncorrectable. Her little ruse made me lose my last shred of hope
and self-regard.

Maybe if it had happened a month earlier I
would have been more resilient. But dad’s passing had stranded me
out on the edge. I had no guard rails to keep me from going over
the side.

I conceded defeat and retreated into myself,
spending less and less time with her circle of friends. The few
times I saw her in public, she would toss a wistful look at me, but
I couldn’t even bear looking at her.

I had this overwhelming sense of being
finished with it all, that I had had enough, that this is where I
made my exit. But again, this was nothing compared to what was to
come.

I realize all of this sounds pretty trivial
and pathetic, but I’m not here to impress you. I’m just telling you
how I came to recede into the deepest funk that my young soul had
yet experienced, and how that opened the doors to a world that
would soon become very important to me.

***

When we got back from the mall, I sank into
the couch while mom went outside to spruce up around the yard. She
tried to coax me into coming out and helping, and I told her I
would, but the truth is, I never budged.

There was some crappy show on, with guns and
stuff blowing up, but to me it was all random shapes and light and
noise. Mom had left her new prescriptions on the counter. The lay
there all wrapped like little birthday gifts. I wondered what new
toys the doctor had given us.

And then the roots came, and this time they
came fast and they came hard, and they didn’t even wait for the sun
to fall. And I let them come and take me until the world of my
house no longer registered in my senses.

I found myself naked and wrapped tight again
in that dark passage, a dim glow filtering through the weave of my
pod. I swayed, all snug and tight like a caterpillar in a cocoon,
almost wondering what kind of butterfly I would become, but I
certainly wasn’t growing any wings in there.

My mind filled with a pleasant buzz. A light
intoxication. Nothing dramatic. Enough to feel pleasant without
being impaired. It kept me from feeling bored and made quite happy
to just chill out and dangle, while I waited for the
inevitable.

There were those groaning things again, and
this time some of them were louder and closer. They didn’t sound
like people in pain. They didn’t even sound like people. They were
more like grunts of exertion or some kind of belching. They were
way too deep and loud to have originated from a human. They had to
come from something large, something elephantine or
whale-like.

Somehow, I knew they would eventually come for
me. And I welcomed it. They didn’t scare me. Somehow, I knew that I
would greet their arrival the way an old man greets the appearance
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 groups, 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 they 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.

“
What’s all this?” said the
man.

“
Seems to be centered around this
pod,” said the woman. She squinted up at me. “There seems to be a
boy in there. Yoo hoo! Did you make all these glow?”

“
Um … yeah.”

“
Impressive,” said the
man.

“
Suppose we should help
him?”

Something tingled beneath my skin. It felt
like little bugs were running back and forth. My vision grew
hazy.

“
Ahem. I wouldn’t bother. He’s
already fading.”

“
Oh, bless his soul! The kid’s just
a dabbler.”

“
A talented one at that.”

***

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.