Root (8 page)

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?”

“
Um, James.”

“
Oh yeah! Hey, remember me? From the
park?”

This was Jared—Jenny’s beau. The realization
jolted me and put me on guard.

“
Oh! Sure! I’m sorry … do you live
here?”

He snorted and chuckled. “Do I look like I
live here? Actually, I’m just visiting. Hey, what’s with the uni?
You animal control?”

“
Nah. Mosquito
abatement.”

“
Abatement, huh? That’s a fancy word
for bug spraying.”

“
I’m not spraying. I’m just …
dumping fish in pools.”

“
Fish in pools! Hoho! Buster’s gonna
love getting him some fish. He doesn’t seem to go for French
fries.”

“
The gator? You’ve been feeding
him?”

“
Kinda. Not burgers, though. He
ain’t getting my burgers. So, you ain’t here to take him
away?”

“
Well, technically I’m supposed to
remove the little ones when I see them. I tried once. It didn’t go
well.”

“
Oh yeah? Why, what
happened?”

“
Took me half an hour to get the
noose around its head. Once I got it cinched, the damn thing near
exploded. It was like wrestling a fucking demon.”

“
So you’re not even gonna
try?”

“
Nope.”

“
Aw, too bad. That would have been
fun to watch.” He came over and looked in my bucket. “Holy cow. You
ain’t kidding. You’ve got a bunch of fishies in there. Look at them
swim!” He giggled all high-pitched and giddy, like a little girl.
There had to be more than beer in him, the way he was
acting.

I took the bucket and dumped the whole load
into the deep end—more than I was supposed to for this size pool,
but I figured the extra would make up for whatever Buster
ate.

“
Hoho! Will you look at that! We got
ourselves a fucking ecosystem.”

I looked down at the scummy water. A slew of
MacDonald’s cups and wrappers and soggy, bloated French fries
smeared with ketchup floated on the surface. The little gator was
already going after the guppies.

“
I’d better be on my way,” I said.
“Good seeing you.”

He grabbed my arm and his face went all
serious. “Uh, one thing, James buddy. Forget that ‘good seeing you’
shit. Okay? You didn’t see me here. Got it? And I’ve got some
advice for you. Don’t come around here no more, bro. I don’t care
what your job says. There’s stuff going down here that you don’t
want to get involved in. I’m just saying.”

“
Cool,” I said. “Not a problem.” I
slipped away, slinking back through the jungle and back to the
truck where I was supposed to meet up with Charlie, the senior
field tech.

The encounter left a taint in my psyche. It
ruffled my brain, like a squall disturbing a previously glassy sea.
I wondered what Jenny had seen in such a loser.

Chapter 10: Default
Notice

Wayne, my supervisor, was already waiting for
me back at the truck. He was an enormous dude in every dimension,
but surprisingly nimble when it came to hopping fences and
squeezing through underbrush.

He made me think of an orangutan ballet
dancer. He certainly had enough red hair on his back and
arms.

Wayne was a pain in the butt to work with,
always complaining about how I did things and ranting about
politics I couldn’t care any less about. Thankfully, the only time
we spent together was riding to and from job sites.

“
What the fuck took you? You only
had five pools to do.”

“
Yeah, well … just moving slow
today.”

No way was I telling him about Jared or the
gator. Wayne was licensed to carry and had a penchant for plugging
reptiles with his Glock. I shuddered to think what Jared might be
packing.

I set my bucket into the rubber-lined tank in
the bed of the truck. The extra guppies were cowering on the shady
side. Wayne peeked over my shoulder. “Christ, that water’s low.
Let’s get ‘em back before they fry.”

***

I biked home on the ten-speed Trek mom and dad
got me for my twelfth birthday. To save on gas, I only took dad’s
pickup out on rainy days. The rest of the time, I kept it parked in
the garage, loaded with up lawn equipment for the odd jobs I still
pulled some evenings. The mosquito control facility was only about
ten miles away, back roads pretty much all the way.

Mom’s sun-scoured Camry was parked in the
driveway as I rounded the corner onto our street. Odd. She usually
worked till six.

I found her sitting on the porch, on the
rattan chair. She had a torn envelope in her lap and a letter in
her hand.

This was one of those days I could see
glimpses of the old woman she was to become, starting to take over
her face. Shadows collected in the pits of her eyes and cheeks. An
inch of gray showed in the roots of her part.

I parked the bike on the front walk and went
up to the bottom of the stoop. “Hey, mom,” I said. “What you doing
home so early?”

Her lips widened into a thin smile. “Oh … I
had an appointment with Dr. Reddy and ... it was already three ...
so I decided to take the afternoon off.”

Mom had just seen Dr. Reddy last Friday. A
little flutter of worry shivered through me. “Is everything
okay?”

“
Oh sure. Least I think so. They did
some tests and uh … well, we’ll see.”

“
What you got there?” I said,
nodding at the letter.

“
Oh, it’s just a notice from the
bank. We were late on the last payment or two … so this is just
kind of a reminder.”

“
Let me see.” I plucked it her
fingers and looked at it. It was a form with a patch of boiler
plate text at the bottom. “Reminder? Holy shit, mom. This is a
default notice.”

“
Yeah, but … it’s really just a
warning.”

“
Mom, it says right here: ‘Notice of
Default.’ Have you not been paying the mortgage?”

“
No. I have. Not always right on
time. We’ve got all these other bills to worry about, you know.
I‘ve been staggering them; paying some this week, some the next.
Sometimes they get in a little late.”

“
Mom. You can’t pull that shit.
Maybe with the electric or the cable. Not with the mortgage. These
banks are just itching for reasons to kick people out. You drive
down these streets. Don’t you see all these foreclosed
houses?”

“
No worries,” she said. “We’ll catch
up. Maybe not this week, but the next. I just had to pay off an
emergency room bill.”

“
Say what? When did you go to the
emergency room?” A queasiness spread its roots deep into my
innards.

“
Oh, a couple weeks ago at work, I
had this weak spell. I … couldn’t get up from my desk. They
insisted on calling an ambulance.”

“
What? Why didn’t you tell
me?”

“
I didn’t want to worry you, and
anyhow, it turned out to be nothing. They didn’t find anything
wrong, just that … I’m a little anemic. They sent me
home.”

“
If it was nothing, why’d you go
back to see Dr. Reddy? Twice.”

“
Oh, it’s just follow-up. You know
them, they like to be thorough. I wish I hadn’t bothered now. These
office visits are so expensive. And he only sees me five minutes at
a time. He wants me to come back for more tests on Friday. I have
half a mind to cancel.”

“
Mom, if he thinks you need tests.
You’d better go. It’s important.”

“
Yeah. I will. Maybe after we catch
up with the mortgage.”

“
How much are we behind?”

“
Well … it’s probably about … four
thousand now, counting this month.”

“
Three months? We’re three months
overdue?”

Mom’s eyes fluttered the way they always do
when she’s embarrassed. “I thought we could catch up last month but
… you know how time flies when you’re busy.”

“
Jesus, mom! You should have told
me. I could have helped more with the bills. I’ve been putting away
a little extra money here and there. But if I had
known—”

“
No. That’s your money. You’ll need
that for college.”

“
What college? I’m not going to
college.”

“
Not now, but … you should keep that
option open. No?”

“
What good is college if we don’t
have a freaking house?”

“
Don’t be ridiculous. They’re not
going to foreclose.”

“
How about we go ahead and sell
dad’s truck?”

Mom sighed and cradled her chin in her palm.
“Well, okay. I’m not sure we have to, but … whatever you think is
best.”

“
I’ll make some posters. We can park
it out front. Put a sign in the window.”

“
Yeah. You do that.” She got up
slowly from the wicker chair. A quick wince deepened her crow’s
feet.

Another jolt went through me. “You okay,
mom?”

“
Yeah. I’m just tired. I think I’d
better go and lie down.”

I watched her retreat into the house, my heart
drowning in a rising sea of doom. Something twined around my
ankles. I threw a suspicious glance at the gnarled roots of the old
magnolia tree behind me, but they just sat there inert, like any
well-behaved tree, as roots from some farther world latched onto my
spine and crept up my vertebrae like an inchworm.

Chapter 11:
Complications

Sleeping in a rented storage unit in mid-July
in Central Florida isn’t half as bad as you think. The drone of the
expressway at night could be quite mesmerizing. Some folks paid
hundreds for those white noise generators. I got to have it for
free. I had my favorite pillow and my own mattress between me and
the concrete floor. With my Bob Marley poster stuck to the ceiling,
it almost seemed like home.

My biggest problem was the heat. The concrete
walls buffered the temperature somewhat, but it still got stuffy
when I closed the overhead door.

So I duct-taped together a pair of screens and
propped them under the door to let in a breeze but keep out
mosquitoes. That helped a bit. I never really felt cool, but after
midnight, it almost got comfortable.

At least I only had to be there six hours out
of every twenty-four. The rest of the time I went to work or hung
out in air-conditioned spaces like the mall or the hospital, where
mom was recuperating from pancreas surgery.

The diagnosis shocked me at first, but by this
point, cancer no longer scared me. We met plenty of folks at the
hospital who had lived with it and seemed to get along just
fine.

Mom had been lucky. They caught the cancer
early and the tumor was operable. And the type of chemotherapy she
would need wasn’t the kind that made your hair fall out.

At least she didn’t need to skimp on doctor’s
visits anymore to save money. After losing the house and having to
quit her job at the library, we now qualified for
Medicaid.

She was better off staying in that hospital
for now. I hadn’t had much luck finding us an affordable apartment.
She planned to stay with a friend when she got released. In the
meantime, I would keep on sleeping at the storage shed until I
could save up some money for rent.

Gideon, the balding Cuban who managed this
Handi-Stor, wasn’t supposed to allow squatters. But he was a family
man with a big heart, so he made a deal with me and a couple others
who had been lurking around the place. So long as we stayed off the
facility until 11 p.m., didn’t pee in the alleys and were gone by 7
a.m., he would tell security not to hassle us. That way, the big
boss and the regular clientele never had to know we were
there.

The other squatters were, like me, decent
folks dealing with a little bad luck. But those storage units also
attracted an alarming amount of vice. This Handi-Stor was
apparently a staging area for some major cocaine trafficking up and
down the east coast of Florida. I doubt Gideon would have let us
stay had he known. His night watchman apparently got paid to keep
mum.