Root (2 page)

So I was there all drowsy and wallowing on the
sofa. Some crappy movie was on, full of spies or criminals
careening in cars, taking pot shots at each other. And then this
stuff came creeping into my consciousness, slithering into the
space between waking and sleep. For a time, I felt stuck between
two worlds, mingling the audio of those mindless movies with these
under-the-forest sensations: a musty smell like the mold growing
inside a rotten log. Bristly, snaky things scraping their bellies
across my legs.

All of these ‘hallucinations’ started
happening about a month before the embolism claimed my dad, an
event that made them a hundred times worse. Hard to believe that
it’s already been over a year now. There I was, a seventeen year
old wanna-be rebel seeking emancipation from his parents. Turned
out, my dad beat me to it.

One windy Saturday morning, as lightning
flashed against a bank of dark clouds, he collapsed on the sidewalk
while fetching the mail, crumpling like a puppet with his strings
cut. I watched it all happen while I was moping on the front stoop.
I ran up and started CPR, the breathing part and all, pressing my
mouth against his onion breath and gritty five o’clock shadow. A
neighbor called 911. He was already gone for good before I even
reached him.

On the day of dad’s wake and in the weeks that
followed, I took to lying in the cab of his F150, popping whatever
pills I could scrounge from the medicine cabinet. Sometimes I would
find mom already sitting there.

That interior of his truck retained the
distilled essence of everything that had been the man named Roy
Moody: traces of tobacco smoke from the time before he quit; the
spearmint chewing gum he had used to compensate; with undertones of
rancid French fries, stale farts and rubbed off aftershave. Being
there, you could close your eyes and imagine him sitting next to
you.

That’s how that dang truck ended up becoming a
sort of shrine, never driven, devoted only to meditation about the
enigma that had been Roy—devoted father and angry beast packed into
5 feet seven inches and one hundred forty pounds of wire and bone
and sinew.

I didn’t know how I was going to manage
without him. Though he was sometimes the enforcer, particularly
when he lost his temper, he was more often a buffer between me and
mom. Without him, we only scraped on each other’s
nerves.

On the day of his funeral I went there and
laid across the seat, letting my body go numb until I felt nothing,
not an itch or quiver or daydream to let me know I was alive. I let
the heaviness flow over me like a mercury bath.

This numb feeling soon became my new normal.
It got so I didn’t have to steal mom’s Oxycontin to conjure it. I
greeted it like a friend. I didn’t feel right without
it.

But there came a time that another sensation
began to intrude, a feeling like rough twine coiling around my neck
and wrists, reaching out of the seat, wrapping around, hauling me
down. My eyes would flash open and there would be nothing there.
Close my eyes and the feeling would return.

For a while I blamed these crawly sensations
on the crystal meth I had played around with a couple months back.
That had been just a lark. It felt dangerous, like taunting a mean
dog, but it never set its teeth in me the way it had ripped into
some of my acquaintances—fifteen pounds underweight with teeth like
seventy year old vagrants.

Another night in the pickup I was really far
gone and one of them things tightened up against my ankle and
wouldn’t let go. A persistent bugger, this one—even my wide open
gaze couldn’t make it go away. I could actually see this gnarly
root stripped of bark, snaking along the scuffed black leather of
my combat boot.

“
Jesus Christ!”

I pulled at it with his hand and still it
clung. I pulled out my Buck hunting knife and hacked
away.

The loop loosened, bleeding white sap. I
yanked my foot free and stumbled out of the cab of the truck, only
to see other roots poking up out of the concrete floor of the
garage, wiggling like worms, bending their tips at me like little
periscopes. I screamed and ran into the house, slamming the door
behind me, pounding up the stairs to my room. I dove into bed and
pulled up the covers, swearing I’d go see a doc about this before
dad’s insurance ran out.

I didn’t know it then, but being upstairs and
cozy in my bed didn’t make one bit of difference in terms of
security. Like I said, one doesn’t go to Root, it comes to you,
wherever you keep your soul.

***

Why do they call it ‘Root?’ Well, that’s
pretty obvious, though not everybody gives it that name. Some here
call it ‘Limen’ or the ‘The Liminality.’ Don’t ask me what means.
Karla explained it to me once, but I forget what she said. You can
look it up if you want. I’m sure it’s in some
dictionary.

Like I said, it’s obvious why it’s called
‘Root’ to anyone who sees it in its raw and untamed form. It’s a
subterranean jungle, a tangle of brown strands of every dimension,
woven into sheets like old spider webs, threading in and out every
which direction, connecting things, outlining spaces, or just
getting in the way.

Root is basically a staging area for souls on
the way out. It’s not Purgatory. That’s for dead people. I’m
talking about live folks about an inch from ending their lives. And
not from cancer or heart attacks or anything like that. The folks
I’m talking about are what you might call … volunteers.

Root wasn’t meant to be a place for loitering.
You’re supposed to go there to get the inspiration to off yourself.
When even your dreams have gone dry and all you have to look
forward to besides your daily life is the dim, brown cave that is
what most souls see of Root, well then there’s not much point in
pressing on.

The end that comes to the less gifted in Root,
is not so cool from I’ve seen. The bearers of bad news are these
nasty things called Reapers. They don’t wear cloaks or carry
scythes. They’re nothing even close to human; and not like anything
of this earth. Only another monster could have designed
them.

But don’t ask me about the afterlife. I’m not
there. Yet.

Like I said, I’m James. James Moody. Nobody
special on this end of the plane of existence. Just some white
trash kid from Florida via Ohio. In Root, though, I’m a rare bird.
I’m a dead survivor, and a weaver of dreams.

Chapter 3: The
Funeral

Those early visitations were nothing compared
with what was to come. Root remained closed to me apart from these
little teases and glimpses. It would take some major jolts to break
down the doors, but that was only a matter of time. Dad’s passing
was only the start. I was in for a bumpy ride.

The day of the funeral, Aunt Helen made
breakfast for all of us—blueberry buckwheat pancakes with sausages
and bacon. I sliced up some pancakes with my fork, slid them around
the syrup, but I couldn’t bring myself to eat more than a bite or
two. I did have a slice of bacon, though. No matter what mood I was
in, I could never resist a good, crisp slice of bacon.

Dad was an Episcopalian so his funeral was
going to be the whole shebang. We had already suffered through the
wake. Now we only had to muddle through a mass and a procession to
cemetery for yet another ceremony. I couldn’t to go home and mourn
in peace and on my own terms.

At the church, I sat in the front pew next to
mom and Aunt Helen, her sister-in-law who had come down from Ohio
with my mom’s brother Ed. Uncle Ed kept chase after his rowdy
eight-year-old twins, Jay and Josh, who seemed to be given free
reign over any havoc they wished to wreak. At one point, they had
blown out a whole bank of votive candles before Ed could coax them
to stop.

“
Kids, please. It’s not your
birthday.”

Mom gripped my hand like a pet hamster she was
afraid might get loose and run away the instant she slackened her
grip. I just sat there and stared straight ahead, trying not to
look at the coffin, wishing my bratty cousins would stop goofing
around and act like they were at a funeral.

Whenever the main door creaked open, Mom would
crane her neck around to see who had arrived. I’m sure she was
keeping some kind of running tally in her head of the folks who
came to pay their respects to dad. Social slights were important to
her.

“
That girl’s here,” she whispered,
turning back around.

“
What girl?”

“
The one were hanging out with. From
the park.”

I turned around and there she was, settling
into a pew way in the back next to her own mom.

I swallowed my gum. My blood, which had been
settling into my lowest reaches like bilge water, began to course
like superheated steam through my veins. The flame that had been
guttering inside of me had roared back to life.

Mom managed a grin. “You like her, don’t
you?”

I stared straight ahead, still not looking at
the coffin, my lids pegged open a half inch wider.

I hadn’t seen Jenny in weeks. I’m not sure how
she got wind of what happened to my dad. It’s not like we shared
any social circles anymore. In fact, I had become a circle of
one.

Her being there did a good job of taking my
mind off the grotesque side show that was my dad’s coffin. It
seemed so surreal—him just laying there in front of this crowd. At
least the lid was closed this time, unlike at the wake when he had
been displayed like some slab of meat, because that’s what he
was—meat. That thing in there was not my dad. My real dad—the
consciousness that made all that meat move and think and talk—was
long gone away to another place.

If dad was here, there was no way he would
have tolerated all these people staring at him laying in a box. Dad
was a social creature. If he could, he would have gotten up and
made the rounds, with body or without, going from pew to pew
cracking jokes and making small talk. There was just no way my real
dad was in this room.

I kept glancing back towards Jenny, trying not
to be too obvious. She seemed to be trying real hard to ignore me,
apart from one puzzled stare. I started to worry. Why was she here,
if she wanted nothing to do with me? I didn’t get it.

The priest finally came out and got the
proceedings underway. When all of the mumbo jumbo was finally done,
a group of pallbearers—dad’s buddies from work—came up the aisle to
carry his coffin. Mom and I followed after, and everybody else
filed out of the church behind us.

Mom went straight to Uncle Ed’s car but I
waited for Jenny on the steps, the downside being I had to listen
to a hundred people say: “So sorry for your loss.”

“
Look at him … so brave,” came a
disembodied whisper.

“
What’s he wearing?”—another subdued
and anonymous voice. “Shush, he’s in mourning,” scolds a younger
voice.

And what was I wearing? Jeans with holes. Teva
sandals. A white dress shirt, un-tucked. Dad wouldn’t have cared.
He would have been impressed that I wore a clean shirt.

Finally, there came Jenny walking out of the
anteroom. Her hair looked shorter, perkier. She wore makeup for a
change, and even a dress.

Our eyes met. She veered over and gave me a
hug, standing one stair higher so our faces were even. My heart
practically burrowed out of my chest. I forgot completely about all
this funeral business, ignoring the folks passing by and patting me
and whispering condolences. It might as well have been just me and
Jenny alone on those stairs.

“
Sucks. What happened to your
dad.”

“
Yeah,” was about all I could
muster. I was having trouble gathering my breath.

Jenny’s mother, stood a few steps back. She
looked nothing at all like her daughter. She had the face of a
bulldog and a body to match. She hovered by the door, trying to
smile, looking very uncomfortable.

“
Burke told me. I was gonna come on
my own but my mom insisted on coming with. Can you imagine? I need
a chaperone to go to a funeral. She doesn’t even know anybody
here.”

My eyes lingered on Jenny’s face, studying
every freckle. “Haven’t seen you downtown lately. Where’ve you
been?”

“
Grounded,” she said. “For no good
reason. Just … sass.” She tossed a glare at her mother.

“
Are you still?”

“
Nah. But I can’t hang out in the
park anymore. My dad freaked when he found out it was just me and a
bunch of guys. I don’t know what the heck he’s worried about.
They’re good kids. What’s he think? I’m gonna get gang-banged? I
mean, really.”

“
Shit,” I said. “That means … we
don’t get to hang out. I mean, like ever.”

She scrunched her eyes. “Why the heck
not?”

“
Well, because … the park’s the only
place I ever get to see you.”

Something in her expression shifted, like she
had lost her favorite earrings and remembered where she had left
them. But it was more than that. It was a bigger change, an
epiphany that momentarily rendered her speechless. A smile invaded
her face. A light emerged from the depths of her eyes that was
breathtaking to see.