Ryan Smith

Fruition

            He got up and went to the bathroom. Then he went to the kitchen and turned on the coffee maker. After that, he turned on the television and stared at it until the coffee was ready. He poured himself a cup and stood starring at the TV, drinking. Then he walked back to the bedroom and into the bathroom to take a shower. After getting dressed, he watched the news for a few minutes before he switched the TV off. Then he got in his car, a 2009 lime-green Ford Focus, and drove to work, where he would sit at a monitoring station and monitor things. His daily duties, which were duct taped upon his workplace wall read as follows: MONITER RECORDING INSTRUMENTS, FLOW-METERS, PANEL LIGHTS, AND OTHER INDICATORS, AND LISTEN FOR WARNING SIGNALS, IN ORDER TO VERIFY CONFORMITY OF PROCESS CONDITIONS. After a successful day of monitoring, he would come home and do a few chores in or around the house, eat, watch TV with the wife, then go to bed.

            Every day was like this, unless he didn’t have to go to work that day. When this was the case, his routine was as follows: he woke up and lay in bed. After a while he turned on the television. He watched whatever was on, usually for the rest of the program’s duration, then got up and went to the kitchen, turning on the coffee maker. Then he went back into the bedroom, got in bed again and stared at the TV. When he could smell coffee, he got up and went to the kitchen to pour himself a cup. Then he walked back to the bedroom and into the bathroom to take a shower. Afterwards, he got dressed, and then climbed back into bed. Eventually, he woke up his wife to see what the plans were for the day.

            When he wasn’t working or occupied with his wife he was usually outside, doing yardwork. He didn’t like yardwork, really, but he didn’t have much of a choice about it either. The back yard was a flawlessly maintained garden of flowers, shrubbery and fruit and vegetable plants. The front, a flawlessly maintained show yard: unblemished tree centered expertly – exquisite shrubs subtly, yet noticeably, complimenting the unblemished tree – impeccable flowers complimenting the exquisite shrubs – all done flawlessly. They, him and his wife, had won a neighborhood lawn contest two years ago; Deer Park’s Neighborhood Contest it was called. Their reward was five hundred dollars in cash and the respect, envy and admiration of people they hadn’t met and neighbors they barely knew. Now he was lucky if a day went by without the yard being mentioned. This was bad enough, but this year, the people who ran the neighborhood lawn contest - a committee of middle aged women who had nothing better to do, except perhaps go to tanning salons or convince their husbands that the cars, all two-to-four of them, needed washing again - this year, they were considering doing a backyard neighborhood lawn contest. Because of this possibility, his wife would not merely allow him to work on the front lawn. No, no, the back must be done as well. So he did, and it was done flawlessly.

            This particular week was different. His wife was gone and would be gone all week. Gone shopping. She was with her girlfriends in San Antonio. God knows how many margaritas they had all drank on the River Walk. He imagined them sitting around a table at some over-priced Tex-Mex restaurant, a pile of shopping bags around the legs of their chairs, laughing loudly, margaritas in hand, flirting with the white waiter, flirting with the Mexican busboy. He could also imagine how much money his wife had spent so far – she had only left yesterday morning – but he didn’t want to imagine it, so he didn’t. It was the first time his wife had been gone for a significant amount of time since all of the neighborhood lawn contest mess started. He didn’t know what to do. He wanted to get back into bed and watch television – there were sitcom reruns and sports recaps to be had – but he remembered what his wife had said. She’d said, “Henry, please make sure you work on the lawn tomorrow. And Thursday. And Saturday. You know the drill honey. We’re gonna win this thing, right?”

“Right.”

“Good. I knew I could count on you. Try not to have too much fun while I’m gone, ok? I’ll be back Sunday, hon. Bye-bye.”

“I won’t. Bye.” But now she was gone, and he didn’t feel particularly obligated. He felt exhausted. He felt like he was tired of mowing the lawns, both of them, twice a week. He walked out onto the back porch and starred at the well-manicured lawn. For some reason he remembered a place he used to go as a child. It was a relative’s house, an aunt, or a great-aunt, or a cousin or something – he couldn’t remember. It wasn’t even a house, actually, it was a trailer. He remembered playing with some kids, probably more relatives, in the yard. It was no show yard. No prize winning yard. There were kids toys spread out at random: a pink, plastic Barbie tricycle, a couple of neon Frisbees, a dirty baby blanket. Marbles and jacks were stomped on every now and then. He remembered the grass: it was long and uncut, there were dandelions to blow, bull thistles and stickers to avoid. Sometimes your foot would get caught in a patch of mud, hidden by the grass. You could pick one of those tall, skinny things and chew on it, or pretend to smoke it. There were bees and ants and dragonflies and grasshoppers rustling about in the grass, the wind. Whenever the adults would call him in, he remembered being bored by their conversation, bored by the TV that never turned off. He would look out the window. Sometimes there would be a snail on it.

In his pocket, his cell phone buzzed. It was a text message from his wife. “Lawn? Lol love you”, it read. He decided to stop mowing the back lawn. He decided to stop doing anything to it. He would leave it to its own devices. He had a week for it to grow, maybe summon a grasshopper or two. He could always work on it the day before his wife came home. He started immediately, by going inside the house, feeding the cat, and turning on the television. Everybody Loves Raymond was on.

            The next morning he woke got up, went to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror. His wife had always hated facial hair, even though he’d had a pretty decent beard going when they first met. “I’m looking pretty scraggly today,” he thought, noticing his manly growth. He decided not to shave. “I’ll have a prepare-myself-and-the-lawn-for-the-wife-and-society day,” he thought.

After showering and dressing, he went to the kitchen and fed the cat. The cat’s name was Boots – a Siamese. Boots had white feet, thus her name. He loved the cat. He loved how much of a bitch she could be, not like the dogs, who were pushovers and yes-men – yes-dogs. She was pretty old, thirteen or so, so she was allowed to be grumpy. If you pet her on the stomach she would attack your hand viciously, unless you were also petting her head - if you did both, you were ok. He didn’t even mind that she would meow at unreasonably loud volumes, standing by her food bowl, for no apparent reason. His wife hated that. He didn’t mind it. He gave her some food, did the two-hand petting trick, and went outside to feed the dogs. The dogs were named Princess and Ladybird. Princess was, in dog years, middle-aged, but she acted old – a half basset hound, half beagle. There was a little diamond of brown fur on her forehead, thus her name. Ladybird was just a puppy. She was miniature dachshund, and was brown with blackish spots. Henry’s wife was fanatical about watching the television show King of the Hill, and if you changed the channel after accidentally catching half a second of King of the Hill, you were in trouble – thus, her name. He loved the dogs.

He stepped onto the back porch, whistling to call the dogs, but stopped when he looked out at the lawn. He was staring at the tree. His wife had said it was the least attractive part of the yard by far, but he thought it was pretty and relaxing to look at. Something about its permanence was comforting. The tree was old, and its limbs were long, crooked and drooping. She’d got him to trim it down to little more than a trunk with a few stumps poking out of it; “Like a war amputee,” he’d thought after he trimmed it. Now it was different, not exactly back to how it used to be, but somewhere in the middle. The stumps had branches attached to them, albeit tiny ones, with actual leaves. It had been awhile since there was any green on the tree. He almost smiled, then frowned, not understanding how this had happened. “Everything was picture-perfect yesterday. Ready for the neighborhood lawn contest.” He looked out into the yard to find the dogs and noticed the grass - it was long - he continued frowning. “I miss a day of mowing and this is what happens? No wonder Emma is always on me about it,” he said out loud. He was trying to stay calm by thinking and speaking calmly. But the tree couldn’t have started re-growing branches in one night, he knew, and the grass couldn’t just explode like that either – it was already halfway to his knee, when it been AstroTurf the day before. He was confused and didn’t know what to do, so he whistled again, pathetically this time, for the dogs.

Ladybird came bounding out of a bush near the fence, leaping so far she barely touched the ground. When she got to his feet she fell over on her back, flattening the grass under her, rolling around, her tongue waving, her tail convulsing. Princess jumped out of another bush on his opposite side, hopping around like an obese rabbit since she was fatter than the puppy. When she got to him, she copied Ladybird, shifting her weight around, her legs kicking at nothing. Henry smiled and reached out to pet their round bellies, one dog for each hand. “Dere’s my Prenschess…my little baby Prenschess doggy…mm mm mm my puppy dog. Calm down Ladybird…I love you too my little puppy wuppy…so cuuute.” He bent down to give each dog a kiss on the side of their face, despite their willingness to French it, then he lay down on his back in the grass in between them.

He thought about how strange it was that the yard had grown so much overnight, but he didn’t think too much about it, because he didn’t want to. Instead he concentrated on his dogs, and on the grass he was lying on. It felt good. The close-cut lawn had always felt unnaturally sharp and brittle under his feet; this felt softer somehow, and stronger, more like a plant than some spiky plastic stuff colored green in a factory somewhere. He liked it and the dogs liked it. “And that’s what matters this week. Right girls?” - but the dogs were off somewhere in the grass, playing. He listened to the way the grass sounded under their paws, when their tails whacked it, when they fell and rolled on it. He liked that too. He thought he might let Boots out in it later. She was old but he still sensed that she was a hunter at heart.

After awhile he got up and walked towards the porch to get the dogs their food, although they didn’t really look like they cared very much at the moment. On the way he stopped at the pool. It was green - very green. Like everything else, it had been perfect yesterday. Flawless. He could hardly see beneath the surface, which was covered with a film of something. He stared at the water, wondering how much work it would take to clean, starting to feel the nervous confusion coming back. He saw the thick, green film rise briefly, then sink. Something dark was moving under the water – whatever it was, it was big. The green skin of the pool rose again, making an enormous hump, then burst with an extraordinary splash - a breath? or was that a stray fin that broke the surface? – which nearly soaked him. He hurried to the porch, calling the dogs from their reverie, grabbing their food bowls. That crash of water, terrifying as it was, he thought, reminded him of doing canon balls as a kid. It had been so long…but it was dangerous. The dogs slept inside that night, much to the annoyance of the cat.

The sunshine seemed brighter than usual, and the pleasant change woke him up. He squinted at the window. There was something on it, casting a round shadow on the bed. He got up and looked - there was a massive snail, about the size of a basketball, maybe a little bigger, attached to the glass. It dwarfed any other snail he’d ever seen, and was certainly much larger than the ones he remembered watching crawl on things when he was younger. It moved slowly towards the top of the window, its antenna lolling languidly. The shell was pale cream-colored, with broad, brown stripes. He could see the texture of the animal’s body through its thin, wet sheen. Henry traced its trail of glistening slime down the glass; where the sunlight streamed through the trail, it appeared to change: the light became softer, less blindingly sharp, and instead of the near platinum of the morning sun, it turned a warm green-gold. He watched the creature as it crept upwards, its muscles - did snails have muscles? – pulsating rhythmically, almost hypnotically. When the last of it finally disappeared above the window, he watched the sunlight filter through the iridescent stream left behind. After awhile, he showered, got dressed and turned on the coffee maker. He thought he’d have his cup outside today, maybe let the cat play around a little in the back. When the coffee was ready, he called the cat and went to the door. Boots was one of those rare cats who would come if you called her, usually.

He opened the door, purposely not looking out the glass, and let her out, following her onto the back porch. Trying not to look up, he watched her: she moved quickly but carefully, and in complete silence. She was edging her way towards the AstroTurf-turned-field, all of her senses sharp – her ears twitched delicately - absorbing the changes of the yard. And he could tell it had changed, even without looking up - he could hear it. It was full of bugs, which he didn’t particularly care for. He could hear little chirps, and shrill scratchy sounds, like rusty whistles. There was an unnerving shake that came at odd intervals, like someone hiding in the grass was trying to scare him with a pair of maracas or a tambourine. He wasn’t used to hearing anything out here except the jingling of one of the dog’s collars, or maybe the muffled sound of the pool pump in the back. When he was mowing or weed-eating or trimming what little sound there was drowned out anyway. The cat had reached the grass and was now smelling at it, one paw in the air. She looked satisfied and continued her stealthy move into the wall of gold and green.

Hesitating, he forced his eyes up, and was instantly both terrified and rapturous. The yard had grown considerably since the day before. The tree was now as it once was - full of warped old branches and covered in green leaves, as if it had never been mutilated by him at all. The grass itself was ridiculous now, just over his knees. Scattered weeds could be seen, poking their heads out from the tops of the grass - mostly golden wheat-looking things, but here and there were dandelions, big as oranges. He also noticed the impeccably arranged shrubs and bushes had mostly disappeared, swallowed up by the wild lawn. Like everything else about the yard, this pleased him and worried him simultaneously. He was glad to be rid of the bushes, to be rid of lawn-work, but he knew it wouldn’t last long, and if his wife came home and saw the back yard like this…

Walking slowly, he called for the cat. This time, she didn’t come. He was worried – she might only be hunting, but there was that thing in the water to think about. Then he walked towards the pool, which was practically hidden from sight by the feral plants. When he reached it, he again saw the green, but he noticed this time that the color had lost some of its sickening vibrancy, as if the slime had sunk into the murky depths, spreading out and coloring the rest. On the pool’s edge there were cattails, hanging over the water, and in the water itself, lily-pads. The pool was more like a pond now - it even smelled like a pond: thick, dank, and stale. But even though he turned his nose up at it, Henry liked the smell. It was how a pond was supposed to smell. Besides, he’d always hated the smell of chlorine. Ever since he was small, he’d hated that raw chemical smell – he thought, especially when it was hot, that it smelled like something they would put on dead bodies in a morgue or something – and he’d grown to dislike swimming pools because of it, but…Emma had wanted a pool, so they’d bought one. The stench reminded him of walking down the detergent isle at the supermarket. When he was little, he would pinch his nose with his fingers and hold his breath when his mother forced him to follow her down that awful isle. He would bubble his cheeks and take an unnecessarily loud gulp air, earning his mother’s sigh and a few seconds worth of unpolluted breath. This was different: the pond had a somewhat rotten smell, but it was more importantly an organic smell, life was implied. And he liked it.

The sun overhead was painfully hot, even for an August day in Texas, so he wandered over to the tree, which could now, quite miraculously, offer shade. He sat down beneath it, where the grass wasn’t quite so high and leaned back against its trunk, looking up into the twinkling canopy. Little flicks of the sun were coming down through the leaves. A caterpillar – like the snail earlier, mammoth – five or six inches long, black and yellow, covered in tiny spikes like needles, wiggled down the tree towards him. Then it changed directions and crawled onto a low-hanging branch, presumably going for the over-abundance of leaves there. When the caterpillar reached its destination, it immediately began munching happily, its greed absurd in the abundance. Something happened inside Henry and he got up from under the resting place and ran towards the pond. Leaping into the open air, he tucked his legs up under him, grabbing them with both hands just before he crashed into the murky water, and sunk. It was cool under the surface, where no hot knives of light could sting him – but he had to breathe, so he swam to the surface, laughing as he took a breath. The pond looked bigger from the inside, and he noticed that his splash hadn’t disturbed the lily pads. Henry floated there for a moment, then dove down towards the bottom of the pool. The bottom wasn’t there, or at least, he couldn’t find it. He surfaced and tried again – it wasn’t there. And he’d noticed a sensation while diving, something familiar, but practically forgotten. His father, who had owned his own modest boat, used to take him out on a lake, usually with some cousins or something. He remembered swimming in the green-brown water. It was warm, soothing really, at the surface, but down by your feet it was cold. It used to make him nervous, thinking about what could be down there in the cold by his feet, so he would often pull them up, just to lower them back into the cold again for the sensation. The pool, the pond, felt like this now - it felt like a lake. For a moment he thought he felt something move near his toes, down in the cold water, but instead of retracting his feet safely, he laughed. He was still laughing when he noticed Boots staring at him smugly from the water’s edge.