the Weed

the Weed originally published by Riggwelter Press.

It is quiet on their back porch. They overlook a small patch of grass butted against a red desert. Mountains in the distance and small developments creep in from all directions. Before long it won’t be so peaceful. Small families moving in mean small children. Small children mean noise. Now it’s just coyotes and windsound. Sometimes rain and with it thunder. Those nights are their favorites. The crash and excitement against their solitude. 

At the edge of the grass, before their world slopes down into another, a tall gray weed sways. Neither of them remember it being there the day before. Just beyond it are cactus and sage and the bright flowers of the desert. 

“If we’re not careful,” he says. “That weed’ll take over our whole yard. It’ll get into the foundation.” 

She smiles and nods.

“They grow so damn fast,” He says. 

“A constant battle,” She agrees.

“I better get it before it turns to seed,” He says and stands.

“It’s nearly midnight,” She responds.

He sits back down for half a breath and gets up again. “It won’t take me but a minute.”

He grabs his gloves. Old cracked leather, formed to his hands. He grabs his tool. A makeshift thing he made himself for battle. An old, white-oak shovel handle, wrapped at one end with cloth and twine for grip, and at the other, a two pronged metal blade. Perfect for weeding, he says, or hunting seals, he jokes. He makes his way across their patch of grass and plucks up three dandelions as practice. Expertly. Masterly. The prongs strike at either side of the stem and he pulls up the bastardly things from their roots.  He holds the bunch above his head and yells to his wife, “A feast!”

She watches him from above in her rocking chair and rocks back and forth. A hand rolled cigarette in one hand and a mason jar in the other. She ashes her cigarette and stands to tell him he looks like a fool. He howls into the night air in response. She adjusts the dial on the radio. Classical music. To her it sounds like it’s playing at half speed. All he can hear are the live cannons. He winces and carries on.

She wears a flowing dress and dances. Very slowly. Each movement starts in her right foot then works its way up. Her knee swivels, hips stutter, torso, breasts, neck, head—her hair and dress move in contrasted waves. She inhales smoke and sips her wine. On her toes now. Slides from left to right across the deck. The moonlight catches her and her shadow is her partner. In the corner, cast across the house, the shadow moves one step behind her and comes down on her from above. She fills her cup and ashes her cigarette.

That buffoon, she thinks and half says. That silly man. Had he just left it, I’m sure the weed wouldn’t even last the night. Besides, she thinks, from up here it’s almost beautiful. Looks a bit like the setting sun.

The weed arches over him. Gray thistles and green veins make up its slender arms. Its leaves curl and grip one another as if to keep warm. A bulbous purple flower makes up its head with yellow filaments stretching out from its center. It watches his every movement. You goddamn bastard, he says. I’m not afraid of you, not afraid of you or any goddamns. 

He looks over his shoulder to assure his wife that he won’t be long. To tell her that this weed is no match for him, in fact, he probably doesn’t even need his tool, could pull it out of the ground with one hand, he thinks. But she has gone to sleep. Her dancing partner, her shadow, is all that’s left—the porch, the grass, the world—all covered in its cloak. A coldness settles in.

He is filled with dread and considers turning back or yelling for his wife. He sits down to think and catch his breath. It’s my yard, my home, he says. Nothing out here can kill me, nothing out here is new. It has been here since the beginning of time. This weed and I. He presses his face against its stem—colder than expected. 

He holds his weapon above his head and stands toe-to-toe with his enemy. It no longer flutters in the wind—this evil thing that stands above him, that rises with the moon and stretches its limbs as if human. He arches his back and swings his weapon at its face. A gash across its meaty brow. He swings again, this time the weapon bounces back and he is uprooted. Spun around. Dizziness. He falls and laughs and is on his feet again. Devil, he cries out and stabs the prongs toward its roots. But the thing is too well set. From the porch and even from their small patch of grass the weed looked so much smaller. He is ill equipped. 

To the shed.

The small shed is warmed by a wood burning stove. He feeds it absentmindedly and the room is sweltering. He sits at his workbench. Ancient tools hang above him, aesthetic things whose purpose are long forgotten. Jagged and orange-rusted saws whose shapes serve no purpose hang from small hooks and levers made of stone. His hands are older now, covered in new scars. Each knuckle swollen. White calloused tissue connects the brightfull veins. He sharpens his ax. It was his father’s ax and his father’s father’s. He is meticulous and the blade shines, reflects the light of the fire.

She reaches across the bed for him and feels the cold of the sheets. She had been dreaming of her old house. The one with the arched doorway and the yellow brick facade. Her father and mother had built it. Will last until the end of time, her mother had said. Her dream is always the same. A scanning of each room. Floating. Things undisturbed. The old books and old carpets all unmoving—settled and permanent. In the kitchen there is a warmth and the sounds of her mother and brother laughing, but they are nowhere to be found. It makes her sad. It happens often. 

She stands on the porch and scans the darkness. The weed has grown. Its grisled body, all bloodied and chipped, stretches into the night. Its angular appendages cast moving shadows across her face. Beyond the weed the sky is empty but for the moon—fullish and pinkish and glowing. She makes her way across the frosted grass. 

The fool, she thinks. Could’ve left it until morning. And now—where is he? Lost again. Out here in the cold. The frigid awful midnight.

She reaches out and touches the weed, surprised by its warmth. There must be some furnace, some engine in its guts. She can hear a noise within it, a kind of ticking. She presses her ear against its green flesh, just above where her husband had stabbed it. The warmth overtakes her, she can feel it in her chest and through her feet. Steam comingles off the both of them—woman and weed. Her cheeks flush, her brow sopped with sweat. The ticking is louder now. Perhaps a bird, she says aloud. She moves around the weed and examines its every pore. Searching for a hollow, somewhere for a bird to nest and make its ticking sound. 

Below one of its many arms she finds an opening and peers in. It is bright inside the weed. There are no shadows, only open spaces, a roundness in all directions. The ticking though is not a ticking—a dragging of stone across steel, a sharpening.

She turns and steps away just as the ax splits the weed down its center. 

Its inner workings spill out. The sky and earth are red. They are both covered—husband and wife, standing just before the desert. He swings again and again. He looks to sever the roots of the demon weed from their earth. The dirt and the force of the blows dull his weapon. The calluses on his hands have opened. The ax handle breaks and he collapses. 

“I didn’t think there’d be so much blood,” she says.

The weed is at their feet, curled in the shape of death, dried and ashen-white. She fills his coffee as the sun comes up.