Michael Collings - The Slab

Almost before dawn the next morning, Willard stalked into the front yard, dressed in an old, thread-bare Pendleton shirt and a thick nylon vest, and began savagely slashing at the stand of bushes with a pair of long-handled, wickedly sharp, tree loppers.

It had taken Catherine the better part of an hour to calm Willard down the night before, so shaken was he at the realization that he could so easily have run over his son. First he blamed himself, then he blamed the bushes, then he blamed the previous owners who had planted the damned things where they would block the view like that. Then he blamed himself again, for buying the damned house in the first place, with its roaches and its cracked foundation.

The only person he didn’t blame was Sams.

Dinner was a fiasco. Even though the kids intuited that something was wrong, that something had happened outside that Mom and Dad were studiously talking about only in hissed whispers, they were nonetheless upset when Catherine announced that, no, there wouldn’t be any super waffles for dinner tonight.

“But you promised…”

“Mommm!”

And so on until Willard thundered, “Quiet!” and startled the kids so badly that Sams, who had no idea at all what was going on, started to cry.

Finally, though, dinner was over, the kids were settled for the night, Catherine and Willard were lying in bed talking quietly.

“Tomorrow, they go.”

“Maybe we could call someone to take them out for us. You know, a professional gardner…”

“No. First thing in the morning. I’m not waiting another day.”

So first thing in the morning, Willard began. His face tensed in an expression somewhere between concentration and obsession, he began.

At first the job wasn’t so difficult. The plants were dense, woody, with leaves dusty green on one surface, a pale, rusty gold underneath. Even so, the newest growth was still tender, easy to cut.

As he worked his way down, however, the older shoots grew more thickly, intertwined so complexly that it was impossible to cut just one and pull it away from the rest. Again and again, he struggled to work the loppers through the woody heart of the shoots, until his shoulders and hands began to ache. His fingers throbbed from the strain, cramped when he took a moment for a break and loosened his grip on the handles.

Under his breath, without consciously realizing it, he began to curse, fluidly, angrily, letting words slip easily between his lips that he would normally never have even thought. Images flickered in and out of his mind, images of bloody bodies, and broken bones, and shattered skulls.

He slashed more violently at the plants.

In spite of the cool day, he began to sweat profusely. The thick flannel shirt hung along his back, sodden and sticky. Finally, he stripped out of his vest, removed the shirt and threw it on the ground behind him, slipped back into the vest, and, bare-armed, began again.

Hack. Slice. Wrench and pull.

And again.

“Dad, can I help?” Willard hadn’t heard Will, Jr., approach, hadn’t been aware that the sun was midway up in the cloudless sky and that he was panting and nearly shaking. He jumped in surprise…and anger at the interruption-even though a part of him welcomed a distraction from the directions his thoughts were carrying him.

“What?” He turned too quickly and for a moment felt dizzy. Then the disorientation passed. “What?”

“Can I help? I could…”

“No. I’m taking care of it. Thanks.”

“But…”

“No. You heard me. No. Go away, Will.”

Willard bent back to the task.

When Catherine came out some time later-he didn’t know how long it had been-to hand him a glass of water, he barely acknowledged her. He took a long swallow, then poured the rest of the cool water over his head.

“Willard, you’ll give yourself pneumonia if you don’t…”

“I’m all right. Let me alone to work.” Then hack. Slice. Wrench and pull.

It must have been mid-afternoon when he finally finished gutting the worst part of the bushes. He could almost see bare earth, and the bulk of the greenery lay thrown haphazardly behind him.

At ground level the stems were too thick for the loppers. Instead, he had to get on his hands and knees and, using a small arced pruning saw, sever each one individually a foot or so from the hard-pan soil.

His back ached. His hands ached. His arms were covered with tiny scratches from sharp twigs, with a fine film of sweat mixed with loose dirt, flecks of sawdust, and a light, pale dust that must have rubbed off the undersides of the leaves. He was hungry. But he couldn’t stop to eat. He had to get rid of these bushes.

They had nearly killed his son.

Abruptly, behind him, he heard small voices whispering, branches rustling. He glanced over his shoulder.

Catherine, Will, Burt, and Suze were bagging the greenery and dragging the packed black garbage bags along the side of the garage. Catherine cut the thicker stems into foot-long lengths with anvil shears, her hands encased in thick leather gloves, and then the kids picked up the short pieces and stuffed them into the bags.

For an instant, Willard felt an overwhelming urge to tell them to get the hell away from here, to leave the damned things alone, that he would take care of them because that was his job and they had nearly killed his son! He had even worked his way off his throbbing knees, using the loppers for support, and was half turned to face them when something in his brain went snaaaap! and, suddenly reeling for an instant with the same sense of disorientation that had struck him earlier, he shook his head and started to speak.

Catherine and the kids were standing in front of him, stock still. She still held the shears in one hand, an uncut branch in the other. Will had frozen in the act of lifting a filled bag. Burt and Suze dropped the bits of leafy detritus they had collected.

“Where’s Sams?”

“Taking a nap.” Catherine sounded cautious, unsure of whether to say anything more.

“Oh. Okay.” Willard shuffled for a moment. Then: “Thanks, guys. For helping out, I mean. I guess I was a bit…uh…a bit short with you this morning, Will. And you, too, Catherine.”

Catherine nodded. The kids remained like stones.

He was going to say something else, realized that he didn’t quite know what, then knelt again and began sawing raggedly at the next stump. But he threw a quick glance over his shoulder and said “Thanks. Again.”

With everyone helping-even Sams a short while later, after he emerged from the house, wiping sleep from his eyes and dragging his blanket across the filthy concrete until Catherine yelped in horror at the sight and set the grimy thing carefully on a folded garbage bag-with everyone working at cutting, trimming, bagging, and stacking, they finished by late afternoon.

As a thank you, Willard took the whole crew to the nearest McDonalds and let the kids have anything they wanted for dinner.

“Just this once,” he said in answer to Catherine’s reproachful glance. “I was a beast to everyone this morning, and they really did a great job when I finally came to my senses. They deserve it.”

And they all enjoyed it.

By the time they returned home, however, Willard realized that he was in some discomfort. His hands and fingers seemed stiff, swollen, and the skin on his arms tingled painfully. Even though he had showered and changed before the family had gone out to eat, Catherine ordered him into the shower again.

“That looks like a rash coming,” she said, pointing to a line of redness along the inside of his arm, a roughened patch of skin extending from elbow to wrist. “I’ll bet there were some oils or something in those leaves, and you might be allergic. That might be why your fingers are swollen, too.”