Roots, continued
Week 3, Winner
It had been decades since the last tree fell. Since then the land seemed to have processed through its grief stages and, just then, was starting to think about coming back to life. Real life, not the holding pattern it had languished in, cloaked in the gray brittleness of raw despair. The predominant color was still flat, the feel of the place still heavy, but there were glimmers of hope here and there if you knew where to look.
The couple had waited. They waited while the final death throws shook the land. They waited while all their neighbors drifted away. They waited, standing in support of the grieving earth and doing some of their own grieving right alongside it. They waited and trusted and hoped and, on the really hard days, prayed.
Terr was big and broad and a man of action. Dre was small and lithe and a man of words. Both were sensitive enough to see what others missed and passionate enough to fight for the underdogs. Men of the land, for the land, even as it grieved. They had each other, and the land had them.
***
The night sky was, as it always had been, full of stars. That was what had entranced Terr when he first landed. He’d disembarked from the plane and stood on the tarmac looking around at the airport too small to be taken seriously. When he looked up at the sky he’d done it out of habit and hadn’t expected to see much of anything beyond the man-made glow of lights.
Normal airports required so much lighting things like stars were only left to the imagination. But that’s how city airports functioned. The major hubs he was used to with terminal after terminal, runway after runway, were full of lights. Lights on the buildings, lights on the ground, even the staff carried lights with them to make them visible to the huge jets that crisscrossed in the sky.
When Terr looked up and saw stars — actual stars, grouped in constellations that he could discern without the use of a telescope — he both knew he was home and that he was likely too late. He was standing out there, alone on the tarmac after the other crew members moved inside following the gravitational pull of proper bathrooms and brewed coffee, when Dre had his own moment of clarity.
Dre was used to the stars. He’d been looking up at them, feeling connected to them, his whole life. They were part of his earliest memories and he expected them to be the last thing he saw before dying. What he hadn’t seen before was someone like Terr.
There were other men, of course, that Dre had encountered both in town and out in the world. None of them exuded the quiet strength he felt emanating from Terr that first moment. Terr was, on the surface, almost the exact opposite of Dre. The surface didn’t matter to Dre. What mattered was that, for the first time, he’d encountered someone who fit.
***
It was just before sunrise when Dre put his hand on Terr’s forearm, silently asking the big man to stop moving. The two been up all night to be there to usher out the old and greet the solstice sun, and were headed for the bench Terr had designed, and built, with the seasonal event in mind. Their porch had creaked in its normal way as they walked across it, and their screen door had snapped shut behind them with the normal thwap as they moved away from the house. The other normal pre-dawn sounds were there and the familiarity of it all combined into a soothing sameness until Dre spotted the sprout.
With his hand still on Terr, Dre crouched down to get closer to the whisp of hope. Being on his knees wasn’t enough. He released Terr and laid himself down on the earth, his nose so close to the green sprout that it was a challenge to keep it in focus. Dre felt tears building as he whispered encouraging words to the little growth.
Terr watched Dre and followed one beat behind. He stood while Dre crouched, and knelt when Dre laid down. He laid down as Dre started to cry, and he started to cry as Dre started to whisper. He took up the whispering when Dre lost his words. The two of them lay there, with the sky lightening around them as the sun rose, giving all their energy to the little sprout that stood for so much even as it was only a couple of centimeters high.
***
Dre had grown up there. He’d played on swings made from ropes tied between trees, back when no one knew to be careful. He’d rolled around down the hills without thinking about what lay beneath the grassy green carpet. He’d picked flowers just because they were pretty without considering the impact of his actions. How he played and what he saw were how he came to love the area and nature itself. His parents weren’t connected to the land. They’d ended up there, having been aimed somewhere else. Circumstances kept them there, not love, and they’d done the best they could with what they had. For Dre the land was home and home was the land.
He never strayed far from home. The pull of the land always brought him back and stayed with him while he was away. He built his life around his home, his community, his land. He was one of the first to notice the change in the trees and soil. It was his deep connection to the earth that left him bound to the place and he’d never understood travelers until he met Terr.
Terr was a man of the world. Travel and change were his constants since as far back as he had memory. His father filled him with stories of “home,” reminiscing about his childhood and painting a very vivid and static picture of the premise — so vivid and static that it because something Terr wanted to avoid more than find. He’d always had more addresses than years and was drawn towards piloting like a fish is to water. When he found himself in Pine Grove all that changed and, for the first time in his life, he felt like he’d landed for good.
***
Dre and Terr lay on the ground facing each other with the sprout between them. The solstice sun rose slowly, shifting the look of the world around them from cool and monochrome to warm and colorful. The presence of the sprout, the proof of life, needed to be seen, honored, and nurtured. They didn’t talk about what it might mean, or what might happen next. They lay there, focused on the sprout, simply bearing witness.
.
***
Terr hadn’t meant to settle down. He had accepted the Pine Grove Conservation Conference flight assignment on a whim, mostly because he’d not been to the area before and the blank spot on his map wanted filling in.
Dre hadn’t meant to settle down. He had accepted the invitation to present because he hoped it would lead to solutions, and because the governor had called for the conference.
Terr hadn’t meant to go to Dre’s presentation. He’d been looking for coffee when Dre stepped up to the podium, and the man’s presence had rooted his feet to the spot.
Dre hadn’t meant to act on his feelings. He’d been on his way out of the room when Terr approached, and the pull he’d felt when he saw Terr on the tarmac rooted his feet to the spot.
***
The sun was high enough in the sky to cast shadows when Terr pushed himself up off the ground. He put a hand out for Dre and helped him stand up. The sprout was just the beginning, and there was work to be done.
***
The Pine Grove Conservation Conferences were just the beginning. Terr found other reasons to return, each time staying a bit longer, returning a bit sooner. Each time he was there the land held a little less life. The trees were going and so were the people, and the conferences weren’t helping. Terr and Dre would find opportunities to connect with every visit, always focused on the state or fate of the trees. Dre would share research, Terr would share stories, and around them the changes continued. That Pine Grove was dying wasn’t the question, it was the answer.
***
Terr was covered in dirt having spent hours readying the patch of land that would, eventually, become a vegetable garden. He had used his hands once the initial layer of parched soil had been chipped away. His hands were black and there were smudges on his forehead and cheeks from when he’d brushed sweat away. Dre was covered in sweat having lugged bucket after bucket of water out to the patch.
There were easier ways to go about starting the garden, but both agreed that they owed the manual labor to the earth.
_***_
This is a second-stage story-start — if you’d like to see where the story goes “clap” for it. My “winning” second-stage story-start (based on number of readers who clap for it) will be developed further and will become a full short story!
