Twenty-Two
Craig
Three days. It was three days before I could peek my head up through the haze of oxycodone without feeling like my legs were dipped in lava.
After crawling through the mud I wanted to cut my leg off to stop the fire burning through it, and ibuprofen couldn’t keep me sane.
Only the thick fuzziness of the narcotic medication could detach me from life enough to actually make it through a day.
But that was all it was, making it through the day.
Sunday morning Jackie tried to talk to me–about something I couldn’t recall.
Sunday night Lukas asked me not to get stoned in front of the kids.
Monday morning Kathy wondered about the pile of muddy clothes in the wastebasket.
I think I told her I thought it was the laundry, but I remember looking down at my pants and trying to decide whether to wash the mud and debris off in the shower or tossing them.
I guess I tossed them. Tuesday, they left me alone, feet up, TV in the background, and somewhere around Judge Judy I could feel my toes again.
My surgeon, Dr. Nuggent had been right, “Everything you do now will have a price.” But the look on Rilee’s water-logged face once her Camry was back on the roadway was priceless and well worth the cost. Knowing that the alternative was hours of stress and uncertainty for her, or maybe days if I hadn’t seen her go over, I’d pay it again.
I just wish I’d been able to carry her up that hill.
Before the accident I could have done that, swept her up in my arms and marched her right up the embankment.
Now I’d settle for climbing the mountain hand in hand, because the other way would probably kill me, or break me in half.
As bombed out as my days were, my drug dreamed nights were distressing.
The accident was back, though incoherent.
Rolling logs. Shouts. The sound of chain links popping.
Flashes of Rilee where she shouldn’t be, in the cab of the flat bed, pumping CPR on my chest, on the phone to EMS. She wasn’t at my accident.
I’d been alone until the next truck came down the logging road to find my load spilled across the winding switchback.
I’d been alone while my incision closed up.
The dream colors were muted, and the edges rounded. Trying to hold onto it was like grabbing smoke, even in the pain medicine funk. It was a proper dream. None of the deja vu heaviness. None of the clarity. If the magic dreams were gone, was she gone too?
While Judge Judy was bawling out a renter for cooking a luau pig in the bathtub, I picked up my phone and began to text Rilee. I’d told her I’d call but I hadn’t yet. When I couldn’t put a coherent sentence together, I gave up on the text message. The grogginess was too thick.
Around three I put some soup on and mixed up a store-bought cornbread mix. Just add eggs, oil and milk! When Kathy came home at four, from the recliner, I told her dinner was on the stove.
“Thanks.” Kathy looked me over. “We were getting worried.”
“Sorry about that, I did a bit more than I meant to. Had another date, but it didn’t go exactly as planned.”
After I explained about the wreck, Kathy sat down on the next couch cushion. “Craig, you have to be careful. You can’t-”
“-do that stuff anymore,” I finished for her. “I know. But I couldn’t leave her there. Cell coverage was crap and it would have been hours for the tow truck. And she might have been hurt, I had to climb down there just to find out.”
“This the coffee girl?”
Woman, I silently corrected. “Yes.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it.” Kathy didn’t bring up Veronica. Instead, she patted my leg and went back into the kitchen to set the table. The kids would be arriving soon.
Once dinner was on, Darren and Jackie kept glancing my way as if I couldn’t see them looking.
Lukas chattered away to no one in particular about honey locust trees.
They are the weeds of trees, I have no idea how someone had so much to say about them.
I was so checked out I almost missed what Lukas said about Ulrich.
“He’s coming in early this week. Tomorrow. He asked if Craig was going to be around and I told him I didn’t know.”
“What?” I coughed.
“You were in zombie land so I didn’t know if you’d be up and around,” Lukas said.
“Lukas,” Kathy snapped.
“What? It’s true,” Lukas countered. “But he made it sound like you should be there. In his Ulrichy way. That guy is weird.”
Swallowing my cornbread, I agreed about my behavior, “I have been out of it. But I’ll make it.
Any idea when he will be in?” Just thinking about bonsai trees sent little tingles through my fingers, like the memory of little tree needles running across them.
A good tingle. It really sucks to have good and bad body tingles.
Lukas took his plate to the sink. “No idea, but ten is probably reasonable.” Then turning to Kathy, he asked, “Are we paying Craig?”
“No.” I answered for her. “I didn’t apply for a job with Mace and Maize. I’m just dropping in on … a friend.”
“Okay,” Lukas answered in an ‘I’m not sure that should be the right answer’ tone but let the matter drop.
That night I took two Advil PM’s and turned in early, trying to stay asleep but off the harder stuff.
It must have worked because I woke in the morning, a little after eight, rested, having slept through the night without interruption, and without a single dream lingering into wakefulness.
None. No truck. No trees. No Rilee. I closed my eyes and then opened them to see the early light clawing through the blinds.
Before I started moving, I actually felt human again.
Once I got going everything was stiff and sore but in my normal everything hurts all the time way.
Moving slowly, I got through a shower, shave, and clothes before I had to go.
Gulping down a glass of milk I popped a couple of the regular ibuprofen and headed out to my truck.
My muddy jacket was still in the pickup bed.
I shook it out, knocking off the crusty stuff, and then drove to the nursery.
Ulrich was already there, inspecting the display, watering and adjusting each plant.
“Lukas says you are not an employee. Why are you here?” Ulrich didn’t even look at me as he spoke, carefully pinching off a tiny green leaf bud from a wavy pine in a wide green bowl.
The odd warm weather was waking all the trees, even the little bonsai.
Standing to watch as he nipped all the new growth away, I shrugged, “I like trees. You like trees.” Ulrich silently inspected the tree’s front and back for any telltale light green growth. After a few breaths I added, “They are like little friends. And it makes me happy to see them.”
“Even when they are sold?”
“I haven’t been around when that has happened.” My foot started tingling so I walked toward the greenhouse, “But I like to think a particular kind of person buys bonsai. One who likes trees.”
Setting the watering can down Ulrich waved me into the greenhouse.
On the work table were four buckets and a large gray plastic tub.
“Bonsai are trees, but ornery trees. They are-” he paused his accented speech looking for a word, “-fiddly. They are a jealous girlfriend, if you do not pay attention to them, they die.” Then he broke into a big grin.
“But they are very pretty. Like a jealous girlfriend.”
More serious now he added, “Everything needs care. Even trees. Mess with their water, or their air, or soil, and you get angry trees. Like people. Let them grow where they shouldn’t and they become weak and out of place.
They need food, care, and good foundation.
” As he said the last, he ran his hand through the dark material in one of the buckets.
“Bonsai need good soil. They eat like trees but live in little pots. This requires good nutrients, drainage, binder, and something for … independence.” With each statement he spooned a handful of material into the tub.
“Organics, pumice, clay, and volcanic soil. Mix this evenly. One part each. I’ll be back, the trees outside need fertilizer.
” He left me with the buckets, a metal one cup measuring scoop, and a large wooden salad fork.
Digging out a cup full from each bucket I blended the soil mix with the fork in the tub before measuring out the next helping.
It was a slow surprising process. The color, scent, and feel of the mixture changed with the addition of each scoop, like the tide, moving into one shape and then back into its most restful nourishing state.
The soil in potted plants grew depleted without falling leaves, or traveling organisms to replenish it.
By potting a bonsai, we removed it from its environment, separated it from nature, all while recreating nature.
Because of its separation, every little part of it needed to be cared for.
The gardener became the bonsai’s world, providing it space, nourishment, and direction.
Ulrich wasn’t creating a tiny forest, he was creating a garden that imitated a forest. An unnatural forest, one that couldn’t live on its own without constant outside intervention.
These weren’t giant sequoias or shivering pines, they were caged creatures.
Seeing this complex and artificial relationship made me feel dirty, complicit in the deception, even as the lines in my fingers darkened with tiny bits of soil.
“That’s enough,” Ulrich’s voice surprised me.
I was so caught up in my head I hadn’t realized I was less than an inch from the top of the tub.
Rubbing the soil in his fingers the blond gardener nodded.
“Good, good. Many bonsai can be repotted with this. Now, fill the water can and add three capfuls of fertilizer. With the warmer weather coming they will need this more often. Do the last bench, the one with the gray pots.”