Under Story

Part One

Laurel’s first memories of soil—though at the time, she would have called it dirt—came from weeding in her mother’s garden. She was five, or maybe six. Her mother pointed, and she tugged. Thistle, dandelion, chickweed: they trailed whole cities, tangled with life.

As the child of apple growers, she had known that roots existed, but not how far they roamed. One day, she crawled under a Golden Russet, which the family called octopus trees because they waved in all directions.

She looked at the base, which split into roots. “Where do they go?”

Her father was pruning nearby. Laurel liked to follow as he worked. He wriggled into her position, so that they were both worms.

“It depends,” he said. “Some go deep down. Others grow as wide as the branches.”

Recently, in school, Laurel had been told to draw a tree. Dutifully she had sketched trunk, branches, leaves. She realized now that she’d drawn only half of it. What she saw above ground was one part of the story. The second was below.