To Move a Sago from the Soil

To Move a Sago from the Soil

A Story by ZackOfBridge
"

Tearing at a stubborn tree

"

              On the street from my childhood. Somewhere between street posts I expect my childhood to resurrect, maybe from a sidewalk slab or a shrub, but its been too long. We don’t live here anymore, haven’t in nearly a decade. Eventually, everyone moves on to something else; whether it’s a new home, a new wife, or a gravesite. It’s a strange thing to expect; the people who you have invested so much memory too, the ones who spark an inner neuron at the sight of a street post, will eventually leave you to those memories.

 My dad rents the house out to a couple a guys, the kind of guys that he says “Goddamn f****r,” to when he hangs up the phone. Their cars are not in the driveway when we pull the truck to the curb. We started with sweatshirts on, unloaded the truck with sweatshirts on, but it wasn’t feeling much like a December morning.  To a passerby unfamiliar with my dad, they would see the two of us as a couple of laborers. With our pickaxe and brown skin, our gloved hands and brown skin, and our brown skin and brown skin.  We had come to tear a twenty-year-old sago palm tree from the soil and transport the exposed tree to a different hole. We had done similar work before, for the aging parents of one of my dad’s friends. It was summer then and we had taken rows of hedges and deep-rooted trees. Their roots had tasted the salt of our sweat before we loaded them onto the truck. That work had gone fairly well besides when my dad struck a gas line with the pick axe and had to jam it with a wooden pencil.

            Parting a single tree from its hold on the ground didn’t seem like much of a strain. It was winter now and we had two shovels and a pair of axes in hand. We didn’t start with digging or axing but instead my dad began to clip the lower palm of the tree so the barbs wouldn’t stab our faces during the axing and shoveling. I dumped the living leaves in a green eco-bin. My dad, crouching and clipping, reminded me of a cat burglar snipping at wires.

            “I feel like I’m stealing something.” My dad said. I laughed. I was thinking how it would be more suspicious if we were white. Seeing a pair of Mexicans working on the lawn is of the everyday. My dad rotated along the trunk, trimming the leaves from our faces. I pick up the leaves and catch glances of the yard in between. This lawn is one of the only on the street with pale grass.

            When your digging a tree from the ground, you have to begin with the pickaxe, circle and swing around the circumference of the tree. The other guy, me clears the loosened dirt, shovels the dirt away from the tree. There are always roots, tough ones. The roots twine together like water-sucking cross roads the pick axe gets underneath them and if you try leveraging the pick to snap the root, well you’ll have a snapped axe and a smug tree. My dad reaches his hand behind him, “I need the axe.” And he swings at the dirt, it’s a violent swing, when swinging an axe its hard to understand what is truly working the chops; muscles or anger?

            As he swings and squats around the tree, I clear the dirt from the trench. Broken roots flare from the bulb of dirt surrounding the once buried trunk. Its plain to see that I am not the only one to have attachments to this yard. The sun is rising all the time, expanding its grip on the neighborhood. Our sweatshirts came off and our forearms felt their first sunlight of the day.

            The trench around the tree was substantial and the side roots disconnected. The dirt had piled away from the tree nicely and job looked mostly complete. There was only the tipping of the tree left. A boy was running down sidewalk with an older woman with short, silvering hair following behind him. He pointed his finger forward, not at us, but forward and he followed his finger. I admired at his enthusiasm. The woman passed us, “Look at them working.” We waved and went back to working our next move, which should have been to simply topple the tree onto its pineapple looking side, but as you the reader knows fairly well, nothing planned goes according to said plan.

            We nudged at the trunk, and the leaves rocked with our nudging, but only as a taunt. Still, with the roots at its sides axed, the tree remained planted in the Earth. “Well, s**t.” We said, and “There must be bottom root.” The tree was close to the outside wall of the house and so I suggested we set our backs to the wall and push with our legs, the force of both our legs should be enough. So we set our backs to the stucco impasto walls and sprawled our feet against the length of the trunk. It was a cramped space for my dad, he was stuck against a corner and had a problem of maneuvering his legs, but we both got our feet onto the trunk. We pushed, and the stucco poked at our backs through our shirts, the muscles in our thighs tightening and the barbed leaves shrugged. “Well, s**t.”

            Trenching around the tree was becoming more difficult as we struck the clay-like dirt formed by a lack of water. Most dirt was becoming this way due to what would soon be declared as the Californian drought of 2014. The mountain tops, the tops without white caps of snow had warned us that things were drying up here in the golden state, but there was no time to think about mountains when we were battling a tree. There came more axing and more sweat, I stood and watched as my dad panted like a dog, sweat dripping from his forehead and sponging into his brows. I thought that parting this tree from the ground was going to kill him, but there is no killing a machine.

Roots, any roots, became our enemies and we ripped blindly into them with an axe.  Like some kind of sweating, raging archeologists, we patted away dirt trying to eye the stubborn root that held our tree to the excavated hole. Our back against the wall pushing gave us breaks from axing, but not a break from work seeing as how the tree stayed grounded.  There was a sound of tearing, I thought it was the tree, but it very well could have been our muscles ripping. Our bursts were shortening and our frustration thickened. The sago was loosening though, pivoting to the point that we could swing it in rotation, but still there was a root slithering beneath us and clamping into the ground like a wooden tentacle. I slipped my hand beneath the tree and into the forests of damned roots, feeling for anything thick and buried. I found it and relayed what I had found to my wheezing dad. It was about time, sweat lathered our skin and clumps of dirt filled our a*s cracks.

We rolled the tree over and my dad swung into the exposed dirt with the axe. With a pull the Sago moved from the crater we had created. We loaded it into the truck, slapping it with our gloved hands. The sago had tried to clamp to its spot of attachment and comfort, but eventually everything has to move on.

© 2014 ZackOfBridge


Author's Note

ZackOfBridge
Just a retelling of some work I did with my dad the other day, I meant for it to be better.

My Review

Would you like to review this Story?
Login | Register




Reviews

Oh this was good, and very interesting. Trees put their roots down, and that's where they want to stay. I had a palm tree in my yard that I wanted to get rid of, so my neighbor put a chain around it and pulled it out with his car. I thought he was going to burn the engine out. My husband had it planted in a very bad place.

Posted 10 Years Ago


"There was a sound of tearing, I thought it was the tree, but it very well could have been our muscles ripping. "
I love that line. this was a pretty good tale of laboring, it made me want to sweat and pant along with you guys; You're great at personifying everything, even the Mexicans. hahaha jk

Posted 10 Years Ago



Share This
Email
Facebook
Twitter
Request Read Request
Add to Library My Library
Subscribe Subscribe


Stats

163 Views
2 Reviews
Added on January 17, 2014
Last Updated on January 17, 2014

Author

ZackOfBridge
ZackOfBridge

Camarillo, CA



About
Whats life but time enough to write stories? more..

Writing
New Shoes New Shoes

A Story by ZackOfBridge