Jack Klausner
THE STUMP (WHAT IF)
Assume you’re lucky enough to be one of those people who has a garden, the kind of garden with maybe a path down the middle and a bit of lawn and some flower beds, a shed at the end, maybe a greenhouse bursting inside with a collage of green. What if you’re out there one day with someone close to you – maybe a friend or a family member, maybe your wife or husband or partner, maybe your brother, sister, mother, father, or maybe your child – and what if you’re digging in one of the beds, clearing it ready for planting, launching the spade down at the dark soil like you’re Ahab with his harpoon. And what if there’s this gnarly stump of a thing, some bush you cut back last year, but you didn’t do a proper job, and now it’s there in the middle of this would-be-flower bed. What if you or your loved one or friend, what if the two of you start digging around it, excavating, like a pair of archaeologists. What if they’ve got the trowel and you’ve got the spade and the two of you spend the best part of an hour there, kneeling, squatting, hunched over this stumpy protrusion, this inconvenience, the sun getting higher in the sky and warming your neck, your back through your t-shirt. What if the job, what if you fall into it, like tunnel-vision, like being hypnotised. And what if all your gouging, gouging, gouging and scraping, scraping, scraping away of the dark earth, what if it reveals that this bush was never really dead. What if its roots spread out like thick fingers in the dark, reaching in all directions. And what if you pull at one of those roots and it rises up from the soil, marking a line right between your feet, right under you, to the very edge of the prospective flower bed. And what about the other roots just like it. What about those. What about the one your loved one or friend is tugging at – look how it curves through the earth towards the garden wall. And what if you start trying to get the spade under the stump. What if you drive the spade’s edge down against the parts where the roots are thickest and what if the feeling and the sound as the spade cuts through the still-living part of the stump, what if it makes you think of cutting meat and bone with a cleaver on a heavy chopping board, like how your father made you do one time when you were a teenager. And what if, once you’ve dealt with those pale, knuckled roots, you manage to get the spade under the stump at last. What if you drive it under there and it happens so perfectly that your friend or loved one says nice, and for a moment you wish they’d go and get a drink from the house because how long have you both been out here? How long have you been baking in the sun? How long has the spit in your mouth been so thick? And what if the thought leaves you because hey you got the spade under the stump of the bush you butchered last year. And you’re wiggling the spade by the handle, pressing up and down like you would a seesaw. What if the stump rises and falls but just doesn’t want to come up, what if it’s still anchored in place by more of those roots, ones you haven’t seen, ones that plunge straight down into the earth. So what if, what if then your loved one or friend, what if they grab the trowel and dive right in there. What if they start stabbing and scraping at the dark beneath the stump while you lever it up as best you can with the spade, and you wipe your brow with your forearm and you realise just how much you’re sweating, and you notice how much they’re sweating too, and again you think maybe you should both go inside for a few minutes, and drink, and rest. But what if the stump’s nearly there. What if it only takes a few more scrapes, only a bit more levering? What if you both keep going, keeping working at it, digging down, digging down. What if the hole gets bigger, large enough to stand in. What if it starts to make you feel like you’re some opposite version of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters, no mound of earth on the kitchen table but one mighty fucking hole instead. And what if for the briefest moment you think stop, something isn’t right – but then what if one more heave is all it takes, and so you keep digging. What if the hole gets so deep, your friend or loved one climbs down into it and now they’re saying hey, pass me the spade. And what if you do. What if you do. What if you pass it down to them as they gaze up at you from the cool shadows. And what if they start pitching the spade into the earth down there, the earth that’s so much darker because of the moisture but also because it’s deep enough for the sunlight not to hit it. What if you lower yourself down and see for yourself how all the roots from the stump – which teeters now at the edge of the hole, like it’s looking down at you – but the roots, they’re as thick as your wrist and white like teeth, snaking in and out of the damp earth walls. What if you get to your knees and start scraping at the wet earth with your hands, like a dog. What if you and your loved one or friend fall into silence, what if you’re both so focused on the digging now, the roots, following the roots wherever they go, you don’t stop and think, you don’t stop and think that you’re not stopping and thinking. And what if later, you say you’ll be back because you just have to get a drink, you’re dying of thirst here, and you climb up out of the hole and go to the house. What if you’re standing in the kitchen, looking out at the garden with its mound of earth where the would-be flowerbed used to be. What if you’re drinking Coke straight from the bottle and it’s burning the back of your throat but you’re so thirsty and what if you see the time and it says you’ve been out there all day. And what if you look at your phone which you left by the sink and it says you’ve been out there for days. And what if you look around and realise the room’s covered in dust, cobwebs like veils at the windows, and what if you go out the back door and running up the garden path, what if you throw yourself over the mountain of earth, hands and feet and knees sinking into loose soil, and as you scrabble to the edge of the hole you see the stump on the other side, but it doesn’t seem like its looking down now it seems like it’s looking at you, and what if when you look down into the hole it’s impossibly deep, impossibly black, the cool draft against your face tasting of earth. And what if there’s no reply when you call out to your loved one or friend, what if there’s just the silence and the stump and you, gripping the edge of the hole, peering down into the black forever. What if there’s not even the sound of a spade being thrust into the earth. What if you’d dealt with the stump properly last year, like you were meant to. What if they’re gone. What if you hadn’t left them. What if it’s your fault. What if you had stayed.