I decided to move the man who was growing like a tree in the back yard. At first, I had been happy such a man was thriving next to my own patio near the barbecue grill. A sort of evergreen, I figured and only splashed water on his feet in the drier months. He didn’t need the water, but I thought it would make him happier. There are no books written about this. No information on the usual websites. He must have pulled the nutrients through the soles of his feet or soaked them up via the air through his skin because he did grow, and everyone knows nothing can come from nothing. After a while I became embarrassed. I failed to understand a single word he was saying, but he didn’t seem too upset at our lack of effort and, finally, he grew silent though he still smiled kindly. The real problem was he was growing and soon would be brushing up against the electric and telephone lines that arced from the alley over the yard and into the top of the junction box on the back of the house. I called over the neighbor who had some good experience with trees. He thought it wrong just to chop the man down only to dump him in the landfill. He suggested we dig him up and move him across the street to his own front yard. So we gathered up some burlap and chicken-wire and, after a morning of digging a circular trench around his feet (he had quite a root system, we discovered), we began the extraction. We took great care to wrap the root ball with the burlap and then with the chicken wire before we attached straps to the trunk of the man and an engine hoist to the straps. He couldn’t have been seven feet tall, but that much soil around the roots adds up. We cranked the hoist until a few of the larger roots below broke free with great thuds. We could tell that the man was in grave pain, but he never cried out once. We tried to move efficiently and quickly. After raising him up and out of the ground, we lowered the root ball onto a metal cart. We pushed the cart across the yard, down the driveway, across the road and into my neighbor’s yard. We had not done a good job with the root ball. Nearly all the dirt we had hoped to transport together with the roots fell away as we banged the cart across the bumpy yard and uneven driveway. At that point, we guessed at the meager odds of survival. We didn’t need the engine hoist any more; we just dropped him into the hole and packed the dirt around the roots. What a mess! The man slumped over, and we had to prop him up with a long two by four and tie him up with straps and stakes. We watered him in and shook our heads. I walked back to my house. I filled that gaping hole with dirt from the alley, and then I went back to my neighbor’s yard. There were no immediate signs of recovery, and the man hung there like a sad crucifixion scene. When faced with a sight like this, one comes to think about that most famous story and thinks, How wretched we are. And yet, and yet, against all odds, that strange creature somehow took hold in my neighbor’s yard. He grew and towers over the house now, only ten years later. Sometimes at night I sneak around to the side of my own house where there are some bushes. Just some regular bushes. In these late hours, now and then, I spy on my neighbor who waters the tree, and I hear them talking in a strange language. It pierces my heart. I hear both a sorrow and a joy, though I cannot decipher what they say from here. I imagine they are praying for me.

John Poch

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