Pulling Weeds

Pulling Weeds

Frances went out to pull weeds in the backyard as she had every day for the past week. Little green, unwanted growths had been infesting her lawn for quite a while. She kept looking with longing at the pristine and weed-free lawns of her neighbours and despaired of ever having the same golf- course look.
The garage rumbled open and she walked in. There were her tools in a neat row on the work bench- the fork-like weeding tool and her gardening gloves and the weeding bucket. Frances made sure to wear her reading glasses when she was weeding. It made it so much easier to see where each little stem shot out of the earth and helped to avoid pulling out the precious grass.
As she walked down the wooden steps to the backyard, she could hear the mournful call of the dove and the small crickets awakening. Frances tried to shake off the morning exhaustion and face the task ahead.
She kept thinking about Eric’s words the night before. “Why isn’t the laundry done? Why don’t you fold those sheets? The yard is filling up with weeds; get out there!”
Frances fought down the mixture of sadness and rage that built up inside of her as she reached the lawn and began on hands and knees to methodically dig up every weed. She dug down deep with the fork puller and felt the sinews of the earth breaking and yielding with each thrust of the tool.
As the morning bird song grew to a maddening chorus, and the doves kept calling out as if in pain, she kept on with her weeding task. Sometimes parts of wriggling worms became impaled on the fork and she brushed them back into the earth with disgust. Each time she made an effort to retrieve the whole root. These pesky weeds must not be allowed to grow back.
Sometimes the taller weeds near the fence left red scratches on her arms and wrists. A drop of blood made a mark on her weeding fork. Frances winced at the sudden sting but felt a growing numbness inside.
That’s enough for today, she thought as she looked at the full bucket. There were still more weeds but exhaustion was creeping into her bones.
Frances made her way back to the garage. She entered and placed her weeding bucket and gloves back on the work bench. She grasped the weeding fork and noticed with a start that there was more blood on her hands. “Those damn weeds must have been worse than I thought,” she said. Frances continued to put away the fork and empty the weeds into a paper garbage bag.
She stopped suddenly. There was a noise. She listened again. It was a low groan coming from somewhere in the garage. Frances put the garbage bag in its place and walked to the back of the garage.
It was a few seconds before she noticed the body. The still and unmoveable mass was out of place in the garage. Her head began to spin as the body seemed to rise and fall on the garage floor as if in a dream. She realized with a start that the almost dead body was Eric.
Frances sat down on the cold, hard garage floor and thought about which part of the backyard should be tackled tomorrow.
Her weeding was done for the day.

571 words