* This story is from a 2023 quick-write and has not been edited. I post it as-is because I like it.
Gregory von Pecksalot was bored as shit. His mother gone to work, his nine children still at school, his pizza devoured, and his television broken, he had to find something to do.
Walking around the extremely cramped one-bedroom apartment, he scanned everything there for ideas. It was pretty uninspiring. Lamps? Nothing fun to do with lamps other than hide pennies beneath the lightbulbs so that, when turned on, the breaker shut off power. But there was no point in pranking himself. Bed? Nah, naps made his stomach hurt. Cabinets and bookshelves? He could take them apart and build a rocket ship, but he was too old to think that might work.
Everything that caught his gaze produced the same results. Toys, shoes, milk, a grease-stained baseball cap, eyedrops, pictures on the wall, tweezers, tampons, carpet, doorknobs. And then he found a shiny, unused garden fork at the bottom of his underwear drawer.
He didn’t know it was called a garden fork, inexperienced as he was in all things yardwork. He just thought of it as a bendy shrunken pitchfork that was probably used to pull weeds or aerate a lawn very slowly and precisely.
He remembered purchasing it years ago. It was supposed to be a thank you gift for his mother. In a moment of spectacular clarity, he realized that not all moms had 10 mouths to feed, one of them being 40+ years old and uninspired to do much of anything. This realization was quickly forgotten, as was the location in which he’d hidden the bendy shrunken pitchfork that was probably used to pull weeds or aerate a lawn very slowly and precisely. He forgot things sometimes.
Having found the shiny tool with tag still attached to one of those annoying plastic strings that hurt his fingers to pull off, he was finally inspired to act. He knew just what he would do: he would find a garden somewhere and work in it. Plunge and pull, plunge and pull. Landscaping for dummies.
He walked to the housing complex across the street and behind the Dollar General, where there were plenty of gardens to bless with his sweet garden tool, but knowing he didn’t have all day, he wanted to find the right one. House by house, he wandered, paused, and passed. This one? No, it’s xeriscaped and hardly needs a tiny pitchfork. This one? Nah, it has blue flowers. This one? Too many garden gnomes, which reasonably frightened him. This one? No way–it was made of artificial turf.
Finally he found the one. The house was lined with a variety of roses, all well kept, a pristine lawn with no weeds, and a sign that said, “My Garden is Proof of Eden.” Yes, this lawn deserved his blessing. Wouldn’t the happy owner be elated to find the lawn had been improved?
The first thing he tackled was the rosebushes. They were incredibly difficult to remove with just his one garden tool, but some blood, sweat, and tears (a lot of all three) did the trick. He then set to work pulling up some of the grass. He was trying to form a happy face, but to passersby, it looked more like a snake that had been tied up into a knot and suffocated on its own tongue. But when the proud gardener waved happily at said passersby, they shrugged their confused little shoulders and kept walking.
Now, I don’t know exactly what Gregory’s ultimate plan was, because Gregory didn’t know either. He simply saw the end product in his creative little mind and hacked away to create that dream. Whatever his plan was isn’t important anyway. What is important is that he had long ago taken off his shoes and socks to enjoy the feeling of dirt between his toes and at some point he tripped over the garden snake, causing his foot to sink below the exposed soil.
It wasn’t in there long. He wasn’t stuck or anything. But five minutes later, a tree had begun to sprout. Strange. Gregory was pretty sure it hadn’t been there before. Also, he was quite positive that there weren’t any breeds of tree that could grow so quickly. As he looked at the tree, it grew a little more. That caught his attention.
As he watched, it grew more and more, and in no time at all, buds began to form over the whole thing. Oooh, a flower tree! That’s what he thought to himself. But it wasn’t a flower tree–at least, not in the typical sense. What flowered there, what the buds opened up to become, were toes. A bunch of toes–some looked like Caucasian toes, some like Asian toes, and an assortment of shades of brown and even black toes.
A toe tree? Gregory had never heard of a toe tree. How did that happen–and then he got it. That was the spot where he had tripped. His own toes must be seeds. Or at least they must drop seeds. He doubled-checked to make sure that all of his toes were still attached (they were) and still with toenails (they were that, too). He thought, Nifty.
So naturally, he dug his toes into a few more places and waited for them to sprout. But they didn’t. That would be ridiculous, he realized. Toes aren’t actually seeds. This was just a magic tree. Or was it a magic area of soil? Oh, whatever, he thought. There is no point in turning magic into science. The fact is, it works.
Gregory wanted to test a theory. It was a relatively far-fetched theory, but that didn’t matter much. He stuck his nose into the soil at the base of the tree. Just as he imagined, the tree began to bud again, and in time, they opened up to reveal multicultural noses.
Some of the toes fell off the tree as the noses formed, scattering about. Gregory picked one up. It looked and felt like a regular toe, minus the attached human and not looking gross, as though it had been severed. He looked around to be sure no one was watching, then took a tiny nibble to see if it tasted like fruit. This was science, after all.
Nope, it tasted like toe.
Then Gregory wondered if the tree only worked with body parts. Or could it grow other cool things as well? He reached into his pocket and pulled out the first item that touched his fingers: ChapStick. Wouldn’t that be cool if he could grow more ChapSticks?
He pushed the ChapStick into the soil, and guess what? ChapSticks. A few noses and toes dropped to the grass below. Another item: keys! Maybe he could–no, he didn’t want the whole neighborhood to have a set of his keys. That could prove problematic.
He looked around for something else–something different. And yes, rocks worked too. A discarded piece of chalk, human hair, gum wrappers, cigarette butts, dead leaves, rusty nails, a welcome mat–all of it worked! And soon there was a treasury of randomness piling up at the base of the tree.
And that word–treasury–occurred to him, too. Oh my god. Money! He could make a money tree! Luckily, his mom had given him a few dollars for treats at the Dollar General (“Anything you like,” she had said). He found the crispest of the three and dipped it in the soil. He couldn’t help but dream a little while he waited for the dollars to sprout.
But sprout they did not. Apparently, money really didn’t grow on trees. Oh well, he could sell the ChapSticks if he needed cash. He wished he had one of those cool trench coats with one hundred pockets so he could put them all inside and sell them to patrons of the gas station on the corner of 3rd and State Street.
Then he started thinking deeply. Or rather, as deeply as Gregory could deep. What if I get really low to the ground and plant a thought? What might sprout then? A thousand thoughts?
And of course, that’s what he did. He got down low to the ground and tried to think of something. I’ll tell you, it was of no use. He couldn’t come up with anything now. The one deep thought had exhausted his library of ideas. So he began looking for something else when Plop! What was that? Plop! Plop. Plop. Plop-plop-plop-plop-plop! Honestly, there were more plops, but this storyteller gets tired of repetition pretty quickly.
He turned to the tree, which had been the thing making that noise, and the first thing he noticed was that every random item had plummeted to the lawn. There were now a whole lot of them. It reminded him of autumn and how you get all sorts of colors in the leaves.
Then he looked at the tree to see what had grown in their place, if anything.
Plumbs. Juicy, purple plumbs–at least that’s the closest approximation to what they looked like.
But why plumbs? He wondered. So he grabbed one right off the tree. This was the first time he had actually plucked something from the tree directly; not that that matters, because nothing changed when he did so. Anyway, he took a bite, even though he didn’t like plumbs. He was curious.
And they tasted like… nonsense. He took another bite, and yep: nonsense. He pulled another plumb to find that, indeed, all of them tasted like nonsense.
What does nonsense taste like? I have no idea. It was Gregory who took the bite, not me. And nonsense is what it tasted like. He liked it.
Now, satisfied with the tree and all the ways he had blessed this stranger’s home, he couldn’t see how he could improve the yard further. He felt a deep pride in what he had done, and after a long moment–two moments, actually–he sifted through the debris to find his garden fork (though that isn’t what he called it), picked it up, along with five ChapSticks, and began the journey home.
What a successful day it had been! Gregory was no longer bored, and tomorrow he would come back, plant some more ChapSticks, and begin selling them at the Arco on 3rd and State Street so that he could afford to pay his mom back for all of the back rent he owed. As he walked, he looked down at his Casio watch. It was later than he thought. His nine kids would be home already, and expecting him to make his famous PB & J. Whoops.
Oh well, he thought, if they starve, I can always grow new kids.
He laughed at his little joke-thought (for it was a joke, I promise), and headed back home.