Growing Grounds

Tammy stood in the center of the living room, eyeing the ugly chair Matt had brought home earlier. Something about that chair just did not feel right. She wanted it gone but Matt loved it and thought the find was excellent. This was the first time Tammy had seen him actually happy since they had moved to the new house and she did not want to risk ruining his good mood--or his course change about country life--so, she left the chair in the corner, a silent finger of discord tracing its way down her spine. "You hate it, don't you?" Matt looked crestfallen, sullen even.    Tammy shook her head. "Not really. Maybe it just needs to be refinished." "No. The rough wood look is what makes it such a perfect accent for the rest of this old time country theme you have going on in here. You put a coat of varnish on it and it's ruined." After a moment, he added, "I thought you'd be thrilled that I brought it home for you. You're always griping because I won't go to the antique shops and yard sales to help you look for stuff like that. I guess, just do whatever you want with it." Knowing that the tenuous thread of happiness was fast disappearing, Tammy spoke up. "Honey, I do like the chair. It's just that it's an odd piece, unlike anything I've seen before and--well, I'm a little jealous." Matt stopped walking toward the hallway and turned to her with an expression of shock. "What?" "I'm supposed to be the brilliant interior decorator around here." She felt bad about the lie but considered it a minor offense under the circumstances. Stopping short, Matt laughed heartily. "Oh, you mean I have bragging rights come the holidays when everyone visits?" He laughed again. "And here I was starting to feel useless and hopeless stranded here in the middle of nowhere and it was just the fact that I had trespassed on your turf that had you looking at the chair like it was a big warty frog." He hugged Tammy, laughing. "Well, I'm glad that makes you so happy but I wouldn't brag too much. I'll just work harder to upstage you before the holidays. That's what I do, you know." She gave him a wink and a quick kiss, hoping the charade would not go transparent. "Good luck, madam." He bowed and then walked back into the hallway. At the kitchen doorway, he asked, "Want a sandwich? I'm making." "Yes, please. I'll be in there in a few minutes." She knelt by the chair, wanting to inspect it more closely without Matt's influence. Tammy touched the surface of the armrest. It was smooth and gray and smelled of black, rich soil. The legs terminated with gnarly talons. The detail was exquisite. Shaking her head and backing away from the chair, Tammy wondered who had had the imagination and time to create such a strange, grotesque piece of art. She reached out to run her fingers down one of the realistic talons and gasped as her fingers touched unnaturally warm wood. A wave of dizzying nausea struck and she retreated to the kitchen, hoping to put the incident out of mind. It was too close to being insane and she wanted no part of that. Matt talked about his new job at the school, the children and the other teachers while Tammy ate in silence, nodding several times during the one-sided conversation. Her mind turned to the chair and she had difficulty following Matt's chatter. She wanted to research the unique treasure, find out who made it and why. "I could take a picture of it and show it to the owner of Ann's Antiques tomorrow. I bet she could tell me about it." "What are you talking about, Tammy?" Matt looked as if she were speaking a foreign language. "The chair. What did you think I was talking about?" She laid her sandwich aside and stood to go find her camera. "Well, that makes perfect sense seeing as how I was just telling you about the pop quiz I have planned for class on Monday." Tammy laughed lightly, making her way quickly out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the master bedroom. She hardly noticed the irritation in Matt's tone. In less than a minute, with camera in hand, Tammy walked into the living room and dragged the chair from its corner. Situated in front of the dark fireplace, the chair showed up on the digital screen with many of its details intact. She snapped off twelve shots, capturing the chair at every possible angle including two from a precarious vantage point on the floor. The armrests of the chair looked like arms through the camera lens and Tammy stood there putting the camera to her eye and taking it away again, unaware that Matt watched from the hallway. "Does it look better through the camera, or what?" Tammy jerked the camera away from her face and looked as if she had been caught doing something naughty. "No. It just looks different. Must be the lighting." "Must be." Matt moved closer to the chair and squatted at its side, looking at the detail of the talons. "You know, I didn't notice these when I put this thing in the truck earlier." "Speaking of which, where did you get it? You never did tell me." Looking sheepish and standing up, he said, "Beside the road. I was taking the scenic route home, you know the old winding mountain road, and there it was just on this side, sitting by the side of the road with a bunch of other stuff for the trash truck to pick up tomorrow." "The trash route doesn't go that far out, Matt. You might have taken someone's furniture who was just moving or something." He shook his head. "No, there were bags of trash there, piled all around the furniture." "I can think of only one person out that way--Mrs. Todd and her son. Well, it's only him there now. Mrs. Todd died a couple of weeks back. We need to ask him if it's his chair and if he meant for it to go to the dump. That's only right." "Be a hell of a thing if I stole some guy's chair, huh?" He squatted by the chair again, irritation creeping into his voice. "I mean, I'd mind if someone came and took part of the junk I had piled up at the end of the driveway. Maybe it was his Mom's. If she died, he's probably going through all her stuff, having to sort everything. You know how it is when someone dies. You have to get rid of most of their stuff." He traced a leg and talon with one finger. "You know, I didn't even notice these backward talons when I got this thing. Oddly placed, don't you think?" "How could you miss them? That's one of the first things that jumped out at me when I saw it. Yes, they're oddly placed." And ugly as hell she almost added but did not. "Hell, the chair is shaped like a squat partial number 5 drawn by a second-grader who forgot to put the horizontal line on top." Matt stood up and swooned on his feet, tottering far to one side. Tammy rushed to brace him. "I'm okay. Stood up too quick is all." He looked down at the finger that he had used to touch the chair and shivered. "That's a first. Sure you're okay?" "Yeah." He edged his way around the chair as if he thought it might grab him. "What is that all about?" Tammy helped him to the sofa where he flopped unceremoniously. Matt shook his head. "I don't know. Have you touched that chair yet?" Tammy nodded. "Why?" "Did you…uhm…feel anything?" He stopped making eye contact. "Yeah. Wood." No way would she tell him or anybody else what she thought she felt and imagined when she touched it. No way. That would be bordering on the Land of Crazy and she wanted no part of that territory. Her sister had already laid claim enough there. Possibly, so had her mother. "That's all?" "That's it." She glanced sideways at the chair and her gut knotted. "What did you feel?" "Just wood. I guess." The silence hung between them for a few uncomfortable seconds and then Matt said, "Right. I'm going to run to town for a couple of things I need for school Monday. You want anything while I'm out?" He was already walking down the short hall past the kitchen and toward the door. "Only if you want to pick up something for dinner. Maybe Chinese or one of those big taco salads from Jesse's Diner." "Will do." Matt disappeared through the door and less than twenty seconds later the car's engine hummed to life and Tammy heard the gravel crunching under the tires as Matt left. * * * * With Matt gone, Tammy wondered what to do with the chair. Sitting on the sofa, she eyed it almost suspiciously as if it would reach out at any moment and grab her by the leg. Whatever I felt, I know Matt felt it too. But what was it? The more she looked at the chair, taking in more and more details, the more she decided she really disliked it. Something was wrong with that chair. It was innate knowledge, a gut feeling. Its uniqueness was more than a mere extension of the artisan who wrested the design from simple pieces of wood. She stood and walked a complete circle around the strange piece of furniture. As she moved closer, the stomach-flipping nausea came again. And when she touched the backrest, she felt a slight vibration running through the wood. Speaking directly to the seat, she said, "I don't like you even a little bit and the first chance I get, you are a goner." She grasped the top of the backrest. With one tiny carved head in each palm, Tammy tipped the chair toward her body and dragged it into the darkest corner of the room. If she had not known better, she would have sworn the thing balked along the way. In the kitchen, scrubbing her hands with Dawn dish washing liquid and hot water as if she had just touched dog s**t instead of an old chair, the nausea disappeared. She thought again about Matt's reaction to touching the chair and it came to her that their reactions might have been more than imaginary or whatever she had thought at the time. Maybe it was a real bona fide allergic reaction to something on the chair. After all, Matt had found the thing sitting by the side of the road. God only knew what it could have been exposed to sitting there. Who knew how long it had been there? And someone could have easily put something on it on purpose. "Someone could have put poison on it for all we know. Maybe that Todd boy got tired of taking care of his elderly mother and rubbed something on it that would kill her. Mrs. Todd would have left her entire estate to her only child…" she trailed off, realizing that not only was she talking aloud to herself, but that a certain paranoia-s***h-conspiracy theory overtone, that often precedes a vacation up to the local nut house, had pervaded her thoughts, actions and voice. One nut job in the family history--recent history, at that--was one too many as far as Tammy was concerned. Not that she approved of that label, but the truth was the truth and the truth would stand when the world was on fire. Her mother used to be fond of saying that. Tammy thought it was probably true—unlike so many old sayings and phrases that her mother used to be fond of spouting.