Doddering Fools

Towering Valley Oaks festooned with orange stringy dodder hung over the highway seeming to edge ever closer to the pavement around every bend.  As the highway began ascending into the Sierra foothills, the great oaks gave way to their smaller cousins, California Live Oaks, interspersed with thickets of madrone and variegated chaparral, all of it infested with spaghetti like strands of the parasitic growth.

    “So ends the world, not with a bang, but with a vampirish species,” said the driver.

Tom Aganst tightly gripped the steering wheel, hands clammy with sweat despite the Lexus’ air conditioned comfort.  His wife, Lucille, appeared every bit as unnerved by the encroaching vegetation coiled throughout with dodder.  The road narrowed considerably where it started climbing in earnest bringing the alien growth closer on the left then the right, back and forth, in a series of steepening switchbacks.

    “We’ll get above it.  They say dodder doesn’t grow higher than six thousand feet.  We’ll be over nine at the lake.”  Lucille said peering down at the map in her lap.

It was too hard to actually chart their progress in the swaying car as it sped through turns, but at least this kept her from glancing out the window.  Enveloped by ocherous tentacles, the bushes clinging to the steep slopes here suggested to her great hairy heads arrayed in rows and eager to feed.

    “That’s before dodder started mutating,” her husband replied and then after a pause added, “you remember the Joshua?”

    “Yes, our wonderful Joshua Trees,” Lucille said stifling a sob.

The remembrance pained her.  When Tom was transferred to a job in Twenty-nine Palms, she’d been instantly smitten with the twisty, spiked, tree-like Joshuas.  They were what had made life bearable for her in the Mojave.  Spaced across the desert like ancient sentinels oblivious to the harsh environment, Joshua Trees had thrived in the region for millennia storing precious water in their trunk and limbs, yet they’d been overwhelmed in a fortnight by invasive tangles of dodder that sucked out their juices leaving them gray and dead to be broken by the wind.

Dodder wasn’t supposed to be able to survive in arid climates with sparse vegetation, but within a month of the first sightings locally of infestation, virtually all the plant life throughout the immense Yucca Valley had been contaminated.  That’s when Lucille began insisting they had to get away.  At least for a while.  Her husband didn’t need much persuading and eagerly began a web search of where to go.

Trying to be reassuring, Tom reached out to stroke his wife’s long strawberry blonde hair.  How lovely and young she looked, he thought checking his own salt and pepper crew cut in the rear view mirror.  Ah well, he reflected, she’s in her thirties, and I’m in my forties,

    “The cabin’s on an island in the lake.  There haven’t been any reports dodder has learned how to swim,” he said.

    “Not yet,” his wife said with a laugh so mirthless it was sadder than a sob.

The road topped out in a forest of emerald green Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce so dark it bordered on blue and black.  The highway kept climbing, but along an undulating plateau that provided panoramic views of granite peaks girt with snow ahead whenever there was a break in the trees.

    “See it isn’t up here,” Lucille said her mood brightening at the spectacular scenery.

They skirted along a mountain wall and then over a saddle into a lake basin.  Small alpine tarns abounded along with a handful of larger lakes gouged into the rocky soil long ago by glaciers that left their mark on the hillsides as well scraping the granite into sheer polished walls.

There’d been few cars on the highway and none at all once they turned off onto the dirt spur that dead ended at the highest lake reachable by road.  The lake spanning roughly a hundred acres was hemmed by serrated ridges that reached almost to the waterline on three sides with a thick patch of forest to the west.  The blue water was dotted with over a dozen islands, some too small to accommodate more than a tent site and others large enough to sport several cabins.

    “Which one is ours?”  Lucille asked excitedly as they exited the car by the pier that stretched about thirty feet into the water.

Half a dozen boats were tied to the wooden pilings.  All of them identical aluminum rowboats with small outboard motors.  

    “We’re at the south end.  From the website pictures, our island’s doesn’t look that much bigger than some of the lots in our neighborhood back home.  Still, it should be easy enough to spot.  The cabin’s on a point facing north towards that great big peak.  What we need to figure out is which boat we rented,” Tom said opening the trunk.

He sighed heavily at the ton of supplies crammed clear to the lid.  The backseat was packed full as well.  After determining which boat was theirs, the couple made half a dozen trips loading the skiff as full as they dared.  Even then they hadn’t transferred half of what they’d brought.

    “You stay at the cabin and start setting up while I go back for the rest.  I think I can get it all in one trip if I’m by myself,” Tom said as they motored across the still waters.

Once she got a look at the place, that was fine with Lucille.  Another case of love at first sight.  While the A frame cabin was small, rustic, and without electricity, the kitchen and bathroom boasted running water from a clever little set-up of windmill pump that fed into a storage tank atop a nearby hummock, the highest point on the islet.  The cabin’s location on a promontory jutting into the water made it a charmer with awesome views of the surrounding mountains.   

Lucille stood on the front porch waving to her husband as he set off to fetch the remainder of their supplies.  Despite the bright sunlight of the afternoon, a chill wind was blowing off the lake.  Labor Day was less than a week past, but winter would hit early at this altitude.  Lucille was thankful they’d packed plenty of warm clothes and enough canned goods and dried foods to last for months if need be.  Not that they intended to stay near that long.

The couple had brought a portable radio which they used to listen to the news every night.  More than anything else, those broadcasts kept them on the island even as the days went from brisk to downright cold.  Dodder was spreading throughout the state and springing up in spots all over the globe where it had never before been seen or thought possible to survive.  The species was transforming and adapting in ways heretofore unimaginable and surviving, nay thriving despite increasingly desperate attempts at eradication.  As troubling as the reports were, Tom knew they would soon have to leave.  They were in no way prepared for the harsh weather coming.  He reluctantly brought up the subject on a morning especially frosty.

    “Do you want to drive down through all those dead forests?  You’ve heard about how many trees have fallen.  Think of how dangerous it would be,” Lucille said as they huddled under blankets on the bench seat of their front porch.

Tom saw the worry lines that had apparently become permanently etched into his wife’s face these last few weeks.  Maybe it was just that she was foregoing or had run out of makeup.  Hell, they were both letting themselves go he told himself rubbing the beard stubble on his chin.

    “We’ll soon be snowbound up here.  You can feel how cold it’s getting, and the snowline’s crept down almost to the lake.  Like I told you, the resort down the road has run out of propane,” Tom said.

    “That’s because no one wants to leave.  They all know how bad it’s getting down below.  You can see more people are coming up here way past the end of the season,” Lucile replied standing and setting her arms akimbo.

Tom had long ago tagged this her stubborn stance, but he knew the cold bothered her more than him and decided to use it.

    “But we won’t have any heat.  We’re almost out of fuel and can’t get anymore without driving down the mountain.”

Lucille pointed to the thick forest lining the west end of the lake.

    “Look at all that fuel.  We have a fireplace, don’t we?”

Tom knew there was no sense arguing with Lucille when she got like this.  Better to wait for a more opportune moment so he got his axe and motored across the lake towards the trees.  The first line of forest along the shore had already been picked clean of downed wood, but there was plenty further in, and he soon saw why.  Dodder.  It hung from the trees above and lay clumped amid the detritus on the forest floor.  As he began gathering suitably sized logs, he could hear and see branches breaking from the sheer weight of insidious growth.

Tom hated having to touch the stuff and used the axe to scrape off all traces of it as best he could from the wood collected.  It wouldn’t be long before the stuff reached the woods along the waterline.  Lucille scanned the shore with their high powered binoculars every day.  She’d be sure to spot the distinctive orange presence streaking the greenery, and then there’d be no reason for them to stay, but Tom knew such a tableau would break his wife’s heart, and he wanted to break the bad news to her gently.  Tonight.  Over a bottle of wine.  Before a roaring fire.  He loaded the boat to the gunwales with wood before heading back.

It was amazing what a sumptuous meal Lucille managed to make from their dwindling supply of canned goods and a couple of freshly caught trout.  Tom had become quite the fisherman, and they reveled in a feast lit by candlelight and a roaring fire so inviting they made love before it after eating.  Spent and content, they on a bed of blankets watching the lowering flames, drinking wine, and caressing each another.

Tom noticed his wife crinkling her nose.

    “What’s wrong?”  He asked.

    “The fire smells funny.”

Tom sniffed.  His wife had a far more sensitive nose, but even he could now detect an acrid odor like ammonia.  The fire had died down to glowing coals whose radiance, Tom thought, shone more tangerine colored than seemed normal.  Dodder immediately sprang to his mind.  The wood was likely infested with it, especially the small seeds.  News reports had said the latest generation of the plant was rife with spores.  Well good.  Tom was glad they were incinerating some of the damn crap.  He laid another load of wood into the fireplace, and as the logs caught, began laying his wife.

In the morning, they both woke up with hangovers, and Tom had a bad case of the sniffles.  His nose was all plugged up.  He stumbled into the bathroom while his wife remained buried beneath the blankets.  Tom splashed some water on his face cursing how cold it was.  The propane was gone so there would be no more hot water.  Regardless, he was going to shave.  Christ, he looked like hell.  What with the chill water and shaky hands, Tom nicked himself half a dozen times and looked more awful than ever when finished.  His cheeks and chin were smeared with blood that he tried to stanch with strips of toilet paper.  And his nose hairs seemed to have thickened and grown.  Good God, they were orange!

Using a pair of tweezers, Tom carefully and agonizingly pulled a strand from his left nostril.  He’d heard that actors who were called on to cry would sometimes pluck a nose hair, and this one felt connected to his eyes.  Certainly, they teared as he tugged, and his peripheral vision sort of shrank when he yanked.  When he looked at the orange frond he’d removed, Tom really wanted to cry because what had come out was nine inches long with a grey gob at the end flecked with blood.

    “That’s brain,” he said aloud utterly stupefied.

Even as he watched, orange tendrils began to protrude from his nostrils.  Lucille was calling for him, but he couldn’t let her see him like this.  First he tried trimming the growth with a small pair of scissors, but that didn’t halt the inexorable advance.  Next he stuck several band-aids under his nose, but shoots bulged out around the edges.  Finally he grabbed some gauze tape out of the medicine cabinet and began wrapping it around his nose and then clear around his head over his proboscis stopping only when he heard his wife scream.

She was sitting upright in bed pulling orange strands from either ear and shrieking.  When she saw her husband’s face weirdly wrapped in tape, she screamed even louder.

    “Don’t pull them out.  Your brains will come with it,” he shouted.

That really made her scream, and the yells got even louder when she looked at all the grey stuff dripping with blood dangling from the ends of the sprouts held in her shaking hands.  Tom rushed to embrace her.

    “What is it?”  She wailed.

    “I don’t know.  Dodder maybe.”

    “But how?”

    “I don’t know.  Spores in the wood or the air.  The stuff’s mutated again.  We got to get to a hospital.”

He helped his wife tape her ears trying unsuccessfully to ignore how with his nose sealed shut, the stuff in his nostrils felt like it was backing up into his brain.  His pounding headache had escalated into a throbbing migraine that was making him dizzy.  Dressing as quickly and as warmly as they could, the couple rushed out to their boat and started to speed across the lake.

Lucille was weeping softly.  The wind was blowing sharply.  Tom reflected that Halloween was only a week away, and he prayed they lived long enough to see it.  Half a dozen people were on the docking pier, and they seemed to be dancing.  Their laughter carried across the water.  As the boat approached, Tom and Lucille could see the people all had orange hair, and then when the couple got even closer, they realized that wasn’t hair.

After tying the boat to the dock, Tom had to shove a couple of laughing fools aside so he could stand on the deck after climbing the short ladder.  The whole group was hopping about guffawing like mad.  Gray flecks fell like blizzards of dandruff from their carrot topped heads.  When Tom tried asking for help, the bozos just pointed at his bandaged face and start chanting, “nosy, nosy.”

    “Come on up,” Tom said to his wife and reached his hand down to help her up the rungs.

     “What’s the matter with them?”  She asked clutching her husband in fear.

The crowd was now dancing around both of them pointing at Lucille’s head and chanting, “Eary, eary.”

One of the revelers fell off the dock into the water, but despite the near freezing temperature of the lake, just floated on his back laughing away.

    “I don’t know.  Dodder infection maybe,” Tom answered.

    “Oh God!  Tom, are we going to get like them?  Will it suck the sanity out of our heads too?”

    “Let’s just get to the car and get out of here.  The sooner we get to a hospital, the better off we’ll be.”

Thankfully, the small band of sillies didn’t follow, but stayed on the pier doing their arrhythmic jigs and cackling like jerked puppets in a funhouse.  As Tom and Lucille were pulling out of their parking space beneath a tree bearded with dodder, they nearly collided with a speeding car.  It had to be doing fifty as it bounced along the rutted dirt path.  The orange haired driver had his head stuck out the window, and he was howling with laughter.  He drove straight into the lake without slowing down.

    “My head hurts so bad,” Lucille wailed.

Tom’s skull felt like it was about to split, and he wondered how long he’d be able to drive.  The formerly lush forests appeared dressed for Halloween, all streaked with orange, drooping and dying under the burden of dodder.  They passed a number of wrecks, some of the bad ones contained corpses, and occasionally an orange haired crazy would dart out in front of the car.  The pain in his head had become so blinding that Tom was afraid he wouldn’t be able to brake in time or swerve out of the way of somebody particularly since he didn’t see out the sides so well anymore.

They’d reached the most dangerous section of the route, the steep set of switchbacks descending the ridge where the drop-off was nearly sheer.  Tom gritted his teeth, told himself to concentrate, and to his surprise the effort seemed to pay off.  The pain in his head began to lessen, but just as he began congratulating himself, one of the goonies jumped out onto the road from behind a bush, and the car hit the man.  Tom didn’t dare stop to help him.  He simply looked in the rearview at the body laying limp on the road and then caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror.  Orange hair was growing out at the roots.

Tom looked over at his wife.  Orange hair was starting to spring from her head as well, and she was smiling.

Tom stroked his hand through his hair and said, “At least it gets rid of the gray.”

Lucille laughed.  Tom laughed as well.  Both kept on laughing even as the car went over the edge.

The end