The itching was ridiculous. It was a fluttering torture, a soft-bristle brush teasing tormented nerve endings, making me want to laugh and cry, but mostly cry. It was like being tickled by a loving, giggling sadist.

It started in my toes ­­— well, one toe actually. The big toe on my left foot. But the teasing, tortuous feeling didn’t take long to migrate to the other toes and onto the rest of my feet. The itch moved as it willed, meandering cruelly.

It started at night, kicking in just as I closed my eyes to sleep after a long day’s work. I didn’t know it at the time, but the night before that night was the last decent sleep I would ever have in my bed. One night I was sleeping like a baby, and the next all I could think about was the ferocious itching in my goddamn feet.

I tossed and turned, and kicked and moaned, and I would have kept my wife awake all night if she hadn’t left me months before. Life with me was “boring,” she said, but if she had been there the night my toes started itching, she might have thought otherwise. It wasn’t just the boring-ness though, that chased her away — she told me I was too “lethargic” also. She said she had met someone much more “dynamic.” She was kind enough to tell me this when I got home from work one average day, ten minutes before the moving truck pulled up and young guys with mustaches and muscles packed up most of the house and took it away. It all happened so fast, you know? An hour later I was left in the doorway with a sterile peck on the cheek and a house half-full of second-tier furniture. I sat on my end of our sofa, where the springs were worn out and the cushion sagged, and tried to remember the last time we made love since that was now the last time we made love.

That was before the itching started though, and the itch was consuming me. I rubbed the soles and the tops of my feet raw scratching them on things. It was maddening. Then, late in the afternoon, I was in the kitchen drinking a glass of milk with one hand, scratching the top of my left foot with the other, when it came to me. I knew what it was that itched so goddamn bad! The answers to some mysteries have to be assembled piece by piece until the final picture becomes clear. Other times, like this one, you’re clueless until the answer shows up late and kicks the door in. Slaps you in the face. Like the answer to why my wife had been spending a lot more time at work lately, and the gym, and why she had taken a few “girls’ weekend” trips recently.

The Eastern Ash Borer. Of course! That little son of a bitch! The EAB was an invasive insect that had been annihilating ash tree populations in the Midwest since 2002. Arborists like me spend most of our work hours in the spring eradicating those little bastards and protecting ash trees against infestation. I was a master mixologist of boutique insecticides in my own campaign against the EAB. An evil genius, mixing imidacloprid with drops of dinotefuran and just a spritz of emamectin benzoate to create magic potent poisons I then served up to my local trees by the barrelful. The right mixture annihilates the pests without harming the trees, and I had the magic ratios down tight. My little company, which is actually just me, has been responsible for saving hundreds of ash trees in the southeastern corner of Minnesota.

And now, the shiny little green fucking terrorists were fighting back. I could feel it! I could feel the larvae, squirming their way around the insides of my feet, making their way above my ankles, chewing their way through my goddamn muscle tissue and tendons just like they would through the phloem of an ash tree.

“Enjoy, yourselves, you bastards,” I thought. “Enjoy your last meal! I’ve got something delicious for dessert.”

I went upstairs, to my son’s room, where I kept my supplies. There had been a fire in the garage several months ago, and I had nowhere else to store my work things. My son was incarcerated in the Oak Park Heights Correctional Center outside Minneapolis, so he didn’t need his room anymore. He’d been in prison since he shot his best friend and then came home and tried to shoot me. I don’t remember it very well, but he told the police that I owed him money, and he shot the house up and roughed me up some when he ran out of bullets. Then he set fire to the garage, and the police and fire department came. Like I said, I don’t really remember it very well. I just know it all happened so fast, you know? My wife (ex) says that it’s my fault he turned out to be such an asshole, but I think it had more to do with all the drugs he does. I don’t know. My wounds healed up pretty quickly, but I stayed in the hospital for an extra month or so because I couldn’t stop crying.

I went into what used to be my son’s room, opened the windows, and started mixing up a batch of insecticide — a little less imidacloprid than usual, and a little more emamectin. Obviously, I wouldn’t be injecting this dose, as I did with trees when they were badly infested. This would be more of a topical application. But I knew the exact dose that would do the trick.

She didn’t say it, but I know my wife (ex) left as much because we were having money problems as for any of those other reasons. My tree company wasn’t bringing in the income it used to. A big national company had sold a few franchises in our area, and these guys with big, shiny trucks and sharp monogrammed shirts started showing up, stealing jobs from me. Folks liked the big logo on their trucks, and the new guys papered the region with mailers, commercials, and even billboards! So I started getting fewer and fewer phone calls, and it was amazing how quickly the balance in our bank account dropped, you know? My wife wasn’t a fan of being broke. She was even less a fan of working, though, so there was never going to be a good ending to that story, I guess.

I have pretty big feet, so I dug a wide hole, the size I would for a sapling with a large root ball. There was a perfect place in the middle of my backyard. It was flat, open, and got plenty of sunshine all year long. I dug the hole deep, as I felt the EAB chewing their way up, inside my shins now, almost to my knees, and I saturated all the dirt inside the hole and around it with my magic potion. I stripped down to my t-shirt and underwear, stepped into the hole, and pulled the dirt back over my feet and the bottoms of my legs. A cool relief enveloped my left big toe immediately, and then made its way gradually from toe to toe. The squiggling, digging, tickling itch stopped dead (yes!) and was replaced by the most calming sensation I have ever felt. The relief moved to the other foot and up both legs until the itch was gone. Gone! A sense of euphoria spread from my grateful feet up my legs, through my groin, over my hips, and up through my stomach and ribs. The relief massaged my neck, and I felt the tension that had been living there loosen and die, like the grubs in my feet. My head felt lighter, and I felt my face soften. The tears that lived there began to dry, and a smile appeared. I took giant, clean breaths that filled parts of my lungs I had forgotten to use. The sun set. Then it rose again.

Sunshine and rain.

They fill me. I feel peace. Strong. Sunshine and rain, and peace. I grow. Clothes are gone now. Decay and life. I have a new skin now. A stronger skin. Sunshine and rain. And snow. Sleep and then wake. The sun rises and sets. People move in and out of the house. Sunshine and snow.

Sunshine and snow.

In the spring I’m rested. Creatures find me, explore me. Not the EAB — my sweet elixir lasts forever. Sparrows that live in the eaves of the house dart back and forth, perching on me, and then chasing each other from bush to bush, to the eaves and the gutter, and back to me. They chatter and sing and tell jokes and talk trash. Squirrels nest. I and the birds and the squirrels are content. This is all. I’m content to stand in this spot forever. Time slows and it grows. One ring at a time. When the wind blows, I bend. And when the wind passes, I straighten again.

Sunshine and rain.

– Richard R. DiPirro