The Irrigation Installation Specialist explained his plan to me. It was thoughtful and thorough, as plans go. The original watering system for my lawn had broken down and it was time for an upgrade. As we toured the yard, pointing at things and talking, our feet crunched—poignantly—on dry grass.  

“The neighbors,” I was saying, “well, they haven’t actually said anything about my lawn, but I can tell—”  

“Uh huh. Where do you—sir?—where should I install the system controller?” 

“—I can tell they aren’t happy with me.” 

“Over there? Behind the oil burner?” 

“Can you believe—no, not there please—at the last HOA meeting the board made reference to the yard-upkeep clause from the HOA agreement—” 

“Behind the hot water tank?” 

“—and I swear the treasurer was looking straight at me.” 

“I’ll just put it behind the tank.” 

“But I only moved in last November. When was I supposed to have fixed it? Over the winter? When the ground was frozen?” I scoffed, though I couldn’t help glancing across the property line. The neighbors’ lawn was lush green and lie-down soft. Mine was a desiccated hellscape. “Still,” I admitted, “I understand their point of view. Your lawn reflects who you are as a person, I always say. But it’s not my fault if the previous owners didn’t understand that. I just need time to undo the mess they left me. And, well, I know you get it. That’s why you’re here.” 

“Um, sir?”  

“Hmm?” 

“Are we good?”  

He began his work while I went back inside my house. From my bedroom I watched the installation process through an open window. If you haven’t seen it done before, irrigation lines go into the ground using a specialized machine that saws the ground apart and lays a hose down in the resulting trench. 

It was a joy to watch, so I was surprised when pangs of anxiety began forming in the pit of my stomach in response to some unconscious signal, some subliminal warning that, despite all evidence to the contrary, something was wrong. But what? 

The answer came in the form of a memory.

It was six months earlier. “Do you know,” my real estate agent was saying, “what one of the nicest features of this neighborhood is?” 

“Is it all the wonderful lawns?” 

She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Not everything is about lawns, okay? No, it’s that this neighborhood has underground utilities.” In most of the surrounding areas, electricity and internet were delivered by means of pole-suspended tension wires. Not here. “Isn’t it marvelous,” she emphasized, “how uncluttered [with wires] the space over this neighborhood feels?” 

 

The memory ended there, but its meaning was clear. I knew what I’d forgotten to tell the Irrigation Installation Specialist about my yard. I leapt to my feet and sprinted outside, shrieking, “Stop the machine!” as I went.   

But the memory had come too late to make any difference.  

Before he could switch it off, the machine’s circular saw snagged on an underground obstruction and then lurched onto its side. I knew what had happened even before the Irrigation Installation Specialist bent over to grasp both ends—one end in each hand—of the severed, underground internet cable, i.e. my source of connectivity to my job and to the world.  

“Oof, sorry,” he said. “Guess you’ll need to call your cable company.” 

I felt cold inside, and it must have shown on my face. 

“Whoa, are you… Are you okay? Why is your face like that? It’s just an internet cable.”  

I let out a puff of air. “No, you’re right. It’s no big deal.” I relaxed my shoulders and unclenched my teeth. After all, I had never mentioned the underground cables to him. How could he have known? If anything, this was my fault, not his. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Don’t even worry about it.” 

“Right… Okay. Thanks, man.” He departed with some urgency, depositing a pair of rubber tire marks at the end of my driveway along the way.  

 

I rubbed my temples and steeled myself for what was next. It was time to call my internet service provider. There could be no delay. For my job I worked remotely, from my home. Without cable internet, I couldn’t do my work. There was no avoiding this.  

I called my provider from the landline, which used a separate cable that had survived the installation process. From there, I navigated through the automated prompts and was put on hold. 

“Your—” 

“Oh hello! My name is—” 

“—call is important to us…” 

“Oh.” 

Sometime later, I was connected to a human being. “Hello, you’ve reached—” 

In the interest of anonymity, I’ll substitute a fake name for the company. Let’s go with ‘Dumbcast’. 

“—Dumbcast. How may I be of assistance?” 

“Yes, hi, my internet cable was cut. Can you please send someone to fix it?” 

“Certainly, sir.” 

 

Two days later a white van showed up between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. The man who emerged from the vehicle joined me at the side of my driveway. I pointed at the ground. “Thanks for coming. Here’s where the cable got cut.” 

The man thought about it and then pointed at the same spot. “This,” he said, “is an underground cable.” 

“Yep,” I said. And you can probably see where this is going. 

“I don’t do underground cables.” 

“O… kay? Do you, er, know anyone who does?” 

“You gotta call Dumbcast and tell ‘em. They wouldn’t have sent me, you know, if you’d told them that to begin with.” 

“Er… I’m sorry about that?” 

He skidded out of my driveway, adding his own rubber tracks to the pavement there.  

I scowled into the middle distance. At least I had functioning irrigation now though. To console myself, I planted some grass seed and watered it in. 

Days passed. Days without internet or television. I watered my seeds. Little sprouts began to poke through the dirt.

 

When the next technician came, he looked down at the severed cable and said, “Well, now… But this is an underground cable.” 

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is,” and my eye started twitching.  

“I don’t do underground cables.” 

“But… I told Dumbcast about the cable being underground. Why didn’t they send someone who—?” 

“You need to request an underground specialist crew.”

“But I told them it was underground.”

“Did you request an underground specialist crew?

“Well, not in so many words, but…”

“They wouldn’t have sent me if you’d requested an underground specialist crew. Thanks for wasting my time.”

He peeled out of my driveway. Seconds later, the smell of burning rubber found me. By the time it had dissipated, I was already watering my grass sprouts again. “And how are you all doing today? Thirsty?” 

Thinking back, it’s possible the lack of connectivity had already begun affecting my state of mind.

 

Two weeks later, weeks without internet or television, weeks in which I’d literally been watching my grass grow (and strangely, had begun enjoying it), the underground specialist crew emerged from their commercial van into the rippling August heat in slow motion, like the awesome fucking heroes they were. Within minutes they had carved a new trench for my internet cable. Hot tears of relief splashed down my face. I could hardly believe it. Soon I would be a man with both an irrigation system and internet connectivity. Soon I would be complete. 

Which was when they cut my irrigation hose clean in half.  

I found the crew leader holding the severed ends of the hose, one end in each hand. “Oh, hey man,” he said, “you never told us you had an in-ground irrigation system.” 

I blinked at him. 

“Sorry, bud,” he said, “I think you’ll need to call your irrigation installation guy.” 

And then I blacked out. 

 

When I came around, the underground crew wasn’t anywhere to be found. Where their van had been parked there was now a lot of broken glass, and some fresh skid marks.  

Also, there was a steaming, water-filled crater where my lawn used to be.  

And I? I was floating in the center of that crater, face up, seeing nothing the ultra blue summer sky, arms and legs spread wide, with a slight smile twitching at one corner of my mouth. The spray from a broken irrigation line poured down over my torso. Wads of tiny, severed grass blades littered the surface of the water around me like so many corpses. 

 

That was six years ago.

I’ve been off the grid since then. No more municipal water. No more cable internet. 

No more lawn. 

No more job, either. 

I admit, things got a little ugly for me when I ran out of money. I began making raids on the local grocery store just to survive. I got arrested, but luckily the owner didn’t press charges. I’m forever grateful to her for that. 

With time I’ve become self-sufficient. I grow things to eat. I’ve learned useful trades and services and have a healthy bartering network in place. I sleep deeply, every night. I have those little lines between my abdominal muscles. I know the constellations by name. I regularly visit the library. I grind my own wheat into flour with a mortar and pestle, both of which I shaped from a stone I unearthed while sowing potato seeds. I have a network of accountants who collectively pay my property taxes in exchange for any number of services—gardening, handywork, pool cleaning, closet reorganization, and there’s one nearly-retired CPA who simply asks that I read novels out loud to him at night. In the summer months, ducks swim in my crater. My neighbor—the treasurer of the HOA—sits with me and feeds them. 

All of which is why I find myself needing to say something. It might be unexpected, or maybe it’s the most obvious thing in the world by now.  

What I need to say is this: 

Dear Dumbcast: you took everything that mattered away from me. You pushed me over the edge of an existential chasm from which there could be no return. I’m not the same person I was before. Thank you.