Backyard (6 page)

“Uh . . .” said James, struggling mightily to suppress more giggles.

“Uh . . . uh,” said Priscilla, looking at her brother, and exploding into intermittent, self-conscious snorts of laughter. “He was already there. We scared him.”

“Yeah,” said James. “He wet himself.” More convulsions of laughter.

“Officer,” piped up Jeri in her most stentorian damn-the-city-council voice. “I really don't see what the problem is. There has been a misunderstanding here. George was peeing in the woods. He does that from time to time.” George's look of consternation turned to one of puzzlement.

“How do you know I . . . ?” Jeri held up an outstretched hand to stop him.

“He's private about it and it's his property. This is not a pervert you're looking at, but a man merely relieving himself in the privacy of his backyard. And look, there's the proof.” Jeri pointed at George's shorts, still blotched with a wet urine stain. George blushed, then sighed. “He was surprised in the act and wet himself.”

“This could very well be the most humiliating experience I've ever had,” moaned George. “Can we bring this to a close, please?”

The policewoman smiled consolingly and snapped her notebook shut. It was then that Nan noticed the sergeant's chevrons on her shoulders. So,
she
is the supervisor here! she reflected with some pride. She looked at the nameplates pinned onto their shirt breast pockets. The sergeant was
Smead.
The police
man
was
Sneed.
Nan smiled, and had to work to hold back the little chuckle welling up inside of her.

“Yessir,” the policewoman said. “I don't think there's any further need to draw this out. You don't want to file a complaint I suppose, do you?” She looked at the children's parents, who were now looking sheepish and every bit as disconsolate as George. They shook their heads.

“Good,” the policewoman said. “So, what's the relationship?”

“Relationship?” said Jeri. “Oh, these are our cousins from England. Joel and Bernice Forrester, from Yorkshire.” Joel and Bernice nodded.

“How do you do,” Joel said.

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Bernice said softly.

“They are staying with us. They don't understand our American customs very well.”

What American customs? thought George.

“We won't take up any more of your time, officers,” Joel said. With that, Smead and Sneed strode down the slope to the street and disappeared beyond the woods.

“Awfully sorry to have bothered you,” Bernice said to George and Nan. “But one can't be too careful, you know, and the children were acting positively shocked. This is our first visit to the States, and we're a little squeamish, I suppose.”

“No bother,” said George, forcing out a brittle chuckle. “Happens all the time, especially with foreigners.”

“Not with the French, however,” Nan said. Bernice and Joel laughed unconvincingly. They had no idea what that meant, but assumed that it was a remark designed to bring a little levity to an uncomfortable situation. Following the Fletchers' cue, they turned around to retrace their steps through the woods. George stared forlornly at his stained shorts, then marched silently with Nan back to the patio, where he collapsed into one of the chairs, staring blankly ahead.

“Drink, my poor, persecuted dear?” said Nan, clasping his limp, clammy hand and stroking it.

“Yes,” said George. “Straight up. On the rocks. No lime.
Shhhh.
Feeder! Don't move!” Nan straightened up slowly, without any sudden motions, and turned her head to look at their big squirrel-proofed feeder. There, on the perch, pecking away at one of the feeding holes was the biggest yellow bird she had ever seen.

“What is it?” she said sotto voce and out of the corner of her mouth as the bird paused in its feeding to jerk its big head up and fix its beady eyes directly on them. Its head, unlike the body, was dark, with a yellow stripe running across the brow, just above its eyes and beak. “Jeez, it's almost staring at us. I've never seen that before. It looks like a freak goldfinch . . . or one that's been pumping some serious iron.”

“Evening grosbeak,” said George earnestly. “That's what it is. I'd be willing to put money on it. I've never seen one of those before.”

“We saw the rose-breasted grosbeak last month.”

“Yeah, once, then it didn't come back. We should probably get a positive ID on this guy.” The big yellow bird took one more peck at the seed portal, then took off with a prodigious whoosh of wings, catapulting itself directly overhead before disappearing on the other side of the roof.

“Bird book,” said Nan, scampering across the patio and into the house to fetch the Peterson guide.

“You're right!” she said after checking the index and thumbing through the pages until she got to the picture of the big, dusky yellow bird that matched what they had just seen. “Positive ID.” She thrust the book at George, who studied the picture and the brief description of the bird, which also had black wings patched with white.

“Sure is,” said George, with a big grin. “No question. That's a positive ID. That just made my day!”

Nan smiled mischievously.

“Now that you're in a cheerier mood, I've got a riddle for you, George: What's the difference between a clump of crabgrass and an orgasm?”

7

Digging In

D
r. Sproot sat brooding on her deck, her forefinger and index finger wrapped into a white-knuckle tightness around the handle of a mug that held her fifth refill of fully caffeinated, dark-roast coffee. It wasn't easy to sit there and quietly fume after you've had six mugs' worth of coffee. Dr. Sproot, however, had trained herself to simmer deeply and quietly when that was required. It was no matter that her nervous system was screaming at her to get up and dance or just park herself on the commode doing a couple Sudoku puzzles while her urinary tract cleaned itself out.

She knew that by carefully cultivating resentment and allowing it to grow you allowed its misbegotten suckers to fill every fiber of your being. All that nurturing would eventually boil over into action, which she was beginning to suspect might be required here.

Dr. Sproot was fully capable of action. For all her botanical erudition and middle-class patina of prim respectability, she harbored violent tendencies rattling the cages to be let out. They wanted her to rape and pillage like a floraphobe Hun. How many times had she had to resist the urge to torch her yuccas or snip off a rose and deposit it in the freezer? But there was another Dr. Sproot buried under the layers of viral pride, intolerance, and mischievous pettiness. It was the sweeter, gentler Dr. Sproot. That Dr. Sproot hadn't been seen much lately or, quite frankly, much at all. It was the persona that subconsciously fueled the floral wizard in her. It made her want to love and pamper her little floral darlings and nurture them to greatness with gentle coaxings and an unwaveringly sunny disposition. Without that secret Mother Teresa thumping around in her otherwise blackened soul, Dr. Sproot would more likely have become a demolition derby driver or the operator of a trash-compacting machine.

Dr. Sproot reconciled her conflicted nature by taking a rigidly unemotional, learned, and professional approach to her gardens. That approach allowed her to infuse her gardening ethic with a ruthless efficiency. Underperformers she rooted out and cheerfully burned at the slightest hint of decline no matter how long they had served her. Her demands for perfection resulted in a considerable outlay for sharp gardening tools, fertilizers, lighter fluid, and dozens of new plants a year to replace those that didn't meet her exacting standards.

The result of all this was a yardful of very nice gardens that were in a constant state of restless transition. There were always holes in the ground. Topsoil was relentlessly churned up and augmented with bags of more topsoil. New plants, their clumped roots covered in burlap, littered the yard, waiting to be fit together in the existing arrangements like missing puzzle pieces.

What was that? Movement! Unseen, but plodding, steadily cadenced, and portending damage or destruction. Dr. Sproot ignored her bladder's insistent call to action, and got up from her chair stealthily so as not to alert whatever flower-devouring beast might be approaching. She reached for the BB gun propped against the house she kept handy to ward off garden pests and screeching crows. Hurrying back on tiptoes to the deck railing, she raised the gun, and took careful aim at the corner of the house. What came into view was no garden-defiling beast, but Marta Poppendauber. On seeing Dr. Sproot poised for action, Marta threw up her hands, inadvertently flinging her handbag onto the grass.

“Don't shoot, Dr. Sproot!” she said. “Don't shoot. I'm a friend.” Dr. Sproot lowered her rifle and sneered.

“Marta, haven't I told you before to come through the front door and
not
through the gate in the fence? Huh? Why, I could have put out one of your eyes. You can put your hands down now, Marta.”

Marta lowered her hands slowly. Keeping a wary eye on Dr. Sproot, who still had her BB gun at waist height, pointed right at her, she retrieved her purse. Luckily for her, it hadn't landed in a nearby stand of yuccas.

“C'mon up. I'll be back in a second. Gotta go to the bathroom.”

Marta climbed up the steps to the deck and sat down in one of Dr. Sproot's stiff-backed, wood-slatted Adirondack chairs.

Marta didn't really want to be here, but what choice did she have? Though she had gotten some guilty pleasure out of watching Dr. Sproot go berserk over a little bit of hot tea, the notion of a Dr. Sproot–initiated lawsuit and all its ramifications terrified her. The damage that her reputation would suffer was more frightening. Dr. Sproot could ruin her. Why, one word from Dr. Sproot, and every wholesale buying club in the state would shut her out. The gardening clubs she hoped to join someday would blackball her. It would also damage any chance she had of winning the Burdick's Best Yard Contest. Marta wondered ruefully if her gardens were good enough to stand a chance anyway. Alas, probably not. Dr. Sproot was right: they were an anarchic mess, pure chaos. She sighed.

More details were leaking out about the contest. Marta had it on good authority that $5,000 was at stake here—an astonishing sum for a gardening contest!—and that could just be the beginning. Marta had spilled the beans to Dr. Sproot about it. But that was under duress, when Dr. Sproot threatened her again in the most indelicate way with legal action and character assassination.

Gazing thoughtfully over Dr. Sproot's grounds, Marta found herself still admiring them. But what was it that was missing? It was some ineffable void that made these gardens too contrived, too consciously manipulated for perfection to
be
perfection.

Marta heard a toilet flush from within the house. She found herself startled at the sound of the sliding screen door and Dr. Sproot's sudden appearance at her side. Marta forced a wan smile.

“Your gardens are looking in peak condition, even in all this dryness, Dr. Sproot.”

“Yes, aren't they? Thank you, Marta. But we're not here to discuss the condition of my gardens, as wonderful as they might be, are we.”

“No, Dr. Sproot, I suppose we aren't.”

“We're here to further flesh out some details of our little plan.”

“Yes, Dr. Sproot.”

“Let's head on inside. I have something to show you. We're going to turn you into a crackerjack backyard spy or my name isn't Dr. Phyllis Sproot.”

 

Marta stared in disbelief into Dr. Sproot's bedroom mirror. There she was, modeling a brown, woolen, and hooded cowl far too long for her, and girded around her waist with a rope. A large pair of sunglasses covered about half her face.

“It's a crackerjack disguise, don't you see,” Dr. Sproot said as a mortified Marta looked at the ridiculous figure she cut in the mirror. “With the hood pulled over your head, and those sunglasses covering your face, no one will have a clue who you are. That is, unless you're caught. If you are caught and detained, you are in no way to reveal your true identity, or mine . . . especially not mine. I have a reputation to preserve, and if it was to be discovered that I was having you run around spying on other people's gardens for me, well, you can imagine the fallout. Now, you, Marta, on the other hand, have very little to lose. You have no real standing in gardening circles, and your own yard is an absolute disaster, and . . .”

The words kept swarming around Marta. She resisted the temptation to make quick, dispelling motions with her hands, hidden in the billowing sleeves of the bulky garment.

“Actually, this is a costume I wore for Halloween one year, oh gosh, twenty-five years ago, when Mort and I were in our wild and crazy years. Ha-ha. It got quite a few comments, I'll tell you, Marta. So, you could pretend to be a scarecrow. Or a monk. There is a monastery in Livia, you know, for those monks whose mission is making those glazed, hard-as-a-rock caramel candies. You could be one of them. Now stretch out your arms.”

Marta obeyed mindlessly.

“We don't want those sleeves too long, do we? You will be having to use those hands to write down observations and take pictures. Lots of pictures. Hmmmm, let's see. I'll have to pin those back a little . . . and . . .”

Marta closed her eyes, lost in the self-abasement of having stooped so low and her own timidity in failing to resist this ridiculous charade in all but the meekest, most halfhearted, and queasy-voiced way.

“But remember what you promised me,” Dr. Sproot said when Marta balked at her assignment after trying on the cowl. “You promised to help me as penance for damaging my vocal cords and as surety for my not destroying whatever little reputation it is that you have. Remember? Now, this won't hurt a bit, Marta. All you have to do is take your notes on whatever you see sprouting from their accursed soil, take pictures—lots and lots and lots of pictures—and bring them all back to me. There will also be some night duty, and a little snipping . . .”

“A little
what?
”

“Snipping.”

“Snipping?”

“Yes, snipping. You will visit the Fremonts' yard late at night—four or five nights' worth of work will probably do the trick—and snip off the blooms and buds of various and sundry Fremont flora. A few at a time so as to avoid notice, but we must, over time, do enough damage to prevent these Fremonts from, by some freak accident, actually winning the Burdick's Best Yard Contest or, more to the point, preventing
me
from winning the Burdick's Best Yard Contest. We can't assume they won't hear about it. We can't assume they won't enter. We can probably assume that, no matter what happens, I will win anyway, but why take chances? We'll call our little snipping exercise the ‘death-by-a-thousand-cuts' treatment.”

“But, Dr. Sproot, I don't want to do that. That's vandalism!”

Dr. Sproot smiled.

“No, dear, that is
not
vandalism. There will be no great loss to the Fremonts, only a few buds and blooms snipped off here and there. They probably won't even notice. And, by doing so, you'll be preserving the integrity of what I've worked so hard to build and nurture here in Livia. Take that away, Marta, and you have stupid people raised to positions of fame and importance all because of a little blind luck. Can't have that, can we, Marta?”

“Dr. Sproot,” said Marta, her voice quivering with uncertainty. “I just don't think I should be doing this.”

What Dr. Sproot did next sealed the deal. She walked over to the counter that separated her dining room from her kitchen, retrieved several papers, and handed them to Marta. One bore the letterhead of an attorney and was addressed to Dr. Sproot. It said that she had valid grounds for a lawsuit against Marta and could recover thousands of dollars as a result of such an injury as Marta had caused through her criminal negligence. Criminal negligence! The others were letters addressed by Dr. Sproot to the presidents of Livia's four gardening clubs. They described in exaggerated detail the scalding tea incident and recommended that Marta be excluded from every officially sanctioned gardening event, demonstration, and contest until the end of time. Tears began to well up in Marta's eyes, and sobs shook her frame. Dr. Sproot suppressed a smile.

“I'm sorry that it has come to this, Marta,” she said. “You should understand that not only do I have a reputation to preserve, but it's also a matter of time. You think I have time to go gallivanting around in other peoples' yards? I've got my own creations to cultivate, and I can't take it for granted that I'm a shoo-in for this award, even though I probably am, and just rest on my laurels.

“You know how important this is to me, Marta. It's the food I eat, the coffee I glug, and the air I breathe. I don't know what I'll do if I don't win. Maybe something drastic. I've had such a hard life, Marta. Such a hard life. This, this one crowning accomplishment, could erase all that forever. And you could share in the knowledge of how much you've contributed to it. There could even be a little reward for you, Marta. But you are either with me in this or against me. Now, which is it?”

All Marta could do was bow her head and nod in the affirmative.

“I'll take that as a yes,” Dr. Sproot said. “Now, Marta, my own surreptitious observations of the comings and goings at the Fremont house have indicated that there are certain days of the week and times when they are least likely to be outdoors. They are few and far between, since these Fremonts do spend lots of time puttering around uselessly in their yard and getting drunk on red wine. But even the Fremonts have to run out and do their errands every now and then. And, luckily for us, they tend to be rather regular in that regard. Come on. Let's sit down and I'll show you my carefully kept logs. Then you can start working. My gosh, I do believe tomorrow, mid-afternoon, could be one of your windows of opportunity. Say, two thirty to five p.m.”

An hour later, Marta walked forlornly to her car carrying a digital camera and a large shopping bag that contained the cowl, the sunglasses, additional batteries for the camera, and a thick log book. Dr. Sproot, a big smile creasing her worn and emaciated face, waved at her. This created a new sensation in Marta, a sort of carbonated bubbling up of excitement and joy. When was the last time she had seen poor Dr. Sproot smile? And waving at her, too? The feelings of friendship began to rekindle in Marta as she got in the car and turned on the ignition. The purring engine reassured her and strengthened her resolve. She would do what needed to be done for her friend, and to further the institution of gardening in Livia. It
was
right and just.

 

Now, here she was in Fremontland, having terrifying second thoughts about her mission, but compelled by some force to keep going. Fraidy cat? She was no fraidy cat.

Beneath her and to the left were some shoots coming up that Marta hadn't noticed before. She bent over, adjusted the lens of her digital camera for the close-up, and snapped away. Then, she moved back to get the broader perspective and took some more pictures. After checking the little flip-open display window on the back of the camera to make sure she had gotten the best lighting and distance to capture enough detail, she snapped it shut, and slung the camera strap back over her shoulder while she proceeded to scribble down notes and a crude map in her small spiral-bound notepad. She didn't know exactly what it was poking up through the ground here, but Dr. Sproot would want to know, and would probably be able to identify it as soon as she saw the pictures.