Backyard (15 page)

“Very kind of you,” said Nan, who wondered whether the root beer was spiked with something mind-altering, causing her to imagine what she thought she had just heard. “I'll give it some careful consideration.”

“Don't wait too long,” Earlene said. “My price goes up in two weeks, and, by then, I could be working for somebody else anyway.”

“Ah, Earlene, one more thing: I don't mean to sound accusing, but you haven't been snipping off our monarda, have you? A couple of weeks ago, I found about twenty stems cut off of several different plants as cleanly as if someone had taken pruning shears to them.”

Earlene closed her eyes for a moment as she worked a gob of melting ice cream around her mouth.

“Not me,” she said after swallowing her load of float with a satisfied
ahhhh
. “You're sure it's not animals?”

“Reasonably so. It's too high up for the rabbits to get to. This has happened over time, not all at once. And my husband George heard snipping noises.”

“Hmmmm. Sounds suspicious, all right. And smart. Take 'em out little bits at a time and before they bloom to make 'em harder to spot. Not me, that's for sure. But, of course, I wouldn't tell you if it was me, would I. Ha-ha . . . Now, what I want to know is this: Who the hell is horning in on my sabotage business? Hmmm? And here I was thinking I had the monopoly.”

With that, Earlene McGillicuddy walked off to further inspect the backyard, sometimes smiling smugly and, at other times, shaking her head in dismay.

“What's
her
problem?” said George, who had been surreptitiously listening in on the conversation from just within hearing range.

“She thinks we're going to lose . . . to those folks on the cul-de-sac we visited last week. The rest doesn't bear repeating. At least not now.”

“Well, sure, their yard is spectacular, if it's the same one I'm thinking about. That one where the couple looking out the window spooked us. Old news. We'd already pretty much pegged them as the winners, hadn't we?”

“No, whatever gave you that idea, George? And if that's what you're thinking, then it's our job to make ours spectacular, too. As soon as this party's over, we start working. We're planning on winning this thing. Or didn't I make that clear?”

George sighed. By the time the party ended, he would have knocked down a couple of sandwiches, three bags of thick-sliced, extra-greasy potato chips, five root beer floats, and three plastic bottles of water. He would hardly be in condition to start wielding a rake and a shovel.

He walked over to the cartons of ice cream, which were packed in ice buckets to keep them from melting too fast, and the aluminum root beer kegs, which had been lifted onto a couple of borrowed picnic tables. He scooped himself out three giant hunks of vanilla ice cream, then kept lathering them with root beer until the foam started cascading over the side of his cup.

Children and teenagers began arriving. George moved to the back so he could keep a closer watch on the angel's trumpets. It simply would not do to have children wandering around back there, testing out the pretty flowers and seeds. Why the hell hadn't Nan allowed him to cut off all the flowers and seed pods and commit them to the flames? And, of course, he had forgotten to post the D
O
N
OT
T
OUCH
signs on the plants, as he had originally intended.

The yard was swarming with people now, and Sumac and Payne were lined with cars for two blocks in every direction. George kept his head tilted toward the angel's trumpets as he ambled over toward the patio to perform the duties of host. He saw that Nan was playing the part of perfect hostess, manning the food and drink tables, circulating from one clot of guests to another, then giving Steve and Juanita big hugs.

“You know, George, I think you're going to win this thing.”

“Thing? What thing?”

George's reactions and mind had been fuzzed somewhat by the root beer floats. He looked skyward, wondering if he was the lucky recipient of a secret message from either the Almighty or some other cosmic force.

“What do you mean, ‘What thing?' Why, that stupid backyard contest, the dumbest contest in history. What else?”

George felt the clap of a hand on his shoulder, and wheeled around to see Ellis and Cullen, almost wedged against him by the crush of people congregating on the patio. They were laughing.

“Dad, you're so gullible,” Cullen said. “Couldn't you tell right off it was me?”

“No,” said George, confused and ashamed to put such dumbfoundedness on display in front of his sons. “You disguise your voice well, Cullen. And how did you two know about this contest? I don't recall your mother and I talking to you about it.”

“You didn't,” Ellis said. “But it's all over town anyway. The Abramses are in it. The Spearmans are in it.”

“The Johnsons, the Gilders, the Messersmiths,” Cullen added.

“And the Hardys and the Hoosenfoots. Hey, that's alliteration. Pretty good, huh?”

“Gosh, I didn't know about the Hoosenfoots? Come to think about it, I didn't know about the Messersmiths and Hardys either. There must have been more folks entering since Mom and I looked at the entrants' list. Jeez, there must be hundreds of entrants now.”

“It's a pretty big deal, Dad,” Ellis said. “But we have full confidence in you and Mom winning and bringing great glory to the Fremont clan.”

George smiled wanly at his two sons, whose Cheshire Cat grins reeked of sarcasm.

“And have you heard, Dad, that other sponsors have jumped on board, and the prizes have been increased . . . a lot?”

“A lot? How much?”

“Well, Livia Farmer's Bank and Trust is now a sponsor. And Jeepsons' Family Restaurants.”

“And Carpet King,” interjected Ellis.

“Yeah, Carpet King. And Consolidated Industries.”

“And Johnson Marine.”

“And Johnson Marine. Shut up, Ellis. New World Semiconductors.”

“New World Semiconductors?”

“New World Semiconductors.”

“And a couple of anonymous rich people who are putting up $20,000 each.”

“What?”

“That's right,” Cullen said. “So now, not only does the winner get the $5,000 from Burdick's PlantWorld, but there's another $75,000 in additional prize money.”

“That is the most astounding thing I have ever heard,” said George.

“And it is absolutely true,” Cullen said. “It's that Burdick guy. Very rich. He wants to get his name on the map somehow. So, this is his big rich-guy project. He will spare no expense and twist every corporate arm he can think of to make this the biggest blowout garden contest in history.”

“So, Dad,” said Ellis, wrapping his strong pitcher's arm around George's shoulder. “We are now four-square in support of your obsession. We might even help you . . . well, at least lend moral backing. You and Mom gotta win this thing. We know you can do it.”

George walked off in a daze, and soon found himself inspecting the far reaches of the yard. He wondered forlornly whether the backyard could even hold a candle to some of the magnificent gardens he and Nan had seen on their scouting expeditions.

Their gardens began to look to him like the work of feckless novices: modest, uninspiring, and showing no particular original pattern that would stand out to judges who really knew their business. He sat down on the arbor's bench to recover from a bout of wooziness; the result of either a contemplative moment coming on or a little too much sugar and fat partying their way through his nervous system; hard to tell which.

On the way back to the patio, George detoured over to the angel's trumpets. It was a good thing he did! The seed pods had been broken open and scattered about. In a panic, George searched his memory for the picture of what the seed pods had looked like when he and Nan placed them at the foot of the plant. Was he just imagining that something—or somebody—had gotten into them? Could his own irrational fears be causing him to hallucinate? No. The iceberg lettuce and baby carrots were gone.

George examined that part of the yard and the area surrounding the compost pile and bordering the woods for something dead or dying. There was not so much as a dead blade of grass. Then, he remembered: death from angel's trumpet poisoning was not instantaneous. It could take days to kill you. What about animals? They would presumably die sooner since they were smaller, wouldn't they? He had not inspected the plants up close since yesterday. A rabbit might have come in the night, gone away feeling sated, and now be dying miserably in its warren out there somewhere in the woods.

George began to think of their campaign against the rabbits as a persecution. After all, they were only doing what nature instructed them to do. And here he was conking them on the heads with rocks and battering them to bits when he couldn't control himself, and now poisoning them horribly.

How much different were rabbits from humans anyway? They felt pain, didn't they? It was only one step up from pain to feelings of filial and paternal love. Rabbits were fathers and mothers. What if that rabbit's kids were watching as he smashed Dad's (or Mom's) head with the shovel just last week? Might there be some fellow rabbits ministering to the one out there dying, wishing to whatever deity they had that a miracle would be performed?

George grimaced and ground his heel down hard into the remnants of the scattered seeds and pods and little vegetable bits until earth and plant were all blended together in one squashed mess. Then, he ground it around some more. He kept on working his heel into the earth around the plants until it was indented into a little inch-deep basin. There are people in this world, he reflected, who would call him a murderer. George looked around, half expecting to see hordes of SPCA and PETA police bearing down on him.

What he saw was a crowd in motion, gravitating at the sound of Nan's urgings and some amplified static toward the patio, which was now one big clot of people. Pat had arrived. Another amplified squeal from the patio, then a hoarse sort of croaking, broke through the sad, self-mortifying spell. George kneaded his forehead to rid himself of the last traces of these terrible, enervating thoughts, but something more was needed, something with the kind of narcotic value that would take his mind completely off all these unpleasant things. He would have another root beer float.

George would not be able to get to the root beer and ice cream. The crowd gathered on the patio had swelled to even greater numbers as he passed through the fence gate and entered the inner sanctum of the backyard. He found himself part of the migration of outliers drifting toward all the squawking and crackling that was coming from the patio. The crowd was five deep. George nodded warily to friends and acquaintances who, like him, were harboring some vague apprehensions about what sounded like a breakdown in the electronic equipment.

As he scanned the crowd that was following behind him to join the packed-in group at the patio, he was at least gratified to note that their visitors were respecting the sanctity of the backyard, carefully picking their way through the gardens, and detouring around the flower beds and plant clusters. Nothing was being trampled, bruised, or even casually brushed against. The crowd, wedged in by the arbors and their trellises, was so thick now that he couldn't see Nan, though he could hear her voice—what would be called a very average voice, but which had projection and the carrying power to be heard over many other sounds. Then came the grotesquely amplified thump of someone tapping a microphone to make sure it worked. Several in the crowd chuckled.

“One, two, three,” came Pat's booming voice, assaulting the crowd, then crashing into the side of the Grunions' house and bouncing back again. “Twenty, forty-seven, eighty-six. I guess it works.”

George could only see the top of Pat's head bobbing up and down, her raised, gyrating hands and snapping castanets. The castanets cracked across the backyard like rifle shots, and Pat's gravelly contralto began to make a noise that was somewhere between a hum and a groan.

The castanets established a slow cadence, and Pat's hum-groan grew louder. Could this be the debut of “The Men of Livia Are Drunken Wife Beaters”? George flinched. The groaning grew louder. This sounded like something sort of Mediterranean and Egyptian. Pat had mentioned that she was getting interested in the music of “the rest of the world.” But this groaning? The castanets clacked faster and louder.

It's some kind of flamenco music, only without the guitar player, thought George. He was relieved to think that this debut number was to be a harmless rhythmic chant rather than an actual song about depraved Livians.

George had to admit that Pat was wielding the castanets with authority. Then came the wail, a long, deep, guttural lamentation that, in musical circles, might be called “dissonant.” It rose in pitch and volume to the level of a shriek. Then, it stopped, and the castanets clacked, more slowly now until they settled into a monotonous andante.

After about two minutes of this, there rose up a thick, fluttering groan the likes of which George had never heard. Pat was twirling her hands around now, forming little pirouettes in the air as she clackety-clacked away. Words were coming out of the groan, and George listened intently for anything that might signal Pat steering her music in a drunken, wife-battering direction. He couldn't understand anything, though it sounded like something he heard once when he was watching a Travel Channel show about East Timor. As he scanned the crowd, he could see that others were straining to understand. A lot of them looked confused and a little annoyed, perhaps perturbed by the shriek, but not quite ready to walk away.