The Indifferent Children of the Earth

by Gregory Ashe

  Chapter 25, Monday 12 September

  The bag over my shoulder gave slightly, and a moment later I felt a stream of mulch trickle down my back. I staggered the last few steps to the pallet, dropped the bag—mulch spilling out of a tear along one side—and reached back, trying to brush the scratchy, smelly stuff away. I got most of it, but a few pieces clung to the inside of my shirt, poking me in the back. I pulled off the red t-shirt, turned it inside out, and shook it vigorously. Then, with the sun pounding down on my back, I gave the shirt a quick inspection and pulled it back on.

  “Jared around?”

  I turned to find Mr. Green standing at the edge of the lot. The sunburn had moved, and now the inside of his arms, where the skin had been pasty white before, was red and aggravated. Almost blistered. I don’t know how he managed to get such an uneven sunburn, and such a severe one at that.

  “No,” I said. “Mr. Wood’s still taking the afternoons off. I think he spends most of them over at his sister’s house.”

  “Yeah, usually his truck’s there,” Mr. Green said. “She lives right by me, so I see him when I’m working in the garden. The last few days, though, I haven’t seen him over there. Don’t suppose you know where I can find him?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Is it an emergency?”

  “Mums,” he said, taking a seat on a bench.

  “Mums?”

  “Mums. My damn mums do this to me every year.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Die.”

  “Your yard looked great when I was at Olivia’s yesterday. Did something happen?”

  “No, right now they’re fine. And the Garden Society’s autumn competition is coming up in just a couple weeks.”

  “Well, I’m not an expert,” I said, “but from what I’ve seen, I think you’ve got a good chance.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “But every year they die on me. Just after I cut them; by the time I get them to the competition, they’re worthless. Jared usually wins, or Melanie. Those two have the greenest thumbs in town, although you’d not be able to tell just by looking at Jared. He could raise a flower from the dead, I’m pretty sure.”

  I thought back to the grower’s tree, to the sprawls that had continued to rise, even after I poisoned the tree. And I started to wonder if I’d been wrong about Melanie. Or partially wrong. Could growers share a tree? Or could Melanie’s sickness have nothing to do with growing? What if it had been Mr. Wood all along, if I’d been right from the beginning? I cursed my own lack of knowledge; there was so much I didn’t know about growers, so much Grandfather hadn’t told me.

  With a start, I realized Mr. Green was looking at me. “I can show you some of our fertilizers,” I said. “But I bet Mr. Wood has already talked to you about all of them.”

  “Couldn’t hurt to look again,” Mr. Green said. “I’m desperate.”

  So I tossed my work gloves on the pile of bagged mulch and led him into the store. As we headed down the aisle with fertilizers, I started pointing out brands and talking; Mr. Wood had insisted I learn at least the basics about what we carried, and it turned out it was going to come in handy. “This is our cheapest one,” I said, “and it’ll do a decent job, but it’s more of a routine thing, not anything special like you’re talking about.”

  “I’ve tried it,” Mr. Green said. “No use.”

  “Well, we’ve got a couple others, they’re a little more expensive. Right here, this one is specifically for flowerbeds, this one is, theoretically, all-purpose.” He didn’t respond, so I moved a little further down the aisle. “This is our most expensive one. Mr. Green says it’s not substantially better than the mid-level brands, but—” I stopped, realizing I was about to contradict my boss in front of his friend.

  “But what?”

  “It’s what my mom uses,” I said with a shrug. “I think we’ve got some specialty plant-foods in the back, but I don’t know if we have anything for mums. I can check and let you know later, though.”

  Mr. Green just looked up and down the aisle, his peeling, pink face screwed up in concentration. Finally, with a smile, he clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll take that one,” he said, pointing to the most expensive one.

  “Sure?”

  “If it’s good enough for your mom, it’s good enough for me; I’ve seen your yard, and your mom does good work.”

  “Thanks,” I said, not really sure what to say.

  “Your grandfather would be proud of you,” he said as I lugged the sack of fertilizer up to the counter.

  “So you knew him?” I said. “Pretty well, I guess?”

  “Better than anyone else in town,” Mr. Green said with a laugh. “Your grandfather was a dedicated man, passionate about his work. Passionate about a lot of things; he got in a fight with Jared’s dad one time, and between the two of them they almost leveled the town.”

  “Like, a fist-fight?” I said.

  “Well, your grandfather wasn’t always old,” Mr. Green said, laughing again. “When he moved here, he must have been around thirty, with a wife and a baby. I was in high school, along with Jared.”

  “So how’d you get to know him?” I asked. I still couldn’t get over the idea of Grandfather in a fist-fight, although it did fit with his personality. Just not with the image of the slightly-stooped, gray-haired quickener I had in my mind. “If he was that much older than you?”

  “It’s a small town,” Mr. Green said. “And I was curious and didn’t have many inhibitions. A family from Spain—and Jews, no less, imagine that—move to West Marshall. Well, you can understand how my curiosity was piqued. And I was studying Spanish. So I started stopping by, and after a while, we became friends.”

  It didn’t sound like the grandfather I had known, the man who had trained me to kill without mercy, who had trained me to trust no one, who had made me into a soldier while I was still a child. The part of me that was still angry with Grandfather raged at Mr. Green’s description—it seemed so unfair that Grandfather had been able to have such a happy life, without any of the emotional baggage that he had forced upon me and Isaac. Another part of me, though, wondered about this version of my grandfather, a man I hadn’t even known existed.

  Without an answer, I rang up Mr. Green. He paid, and when I offered to carry the bag to his car, he just stooped down and picked it up himself. “No thanks,” he said. “You’ve been a huge help. I’ll be sure to tell Jared what a fine job you did.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Jared’s a good man,” Mr. Green said. “He’s straightforward—what you see is what you get, which isn’t always the case here. He doesn’t like you because of your grandfather, and he makes no bones about it, but you keep working hard, and things will smooth out. He really is a good man.”

  I just nodded.

  Mr. Green left, and he probably said goodbye, but my mind was racing so fast I wasn’t paying attention. Grandfather had fought with Mr. Wood’s father. A fist fight. And then Grandfather fleeing town. What if the fist fight had just been the beginning? What if Mr. Wood’s father had been a grower? And what if Mr. Wood, or his sister, or both, were growers now? It would explain a lot of the animosity. If Melanie were the grower, her sickness could be explained by my poisoning the tree. But I couldn’t explain the continued sprawls. And with my limited knowledge of growing, I could only assume there was another grower in town. That only left Mr. Wood. Mr. Wood, who was mysteriously absent when more and more sprawls were rising.

  As I closed up the shop, my mind went round and round the matter, but I couldn’t come to a conclusion. In some ways, I was back where I had started—lots of suspicions, but no real answers. One thing was different, though: I was no longer fighting alone.