by Mark Jacobs
Chapter VI
Pence’s waxy flesh radiated like burnished gold in the sheer angles of the early light. Chin up, eyes unblinking as ever they would remain, he smiled at the gardener cordially for much longer than was merely good manners. His eyes played tricks in the light, flaring like embers and then glowering, making it impossible to tell where exactly he was looking.
The old man watched him skeptically.
“Welcome to the garden,” Pence called up, throwing the gardener a cheery wave. “Shall we shake hands? After all, we are civilized men, you and I.”
“Welcome to the garden,” the old man repeated in a stupor. He had been talking to the back of the boy’s head until now; addressing Pence face-to-face, the old man found himself unable to procure a solid thought. “Ummmm…” he began for lack of a better idea.
“Not very bright, is he?” whispered the boy–with one hand covertly screening his mouth–to the gardener’s left foot, which was sprawled out next to the potato. “Probably getting a bit drafty in the attic. Let’s the two of us keep an eye on him, eh? That’ll be best.”
Pence gave the old man’s foot a conspiratorial nod. Then, pretending he had only been wiping his nose, he casually dropped his hand from his face and pivoted back around to face the gardener. He grinned broadly and shrugged, as children often do when playing innocent before their elders.
The old man regarded him squarely, arching one eyebrow in suspicion.
“What’s that?” the boy quickly asked, shifting any scrutiny off his own shoulders by pointing behind the old man’s head to an engraving near the top of the white stump: in the bark, two carved lines formed a wide-angled V. The cuts exposed ancient green wood with dark veins running underneath the white bark. If there had once been an upper half to this glyph, it had long since been chopped away, for the twin lines had plainly been cloven during the same act that felled the tree itself.
The gardener did not look when Pence pointed, but merely grunted, “Long story.”
Pence’s smile collapsed but his eyes remained level, boring into the cut marks. He put his hands together, spread like an upturned triangle with an open top, replicating the shape he saw.
“For later,” the old man amended, and that was all it took to summon the boy’s carefree grin back as swiftly as it had slid away.
Pence raised himself to his full height. Smiling blissfully, he stuck his hips out and circled them around and around with extraordinary showmanship. “Ahhhh,” he exulted, “but that breeze feels amaaaazing! What do you say, old man: Care to join me as nature intended?”
“Pence!” blurted the old man unabashedly, jolted out of his daze. “Pence! Ha! It’s worked! You’re talking and, and, and… and everything!” The gardener fell back against the stump in peels of laughter, although he bit back periodically to peer bulging-eyed at the boy as if to make sure he had not vanished with the last wisps of dawn’s lingering dreams.
Pence took a very small step forward–he was still atop his husk–and put one hand up like a man approaching an untamed stallion. “Whoa… Whoa there,” he hushed his creator. “Easy does it. Easy, now. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The gardener’s eyes shot open. “Pence! Pence, ha! What in the world is going on? You’re alive! I mean, of course you’re alive, but you’re… more… than I… I mean… is this real? Ha! But I’ve bought the rabbit if it isn’t! Oh, oh my…” the gardener swallowed meekly, screwing his eyes shut to steady himself against the rush of blood and bilious dirt to his brain.
“That’s too much excitement for him,” Pence whispered to the old man’s left foot with a mother-knows-best hardening of his brow. “Watch how I handle this.”
The boy sent both his tinder-stick arms shooting up and flailed them about wildly to catch the old man’s attention. “Hey now, big fella’, hey now! Try to calm down, huh? We’ve all had a big day. That’s right, breathe. Innnn… out. Innnn… out. Good job.” As he spoke, the boy instinctively folded his arms into and away from his chest like a bellows. “Innnn… out. There you go, great. Really feel the wind funnel up your–”
“Pence! Pence. That will do, that will do, my boy. Thank you. Nary a funneling goes a’ wanting ‘round here, trust me on that.”
But Pence was not listening. From his low post atop the potato the boy was now intently surveying what he could of the garden, one hand shielding the sun from his eyes despite having previously shown no discomfort staring fully into the light. When he completed a circle–footpaths to pumpkins, ferns to flowers–he was again facing the old man, who, for his part, was with wide eyes watching the boy’s every move.
Pence addressed the gardener in a painstakingly slow accent, as though the old man’s mumchance stammering was a sure sign of infirmity, and that he must therefore be deaf also. “I’ve got a lot of questions,” he shouted up. “I also have some concerns about the way you’ve been managing things around here.”
The gardener tilted his head in curiosity but did not say anything aside from what his grin told.
The boy shook his head with tragic unction. “Also, if I may say so, I believe I could be of some general assistance to your romantic pursuits.” Pence looked the old man over for a moment. “Or lack thereof,” he added, grimacing as though his every sensitivity were offended by the gardener’s slovenly upkeep.
“Let’s start with the questions,” said the gardener, who had at last eased out of his gleeful hysterics and was breathing easier. “And you needn’t speak like an imbecile–it’s not my ears that plague me.”
“To the point,” replied the boy, giving a nod. Then he wrinkled up his forehead and stuck his nose high, attempting as serious a look as he could achieve with his odds-and-ends pastiche of facial features. “Now, I mean to get answers, all right? First off: Are you my Mother?” he demanded. “Because you’re not very attractive, as mothers go–have you considered trimming your beard, or putting it in braids? What are all the other old maids doing with their beards these days? And is this all there is of the world? Where is everyone? Where are all the ladies? And who am I, exactly? How much money have I to my name? Speaking of money, what is the nature of good and of evil?” Pence paused, albeit briefly. “What is love? What is the reason I find myself here, now, with you? How long shall I plan to stay? In other words, when may I expect myself to die? And why is the Sun such a gut-rotten rooster of a villain?”
“Is that all?” the gardener chuckled.
“Not remotely! I can keep going–”
“No, no, my boy. That will make for as fine a start as any. So then…” the old man stalled as he set about gathering his wits, “here we go… No, I am not your Mother; perhaps more than any other living thing, you may call the world itself your Mother, for every last bit of you was beget of the earth–I did no more than bandy the elements together. Secondly, if my beard is ever cut again, it won’t be by my hand… and my head will almost certainly go with it. Some things you just know, my boy. There is a fateful symmetry to life; you will find it if you look carefully. And no! The world expands beyond this white fence of ours and never ends, not ever, not ever I think. It is so vast no man has seen more than a wave of its waters, or read more than a word from its pages. Of ladies–both those with beards of their own and those without–we have none, I regret to inform you. We are the only two in this garden. Additionally, you are the only one of your kind, in this garden or anywhere else. What day it is, you ask? The same as every day: it is a good day to live, but it may be your last, so you darn better had tell yourself it’s as good a day to die. Money? Good and evil? Indivisible. Seek you none of it, for greed spins like wheels down a hill. Love is the reason. And, lastly… you are made from a potato, after all, and you’re right: you are no longer with your roots. Therefore I am inclined to estimate that you may be fortunate to live for as long as a couple of days, if not a precious few more.”
The sun pulled itself clear over the fence. For a moment it seemed to merge with the flat top of the white w
all like a finger pulling a drop of water up from a calm pond, connected like two halves of an hourglass for one quivering instant before the gap between them is stretched too wide. The old man looked up to the sky and smiled. “Oh, yes… as for the Sun, open your eyes! There may be a hundred kingdoms of man, but all of them would perish inside a season if the morning star refused to rise. That is why a true gardener wears the sun for his hat. And the wind for his belt, and the soil… Pence?”
Pence was not listening, again. Instead, he was absorbed in examining every brightly lit pore and pattern of the old man’s bare left foot, which was, after all, the nearest major landmark to his potato. He gave no sign that he had unraveled any of the old man’s epically thorough response, or that he had even been paying a whit of attention.
His nose drifted near to the foot with a mind of its own, pulling his head along behind. The gardener’s sole was dark with soil and sunburns and hard as oak. Crusted earth was plastered under and around his untrimmed toenails.
Standing on the potato, no room to take another step, Pence bent forward awkwardly trying to reach his face closer to the gardener’s foot, like a boy leaning in for his first clumsy kiss. “Pardon me,” he said shyly, intoxicated.
He inhaled deeply.
“Gack!” he cried in dismay at the odor, trapping his hands over his nose. Knees buckling, his gemstone eyes rolled back in his head and without further fanfare he fell off the hollowed-out potato face first.
“What can I say?” the old man blushed, flexing and stretching his grimy toes. “A true gardener wears the soil for his sandals. And I fertilize the land myself,” he revealed with a wink. “Keen to use your nose, though? Have a walk among the flowers, boy, while still you may. Your time in the garden will come to an end sooner than you think.”
