The Red Garden

by Alice Hoffman

  “As for me, I’ve had enough of her,” the fisherman said. “I was thinking of cooking her. Throwing her into the smoker. But now you’ve come along. What would you give me in exchange for Susan?”

  Ben Levy laughed despite the madness of the evening. “I have nothing, sir.”

  “I doubt that,” the fisherman said, looking him over. “I’ll take your shoes.”

  “My shoes for Susan?”

  The fisherman nodded. Ben Levy slipped off his shoes. The fisherman got up, retrieved the burlap bag, and tossed it at Ben’s feet. Ben took it and made his way through the woods. He half imagined that the fisherman might shoot him in the back, or perhaps Susan had been hiding in the shack and would come running after him, but the woods were silent. He walked on, barefoot. The mud was cold, and the dark was sifting through the trees. When he got to the clearing where they’d met before, Ben went down to the water. New York City seemed like a dream, and this, the dark river and the burlap bag in his hands that he lifted into the water, was all so real. He opened the bag. At first nothing happened, then the eel swam out in a dark flash. It was a large eel, much larger than most, and there was another like it waiting in the shallows. Ben Levy watched them and then he walked on, back to Ruth Carson’s.

  Ruth got him a pair of boots from the used clothing box at the church. Ben waited for seven days thinking Susan might return to him. He had Calen Jacob and the other boys in town search for her in all the secret hiding places they knew around the river, but they found nothing. He asked the pastor to send out a search party; he even had the sheriff called in from the next township, but in the end everyone agreed. The fisherman’s wife must have left the old man, hardly a surprise to anyone in Blackwell. She’d been young and beautiful. A man like Horace Kelly would never have been able to hold on to her for long.

  When Ben left Blackwell, he didn’t bother to collect stories in any of the towns along the road to Amherst. He got on the train, buying his ticket with a donation Ruth Carson insisted he take. He was more than a week behind schedule, but no one at the WPA faulted him for that. People got lost out in the countryside. That’s what maps were for. On New Year’s Day Ben went to the Plaza. He told his colleagues about the banker’s family who lived in the church, and the lynx with one eye, and the tavern where the owner had shot himself after a fire. He left out the story of the fisherman’s wife, however. That one he kept for himself, and he wasn’t surprised when he lost the bet, or when he proceeded to buy a round not just for the winner, whose story concerned a beekeeper who’d been stung a thousand times, but a drink for one and all.

  KISS AND TELL

  1945

  HANNAH PARTRIDGE WAS FAMOUS FOR HER garden. That year, she had planted more than eighty tomato seedlings. She’d worked all through June, crouched down on her hands and knees in the dirt. Her tawny blond hair had turned red from the gritty soil. In the evenings, when she showered, the tub needed to be scrubbed every time. Now it was August and the fruit was ripening. In all the belladonna family, only tomatoes weren’t poisonous, though the leaves could be lethal if boiled into a tea. Tomatoes hadn’t even been considered fit to eat in Massachusetts until the mid-1800s. Now there were hundreds of varieties for cultivation. On summer evenings when Hannah’s neighbors walked by, they could smell the bitter green scent of the vines. They peered into the huge yard, where the twilight gleamed green and shadows stretched far into the woods. If they stood still enough in the first humid waves of nightfall, it was almost possible to hear the plants growing.

  The large farms around town had closed down, the fields were bare, the barns empty. Food was at a premium when not homegrown, costly and hardly first-rate. Even in a small town such as Blackwell, beef and butter were rationed. There was a war to fight, and many of the young men who would have been working the local farms had been sent overseas. Thirty women in town had husbands in the armed services. Another twenty were the mothers of sons who had enlisted. Few people bothered to cook sit-down dinners these days, especially those who were missing a husband or son. The coffee shop had a new Victory menu, with simpler, more inexpensive fare. That was the extent of nightlife in town. People went to bed earlier than they used to, frightened by the darkness of the world beyond Blackwell.

  Hannah was thirty-five that year. She was young and attractive, yet she felt her life had not yet begun. Why then did it seem as if it were already over? Hannah’s sister Azurine, who had studied to be a nurse, had gone off to France to work in the ambulance corps. Azurine was in the battle zone, facing the terrors of the world, driving over muddy fields, performing surgery she hadn’t been trained for should a doctor be unavailable, falling madly in love with one doomed man after another, spending torrid nights in their beds, and mourning each one before he had walked out the door. There may not be another chance to live, she wrote to her sister. If not now, when?

  Hannah sat in the parlor in the evenings to read Azurine’s letters. The windows of the house were open and a fan was set up, yet it was beastly hot. Hannah wore a slip and nothing else. She kept her long, graceful feet in a pan of water in an attempt to stay cool.

  The only way to fight evil is with joy, Azurine had written. Forget everything we’ve ever been taught.

  Hannah’s skin was blotchy with heat, her pale hair was pinned up. Her knees were still dusted with red earth from her day’s work in the garden. Hannah considered herself to be plain, especially when compared with her sister, but her face in repose was incandescent. Had any man in town seen her at that moment, had he walked past and happened to have spied her, he would have realized she was beautiful. But no one saw her, and she couldn’t have cared less about the impression she made. The moths repeatedly hit against the windows, convinced they were headed in the right direction, heedless of the wire screens that stopped their flight. Hannah pitied them. Who but a fool would stay in one place and butt her head against the same window time and again? A fool who should have been in Paris, who never should have stayed home, but one who seemed tied to this garden and this house.

  Hannah retained a stony aloofness. She had always been known as the serious sister, absorbed in her chores, tending to be somewhat standoffish. Still, people were drawn to her. She had an uncanny ability to gauge who was in need, often appearing at someone’s back door with exactly what they yearned for most: a pot of split pea soup, a bottle of milk, a blanket for an ailing baby, a spray of red phlox from her garden. As the summer went on, she had less to give, with nothing more than tomatoes to offer her neighbors. There was a glut of them, so many they fell from the vines in the night. The patter of falling fruit sounded like hail, waking people who lived nearby from their sleep. A rumor began that if Hannah Partridge came to your door with her wicker basket, your wish would be granted. It started when ten-year-old Eric Hildegarde found a rabbit in the grass after Hannah stopped by. Eric had always wanted a pet rabbit and was overjoyed to find one beside the back door. His father built a hutch in the yard the next day, and maybe that was what Eric had wanted most of all but hadn’t known it: to spend the day with his father learning how to use a hammer and saw.

  Mae Jacob, whose husband, Steven, was serving in Belgium and had been out of contact for weeks, received a letter from him the afternoon Hannah delivered a bagful of crimson tomatoes that were perfect for sauce. The next day Mae told her neighbors she’d dreamed of her husband when she slipped his letter beneath her pillow. She didn’t dare to share the details of the dream, which were far too personal, but she credited the tomatoes from Hannah’s garden for her new hopeful outlook, as well as the letters that had begun to arrive on a regular basis.

  Hannah was unaware of the rumors about her garden until the evening she decided to hike over to the Jack Straw Bar and Grill. She had walked to the edge of town in search of a place where she could escape the heat, but even the countryside was stifling. With its darkened windows and its long wooden bar, the Jack Straw seemed promising. Hannah wore a summer dress and sandals. As soon as she was insid
e she perched on a wooden stool directly under the ceiling fan. She whirled around once on pure whim, then ordered a cold beer.

  “You didn’t bring me any tomatoes?” the bartender, Bob Kelly, joked. They’d gone to high school together and were vaguely related through marriage. Hannah had been Bob’s tutor for a season or two. He couldn’t write an essay to save his life. He was deaf in one ear, so he hadn’t been called up to service. “Now I won’t get my wish,” Bob said.

  “Meaning?” Hannah had decided to order a meatloaf sandwich even though she usually only had a salad for dinner. She was suddenly hungry. She had been working hard, forgetting meals, existing on iced tea, tomatoes, and Popsicles. Canning and putting up chutney and tomato sauce had taken up every other evening this week. The rims beneath her nails were scarlet. Her fingertips were scorched.

  “People get their heart’s desire when they eat the tomatoes from your garden,” Bob informed her. “Or so I’ve been told.”

  They both laughed. Hannah was a good egg when she let her hair down.

  “People are pathetic.” She shrugged. “They’ll believe anything. If it’s true, then where’s my heart’s desire? I’ve practically eaten a bushel of tomatoes just this week.”

  “Hard times make for simple minds,” Bob suggested. “What do you hear from Azurine?”

  Half the men in town had been in love with Azurine at one time or another, and Bob had been among them.

  “Out saving the world,” Hannah remarked. She missed her sister terribly.

  “I’ll bet she’ll come back speaking French,” Bob said wistfully.

  Hannah laughed. “Are you expecting my sister to come back?” Hannah had finished her sandwich and beer, so she stood up to go. It would still be broiling in her parlor when she got home. “Would you leave Paris to come back here?”

  THE TOWN HAD decided to go forward with the yearly Founder’s Festival, even though so many of Blackwell’s sons were posted overseas and would be absent. A stage had been built in Band’s Meadow. Every year the drama society mounted a play about the plight of a local ghost called the Apparition. This summer Jenny Linden, aged five, had been given the starring role. As Hannah walked home from the Jack Straw Bar she spied a crowd huddled around the child, who was sprawled out in the grass, crying. No one could get Jenny to stop wailing—not the drama teacher, Grace Campbell, nor the other children gathered in a circle. Even Jenny’s own mother couldn’t comfort the child. Hannah felt herself drawn across the lawn. She sat down beside poor Jenny and patted her hair. When she heard children cry, she was always undone. She had lost a sister when she was quite young, and in some ways she’d never gotten over her grief.

  “I was the Apparition when I was your age,” Hannah told the distraught little girl. Jenny looked at her, baleful, still tearing up. “I was nervous, too. But I remember how I felt when everyone applauded. I felt as though I was a star in the sky.”

  Jenny hiccoughed, but she’d become attentive. The Apparition only had two lines. It’s me, sister, and I’m leaving this earth, but I’ll never leave you. Under Hannah’s tutelage Jenny practiced her part even though tears still shone on her face. She quickly improved with a little coaching. Hannah clapped her hands appreciatively.

  “I can always tell who’ll make a good Apparition. You’ll be perfect,” Hannah encouraged Jenny, who had forgotten all about crying and had instead begun to think of stars up above and how brightly one might burn on the wooden stage if it should ever fall from the sky.

  By the time the adults thought to thank Hannah Partridge, she was gone, walking through the meadow, burning not with light but with despair. She would never get her heart’s desire. More than anything, she wanted a child. Find a husband, someone might have told her, get married, have a baby or two—all easily accomplished even in a small town such as Blackwell. But Hannah was not interested in men. She never had been. She refused to speculate on what this might mean, or admit to the crushes she’d been aware of. She only knew that if she didn’t wish to be someone’s wife, she couldn’t have what she yearned for most in this world.

  THE FOUNDER’S DAY celebration was not as elaborate as it had been in past years. In order to conserve electricity, the fairy lights weren’t strung through the trees. No new costumes were sewn, and instead, the old ones were patched and seamed. The wooden bleachers were hammered into place even though they were rickety and should have been replaced. Still, there would be great fun at last. Carnival rides were set up on the green, and food stands sold homemade cookies and cakes. Ice cream could be had in paper cups or piled into cones made of waffle batter. Although there was no circus this year, no musicians, not even the chorus from Lenox, a troupe of actors had been hired to come from New York and present a series of skits.

  The actors were staying at the Lamplighter Motel. Within two hours of their arrival, they had grown bored with Blackwell. The town council was paying a small fee and expenses. When split among four people, it was barely worth the effort, but the two couples had decided to think of the job as a vacation. They would do their best to take advantage of what little Blackwell had to offer. They swam in the Eel River, which they found shockingly muddy and cold. They hiked up Hightop Mountain, where the women, Charlotte and Abbey, panicked when surveying the wilderness, vowing they’d spied a bear. They ate peach pie at the coffee shop and peered through the dusty windows of the history museum, which had been closed since the war had begun. The foursome wound up at the Jack Straw, where the men played darts with the locals and the women asked for whisky sours, not that there were any maraschino cherries to be had in all of Blackwell. Hannah was at the bar when the request came in. She grinned at Bob Kelly, then took two cherry tomatoes from the basket she’d brought him, placing one in each glass.

  “They’re city people,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the two actresses. “They’ll never know the difference.”

  After the drinks were delivered, one of the actresses came up to the bar. Her name was Charlotte Scott and she was tall and elegant, with long dark hair. She wore a black dress and high heels. She didn’t look like anyone in Blackwell.

  “Was that supposed to be a joke?” she said.

  Hannah turned, ready with a smart remark—something about it being a cherry tomato, and wasn’t that what she’d wanted? But when she faced Charlotte she said nothing at all. Her face flushed and she felt a fool.

  “Cat got your tongue?” Charlotte had her hands on her hips. Her eyes were piercing.

  “I have no idea what you mean,” Hannah said.

  “I mean come sit with us, we’re bored to death.”

  Hannah might have stayed at the bar, finished her beer, and left, but Charlotte took her by the hand. “Someone has to entertain the entertainers.”

  The actresses had a second round of whisky sours, and Hannah ordered another beer. She was talked into recounting the history of Blackwell, since the museum had been closed to visitors. She told all of the stories she could remember. How the founders had been stopped by a snowstorm on their journey west, how Johnny Appleseed himself had planted the oldest tree in town, how Emily Dickinson had visited before shutting herself away from the world. Hannah was more entertaining than she’d ever imagined she might be, perhaps because of the beers. She ended the history lesson by enacting the meeting between the Apparition and her older sister on the banks of the Eel River from the second act of the Founder’s Day play.

  “ ‘I’m leaving this earth, but I’ll never leave you,’ ” Hannah quoted and was met by applause. She felt somewhat flushed by the turn her solitary evening had taken and the praise for her sudden starring role. The men came over and introduced themselves, James Scott and Stanley Franklin. James was Charlotte’s husband and Stanley and Abbey were engaged.

  “Real name, Fishman,” Charlotte whispered gleefully about her spouse. “Men.” She sighed. “All is vanity.”

  At the end of the evening, Charlotte decided they should trek over to see Hannah’s house, since it ha
d been the founder’s home, and they had come all this way for Founder’s Day. It made sense for them to steep themselves in local lore, adding bits and pieces of Blackwell’s history to their skits. The group walked along in the green-tinged summer dark, drunk and cheerful, out for a lark. It was good to forget the war and all the losses in life for a little while and just let loose. In the space of an evening, Hannah and Charlotte and Abbey had become great friends.

  “I’ll bet you’re dying to get out of this town,” Charlotte said. She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Considering.”

  “Not at all,” Hannah answered, confused. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”

  “Oh, come on.” Charlotte gave her a look. “This isn’t for you.”

  They’d reached the front door, which Hannah proudly informed them was the original, the first door on the first house in Blackwell. When she led them on a tour, they were particularly impressed with the rifle over the mantel that had belonged to the founder.

  “You know what they say,” James Scott announced regally. He was handsome and lanky with a wonderful, deep voice that sounded vaguely British. “If you see a gun in act one, it had better go off in act two.”

  The gun hadn’t worked for years, Hannah informed him. Someone had broken the triggering mechanism ages ago. “Act two had better be something completely different,” she said, and again everyone laughed, charmed by her matter-of-fact humor.

  They went out the back door, up to the gardens, past the gate into what had always been called the red garden, now planted with more tomatoes than the four New Yorkers would ever have imagined could be found in one town, let alone on a single plot of land. The scent of the vines was overwhelming, a mixture of sugar and sulfur.