The Sinners' Garden

by William Sirls

  “I said I’d be here at seven,” Rip said, glancing at his watch. He frowned. It was seven thirty. “Sorry. Hart had me working the one-man food drive program.”

  Judi took the pizza out of his hands, and he and Andy followed her to the side of the house. Milo smelled the pizza and joined them from the garage, suddenly Judi’s best friend.

  “When are you going to get Milo a collar that fits?” Rip asked. “It looks like he’s wearing a red hula hoop.”

  “He has one that fits,” Judi said. “But whenever I put it on him, all he does is lie in the corner, paw at his neck, and cry.”

  “He’s a serial dater,” Rip said. “Just get him fixed and then you don’t have to worry about him running off overnight to romance, or for that matter, even wearing a collar at all.”

  “Yeah, right,” Judi said. “Then he’ll run off without his collar and tag, chasing a car instead of a lady dog, and we’ll never get him back.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Rip said with a sarcastic little laugh. “The people in town will mix him up with all the other three-legged beagles running around. My bad.”

  “We’ve got something bigger to discuss,” Judi said. “The bike.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Rip said as they approached the picnic table. Heather stood and Rip pointed at the glass of wine she was holding. “Better watch it there, Officer Gerisch. Drinking and driving is frowned upon by the local authorities.”

  “So is a fourteen-year-old going seventy miles per hour on a motorcycle.”

  And so is a police officer dating a convicted felon.

  Despite the couple years they’d dated in their early twenties, he’d never found a way to completely kill that puppy-love crush he’d had on her since he was about eight.

  “Let’s talk about the bike later,” Rip said. “Plus, if Andy ever gets a speeding ticket, I know a cop who can get him out of it.”

  “It’s too fast,” Heather said. She looked at Judi as if to gain support and a little smile touched her lips. “It’s faster than your Pacer, Rip.”

  “Don’t hate on the Pacer,” Rip said. “It’s over thirty years old, and I only paid four hundred bucks for it. It’s a classic.”

  “It’s a real chick magnet too,” Heather said, drawing a laugh from Judi. “Hey, remember those little rings that you could get in vending machines for a quarter?”

  Rip nodded.

  Heather snorted and was laughing so hard she could barely get the words out. “Your car looks like one of those plastic bubbles that the rings came in.”

  “That’s pretty harsh,” Rip said, studying the Pacer as Heather and Judi continued to laugh. It probably was the ugliest car in Michigan. But at the same time, it ran like a top and would last him at least another year.

  “I’m just teasing you,” Heather said.

  “Who needs a fancy car when you have these babe magnets?” Rip said, smiling and then kissing each bicep. “Best guns in Benning.”

  “Oh, please,” Heather said. “Let’s get back to what’s important. The bike. I’d cut the speed in half.”

  Rip shook his head and held his arms up in surrender. “Why don’t we just put some training wheels on it?”

  Judi pointed at the garage. “You heard Heather. Cut the speed in half.”

  “Not cool, Mom,” Andy said.

  “Not now, Andrew,” Judi replied.

  “What are you gonna do? Ground me?”

  Judi crossed her arms and Rip could see the helplessness in her eyes. Still, she tried to take charge of the situation. “Fix the bike right now, Rip. Before we eat. I mean it.”

  Rip looked at Andy. His nephew meant the world to him and even more to Judi. Plus, he’d never forgive himself if Andy got hurt, so the bike needed an adjustment.

  “To the garage,” Rip said, taking the bike by the handlebars. “Off to chill out the motorcycle and hopefully your mom as well.”

  “This isn’t fair,” Andy mumbled, Milo at his side. About halfway to the garage, a semitruck hauling gravel came around the trees and sped past the house. Super-beagle Milo took off to show it who was boss, barking and chasing its dust until they couldn’t see or hear him anymore.

  Anytime Rip and Andy had ever worked on the minibike or fiddled with anything else in the garage, it was the ideal time to talk about life, things he learned in prison, and also about what Andy referred to as “boring God stuff.”

  “You reading that Bible I got you?” Rip asked.

  “I can’t get into it,” Andy said.

  “Why?”

  “Too many family trees and too much unbelievable stuff. It’s super boring.”

  “You didn’t start with the book of John like I told you, did you?”

  “No,” Andy said. “Why not start on page one like every other book?”

  “Tell me the five rules then,” Rip said. “Take your helmet off first, though.”

  Andy did and quickly swooped his long hair forward. “You serious? The preaching stuff is getting a little old, Uncle Rip.”

  “Excuse me?” Rip said. “How about showing some self-control and trying to think before you run your pie hole and offend somebody?”

  “More preaching?”

  “Do it for Uncle Rip.”

  Andy looked at the garage floor and shook his head.

  “C’mon, man,” Rip said.

  “Love God with all your heart and soul,” Andy spit out quickly, as if the words were choking him.

  Rip held his thumb up and waited the kid out.

  “Two,” Andy said quietly, “is love your neighbor.”

  Rip smiled. “Lay number three on me.”

  Andy tilted his head. “Rule number three . . . Help God make His house bigger.”

  “You got it!” Rip yelled. “Number four?”

  Andy crossed his arms. “Don’t mess with people who handle your food.”

  “Finish it with number five, bro!”

  Andy lifted an arm and held up three fingers. “Number five. Only the first three rules count.”

  “My man,” Rip said, holding out his arms for a hug.

  “My man,” Andy echoed quietly, avoiding the hug and accidentally dropping his iPod. As he leaned forward to pick it up, Judi appeared behind him at the garage door.

  “You’re not working on it yet?” she asked.

  Andy turned around. Rip could tell that Andy’s resentment for his mother was approaching a boil, and the possibility of an argument had just been upgraded to DEFCON 2.

  “We just got in here,” Andy said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Andrew!” Judi shouted, her face reddening.

  “Judi,” Rip said sharply. “We did just get in here.”

  Judi crossed her arms and took a step back, exhaling loudly through her nose.

  Andy crossed his arms to mock his mother. He exhaled loudly and took a step back. Rip heard the crunch and knew what it was.

  Andy’s head lurched down to the garage floor, and then he slowly kneeled down and picked up the iPod. Cracks ran across its tiny screen.

  “Way to go, Mom,” Andy bit out.

  “What did I do?” Judi said.

  “You couldn’t leave us alone! I was about to pick it up and you came in here flippin’ out!”

  “Hey,” Rip said. “It’s not her fault.”

  “Is it broken?” Judi asked. “Let me see it.”

  Andy held it up and gave her a look of disgust.

  “Oh, Andy. I’m sorry,” Judi said, resuming her usual doubtful look again.

  “No worries,” Rip said. “If it doesn’t work, we can fix it or get a new one.”

  Andy held it up and studied it like he’d never seen it before. He raised one of the earbuds to his ear. “Who . . . who is that singing?”

  “Singing what?” Rip asked.

  Andy just kept squinting at the iPod.

  “Hey,” Rip said. “No worries, bro. I said we can fix it.”

  Andy frowned.

  “Give me that,”
Rip said. Andy handed him the iPod. Rip pressed the power button off and on and could see the screen light up behind the cracks. He couldn’t hear anyone singing, but whatever kind of music Andy heard, he was going to have to get used to it, because there was no way he would be able to change anything with the busted touch screen.

  “I could hear somebody singing something, Uncle Rip.”

  Rip handed it back to Andy and shrugged. “Isn’t that what you normally hear in an iPod?”

  Andy gave him another puzzled look. “But I didn’t download that song.”

  “Don’t know what to tell you.”

  “The song sounded weird,” Andy said.

  “All the music you listen to is weird,” Rip said. “Looks like you are gonna have to get used to it until we get it fixed.”

  “Do you really think I can get a new one?”

  Rip wasn’t surprised that Andy was looking at him instead of Judi. “Let’s see if we can fix this one before we go spending any money.”

  “Just make sure you fix that bike first,” Judi said, leaving the garage.

  Andy held one of the earbuds to his ear and made another strange face.

  “Let’s get to work,” Rip said, grabbing the throttle on the bike.

  “How slow you gonna make it?” Andy asked.

  “Heather said it would probably be best to knock the speed in half.”

  Andy didn’t say anything. He just looked at the ground.

  “So if they clocked you going seventy-three near the park,” Rip said, “I’m sure you were driving safe and didn’t have it gunned all the way out, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Andy said.

  Rip winked at him, and Andy smiled appreciatively.

  “So what do you think the top speed is?” Rip asked. “About a hundred?”

  Andy’s smile widened. “Something like that.”

  Rip took a screwdriver and adjusted the governor on the bike’s throttle and then looked at his nephew. “I’m thinking the top speed on this is now about fifty or sixty, but I have a feeling the fastest it will ever go outside of Ripley’s Field is only about thirty. What do you think?”

  “I promise,” Andy said. “Thanks, Uncle Rip.”

  Rip held out his fist and they pounded knuckles. There was nothing better than seeing his nephew smile. And Rip knew he’d do about anything to see it again.

  Even though it was only a few minutes past nine o’clock, Andy was exhausted and back up in his bedroom. He closed the Bible and placed it on the nightstand. He felt like he owed it to Uncle Rip to give the Bible another whirl. He’d been reading for a couple hours, skipping around different parts of the Old Testament, but the more he read, the more unbelievable it became.

  Noah floated around in a wooden boat with two of every animal on it.

  Abraham had a kid when he was crazy-old.

  Moses parted the Red Sea and then he and his followers walked right through it.

  “Phonies,” he said to the bedroom ceiling, quoting his new friend, Holden Caulfield, from The Catcher in the Rye.

  Those Bible guys and their stories were nothing but a bunch of garbage. Good things don’t always happen to good people. In fact, in the world Andy knew, the good guy never won.

  Never.

  Andy had prayed to God about the scar on his face for as long as he could remember, and either those prayers had fallen on deaf ears, or God didn’t care. So as far as he was concerned, the whole God-thing was a waste of time because bad things happened for no reason at all, and God didn’t seem too interested in doing much of anything about it. Andy loved Uncle Rip and would repeat his rules if it made him happy. But it didn’t mean he had to believe them himself.

  Andy sat up in bed and glanced around the empty walls of his bedroom. There was just beige paint. No posters of rock stars, teen beauties, rappers, or other pretty people. He didn’t bother with them either, because just like the Bible, those people also lived in a world he didn’t know.

  He rolled off the bed and woke up Milo, who was curled up on his yellow blanket. Andy went over to the dresser, pulled a couple pretzels out of a bag, flipped one to Milo, then opened the top drawer and took out the mirror. He pulled his long hair back off the side of his neck and studied the scar. And then he put the mirror back and took a long look back at the Bible on the nightstand.

  “Why don’t You talk to me like You talked to Abraham or Moses?” he whispered. “Am I not worth it?”

  He closed the drawer and then went and lay back on the bed. He turned the lamp off and stared at the dark ceiling, looking forward to riding the motorcycle tomorrow.

  Andy leaned over and patted Milo on his head. “Good night, boy.”

  He put his head back on the pillow, closed his eyes, and yawned. When he opened his eyes back up, he could see a little yellow flash beaming against a shadow on the ceiling. And then he could hear a song. The broken iPod was on top of his dresser. He and Uncle Rip had fiddled with it, unable to get the touch screen to change, and now it looked like the stupid power button was malfunctioning and the flippin’ thing was turning off and on by itself.

  Just my luck. I’ll be up all night.

  He stood again and stomped over to the dresser. He lifted one of the earbuds to his ear and the music immediately stopped. He powered it off and then went and lay down again. And then he closed his eyes and thought about Noah and how long he lived.

  “Yeah, right,” he mumbled in the dark. “Nine hundred and fifty years.”

  SEVEN

  Rip liked Saturdays, but wasn’t planning on spending most of the day alone. He didn’t make it over to Judi’s until about noon, and she and Heather had already taken off to the flea market over in Romulus to check out some antique sale. He knew there was no way Andy would have gone with them, so Rip figured the kid had to be out and about around town, getting his miles in on his new dirt bike.

  Rip had decided since he was already at Judi’s place that he’d make the most of his alone time, so he grabbed a box of Cheez-Its out of Judi’s pantry and bribed Milo to come with him out to The Frank and Poet for another look at the flower garden. By the time they had walked out there, Milo had hit him up for half the box.

  “Who in the world would plant that over there?” Rip said out loud as he sat on the bank and looked at the flowers. He’d been asking himself that question for the better part of two hours, and his best guess was that it was the work of some beautification committee, or some sort of whacked bio-art installation. But that made no sense because the only people who would ever see it would be those who happened to be on Judi’s property or passengers on low-flying airplanes.

  Regardless of the logic, Rip couldn’t deny that he felt good just looking at it. Its dimensions were flawless and the gardener’s work had left him feeling as if there was a presence or force in there waiting for him, wanting him. Even Andy had said something was in there. But then there was something else. Rip wasn’t sure how he knew, but he was oddly certain that whatever was in the garden, he hadn’t earned access to it yet. Kind of like when he was in prison for only a few months and tried applying for a furlough.

  “What’s over there?” he said.

  Milo was down in the canal, wading in a foot of water and daring a pair of mallards to come closer. He looked back at Rip like he wanted to know who Rip was talking to.

  “Let’s go, Milo,” Rip said, standing.

  Milo ignored him and growled at the ducks.

  “Treat,” Rip said and shook the box of Cheez-Its. Milo shot up the bank and was at Rip’s feet before he had the box open. “Tell me what’s over in those flowers, Milo.”

  Rip tossed a handful of crackers on the ground and Milo went to work on them, putting them away in a matter of seconds. Milo looked up at him and Rip shook his head at the dog, whose pink tongue hung out the side of his mouth like a thick slice of ham.

  “You are spoiled rotten, you know that?”

  Rip dropped another handful of crackers on the ground
and then looked back across The Frank and Poet at the flowers.

  He knew it’d be trespassing to wander onto the old McLouth Steel property. But the drive to know more about the garden—and what was inside it—was too powerful to ignore.

  Kevin Hart stood in the darkness at the end of the dock. He looked out at the lake, and in the distance he could see lights gliding slowly across the water from the handful of boats that were out for late-night rides. Beyond them, more lights bunched together—as if stars had fallen and congregated on the ground, outlining the Canadian shore on the far side of the lake.

  He sat at the edge of the dock and listened as little waves splashed against the shore, wondering if anyone knew what he’d been up to. He looked over his shoulder, back at his house. There weren’t any lights on, but he could still see its mammoth silhouette, which made him smile in satisfaction. His house, the best and biggest house in town.

  So big, even his dad would have been proud.

  The thought warmed him, but then a light came on up on the third level, making his blood run cool. It was their bedroom. Carrie was home. Through the windows, he watched her walk across the room and then down the hallway. He’d have to wait until she fell asleep before he went out, but she’d probably been drinking over at the club, so he knew it wouldn’t be long.

  He stood and walked toward the house and another light came on up on the same level. It was to the right of the bedroom. Carrie was in the library now. He stopped and studied the two lights. They reminded him of something. It was as if the house were a head and the lights were the eyes of a crazy person looking down on him, watching his every move.

  Gone was the pride. Here was the fury. The defiance.

  He started walking again, maintaining eye contact with the lights.

  And then he laughed.

  No one knows what I’ve been doing. Not even you.

  Heather watched as her mom, Sharon, thumbed the TV’s remote control. Wheel of Fortune was about to start and if her mother ever missed a single episode or rerun that ran at eleven every night, End Times surely weren’t far behind.