The Sinners' Garden

by William Sirls

  “I was just watching a game over on one of the other fields.”

  “Didn’t know you were a baseball fan,” Rip said.

  “It’s a nice break for me,” Hart said. “Reminds me of being young.”

  Hart glanced at Andy and then Rip.

  “I’m glad I caught you both here,” Hart said. “I just want to make sure we are all on the same page.”

  “What page is that?” Rip asked.

  “The only page,” Hart said and his fake smile disappeared. “If you and Andy ever try to railroad me in front of a group of people again—”

  “We’ve already been over this, Kev.”

  “Somebody is going to get burned.”

  Rip looked back at Andy and he was holding his hand up to make sure his scar was covered. And then Andy gave him a look that said, Please do something.

  Rip put the kickstand down on the motorcycle and felt his hands balling into fists as he took a step toward the car.

  Pastor Welsh’s car was pulling up next to Hart’s, and when it did, Hart rolled down the passenger-side window and gave the minister a friendly wave as if he were just there to make a donation to the park fund.

  Hart looked back to Rip and whispered, “Be smart, pothead. Jobs aren’t growing on trees.”

  Rip didn’t say anything as Hart backed his car away and Welsh parked. He turned to Andy and saw the look of disappointment on his face.

  “What?” Rip said.

  Andy just shook his head and said, “Thanks for having my back. But I was kind of hoping you’d drag him out through the window.”

  “I restrained,” Rip said. “I figured you’d be proud of me.” Rip kept looking at Andy and knew there was something else going on between his nephew and Hart. “What is it that you aren’t telling me?”

  “Nothing,” Andy said distantly.

  “C’mon,” Rip said. “Let’s go.”

  They greeted Welsh and followed him to a picnic table that was tucked back in the trees and sat on the opposite side from the minister.

  “Guess who Andy was chilling with when I got here?” Rip said.

  Welsh shrugged. “No clue.”

  Rip nudged Andy. “Tell him, Romeo.”

  Andy rolled his eyes and talked with a mouthful of vanilla ice cream. “When you gonna marry Heather?”

  “Maybe we could make it a double wedding?” Rip said. He laughed and gave Andy another nudge.

  Andy pulled his hair forward over the sides of his face and exhaled loudly. Rip knew he was thinking about what Hart had just said.

  “What was Kevin doing here?” Welsh asked.

  “Taking in a little baseball, apparently,” Rip said.

  “Speaking of Kevin,” Welsh said, nodding to Andy. “I saw you talking with him out near the lake not too long ago.”

  Andy looked away and Rip said, “What? Where? You guys talked?”

  “It was no biggie,” Andy whispered. “It was near the new fountain.”

  Rip could tell by Andy’s voice that it was a biggie, but Welsh gave Rip a nod to back off.

  “The fountain,” Welsh said. “That’s been a favorite spot of yours for some time now.”

  “Yeah,” Andy said. “I remember when Uncle Rip used to put baseball cards near the spokes on my regular bike to make it sound like a motorcycle. I was thinking about that right when Mr. Hart showed up that day.”

  Rip wondered what collectors would have paid for the hundreds of baseball cards the spokes on Andy’s bicycle had torn through. He pointed at the motorcycle and said, “We don’t need them old cards anymore, do we?”

  “You didn’t need them with the minibike either,” Welsh said.

  Andy plopped his elbows on the top of the table and he lowered his chin to his fists. His eyes kept shifting back and forth. He’d look at the ground, then Rip, and then back to the ground. He was anxious about something, and Rip was pretty sure he knew what it was.

  “What did you and Mr. Hart talk about near the fountain, Andy? It’s okay, you can tell me.”

  Andy’s shoulders sagged and then he slowly looked away. “He said something about my face.”

  “That handsome face?” Rip said, now wishing he had dragged Hart out through the driver’s-side window of his Mercedes. It would have been even more satisfying putting him back in the car through the windshield.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Andy said. “The way I wear my hair, people can’t see it anyhow.”

  Now Rip wanted to get in the Pacer and drive to Hart’s house and beat him up in front of his wife. Hart had obviously made another burn comment to Andy.

  “Why would you care what Mr. Hart says about your face?” Rip asked.

  “That’s a dumb question,” Andy said.

  “No, it’s not,” Pastor Welsh said, clearly understanding where Rip was going. “You don’t have to wear your hair long, Andy. Unless you’re trying to hide something.”

  Andy shook his head and pointed at the minister. “I don’t think there are any women in town that wear their hair as long as you do.”

  Welsh laughed.

  Rip really didn’t care if Andy wore his hair long and over the scar for the rest of his life, but the fact that Andy thought he had to wear it that way wasn’t working for Rip. Particularly to avoid comments from scumbags like Hart.

  “Do you feel like you have to hide your face because of what Mr. Hart said?” Rip asked.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Andy said, quickly turning his head and pulling his hair back to expose the scar. He spoke quickly and anger filled his voice. “Wouldn’t you?”

  “Take it easy,” Rip said, seeing the tears form in Andy’s eyes. “Let’s just—”

  “If your mom burned you with boiling water and you didn’t want everyone reminding you of it with their comments? Wouldn’t you hide your face?”

  If your mom burned you?

  Rip couldn’t believe what he had just heard. He wasn’t even sure Andy knew he said it, he was talking so fast. Rip and Welsh shared a glance, and he knew the minister caught what Andy had said as well. Rip waited for Welsh to say something, but neither of them said a word, each waiting for the other.

  Rip had a coughing fit and raised his hands over his head to stretch out his lower back. It hurt like a bear, so he lowered his left arm to press firmly at that aching rib cage with his fingertips. When the cough entered the equation, he’d made an appointment to see Doc Strater instead of that chiropractor he’d considered.

  “Andy, we need to talk more about how you got burned and what that means for you now.” Rip shrugged. “Or doesn’t. But first, we gotta talk to your mom.”

  “Mom? Why?” The boy was backpedaling, looking like he regretted saying anything.

  “Because she’s the only one who can straighten this out.”

  “So you are gonna spend a little time tomorrow with Heather?” Judi asked. “Praying?”

  “Right after I get off work, I’m gonna take her out to the flower garden,” Rip said, passing a bowl of mashed potatoes to Pastor Welsh, who had joined them for dinner. “There is some good mojo out there. You want to join us, Andy?”

  “Sure,” Andy said. It was the most they’d heard from him since they returned from the park.

  “You need to get me out there one of these days,” Welsh said. “Feel like I’m missing out on something special, but I don’t know if this old body is up for too long of a walk or a motorcycle ride.”

  “Anytime you want,” Rip said. “Just say when and we’ll figure something out. We could take one of the cars out there, but it’d be pretty bumpy.”

  Judi took a sip of her water. “Heather said she was going to ask her mom to go to the cemetery tomorrow before you guys go out to The Frank and Poet.”

  “Good luck with that,” Rip said. “You think she’ll go out of the house twice in the same month?”

  “Be nice,” Judi said. “Mrs. Gerisch has problems.”

  “Sorry,” Rip said.

  As refreshing as it was
to hear Judi talk about problems other than her own, saying that Mrs. Gerisch had problems was the understatement of the century. Rip still couldn’t believe that Heather had gotten her to come out of the house for the Fourth of July festival.

  “I’m done eating,” Andy said, scooting back from the table. He hadn’t touched half his plate. He set it on the floor and it took Milo less than twenty seconds to make Andy a member of the clean plate club.

  “Okay,” Judi said.

  Andy made a beeline for the upstairs, and Rip was relieved that Andy had left.

  “We need to keep it down,” Rip said.

  “For what?” Judi said.

  Rip lifted his hand and cocked his head, finally hearing Andy’s bedroom door close.

  “Pastor Welsh and I were talking about Andy’s burn earlier,” Rip said.

  Judi frowned and her eyes darted between the two men.

  “What about it?” she asked.

  “May I?” Pastor Welsh asked.

  “Go for it,” Rip said.

  Welsh laced his fingers together and practically whispered. “Judi . . . I’ve known you guys your whole lives, and we’ve all been through some interesting times over the years.”

  “I agree,” Judi said.

  “And I respect your decision to not tell Andy what happened to him when he was younger, but—”

  “Why does it matter what happened? We can’t change anything about it.”

  “He said today that he knows how he got the scar,” Rip said.

  “I’ve heard him say the same thing,” Judi said. “But it’s impossible. Nobody knows what happened except me, Todd, Rip, Heather, and you, Pastor Welsh. The hospital didn’t even know what really happened.”

  “But,” Pastor Welsh said, “maybe it’s time Andy needs to hear the whole story, and hear it from you.”

  “Why?” Judi said. Rip could see the dread in her eyes.

  Pastor Welsh put his hand on top of Judi’s and whispered, “It’s not what happened, it’s who Andy thinks did it to him.”

  “What?”

  “He thinks you burned him, Judi, not Todd,” Welsh said. “And we think you should set the record straight.”

  Heather wasn’t surprised her mother didn’t want to go to the cemetery, but she still needed to know why.

  “Because,” Mom answered, calm but firm. She threw her elbows up on the patio table and then took a sip of her tea. “Unlike you, I don’t want to be dredging up all those funeral memories. I want to remember your daddy the way he was when he was alive.”

  Heather leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. It was good to see Mom out in the sunshine, even though it was just on the back patio. Still, there was no good reason she couldn’t go to the cemetery with her tomorrow.

  “When was the last time you went to see him?”

  “He’s not there, Heather,” Mom said. “And exactly how does visiting his grave make you feel better about things? Tell me that.”

  “I’m not sure,” Heather said. She was having second thoughts about her idea. “Maybe it would make us both feel better if we went. We never talk about our loss, Mom. Maybe we need to.”

  “And maybe we don’t,” Mom said, closing her eyes. “If visiting that grave is going to somehow convince you that your father is in heaven, go do it. But it’s not what I need.”

  “It’s not going to convince me of anything, Mom,” Heather said. “I just thought it would be nice for us to share some time out there with him.”

  “I want to share time with you, Heather,” she said. “But not in a field full of dead people.”

  Dead people, Heather thought. She closed her eyes and tried to get the image out of her mind. A corpse lay in the ground, long rotting away. What she needed, wanted to know was that her father was more alive than ever.

  In heaven.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  That joint is way too nice to be a cemetery,” Rip said, passing the screwdriver back to Andy as they worked on the old bike in Judi’s barn. Heather had just showed up and he was hoping the bike would start again so the three of them could take both motorcycles out to the wildflowers. Rip was sure that taking Heather out to visit it again would help her deal with her dad-issues. Maybe once and for all.

  “I agree,” Heather said. “It’s way too nice to be a cemetery.”

  It was common knowledge that if you lived in southeast Michigan, and had more than two nickels to rub together when you punched your ticket, Southeast Memorial Cemetery was the place you wanted to go for the big lay down.

  “I always forget how big it is,” Heather added. “It would have made a great park, instead of some gigantic landing zone for a bunch of dead people.”

  “It would have made an awesome park,” Rip said. “I wonder if they still give people those little maps.”

  “They gave me one,” Heather said, reaching into her shorts pocket and pulling out a folded piece of paper. “Without it, I would have been lost.”

  “Those swans still out there?” Andy asked.

  “Not sure,” Heather answered. “I think they hang out on the other side of the lake.”

  Rip didn’t like thinking about the swans. The couple hundred of them that normally hung out in the man-made lake were pretty close to the plots his parents were buried in. Though they’d been dead a long, long time, thinking about them made him feel melancholy.

  “How did it go?” Rip asked, putting a fresh spark plug in the bike.

  Heather shrugged. “I took some flowers with me and straightened up the grave a little. Nothing like flowers to cheer things up, so I guess it went all right.”

  “Good,” Rip said, standing and crossing his fingers before putting his foot on the kick-starter.

  “C’mon, baby,” he said to the bike, pressing his foot down quickly. It started right up and he smiled.

  “Master Mechanic magazine,” Andy said.

  “You still gonna go with us?” Rip asked Andy as he turned the bike off. “Your mom should be back from that summer inventory-taking thing up at the school in a little while, but I’m guessing we got about an hour.”

  “Okay,” Andy said, walking across the barn to hop on his own bike.

  Rip grabbed an old helmet and handed it to Heather. He sat on the bike and patted the seat behind him and she got on.

  “I’ll follow you, Rico Suave,” Andy said.

  They pulled out of the barn and the sun was high in the sky, another scorcher. It was supposed to be over ninety all week, and as an added bonus, the air conditioner in the Pacer had petered out on him earlier in the day. The thought of riding the motorcycle to work crossed his mind, but it wasn’t exactly road-ready.

  “Burning up under that helmet, bro?” Rip asked.

  “I’m okay,” Andy said.

  “Let’s take it slow,” Rip said, turning the throttle. He looked over his shoulder at Heather and she looked cute as ever with the old helmet on. She wrapped her arms around his waist and Rip squinted. “You getting fresh with me, Officer Gerisch?”

  “Shut up, Rico Suave,” she said, getting a little laugh out of Andy. She rested her chin on Rip’s shoulder and they pulled around the back of the house.

  They were riding side by side, about halfway through the woods, approaching the cornfields and not going any more than fifteen miles an hour. Rip was rehearsing what he was going to say, or how he was going to pray with Heather without coming across as “preachy.” The truth of the matter was that he didn’t have the faintest idea how he was going to ease her mind about her father’s spiritual whereabouts.

  Lord, please help me make a difference. Please give me the words to comfort her. The words to give her strength and—

  “Is this as fast as this heap goes?” Heather asked.

  Rip tilted his head toward her. “You serious?”

  “I feel like I’m on a kiddie ride,” she said. “Let’s move it.”

  “Yeah!” Andy yelled with a little burst of speed before slowing down around fifty
feet in front of them. He looked back. “Let’s move it!”

  Rip knew the bike still needed a lot of work, but he figured he could give Heather what she was after. He pulled back on the throttle a little and pulled up to Andy and gave him a little wink.

  “Sorry your bike doesn’t go any faster than forty, bro!” he yelled, hoping Andy wouldn’t try to keep up and get the women all riled up again about his bike being too fast. He pointed up the path that separated the cornfields. “We’ll wait for you up near the canal!”

  Andy gave him a thumbs-up and Rip patted Heather on her leg.

  “Hang on,” he said. He liked the way she tightened her grip around his waist. When he gunned it, the front tire came about a foot off the ground and they took off.

  By the time he spotted the wildflowers, they had hit close to eighty miles an hour and he started to slow down. They passed the last row of corn and Rip pulled off the trail into the grass that ran all the way down to the canal’s bank.

  Heather lifted her head off his back and let go of his waist. “Are you crazy?”

  “What?”

  “Driving that fast without a helmet on this heap? I wanted to go faster, not die.”

  “Don’t ever call this sweet ride a heap,” Rip said and laughed. He glanced back down the path into the corn. Andy was a good hundred yards back, doing a brilliant job of acting like his bike was still hobbled.

  Rip and Heather got off the bike and Rip cringed, feeling like his left rib cage had been run over by a truck. What is going on? Suddenly, his visit to Doc Strater couldn’t come fast enough.

  Heather didn’t say anything. She walked in front of him, down to the bank, and just stared at the other side of the canal. Rip joined her. The flowers seemed even more incredible today, amplifying that perfect sense of peace that drew him. And despite Andy’s repeated warnings, more and more he wanted to be over there and in the flower garden. I wonder if Heather would drive us in again . . .

  Andy pulled up behind them. Rip looked back and saw his nephew hold his arms up as if to say, What do you want me to do?