The Sinners' Garden

by William Sirls

  “I was just curious,” Brianna said. “It was a little jarring how the whole room seemed to go on pause right before he said it. He’s good friends with Ripley, right? I saw them sitting next to each other at Bible study.”

  The only people who had referred to Rip as Ripley over the last thirty years were the police during his drug bust, Rip’s teachers in school, and Kevin Hart. Heather found this odd, so she decided to lean on the reporter a bit.

  “Andy is Ripley’s nephew,” Heather said. “They are best friends.”

  “Oh,” Brianna said, clearly uncomfortable.

  Heather stared her down. “Is there something about Kevin Hart that makes you nervous?”

  “Not at all,” Brianna answered. “Why?”

  There was a little pause. Heather wasn’t buying her answer. In fact, she wasn’t even close to it.

  “Brianna, I have to tell you something,” she said, still staring right at her. She was trying Kevin’s little intimidation secret. “I can’t help but feel that you know more about the Summer Santa than you claim.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Just a hunch,” Heather said.

  “You know as much as I do,” Brianna said, looking quickly away.

  “As much as you do?” Heather asked. “I would certainly hope so. I am the police.”

  “I know that,” Brianna said, her eyes darting nervously back and forth.

  “You okay?” Heather asked. “Sure there’s nothing I need to know?”

  “No,” Brianna said. “I’ve just got a lot to do. I better get running. I promise you, Heather, Thursday’s article won’t be bad.”

  Heather had never been involved in any form of interrogation, but she did remember a few snippets of body language she had learned that let questioners know when someone was being untruthful, and Brianna was in prime form.

  “I may want you to stop by again soon,” Heather said. “If that’s cool with you. Don’t go too far.”

  “Oh. Okay,” Brianna said slowly.

  Heather stood and followed her to the door. She watched as the young reporter made her way toward that red BMW. And then Brianna stopped suddenly and glanced back at her.

  By the look on Brianna’s face, the idea of coming in for another talk was anything but okay.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Neither of them had said a word in close to ten minutes, but Kevin Hart had become used to quiet dinners. He was pretty sure that Carrie didn’t care either.

  “What happened to us?” he asked.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You and I,” he said. “Our marriage.”

  “Oh, please,” she said. “Aren’t we about five years too late for this conversation?”

  Her answer didn’t bother him.

  He tapped his finger on the side of his wineglass and thought about his conversation with Ripley. He couldn’t imagine not worrying about what people thought of him. Being the man with all the money and all the answers to everyone’s problems was what he really lived for. Only worrying about what God saw sounded good, really good, and he tried to imagine the pressure it’d relieve if he quit worrying about what everyone else thought.

  But there was a slight problem.

  If there really was a God, He already knew the truth about every sin Kevin had ever committed.

  “We already have over a hundred guests coming for the Cochran fund-raiser,” Carrie said. She stood and walked over to the kitchen counter and held up the copy of the Benning Weekly that had come out that day.

  “What part of the paper are you in this week?” Hart asked. “ ‘The Only Socialite in Town’ section?”

  “And you wonder what happened to us,” she said, with that irritating little smirk of hers. “I just wanted to show you the ad we have for the fund-raiser. It looks good and you usually like to see the ads you pay for.”

  “Great,” he said. “You know the odds of us raising close to two hundred thousand? One hundred people at twenty-five a clip leaves us around one hundred and ninety-eight thousand short.”

  “The Cochrans will be paying that bill the rest of their lives if we don’t do something,” Carrie said. “That’s if the hospital even does it without the money up front.”

  You mean if I don’t do something, he thought.

  “Besides, we can put in a good chunk of change ourselves, right?” she said. She gave him a curious look. “What’s gotten into you? You’ve never worried about the success of our fund-raisers. You actually seem like you care.”

  She was probably right. At the end of the day it was just another fund-raiser for yet another cause. But something about getting the credit for it felt good. And deep down, there was something in him that wanted this to work for little Marjo. The kid was darn cute.

  Carrie flipped the paper over. “How about this Summer Santa character?”

  “What about him?”

  “He sure seems to be getting a lot of attention.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I’m taking a shower,” she said, dropping the newspaper on the table and leaving the room.

  Hart picked it up and looked at the full-page ad for the fund-raiser: “Black Tie Optional. Choice of Entrée Selection. Entertainment.”

  Then he flipped the paper over and glanced at the headline of the latest article Brianna had put together on the Summer Santa: “What’s Left in the Summer Santa’s Sleigh?”

  He took a sip of his wine and thought about what Andy had said to him. Not all of the boy’s words made sense. But something about that first thing Andy had said played over and over in his head.

  I have searched you, and I know you.

  The words chewed at the back of his mind until they forced him to look at the ceiling and ask his dead father.

  “Do you think anyone really knows what I’ve been doing lately, Dad?”

  He waited, wanting the mighty Walter Hart to answer. He held his hands up in the air. And then he finally let them drop to his sides.

  He lowered his head and closed his eyes.

  Or the things I did a long time ago?

  THIRTY

  Rip was sitting in Judi’s kitchen, thinking about what an uneventful week it had been since he’d had his little chat with Kevin Hart. That had made things better between them, which made life easier by taking a little of that awkward edge off things at work. Other than that, Andy hadn’t had any further words from the iPod and the garden seemed unchanged. The only blip on the weekly radar was the battery of tests he hadn’t quite planned on at Doc Strater’s. When he told Judi how much weight he’d lost, she couldn’t believe it.

  “When I got out of prison, I weighed 205 pounds,” he said, trying to ease her concern. “Then I put on a quick twenty, so I’m really just right back to where I started.”

  “C’mon, Rip,” Judi said. “You’ve lost twenty pounds eating like a pig and not working out?”

  “What are you talking about?” he answered. “I’ve been doing a million push-ups a week. Don’t worry, Doc Strater took a bunch of tests and said the weight loss could be a lot of things.”

  “And the tests said what?”

  “Not sure yet,” Rip said. “I had to wait in his office forever before I got in to see him and was over an hour late getting back to work. The nurses said they’d call me if anything came up.”

  “You do look skinnier, Uncle Rip,” Andy said, looking at him with worry.

  Rip faced him. “C’mon, bro. Your mom is already freaking out on me.”

  “I’m surprised Kevin is actually gonna help you with the cans tonight,” Judi said. She pointed at Andy behind his back. “And I’m really surprised he wants you-know-who to come along. Particularly after the last Bible-versing he gave him.”

  Rip thought about the way Kevin acted the day of their “talk.” Rip hadn’t mentioned anything about their conversation to Judi, just the fact that Kevin wanted to help out and that he asked that Andy come along. Andy hadn’t wanted to go, of cours
e, but Rip talked him into it, telling his nephew that Hart seemed really ready to change, and they might get to be a part of it.

  He glanced at his watch, then looked at Andy. “You ready to go make the big bucks? I’m guessing you’re gonna need some extra dough for all your upcoming dates with Chelsea.”

  “Shut up, Uncle Rip.”

  “Let’s do it,” Rip said, glancing at his watch. “We can head over a little early and get a head start.”

  Andy was a machine.

  Rip knew that when the boy put his mind to something, it was hard to get him away from it, and in this case, that made him an excellent worker. Six or seven thousand cans still needed to be put on the trucks for the different shelters, and Andy was loading the boxes at a pace that was twice as fast as his own.

  Rip wasn’t sure if Judi’s worrying had taken a little of the wind out of his sails, but he was gasping for air and felt like his strength had up and left. Throw in the added bonus that every time he coughed, he felt like one of his lungs was going to break in half and he was ready to call it a night.

  “Let’s take a break,” he said. “You’re wearing Uncle Rip out.”

  Andy stopped like somebody had hit his power switch.

  “C’mon, bro,” Rip said. “I’ll give you a tour of the place.”

  “Okay,” Andy said.

  “You want to go out and see Mr. Hart’s cool boat or you want to go in the haunted basement?” Rip tossed in a little spooky humming and he knew it wouldn’t be much of a decision for Andy. He liked dark places, and Rip guessed it was for the same reason he liked wearing his hair over the side of his face and neck.

  Rip led them off the end of the loading dock and over to the automatic garage door that, once opened, would expose the ramp that led into the basement.

  Rip could see Andy’s eyes widen as the door finished opening.

  “It stinks down here,” Andy said. “Like dirt and cheese.”

  “Hey, don’t complain. This is where I got your motorcycle,” Rip said. “There’s a car down here I want you to see. No promises, but with my new raise, I may be able to put enough dough together over the next couple years to buy it by the time you get your license.”

  They started to make their way down the ramp.

  “Hey,” Rip said, pointing at Andy’s back pocket. “The iPod is about to escape.”

  “I better watch out,” Andy quipped. “It may break.” The two shared a smile, but Andy pulled it out of his pocket and held it as they walked slowly down the ramp into the darkness.

  “It is spooky down here,” Andy said.

  “Only for a little longer,” Rip said, flicking on a whole row of switches, sixteen in all, the second they got to the bottom of the ramp.

  The lights started out dim and then got progressively brighter, giving them a decent view of the whole basement. Rip coughed, and the pain in his lower back upgraded to a category five. Hopefully Doc Strater could prescribe something that would heal the strained muscles, because he seemed plagued by them. It’ll be good to move into management . . . Maybe he was just too old for janitorial work.

  Strater had said about the same thing Pastor Welsh said. If it was a pull, it wasn’t going to go away without some rest, but time off wasn’t an option. Time off’s for rich men.

  They walked along a row of discarded treasures that had been stored down in the musty basement since the dawn of man, including several sets of golf clubs, a motorized golf cart, and a pair of old jukeboxes. Farther up were a dozen victims of Old Man Hart’s hunting excursions. Taxidermied heads of deer, elk, and a moose were surrounded by complete bodies of a bobcat, a pheasant, and a skunk, whose marble eyes drew a good stare out of Andy.

  “Maybe this is what stinks,” Rip said, lifting it by its tail.

  Andy rolled his eyes.

  Rip glanced at his watch. Hart was ten minutes late, so Rip figured he and Andy would hang in the basement until he showed up.

  “I’m thinking you could fly down here for a few minutes with your hair in a ponytail,” Rip said.

  “Why?”

  “Just until Mr. Hart gets here,” Rip said, pulling a rubber band out of his pocket. “Do it for Uncle Rip.”

  “Why?” Andy repeated, lowering his head. “I don’t want to.”

  “I think you’d look cool with a ponytail,” Rip said.

  “Then you’d see the side of my face. I don’t want to.”

  “The side of your face doesn’t bother me.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And I guarantee you it doesn’t bother Chelsea,” Rip said. “Or your mom, or Heather, or Pastor Welsh, or—”

  Andy stopped in his tracks. “But what about everybody else?”

  “Who cares what anybody else thinks?” Rip cried. “What are they going to say that you haven’t already heard?”

  “Whatever,” Andy said, snatching the rubber band out of Rip’s hand.

  Rip smiled, wanting Andy to smile with him.

  Andy pulled his hair off the sides of his face. He put the rubber band over his index and middle fingers and formed a tight ponytail. “You happy?” he said, glancing around the basement, cautiously on the lookout for something that Rip knew didn’t exist.

  “You’ve never looked more handsome,” Rip said, putting his arm around Andy and then kissing him on the side of his head. “Seriously.”

  “Uncle Rip,” Andy said, holding a fist up. “If you ever plan on kissing me in public, you better make sure you’ve practiced falling down first, because I will knock you right out.”

  Rip laughed and they started walking again, coming across a portable basketball net. A lot of the guys used to come down and play during lunch until some union steward put the kibosh on it. Some even suggested Kevin Hart had finally called basketball a no-no because it was a threat to his workman’s comp insurance.

  “You probably never knew Uncle Rip was a basketball star, did you?”

  “You never played basketball,” Andy said. “You were too stoned to play.”

  “That doesn’t mean I didn’t have the tools,” Rip said, grabbing the ball that sat on an old lawn chair beneath the hoop.

  He shot the ball and it went over the backboard, landing in a stack of clay flower pots and breaking most of them.

  Rip laughed. Andy didn’t. He just stared at Rip like he’d missed a free throw to send the state championship into overtime.

  “You’re a scrub, Uncle Rip.”

  “Why the hatin’, bro? I miss one shot and get this harassment?”

  “What’s that?” Andy asked, pointing to the very corner of the basement.

  “Underneath that tarp is the car that I was telling you about,” Rip said. “Mr. Hart hasn’t had it on the road in years. It was his dad’s and he only took it out every once in a while. But it’s really fast.”

  “Can I see it?” Andy asked.

  “You got it,” Rip said.

  They walked over to the corner, where the car had been backed in and covered up.

  “Why don’t you close your eyes?” Rip said. “I can’t pull this off like the sheet on the motorcycle. It’s too big. I’ll tell you when to open your eyes.”

  “Okay,” Andy said.

  “You are gonna love this.”

  Rip unbuttoned the four corners of the tarp.

  He slowly uncovered the Mustang and made sure to remember how the tarp went on so he could put it back. The car really was beautiful. Kevin didn’t like driving it much because the old-timers called him by his dad’s first name when they saw him in it. It seemed to bother him.

  “Hang on,” Rip said. “We’re almost there.”

  Rip pulled the rest of the tarp off. The car still looked amazing. In fact, whatever maintenance it needed seemed to have already been done. It looked practically new with its candy-apple red paint shining under the basement light.

  “Okay,” Rip said. “I’ll bet you double or nothing on that Coke you owe me that the thought of you driving this car will p
ut a smile on your face.”

  “You’re on,” Andy said dully.

  “Open your eyes,” Rip said, stepping away from the car.

  Andy did. But he didn’t smile.

  His neck slowly tilted back and his eyes widened. “Oh,” he whispered.

  “Andy?” Rip said, edging over to him. The kid looked like he was going to puke. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Andy,” Rip said again, standing in front of him and taking him by the shoulders. “Talk to me, bro. What is it?”

  “You guys ready to get some work done?” It was Kevin Hart. He was standing about halfway down the ramp to the basement.

  Andy looked quickly back at Hart and grabbed at the back of his head, tearing his hair out of the ponytail and pulling it forward over the sides of his face.

  “What is it, Andy? Tell Uncle Rip.”

  “It’s nothing,” he muttered, but his eyes didn’t leave the car.

  “You guys okay down there?” Hart asked.

  “Andy,” Rip said, grabbing hold of his arm. “Tell me now.”

  “That’s the car Mr. Hart was driving,” Andy whispered harshly, wrenching his arm away. “When I saw him at the fountain that one day. That’s when he said God didn’t love me.”

  “What did he say?” Rip asked.

  “He said if my scar is an example of what God does to people He loves, he wouldn’t want to see what God does to people He hates. He said God doesn’t love me.”

  “What?” Rip said. He spun Andy around and pointed at Kevin Hart, who was now only a few feet away. “He said that?”

  “It’s no big deal, Uncle Rip.”

  But something inside of Rip had already started to turn.

  He thought about Judi’s bruises. He thought about the cuts on his hand as he punched Todd’s teeth until they weren’t there anymore and how good that felt. Vengeance. He clenched his fists and looked at Hart.

  Did you tell Andy God doesn’t love him?

  Rip was pretty sure he never asked the question, so Hart never had a chance to answer. He’d already elbowed him in his chest and Hart was on his knees. Rip grabbed a handful of Hart’s hair and had his fist pulled back.