Vigilantes of Love

by John Everson

  She paused and met his gaze, her eyes hard. “We’re all family, remember? The circus takes care of its own.”

  Then she took the tiny child and left the tent, leaving Reind to cry in dry, empty sobs over the loss of his son, and his lover, as he stared into the other jar left behind on Erin ’s traveling shelves. Reind stared for hours into the deep, brown, floating eyes of Melienda, who would never see again.

  ~*~

  SEVEN DEADLY SEEDS

  “You like to plant things, don’t you?”

  Bellinda looked up with a start from her digging. A moment before she’d been alone at the edge of the creekbed, plotting out her chrysanthemum garden in silence, with only the birds for company. Now an old woman stood nearby, her eyes cutting sharp as steel through the overcast of the chill spring day.

  “Yes, ma’am,” she answered, but offered no more. Mom had warned her not to talk to strangers. Mom didn’t let her talk to anyone.

  The woman stepped closer, then stooped to be at face level with Bellinda, dragging her thin black coat in the rich loam of the creek dirt.

  “You know the creek overflows here ’most every year,” the old woman warned, trailing a long red-painted fingernail through the dirt. “Your seeds may wash away.”

  “Dad said so, too,” Bellinda retorted, “but my seeds are strong. They’ll keep the creek away. And when they’re big and have flowers, I’m gonna build a fort here and everything.”

  The woman smiled, her lips a thin pink scar across her weathered face.

  “I could give you strong seeds to plant that would grow right in your house,” she offered. “Then you could watch them every day, even when it was raining or the creek was high.”

  A light broke in the young girl’s eye. “Really?” she asked in spite of herself.

  “Sure,” the old woman said. “What’s your name, child?”

  “Bellinda,” the girl said. “I’m seven!”

  “Well, Bellinda,” the old woman said, reaching into a deep pocket of her coat. “My name is Penelope. And I have seven different kinds of seeds you can choose from.”

  She pulled her hand from the coat and opened it. The hand was wrinkled as a raisin, but in its palm were purple seeds pointy as a porcupine, grape-sized seeds red as hearts, sunny yellow seeds with pits like pecans and grass-green seeds that looked withered and sickly. But Bellinda’s eyes lit when she saw the blue seeds. They were shaped like teardrops and glinted with the hue of a summer sky. She knew she shouldn’t take candy from strangers… but seeds would be okay, wouldn’t they?

  “Those,” she pointed. “I like those!”

  Penelope nodded, and carefully extracted two blue teardrops from her hand. The rest of the seeds went back into her pocket.

  “All right,” she said. “You can have these. You have a root cellar in your house, don’t you?”

  Bellinda nodded.

  “Plant them in the dark dirt in the cellar, then. But you must promise me two things. You mustn’t tell your mom or dad that you’ve planted them, because they wouldn’t like you digging down there. And when they’ve grown up and bloomed, you must bring me their seeds.”

  Bellinda nodded seriously. “Okay,” she said. “How will I know when the seeds are ready?”

  “They’ll be ready when they look just like this,” Penelope said, and dropped the two sky seeds into the girl’s eager hand.

  “Should I water them?” Bellinda asked.

  “Only if you want. They grow on other nourishment. And they grow quickly, so watch them every day. You must bring the seeds back here to me before the plants die.”

  The old woman stood up then, her bones creaking with the effort. “Goodbye, Bellinda. We’ll talk again soon.”

  “Bye,” the girl said. Picking up her shovel, she abandoned the bag of chrysanthemum seeds and hurried through the long valley of shorn cornstalks that marched across her endless backyard.

  Her mom, a thin, sharp woman in a faded pair of jeans and an orange and blue Chicago Bears jacket, waved from the sideyard where she was pulling laundry off the line. Bellinda cowered at the lifted hand, but then raised a small hand in reply. Mom was always slapping her for something, and since they moved out here to the country, she couldn’t go anywhere to escape. She wished her parents could have moved away and left her to live by herself in their old apartment in the city. At least she had had friends there.

  Bellinda didn’t risk stopping – Mom would have found some reason to slap her if she got too close. Instead, she hurried up the wooden steps to the back door. Rather than going up the stairs inside, she ran downstairs to the root cellar. She wanted to plant her seeds before Mom came inside to see what she was up to.

  She’d get a thrashing for digging in the cellar, she just knew it. So Bellinda quickly chose a spot in the far corner, where the boxes from their recent move were still stacked high. With her peach plastic beach shovel, she scooped away handfuls of sandy earth until she’d excavated a six-inch pit. Any deeper and the seeds would rot, Dad had said that when he’d shown her how to plant flower seeds. She didn’t know if these seeds would make flowers, but she guessed that seeds were seeds and this would do.

  The door upstairs slammed shut and steps clunked up the stairs into the kitchen.

  Bellinda dropped the seeds into the hole and patted the earth back on top.

  “Grow now,” she whispered, and leapt up just as her mother called.

  “Bellinda, where are you?”

  She ran to her dad’s workbench on the other side of the cellar and dropped her shovel on top. First grade had taught her a thing or two about setting up a lie.

  “Down here,” she answered, and then started back up the stairs.

  “I was just putting my shovel away,” she explained, when her mother met her at the door.

  “Hurry up, then,” her mom said, brushing a wisp of kinked brown hair out of her eye. “Go on and wash up. Daddy will be down for dinner soon.”

  Bellinda hurried up the stairs, turning over and over the sky-blue seeds in her mind. What would the plants look like? How long would it take them to grow?

  Belinda’s parents were named Brian and Brenda, and like so many of the new residents of Faytown, Illinois, they were young Chicagoans who had moved to farm country to escape the crime of the big city. They wanted a quieter, slower life. And since Brian, an Internet web designer, could telecommute anywhere, they’d opted for this sleepy little corn-belt town. The ramshackle 1920’s farmhouse – three stories tall and seemingly three blocks wide – had been a steal, and its upper attic had made a perfect office citadel for Brian.

  The previous owner had disappeared a couple years before and the couple had bought the house from the town for back taxes. That meant that its old furnishings were all still in place, and Brian had just swept the loaded, dusty bookshelves upstairs clean and started piling his own books in place.

  But the original occupants’ tomes remained piled high in the corner, along with an assortment of vials, bowls, and small locked boxes. He intended to go through all of it before he tossed it, but their first month in the house hadn’t given him much time for that sort of thing. The antique couches and chairs remained in place in the living room, as the couple hadn’t had much furniture in their small city apartment. But the kitchen table was new, a white-tiled, blond wood-rimmed country table to match the house’s decor. The family gathered around the table at 6 p.m. every night for dinner. If Bellinda wasn’t in her place on time, she got sent to bed without any dinner at all. When that did happen, she thought her mom looked glad to be rid of her.

  “You’re always underfoot except when you need to be,” Mom said.

  On the night that Bellinda planted her seeds, Brenda served pot roast and mashed potatoes. She glowed with unusual cheeriness as she served it on the cornflower china.

  “Now tell me if this isn’t the best pot roast you’ve ever eaten!” she said as Brian cut into his meat and Bellinda forked up a thick creamy splat of potatoes. Mo
m didn’t ask about Bellinda’s pot roast. Mom said children should be seen and not heard. Bellinda thought she really meant that children shouldn’t be heard or seen.

  “I’ve got that Ryan Matthews over a barrel,” Brian said, ignoring her boast. “He knows that he can’t get a site put together without me. Not for the kind of money he wants to pay, anyway. Moving out here was the best thing I ever did. I don’t have to charge Michigan Avenue prices now and they all know I’m the best. So if they want it done right, they can just sign on my dotted line.” His chest seemed to expand six inches as he spoke.

  “How’s the roast?” Brenda prodded again. “I am just the best cook, aren’t I?”

  “Best one I married,” he answered, dodging the question.

  Brenda threw the fork down on the table. “What kind of an answer is that?”

  Bellinda shrunk down in her seat. Mom was angry. It was best to be small when Mom got that way.

  “You know the I-Food.Com site I did a couple months ago?” he said, ignoring her still. “It got an American Food Association award yesterday for best consumer design.”

  Brenda stood up. “How is your roast, Brian?” she said. It sounded like she was gritting her teeth.

  He seemed oblivious to his danger, and started talking about a new javascript he was working on. When Brenda lifted his plate of food to slam it into his still-moving mouth, Bellinda chose that moment to duck behind her mother and tiptoe down the stairs to the cellar. Dinner didn’t seem to be going well.

  The cellar was dark and dank, as a root cellar should be. Its only light came from a single dim yellow bulb on a chain at the bottom of the stairs, and it smelled faintly of old apples and vinegar. The floor was hard-packed earth. There were shelves for canned foods all around the room, and they still held some spider-webbed bottles from the previous owners. Her dad’s handful of shiny new metal tools stood out in easy contrast to the old rusted pliers and screwdrivers that littered the battered wooden workbench. Bellinda avoided the bench and shelves and hurried to the far corner of the room where she’d planted her seeds. She knew it was too early for them to sprout, but she wanted to see the spot anyway.

  She was in such a hurry that she almost stepped on them.

  Bellinda’s mouth opened in a wide O when she saw the sprouts. Two pale blue tendrils reached up through the earth and yearned towards the plank ceiling above. They were already six inches tall. As she stared, they seemed to grow broader, their stems thickening and stretching taller. There was no breeze, but they shivered slightly. From the kitchen upstairs, Bellinda heard something crash.

  “Wow,” she whispered, ignoring the noise from above. “You’re really growing! Do you want some water?”

  Bellinda found an old mason jar on her dad’s work bench and went quietly up the stairs and outside, careful not to let her arguing parents hear her. Then she filled it with water from the hose and returned to the basement. As she poured the water slowly over the plants, she could almost hear them sigh with relief. One of them seemed to twitch, and she saw that a palm-like leaf was separating from the stem. Her mother called. “Bellinda!”

  She ran up to the kitchen, which was a disaster. The supper dishes lay shattered on the floor. Her dad was nowhere to be seen and Mom was crying.

  “You liked your pot roast, didn’t you hon?”

  “Yes,” Bellinda lied. “It was the best.”

  Her mom smiled at the compliment, sniffing and wiping her eyes quickly. “Go get ready for bed now. School’s in the morning.”

  The next morning Bellinda tried to find a way to sneak into the cellar after breakfast to check on her seeds, but there was just no getting past her mom. “You’re gonna be late, now hurry up there,” her mom insisted, forcing a jacket over her sweater before sending her out the door to wait at the gravel road for the bus.

  The school day seemed to drag on forever. Bellinda could hardly concentrate; it seemed the 3 o’clock bell would never ring. She wanted so badly to see how her plants had grown over night. Finally, the day was over and she ran to her house from the bus stop. Her mom was staring at herself in a mirror and combing her hair ever so slowly in the living room and never even looked up as Bellinda rushed by her and took the cellar steps two at a time.

  “Wow,” she said.

  What else was there to say? The plants nearly touched the ceiling, and their skyblue fronds waved like alien palms across the back quarter of the cellar. Bellinda smiled as she stroked one of the leaves and saw that rows of teardrop-shaped kernels were forming at the edges of each long leaf. She stayed in the cellar until late watching the plants shake and grow, dancing slowly to an internal music.

  When her stomach growled, Bellinda went upstairs to see about dinner and found the house was dark. The clock on the stove said 8:34. In the frontroom, lit only by the glow of a rising moon, her mom was still combing her hair in the mirror. But now she was wearing her New Year’s Eve gown – a black dress lined with gold sequins. It was cut into a deep V in the back and a not much smaller V in front. She kept putting one hand on her hip and pushing her waist from side to side.

  Bellinda opened a cabinet and found some Pop-Tarts and went unseen to her room. Mom didn’t look like she was going to make any dinner tonight.

  The next day when Bellinda got home from school, Mom was asleep on the couch and Dad, face black with stubble, cuffed her head absently as he grabbed a beer from the fridge and returned to his work upstairs. It seemed like he always had a beer in hand since they’d moved to the old farmhouse. At least he didn’t yell and spank her much since they’d come here. She almost never saw him; he was always holed up in his office. Bellinda dropped her books on the kitchen table and ran downstairs.

  The seeds were ready!

  Bellinda knew they were done because they were so blue it almost hurt to look at them, and the pale blue of a couple of the palm fronds were already streaked with an unhealthy yellow. One by one, leaf by leaf, she plucked the blue teardrops from the two plants and stuffed her pockets with them. When the leaves were stripped bare, Bellinda had counted 27 seeds. She stepped back and looked at the monstrous plants and nodded. There were no seeds left to take.

  The bottom leaf on one of the trees was now completely yellow, and as she turned to go upstairs, it fell to the ground. When it touched the earth, it evaporated, like a morning mist caught by sunlight.

  As Bellinda watched, the center stems of both plants began to yellow and another leaf disappeared into the ground.

  Her heart was full of wonder, and she ran out the back door and down to the creek, hoping that the old woman would be there to talk to. She had seeds for her!

  When she got to the creekbed, she looked around at the silent cornfields and called Penelope’s name. She barely had time to close her lips when the old woman stepped out from behind an old elm.

  “You’ve done very well, Bellinda,” the old woman said, as the girl poured seeds into her hand. “Did you get them all?”

  Bellinda nodded, and flushed with her own flash of pride. Penelope had been waiting for her, just as she’d hoped.

  “They grew so fast,” she said.

  It was the old woman’s turn to nod. “Can you keep a secret?” she asked.

  Bellinda’s face lit up. “Oh yes!” she said.

  “They’re magic plants,” Penelope whispered. “That’s why you must be very careful when you plant them. And you must gather all of the seeds they produce.”

  “Can I have more?” Bellinda asked. “I’ll be careful.”

  “Of course, dear,” Penelope said. Her eyes glinted with pleasure and she once again offered a handful of colorful seeds. Bellinda pointed to the pitted yellow seeds and the old woman dropped two of them into her hand.

  “Watch these carefully,” she warned. “They grow even faster.”

  Bellinda thanked her.

  “I’ll be waiting for you,” Penelope called after the girl, her thin smile lending another deep wrinkle to her weathered face.

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nbsp; Bellinda ran up the hill and back to her house with her new prize and thought of the strange things that had happened over the past couple of days. First she met the neat seed woman and then her parents started acting even stranger than usual. She wondered if the seeds had had some kind of effect on her parents. After all, they were magic. Then she shrugged. At least they were leaving her alone for once. It seemed like she was always getting her butt spanked and being screamed at. She would run away, if there was anyplace to run to, but out here in the country, she was trapped. There was nothing around for miles. She wished she could hurt them back; if only she weren’t so small.

  But now, they seemed to be doing their own thing, and she was doing hers. With a smile, she redoubled her pace so that she could plant her new seeds.

  When Bellinda got back to the basement, all traces of the blue plants were gone. She dug a hole in nearly the same place to drop the “sun” seeds in the earth. Then she washed up for dinner.

  That night Mom made dinner, but something still wasn’t right, Bellinda found. Now Dad was acting strange.

  “I’ll take the beans,” he said. “And pass the porkchops please.”

  Mom handed the plates to Dad, but she glowered at him. There were deep circles under her eyes and her hair was askew.

  “Can I have the salt, please,” he said. “And the salad.”

  Soon all of the plates were in front of Dad. As he forked and spooned the food into his mouth, he gave a wide smile. “This is the life,” he said, apparently unconcerned that Bellinda and her mom had nothing on their plates.

  “You know,” he announced, “I got the Matthews account this morning. I told you I would. But I think I’m going to double my quote. He gave in too easy. He’s got the money and I know it.”

  “Could we possibly have some pork?” mom asked.

  Dad looked at her blankly. “You know, I think I’m going to go adjust that quote right now, before I forget.” With that, he pushed away from the table and disappeared back to his office.