In the Weeds

by Daniel Browne

  “For fuck’s sake,” I said. That got everyone’s attention. “You can have your own special section of the farm. No one will touch your squash. We’ll put up a sign and everything. Better yet, let the kids make it.”

  Segregating the disabled students probably wouldn’t be considered a best practice for a model school farm. But the sun was beating on my head like it was a tom-tom, and I had rows to hoe. If we had to make another concession, at least it was a small one.

  Sal turned his head and spit. “That works.”

  I shifted my attention to Miss Marcella. “Work for you?”

  “Whatever.”

  Peace in our time. I couldn’t wait for the teachers to leave so I could get back to the zen of tilling. But when I took a closer look, I saw that Kat had finished it all: the entire court was striped with evenly spaced, perfectly straight furrows, and she was taking a victory lap on Ash’s shoulders, her lips blue with Gatorade. I left them to their fun and went looking for Vic so we could go over the game plan for tomorrow.

  * * *

  With the gravel and soil laid and the furrows in place, we turned to assembling and installing the structures in Seth’s plan: the tool shed, the hoop house, a gate with a lock to go into the gap in the fence. Putting in a second gate where there was no gap, as we’d promised the landlord next door, was an engineering headache best left for another day. Meanwhile, Kat was researching the cheapest way to rig a rainwater collection system; her eyes lit up when she found a pile of castoff PVC pipe behind the school and Edgar said we could have it. A few rubber garbage cans from Home Depot, and we’d be set. “We’re going to Rube Goldberg the shit out of this bad boy!” were her exact words.

  Seth, for his part, was feverishly reworking his schematics, trying to make room for the welcome circle he’d envisioned when the plan was to build on the roof. The problem was the damn handball wall smack in the middle of the court, which made it impossible to fit a big enough circle anywhere in the space. Only, Seth wasn’t willing to admit defeat just yet. Instead, he was erasing inches from the garden rows, changing the angle of the hoop house, hoping a solution would present itself. The poor guy desperately wanted this first foray into educational agriculture to be picturesque enough for the splash page of the Green ’Burgs website.

  While all this was going on, I was hauling and sanding plywood, hammering nails (until Vic grew impatient with my aim), driving stakes for the hoop house—basically any task that required no skill, expertise, or even intuition. It had become standard practice that I was the one to pick up Gatorade and sandwiches. My transformation into a man of the soil wasn’t yet complete, but I was satisfied that I wasn’t dishonoring my clan.

  One afternoon a scrawny black boy, probably seven or eight, in flip-flops, camo shorts, and an undershirt wandered through the fence (we were still working on the gate). He stared at us for a good ten minutes before asking “What the fuck you doing?” of no one in particular.

  Big Craig, busy cutting sheets of plastic to cover the hoop house, was the first to turn his head. “We’re building a farm. No cussing on the farm.”

  “Where are all the animals, then?”

  “No animals. Vegetables.”

  “Is that your skateboard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I ride it?”

  “Come help us out for an hour. Then you can ride it.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “I don’t know, go sand plywood or something.”

  “Is it hard?”

  Craig pointed at me, sucking my bloodied knuckle. “If he can do it, you can.”

  The boy—we later learned his name was Daryl—did exactly what Craig said. He dropped into a squat beside me, watched what I was doing for a minute or two, then picked up a spare piece of sandpaper and got to work. His technique—putting his bony shoulder into it like he was scrubbing a dish—was no worse than mine, but he was a lot faster. He dropped his sandpaper almost exactly an hour later, uncanny since he didn’t have a watch or phone to check. Craig came over for an inspection, pointed out a few rough patches he’d missed (I was glad he didn’t take a close look at my handiwork), and waited while he finished up, giving him the occasional pointer, even taking over the sandpaper to show him the proper push-pull motion, “real light and easy.” Then he took a smoke break to watch Daryl skate around the school parking lot. The kid’s ambitions exceeded his abilities, to put it mildly. He could barely stay upright for more than a few seconds, yet he insisted on attempting a series of spastic ollies and kickflips. With each flailing wipeout, he would bounce back up and try again, while Craig shook his head and chuckled to himself. After about a half-hour, he waved Daryl back to the worksite.

  “Break time’s over, little man. Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you how to make your own board.”

  “Like I got nothing better to do?”

  But of course he came back, wearing the same clothes as the day before. He helped the Ambrose Fierce guys fit the pipes for the hoop house frame, then sanded and painted the skateboard deck Craig had cut for him. The design was inspired by the Saw movies: a vaguely Fauvist depiction of the creep in the mask surrounded by various instruments of torture and corresponding severed limbs. Craig lured him back the next day with the promise of wheels, and this time he brought a couple of friends, both a head taller than him and probably a year or two older. At this point, we had to start making up tasks for them. Seth had them break down about a third of the garden rows and rebuild them on a diagonal to see if he could squeeze in the welcome circle that way (no dice). Elliot got them to sort the equipment he’d picked up at a GreenThumb give-away in Queens.

  The two older boys (I never caught their names) didn’t talk much, except when they were in the vicinity of Kat, who put them to work jerry-rigging her rainwater cisterns. That assignment, punching holes in garbage cans and jamming in the pipes, was the occasion for much vulgarity. Ash grumbled about the lack of respect, but Kat kept her cool. “I can tell by the results neither of you has done that before,” she said.

  Daryl, on the other hand, stuck close to Craig. Watching the runt tag along with the gentle giant, I was a little jealous. The most any of the kids had said to me was, “I wanted the purple one,” when I came back from a Gatorade run. At the same time, I was proud. The bonding, the life lessons—it was exactly what I’d hoped for when we’d started. And if I had to experience it all at a slight remove, at least I could draw a quiet satisfaction knowing I was the one (one of the ones, anyway) who’d set it all in motion.

  I think we were all a bit pleased with ourselves. I’m sure every agrarian utopian movement in history had the same feeling early in its run when everything seemed like it was coming together and you believed you might actually pull it off. Which may explain why we were caught so completely off guard by the young man who came charging through the fence a couple of days before the first planting. He was Latino, apparently an acquaintance of the trio we’d met the other day; I’d noticed him talking to them on the other side of the street moments earlier. But he wasn’t another baller. His hair was short and neat, scissor-cut, not shaved. He was wearing a white-button down, chinos, and sneakers. And unlike his impassive friends, his face was hard with rage. We could hear him screaming before we could make out the words.

  “Where’s your permit?”

  “Huh?”

  Vic, Elliot, and I walked up to meet him at the gate. Seth was in Jersey again, but otherwise we had a full house.

  “I said, ‘Where’s your permit?’”

  “Can we help you?” Elliot asked.

  “I asked you twice already, man.”

  Elliot held out his hand. “I’m Elliot. This is Will and Vic. Do you live around here?”

  “Yeah, I fucking live here. Do you? Do any of you? Because I sure as fuck never saw you before.” The guy didn’t even look at Elliot’s hand, let alone take it.

  “We’ve been out here every day for the last few weeks, working on this farm f
or the community. We met your friends over there already.”

  “Yeah, those fools told me what you’re doing. They don’t know enough to ask to see a permit. But the party’s over because you’re dealing with an educated motherfucker now.”

  “Well, then, I’m sure you’ll understand,” I said. “This land is owned by the Parks Department. The Parks Department gave us a license for a community garden here. We don’t need a building permit.”

  Our inquisitor was shaking his head so hard, I started to wonder if he was having some kind of attack. “Nah, nah, nah. See, you think you’re talking to some thug. But I already told you, I know what’s up. My pops is the councilman for this district.”

  “Your father is Hector Contreras?”

  “That’s right. So you can forget your weak bullshit. If I don’t see a permit in ten seconds, I’m calling the DOB, the cops, and my dad.”

  I almost felt bad for him. The guy’s special claim to authority was that his dad was a backbench councilman. To be fair, every bench was a backbench in the toothless council of the Bloomberg years, but Contreras wasn’t even connected enough at DOB (the very DOB his son was threatening to sic on us) to help John when Rita’s had a permitting issue. The fact was we were covered. We didn’t need DOB’s permission to build on Parks’ property. But try telling that to the crown prince of the Broadway Triangle.

  “You know,” Elliot said, “we used to work for Vivienne Huxley.”

  “Man, I have no fucking clue who that is. Now let me see your permit, and don’t even try pulling some weak-ass community garden license on me.”

  A fleck of spit landed on Vic’s glasses. He took them off carefully and wiped the lens on his shirt. “Listen, he already told you we don’t need a permit. And there are kids here, so maybe you ought to calm down and clean up your language.”

  Hector Contreras’s son took a step toward him. “Who the fuck do you think you are? These kids hear worse every goddamn day. See, this isn’t Park Slope. This isn’t DUMBO. This is Brooklyn, motherfucker. And you don’t come in here and tear our shit up without permission.”

  Vic took a step of his own. They were practically nose to nose now, and I noticed he’d put his glasses in his pocket. “Well, I live in Kensington, but what’s the difference? No matter what, I don’t work for you.”

  The other members of Ambrose Fierce had quietly formed a line behind him. Craig had slipped his studded wristband over his knuckles. Ash was carrying a shovel over his shoulder. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the three ballers slowly crossing the street toward us. Kat was hustling Daryl and his friends off the court, pulling on the neck of Daryl’s shirt when he dawdled.

  “Hold up. I wanna see this shit!”

  The Contreras kid reached into the pocket of his chinos. To this day, it fills me with shame that I flinched. Did I think the son of a city councilman was prowling the streets with a switchblade? What he actually took out was an iPhone. He snapped a picture of the menacing indie band arrayed against him and then stepped around them to document the state of the handball court. Elliot’s shoulders slumped with relief. Vic calmly put his glasses back on. Craig actually looked a little disappointed. Me? I was taking deep breaths, hoping my heart wouldn’t break my ribcage.

  He backed out through the opening in the fence, still holding up his phone. “Yeah, I’ve got you now. This ain’t over. Believe that.”

  Craig blew him a kiss. Vic watched him brush past the three ballers and disappear around the corner.

  “Let’s put up that gate,” he said.

  Kids Are People

  That Friday, the students came. It had been quiet since our runin with the Contreras scion, and other than the welcome circle and Kat’s rainwater collection rig, all systems were go. Still, I was nervous. What if we had more trouble while the kids were on-site? One of the perks of working with GreenThumb was that it settled the insurance issue. As a licensed community garden on city-owned property, we weren’t required to have our own liability insurance. Nonetheless, a brawl in the presence of two dozen children would probably be bad for business.

  That was just the first item on my list of worries: What if it rained? What if the Begin to Win group and the special ed group overlapped and a turf war ensued? Most importantly, what if they hated it? Conscripting Daryl and his friends as unpaid labor was one thing. This was school. If the kids weren’t willing to get their hands dirty, if they were bored by any activity that didn’t involve glowing screens, all our work would be for nothing. And Craig couldn’t bribe them all with custom skateboards.

  Miss Marcella’s third-grade class was up first. There were fifteen of them, their faces as bright as their little outfits. Had Miss Marcella warned them they’d be getting dirty? Had we told her to warn them? Too late now. As for the teachers, Sasha had really gotten into the spirit of the occasion: She was wearing overalls, her hippie hair tied back with a bandana. Miss Marcella, on the other hand, was making no concessions: long sleeves, long skirt.

  The Raise the Roof delegation was bigger than it needed to be. The band had more or less finished their work, but they’d asked if they could stick around to see the fruits of their labor. It looked a tad shady, these scruffy characters lurking by the tool shed as the children filed in. Miss Marcella narrowed her gaze as she passed them but said nothing. Craig, who’d been leaning against the side of the shed, straightened up and stuck his hands behind his back.

  Seth was there, too, an expensive camera slung around his neck. That was more than Miss Marcella could let pass.

  “No one said anything about pictures. You need signed permission from the parents.”

  We’d assumed Begin to Win had the parents sign a photo release form at registration. After all, they had their own brochures to fill.

  “The copier was broken, so we skipped it this year.”

  We promised not to use any photos that showed the kids’ faces.

  Kat was in her element. Come to think of it, Kat never seemed to be out of her element. But the children brought out a sunnier side of her. She smiled and greeted them as they stepped through our brand-new gate, bending over to hand them each a seed taped to a square of colored construction paper—green for cucumbers, red for radishes, orange for carrots, and so on. Her idea. Ash had contributed a one-of-a-kind doodle to each piece of construction paper: a cucumber with shades and a goatee (signifying “cool as a...”), a carrot with a diamond chain (get it?).

  After a brief confab with Elliot, Miss Marcella clapped her hands. The kids, who’d been squirming, fanning themselves with their construction paper, shooting ray beams at each other, immediately clapped in response. I couldn’t see Craig from where I was standing, but I pictured him clapping, too.

  “Students, this is your new garden. Mr. Elliot and his friends made this all for you.”

  Ridiculous as it sounds, I got the impression she was trying to claim the farm for Begin to Win before Sal’s group showed up.

  “Now I want you to listen closely”—she made a show of tugging her ear—“so you’ll know what to do. This is a chance for you to show your values. Can you tell Mr. Elliot what the Begin to Win values are?”

  “Respect! Preparation! Excellence! Spirit!” the children shouted in rough unison.

  “All yours,” Miss Marcella said, stepping aside for Elliot.

  I’d always found it hard to picture Elliot as a kindergarten teacher; he seemed too sedate to handle a bunch of pants-wetters tweaking on pixie sticks. What I’d failed to take into account was that kids were people, and people were Elliot’s thing. It didn’t matter that their personalities were still amoebic. Elliot could vibe with anyone.

  He crouched so he could look them in the eye. “How many of you like eating your vegetables?”

  A few hands went up, but they were the exception.

  “And how many of you know where vegetables come from?”

  “They come from the store!” shouted a boy with an old man’s hairline.

  “N
o, stupid!” said a girl in a bedazzled top. “They come from the ground.”

  “And where do you think the store is, stupid? On the ground!”

  “Respect each other!” Miss Marcella glared at them. “No respect, no achieve-bucks.” She brandished what looked like a stack of Monopoly money.

  Elliot forged ahead with a beginner’s guide to photosynthesis and a game of name that plant. It was disconcerting how many of the students were stumped as he flipped through a set of Ash’s drawings. Since we started drumming up support for the farm, I’d figured out how to talk a good game about food deserts, but in my mind, the concept had remained abstract. Here, though, was the proof: if these kids were to be believed, half of them had never even seen a cucumber, let alone tasted one. Elliot asked one of the initiated, a girl with scabby elbows and drugstore glasses, to describe the experience.

  “They’re kind of cold and wet. Like, slimy almost?”

  “Are they crunchy?” Elliot asked.

  The girl looked down at her hands. “I don’t know.” Had she overplayed her credentials as a cucumber connoisseur? It was enough to break your heart.

  “They are when you grow them yourself,” Elliot said. “And that’s what we’re going to do.” He wiggled his eyebrows, the Willy Wonka of greens.

  That was the cue to split into groups. “If you’ve got a red sheet, you’re with me,” Elliot said. “If you’ve got an orange sheet, you’re with Miss Kat.”

  Kat waved her arms over her head like she was stranded on a desert island.

  “And if you’ve got a green sheet, you’re with Mr. Will.”

  I gave an ironic little salute. As they gathered around, I adopted a businesslike demeanor, no pleasantries, no mugging, just the facts. Trying to beat Elliot and Kat in a popularity contest was a fool’s errand. My goal was more modest: to show my charges, without screwing up, what Kat had shown me the day before. With slow and steady movements, slightly exaggerated for their benefit, I built a mound in the dirt, made a well in the mound with my thumb, placed a seed in the well, and covered it with a thin layer of soil, patting down the soil so it was compact. They went about copying me with almost ritualistic solemnity, a few getting carried away with one step or another. One boy had a look of bliss on his face as he corkscrewed his thumb into the mound he’d made (paging Dr. Freud!). Then again, he might have had a lazy eye. A girl with a missing eyetooth insisted everyone drop what they were doing when she thought she’d lost her seed. After I rescued it from the sole of her shoe, she made a big show of cosseting it, smoothing the dirt over it like she was brushing a pony’s tail.