by Steve Himmer
So I laid the palm of my hand on the curve of the tent, shocked by how smooth and slick it felt, almost an electrical shock, and I felt my way around it toward the brambles in hopes of a space to squeeze through.
And I found one, a few inches wide but large enough for my thin body—thank goodness I’m all skin and bones! As I moved around the tent, I heard the hikers whispering to one another inside it, apparently just waking up. Apparently woken by me.
“He’s outside,” she whispered, a sentence, a phrase, and I was trapped by those two words with one hand still splayed on the tent and one foot inside my garden. Her voice was like… how can I even describe it? I’ll leave it to my faithful scribe to come up with some useful description and just say for myself that it was a shock.
“What’s he doing?” the male hiker asked, the first time I’d heard him up close, and his was a voice that sounded like muscles, like strength. Like a man who knows what he’s doing; a bit like Mr. Crane’s voice, I suppose, though rougher. And that second voice, the man’s voice, shook me out of my stupor, and I stepped all the way into the garden and slipped my hand from their house with the rustle and wheeze of its factory fabrics.
As I moved away, I heard the woman say what sounded like, “the way it was in the movie,” and I could have sworn the man’s answer included “Smithee.” But my ears, I suppose, are no more reliable than my eyes after so many years getting untuned to speech, filling in gaps in what I know of the world with the few names and voices I’ve heard most recently though long ago. So the man sounded like Mr. Crane, and they mentioned someone I knew; my ears filled in empty spaces from memory, like my optimistic eyes sometimes tell me a shape up ahead is my cave but it turns out to be only a shadow.
In my vegetable patch, with the blur of their tent out of sight from most angles, I could pretend I was almost as alone as I wanted to be. My carrots, at least, were right where I’d left them, minus a few given over to rabbits and whoever else had come by. So I pulled up a bunch, brushed them clean of dirt on some grass, and turned back toward the bright orange dam.
But this time, squeezing through the same way I’d come in, I stepped on something so sharp it penetrated the ironclad sole of my foot, an unfamiliar sensation because nothing in this garden has been jagged enough to do that in years. I walk over rocks, over sharp sticks and stingers, without feeling more than slight pressure. No more than I’d feel through a shoe. But this I felt, and it was all I could do not to shout out in pain.
I dropped my carrots and reached for my foot, but stumbled over some piece of the hikers’ campsite—something hard and round, a canister, maybe, because it rolled underfoot and threw me backward into the billowing wall of their tent. The fabric swallowed me like a pebble thrown into the water, and all I could see was a great orange expanse, all ripples and shimmers and shadow and light. I panicked, and thrashed, and I was almost glad, for once, that my eyes were bad so I didn’t have to see myself in that moment of shame.
The hikers, still in their tent, grunted beneath me. I may not weigh much, but I weigh enough to be a surprise when I fall through your wall. I felt them scrambling and squirming. He yelled, something guttural, not a word, and she groaned, then the two of them pushed their way out of the tent, winding me tighter in their wall as they went, and my own thrashing and wriggling probably wasn’t much help.
Then they were outside, standing before me, and she told me to wait, to hold on, and he said, “Settle down, man, settle down.” They grabbed my arms where they reached out of the fabric cloud and pulled me onto my feet. “It’s okay,” she said. “You’re okay.” Then he said, “There’s something in your foot, let me get that,” and the blur of him crouched and reached out for my throbbing foot, still stuck with whatever I’d stepped on. I twisted my body out of his grip and hers, and I almost fell down all over again but somehow I stayed on my feet to hobble away to my cave, led in my blinded confusion by muscle memory or the adrenaline of wounded pride. One of them rushed up from behind and pushed my dropped carrots into my hand, then I felt their pitying eyes on my back with every step.
I sat down on my pallet to take a look at my foot, and what I found was a strange metal pin of some kind, an inch or two long with a knob at one end like the pointers that used to be inside filmstrip projectors. I pulled it out, wincing and biting my tongue, and a blood blossom bloomed where I had been pricked, trickling into the deep cracks and crevasses of my calloused sole.
What I wanted to do was return it, by slashing right through the side of their tent. But instead I tucked whatever it was into one of my wall nooks and left it there for reflecting on later. And to remind me that I’d been provoked to such unwelcome feelings, something else on which I will need to reflect. I get frustrated, sometimes, when things don’t go as I’d like. When a crop fails or I break a finger. I got worked up a few years ago when I tried to build a clay oven and it wouldn’t work no matter how many times I built and rebuilt it. But I haven’t—or hadn’t—felt actual anger, an impulse to rage, for as long as I’ve been in this garden. Until those hikers provoked it.
Until I allowed myself to be provoked, if I’m honest. How fragile and frail my self-sufficiency is if I let others dictate my own feelings for me—others I don’t even know. And I think that’s what bothered me most in the whole awful scene with the tent: I needed their help to get up, I was stuck, and I only stumbled because I’ve gone blind. It was their tent, and if they hadn’t come I may not have fallen right then but I would have fallen on something else in due time, and I’m sure I will fall down again before long. It’s the loss of my safety, of my pure self-reliance, that is worse than losing my eyes.
Perhaps the Old Man has brought them to help me. Perhaps he’s led them here, or perhaps they’ve just come on their own. Whatever it is, I wish he had given me warning. He might have led me to useful reflections before their arrival. But who am I to ask why he does what he does?
I kept an ear out for the hikers approaching as I boiled lunch tea on my fire, afraid their sympathy might bring them over, that the incident had broken the ice and they’d come share my kettle without being asked. And I owe them, of course, after that. I owe them at least a cup of shared tea whether they need it or not. Whether I want to give it or not.
I hope they’ve brought food and drink of their own. My most recent potato harvest was thin, but I have plenty of carrots and beans I might share, and the blackberries and apples grow wild. Lately the fishing hasn’t been great, or I haven’t been great at fishing. It’s hard to tell where my hook hits the water, and if I’m wasting my time in the weeds. I throw a line and I hope for a bite, but I can’t do much to improve my chances these days.
Even as I sat there, my eyes seemed to worsen. The fire a few inches before me lost the licks of its flame. It happens like that for me some days; my sight is dying like weather, I think: sometimes better or worse, more or less noticed, but always there in some form. A breeze kicked up while I sat, though, and brought fiercer crackling into my fire and dusted my legs with fine ash. Across the distance between us I heard snippets of conversation from the direction of the invisible hikers.
The man said something that ended with “if we could ask.”
And the woman replied, “Would he answer?” followed by something I couldn’t make out.
“He might gesture or something,” he told her, and I knew they were talking about me and it made me feel strange. Nauseous, maybe, or dizzy; after not being noticed by anyone for so very long, to have been touched, and helped, and now to be spoken about was a series of staggering blows. My world didn’t feel like my own any more.
“Maybe it’s worth a try,” she said. “Other things aren’t like I expected. It’s much… smaller, I guess.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
I don’t know what they were talking about, or what they want from me. But whatever it is I’ll wait for his word, I’ll wait for the Old Man’s direction. Maybe it will be sharing with them and maybe it won’t,
but so far he’s said nothing and that’s what I’ve done. My birch tea is boiling in case they come calling, in case they rise from their knees and pick up their heads and notice me over my kettle, carried back into my meditations by its sticky steam. It took months, I think, for me to find a bark that made tea worth the name. After I ran out of actual tea leaves a long time ago, the tea leaves Mr. Crane left me, I tried boiling every plant stem and stalk, each color and shape of leaf I could find, and I suffered sour stomachs and bitter taste buds before boiling birch twigs made a brew I was satisfied with. And, birches being one of the few trees I can recognize, I actually know what it is when I drink it, unlike so many of the other things that I tried.
So making tea is one of the greater achievements of my time in the garden, as every cup poured reminds me. Maybe that’s why some small, proud part of me almost hopes that the hikers approach for a cup, while the rest of me hopes they will leave and take their trap of a tent along with them. I should think about that while I’m swimming, I should ask the Old Man if my ego is running away with itself and if the pride I take in my tea might be clouding my mind. I might need to give up drinking it, if it’s become a distraction and if I’m getting carried off course on its steam.
8
The butler ushered me into a room longer than it was wide, lined with bookcases ceiling to floor and its far end a full wall of windows. In front of the glass an enormous desk, as big as my car, spread nearly across the room. There didn’t seem to be enough space to step out from behind it, to squeeze between the desk and the shelves at each end, and I wondered if there was some secret doorway I couldn’t see.
“Good morning, Mr…. ” said my host, seated and half-hidden behind the leviathan.
“Finch,” I replied, trying to be loud enough for him to hear me at the other end of the room, but it came out as a bit of a yell and he may have started in his chair at the sound. Or perhaps he was just leaning back; at that distance, it was hard to tell.
“Mr. Finch, yes.” He looked toward the doorway and said, “Thank you, Smithee.”
“Sir,” said the butler. He left the room and closed the door behind him.
“Come closer, Mr. Finch,” my host said. “Please sit down.” As I walked toward the desk for what seemed like millennia, he asked, “This room… it’s intimidating, isn’t it? Makes you feel small?”
“I… it’s very nice.”
He laughed. “The room’s meant to do that. According to my architect, anyone coming in should be so overwhelmed that they concede to what I ask of them before getting their bearings enough to bargain. It’s built to be the seat of my power. Are you overwhelmed, Mr. Finch?”
I hesitated, concerned this was one of those trick interview questions I’d heard about, and I arrived at the desk before finding an answer.
My host rose from his chair and extended his hand, but I could only reach it by standing on my toes and stretching across the gleaming wood surface. “Wiswall Crane. Thank you for coming.”
I couldn’t tell if he had an accent of some kind, perhaps European, or if he just spoke very clearly in a manner I wasn’t used to.It seemed strange for him to thank me for coming when I’d had so little choice in the matter, when his driver had whisked me away half-asleep and still wearing the same filthy clothes I’d worn for weeks, but he sounded sincere. And I was in no position for making complaints, not knowing where I was, or how I’d gotten there, or—most of all—how to get anywhere else.
Mr. Crane wasn’t much taller than I am, but his rigid posture made the difference seem greater. He filled space like a much larger man. He might have been in his fifties, or perhaps he was twenty years younger; it was hard to guess at his age because he gave the impression of having always been just as he was, never older, never younger, never out of his dark gray suit. His temples flared like white wings on his head and I thought of Mercury’s ankles, wondering if those bright blazes were natural or artificial, strategically bleached to lend him a look of speed and distinction (which they did). Natural or not, he looked as much like a rich, powerful man as the butler had looked like a butler and the chauffeur like a chauffeur. I didn’t know how Mr. Crane made his money, and I never found out, but I could tell right away that he made a whole lot. It wasn’t the room, or not only the room, but the confident way he carried himself. This was a man with a good view of the world from his bathroom window.
He gestured toward a leather wing chair beside me, and I settled into it as gracefully as I could, crossing one leg over the other in what I hoped was a relaxed and confident pose, a pose capable of offsetting the trickles of sweat I felt on my face and dripping from my armpits down over my ribs. I tried to project a confidence that would draw attention away from my weathered flip-flops and filthy T-shirt and shorts and the bird’s nest of hair and beard on my head. I pictured myself as a diorama caveman summoned to a meeting with the museum director, and it reminded me of my final day at Second Nature. I felt like I was about to get fired again rather than interview for what I thought was a job.
Mr. Crane spent a long time looking me over without saying a word, and consulting some papers far away from me on his desk; he looked back and forth between pages and person in a way that made clear the papers had to do with me, but what they said and where that information had come from was as mysterious as everything else about my morning so far. I didn’t know if I was meant to speak, so I didn’t. What could I say, except “Why am I here?”, and I knew he would tell me in time if he was going to tell me at all—why take the risk of being demanding? I looked over his shoulder at the huge window because it seemed like the sort of thing a relaxed person would do as he waited for an inspection of himself to finish.
Behind glass so clear the room was practically open to the outside, a long green slope rolled away from the house. In the near distance there were thick trees and low bushes speckled with flowers, and half-hidden in plants was a mound of gray rocks, like a small mountain standing alone. An impressive, expensive-looking telescope stood on a tripod in front of the window, and I noticed that it was aimed not at the sky as I would have expected but down, toward the ground and the garden. A pair of binoculars and a brass sextant and an elaborate tabletop compass all stood near the window on a low built-in shelf, and they flickered in silvery light from, I supposed, a screen concealed under the desk.
“You answered my email, Mr. Finch. So let me tell you what I’m looking for in this position. It is somewhat… ” Mr. Crane paused mid-sentence, his mouth hanging open just enough to look gracefully thoughtful rather than vacant. His hands froze in a gesture that kept his index fingers and thumbs outstretched toward each other while his other fingers curled in; his hands framed an upside-down heart shape over his chest, and the dark red of his tie made it a heart full of blood.
“It is somewhat unusual,” he finally said.
“Yes, sir,” I replied. I’d never been one for formal titles—ma’ams and sirs and your highnesses—but something about this house, this room, had me speaking like the butler, only, I’m sure, less convincingly. Mr. Crane’s voice had changed as talk turned to business, the jocularity of his greeting replaced with a flat, no-nonsense inflection, and while it wasn’t as friendly, I was more comfortable with it. This was what I expected an employer to sound like, not lamenting the design of his office or asking my opinion about it, but sharpening his point before pinning me down.
“It’s a demanding position. Full-time, residential. I’ll be looking for a multiyear commitment. After a probationary period, naturally.”
He seemed to have skipped over telling me what the job was, or else I had missed it, but it seemed too late to stop him and ask, to backtrack and confess that my mind had wandered while he was talking. So I let him go on, not that he sounded like a man who could be stopped by much. He was reassuring that way, wearing his authority right on his sleeve but in a quiet way that made me more relaxed the longer he spoke.
“There won’t be much opportunity for contact with
your family or friends, or… with anyone, really. But I don’t imagine that will be much of a problem for a man of your constrained social circles.”
“No, I… I don’t think so,” I said, and wondered what was in his file, the same sort of plain beige folder the submanager had opened before me at Second Nature. Did he have my accumulated history of browsing and searching?
Mr. Crane laughed, and leaned toward me. His arms didn’t look long enough to reach from one side of the desk to the other, but somehow he managed to rest his hands on both ends at once. “But you’d like to know what on earth I’m talking about before you agree.”
“I guess so, yes, sir. If you don’t mind.”
He stood up and moved toward a bookcase, drawing a thick leather-bound volume from a shelf but not opening it. “What we need to know about a people, Mr. Finch, we know from their gardens.” He turned to the window, his back toward me and the book still in his hand. “The French like everything ordered. Straight lines, trimmed hedges, paths lined with coral or stone. The French keep a businesslike garden. They know where everything is, when it will grow, what will grow in time to take its place. Everything under control.” He slapped his palm against the book when he said, “control,” not hard, but it made a loud, punctuating sound.
