by Ruth Ozeki
“What can I do for you, Officers?” Setting the mugs in front of them. Steady. Remembering to give them spoons.
I glanced at their faces as they loaded up their coffees. They could be brothers or cousins or clones, one a bit older, the other still damp. The two of them stirred their coffees in unison. I watched their spoons going ’round and ’round. They were solid-looking men. Pleasant. Respectable. Nice Jack Mormons, sneaking a cup of oversweetened hot caffeine. The older one wore a badge, identifying him as the sheriff. I put him in his mid-forties, balding and thick around what had once been a waist. He had the fair skin of a blond, ravaged by the sun and the wind and a lousy diet. His face was spread with a fine network of exploded capillaries. He cleared his throat.
“Sorry to bother you, Miz Fuller. With your daddy being so sick and all.” I nodded graciously. Of course. They were here to deliver their condolences. On behalf of the entire department.
“I got nothing but respect for Lloyd Fuller,” the sheriff continued.
As it should be.
“Course, some folks had a problem with him over the years on account of those crazy ideas of his, but it ain’t him we come about.”
It ain’t?
“It’s them other people. The ones you been allowing to stay on your daddy’s property here. That gang of hippies.”
He said the word “hippies” like he was hawking up a ball of phlegm and blowing it out his lips. I looked at his face again and saw that it was not pleasant anymore, but stupid and cruel. He caught my eye.
“What about them?” I could feel the tremor in my voice, a jaggedy rise in pitch caused by the constriction in my throat, as the whole script unrolled before me: the Spudnik, busted for the narcotics that those hippies were most certainly carrying; me, convicted of harboring drug dealers and being an accessory to the crime; my kids, sent into foster care on some brutal farm, while I served time in the Power County penitentiary. Oh, please, God, get me out of Idaho, and I promise I’ll never set foot here again.
“Well, we’re just keeping an eye on them. They were involved in a ruckus at the potato-processing plant over in Pocatello the other day, and yesterday some property got defaced in the Stop-N-Save. We got complaints about them disturbing the peace at the school, too. Maybe you heard about that?”
You could look at it that way. Daisy had disturbed my peace with his basket of flyers, never mind the entire gang moving into my parents’ driveway.
“You could talk to them,” I said. “I don’t know where they are, but I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”
“Oh, we know where they are,” the sheriff said. “They’re over at the public library. Right now it’s you we want to talk to. The reason we’re here, Miz Fuller, is we wanted to know what your connection is. We figured you must know them, since you’re letting ’em stay here.”
This was easy. “There’s no connection,” I said confidently. “Absolutely none. I don’t know them at all. It’s my father and mother they came here to see. They’re interested in the seeds.”
The sheriff was watching me closely. He didn’t say anything.
“You know. Fullers’ Seeds.” I was anxious to clear up this confusion, to get the answer right, but I was speaking too quickly. “My parents’ business? Of course, it’s not much of a business, more like a hobby, really. They’re retired. It keeps them busy. . . .”
“Well, Miz Fuller,” he said, “we don’t have a problem with your parents’ business either. My ma buys kales and lettuces off them, and she gets a good crop of greens, if you like that sort of thing. It’s these other folks we’re concerned with.” The sheriff grinned then, and I thought I saw a flicker of malice kindle in his pale blue gaze. Like he knew me. Like all of a sudden this was personal. “We thought that what with your background and all, you mighta had some previous acquaintance. . . .”
I heard my children in the yard, and the screen door slammed. My heart stopped. I wanted to jump up and scream, No! Don’t come here. Fly away! Fly away! but I couldn’t move. The kids, well trained about cops, braked at the threshold. Their voices fell silent, replaced by the tiny, insistent peeping of a baby chick. Phoenix couldn’t keep his lip from curling. Ocean had her hands cupped in front of her heart, and the peeping was coming from there.
“Billy Odell?”
It was Cass. She had come up behind the kids and now stepped between them and into the kitchen. She held out her hand to the sheriff, who got to his feet.
“Hey, Cassie. Long time no see.”
“What are you doing here, Billy?” She helped herself to Mr. Coffee. “Dropping by to say hi to Lloyd?”
“Yeah, well, partly.” He turned to me. The malice was gone now, and his eyes were just plain dull blue. “How’s your daddy doing anyhow?”
“He’s fine,” I said automatically. “He’s dying. Want to see him?”
“Oh, Yummy,” Cass said. “Lloyd isn’t going anywhere for a good while yet.”
“I didn’t say he was going anywhere. Why should he? He’s exactly where he wants to be.”
Cass exchanged a look with Sheriff Billy Odell. The name sounded familiar. I wanted to smoke a cigarette. I got up and dug around in the junk drawer for the pack I’d hidden. Ocean eyed me from the threshold, cupping the chick in her hands, but she didn’t say a word.
“Go find a box for that bird before you suffocate it,” I told her, but neither she nor Phoenix moved. I lit up and inhaled and felt better immediately. “The sheriff was asking about the Seeds,” I said to Cass. “There was some kind of trouble at the Stop-N-Save.”
“What kind of trouble?” Cass asked.
Sheriff Odell hesitated. “Some jokers went and put a bunch of stickers all over the potato products in the frozen-food section.”
“Stickers?”
“With a skull and crossbones,” the younger officer said. “Like they was poison. A couple of the employees said they saw some hippie-looking kids hanging around. Fits the description.”
“What do they have against potatoes?” I was feeling conversational all of a sudden, but no one answered. Cass just frowned at me, and Odell shrugged.
“Couple days ago we got a heads-up from Pocatello. This same gang was demonstrating illegally at the plant over there and harassing the workers when they come off shift with some kind of communist propaganda.”
“Oh, well,” said Cass. “I know about that, and it’s a lot of baloney. My cousin works at the plant, and I heard what happened.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Exactly nothing. One of them got dressed up like a Mr. Potato Head toy, and the rest of them passed out some brochures, is all.” She turned back to the younger cop. “Aren’t you the Patterson boy?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How’s your ma? She still in chemo?”
“No, ma’am. She’s all done with that. Doc says she came through just fine.”
“I’m glad to hear it. You tell her Cassie Quinn said hi.”
Cass really knew how to deal with law enforcement. I was impressed.
“For goodness sakes, Yummy!” she said when she had seen the sheriff to the door. “That was Billy Odell. You used to go out with him. How could you not remember?”
Phoenix, hearing this, gave me the stinkeye and left the room, but I could tell he was sticking nearby. Sometimes he treats me like I’m the one who needs looking after. When he was little, he used to crawl up onto my lap and play patty-cake with my cheeks, holding my face between his small palms. “Calm down, Mommy,” he’d say, looking deep into my eyes. “I love you.”
Now he just wants to reject me.
“I never went with Billy Odell,” I called, loud enough so that Phoenix would hear.
Technically it was true, even though Cass’s words had brought to mind the image of Billy Odell putting his hand inside my top and pawing my breast, what little of it there was at the time. We were thirteen, and it was his birthday party, and we were down in his parents’ cellar.
I remembered the splintery wood digging through the thin fabric of my dress, and the cobwebs, and the row of canning jars filled with pickled vegetables trembling on the shelf as he knocked me against it. We used to call it dry humping, and there was never any question of letting him go further. He got so mad at me for not wanting to put my hand on the hot, upholstered lump that was his penis, he almost started to cry. He called me a cock tease. He moaned and told me his balls would turn blue and fall off and it would all be my fault. Lousy birthday. Should I have jerked him off? I didn’t think so at the time, but who knew he’d become sheriff?
“I can’t believe you forgot,” Cass said. She turned her back to Ocean, who was still hanging around the doorway. “You let him go to second base,” she mouthed in my direction.
How did Cass remember things like this? From upstairs I heard Lloyd calling. He must have heard the sheriff’s truck drive away. Cass was holding up two fingers. “Billy used to make a peace sign like this and say ‘Hay! Farm out!’ It was his quote in the yearbook, remember?”
“Okay, stop. Enough. I remember.” I glared at Ocean, who was cupping the chick against her chest in one hand and raising the two fingers of the other. “Don’t,” I told her. “Go upstairs and tell your grandpa that everything’s fine, then find a box for that poor bird before you crush it.”
“I can’t,” Ocean said importantly. “Chicken Little is imprinting on me. That’s her name. Wanna see?” She approached and parted her thumbs. A tiny beak poked out from the opening, and I could see the chick’s bright, beady eye. “Okay, that’s enough,” Ocean said, sealing up the small cave of her hands. “I don’t want her to imprint on you.”
“Gee, thanks.” It was heartwarming, the confidence my kids had in me.
“Cass said I could keep her if you said okay. Okay?”
“Okay.”
She skipped off to join her brother in the living room. We heard her bellow, “Hay! Farm out!” followed by the sound of Phoenix, groaning like he’d been bludgeoned. I waited until I heard my daughter’s small feet pattering up the stairs and into Lloyd’s bedroom, then I lit another cigarette.
“How do you remember this stuff?” I asked Cass.
“You know what it’s like here. It’s not as if a whole lot happens. Good thing you’re back—”
“Glad to oblige.”
“—with a brood of fatherless children and a gang of dirty commie hippies in tow. No wonder Billy is nervous.”
“For your information, all my children have fathers. And I didn’t bring the hippies. They just appeared. And if they’re in trouble with the police, they’ll just have to disappear.” As soon as I said the words, I regretted them, because Phoenix materialized in the doorway, followed by Ocean. I reached for the ashtray.
“It’s okay, Mom,” Ocean said philosophically, eyeing the cigarette. “You can’t help that you’re an addict.”
“You can’t make them go,” Phoenix said.
“Why not?”
“Because they’re our friends.”
“No they’re not, Phoenix,” I said. “I know the type. They’re parasites and freeloaders.”
“No they’re not. They’re—”
Cass interrupted. “Phoenix, you promised to help your sister set up a box and a broody light for that chick, remember?”
Phoenix gave me an evil look, then stomped out the door. Ocean followed, rattling down the steps, crying out, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” Just then we heard the sound of an RV lumbering into the driveway. From the window I could see my children running to meet it. The armored door opened and the Spudnik sucked them up inside like an alien vessel.
I turned to Cass. “I’m telling you, if the cops are nosing around now, it’s only a matter of time before they come back with a warrant, and I guarantee that Winnebago has enough stuff in it to get us all thrown in jail.”
“What do you mean, stuff?” Cass asked.
“Drugs. Pot. Pakalolo. Illegal substances.”
“Oh.” Cass frowned and took a sip of her coffee. “You think so?”
“Believe me.” I got up and cleared the mugs off the table, still half filled with thick, sweet coffee. I dumped them in the sink and squirted detergent inside, running scalding water into them until the suds started to spill over the rim. “I know the scene.”
Cass still looked dubious. “They seem okay,” she said. “The French girl’s going to have a baby.”
“Oh, God. That’s just what we need.”
Lloyd called from upstairs. “Is anybody there? I need some help!”
I groaned and clutched the edge of the sink.
Cass shook her head. “Face it, Yum. It’s too much for you to manage on your own. And once planting starts, I’m not going to have a minute free—”
From outside came the sound of feet marching up the porch steps and voices singing, “ ‘With a chick chick here, and a chick chick there. Here a chick, there a chick. Everywhere a chick chick. . . .’ ”
The screen door burst open, and the parade trooped into the kitchen. Y led them, dressed in his caftan and a down vest. Lilith, draped in tie-dye, beads, and tinkling bells, walked with Ocean, who now carried the chick in an upside-down crocheted hat. Frankie and Charmey followed, side by side. Geek guided Momoko carefully by the arm, and Phoenix brought up the rear, slouching, but looking smug.
“Oh, great,” I said. “A convention.” My mother was wearing a ratty knitted shawl with crazy rainbow stripes and long beaded fringes. “What’s she doing with you? I thought she was in the greenhouse.”
Y held up his palms in a position of surrender.
“Whoa, Yummy, dude, stay chill. We just took her for a little drive into town. She was helping us get a library card.”
“Melvin!” Lloyd’s plaintive voice drifted down from the second floor.
I looked at Y. “Melvin, he wants you.”
“My name’s Y.”
“My name’s Yumi.”
Y headed for the stairs. “I’ll go see what he needs. Then let’s meet in the parlor. It’s less smoky in there.”
“What we’d like to propose,” Geek said, “is that you let us stay here through a growing season.”
They had me surrounded and immobilized, sunk in my father’s old checkered recliner. Cass sat at Lloyd’s desk, looking on. Momoko was perched on the love seat, with Geek at her feet. The rest of them sat cross-legged on the fraying rug.
“It’s March now,” he continued. “That would mean until September.”
I frowned. “And why should we let you do that?”
“Well, for one thing we can help with the seeds, right, Momoko?”
He tapped her knee. Momoko blinked, then nodded. Geek shook his head. “It’s amazing! I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Like what?” Cass asked.
“Their operation. The greenhouse. The warehouse.” Geek paused, inclining toward Ocean and Phoenix. “It’s like a vault,” he breathed, infusing his voice with an undercurrent of awe that worked like magic, pulling them in. “A vault, full of treasures—”
“Treasures!” Ocean echoed. I watched her warily.
“Or more like an ancient, dusty library, maybe. Shelf upon shelf filled with rare and valuable books. . . .” He paused to contemplate the effect of this metaphor.
“What do you mean?” Phoenix, too, was riveted. He didn’t even like books.
Geek paused to let the image ripen, but I interrupted.
“And how exactly does all that pertain to us?”
He sighed and gave me a rueful smile. “You teach literature, right? So what you are sitting on here at Fullers’ Seeds is a library containing the genetic information of hundreds, maybe thousands of seeds—rare fruits and flowers and vegetables, heritage breeds many of them, and lots of exotics. These seeds embody the fruitful collaboration between nature and humankind, the history of our race and our migrations. Talk about narrative!”
“Here?”
“Yeah. In the
shed.” He gestured out back. “And the greenhouse and the fields. I don’t know whether you care or not, but some of these seeds could be the last specimens of their kind left on the planet! Momoko has been collecting them for almost half a century. She and Lloyd have been planting them out, year after year, to keep them viable.”
He turned to the children.
“Kids,” he exclaimed. “Your grandparents are planetary heroes!” The light from the late-afternoon sun, slanting though the window, glinted off the thick lenses of his glasses.
“Heroes?” Phoenix asked.
“They’re saving these plants from extinction. It’s such crucial work! We’ve got to help them stop the genetic erosion of the earth’s ecosystem. We’ve got to act now!”
“And why is that?” Casting my parents as planetary heroes was the last straw. I thought they were merely prophets of the Revolution.
Geek lowered his voice and glanced up at Momoko. She was dozing. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was open.
“Their storage system is a mess,” he said softly. “They’ve got thousands of different kinds of seeds in shoe boxes and envelopes and canning jars. A lot of them are unmarked. It’s an archival nightmare.” He paused as my mother let out a soft snore.
“So?”
He looked at me, and I was startled by the seriousness of his expression. Maybe I had read him wrong. Maybe this wasn’t just rhetoric.
“She’s forgetting the names,” he said. “If no one knows what they are, and if no one plants them, the seeds and their stories will die.”
“But what about Lloyd?” Cass asked. “Can’t he remember?”
Y spoke up then. “Well, that’s the drag, you see. Lloyd’s mind is okay”— he glanced up toward the stairs—“it’s his body. Between his colon and his heart, I don’t think he’ll last out the growing season.”
So I capitulated, with the provision that the Seeds divest themselves of illegal substances while on the property and refrain from political agitation within the county line. The children were happy, and, watching them, I started to feel an overwhelming sense of relief as well. Charmey said she would help with the cooking. Y and Lilith would see to Lloyd’s needs. Geek and Frankie would work with Momoko in the garden, first cataloging, then planting, and finally with the harvest. It seemed too good to be true. My mind slid over the inevitable, and I focused on short-term possibilities. If this worked out, maybe I could leave, take the kids back to Hawaii, as long as I came back at the end, to wrap things up. After dinner I lit a cigarette and walked outside into the garden.
