Following Brenda through another swinging door, which led out back, they found Mrs. Ballard seated in a great rattan chair with a spreading back like cobra's hood. She was sitting in the cool of the shade offered by the trellis porch, which took up almost the entire back of the house. Lee found himself wondering if that chair had come from one of those far off places in one of the pictures he'd just passed.
The old lady eyed Lee suspiciously, as though for a moment she thought he was there to sell her Little League candy or greeting cards.
"I was wondering if you were going to show up,” she said at last, folding her newspaper in her lap.
"Sorry, ma'am,” Lee apologized, though he didn't really know what for. This was one of Lee's prime rules for success as a kid. When dealing with adults, no matter what they said to you, it was usually a good strategy to respond with an apology.
The old lady reached out a spidery hand and seized a small glass of orange juice from the table by her side. Her long, tenuous fingers trembled as she put the small juice glass to her lips, and then, surprisingly, she threw a gulp down the back of her throat, just as Lee has seen his dad do when he and Uncle Ed were taking shots of liquor. Her breakfast done, Mrs. Ballard rose from the chair, using her thin arms as wobbly supports, the loose skin swaying with every straining tendon.
For a moment, Lee thought he should try to help her, but being a good judge of people, he refrained, instinct telling him it would not be appreciated.
Once up, she moved with that same peculiar gliding motion he had witnessed in the parlor, appearing to float along rather than walk. From a peg by the exit to the grounds, she donned an enormous sunbonnet, tying it with a bright sash, trapping the gray folds of skin dangling loosely from under her chin. Adjusting the bonnet to get the fit just right on her hair, she then led the way through the open arbor doorway and out into the bright June morning.
She had said nothing, but her manner spoke that she expected for Lee to follow.
He hung back a bit, but stayed with her. For some reason he felt funny about walking right by her side.
Without even looking to confirm that he was behind her, she set upon the descriptions of the tasks at hand.
"As you see, I've got quite a lot of roses planted.” She spread her arms out with her hands palms up and gracefully turned all the way about. “I just love my roses. Yellows, reds, pinks, they're all my favorites."
Stopping, she reached out and fingered a dry, green leaf. “It's such a shame. They're just withering away."
For a moment Lee though she was actually going to cry. But that emotion fled quickly and she was instantaneously recomposed with her dour and suspicious scowl.
Lee surveyed the back yard, or grounds, as the garden might be more appropriately called. Along the back of the house where they had just come from, was an immense balcony, which wrapped from one side of the second floor to the other. Below it, an intricate white trellis, thick with a thatch of thorny creeper roses stretched the entire length, creating a shady patio or arbor. But not a single flower was to be seen, anywhere, just the shriveled up buds like bad, brown Brussels sprouts, and lots and lots of sharp looking thorns.
Catching site of a figure, he started, thinking someone else was out in the garden with them. But quickly he recognized it for a statue. It was a life-sized rendering of a young woman in a flowing gown, actually more like a sheer nightdress than something to be worn out in public. She was shapely and beautiful, like a wood nymph or a sprite, but had an odd look on her pretty, young face, as though she was lost or confused. The artist's positioning of her body was as though she was striding into a stiff wind, perhaps in search of a lost lover. Comically, Lee thought, maybe she just looked stupid because she was squinting and really only needed some glasses.
This reminded him that he and Ronnie had been known to do a little statue dressing up every now and then. There was a bronze statue in the park down by the courthouse titled: “The Mother of the Confederacy.” Once, they had snuck out at night and dressed the mother of the Confederacy in one of Ronnie's mom's old bras Ronnie had purloined from the clothesline. The statue was life-sized, and the busty woman was standing resolutely below a flowing confederate flag, the pole gripped in both hands as she faced the invisible Yankees. When Lee first had the idea, it took him a little while of thinking about before he solved the question of how they would get the bra around the woman's chest. They'd had to take the feminine contraption apart to get the shoulder straps around the arms and over the shoulders. As much as it had been fun, it had been educational. Lee had filed away the workings of the garment for the future, in case he ever had the opportunity to work on a live one.
He came back to himself, and didn't even realize he was staring, but he could quite realistically make out the girl's erect nipples through the artist's carefully detailed representation of the gauzy fabric of her garment. Looking further down he was thrilled he could see the artist had paid equally close attention to anatomic detail in the area where the fabric was pinched between her legs.
"I bet you've never seen grounds like these before, have you, boy?” Mrs. Ballard said snapping Lee back to attention.
"No ma'am,” he replied truthfully, and more that a little embarrassed because Mrs. Ballard had undoubtedly caught him looking.
"Right after the war, in 1946, we planted over two hundred rose bushes,” she stated primly. “The smell of the flowers in the spring was just heavenly.” She cleared her throat, forcing Lee to take his eyes off of the girl. “It was Walter who collected these statues on a trip to Italy.” She scowled a bit, then added, “some of them are a bit too arty for my taste, like that young girl you seem to be so attentive of."
Lee hung his head and stared at his feet.
"My favorites are the children,” she said.
"Children?” Lee looked about. “Where?"
"They're around somewhere.” She looked around, for a moment displaying that exact same confused look as the girl. “They're a boy and a girl.” She put her hand down near her hip. “About so high."
"How many statues do you have, Mrs. Ballard?"
From where Lee stood he could only see the girl.
"A half dozen or so, I think."
"Maybe somebody stole the others,” he offered, shading his eyes.
"Not very likely,” she said perfunctorily. “But, they are valuable, real Valencia marble, you know."
Lee nodded dramatically to show he was properly impressed, but unfortunately Mrs. Ballard didn't see the gesture as she had suddenly given her attention to fingering a dried up rose bud.
Looking again, Lee noticed something else about the statue just didn't look right; she must have been holding her right arm around her back. But when Lee moved over to get a better angle, he saw that her arm was missing, the break was smooth and clean right at the shoulder, as though the limb had been carefully taken off with a masonry saw.
"The other statues must be hidden amongst the bushes,” he thought. It was difficult to get a clear and unobstructed view for any distance. Spreading out behind the house, presumably all the way down to the river, were various organized clumps of rose bushes, trellises, and ornamental shrubby trees that were probably placed by the landscape designer to imitate an actual formal European garden somewhere. Now though, the pattern, if any, was lost, at least to Lee's eyes. The whole thing was a jumble, almost a maze. And of course, it didn't help in the effort to create a beautiful and elegant effect that to either side, like dark castle walls in a fairy story imprisoning the garden, was the host of dead cherry trees, again standing in their stark and precise rows, marching all the way down to the river. Just like those out front of the estate, all of the dead giants had their smaller limbs lopped off at the joints and the stumps sealed with pitch.
Again walking along behind, Lee almost asked her why the cherry trees had been destroyed, but held his tongue. Something in Mrs. Ballard's attitude made him doubt she would have answered him anyway. It wasn't entirely tha
t she was a grown up and he was just a kid. But it was definitely there. Keeping two steps back as she walked down the stone step path, Lee knew it would be best to be quiet and just listen as much as possible. “Don't speak until spoken to,” and, “Children should be seen and not heard,” echoed through his mind as surely as though the old lady had spoken the phrases to him out loud.
Just ahead, off to the side of the path they were on, was a single out building, the only structure around other than the gardener's shed he'd seen over by the garage. This was a shy, little, white house, which seemed to present itself as something starkly foreign and entirely alone.
Coming up on it, the little house appeared exactly square, with an overhanging section of gray shingle roof in the front, which came down to protect the entry into the front door during a rain. It wasn't a child's playhouse, and it wasn't a full sized building either, but something in between. And helping add to the strangeness of its appearance, it had large windows, like those from a normal full-sized house, one on each side and one in the front by the door, which helped create a disconcerting and odd architectural perspective.
Lee could easily see inside. There were no curtains or blinds in the starkly naked windows. Peering through to the back, he could see the blank interior back wall had no window. Instead, there was only a door, not in the center, but off to the side, which would surely have to open into the addition, which slanted down like a basement access, disappearing into the earth below.
Something about the place drew his eye. There was no putting a finger on the queer effect looking at had on him. The thing just seemed to stick out, oddly out of place, incongruent, and just kind of wrong. Maybe part of the blame was caused by the ultra bright white of the exterior paint, which glared painfully in the wash of the sun. It was difficult for Lee to look at the little house without shielding his eyes, as it seemed to give off far more light than that which could possibly have been reflected naturally.
Now that they were getting closer, Lee could perceive an awful stillness within, as though the air inside never moved or wasn't really even air at all, but something different. It had that queer effect on him, the same as the vacant house next door to the Leroy's. The creepy sensation was not at all unlike peering in through the glass at a sealed exhibit of posed wax figures at a museum. Real but unreal. Looking in, he couldn't help but feel what it felt like to be inside, the quiet, the emptiness, even the dry, musty smell, he was sure was there. The inside had been painted more than once, and the white on white was peeling, revealing the slightly different shades of layered white and gray. As far as for anything inside, all Lee could see was a vinyl topped, folding card table and a single straight-backed wooden chair, not facing the table or the windows, but directed towards the narrow back door.
"This is my sewing room,” Mrs. Ballard pointed to the little house as they stood in front on the walk. “For some reason, Mr. Ballard said he couldn't tolerate the sound of a sewing machine, the clicking and such.” She shook her head. “He said it drove him to frustration, so he had this built for me outside here. Isn't it lovely?"
She stopped and raised her hands up, and then brought her fingers together pinching an imaginary baton and waving it about as though directing a symphony orchestra.
Lee was too polite to say anything.
Suddenly, she stopped her conducting and faced Lee. “If you must know, I don't really sew any more, but since Walter passed on, I feel drawn to the quiet it affords me. And I don't like to have my solace disturbed. Understand boy?"
Lee shrugged as he nodded. He hadn't planned to ask her about whether or not she sewed. If he were going to ask her about anything it would have been about why Mr. Ballard had done what he'd done to the cherry trees.
Unknown to either one, from an upstairs bedroom window, Brenda watched the two as they moved down the walk. She held back the curtain lightly with her fingers and looked out. Mrs. Ballard floating along, with the young boy following behind, close enough to listen, but not too close. After a long while of watching in silence, she let the curtain fall back into place and went back to her chores.
Continuing on, they came down a fold of the land, which created a rolling split-level to the property. Lee could see the end of the grounds marked by the rising bluffs of the far side of the river on the other side of a thick tangle of growth. There, along what must be a sudden drop off to the river below was an enormous mound of dirt, like the beginning of an earthen dike covered with a blanket of weeds and even a few small, scraggly trees.
Mrs. Ballard stopped and pointed to the pile of dirt and clay.
"That's the earth they dug out when they put in the bomb shelter. I want you to dig that out and use that rich soil to replace the spent soil all along the arbor trellis and in all the other rose beds."
"That will take all summer,” Lee thought to himself, at first overwhelmed by the scale of the job.
As though she read his mind, Mrs. Ballard continued, “I'd imagine if you work hard, it shouldn't take you more than six or seven days to do the whole thing. That is if you don't dawdle, but work hard. And I want you to be careful digging up the roses so as not to damage the roots. Plants can endure a lot, like people. But sever the roots and they'll surely die."
She glared at him covering her stark, white eyes with her shaky hand to shade them from the sun. “Do you think you can handle a big job like this?"
"Yes, ma'am,” answered Lee. As soon as he had said it, he was convinced his entire summer was lost.
"We'll see,” she said, turning back up the walk.
Lee was surprised to suddenly notice another statue, starkly white, just like the girl. It was of a man, in a Dutch Master's kind of Renaissance plumed hat. He appeared to be lurking in the bushes, so that Lee could only make out the man's shoulders and head. Lee was so caught up by the shock of the appearance of the figure he didn't notice Mrs. Ballard had started back up the walk, and he had to hurry a few steps to catch back up with her.
For a while neither one said a thing.
"Mrs. Ballard?” Lee finally asked, coming up along side. “Why don't you have your regular yard man do this? I mean, if he's already working for you? I imagine he could—"
She cut him off. “He's one of those high-toned Nigras.” She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. “I've talked to him about it, but he says that he's allergic to rose thorns, if you can believe something like that?” From her tone, she obviously didn't. “All that folderol aside,” she said a real bitterness showing through, “with what he charges me an hour, and how slow he works at anything other than cutting the grass, I just couldn't afford it."
"Yeah right,” thought Lee. “Like she couldn't afford anything. Everybody has Valencia marble statues in their back yard."
Mrs. Ballard stopped when they arrived back at the entrance to the arbor patio.
"The shovel and wheelbarrow are in the shed back by the motor car garage. You can go ahead and get started right now if you think you can do the job.” With a twist of her wrist, she looked at her watch, a beautiful little heart-shaped silver affair with a ring of diamonds around the face. “But, I won't pay you for a full day. Not unless you do a full day's work."
"Mrs. Ballard?” Lee stepped up and faced her squarely. He looked up at the thatch of brambles and thorns that covered the latticework walls and then caught Mrs. Ballard eye-to-eye. “I can do the job, and I'll do a good job, too. But, two dollars a day isn't enough for all this work."
She glared at him as though he had just reached out and poked her with a pin.
Undaunted, Lee stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his blue jeans and gave her his serious look. “I'll do it for five dollars a day. I'll work just like a grown up from eight to five, only taking breaks for lunch and water."
The dour old lady and the resolute boy faced each other down. It was a shame that Norman Rockwell wasn't there to paint the scene.
"I imagine in gall alone you'd be worth ten dollars,” she said at last. “Go on, get
started. But remember I'll be watching you. A full day's work for a full day's pay. And you won't get a cent from me until the job is done. And done to my satisfaction."
Lee nodded and held out his hand to shake on it.
She turned, dismissing him with a funny flip of her wrist and faded into the shadows of the entry.
"You'll like what you see,” Lee called after her, not knowing if she heard him.
That afternoon, when he dragged his weary body home, burnt by the sun and scratched by so many thorns he looked like he'd had a fight with an army of cats, he seriously considered not going back the next day. But at dinner, his dad and Maggie had both complimented him on being so responsible, telling him that he was showing that he was becoming a young man.
Patty, though, had been horrified by the cuts all over Lee's hands. His hands and fore arms were ravaged by the sharp thorns, which absolutely covered every inch of the wicked tendrils and stalks. Patty said it looked like he'd stuck his hands in the lawn mower.
Lee held them up, moving them back and forth, to show everyone the damage.
"You should wear some gloves,” Maggie suggested. “There's nothing worse than rose thorn scratches."
His dad had agreed and told him he should go poke around in the garage tomorrow morning and look for a pair of work gloves.
Despite the first day, that night, in bed, band-aids and iodine on his fingers, Lee decided he'd definitely go back in the morning. He felt compelled to, almost like it was a dare. It was something about Mrs. Ballard's attitude, how she'd said: “If you think you can do the job?” She had this nasally haughty and all too superior tone. She hadn't come right out and called him white trash, but he knew it had been there between them all the time they'd been together. He'd recognized it in how she called her yardman a “Nigra.” And she'd shown it the other day with Maggie, too. He knew people like her all too well. He knew kids whose parents were well off and they looked down on others because of it. They were the same people who usually treated the coloreds poorly, and used the word Nigras instead of saying what they were really thinking. And God, he hated that holier than thou attitude. Just because you have to work for a living or your skin isn't white, they felt they were better than you. He'd been in a number of fights with other boys over just this sort of thing. He was determined to show that sour old lady what a Coombs could do. And he didn't feel the least bit guilty anymore about the eggs and toilet paper he, Ronnie, and Art had thrown last Halloween.
Evil Heights, Book I: The Midnight Flyer Page 11
