Strangers Among Us

by Kelley Armstrong

  I jumped just now, at the sound of a distant car. They have me on edge, you see. But night is falling as I write, and with it comes the safety of darkness. At twilight, the grass whispers and the leaves mutter to one another. And the smells! It’s impossible to describe the smells—a perfume of cherry blossom, honeysuckle, and magnolia. I know if I put down my pen and stepped off the porch, if I placed a palm on the dew-wet grass, I’d be able to feel the vibrant hum of nature, flowing like a current. This time belongs to things natural and pure. The thought of one of the vans suddenly appearing is not only abhorrent, but unthinkable.

  Disturbing. That is the only word I can think of to describe what I saw today. I was in my garden—carefully pruning my clematis—when I heard the unmistakeable purr of an approaching van. I reached for my notebook (which I always keep at the ready) and jotted down the time, as per my custom. But I was to witness something new. Instead of cruising past, the van began slowing down. I watched in horror as it pulled to a stop in front of Mrs. Crenshaw’s place, and two figures (I hesitate to call them men) clambered out. They wore white jumpsuits, like painter’s coveralls, along with white hats, white gloves, and white boots. Surgeons’ masks muzzled their mouths, and clear plastic safety goggles obscured their eyes. These goggles, like the license plates of their vans, seemed to constantly reflect sunlight, making it impossible to see anything behind the lenses. Petrified, I watched these men open the rear doors of the van and unload a large supply of everyday gardening tools. I found that more alarming than if they had pulled out an arsenal of weapons: machine guns, bazookas, crates of grenades. For they acted as soldiers, and it was this incongruity—between their military manner and the banal nature of their task, which unsettled me most.

  The first one slipped a pesticide pack on his back and immediately set to dosing Mrs. Crenshaw’s entire yard, like a marine spraying a flamethrower. Meanwhile, the other turned his motorized trimmer on her privet hedges, shearing the tops and sides with mercenary precision. Last, they attacked the lawn, which was cropped until it resembled a monstrous putting green. The whole incident seemed to occur in fast-motion, as if I were watching a film being played back at twice the normal speed. Before I could make a single note, the tools were disappearing back into the van. One worker slipped behind the wheel while the other deposited something in Mrs. Crenshaw’s mailbox. Then the engine purred to life. Both doors swung shut, scarcely audible. Wheels turned silently on silky-smooth tarmac.

  They were gone.

  The world slipped back into real-time. The street was quiet, dead, save for the chirruping of a lone blackbird overhead. Nobody else had witnessed the travesty. I was shaken and stunned, almost shell-shocked, but I walked—as casually as possible—over to Mrs. Crenshaw’s, and checked in her mailbox. Within was a quarter sheet of white paper. Plain black letters in a nondescript font read: Your lawn has been serviced. That was all. It was so shockingly absolute I dropped the paper as if it were infected, diseased, contagious. I rushed home, slamming the door and snapping the deadbolt behind me.

  In my notebook I wrote: They have stepped up operations.

  The rest of the week has proved me right.

  Just as the sight of cruising vans became familiar, so too have the sightings of men in white suits. A day doesn’t pass when I fail to spot them, on our block or those nearby, wielding their vast array of weapons: lawnmowers, trimmers, clippers, hedgers, saws, power rakes, edgers, rollers. From daybreak until twilight they are busy, like swarms of ravenous white ants scrambling over the city. They fill clear plastic bags with grass clippings, weeds, twigs, moss, flowers, leaves—anything. Anything that stands in the way of their generic, pristine lawns.

  This afternoon I had a harrowing encounter with Mrs. Crenshaw. In the middle of loading sacks of fertilizer on my flatbed for the weekly deliveries, I stood up to find her hovering nearby. Rake-thin, long-limbed, and hook-nosed, she had the look of a wingless, featherless bird. I forced myself to smile, even asked after her health. Perfectly familiar, perfectly friendly, even though all our previous conversations (or altercations) had been based around my unruly lawn encroaching on her pruned paradise.

  Yet she had a smile for me, as well. Quite dazed. It matched the look in her eyes: as if she were gazing through me rather than at me. Encouraged by this congeniality, I asked her about the vans, and the men I’d seen. “Oh yes,” she said, her smile broadening. “Them. I hired them, you see? I am weary of my lawn. It is so much easier to let them take care of it.” I pressed her further, asking who ‘they’ were and how she had contacted them. To these queries, she merely waved her hand airily. She’s not quite sure, she told me. Perhaps on the internet, or in the phone book. Perhaps through a friend. It’s even possible, it seemed to her, that she hadn’t hired them at all. But what troubled me most was the dull, glazed expression on her face—like a lobotomy patient. As if she herself, like her lawn, had undergone some kind of treatment. She, oblivious to my suspicions, began to wax enthusiastic about ‘them,’ telling me I should consider hiring them to take care of my own ‘yard problems.’ She said ‘them’ like their service was some kind of a miracle cure, a new drug her doctor had prescribed. Soon it will be the talk of the town, she promised me.

  Them.

  This week I have recorded other incidents that confirm my fears. The jottings in my journal are no longer concerned with which lawn seed to use in spring, or the best way to cultivate wisteria. No, it reads now like a military log for what I am beginning to think of as ‘The Resistance.’ The Resistance of one. In this way I have kept track of their activities. They are at the university, tearing up boulevards, yanking out shrubs, hacking down trees. They are down in the city’s parks, laying generic strips of turf, slashing back hedges, gutting flower beds. They are on every corner, every street, shameless now, gaining momentum. Even as I write this I can hear them working on our boulevard. The harsh whine of their machinery rises in the air, like the buzz of swarming locusts. There is no foreseeable end to it. They won’t stop until they’ve slashed every tree, lawn and hedge into submission, until they’ve eradicated all the dandelions, nettles, ragwort and thistle from the entire city. The vision comes to me now, like something out of Revelations. The lawns are perfectly flat and groomed: squares on a massive green checkerboard. Row after row of identical trees, stiff and monotonous as cardboard cutouts, stretch down each and every boulevard. There is no sense of disorder, no sense of life and chaos. It is a man-made apocalypse, Judgement Day welcomed with open arms. And this unnatural vision will come to pass unless we wake up from our general slumber, unless somebody—anybody—stands up and shouts, “Enough!” Out of unlikely necessity, it looks like that person may have to be me.

  If I truly am the lone Resistance, I may as well resist.

  I waited until early evening, when their activities typically ceased for the day. Cool, waning sunshine fell like honey over lawns, sidewalks, lampposts. Armed with spade and shovel, I marched out to the boulevard. A fitting no man’s land. A suitable place to begin. While the neighbourhood slept, ‘they’ had changed it into a perfectly groomed strip of grass, smooth and flat and straight as green ribbon. Gripping the spade firmly by both hands, I raised it over my head.

  I struck a blow.

  The turf was still fresh, and hadn’t settled. Easy enough to peel back entire sections, roll them up like carpets. These were cast aside. Next came the planting. Using buds and bulbs and shoots and cuttings from my own stock, my own garden and flower beds, I dug and planted, sowed and covered. First, I laid down a fierce and aggressive vanguard: grenades of golden canopied achilliea, each one an explosion of yellow, dropped in next to brigades of Halberdleaf hibiscus, and battalions of kniphofias—their flowers jutting straight up like the bloody spears of a phalanx. I worked myself into a sweating, panting frenzy.

  Halfway through my operation, I heard footsteps.

  Imagine my surprise, in looking up, to see Jay approaching, heavy textbooks clutched to her chest. She
smiled at me, and told me my display was beautiful. I thanked her, too spent to be properly nervous or tongue-tied. Moments passed. Then, in a quiet, hesitant tone, she asked me if, maybe, she might be able to help, possibly? In answer I gestured at the remaining bulbs, stalks, seedlings and stacks of stones. Of course I could use her help. Blushing slightly (she has plaster-pale cheeks, so the red stands out like circles of paint) she dropped her books and set to work. Without changing her clothes, without gloves or proper shoes, she dove straight in like a vole.

  We worked together, in comfortable silence. What I remember most are her hands—her pale, bony hands, dipping into the earth, and the way the dirt stained her palms, gathered under her nails, smeared her forearms. Behind my fiery frontline, Jay selected calmer colours: some cream-flavoured marigolds, the soft, sundial shapes of osteospermums, and a sprinkling of white petunias. The stepping stones went in last, laid out flat, cool and grey as puddles.

  We finished as the sun died. Shattered and sweating, we stood side by side in the spreading dark and gazed at our creation: the paler colours hovering like strange and beautiful ghosts, the darker shades playing shadow-tricks on our eyes. With the work done, my reticence returned. It had been so easy and comfortable while we were united by purpose. Now silence clung to us like spider webs. Jay reached for her books, muttered excuses about dinner, reading, working on her thesis. I stood and nodded like a bobble-headed doll. I said I had things to do as well: orders to fill, bills to process. But before she went, she seized me in a swift, impulsive hug—squeezing her bony figure against me, her arms tight on my neck.

  And in my ear I heard: “I really appreciate what you’re doing.”

  At that she withdrew, scuttling across the street. She seemed to know what I was up to—with my observation and my recording, my vigilance and my resistance—though I didn’t know how. I wondered about that while I watched her scurry up her steps and slip inside her door, as silent and soundless as a mouse retreating to its den.

  There has followed a frenzy of activity, a veritable revolution. Across the city, wherever I can, I am fighting them. I perform spontaneous acts of creation on a daily basis, off-setting Their meticulous devastation. In the cooling dusk, with whatever tools are on hand, I (the Resistance!) am taking to the streets, riotous and seditious. An oasis of pink-belled Digitalis appears here, bursting clusters of fuchsias ignite there. The wildest, fiercest plants make the most effective allies: Russian vine, silver ivy, holly, rhododendron hedges. These and countless others push belligerently into Their artificial wasteland, recovering lost ground. And weeds: my secret weapons. Proliferate, burgeoning weeds. Patches of buttercup bloom overnight, occupying manicured lawns. Bindweed creeps up on flowerbeds, overpowering them. Dandelions, sorrel, leafy sponge, dock, tansy, pokeweed—they are able soldiers all.

  My workroom has become a place to plot, to draw up battle plans and manoeuvres. Which fertilizer can create the most havoc? Which seeds to scatter where? Those answers I don’t know, I research on the internet. I do not have their numbers or their supplies, but I have nature on my side and the benefit of surprise. They never know where I will strike because I act at random. Disorder is my ally; chaos is my friend. I take inspiration from a blog I’ve stumbled upon in my searches; it is run by somebody called Narcissus, who posts messages and well-known quotations at least once a day. They are always uplifting and seditious. One of my favourites was Michael Pollen: A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule. Today it was a W.H. Hudson quote: Rather I would see daisies in their thousands, ground ivy, hawkweed, and even the hated plantain with tall stems, and dandelions with splendid flowers and fairy down, than the too-well-tended lawn.

  The knowledge that there are others like me keeps me going, in this war of attrition.What I do today may be undone tomorrow. Squadrons of marching ivy, platoons of toeflax, armies of bullthistle: all can vanish in a single morning. For I have not stopped Them. I am only keeping Them at bay. But the idea that this is even possible, that I can slow Them down, has given me hope.

  Hope, too, I’ve found in our own, local struggle. During the evenings, Jay and I persevere. Following our initial efforts on my boulevard, imagine my delight to have her join me again, and again, always during those same hours. What began with that initial chance encounter has blossomed into a nightly ritual; she has joined my Resistance. This week we targeted the boulevard in front of her house. Now it looks like an extension of her garden: unchecked, unmanageable, unyielding. Stretches of geranium grope their way around segonia shrubs and pink-flowered azalea. And in finishing, what could be more sensible than to continue? Up and down the block, spreading nature’s anarchic vitality, gaining ground in inches and feet, ignoring our neighbours who now seem too dumb and dull to protest. From behind their windows they peer out, blinking myopically like bunnies trapped in glass cages.

  Tonight, just now, as Jay and I stood surveying our latest masterpiece—a stunning display of ornamental grasses, ranging from Liriope to Little Bluestem, planted in front of the Amonte’s home—something unexpected occurred. She asked me if I’d like to come in for a drink. A lemonade, perhaps, or something stronger?

  I accepted, of course, and found myself following her across her lawn and into what I could only describe as a cave of books. Books carpeted the floor and leaned against the walls in precarious towers. Others lay across chairs, desks and tables, the pages spread open like the wings of exotic and dormant moths. She ushered me into her living room, wading through textbooks, fiction anthologies, poetry chapbooks, paperback novels, volumes of critical essays, collections of plays. She cleared a seat on the sofa for me before vanishing into the kitchen. I heard cupboards opening, bottles capping, liquid pouring. She returned with two glasses of vodka lemonade and sat next to me. The low-slung sun was shooting its last, blazing rays through her window, making our glasses glow like lanterns.

  That kind of intimacy did not come easy to me; a familiar nervousness filled me like a fever. I cleared my throat, explained that I’d never been much of a reader. She glanced around, blushing, as if surprised to see all those books scattered about her living room. She explained about her studies, about her Master’s degree. When pressed, she elaborated on her thesis: a project combining her twin loves of literature and horticulture. It must have been obvious to her that I didn’t understand everything she said, but her patience allowed some of the concepts to filter through—like the relationship she perceived between plants and words, mother nature and human nature. Thoughts are like seeds, growing in the darkness of our consciousness. Cultured and nurtured, they sprout into ideas, grow into finished and complete structures. A poem, say. Or a story. But in hostile environments, smothered and suppressed, they die at the backs of our skulls, the stillborn babies of infertile imaginations.

  And I, fascinated, listened to her as she opened up, a night flower unfolding in the dusk, her words evoking a heady, almost dizzying effect in me. Later, we took our drinks and chairs to her front window, there looking out upon our own creation: the wild, rambling boulevard. Stalks and stems stood out in stark silhouette, and flower heads seemed to float in the dark like will-o’-the-wisps. Jay swirled her drink, causing the ice to tinkle pleasantly.

  Then she said, “Abram Urban said ‘My garden of flowers is also my garden of thoughts and dreams. The thoughts grow as freely as flowers, and the dreams are as beautiful.’” She recited this in a low, mournful tone, as if reading at a funeral. I looked at her, wondering why I hadn’t realized before. Narcissus. She was my Narcissus. And as if in confirmation, she brushed my forearm with her fingertips, her nails searing my skin. The sudden gesture—so natural yet so shockingly intimate—left my skin throbbing hotly, as if I’d been burned, or marked.

  They have struck back, as I knew they would.

  We are dusk-mites, operating under the cover of darkness. Jay and I feel much safer doing our work during the evenings rather than exposed in the daytime. For in the day they are strong, and in the day we are vulnerable
. Legions of vans swarmed the city this week, more than I have ever seen, redoubling their efforts. Battles are won in increments, in inches, and they’re taking back the ground we’ve gained. Our beautiful grass collage? Gone. The rock and stone garden we arranged in front of Mrs. Crenshaw’s? Vanished. For days on end the air in the neighbourhood has been thick with the reek of oil fumes, cut grass, pesticides, moss killer. This retribution, of course, is not unexpected. Yet they are pursuing other avenues—far more shocking and, I fear, ultimately far more dangerous to our well-being.

  This morning there came a knock at my door. When I opened it, I saw Jay standing there, looking perplexed. She had her book bag slung over one-shoulder, and in her hands was a slip of white paper. She held it out to me, asked me if I’d had a similar notice. I took it from her, my insides going numb, as if I’d swallowed ice water. It was easily recognizable, with its plain black lettering, its obtrusive font, its single declarative sentence, so minimalist and so menacing: Your lawn is due for servicing. I told her, no, I hadn’t received anything like this. Not yet. She frowned and took it back from me, studied it while nibbling her lip.

  “It must be some mistake, then. I’ll call and explain I don’t need it.”

  I tried to tell her. I babbled inarticulately about the seriousness of the situation, the effects of the treatment on Mrs. Crenshaw and Amonte; I stammered on about Them. But she didn’t seem to understand, or want to understand. She laughed at my worries, kissed me on the cheek, said my concern for her was touching. “It’s fine,” she told me, adjusting her bag. “I’ll be fine. You’ll see.” She wouldn’t quite look me in the eye, though. I wanted to grab her, shake her, tell her she was fooling herself. Instead I stood there, silent and frozen, my tongue stuck like a fishhook in my mouth, as she trotted down my steps and hurried away from me, away from the truth.