Mr. Aorta glanced at his checkbook balance, grinned indecently, and went to look out the back window.
The moon was cold upon the yard. Its rays passed over the high fence Mr. Aorta had constructed from free rocks, and splashed moodily onto the new black earth.
Mr. Aorta thought a bit, put away his checkbook and got out the boxes containing the garden seeds.
They were good as new.
Joseph William Santucci's truck was in use every Saturday thereafter for five weeks. This good man watched curiously as his neighbor returned each time with more dirt and yet more, and he made several remarks to his wife about the oddness of it all, but she could not bear even to talk about Mr. Aorta.
"He's robbed us blind," she said. "Look! He wears your old clothes, he uses my sugar and spices and borrows everything else he can think of! Borrows, did I say? I mean steals. For years! I have not seen the man pay for a thing yet! Where does he work that he makes so little money?"
Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Santucci knew that Mr. Aorta's daily labors involved sitting on the sidewalk downtown, with dark glasses on and a battered tin cup in front of him. They'd both passed him several times, though, and given him pennies, both unable to penetrate the clever disguise. It was all kept, the disguise, in a free locker at the railroad terminal.
"Here he comes again, that loony!" Mrs. Santucci wailed.
Soon it was time to plant the seeds, and Mr. Aorta went about this with ponderous precision, after having consulted numerous books at the library. Neat rows of summer squash were sown in the richly dark soil; and peas, corn, beans, onions, beets, rhubarb, asparagus, water cress and much more, actually. When the rows were filled and Mr. Aorta was stuck with extra packs, he smiled and dispersed strawberry seeds and watermelon seeds and seeds without clear description. Shortly the paper packages were all empty.
A few days passed and it was getting time to go to the cemetery again for a fresh load, when Mr. Aorta noticed an odd thing.
The dark ground had begun to yield to tiny eruptions. Closer inspection revealed that things had begun to grow. In the soil.
Now Mr. Aorta knew very little about gardening, when you got right down to it. He thought it strange, of course, but he was not alarmed. He saw things growing, that was the important point. Things that would become food.
Praising his good fortune, he hurried to Lilyvale and there received a singular disappointment: Not many people had died lately. There was scant little dirt to be had: hardly one truckful.
Ah well, he thought, things are bound to pick up over the holidays; and he took home what there was.
Its addition marked the improvement of the garden's growth. Shoots and buds came higher, and the expanse was far less bleak.
He could not contain himself until the next Saturday, for obviously this dirt was acting as some sort of fertilizer on his plants--the free food called out for more.
But the next Saturday came a cropper. Not even a shovel's load. And the garden was beginning to desiccate .
Mr. Aorta's startling decision came as a result of trying all kinds of new dirt and fertilizers of every imaginable description (all charged under the name of Uriah Gringsby). Nothing worked. His garden, which had promised a full bounty of edibles, had sunk to new lows: it was almost back to its original state. And this Mr. Aorta could not abide, for he had put in considerable labor on the project and this labor must not be wasted. It had deeply affected his other enterprises.
So--with the caution born of desperateness, he entered the gray quiet place with the tombstones one night, located freshly dug but unoccupied graves and added to their six-foot depth yet another foot. It was not noticeable to anyone who was not looking for such a discrepancy.
No need to mention the many trips involved: it is enough to say that in time Mr. Santucci's truck, parked a block away, was a quarter filled. The following morning saw a rebirth in the garden.
And so it went. When dirt was to be had, Mr. Aorta was obliged; when it was not--well, it wasn't missed. And the garden kept growing and growing, until--
As if overnight, everything opened up! Where so short a time past had been a parched little prairie, was now a multifloral, multi-vegetable paradise. Corn bulged yellow from its spiny green husks; peas were brilliant green in their half-split pods, and all the other wonderful foodstuffs glowed full rich with life and showcase vigor. Rows and rows of them, and cross rows!
Mr. Aorta was almost felled by enthusiasm.
A liver for the moment and an idiot in the art of canning, he knew what he had to do.
It took a while to systematically gather up the morsels, but with patience, he at last had the garden stripped clean of all but weeds and leaves and other unedibles.
He cleaned. He peeled. He stringed. He cooked. He boiled. He took all the good free food and piled it geometrically on tables and chairs and continued with this until it was all ready to be eaten.
Then he began. Starting with the asparagus--he decided to do it in alphabetical order--he ate and ate clear through beets and celery and parsley and rhubarb, paused there for a drink of water, and went on eating, being careful not to waste a jot, until he came to water cress. By this time his stomach was twisting painfully, but it was a sweet pain, so he took a deep breath and, by chewing slowly, did away with the final vestigial bit of food.
The plates sparkled white, like a series of bloated snowflakes. It was all gone.
Mr. Aorta felt an almost sexual satisfaction--by which is meant, he had had enough . . . for now. He couldn't even belch.
Happy thoughts assailed his mind, as follows: His two greatest passions had been fulfilled; life's meaning acted out symbolically, like a condensed Everyman. These two things only are what this man thought of.
He chanced to look out the window.
What he saw was a bright speck in the middle of blackness. Small, somewhere at the end of the garden--faint yet distinct.
With the effort of a brontosaurus emerging from a tar pit Mr. Aorta rose from his chair, walked to the door and went out into his emasculated garden. He lumbered past dangling grotesqueries formed by shucks and husks and vines.
The speck seemed to have disappeared, and he looked carefully in all directions, slitting his eyes, trying to get accustomed to the moonlight.
Then he saw it. A white fronded thing, a plant, perhaps only a flower; but there, certainly, and all that was left.
Mr. Aorta was surprised to see that it was located at the bottom of a shallow declivity in the ground, very near the dead tree. He couldn't remember how a hole could have got dug in his garden, but there were always neighborhood kids and their pranks. A lucky thing he'd grabbed the food when he did!
Mr. Aorta leaned over the edge of the small pit and reached down his hand toward the shining plant. It resisted his touch, somehow. He leaned farther over and still a little farther, and still he couldn't lay fingers on the thing.
Mr. Aorta was not an agile man. However, with the intensity of a painter trying to cover one last tiny spot awkwardly placed, he leaned just a mite farther and plosh! he'd toppled over the edge and landed with a peculiarly wet thud. A ridiculous damned bother, too: now he'd have to make a fool of himself, clambering out again. But, the plant: He searched the floor of the pit, and searched it, and no plant could be found. Then he looked up and was appalled by two things: Number One, the pit had been deeper than he'd thought; Number Two, the plant was wavering in the wind above him, on the rim he had so recently occupied.
The pains in Mr. Aorta's stomach got progressively worse. Movements increased the pains. He began to feel an overwhelming pressure in his ribs and chest.
It was at this moment of his discovery that the top of the hole was up beyond his reach that he saw the white plant in full moonglow. It looked rather like a hand, a big human hand, waxy and stiff and attached to the earth. The wind hit it and it moved slightly, causing a rain of dirt pellets to fall upon Mr. Aorta's face.
He thought a moment, judged the whole situation
, and began to climb. But the pains were too much and he fell, writhing.
The wind came again and more dirt was scattered down into the hole: soon the strange plant was being pushed to and fro against the soil, and dirt fell more and more heavily. More and more, more heavily and more heavily.
Mr. Aorta, who had never up to this point found occasion to scream, screamed. It was quite successful, despite the fact that no one heard it.
The dirt came down, and presently Mr. Aorta was to his knees in damp soil. He tried rising, and could not.
And the dirt came down from that big white plant flip-flopping in the moonlight and the wind.
After a while Mr. Aorta's screams took on a muffled quality.
For a very good reason.
Then, some time later, the garden was just as still and quiet as it could be.
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph William Santucci found Mr. Aorta. He was lying on the floor in front of several tables. On the tables were many plates. The plates on the tables were clean and shining.
Mr. Aorta's stomach was distended past burst belt buckle, popped buttons and forced zipper. It was not unlike the image of a great white whale rising curiously from placid, forlorn waters.
"Ate hisself to death," Mrs. Santucci said in the fashion of the concluding line of a complex joke.
Mr. Santucci reached down and plucked a tiny ball of soil from the fat man's dead lips. He studied it. And an idea came to him.
He tried to get rid of the idea, but when the doctors found Mr. Aorta's stomach to contain many pounds of dirt--and nothing else, to speak of--Mr. Santucci slept badly, for almost a week.
They carried Mr. Aorta's body through the weeded but otherwise empty and desolate back yard, past the mournful dead tree and the rock fence.
They gave him a decent funeral, out of the goodness of their hearts, since no provision had been made.
And then they laid him to rest in a place with a moldering green woodboard wall: the wall had a little sign nailed to it.
And the wind blew absolutely Free.
* * *
SONG FOR A LADY
* * *
The travel agent had warned us. It was an old ship, very old, very tired. And slow. "In fact," said Mr. Spierto, who had been everywhere and knew all about travel, "there's nothing slower afloat. Thirteen days to Le Havre, fourteen to Southampton. Provided there are favorable winds, of course! No; I doubt that we'll spend our honeymoon on her. Besides, this will be her last crossing. They're going to scrap the old relic in a month." And I think that's the reason we picked the Lady Anne for our first trip abroad. There was something appealing about taking part in a ship's last voyage, something, Eileen said, poignant and special.
Or maybe it was simply the agent's smirk. He might have been able to talk to us out of it otherwise, but he had to smirk--the veteran of Katmandu and the innocent untraveled Iowans--and that got us mad. Anyway, we made two first class reservations, got married and caught a plane for New York.
What we saw at the dock surprised us. Spierto's horrified descriptions of the ship had led us to expect something between a kayak and The Flying Dutchman, whereas at first glance the Lady Anne seemed to be a perfectly ordinary ocean liner. Not that either of us had ever actually seen an ocean liner, except in films; but we decided what one should look like, and this looked like one. A tall giant of a vessel, it was, with a bright orange hull and two regal smokestacks; and a feeling of lightness, of grace, almost, despite the twenty thousand tons.
Then we got a little closer. And the Lady Anne turned into one of those welldressed women who look so fine a block away and then disintegrate as you approach them. The orange on the hull was bright, but it wasn't paint. It was rust. Rust, like fungus, infecting every inch, trailing down from every port hole. Eating through the iron.
We gazed at the old wreck for a moment, then resolutely made our way past some elderly people on the dock and, at the gangplank, stopped. There was nothing to say, so Eileen said: "It's beautiful."
I was about to respond when a voice snapped: "No!" An aged man with thin but fierce red hair was standing behind us, bags in hand. "Not 'it'," he said, angrily. "She. This ship is a lady."
"Oh, I'm sorry." My wife nodded respectfully. "Well, then, she's beautiful."
"Indeed she is!" The man continued to glare, not malevolently, not furiously, but with great suspicion. He stared up the plank, then paused. "You're seeing someone off?"
I told him no.
"Visitors, then."
"No," I said. "Passengers."
The old man's eyes widened. "How's that?" he said, exactly as if I'd just admitted that we were Russian spies. "You're what?"
"Passengers," I said again.
"Oh, no," he said, "no, no, I hardly think so. I hardly think that. This, you see, is the Lady Anne. There's been a mistake."
"Jack, please!" A small square woman with thick glasses shook her head reproach. fully.
"Be still," the old man snapped at her. His voice was becoming reedy with excitement. "If you'll consult your tickets, young fellow, I think you'll find that a serious error has occurred here. I repeat, this is the Lady Anne--"
"--and I repeat," I said, not too patiently, "that we're passengers." However, he didn't move, so I fished the tickets out of my pockets and shoved them at him.
He stared at the papers for a long time; then, sighing, handed them back. "Private party," he muttered; "excursion, might say. Planned so long. Outsiders! I . . ." And without another word, he turned and marched stiffly up the gangplank. The small square woman followed him, giving us a thin, curious smile.
"Well!" Eileen grinned, after the slightest hesitation. "I guess that means 'Welcome Aboard' in British."
"Forget it." I took her hand and we went directly to the cabin. It was small, just as the friendly travel agent had prophesied: two bunks, an upper and lower, a sink, a crown-shaped pot du chambre. But it wasn't stark. Incredible fat cupids stared blindly from the ceiling, the door was encrusted with flaked gold paint, and there was a chipped chandelier. Grotesque, but cheerful, somehow. Of course, it would have been cheerful at half the size--with a few rats thrown in--because we'd gotten ourselves into this mess against everyone's advice and, one way or another, we were determined to prove that our instincts had been right.
"Nice," said Eileen, reaching up and patting a cupid's belly.
I kissed her and felt, then, that things wouldn't be too bad. It would take more than a grumpy old Englishman and a crazy stateroom to spoil our trip. A lot more.
Unfortunately, a lot more was fast in coming.
When we took our stroll out on deck, we noticed a surprisingly large number of elderly people standing at the rail; but, we were excited, and somehow this didn't register. We waved at the strangers on the dock, watched the passengers still coming aboard, and began to feel the magic. Then I saw the old red-headed gentleman tottering toward us, still glaring and blinking. In a way he looked like the late C. Aubrey Smith, only older and thinner. Just as straight, though, and just as bushy in the eyebrows.
"See here," he said, pointing at me with his cane, "you aren't really serious about this, are you?"
"About what?" I said. "Traveling on the Lady Anne. That is, hate to sound cliqueish and all that, but--"
"We're serious," Eileen said, curtly.
"Dear me." The old man clucked his tongue. "Americans, too. British ship, y'know. Sort of reunion and--" He motioned toward another man in tweeds. "Burgess! Over here!" The man, if anything older than our friend, caned his way across the wooden planks. "Burgess, these are the ones I mean. They've tickets!"
"No, no, no," said the man with the cane. "Whole thing obviously a ghastly blunder. Calm yourself, McKenzie: we've time yet. Now then." He gave us a crafty, crooked smile. "No doubt you young people aren't aware that this is rather a, how shall I put it, private, sort of, cruise; d'ye see? Very tight. Dear me, yes. Unquestionably a slip-up on the part of--"
"Look," I said, "I'm getting tired of
this routine. There hasn't been any slip-up or anything else. This is our ship and by God we're sailing to Europe on it. Her."
"That," said Burgess, "is bad news indeed."
I started to walk away, but the old man's fingers gripped my arm. "Please," he said. "I expect this may seem odd to you, quite odd, but we're actually trying to be of help."
"Exactly so," said the redheaded man, McKenzie. "There are," he whispered darkly, "things you don't know about this ship."
"For example," Burgess cut in, "she is over sixty-five years old. No ventilation, y'know; no modern conveniences whatever on her. And she takes forever to cross."
"And dangerous," said the redheaded man. "Dear me, yes."
The two old fellows pulled us along the deck, gesturing with their canes.
"Look at those deck chairs, just look at 'em. Absolute antiques. Falling to pieces. Wouldn't trust the best of 'em to hold a baby."
"And the blankets, as you see, are rags. Quite threadbare."
"And look at that staircase. Shameful! Shouldn't be at all surprised to see it collapse at any moment."
"Oh, we can tell you, the Lady Anne is nothing but an ancient rust bucket."
"So you see, of course, how impractical the whole idea is."
They looked at us.
Eileen smiled her sweetest smile. "As a matter of fact," she said, "I think this is the most darling little boat I've ever seen. Don't you agree, Alan?"
"Definitely," I said.
The old men stared in disbelief; then Burgess said: "You'll get bored."
"We never get bored," Eileen said.
McKenzie said, "You'll get sick, then!"
"Never."
"Wait!" Burgess was frowning. "We're wasting time. Look here, why you are both so damned determined to travel on an outdated ship when there are dozens of fine modern vessels available, I shan't pretend to understand. Perhaps it is typical American stubbornness. Flying in the face of convention, that sort of thing. Eh? Admirable! However, we must insist that you overcome this determination."
Eileen opened her mouth, then shut it when she saw the roll of money clutched in the old man's fist.
The Howling Man Page 10
