I want to cut and paste one of my stories here, but first I want to talk about my day. My goal is to blog in a way that will be interesting and/or funny, and not like something in my private journal. I haven't perfected this art yet, so bear with me...
I planned to bake fruitcake today, and then after lunch, Norm and I were going to finish our apples by making juice. At 9 a.m. I thought to myself, "I have three hours to make my fruitcakes... LOTS of time." Have you ever made fruitcakes? First... you should always read the recipe at least twice several days before you begin. I had to forget about soaking my dried fruit in booze :-( (Why does this site not have emoticons?). Norm isn't into booze unless it's cooked, so I soaked the finished product in apple juice - fresh-made apple juice. But that was at 3 pm... first I had to scald three pounds of raisins and one pound of minced dried apricot. Cutting up dried fruit is a crappy, sticky, time-consuming job. Our neighbour dropped by in the middle of it and told me to dip my knife in hot water (which I happened to have as I was scalding raisins!). I told her she needs to come over every day and teach me things. Her husband died in June and I was telling her today that we should have gotten him to teach us how to operate the tractor. Now we own it and we are having a tough time figuring it out... But I digress. The fruitcakes seem to have turned out well, but I'll wait a month before tasting them to allow them to mellow. Right after lunch we started on the apples. The big box of gravensteins were too soft to put through the peeler/corer, so we ended up making applesauce too. The macs were also pretty old, and we had a lot of waste. Next year we'll try to remember to do this in season... sigh.
Just as we were cutting up the last of the apples, Norm said, "Should we finish off the apples we got from Jack too?" ARRRGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!! We still had apples from JACK? That was months ago that we picked those. I thought we processed them already and I was so tired. But Norm helped and we got it done.
Then we voted. Today is election day in BC for municipal and Regional District reps. The polls close in 4 minutes. I hope my candidate wins. I hope I can keep my eyes open long enough to hear the results. Okay, this has now turned into a journal entry. I can't seem to help myself. Here's a story I wrote several years ago. Norm likes it... I hope you do too!
Jed and the Garden
Lonnie Facchina
The neighbor’s gray cat perched atop a stone pillar. There were six pillars surrounding Jed Huggins’s yard, linked together by an ornate black iron fence. Trees and shrubs snugged up to the fence on the street side, allowing only teasing glimpses into the fairy tale garden beyond.
Jed’s property was unexpectedly large, considering it was in the center of Hartville. Behind the stern wall and wrought iron gate a path of stepping-stones led to Jed’s house – a white-painted, two-story Victorian. Fuchsias spilled from baskets suspended along the front porch. The house was well kept and quaint, but the yard was amazing. It overflowed with blooms –Canterbury bells, lilies, hollyhocks, roses in an astonishing range of shades, mums, fragrant sweet peas, tall cosmos and daisies with happy faces. A stream meandered across Jed’s property and spilled into a pond full of water lilies and goldfish. Draping willow trees shaded the pond and the rustic garden benches that flanked it. Artfully arranged terra cotta pots added splashes of color here and there. The lawn itself was a thing of beauty. Not a single weed marred the luxurious green carpet. It was a garden that inspired and delighted all who viewed it.
The gray cat, oblivious to the beauty, groomed herself. She licked her front paw then sensuously slid it over her ear, across her closed eye and down her cheek. Her tongue popped out to meet it (destroying any illusion of sensuality) and the process began again. Her ears, like little radar antennae, spun back and forth. They worked independently of each other, picking up every sound in the neighborhood – the whiz of a passing bicycle, the clatter of a lid placed on a garbage can a half block away, the drone of bees in the garden.
It was August, and the town of Hartville was lazy in the midday heat. Folks stayed inside on days like this, when the humidity hung so thick that it pressed against your chest and made it hard to breathe. People slouched in darkened rooms, their faces intent on computer screens and TV sets. Others just lay on their beds with cold cloths over their eyes. Air-conditioning units, one in every home, hummed in unison.
Down the street a lawnmower sputtered to life. The cat’s radar ears both swiveled towards the sudden noise. The distant whine of big trucks traveling the highway and the steady thump thump thump of the bass on someone’s stereo were proof that life existed in Hartville, even if the town did appear abandoned.
A porch door squeaked open and then slammed loudly shut behind a large man in khaki shorts and a gray undershirt. The cat bolted at the first sound of the
screen door. She knew that sound meant danger. Sure enough, the man threw a stone, narrowly missing her as she darted under the fence and back to the safety of her own yard.
“Stupid friggin’ cat,” the man, Jed Huggins, murmured as he crossed his yard to retrieve the stone. He put it with the rest of the pile he’d collected to discourage animals that came onto his property. Still muttering aloud, he sank into his wooden porch chair.
“I worked too hard on this garden to let any goddamned animal shit in my dirt and mess things up. You hear me, Cat?” Jed’s muttering crested into a shout, with a fist-shaking thrown in for good measure. The cat stared at him, haughty and unconcerned, safe on her own veranda.
Jed needed his garden to be perfect, especially today. This would be the tenth year in a row that he planned to win the Hartville Garden Contest. The judges would arrive this evening and Jed was willing to sit here and guard his perfect yard all day if he had to. He pulled a can of beer from his shorts pocket. It made a satisfying “pfffffft” sound as he opened it. The cold liquid, shocking and refreshing, rushed down his throat. He took a deep breath. The air was intense, thick with humidity. Jed heard the lawnmower down the street and wondered if it was someone preparing for the contest tonight. No one else would be fool enough to mow their lawn in this heat.
Jed was known in town as a beer drinking, foul-mouthed, angry man who, folks said, had ruined his wife’s life. Clara had been a tiny, sweet young thing from the next town over. They’d married seventeen years ago, and a baby was born not three months after the wedding. Her parents told anyone who’d listen that Jed had raped her, but Clara had always denied it.
Clara had truly seemed to love Jed. She had followed him around the house like a puppy, always doing her best to win his approval. The more she did, the more he seemed to expect, until she was half crazy with trying so hard. Tongues wagged as Clara started to gain weight. Only five foot three, she’d been dainty and petite when they’d married. After five years with Jed she weighed over two hundred pounds and no longer fit through the turnstile at the Shop n’ Go. In utter defeat, Clara had jumped off the bridge over the Hart River gulch. She had been holding their son. It had been little Mickey’s fifth birthday.
Jed had looked properly grief-stricken at the funeral, but afterwards, when Clara’s family ganged up on him and accused Jed of driving his wife and son to their deaths, Jed’s eyes got cold and grim, and he turned and walked away. He never spoke to them again.
That cold, grim look had stuck. No one was welcome in Jed’s yard except the five judges of the Hartville Garden Contest. This year the judges were all new. A slight shiver of unease passed over Jed as he sat on his porch appraising his pride and joy. He knew in his heart that there wasn’t a nicer garden anywhere in the entire town of Hartville. On the other hand, he’d won the contest nine years in a row. New judges might decide that it was someone else’s turn for a change.
“Afternoon, Jed. Hot enough for you?” The ever-cheerful mailman opened the gate, bounced along the stepping-stones to the porch and handed Jed a bundle of mail. A big grin split his face.
“Afternoon,” Jed was a man of few words. Cheerful people made him nervous. Happiness wasn’t natural in Jed’s opinion, and it came across as phony and patronizing from others.
“Your garden is perfect, Jed. Good luck in the contest. You’ve got it made, if you ask my opinion.”
Jed softened with the praise and nodded his thanks. He watched the mailman leave, whistling and bouncing to his next delivery, then polished off his beer and heaved himself out of his freshly varnished porch chair. He had lots of work to do before 7:00 pm tonight. That was when the Garden Contest judges would be arriving.
Three hours later Jed was sweaty, tired and finished. There was not a dandelion in sight, not a single yellowed, withered leaf on a single plant, not a stray long blade of grass that somehow missed the mower blade this morning.
Jed smiled grimly. “Let them beat this,” he thought with satisfaction. He went into his house to shower and change.
At seven twenty that evening the five judges filed out of Jed’s yard. The last one turned to pull the gate closed and waved at Jed in a final good-bye. They may have been new judges, but they had lived in Hartville all their lives and Jed knew each of them. He was confident that he would win yet again. They were impressed, awed with the color and design displayed in his yard. Now he just had to wait. Tomorrow was Saturday, and the results wouldn’t be published till Monday. This was the hardest part, as Jed knew from experience. By Sunday evening he would begin drinking to pass the time. He usually blacked out around midnight and would wake up Monday morning to find himself on the couch (last year it was the floor in front of the couch) with a massive headache and the foul taste of stale scotch on his tongue. He always grabbed the morning paper first thing, and each year he’d find his yard featured in full color on the front page. The headline would be “Jed Huggins Does it Again” or “Huggins Garden Still the Best in Hartville”.
Monday morning finally arrived. Sure enough, Jed had polished off the better part of a bottle of scotch last night and slept on the couch. He gripped his head with both hands to try and stop the pounding headache. His scraggly comb-over was tangled around his ear. He smoothed it back into place then rose with a groan and headed for his porch. The paper was folded in half with the top half hidden. He bent to pick it up, that simple maneuver causing considerable nausea. Before Jed had a chance to turn it over, his nosy neighbor – the one with the stupid gray cat – picked up her paper and hollered over the fence, “Good job, Jed! I’m not surprised to see that you won again!”
Jed hid his irritation at her spoiling his moment and turned his own paper over. He was greeted with the sight of his front yard and the headline, “Huggins Garden Tops for Tenth Time – New Record!” His headache was forgotten and tension flowed from his shoulders and neck so suddenly that Jed had to sit down. He perched on the edge of his porch chair and read the entire article, which briefly touched on the suicide/murder of his wife and son. “Stupid friggin’ reporter,” Jed thought, “Can’t ever just do a story about my garden. Gotta dig up all the dirt and rub my nose in it every single year.”
Finally he got to his feet and went into his house. As the squeaky porch door slammed behind him, he stood a moment to adjust to the gloom. Jed looked around the front parlor. That’s what Clara had always called it, as though it was somehow better than a regular living room. It was completely devoid of personality and contained only a couch, a coffee table, two armchairs and a small TV on a stand. No photos or paintings graced the mint green walls. There were no knickknacks in sight. All the curtains were closed. It was a sad room, the only thing out of place was the scotch bottle, three quarters empty, sitting alone on the coffee table.
Jed hurried down the hall, passing the bright yellow kitchen that always looked cheerful despite the gloom in the rest of the house. He went to his bedroom, took the newspaper to his dresser, picked up the waiting pair of scissors and cut the article out. With the skill of ten years of practice, Jed arranged the article and photo in a frame and turned to the wall behind him.
Nine articles, some yellowed with age, lined the wall in nine identical frames. A single nail remained. Jed hung the tenth frame and stood back with satisfaction. The wall was complete. He smiled softly, and the cold, grim look evaporated. Now the entire town would now know that he was not a failure. He could do something right and make it last. Jed tore his eyes away from the ten framed symbols of his success. He pulled a small pistol from his bedside drawer and sat on the edge of his bed. His eyes welled with tears. One splashed off the butt of the pistol and Jed tenderly wiped it dry with the hem of his undershirt.
The gray cat, perched on a stone pillar in Jed’s front yard, was the only one who heard the gunshot. Both of her radar ears swiveled momentarily toward the noise then, purring, she began to groom herself.
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