A short story
BY NATHAN A. FERGUSON
The little boy bent over awkwardly as little boys do. He plunged the shovel into the dirt, half because he wanted to dig a hole, and half because he wanted to see how far the shovel would go. He strained, putting his weight on the handle, and flung the dirt against the house. Eventually, he had a hole bigger than any of the flowers in the pots.
Untied laces on his hiking boots were caked with wet mud looking like big fat night crawlers. His shins, at least, were clean from playing with the hose, trying to get at the neighbor’s white cat. In his pocket was the end of a chameleon’s tail from a reptile that had skittered away from the child’s not-quite-fast-enough grasp.
The afternoon brought a coastal breeze. It made its way up the marshes, rippling the water’s surface, seeming to flow backward against the outgoing tide. Pine dust from North Carolina’s highest trees had long since fallen on the cars, caking them with yellow film, and washed away in the rain. The kid couldn’t take the dust. Last spring his Arizona-reared lungs and sinuses seized up like a rusted hinge on the back gate.
The grandfather left the garage through the utility door and stood directly behind the boy. “Jacob,” the grandfather said. “You’ll want to spread those flowers out or else they’ll die.”
“Flowers don’t die.”
“Now don’t get smart. Do an honest day’s work and I’ll pay you for it.”
Jacob drove off his grandfather with his attempts at whistling; high-pitched clutter as if he were trying to tune in a radio.
The boy pulled a Jacob’s ladder flower from the pot and threw the ball of dirt into a hole, planting it the way it fell, slightly crooked. Jacob grabbed the shovel and started dancing around, ramming it into the sandy dirt, trying to get as close as he could to the shrubs in the next bed. He misjudged and the shovel ricocheted off the dirt and lopped off branches. Jacob didn’t care enough to try to hide the severed appendages. He plopped down on the dirt and decided to look for worms.
The grandfather went into the house but couldn’t sit down, not while Jacob was out there with a shovel. His wife walked into the kitchen to find him staring out the window at Jacob who was now smashing ants with his little fists.
“Those flowers aren’t going to grow,” he said.
“Well, Henry, you just have to give him a chance. You never know.”
“Not the way his mother raised him. It’s asking too much.”
“Why do you blame her all the time?” Bernice asked. “I read that it’s something genetic. It’s our fault as much as it is hers.”
“Our genes created this confused mess? Maybe you ought to read ahead next time.”
The grandfather turned and walked across the kitchen for a drinking glass. He filled the glass with sink water and reluctantly looked outside. They had hoped that by buying Jacob’s ladders from the nursery the boy would think they were named after him and take better care.
Before the glass touched his lips he said, “He’s peeing on your azaleas.”
Face muscles yanked her skin taught like a sail catching a breeze. “Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She ran as fast as her old legs would take her — without tumbling, that is — out into the yard.
The grandfather could hear her through the open window, trying to talk loudly without yelling as the boy twisted from side to side. He smiled and took another drink figuring he would be spending most of the day going in and out into the spring air and didn’t want to get dehydrated. He would need every ounce of energy to stay ahead of Jacob. Besides, dehydration caused headaches whether or not the kid was around to start the nail in his skull.
Eventually, the grandmother, leaning over to get herself at face level with the kid, got him to sit on the grass. Dangerous, the grandfather was thinking. Dangerous. He can slap. Jacob picked up a little piece of plastic that had a picture of the blue-petaled flower, his name, and a word he couldn’t pronounce. He threw it at his grandmother. It fell short and she strained to pick it up.
“See these are perennials,” she said. “They bloom every year.”
“Every year?” He thought for a moment. “Prennals?” He started shouting, “Prennals! Prennals! Prennals!”
Hands heavy, shoulders weak, as if she were carrying two buckets full of water at her sides, she went into the house to start dinner.
An hour later, uncut vegetables sat on the counter. No pans had clanged together. The stove had not been turned on. She looked into her husband’s fisheyes, magnified by his glasses.
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to teach that little boy a lesson. His mother doesn’t seem to want to, so I will.”
“I haven’t heard you use that tone of voice since Jenny was a teenager.”
“It’s amazing Jenny lived beyond her teenage years, not with the people she was mixed up with. That whole idea about moving to the Southwest and selling leather goods was doomed to fail. Adults don’t think like that.” He walked over to the sink and refilled his water glass. “We have one daughter and one grandson. How in the hell did the human race survive for so long with the odds we’re dealing with?”
“Don’t do anything drastic,” she said. “You know he’s young. It could hurt a little boy if you try to straighten them out when they’re too young. I read that last week. I think it was Tuesday.”
“We’ve got a bent tree growing in the backyard and it needs to be straightened before it grows up crooked and creates a social problem. It’s either that or you might read about him someday.”
Jacob sat in the dirt like every other day when dinnertime neared, waiting for his grandmother’s disembodied voice to come through the screen door on the back porch. As the smells of chicken and herbs wafted through the backyard like invisible smoke, Jacob started smashing more ants.
The boy’s head whipped around when he heard the backdoor open. He saw his grandfather’s white shoes step out first then came his khaki pant legs. The grandfather ambled over to the boy and said, “Don’t you think you ought to finish planting those flowers before you come in for dinner?”
Jacob looked at the dirt just beyond his feet. He had spread much of the blackest, richest stuff in the grass, the rest was brown sand.
“You know Jacob, I think you ought to finish planting, then you can come in and eat.”
The boy scanned the remaining flowers in the pots. It had taken him all afternoon to plant six and there were at least eight more.
The grandfather turned, walked back up the steps through the screen door and into the house, closing the heavy door behind him. With one solid click, the door was locked.
Jacob waited for his grandmother to come but she didn’t. He waited some more and still she didn’t come.
The grandmother looked out the window and said, “Are you sure about this?” The boy sat rocking with his arms folded around his bent legs. “I think it’s cruel what you’re doing.”
The grandfather rubbed his temples, then threw his arms out like opening scissors. “Cruel? Cruel? Cruel is having to drop off your son with your parents because you have to report to jail.”
“Now, now,” she interrupted. “It’s not totally her fault.”
The grandfather gave up and sat at the table and caught a quick glance at Jacob sitting back on the grass staring at the sky. Then Jacob sat up and started pulling blades of grass and stacking them in a pile at his side. The grandfather made a mental note to pick up from the hardware store some grass seed along with house paint, a new hose, glass for the garage window, and stain remover; the usual repairs from one of Jacob’s visits; stuff he should have had on hand already.
The grandmother turned the heat down on the stove, hoping either the boy would plant the flowers or her husband would give up. Neither of which was likely. “Stubbornness must have skipped a generation,” she said.
Soon the food was cooked through despite the heat at its lowest setting. The grandfather crept out into the garage to lock the utility door and turn off the sprinkler system. The wind picked up and from the falling pressure on the wall-mounted barometer, he knew a storm was coming, but not a hurricane. It was too early in the season for that. Besides, he had meticulously researched his retirement home before he bought it so that it was just far enough, about seven miles from the coast, and twenty feet above sea level, that it could weather the big storms.
Jacob stood up. He walked through the screen door and stretched to see through the bottom corner of the window on the backdoor. He caught a glimpse of the kitchen and it was vacant. Then he tried the handle but it was locked. He pounded his muddy little fists on the door's dark finish. After several tries he gave up and sat down on the steps. He tried again to no avail. The grandfather turned up the volume on the TV, and the grandmother nervously turned the page to the book she was reading about kleptomania.
The night air surrounded the boy as he sat on the steps. The stars were out, and the moon couldn't be seen in any direction. The breeze had turned into a full wind.
"You're not going to leave him out there all night?" the grandmother asked shyly.
"If I have to I will. The mosquitoes aren’t bad yet, not with that breeze. He can go on the porch whenever he wants.”
“Sounds more like he’s a dog than a boy.” The grandmother put her book away, and disappeared in another room, while the grandfather sat in his chair staring at but not watching TV.
At half past ten, the grandmother threw the sheets almost off the bed, uncovering the two of them. "I'm not taking anymore of this," she demanded. “He's all alone out there."
"No. Let him be. We can't accomplish anything every time we pick one up when they fall."
At eleven the grandfather rose from the bed while the grandmother lay still. His feet tingled as he walked across the carpet until they met the cold kitchen floor. The grandfather took a flashlight from the kitchen cupboard without turning on the light, slid his curled up arthritic toes into his slippers, and opened the kitchen door. Jacob's handprints flashed on the glass as the door swung through the faint light off the far corner of the house.
Jacob lay asleep on one of the lawn chairs on the screened porch. His dirty little legs were stretched out, toes pointing north and south. The grandfather carefully pushed open the side door, knowing it would squeak, and shined the flashlight out, out into the yard where he could see a bunch of empty pots. All the flowers had been planted in the flowerbed, blue petals and green leaves, clumped around the shrubs. He laughed quietly, being careful not to let the light hit Jacob. By then the rain was pelting the east-facing side of the screen, catching the droplets before they washed away the dirt on the boy’s face.
As the brass clock on the nightstand ticked past a quarter after eleven, the grandfather laid down next to the grandmother.
"Did you pick him up?"
"I thought you were asleep."
"How could I sleep? Did you?"
"Yeah," he answered. "I planted him in his bed.” The grandfather pulled the sheets up to his chin. “He’ll make a good perennial."