Wondergirls

by Carol Reid

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

There was such a look on old Mrs. Bradley’s face, no look at all if I had to describe it. The plant itself had more expression. The scene gave me a damned odd sensation, the kind that makes you look over your shoulder when you know you’re alone.

“Wondergirls,” I heard myself say, and there and then I made up my mind to take a run out to the Dutchman’s. I thanked the old lady for the tea and the tour, finished my rounds without talking to another solitary soul, and headed down the highway toward the greenhouses, stopping only to tip out my load of trash.

John Vandermere and his wife had started out the nursery from nothing but a tumbled-down shack and a couple acres of rocky but workable land. John had been a drunk and she had joined him, though she had never been as devoted to the life as he.

Don’t take me wrong, I’ve had my tussles with the almighty bottle myself and I know the hold it can take on a man, though lately I haven’t touched a drop. Then John got sick, too sick to drink and, the way it does with some, the spectre of death snapped them both into at least trying to live again. They took to the land, wringing life out of every arable inch of it, like they’d once squeezed the last drop from a bottle.

Because he sold cheap, folks took to buying their seedlings and annuals from him and when those flourished, they’d go back and buy more, bringing friends and family along. Within two years, the one ramshackle greenhouse had sprouted into six more, each full of sweet, neat rows of green.

Why, the truck I use to haul trash was his, once. He leased it to me darn reasonable when I took up the job of trashman.

Flowers and succulents, vegetables and herbs all bursting with life; that’s what I saw when I come around the last turn of their twisty drive. That, and the Vandermeres, standing like two sad scarecrows in the path between the greenhouses, with an open bag of lime scattered like ashes at their feet.

I got out of the truck making some noise, since it seemed they hadn’t heard me coming.

“It’s all looking really good, John," I said from about ten feet back. I was beginning to get the creeps, them standing there so stiff and straight, like the cat in wait for the canary.

The wife turned around first and at first she looked kind of dark in the face like old Mrs. Bradley had looked, but when John swung his face around at me I could see that he was all right.

“Yeah, real good,” he agreed, sounding a little bowled over at the extent of it. I guess, like me, John wakes up in the morning sometimes wondering how he got so lucky in life, how everything had just sort of come together for him, a day’s work for a day’s pay, knowing he was of service to the community. Like me. Me and John, we both believe in the common good.

I walked around the greenhouses with him, asking after the new hybrids, the Prince of Reds and the Wondergirls. Didn’t mention what I’d seen at Ma Bradley’s though. Straight as he is now, him and me both, we’re just one drink away from something that don’t bear thinking about. So I thanked him and shook his hand and went on home.

Well, the week passed, as weeks do, before you know it. I made my pickups and deliveries, and dumped my trash from Vickers Place and Cedar Point and Dancerville, and then, come Thursday, back to Hammersea Road.

It was a restless day, close and damp, and the sea was dull as lead. I hoped a storm would come and clear out the heavens, big and bright and full of thunder, like the left hand of God coming down to clear the darkness away.

Funny how sometimes I still think in the old way, the way my ma or granddad would have thought, of God being a big old angry bearded man, ready to slap down what he don’t like and no talking back either. If I were to think about a lord and master now, I would think about a lush green vine that grows like ivy over everything, knowing without thinking, only good, not right or wrong.

Well, Semple’s place was in a shambles. It was hard to know what he meant for me to take away.

“Semple!” I called out. “Semple, where’s your trash?”

Piles of stuff were scattered all around the back of his workshop; broken frames and crates of jars tipped over. A half-growed dog dragging a length of dirty rope bounded through the yard from who knows where, and that bothered me. You can’t have untrained animals running loose, tromping through gardens with their fat, unthinking paws. His feet rolled like thunder through the place, so still and quiet it was. Maybe I should have grabbed that dog then and there and wound that length of rope tight around his neck, but notions like that don’t come so quick to me anymore.

“Semple!” I called out again, picking my way over the stuff that was scattered around. Surely to Christ, I thought, he doesn’t expect me to gather up all this by myself and bale it up. Not for ten goddamn dollars a month.

I heard a sort of rumble as I went round back the house and I looked up at the sky expecting storm clouds, but there were none. The sky was still and solid as cold fat in a fry pan.

The hives had been moved alongside the house, but that wasn’t where the sound was coming from, for the frames were open and clean as new. The bees were all in the house, and Lord Almighty Jesus but the place smelled good. It reeked of warm clover and blackberries overripe in the summer sun and sweet wood smoke.

Maybe that’s why what I saw inside didn’t move me any. It seemed like a good place, smelling so fine, even with the walls and floor crawling with humming bees. Even with what was left of Semple crumpled up in a corner, with a swarm of them moving under his clothes, up his legs and arms, across and down his chest. They moved slow, like they’d had their feast already and were strolling back for seconds. The veil over his face was thick with them, inside and out.

I didn’t touch anything. The bees didn’t touch me. A lot of them were covered with orange pollen, heavy with it. After a while I went back outside and straightened up some of the mess, picked up the stuff closest to the truck and threw it in, though I wasn’t obliged to, really.

At Mrs. Bradley’s there was no one to offer me dishwater tea in cracked cups, though she had got around to stacking up her bit of refuse for me to cart away. I took a peek into her garden and saw her legs and feet sticking out from under the stand of Wondergirls.

When I looked closer it made me think of this woman I saw once playing on the grass with some children. Their lips were sticky with jam and muck, and she was letting them kiss her all over her face. The marks on old Mrs. Bradley were like that, but deeper.

The plants were thriving, hearty enough to feed alone now, their leaves so glossy and green, fruit and flowers both flourishing on the stalks. Huge flowers like I’d never seen, red as ripe fruit, with centers dusty with bright orange pollen.

There was no sign of Harlow at his place. Well, the Prince of Reds had promised to be a hardier and hungrier breed. I looked at the stand of thick-stemmed, eight foot tall plants, thought of Harlow tweaking at the little leaves just a week before and it just about made me laugh.

So next Thursday I think I’ll take a day of rest. Both Cedar Point and Dancerville should be setting fruit and flower any time now. Vickers, round about my place, is a little slow, but in ten days or so it won’t matter. We’ll all be working together by then, like a real community, all for the common good.

But you know, there’s one thing I just can’t get off my mind; that day of the tea taking at old Ma Bradley’s: the Wondergirls letting themselves be stroked by the old lady, reaching out to her, even. Odd trait, most probably wiped out in the next generation.

I’ve got Wondergirls myself of course, as well as the others, and I keep thinking... I dream about this sometimes, though I dream little now, of wading naked through those cool green leaves, carefully of course, I wouldn’t be crushing any of them underfoot.

I dream of them reaching out their flower heads to me like a cat offering a velvet ear for scratching. Perhaps tonight, just once and then be done with it, I’ll go out there after dark, and hold out my hands to them. Nothing will happen. I know that. But just the once, perhaps I’ll try. And then I won’t have to think about it anymore.