Chapter Ten

When Ben showed up in the morning for his last day of work, he found Elizabeth and Pablo, the head gardener, having a heated dispute next to the tulip patch. Pablo was pulling furiously on his thick mustache and pacing back and forth.

“I have a family here,” he shouted. “I’m not one of your flowers that you can rip out of the soil and put on a truck. I have roots here. I’m not a flower.”

“I know that,” Elizabeth said. “But it’ll be fun. We’ll get to see the whole country and go wherever the wind blows us.”

“The wind’s not blowing me. I don’t like wind.”

“Why Pablo? Why don’t you like wind.”

“Do I look like some kind of leaf that you can just blow off the branch and then rake me?”

“No, Pablo. You’re no leaf.”

“Then stop treating me like I’m a member of the plant kingdom.”

“You want me to treat you like an animal?”

Pablo slapped his hand against his thigh.

“I quit!”

“Are you going to follow your dream?”

Pablo ran into the tulip patch and started kicking furiously at the tulips, sending them up into
the air in little arcs. Ben was surprised. Pablo was usually the calmest and most mild mannered of all the gardeners. Sure, sometimes he slacked off and just smelled the flowers, but usually he was very dilligent and methodical.

Ben tried to slink away, but it was too late. Elizabeth looked over and saw him.

“Do something, Ben!”

Ben froze. Poetry hadn’t prepared him to deal with feral gardeners. Maybe if he recited a poem that made Pablo realize how beautiful the flowers were, Pablo wouldn’t want to destroy them.

Or maybe words weren’t the answer this time. Picking on a flower was a cowardly act and someone had to stop it. Ben had a special responsibility. Not just because his job was to help the flowers grow, but he had bit the head off of one and needed to redeem himself. Pablo was a bully, picking on defenseless tulips. Ben stuck out his chest and said, “Why don’t you pick on the cactuses?”

Pablo stopped kicking up the tulips. He turned towards Ben with a hard look in his eyes and then looked down at his work boots that were stained green by the stems he had kicked. Ben thought that Pablo was about to go into a rhino charge, but then Pablo just turned and walked away, his head hung low.

Elizabeth walked into the tulip patch, knelt down, and began to pick up the torn up flowers, using one arm to cradle their corpses.

“He took it rather well,” she said. “Some of the other gardeners were really angry.”

Now they needed to find new gardeners. They also needed people who could drive the trucks. Ben knew where they could find working class people looking for work; the whole staff of the grocery store had quit their jobs in a flower-induced fit.

***

Ben figured that Marcy hadn’t yet succeeded as a plus-size model and might need a job. He got her home address from the manager of the supermarket for only a small bribe.

Marcy’s apartment looked like the kind of place Tryone would own. There was a large hole in her wall, next to the refrigerator, as if a wrecking ball had taken one whack and then decided the building wasn’t worth it. A family of pigeons had moved in and covered the carpet with their droppings. Ben and Marcy sat down at the folding table and Marcy poured them both some steaming hot water.

“I don’t have any tea bags,” she said apologetically.

“You look good,” Ben said, sipping his hot water. It was true. She looked better. She had definitely lost some weight.

“I look terrible.” She said. “I’m not eating enough. I’m losing weight. If I keep losing weight, I won’t be able to be a plus-size model. I’ll have to be a regular model.”

“You’ll make a fine model, whatever your size,” he said. This was true. She would make a good model. She had already developed an eating disorder. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“I spent all my savings on headshots and plus-size modeling classes. Now I don’t have beef money. I never should have quit my job. It’s hard to become a successful supermodel.”

“You need a job now?”

She nodded. “While I pay my modeling dues.”

“Would you like to drive a truck?”

He explained the plan to bring the flowers around the country, bringing beauty to the people.

Marcy shook her head determinately. “I have to be where superstar agents will discover me.”

“This is the best chance for you to get exposure.”

“Who gets discovered at a truck stop?”

“It won’t just be truck stops. We’ll be going to all sorts of places. My garden is going on the road. We’re going to show the beauty of flowers to whoever will look. Everyone can have the great experience from flowers just like you did. The wind will blow us like leaves. Maybe a superstar agent will rake you up.”

Marcy smiled. “I can be one of those beautiful flowers that brings beauty into peoples lives.”

Ben smiled back at her. “That’s right.” She could think of herself as a flower if she wanted to, as long as long as he didn’t have to read poetry to her. Then he immediately felt guilty for thinking that. Marcy was a kind person and deserved to feel good about herself.

“I wrote a poem,” Ben told her. “And you were the inspiration for it. Would you like to hear it?”

She sat up straight and a big smile lit up her face. “Yes. Please.”

“It’s called, ‘My Honey Pot.’”

Ben recited his poem about the runaway bee who left his hive because of his love for a flower.

***

Ben and Derrick strolled around in the cool evening, watching the last of the flowers being packed into the trucks. The garden looked like it had when Ben first saw it, when the disgruntled poet had torn up all the flowers with a riding lawnmower; all of the flower beds were bare.

When they saw Marcy come along, Derrick was surprised to see her. She would be driving the truck with the greenhouse mounted on the back, and was presently complaining about the sign on the back of the truck that said, “WIDE LOAD.”

“She’s lost weight,” Derrick pointed out.

“I thought she had anorexia,” Ben told him. “But she just couldn’t afford food. This is supposed to be the greatest country in the world and yet some people don’t have enough to eat.”

Derrick furrowed his brow and rubbed his chin. Then he said, “I think I have anorexia.”

“You don’t have anorexia.”

“Then how come every time I look in the mirror, I think I’m too fat?”

“You are too fat.”

“It’s not my fault. I don’t like to sweat.”

The sound of an industrial-strength bolt gun boomed through the air. Elizabeth was having a reclining chair installed in the gazebo. She wanted to sit in the gazebo at the front of the caravan, leading them like a general into the field.

She was standing next to the truck that had the gazebo mounted on it, watching the technician bolt the recliner into the center of the gazebo. Ben and Derrick stopped next to her.

“There’s no windshield on that gazebo,” Ben said. “You’ll get bugs in your teeth.”

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes and scratched her chin thoughtfully.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’ll have another chair put up there for Derrick. Then he’ll absorb the bugs and they’ll go in his teeth.”

“That won’t work,” Derrick said.

“Why not?” Elizabeth asked.

“My powers don’t work at high speeds.”


May 20, 2007