Chapter Eleven

The baggers weren’t looking for new jobs. They just sat there in the lounge of Abbott’s Home for Exceptional People, eating Cheetos and watching The Price is Right. Stephanie scurried around, handing out paper towels for them to wipe the orange Cheeto powder off their faces, but the baggers just tucked the paper towels into their shirt necks. They looked unemployable. The job interview would be over as soon as they shook hands with Cheeto powder on their fingers. No one would hire them. No one except for Ben. Elizabeth had sent him to offer them a job.

Stephanie’s lips snarled when she saw Ben. She strode up to him, holding the roll of paper towels like a club.

“Are you stalking me?” she asked.

“No.”

“So you’re just gonna give up? Just like that?”

“I’m here on business.”

“If you’re looking for flowers to inspire your poetry, you won’t find them here.”

Ben looked around the room and realized there were no flowers. Just the pink walls, stained carpet, and dingy air. Maybe they were afraid that flowers would over-stimulate the baggers and distract them from The Price is Right. They didn’t want baggers knowing about all the beauty in the world. Then they would be harder to control.

“Why are there no flowers?” Ben asked.

“I had them taken out,” Stephanie told him. “Bad memories.” She tightened her grip on the paper towels. “What do you want anyway? Why are you here?”

“I need baggers.”

“I see. And are you lying again, like you lied about the poem?”

“No. I really came for the baggers. I have a job for them. It’s just like putting groceries into bags except now they’ll put flowers into trucks and take them out again. We’re taking the garden on the road to bring the beauty of flowers to small-town America. They’ll get to travel all around the country.”

“You’re insane.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“You’re not taking them.”

“Why not? It’ll be good for them. Especially Bobby. If he’s going to be president, he’s going to need some grass-roots support.”

“He can’t be president.”

“Why not? He’s over thirty-five, he was born in America.”

“You know why.”

“Is he Jewish?”

Stephanie slapped the paper towels against her open palm.

“These aren’t normal people,” she shouted. “They can’t do what other people can do. They can’t travel around the country showing people flowers. Someone has to look after them.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “You can come too.”

“I don’t want to come.”

“Why not? You said it yourself. Someone has to take care of them.”

“They’re not going.”

Ben wondered why she was being so difficult and why she hadn’t even offered him any Cheetos. Maybe she still felt jealous about the flower that inspired his poem.

“That flower that I wrote the poem about,” Ben said. “It’s dead.”

Stephanie eyed him suspiciously.

“I killed it,” Ben added.

“Now you’re scaring me.”

Ben felt worried. This seemed like a place with a few spare straightjackets lying around. There was probably a man in a white jacket with a giant butterfly net. He would catch Ben with it and lock him up in a padded cell.

“I didn’t mean to kill it,” Ben explained. “It was an accident. It was only third-degree murder.”

“Only?” Stephanie said incredulously. “Only third-degree murder?”

“Yes. Flower-slaughter.”

This wasn’t actually true. It was a crime of passion and would more actually be called second-degree murder.

“I’m sorry,” Ben said. “I lied. It wasn’t flower slaughter. It was second degree murder.”

“You lied again?”

“Yeah, but I told you right away.”

“What are you, a compulsive liar?”

He might be. He just lied instinctively. Maybe he should talk to Pat Henderson about this.

***

The truck with the gazebo mounted on top led the convoy down the two-lane highway. It was followed by two dozen trucks filled with the flowers. Ben, Derrick, and Elizabeth sat inside the gazebo. Derrick wasn’t able to stop the bugs from splattering in the others’ eyes and teeth at high speeds so the three of them wore plastic goggles over their eyes and thin silk scarves over their mouths to keep the bugs out.

Ben read poetry to the flowers through a staticy Citizen’s Band radio. CB radios were installed in the front cabins so the drivers could communicate with each other and also in the back with the flowers so Ben could read poetry to them from his seat in the gazebo.

The sunlight rippled through an endless sea of corn on both sides of the road.

Ben finished up reading his poem. The last line had a metaphor comparing orange Cheeto powder to flower pollen.

Elizabeth lifted up her goggles to wipe a tear out of her eye.

“That was beautiful,” she said.

“Let me talk into the CB,” Derrick said restlessly. “I want to read a poem.”

Ben tried to hand the CB receiver to Derrick, but Elizabeth snatched it out of his hand.

“You can’t talk on the CB,” she said. “You don’t have a handle.”

All of them had handles, code names that they used to identify themselves over the CB radio.
Elizabeth was Grey Goose, Marcy was Butterfly, Ben was Mr. Mxyzptlk. Only Derrick didn’t have one.

“I don’t want to change my name,” Derrick pouted. “My parents gave me this name. They named me after an oil derrick. They thought it was lucky. That I’d strike oil.”

Elizabeth was insistent. She wouldn’t let Derrick speak on the CB until he chose a handle.

Finally, he conceded and chose the name Toby. For some reason, Ben found the name Toby hilirious and started giggling uncontrollably.

Elizabeth handed Derrick the CB radio and he recited his poem.

“We got a great big convoy, rockin through the night. Yeah, we got a great big convoy, ain’t she a beautiful sight?”

“You didn’t write that poem,” Ben said. “That’s the convoy song.”

“No. I wrote it.”

“You couldn’t have written it. You weren’t even born when it was written.”

Derrick continued to recite the song in a droll monotone.

“You gotta join our convoy, ain’t nothin’ gonna get in our way. We’re gonna roll this great big convoy, across the USA.”

“Stop it!” screeched a voice through the CB radio. “You’re singing is horrible.” The voice wasn’t one of the gruff voices of the drivers, but nonetheless, Ben recognized it immediately. It was the next president of the United States, Down Syndrome Bobby.

Elizabeth grabbed the CB receiver from Derrick.

“Bobby, is that you?”

“Tell him he needs a handle,” Derrick said.

“It’s me,” Bobby said.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m a stowaway.”

“Where are you?”

“With the flowers.”

Elizabeth looked at Ben with a concerned look in here eye. “There’s no seatbelts back there,” she told him. She pressed down on the radio and told the drivers to pull over to the side of the road.

After the convoy came to a halt, they tried to figure out which truck he was in.

“Bobby,” Elizabeth spoke into the radio. “Bobby, which truck are you in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you describe the surroundings?”

“There’s flowers.”

“I need you to describe the flowers for me.”

“They’re pretty.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“They make me feel warm in my heart.”

“What color are they?”

“Green.”

Elizabeth looked at Ben. “Of course,” she said. “The cactuses. He’s in the greenhouse.” She pressed the button. “Bobby, whatever you do, don’t touch anything.”

When they opened up the greenhouse and brought Bobby out, his skin was flushed and his grey sweatshirt was soaked with sweat.

“It’s so hot in there,” Bobby moaned. “How do people live in greenhouses?”

“They don’t,” Derrick said. “And you need a handle.”

“Not now,” Elizabeth said. “Let him drink something first.”

They gave Bobby a water bottle and he swallowed it down greedily.

It turned out that Bobby had overheard Ben’s argument with Stephanie. Bobby wanted to go, but Stephanie wouldn’t let him, so he had no choice but to stow away in the greenhouse.

Elizabeth decided he could join them. Who knew when they would need someone to put something in a bag?

***

Ben stared out at the passing scenery, looking for inspiration. The view didn’t change: corn, corn, corn. An appropriate metaphor for the life of the workingman. Nothing but corn.

Maybe the view didn’t change because they were going in circles. Just like the life of the workingman. The same thing over and over again.

Then Ben saw an unpainted shack sat in the middle of a clearing in a field. It’s wood was grey from years of rain.

“Bet they don’t have flowers,” Derrick said.

Elizabeth saw the dilapidated shack and her eyes lit up behind her goggles. She pulled down her scarf and smiled broadly.

“It’s flower time,” she said. She grabbed the speaker for the CB radio. “This is Grey Goose. We’re stopping at the shack over in that field to the right. Everyone to their battle stations. Over.”

A chorus of ten-fours rang out from the drivers.

“We can’t stop here,” Derrick protested. “This is how horror movies start: pulling off the road and going to an isolated farm house.”

“No,” Ben said. “This is how farmer’s daughter jokes start.”

“I’m serious,” Derrick said. “I saw a movie about this. Some teenagers stumble onto a farm and find out that the farmer grows marijuana there. The farmer points a gun at them and gives them a choice: they can either stay and pick the crop or he’ll shoot them.”

Ben thought that might not be so bad. If he picked crops in the field, he could really feel the plight of the working man.

“What did they do?” Ben asked.

“Huh?”

“They picked the crop?”

“I don’t know. I fell asleep.”

The trucks turned into the narrow dirt path, stirring up a cloud of dust.

“It’s just corn,” Ben said to Derrick, reassuringly. “If it was marijuana, they wouldn’t need our
flowers.”

“Corn’s even worse,” Derrick said. “We can’t even smoke it.”

“You can make a corn-cob pipe.”


***
June 5, 2007
Jerusalem, Israel