Chapter Fifteen

There was empty square in the center of town where most of the foot traffic passed through. It was the best place to set up. They parked the truck with the gazebo on it in the center of the square, took the flowers out of the other trucks, and made a large circle of flowers on the ground around the gazebo. That way folks could stand in the gazebo, out of the sun, have a cold beverage, look down, and get a good look at all the flowers. The gazebo also made it seem more like a permanent garden and less like a show that packed up and left. They weren’t carnies, after all.

The townspeople peered out of the small shops lining the road and gawked at this strange new sight. Some approached for a closer look, and some even hopped up onto the gazebo for a bird’s-eye view. For many of them, Ben supposed, this was their first time seeing a flower. They had probably only heard about flowers before in storybooks.

Bobby brought out rare African violets, Marcy set down a basket of roses, Toby helped with the poppies, Ben set down a large tub of purple petunias, Hey Zeus lugged out a cactus, and Elizabeth wheeled out the dandelion cart. Everyone pitched in and helped set up the flowers. Except for Derrick, of course.

“You want to help?” Ben asked him.

“Not in my job description,” Derrick swatted at a swarm of mosquitoes swirling around him.

“You can help and absorb the mosquitoes at the same time. A little hard work might take your mind off the mosquito bites.”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Come on Bartleby. It’s good exercise.”

“I’m conserving my electrolytes.”

A car came crunching up the gravel road. It was a police car but its lights weren’t flashing. It rolled slowly towards them and jerked suddenly to a stop, just inches from the Mongolian mums. The driver’s door swung open and a short, wiry man slid out. He wore a tan policeman’s uniform, two ivory-handled guns in a worn leather holster, and a shiny star pinned to his chest. Now Ben knew why the sheriff didn’t have a gun. This policeman had two. He must have taken the sheriff’s gun.

The policeman took off his mirrored sunglasses and squinted his beady eyes. Tan lines tattooed the shape of the glasses to his face. He put the sunglasses back on, and turned his head towards Ben.

“Howdy,” Ben said pleasantly.

“Carnies?” the policeman croaked out.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Why does everyone keep asking us that? Did you have some problem with carnies?”

“No and we aim to keep it that way. Now who are you?”

“Ben. Who are you?”

The man tapped the silver star attached to his chest. “Sheriff. Sheriff Webber.”

“You couldn’t be. We already met the sheriff.”

“Callin’ me a liar?”

“No. There must be two sheriffs.”

“Sheriff Webber’s the only sheriff in these parts. And that’s me.”

“Then who sold us a flower-beauty-sharing permit?” Ben wondered aloud.

“Must have been Joey Bob,” a woman from the crowd said in a thin voice.

The new sheriff nodded quickly and chuckled.

“That Joey Bob, always trying to be me.”

“How come Joey Bob gets two names,” Derrick asked Elizabeth. “Why don’t you take one from him?”

“Impersonating a police officer,” Sheriff Webber said. “That’s against the law. Do you want to press charges?”

“No.” Ben shook his head.

“Well I’m going to.” The sheriff took a notebook and stubby pencil out of his shirt pocket. “So I don’t forget.” He jotted down in the notebook and mumbled, “Arrest Joey Bob.”

He snapped the notebook shut. “Now, what brings you folks to our neck of the woods?”

Ben explained to Sheriff Webber about their caravan, about the power of flowers to help people see how beautiful life was, and how they just wanted to show the townspeople their flowers.

“Do you have a permit?” Sheriff Webber asked.

“Joey Bob sold us one. But he never gave it to us.”

The sheriff shook his head. “Joey Bob permits aren’t valid.”

Ben figured it was the old double-shakedown. The two sheriffs were probably in cahoots. “So we have to buy another one from you?”

Sheriff Webber’s nostril’s widened. “Attempting to bribe an officer of the law is an arrestable offense.”

“We’re not trying to bribe you,” Elizabeth explained. “We’re trying to pay the permit fee.”

“I look like a bribe-taker to you?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “You look like a very honest man. Like Abraham Lincoln.”

“Abraham Lincoln,” the sheriff chuckled and waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about the permit. You don’t need it.”

“Thank you.”

“So why’d you ask if we had one?” Derrick said.

“You don’t need one ‘cause you ain’t having no flower picnic or whatever you call it. You’re gonna pack up those flowers back on your trucks and get outta town right this minute.”

“Why?” Down Syndrome Bobby asked. “Why don’t you like flowers?”

“Oh, I like flowers just fine.” Sheriff Webber shot a gap-toothed smile down at Bobby. “Sometimes I go for long strolls in the meadow just to look at the flowers. What I don’t like is folks who think they’re better’n us, lookin’ down on us an’ our lives, presumin’ that we need to look at their flowers.” He snatched off his sunglasses and glared at Ben. “I don’t like you comin’ into my town, presuming to have yourself a flower show. Not even askin’ permission first, just settin’ up your flowers.”

“May we have a flower presentation?” Elizabeth asked politely.

“No. You mayn’t. It’s too late for that now.”

“Please?”

“Not even pretty please with a spoonful o’ sugar on it. You ain’t havin’ a flower show, no way no how.”

Ben took a deep breath. The sheriff was a hard man, but flowers and poetry would win the day.

“Didn’t you ever have a dream?” Ben asked.

“I have a dream,” the sheriff said, doing his best Martin Luther King impression, “that one day you will pack up your flowers. You will put them back in your trucks. You will drive away and never look back. I have a dream today!”

Several of the onlookers from the town giggled uncomfortably.

Ben said, “I don’t suppose you like bobsleds?”

The sheriff’s eye’s bulged in their sockets.

“You want me to lock you up?!”

Ben considered this question. He had never been in jail before. It would be a great chance to experience the plight of people so downtrodden that they had to turn to crime.

On the other hand, he knew what they did to poets in jail. He would have to find a patron to protect him from the other inmates. But the patron would demand favors in return. Flowery favors.

On the third hand, it would make a great story to be put in jail because of his poetry. To actually be locked up for his writing! That would certainly help his career.

Ben straightened his back, lifted his chin, and stared down the sheriff. “We’re not going anywhere,” he said, “until you smell these flowers.”

“Funny thing,” the sheriff said. “I’m suddenly feeling all stuffed up. Fraid I won’t be able to smell anything.”

The sheriff pulled a pair of handcuffs off his belt.

Ben looked back at the rest of the flower caravan and saw them backing away slowly. “Come on!” he called to them. “Stand your ground. He’s only got one pair of handcuffs. He can’t arrest us all.”

“I can use a rope,” the sheriff said.

Ben didn’t think the sheriff was planning to tie their hands with the rope. There was going to be a hanging. The sheriff was going to take him for a stroll in the meadow and use him as flower fertilizer. At least Ben’s poetry would become famous if he was killed for it. Everyone would read his poetry then. Artists became more famous after their deaths. He would become like Socrates, Galileo, and Curt Kobain.

Ben breathed deeply and looked at the bright cloudless sky. He was about to be martyred for his belief in poetry and flowers. He hoped he would die well, but knew he probably wouldn’t. If only he had known he was going to die today, he would have fasted and cleared out his system; then he wouldn’t soil himself at the execution. Dirty pants took some of the glory out of martyrdom. That was probably why they let death row inmates have whatever they wanted for their last meal: to humiliate them.

The sheriff pressed his hands down on the ivory handles of his twin pistols and spoke coldly and deliberately. “Don’t make me get the volunteer fire department.”

Ben’s heart sank. The threat was clear: the firemen would spray the flowers to death with a fire
hose. (Or maybe use buckets of sand; Ben didn’t see any fire hydrants.) Sheriff Webber had found their caravan’s weakness, the Achilles Heel, kryptonite, the part that was as delicate as…well, as a flower. Ben thought this was cheating: getting the fire department to do the police department’s job.

When Ben looked over at a row of geraniums, he saw their sad petals drooping slightly and knew he couldn’t allow anything to happen to them. Not just because his job was to help them to grow, but because he had bit off the head of a tulip; he had a special responsibility. He would have to swallow his pride for the sake of the flowers.

“All right.” He met the sheriff’s gaze. “You win this round…”

“Ain’t no second round. This ain’t no two-out-of-three-falls cage match, kid. This is a Texas-Death-Match and you lose. You just go on, git, git, and git gone.”

Ben detected a slight wavering in the sheriff’s voice. Maybe he was bluffing and there was no volunteer fire department. Why would a town so small need one? The houses didn’t look particularly flammable; they were made of stone. And who would be on the volunteer fire department? Gimpy Barry? Joey Bob the fake sheriff?

No. They would have to pack up and go. Even if there wasn’t a volunteer fire department, it would be easy for the sheriff to round of a posse of firefighters to put out this fire: the fire of flowers.

THE FIRE OF FLOWERS! Ben’s face lit up. Inspiration struck in the strangest of places. There was a poem in this. Ben started to compose it in his mind. The fire that no posse can lynch. Flower Fire: unquenchable, unlynchable, un…somethingable.

“What are you grinnin’ at?” the sheriff demanded.

Ben hadn’t realized he was grinning. That happened sometimes in a fit of creativity: he lost all sense of his physical body and got all tingly. The sides of his face ached from grinning.

“Thank you sheriff. You’re my muse.”

The sheriff took a step back. He looked uncertain and a little afraid. Then he breathed deeply into his chest, spat on the ground, and ground the spittle into the dry earth with his boot heel.

“We ain’t no relation.”

He clicked open the handcuffs and approached Ben.

***
י''א באב תשס''ז
ירושלים
July 26, 2007
Jerusalem

Chapter Fourteen

Max had never supported Ben’s literary aspirations.

Many years ago, Ben was laying on his bed, reading To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s novel about racism in a small southern town. Ben read the part where the racist white jury unanimously convicts the innocent black man of raping a white woman. This miscarriage of justice upset Ben so much that he threw the book across the room and broke a window.

Max’s heavy footsteps came rushing up the stairs. He knocked open the door, almost taking it off its hinges.

“What happened?”

“The window broke.”

“Were you playing with a ball in the house?”

“No.”

“Well why not? You never play with a ball. You always just bury your nose in a book.”

Ben didn’t respond, just stared at his feet. Max sighed.

“Alright, how did you break the window?”

“I was reading a book.”

“Don’t be smart with me. Just tell me what happened.”

Ben explained how they accused Tom Robinson of a crime he didn’t commit, almost lynched
him, then convicted him and sentenced him to death.

“Well that’s terrible,” Max agreed. “But it’s no reason to break your own window. If you’re so mad, go break the author’s window.”

“She doesn’t have a window. She’s dead.”

“Well don’t break my window! You’re acting like an inner-city person that riots and burns down his own neighborhood.”

Ben felt his face grow hot with anger. “You’re a racist!”

“I am not. I know what I’m talking about. They don’t study, just play basketball all day. They have hoop dreams.”

“You would have convicted Tom Robinson if you were on the jury!”

“I would have weighed the evidence carefully.”

“How come you want me to stop reading? Why do I have to play sports but you want them to read?”

“Because you’re my son. I don’t care what they do.” Max looked at the shattered window.
“Was anyone hurt? That’s the important thing.”

***

As the caravan entered the narrow street of the small town, a group of dirty barefoot children ran alongside it, leaping like gazelles. The truck slowed down so as not to run them over. The children reminded Ben of wild animals on an undiscovered continent that had never seen people before and hadn’t yet learned to be afraid of them. Ben felt like he was sitting on a tank instead of a gazebo, looking down at the newly-liberated people. Except they wouldn’t be greeting him with flowers—he would greet them with flowers.

Ben smiled and waved at the children.

“Candy! Candy!” they shouted.

“It’s not a parade float!” Ben called back. “It’s a gazebo.”

“Candy! Candy!”

Ben turned to Derrick.

“Derrick, give me some candy.”

“I don’t have any.”

“I just saw you eating Mentos.”

“Mentos aren’t candy. They’re breath mints.”

“No they’re not. Anyway, your Mentos are fruit-flavored.”

“No.”

“Come on. I’ll get you some new ones.”

“Derrick,” Elizabeth said. “Give the children some candy. We have to make some sacrifices.”

“Why am I the one who always has to make the sacrifices? I had to give up my name. Now you
want me to give up my Mentos?”

“We’re guests in their town. We should be nice.”

“We’re not guests. We’re strangers. They can’t take candy from strangers.”

“Come on, Derrick,” Ben pressed. “You have a whole back full of candy. Throw them some.”

“What about stranger danger?”

“Derrick…”

“Fine.”

Derrick pulled a Snickers bar out of his knapsack and threw it at the children. It hit a little girl in the face. She slumped to the ground like a sack of flour and knocked up a cloud of dirt. Her pigtails bounced on the ground a couple times and then were still.

“You killed her!” Elizabeth shouted.

“What did you do that for?!” Ben screamed. They had just arrived in their first town and had already killed someone.

“You told me to throw it at them.”

“I told you to throw it to them! Not at them!”

Elizabeth grabbed the CB. “This is Grey Goose. We’re pulling over. There’s been a casualty.”

Derrick shook his head frantically. “Just keep driving!”

“No. We’re not doing a hit and run.”

“So we’re gonna do a hit and stop?! That’s even worse!”

“Maybe we can help her.”

“How? With flowers?”

“Maybe someone knows CPR.” Elizabeth pressed the button on the CB radio. “This is Grey Goose. Does anyone know CPR? Over.”

“This is Lonely Pelican.” Lonely Pelican was Larry Fishman’s handle. “That’s a negatory.
Don’t know CPR. Over.”

“Thanks Lonely Pelican. Is there anyone that does know CPR? Over.”

“Patches McGee here.” That was Slim Henry’s handle. “I did the Heimlich Maneuver once. Didn’t go so well. Figure I’m due now. Over.”

“Thanks Patches, but I think the candy bar hit her in the forehead. Didn’t go down her throat. Over.”

The caravan screeched to a halt. Ben pulled off his goggles and scarf, tore off his seatbelt, and hopped down the stairs of the gazebo, landing with a tooth-jarring shock on the rocky ground. He ran up to the little girl. She was sitting up now and had a large bump the size of an egg on her forehead. A little boy’s round face was smeared with chocolate and he was licking the last of the Snickers out of the torn wrapper.

The girl looked up at them dreamily.

“Are you carnies?” she asked.

“No,” Ben said. He would check to see how bad the blow to the head was. He didn’t know first aid, but he figured he’d better do something before Slim Henry tried the Heimlich maneuver. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“The thumb isn’t a finger.”

“I’m not holding up my thumb.”

She squinted closely at his hand. “So you ain’t,” she said wonderingly.

“I’ll just wait in the van,” Derrick said.

Ben saw that Derrick was looking towards the end of the street as if he was expecting an angry mob to come over the horizon at any moment with torches and pitchforks. Ben doubted that would happen. It was early afternoon and the sky was clear; there was no need for torches. And nobody used pitchforks anymore. This was the twenty-first century—there were more advanced ways of checking for fugitives hiding in stacks of hay.

“What’s going on here,” a deep voice said sharply.

Ben volted around and saw a large man had snuck up on them. He wore blue jeans, a worn flannel shirt, and had a rough, creased face. There was some spittle in his whiskers.

“She just bumped her head,” Ben said and then explained what had happened.

“Run away and play, little Suzie,” the man said. The girl skipped away with her friends. The man turned towards Ben and offered his hand.

“I’m Sheriff Johnston.”

Ben’s heart jumped. They were going to be arrested for assaulting a little girl with a Snickers bar.

Sheriff Johnston’s handshake was soft and wet. Ben tried to suppress a shudder. It felt like an eel was sliding over his palm.

Strangely enough, the sheriff didn’t have a gun or a badge. (Or a sheriff’s hat for that matter.) They had wandered into a town where the law was unarmed. Maybe they had accidentally wandered into Canada. That wasn’t part of the plan. The flowers were supposed to inspire Americans, not foreigners. Still, at least if they were in Canada, it would be easy to find a bobsled. Or maybe his first name was Sheriff. Parents gave their children strange names. Like Toby. Ben couldn’t suppress a giggle when he thought of the name Toby. He covered up his mouth and tried to get himself under control.

“You all right there, young fella?” Sheriff Johnston asked.

Ben nodded and stopped laughing. This man probably was a real sheriff. He didn’t seem like the kind of person whose parents would name him Rainbow or Sunshine. They wouldn’t get more exotic than something like Cody or Trevor.

“You carnies?” Sheriff Johnston asked.

“No,” Ben answered. This town had something about carnies.

“Sure about that?” the gunless sheriff asked.

“Yeah.”

“Not carnies?”

“We’re not carnies.”

“Are you a motorcycle gang?”

“No.”

“We don’t have any motorcycles?” Derrick pointed out.

The sheriff looked at the trucks and squinted his eyes. “What you got in those trucks then?”

“Flowers,” Ben said.

“What sort of flowers?” the sheriff asked suspiciously. “Motorcycle flowers?”

“Beautiful flowers,” Ben said, wondering what in the world motorcycle flowers were.

“And what do you plan to do with these so-called beautiful flowers?”

“Inspire people to see how beautiful life is. So that they’ll follow their dreams.”

“So it’s a revival meetin’ then?”

“No.”

“You’re a faith healer then?”

“No.”

“I love gettin’ saved.”

“I’m not a faith healer.”

“I’ll go get Gimpy Barry. He needs a healin’. That boy just sits in that chair.”

Sheriff Johnston turned on his heel and started to walk away.

“Ben,” Elizabeth whispered into his ear. “Are you sure you can do this? Gimpy Barry isn’t a flower.”

“Of course I can’t. I’m just a poet.” Ben ran after the sheriff. “There’s been a misunderstanding. I can’t heal a crippled person. I’m not a faith healer. I’m not here to preach. We’re not having a revival.”

“Gimpy Barry’ll be disappointed. And that boy’s had more than enough disappointment. I guess one more won’t make much of a difference.” Sheriff Johnston sighed. “Well then, who are you fellows?”

“Well, I’m a poet, he’s a human citronella candle, he’s a hermit…”

“Former hermit,” Toby corrected him.

“Right. Former hermit. Now he’s a future gold-medalist in the bobsled…”

“You carnies?” the sheriff asked. His face was dead serious. He seemed to have forgotten that he had already asked this question.

“No,” Ben explained patiently. “Our trucks are stuffed with flowers. We came to show them to people and inspire them to realize how beautiful everything is.”

“You Muslims?”

“No.” Ben shook his head.

“I am,” Toby said.

“Really?” Ben was surprised. He never would have suspected that this ex-hermit and future gold-medalist was a Muslim. It just went to show that you couldn’t judge by appearances. Muslims looked just like everyone else. They weren’t all Middle Easterners with turbans and long beards.

“Are you a moderate?” Elizabeth asked cautiously.

Toby shrugged. “I guess.”

“What’s in those trucks?” Sheriff Johnston asked.

“Flowers,” Ben said. He decided not to mention the cactuses. It might set the sheriff off. “We just want to share the beauty of flowers with you. Can I show you?” Ben turned to walk to the truck.

“Hold it.” The sheriff grasped Ben’s shoulder. “You got a permit to show those flowers?”

“No. We didn’t know we needed one.”

“Well, now you know. ‘Fraid you can’t be showin’ any flowers. You need a flower-displaying permit to display your flowers, beautiful or otherwise.”

Ben felt his anger growing. Usually he tried to sublimate it into a tight little ball in the pit of his stomach, and release it in his poetry, but every once in a while some of it slipped out, like what was happening now.

“There’s no such thing as a flower-displaying permit!” he shouted. “There wasn’t any permit fee when you thought we were revivalists! You’re just trying to run us out of town!”

“Easy there fella,” the sheriff said. “I can sell you a permit.”

Elizabeth pulled Ben away from the sheriff. “Let me handle this,” she said.

Ben took a few steps away and let her handle the sheriff. He was embarrassed that he let his anger take over. His hands were still shaking.

“That’s very kind of you, Mister Sheriff,” Elizabeth said. “How much is the permit?”

“How much you got?”

Ben was wrong. This wasn’t Canada. It was communist Russia. Oh well, at least it was one of the tundra countries. They’d be able to find a bobsled. Ben kicked dust at an imaginary umpire. Everyone in the flower caravan looked shocked that a sheriff would abuse his position in this way. Only Elizabeth didn’t seem to understand what was happening. Her face remained pleasant and uncomprehending, her head slightly tilted, her eyelids flickering erratically, and a merry grin plastered on her face.

“That’s nice,” she said. “You charge on a sliding scale so that no one is turned away. Well, I’m very rich. Charge me the maximum.”

Ben suddenly felt dizzy and nauseous. He was sure he was going to pass out or have an epileptic fit.

“The maximum, eh?” the sheriff squinted at her like he was a carnie, trying to guess her weight. How much could he squeeze out of her? “Fifty dollars?”

“That sounds very reasonable.” She unbuckled her large, jewel-encrusted purse and fished out a crinkly fifty dollar bill.

Sheriff Johnston looked disappointed with himself when he took the bill. He should have asked for more. He should have made his initial offer higher.

He looked like he was about to ask for more, add shipping and handling charges. Then suddenly, without saying a word, he stuck the money in his pocket and ran off.

“You forgot to give us the permit!” Ben shouted after him.

***
אב ה' תשס''ז
ירושלים
July 20, 2007
Jerusalem

Chapter Thirteen

Most of the gardeners quit. Only Manuel, Frederico, and Hey Zeus agreed to become truck drivers. Ben recruited Marcy, but they were still short on employees so Elizabeth decided to put an advertisement in the newspaper. She asked Ben to write the ad, since he was a writer.

Ben didn’t want to. Help wanted ads were a waste of his creative juices and he hated wasting creative juice. It would start him down the wrong path: the path of writing dry nonfiction, legal documents, and instruction manuals that nobody read. He supposed his close friends and family would read an instruction manual if he wrote it, just to be nice. They would tell him how great it was, how clearly he explained the steps of putting together an electric fan. It would be the first thing he wrote that his father actually liked.

On the other hand,if he wrote the ad, at least he would be published. He supposed a help wanted advertisement counted as being published. Elizabeth was having it printed in all the major newspapers and it would be distributed all over the city.

So Ben agreed to write the ad. His first published poem was titled: “Help Wanted.” He tried to make it creative. Drivers were wanted, the poem said, like water on thirsty lips. Generous compensation. Generous like a drunken philanthropist. Or a philanthropic drunk. Comprehensive health insurance, covering everything, like the feathers of a penguin, or the burka of a Muslim. Valid driver’s license needed. Needed like the earth needs the rains, the stargazer needs the stars. The salary competetive. Competitive like a sporting event, with balls and sticks and rackets, running, jumping, leaping! Onward Ho Ye Mighty Flower Caravan!

Then there was a phone number for people to call if they were interested. Interested like a narcissist in a hall of funhouse mirrors.

Ben bought copies of the newspapers and gave them to his family and friends. He was now a published author. Tyrone was impressed. “Makes you tink bout what really impo’tant.”

Ben’s father was not impressed. They sat in his parents' kitchen, the newspaper spread out on the table. Max read the poem silently and shook his head.

“You’re an addict,” he announced. “This poem is a cry for help.”

“No it isn’t,” Ben said.

“Then why is it titled, “Help Wanted?”

“It’s a help wanted ad.”

“You said it’s a poem.”

“It’s both. It’s functional poetry. The idea that art is just there to look pretty is used by owners to mistreat their employees. Remove beauty from the daily grind and people think their jobs ought to be miserable. Then they tolerate it.”

“And I suppose rhymes are a tool of the oppressor?”

***

“I guess I should invite you inside for a cup of tea,” the hermit said. “I suppose that would be the hospitable thing to do.”

The hermit turned and walked towards the dilapidated shack. They followed after him. Ben saw that Derrick looked a little pale, possibly worried that being a hermit was contagious.

Mayby Derrick already had hermit. He was basically a hermit in his parents’ basement, just sitting there, strumming his guitar. Derrick rode the proverbial luge.

“Derrick,” Ben whispered. “You should be on the hermit’s bobsled.”

Derrick looked at him and squinched up his brow.

“Why would I wan’t to do that?”

“It’s good exercise. You need the exercise.”

“It’s not exercise. You just sit there.”

“You have to shift around, back and forth. You have to scrunch up inside the hollowed-out log to cut down on the wind resistance.”

“I’m not getting in a log with him.”

They went into the shack. The place was a real dump. It looked like the kind of place Tyrone would own. It had a dirt floor littered with broken glass. A torn blanked covered a lump of dried straw that looked dry enough to draw blood.

The hermit set a blackened kettle on a small portable gas stove which he then lit with a match.

“Hope you like corn tea.”

“That will be fine,” Elizabeth said.

Ben looked at the selection of mugs resting on a wobbly wooden table. They all seemed to have a black mold growing on them. It was inspiring. If only Ben could spend the night there, drinking corn tea, he felt sure he could get a good poem out of it. He picked up a mug with a good amount of black mold and sniffed. Plight. It smelled like plight. Ben realized he didn’t know the hermit’s name; didn’t know whose plight he was smelling.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The hermit opened his mouth to speak but then froze. His eyes went wide. He seemed to have forgotten his name. The hermint looked embarrassed and Ben felt embarrassed for him.

“I’m Ben,” Ben said. He’d stall for time. He’d introduce everyone and maybe by the time he finished introducing a couple dozen drivers, the hermit would remember his name.

“This is Derrick. Toby actually. He has two names.”

“He has two names?” The hermit said petulantly. “Why’s he get two names?”

“One’s his handle.”

“I ain’t got a handle. I ain’t got nothin to hold onto. Can’t even remember my name. And he gets two?”

The kettle shook in the hermit’s hand, his lips trembled, and he looked like he was about
to burst into tears.

“Don’t cry,” Elizabeth said. “You can have one of Derrick’s names.”

“What!? No!!” Derrick kicked at a pile of dried corn cobs, sending them scattering.
“You’re giving my name away?”

“Let him have Toby.”

“No! Toby is my name!”

“Toby,” the hermit mused. “Yeah. That’ll do nicely.”

Ben couldn’t help giggling. Toby was such a funny name. Derrick shot Ben an angry glance.

“So Toby,” Elizabeth said to the hermit, “Is there a place close by where we can find more people? More people like you?”

“Ain’t nobody like me. I’m unique, like a snowflake.”

“Other people we can show the flowers to?”

“There’s a little town up the road a stretch. Sometimes I head there to trade corn for some sour candy and licorice. But they don’t like flowers there.”

“Really?”

“Don’t remember ever seein a flower there. Not a one.”

“Well, that’s about to change.”

***

The caravan sped down the road toward the town. Ben, Derrick, and Elizabeth sat up in the gazebo, the wind whipping their scarves. Ben read a poem to the flowers through the CB radio about how everyone was a snowflake, everyone was unique, and when they came together with other snowflakes, they became snow and made a path for the bobsled. Ben wasn’t sure what the bobsled was a metaphor for, but it sounded good. He tried to focus on his poem, but was hard to concentrate with Derrick and Elizabeth arguing.

“Why’d we bring him along?” Derrick asked. “What do we need with a hermit? Are we going to bring everyone along that wants to follow their dream? The caravan is cramped enough as it is.”

“We need someone who knows how to take care of flowers,” Elizabeth said. “Especially since we lost Pablo.”

“How can he take care of flowers? All his corn died.”

“Because you wouldn’t help him. You should have made the bugs come after you.”

“I couldn’t. I can’t tell the bugs what to do. If I could, why would I tell them to bite me. I’d send them to picnics to steal me sandwiches.”

“You can’t stop the bugs from getting in our teeth either. Apparently you’re losing your powers. You’re having a slump.”

“Why does he have to be Toby? Toby’s no name for a hermit.”
“He’s not a hermit anymore.”

“He can be Herman. Herman the hermit. Or Kermit. Kermit the hermit. Oh, gimme the CB. I just made a poem.”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “You can’t talk through the CB until you have a handle.”

***
כ' תמוז תשס''ז
ירושלים
July 6, 2007
Jerusalem