Chapter Nineteen

The mosquitoes were out in force because of the humid weather, but the guests in their fancy evening-wear weren’t affected. They crowded close to Derrick in the gazebo and he soaked up all the bugs. A pile of dead swatted mosquitoes lay on the floor around him.
The caterers wore black pants and white shirts. Ben thought this uniform was meant to dehumanize them, so the guests wouldn’t feel uncomfortable with fellow human-beings subservient to them. The caterers strode across the grass between the kitchen and the gazebo, carrying silver trays of hors d’oeuvres: hunks of rare roast beef on rice cakes, stuffed mushrooms, squares of cheese on toothpicks, caviar on small squares of toast. When Derrick reached for a stuffed mushroom, the caterer jerked the tray away. Apparently the food was only for the guests, not the employees
***
After throwing his ice cubes in Ben’s face and deciding that Ben “wasn’t worth it,” Howard Roseman stormed off to the bar to get himself another drink. On the way, he snatched a platter of appetizers from a passing caterer and wolfed them down greedily.
Ben didn’t feel too upset from the throwing of the ice in his face. He was too inspired to feel humiliation or any other emotion. The inspiration flushed out every other feeling and filled him with tingles. He whipped out his notebook, his blue Bic plastic pen, (it was a workingman’s pen; medium point, not bourgeois fine point,) and composed The Particle of Love, comparing the intangibility of True Love to the mysterious Higgs Boson.
At first, Ben thought his poem was great, but then he realized he was feeling a false inspiration. His poem had nothing about the workingman, it rhymed, and his father would like it. He had sold out.
Ben looked up at the gazebo and saw the crowd laughing merrily, impervious to Derrick’s misery as insects devoured him. No one even offered to bring him a fly swatter. They snatched food and drinks off the caterers’ trays without as much as a thank you, willfully blinded by the dehumanizing uniforms.
They knew the mosquitoes weren’t biting them, but didn’t think about why. Derrick was the Higgs Boson that kept the mosquitoes away. The caterers were the Higgs Boson that brought them food and drink. The small dishes that they held in one hand were clean, but how did they get clean? The Higgs Boson dishwasher.
Ben felt like his eyes had opened for the first time. He looked around the garden and saw Higgs Bosons everywhere. He needed to get it on paper quickly before he forgot.
He flipped to a new page in his notebook and began to furiously write down his new Higgs Boson poem. It wasn’t a sell-out poem. It was rhyme-less, rhythm-less, gritty and grimy. It was about how it felt to be a Higgs Boson. All these physicists were trying to find the Higgs Boson. To find a Higgs Boson, you had to think like one. Ben knew what it felt like when your job title was also the name of a machine. Dishwasher. It was like having a job as a blender. Or an electric toothbrush. An electric toothbrush that cleaned teeth like a dentist, only more suicidal.
Ben wrote about the Higgs Boson of flowers: the gardeners. “Taste the sweat of Higgs Boson Gardener,” he wrote. “Doing the dirty work, handling the fertilizer, measuring the PH levels in the soil.”
His new poem, My Name is Higgs Boson, was brilliant. Not a false brilliance like The Particle of Love, but an authentic brilliance rooted in the backbreaking labor of the oppressed.
He was back. His brief flirtation with selling out was over. When Elizabeth called him up to the gazebo to read a poem, he would read My Name is Higgs Boson. It would probably horribly offend these people. They didn’t want to know how their dishes got clean, but they were going to find out anyway.
***
Elizabeth stood in the center of the gazebo and raised her hand, indication she wanted to make a speech. The chattering died down and everyone turned toward her.
“You’re probably wondering how my flowers got so big and luscious,” she said and paused for dramatic effect. “I’ll tell you: Love. The answer is love. Everyone needs love. People, animals, plants. Everyone. Scientists are just beginning to understand what the poets knew all along: love greatly increases botanical yield. Scientists used to say that all plants needed were nutrients from the soil, water, and sunlight. But new studies are rebutting the myth of photosynthesis, that flowers are hyper-independent. We’re so used to associating flowers with beauty, but flowers don’t always realize how beautiful they are. They feel insecure, just like the rest of us, and need to be told. And what better way than through poetry?”
Ben saw Howard Roseman standing alone in the grass near the gazebo. He had a hand on his throat and was making a gagging expression; apparently he thought flowers were being too sensitive.
“And now,” Elizabeth continued. “I’d like to introduce our newest poet here at Roseman Gardens, a promising young man with a unique free-verse style: Ben.”
The crowd clapped enthusiastically and a few people whistled at Ben as he ascended the gazebo steps. A slight breeze gusted through, blowing Ben’s poet scarf. Ben squeezed his way to the center of the gazebo, between Derrick and Elizabeth.
The clapping died down and the crowd smiled at Ben. They were probably expecting pleasant rhymes about love and meadows, but they were going to get something else altogether: unrhyming verses about sweaty unshaven workingmen, jet black from coal mine dust. Ben flipped his notebook open to the page with My Name is Higgs Boson.
Behind the crowd, in the grass outside the gazebo, Howard Roseman was grabbing his neck, making a choking signal. Choke, he was telling Ben. You’re going to choke!
Well, Ben would show him. He’d show everyone who didn’t believe in him. His father Max, Pat Henderson, Fat Reggie from the restaurant, and Howard Roseman. Ben cleared his throat and took a deep breath. He was going to do the best recitation ever.
Howard Roseman fell to his knees and frantically scratched at his throat. Maybe he was really choking, Ben thought. That would explain why his face was turning purple and his eyes bulging out of their sockets.
“He’s choking!” Ben shouted.
Everyone smiled at him. A few people nodded their heads at their neighbors. He was such a passionate poet. The flowers were choking because the soil wasn’t sufficiently oxidized and needed to be aerated. With Love.
“Someone do something!” Ben shouted. He stuffed his notebook back in his pocket, pushed his way through the crowd, and hurdled the gazebo railing. He landed hard on the grass below, sending bolts of pain shooting up his legs.
“What’s he doing?” a woman asked.
“It’s art,” a man explained knowledgably.
Ben quickly hobbled over to Professor Roseman who was scratching weakly at his neck and whose eyes were rolling back. Ben went behind him, wrapped his arms around his midsection, and then remembered with dismay that he didn’t know the Heimlich maneuver. Oh well, he had seen it done enough on TV. How hard could it be? He clasped his hands together into a ball, grasped Roseman’s skeletal frame, and crushed his stomach with all his strength.
No luck. No food flew out of his mouth. Roseman went limp; he had lost consciousness. Ben pulled again as hard as he could, lifting Roseman high into the air. Ben felt his legs slip out from under him and he fell backwards, suplexing Howard Roseman on the grass.
The old man was sprawled out on his back, about to die. Ben’s father had been right. Poetry was useless. Ben didn’t have any practical skills. Poetry couldn’t clear out Professor Roseman’s windpipe.
Or could it?
Ben pulled the blue plastic medium-point pen out of his pocket. He pulled off the cap, bit down on the front end of it, loosening the plastic tip, and dropped the tip of the pen on the grass along with the plastic ink cartridge. He also bit off the little piece of plastic that sealed the back of the pen. He was left with a hollow plastic tube. He was going to have to perform a tracheotomy; sticking the pen into the blocked windpipe to create an alternate path for oxygen. He had seen it done on TV on one of those medical shows, ER or possibly MacGyver. It seemed like the kind of thing MacGyver would do.
There was no time to wait for someone else to help. Roseman’s face was dark purple and red streaks ran down his neck. Every second, lack of oxygen was destroying brain cells; brain cells needed to find the mysterious Higgs Boson.
Ben knelt over Professor Roseman’s limp figure and set the tip of the plastic tube down on the lower part of his sagging old man neck, close to the collar bones. The sagging flesh reminded Ben of a chicken’s neck. With the palm of his free hand, Ben hammered the pen into Roseman’s neck.
Crunch!
A sharp pain shot through Ben’s hand. He pulled his hand away, squeezed it into a fist, and grimaced. He opened his fist and saw the small circular shape of the pen, indented in his palm.
Screams came from the gazebo. Ben looked down at Roseman. The pen was stuck halfway into his neck, blood oozed out from the sides of the pen, but nothing came from within the plastic tube; he still wasn’t breathing. Ben thought he might have missed the windpipe altogether. He wasn’t very good at anatomy. Or maybe he had done it correctly but something was stuck in the pen, blocking the flow of air. Sometimes, Ben would drink the juice straight out of an orange with a straw. He would shove the straw straight through the peel into the pulpy insides, but he couldn’t suck out the juice because a piece of orange peel would be stuck in the straw. First, he had to suck the orange peel out of the straw. Then he could drink the juice. Maybe a piece of Howard Roseman’s neck skin was jammed in the pen like orange peel in a straw. Ben didn’t want to suck it out, (he didn’t know what old man chicken neck tasted like and didn’t want to find out,) but this was no time for squeamishness; a man’s life hung in the balance.
Ben took a deep breath. Then he realized he needed to breathe out; he couldn’t suck out the blockage if his lungs were full of air. Ben breathed out, pushing his lungs empty, and felt his hands shaking. He could be brave when he had his courage-gathering deep breaths, but without the calming oxygen to relax his blood, he was a coward.
But who was he to complain? Howard Roseman hadn’t inhaled oxygen in several minutes and he wasn’t complaining!
That thought gave Ben the push he needed. He lowered his head and wrapped his mouth around the plastic end of the pen.
“Get out of the way!”
The bartender pushed Ben away and he fell into the grass, hitting the ground hard and rolling.
The bartender pulled open Roseman’s mouth, peered inside, stuck his fingers into his throat, and pulled out a half-chewed hunk or rare roast beef.
Roseman coughed and then gasped in deeply, quickly and desperately: not through the pen, but through his mouth. He stared up at the starry sky, his eyes blinking frantically and watering slightly, the blue Bic plastic medium pen still sticking out of his neck.
The entire party hurried over and gathered in a circle around them. Elizabeth knelt beside her husband.
“Oh Howard,” she said, glancing at the half-chewed beef in the bartender’s hand. “You know the doctor warned you about red meat.”
Howard tried to speak, grimaced, and his hand shot to his neck.
“Don’t try to speak, Howard. You have a pen in your neck.”
He touched the pen, questioningly.
“Don’t take it out,” Elizabeth said. “Just leave it in for now. It might be holding things in. Or be in an artery. Let the paramedics handle this.”
“That’s right,” Ben said. “Leave it in. There’s definitely something lodged in there.”
Roseman furrowed his forehead, raised his eyebrows, and lifted his shoulders as if to say, what happened?
Elizabeth slapped at her wrist and then looked at the dead mosquito sprawled against her skin.
“Derrick!” she called. Derrick was standing all alone in the middle of the gazebo. “Could you come over here please?”
Derrick sighed, lowered his shoulders, and trudged over to the crowd in the grass.
Ben explained to Professor Roseman what had happened after he blacked out. How he had tried in vain to perform the Heimlich maneuver, jammed a pen into his throat, and was about to try sucking out whatever was lodged in there when the bartender came and pulled the meat out of his throat.
Howard’s face was pale, his eyes glassy and confused-looking. Maybe he had suffered brain damage, or maybe he was just exhausted from almost suffocation. He opened his mouth to speak again, grimaced in pain, and grabbed his neck. Ben knew how frustrating it could be not to be able to communicate; he had the same situation with Juan, the Hispanic dishwasher.
Roseman made a writing motion with his hand, signaling for something to write with. Ben flipped his notebook open to a blank page, handed it to Professor Roseman, and felt his pockets for his pen. Where was it?
Oh. Right. It was in Professor Roseman’s neck. But the writing part wasn’t. The plastic ink tube and the pen tip was somewhere in the grass.
“Just a sec,” Ben said and began combing through the grass like he was searching for a lost contact lens.
Before Ben located the writing part of his pen, a tall man reached into his tan sport coat, pulled out a pen, and handed it to Howard Roseman. It was a nice pen, not a cheap Bic like Ben’s. A dark polished wood-plated fountain pen, the kind favored by executives of heartless corporations for signing downsizing orders. When Howard took off the pen cap, Ben saw that the pen’s tip was plated in gold. The ball-point looked sharp; probably fine-point.
Howard dropped Ben’s notebook to the grass, raised the pen high above his head in a stabbing grip, and ran at Ben.
Ben stumbled and just barely jumped out of the way in time. The thrust missed his head by millimeters. Howard Roseman, his face gnarled and twisted, ran after Ben, trying to stab him with the pen.
Howard was too old to run properly. He sort of shuffled after Ben, the blue Bic pen bobbing up and down in his neck, but he shuffled with great determination. He kept pursuing Ben in circles around the gazebo and all around the garden until the paramedics arrived.
Ben figured that the party was over, for him at least. They probably wouldn’t let him recite My Name is Higgs Boson now. He was worse than the poet who ran over the flowers with a riding lawn mower.
***
ט''ו באלול תשס''ז
ירושלים
August 29, 2007
Jerusalem

Chapter Eighteen

It was late afternoon and the caravan winded it way through the mountains. From his seat atop the gazebo, Ben breathed in the fresh mountain air and enjoyed the beautiful sight of thin, wispy clouds puffing through the mountain ridges. He was reading his new poem, The Fire of Flowers, over the CB radio.
Derrick squirmed around uncomfortably in his seat. He reached for the CB radio, but Ben pulled it away.
“I’m in the middle of reciting a poem!”
“Tell them to pull over.” Derrick said. “I have to go again.”
Elizabeth sighed. “We just stopped twenty minutes ago. We should have been at the next town by now. There’re people there who don’t realize how beautiful life is and they need to see some flowers. They can’t wait forever.”
“Neither can I!” Derrick wriggled in his seat. “I drank twenty cups of coffee back at the last truck stop!”
“Well, you shouldn’t have done that. You took advantage of their generous offer of free refills. They had to brew seven pots just for you. We’re not stopping. You’ll just have to wait.”
“Fine.” Derrick unbuckled his seatbelt, stood up, and walked shakily over to the side of the gazebo, holding his arms out like a tight-rope walker. He unzipped, and hoisted himself up to he could get it over the railing.
“Don’t make any hairpin turns,” he said and let loose with a powerful stream. The wind blew his stream onto the windshield of the truck behind the gazebo, the one that carried the roses. The rose-truck’s windshield wipers turned on.
“This is Rattlesnake,” came over the CB radio. Johnny Richler (whose handle was Rattlesnake) drove the rose truck directly behind them. He was a thin, nervous man with a curly red beard. He always blinked way more than was necessary. At the moment, his voice was surprisingly calm. “Would you care to explain why Mosquito Boy is relieving himself on my windshield? Over.”
“Grey Goose here,” said Elizabeth nervously. “Take it easy Rattlesnake. Just squirt some windshield wiper fluid on there. Over.”
Ben saw the blue fluid squirt onto the windshield of the rose-truck and the windshield wipers wiping at it.
Derrick had finished, zipped up, and returned to his seat.
“Here.” Elizabeth handed the CB to Derrick. “Apologize to Rattlesnake.”
Derrick pressed the button and spoke into it.
“This is Derrick, the original Toby here. Don’t worry. I drank so much coffee that what came out was clear. Purer than bottled water.”
Rattlesnake’s windshield wipers were still whipping back and forth, but now they had sped up; they were at their fastest setting.
“You don’t need to have them on that fast,” Derrick said. “There’s no monsoon.”
“No!” screamed Rattlesnake’s squeaky, gravelly voice through the CB. “Don’t you tell me how to clean my windshields! You’re no one to give advice on how to clean windows!”
The rose-truck started to speed up. It was closing the gap between itself and the gazebo-truck.
“Give it to me.” Elizabeth grabbed the CB radio from Derrick. “Rattlesnake, this is Grey Goose. Stop tailgating us. Over.”
But Rattlesnake didn’t stop tailgating. He continued to close the distance between the two trucks. Derrick tightened his seatbelt and assumed a crash position, his head tucked between his knees. Ben did the same, half expecting an oxygen mask to drop from the gazebo ceiling.
The gazebo lurched sharply. The chest strap on Ben’s seatbelt crushed the wind out of him. Ben heard a crunching noise and looked back. The front grill of the rose-truck drove right into the gazebo steps hanging off the back of the truck, and splintered the steps onto the road behind them. Rattlesnake continued to grind into the back of their truck and chip away at the stairs.
“I think I have whiplash,” said Derrick.
Ben couldn’t believe it: he was going to die and it was a workingman, one of the people he wanted to represent, who was going to kill him. He supposed that the wild apes must have mauled Dian Fossey a few times before they accepted her.
Larry Shoemaker, who drove the gazebo-truck, tried to speed up, but Rattlesnake continued tearing away at the back stairs.
“I should have known this would happen,” Elizabeth scolded herself. “I never should have given him a second chance.”
“Second chance?” Ben looked up at her from his crash position. “What do you mean, ‘second chance?’?”
“Rattlesnake was the old gardener. He’s the one who killed the flowers with a riding lawn mower.”
Ben sat up straight and stared at her.
“And you hired him back after that?”
“Everyone deserves a second chance. He said he got some counseling. I don’t know, maybe I’m too nice.”
“Yeah, real nice,” Derrick said from his crash position. “You won’t even stop so I can go to the bathroom.”
Elizabeth ignored him. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I know what to do.”
Ben asked, “You want our suggestions first?”
She shook her head. “There’s no time for that now. Ben, you’re going to have to use your poetry to calm him down.” She held out the CB radio for him to take.
“But my poetry doesn’t make people calm. It agitates against the status quo. It’s supposed to get people mad.”
“Oh, I’ll do it,” Derrick said. He grabbed the CB and pressed the button. “We got a great big convoy, ain’t she a beautiful sight! We got a great big convoy, rockin’ through the night!”
The enormous front tires of the rose-truck caught hold on the gazebo platform and climbed up into the gazebo itself. The front cabin of the rose-truck flew up, smashing through the two back columns supporting the roof, and landed on the gazebo floor, cracking its surface. Derrick dropped the CB receiver as the front of the rose truck sped at their faces. It was only inches from them when the load it was hauling pulled it back. The rose-truck’s front cabin slid off the back of the gazebo and dropped to the highway with a smash. The weight of the roses had saved them. Tire marks were burned into the floor of the gazebo and the wood was cracked in several places.
It didn’t slow Rattlesnake down, however. He continued to pursue them along the narrow mountain pass.
“Don’t worry,” Elizabeth said. We’ll just keep driving. We just need to stay ahead of him until he cools down.”
“That’s a great idea,” Derrick said. “Just keep the high speed chase going. Brilliant.”
Ben picked the CB radio up off the ground. Derrick was right: a high speed chase on this narrow mountain path was too dangerous. Especially at the speed they were going; way above the posted speed limit. Ben didn’t want to sell out, but he had no choice. He improvised a soothing poem to calm Rattlesnake down. The most boring, sedate, and cliché poem he could think of. Cumulonimbus clouds drifting lazily along the tranquil river of sky. Slumbering willow trees fluttering in the mist. (He was tempted to throw something in their about third-world children’s tiny hands mangled in the machinery of oppression, but he managed to restrain himself.) Dandelion fluff flittering on a ray of sunlight.
He couldn’t tell if the poem was having any effect. The rose-truck continued to speed after them and there was no one talking on the CB.
“Try telling him to pull over,” Elizabeth suggested.
“Rattlesnake,” Ben said in his most soothing voice. “Why don’t you pull over? Let’s take a break.”
Ben waited for a response. After a tense few moments, Rattlesnake’s gravelly voice came squeaking through the radio.
“Throw me the Mosquito Boy and I’ll stop.”
Elizabeth looked at Derrick like she was giving Rattlesnake’s offer serious consideration.
“No,” Ben said. “Rattlesnake, we’re not throwing him to you. You won’t be able to divide us. If you want one of us, you’ll have to get past all of us.”
Suddenly, Derrick unbuckled his seatbelt, stood up, and started walking tightrope-style to the back of the gazebo.
“Derrick! NO!!!” Ben quickly unbuckled his own seatbelt. “Don’t do it. Don’t be a hero!”
“Sit down, Ben,” Derrick said. “I had seven pots of coffee. I have to go again. What do you think? I’m going to jump off the gazebo?”
Derrick stood up against the side of the gazebo, unzipped, and hoisted himself up.
“Aim away from Rattlesnake!” Elizabeth yelled. “You’ll just make him madder if you hit him again.”
“How could he get any madder?” Derrick asked, stumbling and grasping onto the banister for support. “He’s already trying to kill us. Maybe this’ll cool him off.”
Derrick let loose and the wind once again blew it towards the road behind them. Rattlesnake backed off a bit so that the stream fell harmlessly to the road. As soon as Derrick trickled to a stop, Rattlesnake put the petal to the floor, screeching forward at the gazebo.
Derrick hurried back to his seat while zipping up, but before he could sit down, buckle up, and assume a crash position, the rose-truck smashed them. It felt like an earthquake striking. Derrick tumbled down, tried to grasp onto the ground where the rose-truck’s tires had cracked it, but he lost his grip, slid and tumbled backwards, past the demolished stairs, off the back of the gazebo.
“DERRICK!!!”
Ben squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, waiting for the bone-crunching crack of tires pulverizing Derrick, but no sound came. Ben slowly opened his eyes, looked back, and was shocked by what he saw. The rose-truck was now several car-lengths behind them and was no longer tail-gating them. Derrick was hanging onto its front hood, his chest pressed tightly against the front grill, his legs swinging freely underneath between the two enormous front tires, and his sneakers scraping against the concrete.
“Rattlesnake!” Elizabeth called into the CB. “Stop at once!”
“No!” Ben shouted at her. “Don’t say stop! If he stops, the momentum will throw Derrick off and he’ll go flying. He has to slow down gradually.”
“I meant for him to stop what he’s doing: the craziness. Not literally to stop the truck all at once. I’m sure he understood.”
“Well maybe he didn’t. I think you should clarify.”
“Oh, all right.” She pressed the button on the radio. “Rattlesnake, you should slow down the truck gradually and then come to a complete stop. Whatever you do, don’t stop suddenly. Then Derrick might go…”
Ben snatched the CB transmitter out of her hand. “What are you doing?! Don’t give him ideas!”
“You said to tell him to slow down.”
“Yeah, but don’t tell him why.”
Instead of slowing down, Rattlesnake sped up. He was closing the gap; it seemed that the flower-truck’s top speed was faster than the gazebo-truck’s. The jagged spiky remains of the gazebo stairs were about to impale Derrick.
“Go faster, Larry Shoemaker! Faster!” Elizabeth screamed frantically into the CB.
“I’m going as fast as I can go!” Larry Shoemaker said. “Lay offa me, willya?”
Derrick’s arms strained to support his body weight; the veins pressed out of his arms, ready to pop.
Just a moment before the rose-truck smashed into the gnarled mess of splintered spear-like planks, Derrick pulled himself onto the front hood, and a jagged lance of wood tore the back of his shirt. He collapsed against the front window, staring through it into Rattlesnake’s mad eyes.
The rose-truck swerved back and forth, but Derrick held on tightly with one hand in the crevice between the front hood and the window. With his free hand, he grabbed a wooden plank that had broken off the gazebo and started to sledgehammer the front windshield. Small cracks sprouted on the glass and broke out into rivulets.
Rattlesnake turned on the windshield wipers (at their fastest setting.) They swatted Derrick’s plank of wood and it fell to the side of the road. Derrick lost his balance, tumbled, and slid headfirst on his stomach down the hood. He managed to grasp onto the hood ornament and hang on. His legs fell down and his sneakers scraped on the pavement. He was right back where he started.
Ben couldn’t recite a calming poem over the CB; he couldn’t make himself heard through the cacophony of other driver’s voices urging Rattlesnake to take it easy and not lower himself to Derrick’s level.
Ben knew he had to do something. He unbuckled his seatbelt and looked around for a rope or something to throw to Derrick. There was nothing.
Rattlesnake swerved sharply to the shoulder of the road and one of the huge man-eater tires almost swallowed Derrick up. It managed to tear his shoe off his foot, and squish it, turning it into a flip-flop.
Ben carefully approached the back of the gazebo in a crouch position. When Rattlesnake tried to impale Derrick on the spears of wood, Ben would reach down and try to grab him.
“Ben!” Elizabeth unbuckled her seatbelt and stood up. “LOOKOUT!”
The two remaining gazebo posts begin to creak and splinter. The shadow cast by the gazebo’s roof started to shift. The weight of the roof was too much for the two remaining posts to handle and the heavy dome was falling down. Ben’s life didn’t flash before his eyes. He just had a moment of regret that he wouldn’t get to become a world-famous poet.
Then his eyes caught onto the duct tape which marked the center of the gazebo. He grabbed Elizabeth and leapt with her down to the spot of duct tape on the ground. The gazebo roof crashed down around them, but the high apex of the center of the dome stopped before hitting them. Duct tape saved their lives. Duct tape could do anything. It was Ghetto Traveler in solid form.
They were in complete darkness. The gazebo dome blocked out the setting sun and muffled the sounds of engines in overdrive and the mountain wind whipping past. It would have been somewhat peaceful, except Ben was lying there with his arm around Elizabeth, and she was really old. And she was wearing way too much perfume.
A ray of light burst in from the back corner and quickly grew. Ben saw the splintered remains of the stairs and the faded yellow line on the faded gray road racing by underneath them. The dark wall pushed them towards the blurred road. The gazebo’s dome was sliding back and trying to push them off onto the blurring road underneath.
Then the dome’s wall (the one pushing them) lifted up into the air. Ben and Elizabeth scrambled under it towards their seats. The weight of the other side of the dome hanging over nothingness pulled it down to the road, see-sawing the front part up into the air.
Ben grabbed onto the back of his seat and felt a moment of relief flood him until he realized that the gazebo dome was going to smack into Derrick.
THWACK!!!
The gazebo dome crashed into the front grill of the rose-truck with an ear-splitting crunch. Ben forced himself to turn around and look, expecting to see pieces of Derrick splattered all over the road. Instead, he saw Derrick sitting in the upside-down gazebo dome, sliding along the shoulder of the road, parallel to the rose-truck. It looked like he was riding a bobsled. No. A luge. He was all alone so it was a luge. Derrick’s face looked terribly lonely and frightened. It would be terrible to die on the luge. Much better to die in a horrible bobsled accident. At least you weren’t alone.
The upside-down gazebo dome luge was splintering rapidly, leaving a trail of sawdust. There was no snow to cut the friction. Rattlesnake turned into the shoulder of the road, smashed into the upside-down gazebo roof and knocked Derrick off the shoulder of the road. Derrick started sliding down the steep slope. The luge picked up speed as it whipped through and knocked down little pine trees that grew on the side of the mountain.
The steep slope became steeper and Derrick picked up speed. Finally, it became so steep it was no longer a slope. It was a cliff. Derrick went flying right off it and into the abyss.
***
ד' באב תשס''ז
ירושלים
August 18, 2007
Jerusalem

Chapter Seventeen

Fortunately, they managed to convince the sheriff to let them leave with their flowers and poet intact. Ben didn’t feel at all embarrassed that a small town sheriff ran them out of town; he felt too inspired to feel anything else. From the top of the gazebo, he scribbled furiously into his notebook verses about the Fire of Flowers. The five-alarm Fire of Flowers. The Great Chicago Fire of Flowers.

As they pulled out of town, Elizabeth whispered softly to herself, “The siege begins.”

The pen slipped and Ben accidentally tore a hole through the paper.

“What siege?"

“Ben, you didn’t think we were going to accept defeat so easily, did you?”

“Yes?”

“No.”

“Aren’t we fleeing?”

“That’s what I want him to think.” She looked over her shoulder at the town shrinking in the distance and the corners of her mouth curled upwards.

“Let’s just go to the next town,” Derrick said. “That sheriff is going to lock us in jail…or worse.”

“Derrick, Derrick, Derrick.” Elizabeth shook her head. “You’re always thinking negatively. We have to work on that.”

“I’m not being negative. I’m realistic. We’re going to be lynched. He has a volunteer fire department.”

“Don’t be silly. Our only problem is the sheriff. It’s just like The Wizard of Oz. As soon as the Wicked Witch is gone, all the people there will be on our side.”

Ben hoped she wouldn’t expand on this metaphor, but she did.

“Yes, I’m Dorothy. Ben is Toto. Derrick, you’re the Cowardly Lion.”

“WHY AM I THE COWARDLY LION?!”

“That can be your new handle,” she suggested.

“I don’t want to be the Cowardly Lion,” Derrick moaned.

“At least you’re not Todo,” Ben said.

“The point is that we just have to get around the sheriff. The volunteer fire department won’t give us any trouble. Don’t worry. I have a plan.”

“What is it?” Ben asked.

“No no. You tell me your plan first.”

“What?”

“I read a book on leadership in preparation for our journey and it said I should ask you your ideas first. If I said mine first, it would influence you. You would be afraid to contradict me. So go ahead: tell me how we can get rid of the sheriff.”

“I don’t have a plan,” Ben said.

“Sure you do. How can we show our flowers to the townspeople?”

“I don’t know. Ghetto Traveler, maybe?”

“Ben, Ghetto Traveler is a lovely fluid, I’m sure, but it can’t be of much help in our present situation. Derrick, what’s your idea?”

“Okay,” Derrick said. “We could support the other sheriff, Joey Bob. You know: the resistance.”

Elizabeth mad a sour face. “But he deceived us. He took fifty dollars from me and sold us a worthless parade permit that we never even received.”

Derrick shrugged. “Lesser of two evils. He’s our Northern Alliance.”

“Hmmm.” She rubbed her pointy chin.

“You’re not actually considering this?” Derrick said. “I was joking, you know.”

“It’s a good idea,” she said. “It’s actually better than my idea.”

“It’s a terrible idea.”

“Then why’d you suggest it?”

“I was joking. Couldn’t you tell I was joking?”

“You sounded so serious.”

“I have a very dry sense of humor. What do you want me to hit two drums and a cymbal every time I make a joke? Doo-doop-CHING!”

“This is no time for jokes. This is serious business. You need to express your feelings better, Derrick.”

“Why don’t you tell us your idea,” Ben suggested.

She grinned and clasped the tips of her fingers together like Mr. Burns.

“Okay, first we’re going to need a diversion.”

“A virgin?”

“No, Derrick. A diversion.”

“Oh. Okay, right.”

“And then when the sheriff is diverted, we sneak the caravan in and quickly put on a flower show.”

“What diversion?” Ben asked. They would need a pretty big diversion to sneak in an entire caravan.

“Well,” Elizabeth said. “I have a good idea for a diversion, but I’d like to hear your ideas first. Ben?”

“Ghetto Traveler.”

“No. Derrick? And please be serious this time.”

“Chloroform and a rag.”

“I told you to be serious.”

“I am being serious.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “We don’t want to stoop to the sheriff’s level.”

“So what’s your idea?” Ben asked her.

“Well, I lied. I don’t have one. I thought it would encourage you to think of something if you thought I had an idea. I’ll ask the gang what they think.” She picked up the CB radio. “This is Grey Goose here. I need some advice. What’s a good diversion to distract the sheriff while we sneak in the flowers? Over.”

A staticcy voice came through the CB radio. “I have an idea. Why don’t you strip down to your underpants, lather yourself in some pig’s blood, and streak down Main Street?”

“Who said that?” Elizabeth asked. “You didn’t identify yourself. Over.”

“It’s the sheriff,” Ben said. “He’s on the CB radio.”

“Don’t be tryin’ any diversions!” the sheriff shouted through the CB. “Just keep goin’ straight outta here! DON’T MAKE ME COME AFTER YOU!!!”

***

They drove from town to town setting up the flower show. It was always the same routine and always without much luck. No homicidal sheriffs ran them out of town, but they didn’t get any ecstatic receptions either. Everyone told them how “pretty” the flowers were, but no one wanted to drop everything and join an aspiring bobsled team. Elizabeth thought the sheriff had laid a curse on them.

They ate at greasy little truck stop diners. Since Elizabeth always picked up the tab, Derrick always ordered the most expensive thing on the menu. All of the truck stop diners were similar: a layer of grease coated every surface: the tables, the plastic-tiled floors, the plates, the silverware. It was as if they used deep-fat fryer grease for mop water and to clean the table-tops and dishes, their own multi-purpose cleaning fluid, a truck stop Ghetto Traveler.

Ben’s shoes stuck to the plastic tiles and made suction cup sounds when he lifted his legs. He wanted to get in touch with the working people so he took off his shoes and socks, and walked around, leaving greasy footprints on the plastic tiles until the waitress told him to stop; the health inspector demanded the wearing of shoes.

Just like the gardeners and caterers before them, the truck drivers shunned Ben and Derrick, thinking that reading poetry to flowers and absorbing mosquitoes wasn’t real work. Ben hoped this would change with time and the truckers would accept him as one of their own. Dian Fossey wasn’t accepted overnight when she joined a tribe of gorillas. These things took time.

And Dian Fossey’s parents probably didn’t support her decision to join the gorilla tribe. They probably called Pat Henderson (or a Pat Henderson equivalent) and he probably told her that she was addicted to Anthropology.

Ben and Derrick were sitting alone at a window booth facing the highway. Derrick took a packet of Sweet n Low from the sugar carrier and rolled it around in his hand, grinding up the crystals inside into a fine powder. Then he packed it back in with the other sugars and Sweet n Lows.

“Stop that,” Ben said. “People are gonna use those.”

“So? I’m not hurting it.”

“You shouldn’t manhandle other people’s food.”

“I’m not manhandling, I’m not even touching it. There’s a wrapper between me and the Sweet n Low.”

“People are gonna see it’s all powdery and they’ll think there’s something wrong with it.”

“What’s the difference? It’s all gonna dissolve anyway when they put it in their coffee.”

“Just stop doing it, okay? As a personal favor to me, stop grinding up the Sweet n Low.”

Derrick threw a packet of Sweet n Low that hit Ben on the nose and fell in his minestrone soup.

“Sorry,” Derrick said. “Got carried away.”

He plunged his fingers into Ben’s minestrone soup and pulled out the pink packet of Sweet n Low. He wiped the reddish-orange liquid off with a paper napkin and squeezed the packet back into its container.

“Don’t put it back!”

“Why not? I wiped it off.”

“You got the Sweet n Low all soupy!”

“No I didn’t. It’s inside the bag. And there’s a wax coating inside to protect the granules.”

“You still shouldn’t put it back.”

“You want me to waste it?”

“I can’t eat my soup now after you stuck your hand in it.”

"Why not?”

“You’re disgusting. I’m going to go sit with Toby.”

Ben hopped up and stormed over to the booth where Toby sat alone. Toby was still a hermit even within the caravan. The truck drivers didn’t like him because Toby would never order off the menu. He wasn’t used to such a wide range of food and always asked for corn. Just plain corn on a plate. “Who does he think he is?” the truckers would grumble. “A movie star?”

“Hi,” Ben said, sitting down.

“Hi,” Toby mumbled.

“So,” Ben said, trying to start conversation. “You’re a Muslim, eh?”

“Yep.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed.”

“I converted.”

“Oh.” Ben watched Toby spoon corn into his mouth with a soup spoon. “Was that before or after you became a hermit?”

“After,” Toby said. “There was this fella travelin’ through. First I thought he was a salesman. I don’t like salesmen.”

“Right. I know.”

“He stopped an’ tol’ me all bout his religion, how all I had to do was believe on this Jesus feller and be saved. So I figured, what have I got to lose, so I went and joined.”

“Oh.”

“Yep.”

Toby took a big spoonful of corn and chewed it up happily.

“I think you might have converted to Christianity,” Ben said.

“Really?”

“Yeah. It’s a different religion.”

Toby shrugged. “I get ‘em all confused. Bein’ a hermit, sometimes I mix things up. And the corn don’t correct me.”

Ben felt disappointed. Now he couldn’t say that one of his friends was Muslim. It lessened his desire to befriend Toby and made him wish he hadn’t sat down at the table in the first place. He felt uncomfortable for the rest of the meal.

***
כ''ח באב תשס''ז
ירושלים
August 12, 2007
Jerusalem

Chapter Sixteen

After Elizabeth gave Ben the job reading poetry to flowers to help them grow, she had Pablo, a broad shouldered barrel-chested man with a thick mustache that he prodigiously stroked, give him a tour.

Pablo showed him through the rose garden, tulip hill, and then the greenhouses. A sprinkler system sprayed mist through the hot air of the tropical greenhouse. Pablo warned Ben not to eat from the chocolate tree. It was bitter chocolate. He also told him to keep his hands off the bananas. The bananas weren’t bitter, but the banana tree was still off limits.

The most beautiful colorful flowers were in the tropical greenhouse, but it was so humid in there that Ben would just quickly recite a poem to the chocolate tree and then rush to the desert greenhouse, where he would leisurely read poetry in the dry heat under the shade of a large cactus.

***

His new job took up a lot more of his time. When he was a dishwasher, he had been able to leave his work at the office. As soon as he scrubbed the last pan, he went home and forgot about dishes. (Except for some bizarre dish dreams.) As a poet, he had to take his work home with him; he had to work on new poems for the flowers.

One night after work, Ben was alone in his apartment trying to compose poetry for the flowers. He took off his shoes and socks and stood barefoot on the stained orange carpet to get in touch with the plight of the working man. He might catch a fungus from this workingman carpet, but that was the risk he had to take.

While waiting for inspiration to seep in through the soles of his feet, someone’s knuckles rapped briskly on the wooden door to his apartment. Ben wished he had a peephole so he could see who it was, but this apartment didn’t have frills like a peephole. It was a workingman’s apartment.

The knuckles rapped again. Ben stood very still, trying to breathe silently. Maybe whoever it was would think he wasn’t home and go away. Unfortunately, the tea kettle on the hotplate decided to start whistling just then. Ben found that drinking freeze-dried coffee helped him empathize with the working man and had started drinking it when he worked. It helped his mind; not just the caffeine; he believed the freeze-driediness also helped.

“Open the door,” said an authoritative voice. “We can hear your tea kettle whistling.”

Ben turned off the hotplate and the whistling died out.

“Who is it?”

“Department of Agriculture! Open up!”

Ben would have pulled the door open a little bit, leaving the chain on the door, and asked to see their IDs, but his apartment didn’t have frills like a chain on the door, (it was a workingman’s apartment) so he just unlocked the door and let it swing open. Two solidly built men stood in the entrance wearing matching frayed black suits, white shirts, and bland ties. One was taller with a narrow face and angular features.

“Benjamin Fishbein?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He held up a badge. “I’m Agent Black with the Department of Agriculture.” He gestured to the man next to him, who had large jowls and blinked a lot. “This is my associate, Agent Lugo.”

“I can introduce myself, thank you very much,” said Lugo.

“Not now, Tom,” Agent Black said and then turned back to Ben. “We’d like to have a few words with you. Can we come in?”

“I guess.”

Agent Black looked down at Ben’s bare feet and at the stained carpet.

“You don’t want us to take our shoes off, do you?”

“No.”

“’Cause you seem like that kind of person—asks people to take off their shoes when they come in
the house.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know…you being a poet and around flowers a lot. There’s a positive correlation with wanting people to take their shoes off at the doorstep.”

“I was just getting in touch with the working man. And how do you know so much about me?”
Agent Black didn’t answer but walked past Ben into the apartment, and strolled over to the window. He set down his briefcase, took in the view of the moldering brick wall, and whistled.

“Quite a pad you’ve got here.”

Agent Lugo walked around the apartment, checking in the bathroom and behind the doors. He kept a tight hold on his briefcase. “Are you going to offer us something to drink?” he asked.

“I don’t have anything.”

Lugo stopped walking. “I heard water boiling,” he said, looking down at the tinkling kettle on the hotplate.

“Are you allowed to drink on duty?”

“We can have a cup of coffee.”

“Or tea,” Agent Black said, looking back from the brick wall. “I like tea.”

“I don’t have any tea.”

“Coffee’s fine.”

“I only boiled enough water for one cup,” Ben said.

“Half a cup’s fine,” Black said.

“Same here,” said Lugo.

“I don’t have any cream or sugar,” Ben said apologetically. “Black and bitter like the life of the workingman.”

Ben got the coffee and a couple mugs out of his cabinet. He wished he knew more about agriculture. Then he could speak intelligently when the agents started talking about cotton gins and harvest festivals.

“Have you noticed anything strange about your new job?” Agent Lugo asked.

Ben shrugged. “Not really.”

“Ben,” Lugo said. “We’ll get right to the point. Your employer has illegal plants in her garden.”

Ben knew the job had been too good to be true. Elizabeth was probably growing pot and Ben was an accessory to the crime, reading poetry to the dope. No, that couldn’t be it: he hadn’t noticed any marijuana in the garden. It had to be something else. The cocoa plant! Elizabeth was growing cocaine in her greenhouse. No wonder Pablo told him not to eat from the chocolate tree. Or maybe there was peyote growing on the cactuses.

Ben figured that they wanted him to wear a wire. They wouldn’t hear much. Just Ben reading poetry to flowers. Although they might steal his poetry before he had a chance to publish it. Some of it hadn’t even been written down yet; he composed them extemporaneously in the garden and there would be no way for him to prove his authorship. Agents Black and Lugo could steal his poetry and claim it as their own.

Ben handed them each half a cup of freeze-dried coffee.

“I won’t wear a wire,” he said.

“I don’t want you to wear a wire,” said Agent Black, taking a sip of the scalding coffee.

Agent Lugo dropped his briefcase on the bed, popped it open, pulled out a thick black binder, and flipped through it. He found what he was looking for and turned the binder towards Ben, showing him a glossy, full-page photograph.

“Have you seen this flower?”

The flower had a long stem with emerald thorns, tufts of golden pollen and long flowing petals like liquid amethyst.

“It’s beautiful.” Ben ran his finger over the photograph admiringly.

Agent Lugo pulled the binder away. “Don’t touch. Just look.”

“Sorry.”

“This is an African Moonflower,” Lugo said. “It may be beautiful but it’s also very illegal.”

“Why?”

Agent Lugo grinned slightly and caught Agent Black’s eye. “He’s been reading National Geographic.” Agent Black chuckled. Lugo turned back to Ben. “Let me ask you something kid: You think just because a magazine has a yellow border it has to be true?”

Ben shrugged.

“Do you know what an ecosystem is?”

“Of course.”

“The African Moonflower is a swamp-eater. Do you know what that is?”

“No.”

“When a swamp-eater gets into an ecosystem, it destabilizes everything. It disrupts the food chain. Protozoans and monerans are wiped out. And who knows? Maybe one of those swamp creatures holds the cure for cancer, or AIDS, or some other God-forsaken disease, and we’ll never know, because some African Moonflower spores got loose and messed up the ecosystem. Once they pollinate, there’s no stopping them.”

“And that’s just the African Moonflower,” Agent Black interjected. “There’s flowers that if they got loose could destroy America’s agriculture. That means no food. A catastrophe the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

“Agricultural terrorism,” Lugo said sadly. “Our freedom hangs in the balance.”

Ben wanted to help them. Sure, America wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t want the ecosystem to be destroyed and for Osama bin Laden to take over and become president.

On the other hand, Elizabeth had given him a job as a poet. He had already bragged to everyone that he was a professional poet. He didn’t want to have to go crawling back to Reggie and beg for his dishwashing job back.

“So in the tropical greenhouse,” Lugo continued. “Have you seen an African Moonflower?”

Ben figured he had better tell the truth. They certainly trained agents of the Department of Agriculture to spot lies.

“I don’t know.”

Wrong answer. Agent Lugo slammed the binder shut, causing Ben to jump.

“How can you not know?! It’s a very distinct flower!”

“I’m sorry. I don’t spend too much time in the tropical greenhouse.”

“Why not?!”

“It’s humid in there. It’s uncomfortable.”

“So? Isn’t that your job? To read poetry to them?”

How did they know all this? They must have a spy at the garden. Ben wondered who it could be. Maybe they had tapped his phone.

“What do you want from me?”

Agent Lugo smiled. “We want you to do your duty as an American citizen.”

***

At Elizabeth’s garden party which celebrated her eightieth birthday, (the one with the wealthy people, the first one) the gazebo became too crowded for Ben, so he stepped out into the grass and strolled around the garden, looking at the flowers.

Ben was standing by the roses when a straight-backed old man came up to him. He had well-pronounced frown lines and bushy white hair, except for two thick dark eyebrows. He stirred the ice in his drink with a small red plastic stick, and gave Ben a hard stare.

“You must be the poet,” he said.

“I am,” Ben replied.

“You look like a poet.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s not a compliment.”

The old man shook the ice and stared into his glass.

“I hate birthdays,” he said. “But she insisted I come. I’m Elizabeth’s husband by the way.
Howard. I can’t stand these things, but…birthdays.” He sighed and spit in the grass. “You know Albert Einstein?”

“Of course.”

“He was my professor back at Princeton.” He began to stir the ice in his glass again. “Well,
Professor Einstein never learned his own phone number. He figured: why use part of his brain to store something he could just look up? It’s a waste of brain space, you see? If he wanted to know, he could just look himself up in the phone book. Well, I never even learned when my birthday is. If I want to know, I’ll go to city hall and get my birth certificate.”

“You don’t know when your birthday is?”

“No, and I don’t care. It’s a silly holiday, made up by Hallmark to sell greeting cards.”

“Hallmark made up your birthday?”

“All birthdays!”

He took a sip of his drink, puckered his lips, and looked at Ben appraisingly.

“What is it you do exactly?”

Ben gulped. “I read poetry to the flowers to help them grow.”

“And how exactly does it help them grow?”

“Love?”

Roseman shook his head.

“What?” Ben protested. “It works. Scientists have done studies on this.”

“No. They haven’t. Are you a scientist? No? Well, I am, and let me tell you: there is no scientific credibility to this quack theory of flowers needing love. There’s one study done several years ago by a disgraced former professor of botany at a community college in Kansas, but that’s it. There is no scientific basis to support the theory of the existence of such a thing as Love.”

“You don’t believe in Love?”

“I believe in Physics. Love was invented by deadbeat poets. They didn’t have any marketable trade; they couldn’t get dates, so they made up love. They don’t want to work and support a family so they talk all lovey-dovey and trick unsuspecting women. Poets are nothing but two-bit con men. Hustlers.”

“Have you told Elizabeth what you think about love?”

Howard Roseman’s eyes popped wide, his face flushed, and he ground his teeth.

“My wife has some strange ideas.” He looked over to the gazebo where Derrick was wildly swatting at a cloud of mosquitoes. “You are a bum, Fishbein. A bottom feeder; one of this fish that sucks on the side of aquariums. I don’t know what they’re called because I could just look it up. In fact….” Suddenly Howard Roseman laughed to himself, smiled, and all his anger seemed to have washed away. “You know what? I’m not getting into this with you. My time is too important. My mind is too important. I have to use it to find the Higgs Boson.”

He turned and started to walk away.

“The Higgs Boson?” Ben said. “What’s that?”

Howard Roseman stopped and looked up at the sky. “He doesn’t know what the Higgs Boson is,” he said with an exhausted sigh. He turned back and looked Ben directly in the eyes. “The Higgs Boson is a hypothetical elementary particle; hypothetical because no one’s ever actually seen it. We postulate it’s there because its existence explains the mass of other elementary particles. Kapeesh? I plan to be the first one to find it.”

“And no one’s ever seen it?”

“Were you not paying attention? Were you thinking about flowers? Yes, no one has ever seen it.”

“Then the Higgs Boson is just like love. No one’s ever seen love, but it explains the way things are. Love is an elementary particle: The Particle of Love.”

Howard threw his drink in Ben’s face. Fortunately for Ben, all the liquid was gone and only a couple ice cubes flew out and clunked harmlessly against his forehead.

“Side-sucker!” he hissed. “You’re a side-sucker, Fishbein. You may have Liz fooled, but you can’t fool me. You’re a con man and I’m going to expose you for the two-bit hustler that you are. You know Stephen Hawking?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m the one who put him in that wheelchair!” He waved a knobby finger threateningly in Ben’s face. “You shouldn’t cross me! I’m not a man to be crossed!”

He turned and stormed away, probably to the bar to get a refill on his drink. A full glass that he could throw in Ben’s face.

Ben didn’t feel nervous or angry. He was feeling too inspired to feel anything but pure inspiration tingling over every inch of his skin. He borrowed a pen from one of the caterers and scribbled on a cocktail napkin. The words just flowed. His new poem was called: The Particle of Love.

The part of you I love
I can’t see empirically,
but the part of me in love
knows instinctively;
your particle of love
is a Higgs Boson to me.

It rhymed. It was the kind of poem his father would like. Ben was becoming an establishment poet and hated himself for it. The flowers were dragging him away from the plight of the workingman.

Ben looked over at the throng gathered around Derrick and was surprised by how much they resembled mosquitoes, sucking the blood of the workingman. And now he was selling out.

They called him over to the gazebo. It was time for him to read his poem.

***
כ''ב באב תשס''ז
שדה אליהו
רמת הגולן, ישראל
August 6, 2007
Sde Eliyahu
Golan Heights, Israel