Duane's Depressed (41 page)

There were a few Hispanics in town, most of whom worked in the farming country to the east—it was not long before they began to arrive to check out the garden. They paid Duane many compliments and rewarded his generosity with modest smiles. They took corn, peppers, radishes, a few spring onions, and an eggplant or two.

Often old couples would pull off the highway and check out the garden—strangers, travelers, people on their way from someplace south to someplace north, or vice versa. These passers-through rarely took anything from the garden, but they didn’t treat it cursorily, either. Many of them walked slowly up every row, stooping now and then to inspect the quality of the vegetables.

“A garden this big is a passel of work,” one large-handed old man said. “Momma and me put up a garden nearly this size when we was younger, but hell, I wouldn’t be up to it today.”

“There’s things growing here that I don’t even know the name of, and I know the names of plenty of vegetables,” his wife said.

Though most any kind of person was apt to stop by and admire the garden and pick themselves a mess of this or that, by far the most regular users were the disadvantaged young white families of the town—roughnecks or pipeliners who had been laid off, food stamp mothers with two or three unkempt children with bewildered eyes. They all came to the garden tentatively, on the first visit, not investing much hope, as they might stop by a garage sale hoping to pick up a usable hot plate for fifty cents. Often they would mope around the garden for an hour or so, confused by the abundance, not knowing quite what to choose, perhaps not yet convinced that they
could
choose. Some Duane had to encourage by offering gatherings of whatever had just come ripe. He had overplanted tomatoes—he had enough, he felt, to feed the whole town, so he urged a pound or two of homegrown tomatoes on everyone who stopped by. The young mothers quickly became convinced that Duane meant what he said: that the food was free. They perked up a little, and made sure their children said thank you, when they got back into their cheap cars, laden with peaches and corn and snap peas, and drove off.

Soon young farmwives from the circle of farm communities
just to the east began to visit the garden. These women were not so much poor as curious, eager to find out about vegetables they could try in their own gardens, when it came time to plant again.

Word soon spread to the nearby communities—Duane was even pestered by reporters and TV crews, but he refused all requests for interviews and hid out in the trailer house when the reporters became too persistent. He had a big garden, but it wasn’t big enough to feed the whole area. He wanted it to be a resource mainly for the local poor, who needed it most.

One day, to his surprise, Gay-lee and Sis drove up, with Shorty in the car. He had finally given up his room at the Stingaree Courts. Once he started his garden he went to the Courts less and less, until he finally came round to Marcie Meeks’s view, which was that it was absurd to pay forty-eight dollars a night for a room he never used.

He felt a little sad when he turned in his room key, even so.

When the women drove up Shorty hopped out of the car and ran around the outside of the house, lifting his leg on every second bush. When Duane walked over to Sis and Gay-lee and gave them each a big hug they both looked shy and a little scared. Neither seemed comfortable to be standing in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of a small town.

“Duane, you sure got a big garden,” Sis said. “My grandma, she used to garden like this—she grew every kind of thing that grows. But after she passed ain’t nobody had time to put in this much garden.”

“If I was a vegetarian this would be heaven, I guess,” Gay-lee said.

“Well, but you don’t have to be a vegetarian to enjoy a good garden,” Duane said. “I’m real glad to see you two. What’s been happening over at the Courts?”

Both of the women hesitated. They seemed tongue-tied.

“This my day off,” Sis said. “Gay and me just decided to get out into the country and take a little drive.”

“Is that where you live?” Gay-lee asked, pointing at the big house.

“No, I live in a little cabin about six miles out,” Duane said.
“This house is where I used to live when my wife was alive and all my kids were living at home.”

Duane walked them through the garden, showed them what was good, and piled their car with his choicest produce before he let them leave. He knew Sis had many children—she could use all the vegetables she could carry. Though Gay-lee didn’t cook he insisted that she take some fresh peaches and a box of dewberries for her girls.

The gift made Gay-lee choke up.

“We miss you,” she said, wiping a tear.

“Sure do,” Sis said. “We don’t get too many gentlemen out at the Stingaree.”

“We don’t get
any
gentlemen, now that you’re gone,” Gay-lee said.

“You two are the first people ever to refer to me as a gentleman,” Duane told them, as he was putting a final sack of roasting ears into their car.

In response Sis came over and gave him a big tight hug.

“Well, you is one,” she said. “You is one even if you didn’t know it.”

“You may miss me but my dog don’t,” he said.

Shorty hopped in the front seat of Gay-lee’s car as if he had been riding in it all his life. He was riding in the middle, between Sis and Gay-lee, his paws on the dashboard, when the three of them drove away.

9

D
UANE WAS DEEPLY GRATIFIED
by the way the big garden was received. Particularly, he was pleased by the fact that everyone who took vegetables from it—young, old, and middle aged—took care to obey the sign and do their picking neatly. There was no wastage. Young mothers kept tight control of their little ones, so that few plants were trampled. Only once or twice had he even found a cigarette butt in the garden rows.

Karla, he felt sure, would have been very pleased by the offering he had made in her name. He liked to think she might have planted a public garden in
his
name, if he had been the one to die.

In July the good slow rains ended and the temperatures began to climb. Despite constant picking the garden still flourished, but it began to need regular watering. Duane spent the early mornings and the late afternoons here and there in the garden with his hose or his watering can.

Near midday one Wednesday, when he was resting under the whirr of the air conditioner in the trailer house, he heard a car drive up. It parked, and two doors slammed, but Duane was in a half doze and did not immediately get up from the couch to see who was in the garden. But in a few minutes curiosity got the better of him—he was always interested in what kind of people came to see the garden. He got off the couch, splashed water in his face, and peered out his back window at the two visitors.
Two women in khakis and shorts were on the far side of the garden plot. One wore a floppy hat with a large brim and the other a little mashed-down green cap of a kind he had seen only once before: the morning when he had spied on Honor Carmichael and her friend as they painted Jody Carmichael’s store.

The visitors were, in fact, Honor Carmichael and the same friend. Honor carried a large straw basket and would occasionally stoop down to inspect a vegetable—sometimes she would kneel down and sniff it. Her friend had a slight limp—she steadied herself with a cane. Duane could not remember that she had used a cane when the two were painting the store, but perhaps he had missed it in the early dimness.

The sight of Honor Carmichael took Duane aback. He was accustomed to having pretty much anybody show up at his garden—a couple from Auckland, New Zealand, had stopped and picked a few vegetables one day—but the one person he had not expected to see there was his psychiatrist, the woman he had wanted in his dream. The two women seemed to be having an animated conversation as they inspected the garden. The little short woman seemed to be agitated—perhaps even annoyed. She kept gesturing with her cane, and raising her hands as if in despair.

After watching the two for a few minutes Duane began to feel like a Peeping Tom. He washed his face again and hastily ran a comb through his hair before stepping out to greet them. Though Honor Carmichael saw him at once and walked over to greet him, the little short woman, who was boldly lipsticked, took not the slightest notice of him.

“I don’t believe you grew up here—it’s a lie you told me to make me believe you’re some kind of hick,” the small stout woman said. “This is the end of the earth. I don’t believe you grew up here, and if you did I have no idea why I’m living with you. No wonder we don’t get along.”

Honor came over and shook hands with Duane, evidently quite unperturbed by her friend’s protest, which was delivered in a strange, gravelly-voice accent that Duane couldn’t place—all he knew was that it was not a Texas accent.

“Hi,” Honor said. “We’ve come to raid your garden. It’s really wonderful.”

“But have you got any squash? I’m not finding any squash and I live for squash,” the stocky woman said, looking at Duane suspiciously. Evidently her appetite for squash took precedence over her views about whether Honor had grown up in Thalia because she dropped that subject and never mentioned it again.

“Duane, this is my friend Angie Cohen,” Honor said. “Angie Cohen from Baltimore, the squash lover.”

“Well, if she’s a squash lover she’s landed in the right garden,” Duane said. “We’ve got eight or nine kinds of squash and they’re ready to go.”

He had shaken hands with Honor and now reached out to shake hands with her friend. Angie Cohen extended her hand for a moment but turned away before he really had time to shake it.

Honor looked lovely under her wide-brimmed hat. Her arms and legs were tanned, though Angie Cohen’s were a fish-belly white.

Duane was glad the little woman with the cane had asked for squash, because he had planted several varieties that could not be found in the local supermarkets. Karla had always loved squash, both to eat and to look at. Throughout the summer she always kept a big tray of squashes on the kitchen counter, and a bucket or two of them on the small porch inside the back door, to distribute to guests.

Though it was Angie Cohen who had asked about the squash, it was Honor who actually squatted down and selected a dozen or more, putting them in her large straw bag.

“Leave that one, it looks mealy,” Angie said—otherwise she made no comment.

“I’m afraid you’ve missed the peaches,” Duane said. “Everybody who showed up last week took peaches.”

“What about cucumbers?” Angie asked, when she considered that they had enough squash. “I haven’t had a decent cucumber since we left Maryland.”

Honor looked at her friend and wrinkled her nose.

“Angie, we left Maryland fifteen years ago,” she said. “I’ve had plenty of decent cucumbers since then.”

“Oh, you—you’ve got no sensitivity,” Angie Cohen said. “You could eat wallpaper and like it. The best cucumbers grow on the eastern shore of Maryland and you won’t find anyone who knows cucumbers who disagrees with me.”

Honor ignored that remark, but she followed Duane to the cucumber row and picked several. Angie Cohen did not join them—she seemed convinced that no Texas cucumber could be worth the walk.

“This garden is wonderful,” Honor told him. “What a very generous way to honor your wife.”

“Well, she always liked gardens,” Duane said. “We gardened together for quite a few years. When the kids were home we ate most of what we grew, but now our kids have moved away. I can grow a lot more than I can eat. Giving it away seemed like the best plan. How’d you hear about it?”

“Oh, from a patient,” Honor said.

Angie Cohen was limping along impatiently, several rows away. Every time Duane glanced at her she glared back at him, balefully—she seemed to be in a very quarrelsome mood. The fact that he and Honor were chatting for a moment clearly didn’t please her.

“Honor, get over here and pick some of these beets,” she said—it came out almost like a growl.

“It’s inhumanly hot,” she added, pulling a handkerchief out of her pocket and mopping her face.

“We’ll go in a minute, Angie,” Honor said.

“Beets!” Angie said, pointing at the plants. “Beets, beets, beets!”

“I heard you the first time, Angie,” Honor said.

She didn’t hurry to obey her friend. Instead she stood looking at Duane.

“It seems to me you found the right cure for yourself,” she said. “You planted a garden, and it solved some of your problems. So I suppose you won’t be needing a psychiatrist again.”

“Oh, I will, though,” Duane said. “I’ve just kind of been trying to get adjusted to not having my wife.”

Honor Carmichael gave her friend a casual wave, as if to say hold your horses, and then looked straight at Duane.

“You were looking for something that felt essential, as I remember,” she said. “Something whose value was undeniable. Well, you found it. A garden is essential. It’s simple and it’s good, and you’re feeding the poor, which is also good.”

“Honor, goddamit, what about these beets?” Angie Cohen growled.

Honor was now the one to look impatient.

“She won’t let me alone,” she said to Duane. Then she went over, knelt down, and picked a dozen beets.

“Well, beets have iron and I really need the iron,” Angie said, as if someone had questioned her right to iron.

By the time the two women finished going through the garden the straw basket was bulging—Duane persuaded Honor to let him carry it to their car.

“I sure hope you ladies will come back sometime,” he said. “This garden is a long way from played out.”

“We missed the asparagus, though,” Angie said glumly, as she limped around to the passenger’s side of the vehicle—it was an old green Volvo, its backseat littered with books and papers.

“Well, you did,” Duane said. “I had some fine white asparagus back in June.”

“Too late—every goddamn thing we do is too late,” Angie said, as she got in the car. She didn’t thank him for the vegetables, and she slammed the car door hard.

“Don’t mind her, she lives for complaint,” Honor said. “Thank you very much for the wonderful vegetables. We’re going to have fine eats for the next few days, thanks to you.”