Front Yard (21 page)

The smoking hole, which was now swarming with workers and emergency personnel, wasn't all that impressive. In fact, it didn't appear to be any bigger than the hole they were already digging. But the wall on the west-facing side of the Grunion house was no more, giving them an unprecedented view into the interior. George and Nan were amazed that the house was still standing at all. Perhaps the most amazing sight was their new flower bed, or, rather, what it had sprouted. Sitting on top of the bed, upright, and looking none the worse for the wear was the backhoe, which they calculated had been moved forty-plus feet from its original position.

“Damn!” said George. “It looks like someone just parked it there.”

“Thank goodness we were the only ones here,” Nan said. “Oh, please God, see that no one got killed or hurt.” A middle-aged man wearing a hard hat, goggles, and emergency gear strode nonchalantly toward them, a two-way radio hidden somewhere on his person squawking away.

“You two folks the homeowners?” he said.

“Of this house,” George said. “Not that one.”

“Well, we were lucky this time,” the man said. “The house next door was unoccupied. Early indications are that no one anywhere else got seriously hurt, even some guy who got blown all the way into the lake.”

“Whoa!” went George and Nan.

“The water and mud saved him. And the catfish he landed on. The catfish got flattened, though. Ha-ha!”

“Who was it?” wondered Nan.

“Not really at liberty to tell you that, ma'am.”

“I bet it was one of those Scroggit brothers, George,” said Nan. “The stupid, timid one that scared the bejesus out of me when I climbed up on your shoulders for a peek. He was wearing a disguise.”

The man from the fire department smiled indulgently.

“Apart from the house next door being pretty much destroyed, there's a heck of a lot of minor damage,” he said. “But a pretty small explosion as these things go, really. There's no evacuation, so you folks are free to stay and get to your cleanup work. Someone'll be coming by to ask you some questions.” The man followed their gaze toward the backhoe.

“Ah-ha, the culprit,” he said. “Funny how these explosions work. They're like tornadoes. You never know. I mean, for cryin' out loud, looks like you folks just had superficial damage. Windows and the like. Well, we're probably going to be making a little bit of a mess over the next few days, repairing that line. I'll leave you alone now. You're probably going to be wanting to call your insurance carrier, and, I'm thinking, maybe a lawyer, too.”

The man walked back toward the site of the explosion, stopping briefly for a close-up look at the backhoe.

“George,” said Nan, her voice sounding tiny and brittle. “We do still have our homeowner's insurance, don't we? Please say yes, George.”

“Yes,” said George. “Made the payment a couple of weeks ago. Phew! And you know what I'm thinking, Nan-bee. Just like the man said, it might be time to get ourselves a lawyer. I'm sick and tired of having to put up with all this bullshit.”

24

T
he crews came quickly. They finished their repairs to the house and cleaned up the debris in a couple of days. The backhoe had been driven off under its own power, much to the Fremonts' amazement. The garden plot onto which the explosion had so neatly deposited it had miraculously survived. So perfectly had the backhoe landed that only those few flowers directly under the wheels and bucket had been smushed. A few more were run over when it was driven off. But, amazingly, none of those flowers had been pulverized or even mortally damaged. All sprang back to vertical life within two days.

“I can't believe it,” said Nan. “All the hurt flowers have bounced back. We won't have to replace a single one.”

“It's the magic of the Fremont gardens,” George said. “Subjected to devastation no other garden could withstand, they bounce back even better than before.”

Jerry built and painted new trellises for them, and, though a number of rose and clematis blooms had been severed from their canes and vines, the canes and vines themselves were back in business and thriving again within the week.

The rest of the Fremont backyard gardens survived the explosion virtually intact. Nan figured it was because the modest shock wave from the explosion was either mostly directed toward the house next door or passed over everything close to the ground. George wondered whether something else might have helped them, and hinted strongly at supernatural influences.

“Will you knock it off with that,” Nan chided. “Everything has a scientific explanation, unless, of course, the hand of God is involved here.”

“I wasn't counting out the Big Guy,” George said. “I'm just trying to be open-minded about it.”

What was certain was that the Fremont gardens, front and back, were going great guns. This was a summer when the weather was at its nurturing best. Hot spells gave way to cool ones with regularity, and the well-timed rains came gently, steadily, and plentifully.

This was when the backyard's monarda, daylilies, Asiatic lilies, purple coneflowers, and balloon flowers were in all their glory, with the black-eyed Susans just starting to brighten the color schemes up with their luminescent yellow petals and black eyes. The blue hydrangea had erupted in the most vivid deep blue they had ever seen or would have ever thought existed.

In the front yard, Mary and Shirelle were doing ye-owomen's work, but this was the easy part; it was mainly maintenance mode at this point, and not even that much of that, the weather having cooperated so wonderfully.

With that in mind, Shirelle had found a job at Burdick's, where she worked part-time to allow her a couple of days reserved exclusively for the Fremonts. Mary, having gotten the word from Nan that, sorry, her parents would foot the bill for only one semester of college, was working at one of Livia's three smaller nurseries, the Root and Stem. That was a full-time job, but it was the day shift, meaning there was plenty of time left for gardening when she got home from work.

Everything they planted two months earlier had flourished or was flourishing.

The big wave of lavender Walker's Low catmint blooms had come and gone, giving way to lesser and more sporadic displays. Shirelle had lately been using her Fremont time to deadhead the spent blooms, hoping against the odds for a big comeback in August.

On the catmint's northern and southern flanks, the Happy Returns and Rosy Returns daylilies were just now hitting their stride. They were throwing out short-lived flowers daily, and it was Mary's job to deadhead those during her free time in the evening and on weekends. More muted than the catmint and brilliant yellow Happy Returns, the Rosy Returns featured curled-back, frilled-edged petals that were a bronzed pink, funneling down to a vivid yellow-green deep inside the throat of the bloom.

Providing some further edging were the delphinium. They looked like miniature spires or even church steeples of densely packed purple, pink, and white flowers, and were blooming like crazy. They were finicky, though, needing mulch at their base, and had water needs that even the summer's regular rainfall couldn't quite satisfy. Shirelle felt the delphinium gave the front yard crucial narrow and vertical accents.

Waving in the slightest breeze were the clumps of ornamental grasses, which had grown to two-to-three-feet tall. Shirelle had planted just the right amount to break up the riotous colors and provide a more natural-looking contrast. She was glad to see that the Karl Foerster and prairie dropseed were quite enough, and that her change of heart about planting more varieties had saved the gardens from ornamental grass overkill.

How would it be possible to describe the hybrid teas!

Like Crater Lake, or the first swirl of Sagelands '07 merlot on the palate, they beggared description. Crowning the front yard's ridge, their luscious, curling petals and vibrant illuminating colors, one hue giving way to another from the tip of each petal to its base, gave them a three-dimensional luster that none of their other flowers could match. Certainly they were arrogant, thought Nan. But the other flowers didn't seem to mind, and who was she to question the presence of that essence of prima donna in something that could so readily flaunt its perfection.

Her own favorites, which she was careful not to show, were the four Full Sails, which looked to her like a cross between whole-bean vanilla ice cream and an untouched tub of margarine, and had a scent that was stronger than honeysuckle.

Shirelle had cast her usual concerns about overly gaudy color combinations aside when planning for the hybrid teas. She had added a couple of pink Tiffanys to a mix that already included the Full Sails, Blue Girls, Chrysler Imperials, and Bronze Stars.

Shirelle and Mary had also supervised the planting of two paper birches to fill up the bare space at the corner of the lot. They had them sunk into the turf behind the Burdick's sign, which in response to their entreaties, the Burdick's folks had consented to let stand through mid-August; and had decorated the site with a few boulders delivered by Burdick's and set in place precisely to Shirelle's specifications. They then added golden-brown cypress mulch, which they were continually freshening, and plenty of petunias to brighten up the base.

The paper birches bore careful watching and constant care, as prone to disease and sensitive to scorching sun as they were.

Anyone with an hour or two to spend looking at flowers would have spotted a ruby-throated hummingbird hovering around the daylilies and delphinium, and the two hummingbird feeders dangling from shepherd's crook rods. Even the most casual observers would have noticed levitating honeybees everywhere. Shirelle told Nan and Mary that you could even pet honeybees when they were slurping their nectar, so intent were they on their task. She had demonstrated with a honeybee gorging itself on monarda nectar.

“Try it yourself,” she said. “It won't sting you.” Both Mary and Nan had giggled and declined.

“Some other time,” said Nan. “After I've had my two glasses of wine.”

For the most part, the butterflies hadn't arrived yet, though they had all noted a few orange-and-black monarchs in the vanguard of the migration that made them eternal travelers. They would always be on the lookout for red admirals, which had swarmed around the gardens four years earlier in late August through mid-September. They had watched, fascinated, as those butterflies would rest in the direct sunlight, soaking up the diminishing solar energy that strengthened their orange-banded and white-splotched brown-and-black wings and powered their flight.

“Why do they call it a red admiral, when the closest color to red on it is orange?” wondered Mary. Shirelle shrugged.

“It was probably the same idiot who named the red-bellied woodpecker,” she said. “I defy you to find more than a tiny bit of red on those belly feathers. On the head yes, but the red-
headed
woodpecker name was already taken.”

Whatever it was that contributed to that influx of red admirals had apparently not happened again; they had not returned.

As for the Burdick's sign, it was still attracting interest, though that had dropped off considerably since most of the people within a two-mile radius had already seen it and had no need of further study.

Still, the front yard had become an amazing quilt of color, which took on a wondrous waving effect when the breeze moved through the flowers. It was common for motorists driving along Sumac Street to slow down and even stop right there in the middle of the road to gawk. Same with pedestrians strolling along the sidewalk on the other side of Sumac. They'd start with the lake, especially if its mating pair of bald eagles were circling overhead, or its great blue herons wading across its reedy shallows, looking for bluegills or frogs to spear for lunch, then turn to take in the wonders of Fremontland.

Isn't there some way we could charge all those people whose lives we've enriched so much? thought George, being only partly facetious.

“Well, at least it's better than those gawkers who showed up after the gas line explosion,” he said to Nan, as two elderly couples crossed the street to get a close-up look at the daylilies.

“That's exactly the way to look at it, dear,” said Nan, allowing George to fill her wineglass to midway up the snowy pattern of trees etched into its bulging center. “They are stopping to appreciate beauty, not mayhem.”

25

D
r. Phyllis Sproot gazed out on what any properly trained gardener in her right mind would deem a nirvana of gardens right here on earth. Spectacular, wasn't it? So well ordered and perfectly in synch with the canons of gardening, as amended and augmented by herself. Perfect little rectangular, oval, and half-circle plots covered most of her one-acre lot. From them rose legions of flowers—mostly comprising the coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend, which Dr. Sproot herself had pioneered in Livia, and even in the rest of the world for all she knew.

Here and there were some other flowers and plants. Yucca, for instance, played a strong supporting role.

Dr. Sproot's careful calculations showed that her gardens were 87-percent coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend and yuccas, the precise proportion, she had concluded, needed to create nirvana on earth. The remaining 13 percent, of course, were reserved for her token roses and dahlias. There was no need of any others.

Dr. Sproot snorted. What a joke those geraniums and spikes had been! She chortled at the thought of the Rose Maidens scurrying for the gate, their dignity in tatters, as she peppered them with BBs. And, now, she was back on track to becoming the preeminent gardener in Livia.

But there was a rather large bump in that track that needed smoothing out. And a rather large score that could be settled in the smoothing-out process. Dr. Sproot laughed, lifted up her hands, and turned them over to study her trembling fingertips. Trembling with terrible power! Little had she known that it was through these slender, insignificant extremities that she could create so much mischief.

A tingling shot through her hands and settled in those magic fingertips, causing them to spasmodically flutter as if they had a life of their own. Reload, thought Dr. Sproot. Reload with the power of pests long gone. Pests eaten by birds and snakes and frogs. Pests asphyxiated by pesticides, squished under the soles of shoes, flicked off leaves, and ravaged by those terrible and mercenary allies of man: praying mantises and ladybugs. Power such as this had to be channeled. Unfettered, it could lead to her laying waste to her own gardens. Even now, something was lifting her hands and pointing them at the nearest bed of coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend. Her arms stretched out, straight as ramrods, and she felt the discharge, a sort of tickling sensation that shot out of her fingers with a pop, them left them limp and useless, unable to grasp anything or even move until the lifeblood surged back into them.

Dr. Sproot shuddered and leaned over to look at the flowers she had, theoretically, just zapped. Nothing. What kind of quackery is this? thought Dr. Sproot. She waited. Minutes passed. A half hour. Then, an hour and still nothing. That particular stand of coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock looked no different from the way it had before she had cast her alleged little “fingerspell,” as that charlatan of a gardening witch, Edith Merton, had called it.

Dr. Sproot frowned and wondered if she was being had by Edith. She looked at her fingers and scowled. Nothing there to indicate that the reincarnated souls of thousands of slugs, snails, aphids, cutworms, and Japanese beetles had just passed through her electrically charged extremities.

Maybe it's just a touch of arthritis, thought Dr. Sproot forlornly. She waited some more. It's a delayed reaction spell, she thought hopefully. Spells take time, after all, don't they? When Edith had cast that spell on her yard, and then on the Fremonts, ' that had taken a day in her case, and, what, almost a week, for that hailstorm to lay waste to the Fremonts' yard? Even Dr. Sproot shivered at the prospect of someone having such evil powers at her beck and call. Especially when it was someone else.

She looked down at her allegedly zapped flowers, which appeared to be none the worse for wear, and suddenly felt silly. The whole thing was a hoax. Even what had happened last year could probably be explained. Some quick-acting blight had afflicted her garden and the gardens of the Rose Maidens. It had nothing to do with Edith and her little retribution spells. As for the storm, hey, weather during a thunderstorm could be very localized in these parts. That, of course, didn't explain how the Fremonts' gardens had then sprung back to life. In mid-August, no less! Dr. Sproot was still trying to work that one out.

Her fingertips tingled again with energy. Only this time, it felt more like pain. Arthritis, for sure, Dr. Sproot thought. And pretty bad. It was the worst health news a gardener in her prime could possibly get. Arthritis meant no more grasping of shovels, rakes, and hand tools. It meant even prying a seedling out of its little plastic housing would now be a chore. Bending over to plant something? Forget it. It was only a matter of time before her knees got calcified. She tried a couple of deep knee bends and thought she could feel old muscles and ligaments stretched to the breaking point and dried-up bones grinding against one another. Only a matter of time, and then what would she do?

One thing she knew for sure she would do was to teach that Edith Merton a lesson she would not soon forget. Gardening witch, indeed!

It had been a week ago that she had rendezvoused with Edith at the Hi-Lo Doughnut Shoppe, her favorite stop for cream-filled Bismarcks and unlimited coffee refills. At first, when Dr. Sproot had called her to suggest such a meeting, Edith had demurred. Actually, that was putting it mildly. Edith had wondered aloud how Dr. Sproot could possibly work up the nerve to ever speak to her again, and had hung up on her in mid-sentence. So much for diplomacy. More extreme measures would obviously be called for here. The next step involved something that Dr. Sproot excelled at—
threats!

Lately, business had been tough for Edith and her husband, Felix, who owned Mertons' Liquors and Mertons' TV and Appliance Mart. Livians were spending less on booze, and running their washing machines and refrigerators longer before replacing them. There was also the fact that Edith's sideline business—running séances for youngsters who had lost their hamsters, guinea pigs, goldfish, parakeets, and other smallish pets and wanted to commune with them—had also hit the skids. Livia's parents were cutting back on Christmas and birthday gifts. They had also been counseled by their pastors, who had heard disquieting rumors about this resurgence of paganism in Livia, that communing with dead organisms, even if it was all in fun, was not in the best interest of their spiritual lives.

All this had come to Dr. Sproot's attention. That was mainly through a network of shirttail relatives who operated two of the leading lending and mortgage institutions in Livia and did clerical work at one of the Lutheran Church synod offices in downtown St. Anthony, and usually in return for some gardening consultation work.

It was through this network that Dr. Sproot discovered that Edith and Felix Merton had fallen behind in their business loans, and were in debt up to their eyeballs. That seemed to her to present itself as an excellent investment opportunity. Dr. Sproot's lawsuit judgment against Earlene McGillicuddy and her $1-million life insurance benefit, awarded to her on the death of her cross-dressing drunkard of a husband, Mort, had in the past year alone ballooned to three times its original amount due to some highly lucrative and somewhat shady investments. And all that money was just itching to be put to work in some new ventures.

Dr. Sproot's lender relatives, not really all that excited about the prospects of foreclosing on the Mertons' appliance and liquor stores, were happy to sell her the loans at a premium price.

The next time Dr. Sproot called, she was able to make Edith an offer she couldn't refuse.

“Hi, Edith,” she told the answering machine at the hardware store. “Dr. Sproot here. I suggest you reconsider my earlier proposal for a get-together, or maybe you didn't hear it since you so rudely cut me off in mid-sentence. Well, the proposal still stands, so why don't you call back and we can make arrangements for a little tête-à-tête.”

The answering machine cut off with a beep. Furious, Dr. Sproot called back, her voice now quaking with rage.

“Dr. Sproot again, dearie,” she continued. “There's something else you might be interested to know. I am now the official owner of both Mertons' Liquors and Mertons' TV and Appliance Mart, having bought the loans. Jeez, those were risky loans! I never realized you were such a poor candidate for business loans, Edith. Why, I would have charged you fifty-percent interest, minimum. Why would I have ever wanted to take them on? Call back to find out why. Ta-ta.”

The meeting with Edith at the Hi-Lo was everything Dr. Sproot could have hoped for. Edith positively oozed politeness and a desire to please. Dr. Sproot acted the part of the magnanimous landlady, assuring the scared-stiff Edith that, no, she had no desire to foreclose on their properties as long as she was certain she and Felix were making good-faith efforts to meet their loan obligations.

“Yes, Edith, times are tough, I know,” said Dr. Sproot as she scarfed down her third Bismarck and inhaled her fourth cup of dark-roast Hi-Lo brew. “And I want to assure you that it is my mission in life to support our struggling small businesses.”

Edith was fairly panting with joy and gratitude.

“You and Felix are pillars of the community,” Dr. Sproot said sententiously. “Without you, commerce crumbles into dust. I'm here for you, Edith. Consider me to be your lending source of strength and resilience. Lean on me, Edith. Rest assured I don't want to throw you out on the street.”

Edith was now positively giddy. She reached across the table to grasp Dr. Sproot's hand, now sticky with Bismarck residue, and shook it violently.

“Thank you so much,” said Edith, her voice shaking with unanticipated relief. “I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams that you'd be calling me here to tell me that. My goodness, that's wonderful news. You have no idea what Felix and I have been going through, trying to pay these loans and working these things out. Those lenders, Dr. Sproot, they have no heart, no heart at all!”

Dr. Sproot looked at the cringingly humbled Edith and smiled. Here, under her thumb like a helpless, semi-microscopic bug about to be squashed into nothingness, sat the author of so many of her woes. And the nerve of her, acting as if nothing untoward had ever happened between them!

It was last year, after that horrible, stormy night in July, when Edith had fingered Dr. Sproot as the ringleader of the aborted garden sabotage mission targeting the Fremonts' backyard. Then, she had claimed that Dr. Sproot had blackmailed her into helping because of an affair she had with Mort. And then came that article in the St. Anthony
Inquirer
! Why, it had humiliated Dr. Sproot beyond all reckoning.

“Yes, well, so glad to help, Edith. But you do realize that, as a businesswoman, I expect a return on my investment at some point? I'm not just doing this out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Ye-e-e-s-s-s,” said Edith, stuttering. “I do realize that. Felix and I are doing the best we can. But, but . . . ah . . . you know, times are tough and business has dropped off. It's going to be hard to make these next few payments.”

Dr. Sproot stared at Edith and let a long pause crumple her into a trembling mass of insignificance. Putty in her hands.

“You know what they say, Edith: Adapt or die. You haven't adapted very well. Either make your payments or I will shut you down! You're behind four months' worth of payments on one business, and six months—
six months!
—on the other! How did they let you go this long being a deadbeat? Huh?”

“But you said . . .”

“I said I didn't
want
to foreclose on you, or something to that effect. But you know, Edith, sometimes you're forced to do things you'd rather not. That's the story of life, isn't it?”

Dr. Sproot could see the furiously twitching lips and the eyes filming over, then pooling, with tears. The first one trickled out over Edith's eyelid and streaked slowly down her cheek.

“Oh, please! Please don't foreclose on us! We'll do better! I'm sure we will. Just give us another chance. We'll . . .” Edith's sobs were choking off her words. Dr. Sproot held up her hand to signal Edith to stop all this caterwauling nonsense. She smiled in a gentle way meant to look consoling.

“Stop that crying, Edith. Stop it right now. I think I have a solution to your problem. At least a temporary solution.”

Edith dabbed at her eyes with a Kleenex.

“What?” she said. “What can we do?”

“I need to learn some witchcraft. And I want you to teach me.”

Edith jerked away from Dr. Sproot. “What!”

“You heard me. Teach me some of your black arts! I've got some unfinished business to take care of, and I need some help from down below.”

Edith slouched over the table and cast darting and stealthy glances around the doughnut shop to make sure no one was within hearing range. Then, she leaned over toward Dr. Sproot.

“I can't do that!” she whispered hoarsely. “I gave that up after last year's fiasco. I even threw away my own dead mother's old-fogey spell-casting outfit. I've sworn to never practice witchcraft again.”

“
You
wouldn't have to practice it. You'd just pass along a few pointers to me, and I'd do the rest. Then, I'd be willing to put off your payments for a few more months, with late-payment interest accruing, of course.”

“But, Dr. Sproot,
please!
I only do my small pet séances now, and that's harmless. To go back to evil plant spells, I just couldn't. Marta's right; it's immoral.”

Dr. Sproot cackled. Immediately, despite her reservations, the professional necromancer in Edith saw talent and potential in Dr. Sproot as a witch.