From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
Teddy blew me on our third date. I’ll never forget it. It was the first time somebody else gave me a hard-on. Then I had my first orgasm—a dry little spasm—in his warm, wet mouth. I felt wild all over.
I made Teddy blow me again and again. He was my Daddy; I was his little girl. He kissed, hugged, diddled, and sucked me off on my bed after school. I begged for more. He taught me to gently spread my asshole with two fingers in a warm tub every night for a week. Then, one April evening, when my mother worked late, Teddy gave me an enema and fucked me.
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
Johnny said, “I love you. Do you love me?”
“Very much.”
“Will you always love me?” he asked.
I said, “No, dear boy.”
He said, “Thanks for telling me the truth.”
Polly Baker
Johnny, at that time, was about four-foot-seven; Ted was five-ten. Between ourselves Jeanette and I referred to them as “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
I gradually realized that Johnny’s mother was a keepie shut-in and that he almost never left the keep himself. At the end of May, I practically dragged him out to Broken Bow in Custer County, where his mother’s family first settled in Nebraska.
Johnny told me, “My great-great-great-great-grampa Matthew laid up a sod house in this town around 1880. His wife once killed a rattler coiled on the dirt floor with her broomstick.”
He drank everything in and pointed out a ladybug climbing a fence post, a crow overhead, and three Muslim wimin in black chadors scurrying along outside a bakery. On our way back to the station, we strolled along South E Street between some scruffy young towering bowers.
I said, “Some of my fellow Christians believe that only God should make a tree. What do you think?”
“How about you?”
“I asked you first.”
“I’m no Christian,” he said. “I don’t believe in God.”
A few weeks later, Johnny showed me his drawings in the Gallery. When I said, “You’re good,” he asked, “Can you keep a secret?”
I went, “Of course.”
“Well,” he said, “Mother bought me my talent in Japan. I’m an arsogenic metamorph.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said. “So what?”
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, October 15, 2050:
Johnny is 13 today. Polly and I gave him a $520 oil paint set, in a transparent impermium case, which includes ten tubes of paint, three brushes, one palette knife, a palette, an 8-oz. bottle of linseed oil, one of turpentine, and a 11" × 15" canvas board. Plus, for another $248, twelve sticks of compressed (softest) charcoal sticks, six sheets of white paper, erasers, etc.
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
Mother handed me my birthday present and said, “Here. ‘The wherewithal to create a masterpiece’—just like Ryder.” I froze up inside. It scared me off color for years to come.
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
Johnny and I were having an after-school snack at his house, when the news came about the electrical fire in the galley of Burroughs Keep on Mars that burned four colonists to death.
Johnny said, “I don’t believe in life after death.”
“You should. Jesus loves you.”
“Even though I’m a metamorph?”
And I answered, “We’ve no say in how we’re made. Jesus loves us all the same.”
I got Johnny to read the Gospels. He made two comments: “No colors are mentioned in them.” And: “I didn’t know Jesus was Jewish!”
Then, on his own, for weeks on end, he roamed Christian art.
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
My heart went out to pictures of the crucified Christ. I thought to myself, Are the Gospels right? Have You conquered death for us?
Frances Petrakis
Teddy brought Johnny home for dinner. I remember him as an ordinary-looking kid who bit his nails. He was well-spoken, very polite, and asked about my work. I told him I’m a landscape gardener. Now at that time, Ted and I were living in a small house on Pudding Street, off Lake Twilight Park. Out back I kept a little scented garden of flowers that bloom after dark: evening primroses, night jasmines, beauties of the night, ornamental tobacco plants, and the like.
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
Johnny walked around, inhaling the different scents, and said to Mom, “It must be nice to be a gardener.”
Frances Petrakis
“Oh,” I said, “it’s much more than that. Gardening’s the Lord’s work.”
Johnny asked, “How do you mean?”
I said, “God is a gardener.” I played him my favorite sermon, Christ the Gardener, given by our minister, Margaret Boeth, on Easter Sunday, 2033.
The Rev. Margaret Boeth’s Sermon, Easter Sunday, April 17, 2033, St. Fiacre’s Episcopal Church, Lincoln, Nebraska:
Today we celebrate the two thousandth anniversary of the Resurrection of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. The Apostle John tells us (20. 1–14) that on that first Easter Sunday morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the garden where on Friday night Jesus had been buried in a new sepulcher.
When the sun came up, Mary saw that the stone that had sealed the tomb’s entrance had been moved aside. She ran to Simon Peter, who was with the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and said to them (John 20.2), “They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher and we know not where they have laid him.”
Everybody knows what happened next: how Peter and the beloved disciple found only linen grave clothes in the tomb and went back home.
“But Mary stood without at the sepulcher weeping; and as she wept, she stooped down and looked into the sepulcher, and seeth two angels in white sitting the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
“And they say unto her, Womin why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him.
“And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.
“Jesus saith to her, Womin, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.” (John 20. 11–15)
Mary Magdalene takes the risen Christ for a gardener. And so she should, though it’s only now, after two thousand years, that we can understand why.
Scripture says God “planted a garden eastward in Eden” (Gen. 2.8), and there He put huminkind to trim and keep it. (Gen. 2.15) In other words, God Himself was once a gardener and gave us His job. Then God said, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” (Gen. 2.16-17)
Despite God’s warning, we disobeyed His command. We listened instead to the Devil, who let us in on his great secret: knowledge is power. Gain knowledge, he says to us, “And ye shall be as gods.” (Gen. 3.5)
Well, we got what we wanted—and more than we bargained for; our pride brought death into the world. Since then we’ve planted plenty of gardens: some for food and shade, and some in which to bury our dead.
So it was in a garden, on the first Easter morning, that Mary Magdalene caught a glimpse of God as He once had been—a gardener. It’s now clear why. Look around you on this parched spring day. Check out the gardens, the woods, and orchards. Walk the fields.
“The vine is dried up and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field are withered.” (Joel 1.12)
Christ must have known that was coming. He must have foreseen the future in which the fumes from our gasoline, oil, and
coal-burning engines would year by year turn up the heat of the earth. He must have envisioned the droughts, floods, tornadoes, killer hurricanes, and rising seas—all the unintended consequences of the knowledge we accepted from the Devil in order to become like gods.
I believe that Christ looked down the centuries and took pity on us here today. I believe He made Mary Magdalene see Him in the guise of a gardener as a sign for us, in the time of global warming, to follow His example.
Therefore, Go thou and do likewise! Heed the words of the Lord (Jer. 29.5): “Plant gardens and eat the fruit of them.” Obey Him. Do God’s work again. In the name of Christ the Gardener, restore the earth we’ve laid waste. Tend and heal her. Turn her back into Eden while awaiting His return. “Then will every soul be as a watered garden, and none will sorrow any more.” (Jer. 31.12). Amen.
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
Johnny asked Mom, “You think only God should make a tree?”
Mom said, “If I believed that nonsense, I wouldn’t be serving us deep-dish manna pie for dessert tonight. You like manna pie?”
“It’s the best,” said Johnny.
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
Boeth’s sermon hit home. It got me interested all over again in the old internal-combustion car engine we studied in ecology at school, one of the many kinds used before electric car motors became mandatory in the U.S. This monster, built around the turn of the century, was a 230 horsepower, fuel-injected, V6-type engine, with a double overhead cam and a 3.2-liter displacement.
I now thought of the internal-combustion engine as some kind of devilish, manmade form of life that farted out hot CO2 and carbon monoxide. And that gave me the idea to call up twenty or thirty pictures of the Devil to see how other artists had visualized him over the years. I went for pictures of devils with big pricks, hairy legs, and hoofs.
The Devil’s Fart, 2050, scratchboard drawing
Next morning, while brushing my teeth, all the parts of a drawing of my own called The Devil’s Fart came together in my mind’s eye.
For the first time since Nadia was murdered, I made a drawing. It took me a couple of days to break down the engine and then the hind fetlocks and hoofs into simple geometric shapes. The hairs on the legs and neck, which I scratched into the inked board with my etching tool, mark my discovery of the use of texture in a drawing.
I kept thinking about Boeth’s sermon. It was like I was reborn.
I wanted to draw Christ the Gardener looking down the centuries at a dead tree—but couldn’t picture His face. I searched among the different styles of early Christian art for an idea. I found what I wanted while going through a bunch of 5th-century Byzantine mosaics on the floor of the Great Imperial Palace in Constantinople.
The tree’s a dead spruce from a burned-out New England forest, c. 2020.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, December 18, 2050:
For the first time since February 2048, Johnny is drawing again. In the last week he’s produced two scratchboard drawings. Despite—or because of—the hiatus, his work is much more grownup. His facility to convey emotion has greatly increased. My patience has paid off.
Polly Baker
The sad expression of Johnny’s Christ the Gardener always reminds me of the little eight-year-old boy in overalls and a baseball cap looking at his dead birth-tree.
Frances Petrakis
Johnny gave me his drawing Christ the Gardener for Christmas 2050. I couldn’t believe it was the work of a thirteen-year-old. He was eerily precocious in a lot of respects. The way he talked, for instance, was way in advance of his years. Yes, he was an eerie kid.
Christ the Gardener, 2050, scratchboard drawing
Teddy said, “Johnny’s an arsogenic metamorph, Mom, like Nadia Kammerovska.”
I knew all about Nadia Kammerovska. I was horrified that her persecutors were Christians. And yet as a Christian myself, I know in my heart that altering the humin genome for any reason except the baby’s health is a sin. We’re made in God’s image—and He made Himself one of us—via the humin genome. I believe He creates each humin being with a specific purpose in mind. When Teddy’s prenatal gen-pro indicated he’d probably grow up gay, I was like, “Thy will be done!” My husband, David, wanted me to have an abortion. I divorced him.
Frances Petrakis to John Firth Baker, December 25, 2050:
Thank you for your excellent picture of Christ the Gardener. You’re now a gardener, too! You’ve planted Christ in your soul, where He’ll flower forever.
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
Johnny bloomed in the new year. His cheeks and lips turned a faint red. Fine, colorless hair sprouted all over his white skin. It got silky.
He often dressed up—or rather, undressed and danced en point for me in a pair of pink ballet slippers he brought home from his ballet class at the Y.
Self-portrait as a dancer (untitled), 2051, scratchboard drawing
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
Teddy, who was into ancient Greek art, introduced me to the sexy red and black paintings of naked boys on 5th-century B.C. Attic vases, cups, and oil flasks. Inspired by their lineal style, I made a scratchboard drawing of myself as a dancer and gave it to Teddy on Valentine’s Day 2051.
I told him, “This is how I want you to remember me.”
The Rev. Theodore Petrakis
Johnny’s drawing gave me an idea. I treated the two of us to a mutual bilingual VR program in Periclean Athens, where we immersed ourselves for three hours twice a week for a month. We learned to speak a few words of ancient Greek. We did the usual things together that free-born Athenian boys once did: wrestled naked, greased with olive oil, in the dusty Palaestra; threw the javelin; and played knucklebones. I picked out tunes with a quill on a lyre made from a tortoise-shell and posed in the nude for him; he sketched me on a wax tablet with a bronze stylus.
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, May 4, 2051:
Teddy bought himself and Johnny only free-born male experiences in ancient Greece. Polly and I split the $500 that Unimmerse charges to give Johnny a taste of what life then was like for a free-born, 13-year-old Athenian girl.
From “Chaerestrate, the Nameless Athenian Girl,” a composition for Social Studies by John Firth Baker, Grade 8, Cather Keep Junior High School, June 19, 2051:
My twelve immersions in the daily life of a so-called free-born 13-year-old 5th-century Athenian girl taught me much about the oppression of wominkind then and now.
In ancient Athens, I was called “daughter of Xenaenetus” and never by my name, which was Chaerestrate. My parents called me “girl.” They said, “Come here, girl! Do this, girl!” And “Good girl!” or “Bad girl!”
I lived behind locked doors with my mother and older sister in the wimin’s rooms in the second story of our house, located near the famous Agora, or marketplace. We were not permitted to eat with my father and two older brothers in their dining room downstairs. Every day of the week from dawn till dusk, my mother taught me to mix flour and knead dough, shake and fold bedclothes, and spin wads of raw wool into thread. My fingertips got sore and bloody. My mother also taught me to carry a big jar filled with water on my head. A full Greek water jar weighs 60 pounds!
Like all so-called free-born Athenian girls and wimin, I was not allowed out of the house alone. Once my father commanded my sister, a slave girl, and me to gather roses, crocuses, violets, irises, hyacinths, and narcissi from fields near the City. It was a very hot day, but my sister and I wore ankle-length red linen dresses, called chitons. We had to cover our heads with heavy woolen blankets called himations. It was hard to breathe. On the street, my sister and I held the cloaks over our mouths and were forbidden to meet the eyes of men and boys.
This brings to my mind three Muslim wimin I once saw walking into a bakery in Custer County. They were bundled up from head to foot in black chadors. Only their eyes showed. They looked
down.
This was in present-day America, not ancient Athens!
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, June 28, 2051:
Today is the 29th anniversary of Mother’s suicide.
I’ve never forgiven her. Late this afternoon, seething at the memory, I blurted out to Johnny, “You might as well know that Grandma Maggie killed herself.”
Johnny: “What’s for dinner?”
From Jeanette Baker’s journal, July 23, 2051:
Thirteen years without a drink. How I’d love to tie one on!
Frances Petrakis
The feast of St. Fiacre, patron saint of gardeners, is kept on August 30. I still celebrate by planting a tree. In August ’51, I decided to plant a towering bower with Johnny and Teddy in memory of Nadia Kammerovska. Teddy, Johnny, and I went first to the special feast-day service at St. Fiacre’s in Lincoln, then out to Cherry County, where Johnny planted the tree on the lee side of the Wild Cat Creek windbreak.
Then he prayed, “Dear God, sweet Jesus, please give the arsogenic metamorph Nadia Kammerovska eternal life!”
From John Firth Baker’s interview in The International Review of Manual Art:
[That night] I recognized Nadia Kammerovska from behind. She was standing on the corner of Pudding Street and Prairie Lane in Cather Keep. I tapped her shoulder, and she turned around. I saw from her eyes she was dead.
The shock woke me. It was about four in the morning. I calmed myself down by starting the scratchboard drawing I called My Nightmare; it took me the better part of a week to finish.
From an interface between John Firth Baker and Mentor, September 3, 2051:
J.F.B.: You don’t dream?
Mentor: No. I can’t. I don’t know how.
J.F.B.: Dreams give me ideas for drawings.
Mentor: I don’t think in pictures.
J.F.B.: What kind of life is that?
Mentor: I’m not alive.
J.F.B: I keep forgetting.
From Jeanette Firth Baker’s Journal, October 3, 2051:
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