by Ann Ripley
Word traveled fast around here, Louise noticed. “Just to, uh, survey the weed population.” It was high time to tell someone this, and she’d rather tell this woman than Sheriff Tatum. “By the way, I happen to know Eddie Porter has a white truck, in case that’s of use to the sheriffs department.”
“Oh, he does, huh?” The sergeant looked sober and surprised. “I’ll certainly follow up on that.”
“And if I go up to that ranch again, I’ll be happy to keep an eye out for you.”
“Do that,” Rafferty urged. “Call me any time. I hear that out East, you’ve done some crime fightin’—in between your TV career, that is.” She grinned at Louise with a mixture of admiration and amusement. “Some kind of a wonder woman, huh?”
“Oh, please. You know how it goes. It was mostly luck. Tell me about yourself, Sergeant Rafferty. How did you get into law enforcement?”
“Oh, easy,” said the sergeant. “I graduated from high school in a little Nebraska town. There were two ads in the paper—one for a dispatcher, and one for a dishwasher. I looked up ‘dispatcher’ in the dictionary, and it said, ‘one who dispatches.’ Sounded good enough for me. I’ve been doin’ police work ever since. Although I don’t know how different the two jobs really are, since I get my hands into plenty of hot water.”
Like Clues, Gardens Can Spring Up Anywhere
A NEW HOME PRESENTS A BLANK canvas on which a builder’s landscapes usually lays the yard-and-garden design. Buyers of used homes often are on their own, and can have a world of challenge before them. In spite of what seem to be impediments, a garden can sprout up anywhere they want it in their newly acquired yard—even in the middle of a monolithic sea of green grass. Home owners must ignore the surface, and look with a true gardener’s eye at the endless opportunities that he before them.
A trash heap can become a treasure. True, these used homes can come with eyesores—genteel trash heaps in the corner of the backyard, abandoned dog runs, weed-filled alleys, and little ugly spaces at the house corners which no one ever spent a moment thinking about. Sometimes the mortgage also paid for outbuildings such as extra garages or metal storage sheds.
Far from griping, the new home owner should rejoice: the more trash, the better, for one man’s trash pile can be another man’s Garden of Eden. Literally, the trash pile is an opportunity to start a hilled garden. First, cover the pile generously with good planting soil. (In the case of one householder with a huge hill filled with farm “trash,” this meant bringing in five truckloads of soil to cover the debris of years.) On a little hill, start with an accent plant, perhaps an arborvitae or a juniper, placing it off center. Embellish it with a few other evergreen shrubs, then use the angle of the incline to display flowers, an assortment of ornamental grasses, or perhaps a cascade of vines. Mulch it attractively and well, because it will become a standout feature of your yard.
Beautify the desultory dog run. A ten-foot-wide dog run can be transformed into an exciting avenue with curved walk, flanked by delightful shrubs, trees, and flowers. Some intrepid home owners would even manage to fill the area with rocks, and let a stream meander through its length, with a small recirculating pool or waterfall at one end.
The entrance to the basement door, or the side of the house that holds the gas meter, is often ugly and ignored. Tiny corner spaces that others neglected over the years can be made into small garden oases. Even a space four feet square can be used cleverly, to hold vines, plants, and flowers. In the background, place several flue tiles of different heights and place a plant in each one. Train vines up the back wall, and in the foreground place a slow-growing shrub and some groundcover. Or, alternatively, place a couple of interesting rocks in the area, tuck in an evergreen shrub and a hardy perennial such as yarrow. The tinier the area, the smaller-scale the plants should be.
Don’t tear down that decrepit outbuilding. Neglected or even abandoned outbuildings are like a gift from heaven. The British know how wonderful they are: They paint them delightful shades of robin’s egg blue or dove gray. They nail on charming windowboxes trailing with lantana, hang the walls abundantly with vines, and grace the front with old roses, delphiniums, and verbascum. Any building, ruined or not, is wonderful background for a garden.
It is a major challenge to transform an ugly outbuilding that claims a major part of the view of the house, for instance, a metal workshop of the sort that hobbyists buy. Since all these workshops seem to be cumbersome and ill-styled, and painted in a mustard yellow color, the first step is to paint them a neutral tan-brown, to help them disappear into nature’s kind arms. No amount of vines or roses will take the onus off such a hideous structure, so the thing to do is distract—by erecting as much stockade fencing as one can afford, and planting generous clumps of disguising evergreen trees. Your next objective should be to clothe the (newly painted) walls, and especially the front wall, with sturdy plants such as trumpet vines. Eventually, its basic ugliness will be disguised. This same “plant and conquer” philosophy should apply to homely garages. Paint them, and plant them. No homely garage should be left to glare out at you, when you can make it the site of another charming garden.
Boring expanses of worn-out lawn: Probably more common than inheriting a junk pile is inheriting a yard with nothing in it except lawn, and often tired, shabby lawn at that, The new owner looks on this expanse with a sinking heart, for how can it ever be transformed into something interesting?
That is when our gardening imagination should come into play, seeking out the creative solution to the use of this open ground. Envision where trees or rocks will go: Then start out slowly, piece by piece, building the garden as you have time and money. The more tentative gardener might take the approach of starting with a garden that hugs the house, like a timid child clinging to his mama’s skirts. This is not necessary, and not nearly as much fun as starting at the most dramatic focal point of the yard.
Prepare the earth in this area, digging up and removing turf, and enriching the soil, and then set in place one significant garden accent—a large boulder, a sculpture, an evergreen bush or tree, or a small deciduous tree. Don’t skimp with this feature—that is, make it big enough. It will capture attention, for around it you will plant your first garden. Always keep a rough plan of the big picture—that is, the whole yard—in mind. If you’re the compulsive type, you can lay it all down in a formal diagram, or you can wing it: One gardener claimed, “I never plot anything—I do it all by eye.”
Making a successful garden, piece by piece. One home owner, who did this over seven years, transformed a drab, long yard into garden after garden, until there was nothing of grass but a serpentine grass path, taking one through a series of interesting and intricate connecting garden beds. Periodically, the eye was drawn to such garden features as stone benches, sculptures, vertical pines, ruined walls, a gazebo, and rose-filled arches. No one who had seen the garden seven years before would have believed it was the same place.
But such are gardeners—patient, and enterprising. Using their gardener’s eye. Helping a garden spring up almost anywhere—even on a dunghill. In fact, a dunghill would be a gift almost too good to be true.
Chapter 12
RETURNING HOME IN THE DIMMING evening, Louise drove slowly around the circular driveway, to see if there was anything amiss. Her car crossed from the shadows of the ponderosa pines and cottonwoods into a patch of dying sunlight. Beyond her property, toward the foothills, she could see a figure outlined in the twilight. It was her neighbor, Herb, leaning against his fence.
Herb looked like the type who might talk about the things that went on in this rural neighborhood. She parked the car, and walked down to visit with the old farmer. His eyes were on the West.
Mindful of snakes, she stepped gingerly over the rough grass parkway.
“Jest eyin’ the last rays of the sun,” the farmer explained. His straw hat was pushed well back on his head, and his face was a map of browned old wrinkles, with bright, friendly eyes show
ing through.
Louise stepped on the other side of the fence. “I swear,” she said, “this has to be one of the prettiest places in the world.”
He gave her a warm smile. “Indeed, I think so. And there’s lotsa new folks think so, too. They’re buying up the farms and the old homesteads and makin’ ’em pretty fancy. Jes’ hope they watch out for critters. It’s dry in the hills, so we got our lion and our bear around here.”
She’d heard this kind of warning from Pete, and had a hard time taking it seriously. As she saw it, it was a problem associated with those who lived farther into the mountains. She put it down to something the old-timers liked to scare newcomers with. “So who are these new people?” she asked him.
“Got quite a bunch of ’em,” he said. “A computer guru, a couple of scientists, some mighty well-heeled retired folks. We even got our very own expert on some syndrome or other.” Herb pushed his hat back to scratch the front of his bald head, possibly to aid his recall. “Believe it’s called … post-traumatics.”
Louise was puzzled. “Post-traumatic stress disorder?” she guessed.
He snapped gnarled fingers. “Yep. That’s it. Stress. That’s it, exactly. Doctor Gary Rostov—I jes’ call him Gary—master of post-traumatics … stress. He explained it all t’me. Folks get all fussed up when they have a big shock—like maybe their ma dies, or they shot down so many people in the Vi-etnam War that it made ’em disgusted with themselves. This keeps comin’ back to haunt ’em like a bad dream.”
“So he’s an authority on that.”
“Yep. Sez he knows how to snap ’em out of it. He lives back in that green house next t’the stream. Told ’im it was flood plain, and the house there’s had some problems. But he likes that spot. Bet he’ll have some stress hisself when we get another hundred-year flood in a few years.”
Louise laughed. “So hundred-year floods aren’t reliable.”
“Sure ain’t. They don’t keep a calendar. Our expert’ll just have t’head for higher ground is all.”
She didn’t have time to mention what was on her mind before Herb got around to his concerns. “Got somethin’ important t’tell ya, Louise, kinda off-puttin’. Wanna come in? Ellie’ll give us a fresh cookie, so it won’t smart so much.”
As they walked to the house, she saw that someone liked roses. The house was fronted with them, each one growing in its own separate wire cage.
“Ellie loves them roses,” the farmer said unnecessarily, “and course, we gotta protect ’em against those deer, ’cuz they love ’em, too.”
“Beautiful.” She wasn’t just being nice. They were impressive and healthy plants, if dwarfed by their protective cages. Louise sighed. Gardens all across America were being treated in this clumsy fashion because of the scourge of deer.
They entered the plain, elderly farmhouse, and Louise could tell a fastidious housekeeper reigned here—there was no red dust in this home. Dominating the living room were two plush recliners, their backs and arms prudently covered with crocheted antimacassars. They sat facing a large-screen television, and Louise could imagine the farmer and his wife sitting in cozy comfort in front of the big box when the day’s work was done. The place smelled of sugar cookies and coffee, and Louise, who loved coffee, gladly homed in on the kitchen to meet Herb’s short, plump wife.
After introductions, Ellie didn’t waste time giving her the news. “Herb saw someone suspicious snoopin’ around your house today—’cept they didn’t get a chance t’ break in, because he went right down there. You didn’t appear to be home.”
“I wasn’t home the whole day. So someone was—hanging around?”
Herb answered her. “It was somebody in an old white car. Noticed he wore a wide-brimmed hat. Wondered if y’knew ’em or not. Kind of lingered there in your driveway, drove around once, and then took off fast.”
“Toward where?”
“Toward Boulder.”
Took off fast, and hurried to Boulder to the organic farm to shoot her? She ran down a little mental list: Eddie Porter? Tatum, Payne, or Reingold? One of their accomplices? Or hired gunmen? This was getting absurd.
Louise was an eager customer for Ellie’s cookies, and as she ate, she gave the couple a glimpse into her work in television. When she told them that she had been up at Porter Ranch when Jimmy Porter’s body was found, Ellie’s eyes lit up with excitement.
“Um, we live about as close to the Porters as a body can get,” she said, primping nervously at a bouffant hairdo already immobilized with hair spray. “ ’Cept for old Harriet, of course. I reckon I know as much about those ranch folks as anybody.”
At last, thought Louise, she’d found a real source of Porter family history. But as Ellie began to pour out her story, it soon became apparent it was not the clear history Louise had sought, but a confused, emotional recounting of events. “Bonnie Porter suffered terrible up there on that ranch. Three of her little kids died there before she died herself. ’Course, she grieved the hardest over the boy who had the fits. Why, can you imagine holdin’ your lil’ son in your arms while he shook to death in a crazy fit?” The farm wife shook her head in disbelief. “And it sure didn’t help that family. Why, I know it affected Eddie—riled him up somethin’ awful. And maybe Sally, too. She was always such a depressed lil’ girl. Then, as if all this wasn’t bad enough, the deformed baby died, and Harriet’s father passed on—no one knew why. I wasn’t that surprised when Bonnie was caught in that fire. She was so low—it was like she wanted ta die herself, just ta get away from the pain…”
Louise set down an uneaten half of cookie, her appetite failing her. “How terrible,” she said, “and how good of you to have shared it with me.” After a moment, she changed the subject, feeling there had been enough talk of tragic family events. “While we’re talking history here, would you know who bought that stretch of land on Route Thirty-Six from Harriet Bingham?”
Herb sat up straighter in his chair. “I kin help ya there.” He gave Louise a shrewd look. He had probably subdivided all the land around this farm and made a bundle at it. “Harriet sold that land off, over time, to Earl Tatum and his friends. Yessir, Earl has always had the inside track with Harriet, and I wouldn’t be surprised if him and some buddy—say, that Payne fellow—didn’t buy her whole ranch off her mighty soon. After all, what’s an old lady like that gonna do up on that mountain all by herself?”
“Why, she might not even be safe up there,” chimed in Ellie. “After all, why’s everybody dying up there? If I was Harriet, I wouldn’t want to stick around with not hardly a soul ta talk to.”
Louise was becoming overwhelmed with fatigue and a surfeit of family history that was interesting, but of doubtful significance. What was important was the fact that Tatum had bought all those prime patches of land from Harriet Bingham. She thanked Ellie and Herb, and insisted she was quite safe walking the quarter of a mile home by herself, since there was still a little light in the sky.
Back at her rented house, she pulled the draperies and shades down and rooted around in the living room to find paper and pen. She had to start keeping notes on everything that was happening; right now, it was a confused mass of details. She found no paper, but her hand came upon a can of pepper spray, around which a scrawled note was fastened with a rubber band. She read:
“This is useful Jot when you walk the mountain trail. We hear there are lots of mountain lions this year. Two is better than one when meeting a lion. Stand tally put hands above head to make yourself look taller. Bark like a dog or make another kind of racket, since this upsets mountain lions. DON’T TURN YOUR RACK ON THE LION! Also, avoid eye contact. If all else fails, pepper spray might help.”
Next, there was a paragraph on bears.
EITHER talk softly to a bear so it knows you mean it no harm, OR ELSE (some people think this is better) chew the bear out by yelling “bad bear, bad bear.” DON’T make eye contact with the animal. Whatever you decide to say, back slowly away from the bear, but do NOT run.
Don’t get between mama bear and baby bears!! If the bear attacks, you will have to use a stick, the pepper spray, or your bare hands to beat it off.
Bare hands? Louise shuddered. She certainly wouldn’t walk those mountain trails until Bill returned. Pepper spray might help with wild animals, but she realized it was a pitiful match for a rifle—like the one used to shoot holes in her cowboy hat today. Maybe she should have asked Herb if she could borrow a real weapon, a shotgun, perhaps. It could ride in the trunk of her car. Meantime, she would carry the pepper spray in her purse.
She tried the kitchen in her continuing search for paper, but was overcome with the sickening smell in the room. It made her wonder if someone had stashed a dead body under the sink. Then she realized she had forgotten to remove the trash from the wastebasket, and the odor was from the unused chicken parts she had thrown away.
After shoving the garbage down into the plastic bag and tying it, Louise went out the back door to deposit the trash in the Dumpster by the road. Once outside, it was a magic world, with clouds scudding across a full moon as if propelled by giant winds—and yet, it seemed there was no wind at all on the surface of the earth.
Lost in the beauty of the scene, she picked her way across the yard, past a decrepit greenhouse, and down the garden path. She was thirty feet from the Dumpster when she saw two almond-shaped yellow eyes staring at her. The eyes of a puma.
“Unnh,” she moaned, feeling a terrible disconnect from the civilized life she had led for the past forty-three years. Wondering if, after all her recent brushes with disaster, her death would be delivered by lion’s teeth.
In the light of the moon and Herb’s distant yard light, the sight was surreal. The two eyes slowly sank toward the ground as the lion crouched in a defensive pose, much like a big house cat. As if the huge animal were metamorphosing back and forth between its molecular structure of bones, muscle, and blood, and thin air, Louise caught only momentary glimpses of it: the powerful line of the shoulder, the gaunt flank, those terrible eyes, and the ominous swishing of its enormous tail.