The Garden of Blue Roses

by Michael Barsa

  It coughed to life.

  I didn't have a license. But Klara had taught me to drive like she'd taught me everything else. I focused on the delicate dance of clutch and brake pedal and gas, swerving down the driveway and nearly running into a wretched elm. At the bottom I turned left. I managed to keep to the road. The trees gathered overhead, curious and dark. They were like all native Vermonters—rigid, ill-spoken, menacing in crowds.

  I lowered the window. Wind felt good. Soon I reached a bullet-riddled sign that read "M14." A swath of cracked pavement led toward town—an outpost of illusory civilization where the mountain folk went when they wanted to practice standing in line and tucking in their shirts. But at least it wasn't a "cosmopolitan center" like Burlington or Brattleboro. One didn't encounter transient students or "civilly united" lesbians or fur-clad New Yorkers doing "outlet shopping" or "aprés ski."

  I suppose I should say its name. Battenkill. Kill from the Old Dutch killa, meaning a riverbed or channel. Battenkill is where Klara's favorite china shop is located and where there's a medical clinic with more than a single doctor. Actually it's the medical clinic with virtually all the doctors, having absorbed or driven out of business eleven other medical offices in the surrounding region. This has caused some people, including Klara, to refer to it grandiosely as a "hospital" even though it consists of a single brick building and performs only the most rudimentary surgeries.

  I sped toward Battenkill, the town, along Battenkill, the river, crossing the water several times over covered wooden bridges—the sort tourists love but locals hate because they have only a single track, so whenever a car comes from the opposite direction there is endless maneuvering over who will cross first. But on that day I didn't care, didn't slow down at all. I felt an accident would be preordained or not, and there was nothing I could do. I passed an old green road sign that read "Battenkill" and "Pop. 3888" and "Elev. 3525 ft." Then came a few slumping shacks and prefabricated monstrosities with aluminum siding and backyard trailers. The town's center was a row of dilapidated red-brick storefronts built during some long-forgotten industrial age, flanked on one side by a concrete municipal structure and on the other by the post office. The clinic was a good mile or two beyond.

  In town I was impeded by an old woman in a powder-blue Buick who drove like an old woman in a powder-blue Buick. Finally she veered up onto the sidewalk, as I knew she eventually would. Within seconds the post office was behind me. Then the clinic's ever-illuminated sign appeared between clusters of bushes on my right: A Service of the United Healthcare Network, The Nation's Healthcare Provider. This sign was the only new or refurbished thing about the place, other than a façade painted to look like windows and a corporate banner fluttering above the entryway that depicted little silhouettes of people in different colors holding hands.

  The parking lot was behind a screen of bushes. I stopped some distance away and approached on foot, not trusting my ability to circle back. The Peugeot gleamed in the sun. I cupped a hand over my eyes and peered through its tinted windows. I saw no Chilton's guide or wire-cutters. I slipped my fingers beneath the door's handle, but it was locked. Then I remembered what was in the MG's trunk. I hurried back and fetched it—an old wire hanger. I slipped it below the Peugeot's window, fished it around. I'd seen this done in police shows and read about it in Father's books. Still I was amazed when it snagged. I lifted, heard a click, and opened the door.

  The button for the trunk was beneath the seat. I pressed it. The book and wire cutters were in the wheel well, where everybody in novels conceals everything. I slid them inside my blazer. Then I glanced around. Nobody was near. I returned to the driver's door and squeezed into the seat, nearly overwhelmed by the new car scent, that odor of volatile organic compounds clearly in excess of EPA guidelines. It reminded me how new Henri's car was, just like his spade and shovel—how everything about the man seemed to be of recent manufacture.

  I opened the glove compartment. A sheaf of papers. I flipped through them: receipts for soil, seeds, various chemicals. I tucked one of them inside my blazer pocket, but the true prize—a car registration with Henri's name and address—was nowhere to be found. Was this itself revealing? I began poking my hands into any other plausible place—lifting the plastic armrest, pulling out the cup holder, peering into the thin recess beneath the radio. The man was a blank.

  I was just bending beneath the imitation leather seat when I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a shimmer at the clinic's door. I didn't move. I remained half-crouched, my tie hanging down, a sheen of perspiration erupting across my skin. Slowly I raised my head. A bird was watching me—an old blackbird with jaundiced eyes. When it turned to peck at a weed I grabbed the charm hanging from the rear-view mirror, a plastic rabbit's foot, and flung it into the nearby shrubbery. The bird didn't move. I took out the MG's key and gouged a tiny question mark into the car's sleek outer skin.

  The bird flew away.

  I hurried back to the MG and stashed the Chilton's guide and wire-cutters beneath the seat. Then I approached the clinic door. It was not automatic, so I had to go to the side and punch a blue shield with an outline of a wheelchair. The lobby was bathed in a fluorescent light that reflected harshly off the speckled linoleum floor. Soporific music seeped out of ceiling speakers. A couple of formless hags leaned on canes and an old man couldn't keep his jaw from clicking up and down. Only a young Hispanic boy appeared sentient, holding his hand and whimpering into his father's shoulder. There was also a hanging television on which an earnest newscaster intoned: "We're United Healthcare, here to serve you better."

  There was no sign of Henri or Klara or Marta. I approached the counter. "Excuse me?" I said to the nurse behind it. She was a young woman with long red hair like they used to burn witches for having. Her cheeks were chubby on their way to being fat and her dimpled chin receded. She reminded me not just of witches but also of a girl I once knew in middle school, Veronica Stimmel, a ponderous bookish lass who thought I might share her interest in silly novels about gnomes and warlocks and impossible journeys through icy realms. "You remind me of—" she'd said one day, uttering some unpronounceable name, Etihadilough or Letihoulituff, a name supposed to sound noble and brave, not like the stupid kerfuffle it was. I'd laughed. There was nothing else to do. She stared at her blocky feet, which had drifted close to mine, and when my laughter died I said: "I'll tell my sister. She'll find it hilarious, too." And that was the end of Veronica Stimmel.

  This one, though, seemed less reticent, less easy to dispatch. She was scrutinizing her fingernails and talking rapidly into the telephone. "You've got to tell him to open up to you. I mean how were you supposed to know what that old radio-controlled speedboat meant to him?" She smiled at me, a quick sideways stab of lips, and pushed a clipboard across the countertop. It held a sheet of paper with "Patient Information" printed across the top and several blank spaces to be filled in.

  "I'm not sick," I said.

  She held up a finger. "He also needs to learn to admit he can't fix everything. Just tell him to buy a new one already and get over it."

  "My sister, Klara Crane, and a gardener who goes by the name ‘Henri' just brought our housekeeper Marta in a few minutes ago."

  She frowned and thrust the finger forward more intently, like showing off a paper cut. Her fingernail tapered to a perfectly oval point. "Listen, I got to call you back." She slammed down the receiver. "What is it you want, sir?"

  I cleared my throat, recalling other girls, haughty vixenish things trying to maximize their few precious years of youthful bloom. It was satisfying to see this one already past her prime—the skin falling slack beneath her eyes and her hair hanging limp across her shoulders. But the way she clung to her attitude told me she didn't know it yet.

  "My sister, Klara Crane and a gardener named Henri brought our housekeeper Marta in here, and I wanted to know whether they had to fill out forms with—"

  "Mar
ta? Marta what?" she snapped.

  I sighed. "Surely there can't have been more than one person named Marta who just arrived."

  "Doesn't matter. We've got rules, sir. I can't let you in if you don't—"

  "I'm sorry. There seems to be a slight misunderstanding. I don't wish to go in. I merely wish to see whether this gardener has filled out one of these forms."

  "Everybody has to fill out a form. Those are the rules."

  "Yes, good, I see we both appreciate rules, now if I might just be able to see this form?"

  She gave a pert little smirk. "You must be kidding."

  "I can assure you I am not, generally speaking, a kidder."

  "Then who the hell do you think you are, mister?"

  I cleared my throat. It was always so tedious speaking with members of the public. I found I had to constantly explain myself as if to a child. "As I just said, I'm Marta's employer, and it was my sister Klara, Klara Crane, who came in here with the gardener."

  She blinked and looked at me.

  "You probably haven't filed their forms yet," I continued. "Look, what's that on your desk?"

  I pointed to a filled-in Patient Information sheet, which she quickly covered with her freckled elbow. "Rules are rules, sir. Now don't make me call security."

  I smiled, half turning to the others in the room, who remained stupefied by their ailments, and then, finally understanding her, pulled out of my wallet a pair of twenty dollar bills. "I trust this should suffice," I said in a low voice.

  She rolled backwards on her swivel chair. "Hey! Ralph! Can you help me out here a second?"

  I could see she was serious. There was no use continuing. I turned and walked away, past the gauntlet of infirm limbs. I didn't wait to punch the blue shield on the inside of the doorway. I thrust my shoulder against the glass, thinking: what am I running from? I haven't done anything wrong. But I knew I had. I'd botched the interrogation. Sherlock Holmes would have done it much better—would have disguised himself as an inspector and demanded to see the hospital's paperwork. I pushed my hands into my pockets and told myself there was a good reason I hardly ventured into town. I couldn't navigate it; I was not welcome here.

  This time it was easier to start the car. I drove to the Battenkill river and stopped in the middle of the bridge. I reached beneath the seat. The Chilton's guide and wire-cutters were still there. I flung them into the water and watched them bubble away, the wire-cutters disappearing instantly, the Chilton's guide holding out a little longer, swirling and scrabbling to stay afloat. Then I pulled out the receipt. It was dated some months ago. It was for five fifty-pound sacks of organic fertilizer and something called "pH balancer." The letterhead was from a "Girardi & Sons"—the logo printed inside a silhouette of a greenhouse—with an address on "J" street, only a few blocks from the center of town.

  I held the receipt as I drove, turning left at the post office, then right down another tree-lined street. "Girardi & Sons Gardening and Nursery Supply, Since 1946," was painted on a swinging sign. Behind the sign lay an old ramshackle building with aluminum siding and a greenhouse with several broken windows. The driveway was lined with potted plants, which I had trouble avoiding as I parked, crunching one beneath my tire, toppling another when I swung open the door.

  I began in the greenhouse. Almost instantly I was struck by its moisture, the physical sensation on my skin and the dank metallic stench. There were plants everywhere—small buds, blooming flowers, half-sized trees—lined up in rows like slumbering troops. But otherwise I could tell right away that I was alone. I've spent enough time in solitude to recognize the stillness, to know the signs.

  There was a door at the far end. I passed through it. I found myself in the main house. In an office.

  "Hello?" I called out.

  The room was small, with a heavy wooden desk in the center and wood-paneled walls. On the walls hung pictures of oarsmen and flowers and lions emblazoned with the words TEAMWORK and QUALITY and SUCCESS. There was also a rifle hanging behind the desk. I walked up to it and leaned forward. I could hardly believe my eyes. An authentic World War II M1 Garand.

  "It was my dad's. He started this business after the war."

  I whirled around. Behind me stood a rock of a man—his short sleeves taut around his biceps, his forearms webbed with veins. Beneath a loose silk shirt moved tectonic plates of pectoralis muscles. He thrust out a hand. "Phil Girardi," he said.

  "Oh, yes, Milo Crane," I replied. His hand was hot and dry and callused and so large that it nearly enveloped mine.

  "You a World War II buff?"

  I nodded. He smiled, then walked to another door at the far end of the room, one I hadn't noticed because it was cut into the wood-paneled wall like a trap door in novels. For a moment I wondered if I was in a novel, and I pinched my earlobe—an old trick.

  "My dad was in the war. Brought back loads of stuff."

  The door opened on a spring. It was a small annex—really more of a shrine—and on the walls hung black-and-white photos of a young man whose chiseled features bore a striking resemblance to Phil's. Only his physique was much thinner—his pale Army uniform hung loosely over his frame. It was the uniform of the Pacific Army Group, and in the more formal photos I spied the double-bar insignia of a Second Lieutenant. But in the combat photos he looked like a plain infantryman squinting nervously at the surrounding palms, or wading through chest-high water holding a rifle like a trapeze bar over his head. There were other memorabilia—medals, newspaper clippings, a bullet-riddled helmet and dilapidated combat boots. On the far wall hung a rusted bayonet, an officer's .45 caliber pistol, a few mortar casings, .50 caliber machine-gun bullets, the shell of a hand grenade, the nozzle end of a flamethrower, and a slightly unsheathed Japanese officer's sword near whose hilt I could just see the rusted flecks of blood.

  "This is incredible," I breathed, noticing that none of the weapons had been defused—the bullets' powder not removed nor the pistol's barrel spiked. This gave me a thrill beyond any normal museum display.

  "That sword belonged to a Japanese officer they trapped in one of the caves on Guadalcanal," said Phil, rubbing his goatee. "Poor bugger killed himself instead of being taken prisoner."

  "They did do that," I agreed, recalling my picture books of the battle—the rotting corpses, emaciated Japanese defenders, one American officer with the top of his head blasted off and a stump of cigar still clinging to his chin.

  "Crazy bastards."

  "They took dishonor even more seriously than death," I said.

  "Boy, has the world changed." He closed the door again. Then he rubbed his massive hands together. "You looking for perennials? I think I've got some delphiniums back at the greenhouse."

  "No, no, I'm just—"

  "Sorry. Everybody seems to want perennials lately."

  "Ah yes." I took a deep breath. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a gardener. I'm a journalist, you see." I pulled out my notebook and spy pen.

  "What can I do for you?" Phil said warily.

  I smiled, explaining that I was researching several of the more prominent gardeners in the area and that Phil's name had arisen as a source for many of their soil and fertilizer needs. "For example, I've already spoken with a Mr. Henri Blanc. He comes to you regularly, does he not?"

  Phil nodded.

  "I understand he's got some sort of"—I flipped a few pages in my notebook for effect—"secret fertilizer or something?"

  "He calls it that, but everyone who works around here makes something like it. You got to, with these soils."

  "Do you think he's not an especially forthright gardener, then?"

  He cocked his head. "He's a good guy. Just interesting."

  "Do you know where he's from?"

  "He's French, right? I don't know much else. He kind of came out of nowhere."

  "What do you mean?"

&nb
sp; "He showed up suddenly a few months ago. Then it was like he was always here."

  "A few months ago?" I've worked with Elizabeth for months.

  "That's right. Hey, what did you say your name was again?"

  I hesitated. "Milo Crane."

  "Your father was that writer, wasn't he?"

  I nodded, bracing myself for the inevitable barrage of questions: What was he like? How did he come up with those books?

  "Because Mr. Blanc said he knew him," Phil went on. "Your father. Said that's why he moved here. This was right after, well, that terrible accident. I'm so sorry, you know, for your loss."

  But I wasn't thinking of my loss. There were too many questions, too many strange coincidences. "He moved here in the winter? From where?"

  "Said he was working upstate. Near Burlington."

  "Why would he move here for my father after my father's death?"

  Phil shrugged those huge shoulders. "You mean you don't know?"

  "He's a stranger to me."

  "Oh." Phil looked perturbed, like he was trying to solve a difficult sum.

  "Do you know anything else about him?" I asked.

  "I heard he was pretty popular."

  I snapped closed the notebook. "One last question. When Henri orders supplies, where do you deliver them?"

  "He picks up everything here."

  "I suppose he always pays cash?"

  "Listen, I can't . . ." He looked away, fingering a couple of papers on his desk. "I really can't get into that. Sorry."

  I bit my lip, knowing I'd bungled things again. It seemed so easy in stories to question witnesses. They either answered the detective or had something to hide. Either way they gave useful information.