Benny nodded.
“Want a refill on the Coke?”
He picked up his glass and sucked up the last of the Coke, but shook his head no.
I took a bite of my burger, chewed it, looked at Benny. “You got any goals?” I asked him.
Benny looked at me then. He didn’t say a word. He stopped chewing and just stared.
“I mean, what do you want to do with your life? You want a wife? Kids? A trip to the moon? We fly around together, city after city, studying all these plants, and I don’t think I even know you.”
He swallowed and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I have goals,” he said.
“Well, like what?”
“I haven’t told anybody. I’ll need some time to think about it before I answer you. I’m not sure I want to tell anybody, no offense.”
Jeez, Benny, take a chance on me why don’t you, I thought. We went back to eating our burgers. I knew the higher-ups would want me to follow the lead Benny had dropped when we were driving in from the airport, so I tried. “Tell me about bridges,” I said. “Why are they important in songs?”
Benny wouldn’t say another word. We finished eating, and I carried Benny’s things up to his room for him. At the door he turned around and looked at me. “Bridges take you to a new place,” he said. “But they also show you the way back to where you once were.”
He closed the door.
I didn’t turn on any music in my room. It was nice to have it a little quiet for a change. I wrote my reports and e-mailed them off, then went out for a drink. I nursed it along, wondering where we stood on the bridges.
ABBA, FÄLTSKOG LISTING 47: “DANCING QUEEN,” DAY 4. UP&L OFFICES.
World Botanics sends Benny only to companies that meet its few criteria. First, they have to have occupied the same building for fifty years or more. You’d be surprised how few companies in America have done that. But if a company has moved around a lot, chances are its plants have not gone with it. Second, it’s nice if the company has had international ties, but that isn’t necessary. Lots of people somehow fail to tell Customs about the cuttings or the little packets of seeds in their pockets after vacations abroad. If a company’s employees have traveled around a lot, or if they have family ties with other countries, they sometimes end up with the kind of plants we’re looking for. UP&L has stayed put for a good long time, plus its employees include former Mormon missionaries who’ve poked around obscure corners of the planet. World Botanics hoped to find something in Utah.
The UP&L CEO and the HR staff and Polly were all waiting for us. You’d think Benny’d want to go straight up to the sixth floor to settle the Nemanthus gregarius question, but he didn’t. Benny always starts on the first floor and works his way to the top, so we started on floor 1.
The lobby was a new install, and I was glad Benny didn’t waste even half an hour there. Not much hope of curing cancer with flame nettle or cantea palms. The cafeteria on the second floor had some interesting Cleistocactus strausii. Like all cactus, it’s endangered but not extinct in the wild yet. There are still reports of Cleistocactus strausii growing here and there in the tops of the Andes. As far as anybody can tell, it can’t cure a thing.
We didn’t make it to the sixth floor till after four o’clock, and you could tell that Polly was a nervous wreck.
But Benny walked right past her Nemanthus gregarius.
“Hey, Benny,” I said in a low voice. “What about the goldfish vine?”
Benny turned around and stared at it. Polly moved back into her cubicle so she wouldn’t block the view, but after a minute Benny put his hands in his pockets and walked off. Well, poor Polly, I thought.
But just before five, I turned around and Benny wasn’t behind me. I found him at the Nemanthus gregarius. Jeez, Benny, I thought, we need to know the name of the game here. Declare extract of Nemanthus gregarius the fountain of youth or tell Polly she has a nice plant but nothing special. I steered him out of the building and back to the Marriott.
ABBA, FÄLTSKOG LISTING 47: “DANCING QUEEN,” DAY 4. DINNER.
I ordered Benny’s burger and a steak for me. We sat there eating, the only sound between us a muffled “Dancing Queen.” After last night, I was not attempting conversation.
I’d taken time before dinner to look up Nemanthus gregarius on the net. It is not endangered. It grows like weeds in cubicles. It can’t cure a thing.
I didn’t know what Benny was doing.
He sucked up the last of his one glass of Coke and put the glass down a little hard on the table. I looked up at him.
“I want to find a new plant and name it for Agnetha,” he said.
“What?”
“My goal in life,” he said. “If you tell anyone, I’ll see that you’re fired.”
“You’re looking for a new plant species in office buildings?”
“I’d actually like to find one for each of the four members of Abba, but Agnetha’s first.”
And I’d thought finding one completely new species too much to ask.
“When Abba sang, the world was so lush,” Benny said. “You can hear it in their music. It resonates with what’s left of the natural world. It helps me save it.”
It was my turn to be quiet. All I could think was, it works for Benny. He’s had plenty of success, after all, and who hasn’t heard of crazier things than the music of dead pop stars leading some guy to new plant species?
When I wrote up my daily reports that night, I left out Benny’s goals. Some things the higher ups don’t need to know.
ABBA, FÄLTSKOG LISTING 47: “DANCING QUEEN,” DAY 5. UP&L OFFICES.
We spent the day looking at more sorry specimens of Cordyline terminalis, Columnea gloriosa, and Codiaeum varigatum than I care to remember. By the end of the day, Benny started handing out the occasional watering tip, so I knew even he was giving up.
“Nemanthus gregarius?” I asked in the elevator on the way down.
Suddenly he punched 6. He walked straight to Polly’s cubicle and stuck out his hand. “I owe you an apology,” he said.
Polly just sat there. She was facing her own little Waterloo, and she did it bravely.
“I thought your Nemanthus gregarius might be a subspecies not before described, but it isn’t. It’s the common variety. A nice specimen, though.”
We left quickly. At least he didn’t give her any watering tips.
ABBA, FÄLTSKOG LISTING 47: “DANCING QUEEN,” DAY 5. WANDERING THE STREETS.
The thing about Benny is, if it doesn’t work out and we’ve studied every plant on thirty floors of an office tower without finding even a Calathea lancifolia, he can’t stand it. He wanders up and down the streets, poking into every little shop. He never buys anything — he isn’t shopping. I think he’s hoping to spot some rare plant in the odd tobacco or magazine shop and to do it fast. I have a hard time keeping up with him then, and heaven forbid I should decide to buy something on sale for a Mother’s Day gift.
We rushed through two used bookstores, an oriental rug store, four art galleries, three fast-food joints. “Benny,” I said. “Let’s get something to eat.”
“It’s here,” he said.
“What’s where?”
“There’s something here, and we just haven’t found it.”
The Dancing Queen was resonating, I supposed. Shops were closing all around us.
“You check the Indian jewelry store while I check Mr. Q’s Big and Tall,” he told me. “We meet outside in five.”
I did like I was told. I smiled at the Navajo woman in traditional dress, but she did not smile back. She wanted to lock up. I made a quick sweep of the store and noted the various species of endangered cacti and left. Benny was not on the sidewalk. I went into Mr. Q’s after him.
He was standing perfectly still in front of a rack of shirts on sale, hands in his pockets.
“These are too big for you,” I said.
“Window display, southeast corner.”
Well, I walked
over there. It was a lovely little display of Rhipsalis salicornioides, Phalaenopsis lueddemanniana, and Streptocarpus saxorum. Nothing unusual.
Then I looked closer at the Streptocarpus saxorum. The flowers weren’t the typical powder blue or lilac. They were a light yellow.
The proprietor walked up to me. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but we’re closing. Could you bring your final purchases to the register?”
“I’m just admiring your cape primrose,” I said. “Where do they come from?”
“My mother grows them,” he said. “She gave me these plants when I opened the store.”
“Did she travel in Africa or Madagascar?”
“Her brother was in the foreign service. She used to follow him around to his postings. I don’t remember where she went — I’d have to ask her.”
“Do you mind if I touch one of the plants?” I asked.
He said sure. The leaves were the typical hairy, gray-green ovals; the flowers floated above the leaves on wire-thin stems. It was definitely Streptocarpus, but I’d never seen anything like it described.
“I think you should call your mother,” I said, and I explained who Benny and I were.
The store closed, but Mr. Proprietor and his staff waited with us for the mother to arrive. The whole time Benny just stood by the sale rack, eyes closed, hands in his pockets. “You’ve done it again,” I whispered to him.
He didn’t answer me. Just as I turned to walk back over to the cape primrose, he opened his eyes. “Streptocarpus agnethum,” he whispered.
And he smiled.
ABBA, FÄLTSKOG LISTING 32: “I HAVE A DREAM,” DAY 2. AGNETHA’S GRAVE.
The thing about Benny is, he’s generous. He took me to Sweden with him, and we planted Streptocarpus agnethum, or “dancing queen,” around Agnetha’s gravestone. Turns out the flower wasn’t a cure for anything, but it was a new species and Benny got to name it.
“Agnetha would have loved these flowers,” I told Benny.
He just kept planting. We had a nice sound system on the ground beside us, playing her music — well, just one of her songs. It talks about believing in angels. I don’t know if I believe in angels, but I can see the good in Benny’s work. Nobody’s bringing back the world we’ve lost, but little pieces of it have survived here and there. Benny was saving some of those pieces.
“These flowers are so pretty,” I told him.
Of course he didn’t say anything.
He didn’t need to.
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WITH RAIN, AND A DOG BARKING
I don’t hear most noises in Salt Lake City. I’ve gotten used to city noise, and my mind ignores all the sirens, the engine backfires, the startup of traffic when the lights turn green. I only realize how surrounded by sound I am when I go home to Idaho and walk out in the night and hear how profoundly still it is. But in Salt Lake last April 15th, at 11:30 at night, I realized the Barretos’ black Labrador had been barking next door for some time. I remember the date and the time because I had just finished my taxes and had gotten up to get my coat and the car keys, turn off the lights, and drive down to the post office.
I walked outside and looked over the fence to see if anything was going on in the Barretos’ yard. I try to watch the Barreto place since Elicardes died of a heart attack in March. Besides, you learn early when you grow up on a farm that you should not ignore a persistently barking dog. Dogs bark for reasons: sometimes reasons you can ignore, like a homeless person looking for aluminum cans in the trash, and sometimes not. You’d better find out which.
I couldn’t see the dog at first, it was that dark outside, but I could hear it barking in the Barretos’ back yard. It had been raining, and the grass was wet. I put my tax envelopes in the car, then walked back along the fence between our places looking for what, I asked myself — a stray cat? A prowler? The dog knew what was normal and what wasn’t, so something was going on.
But I couldn’t see a prowler. There wouldn’t have been a place for one to hide, really, in the Barretos’ back yard. They had a flowering plum tree in the back corner between our yards, two spruce pines in the opposite corner, a swing set and a sandbox. The dog was barking by the plum tree, so I walked back to it. I couldn’t make out anything up in the tree, but I could see the dog. He was standing close to the trunk of the plum and barking. I whispered his name: “Lucky.”
He stopped barking and looked at me. I crouched down and stretched my hand between the slats of the fence. “Here, Lucky.”
He walked over and smelled my hand. He knew me. I petted his head, and he licked my hand. He was shaking, wet from the rain. I looked up at the tree, but nobody was in it. I could have seen that. I thought maybe a cat could be hiding up there. Lucky usually didn’t bark at cats — he actually seemed to like them — but maybe this was one he didn’t take to for some reason. “Quiet down, Lucky,” I said, and I left to mail my taxes. He was barking again when I got back.
In the night, Edwardo, the youngest Barreto boy, opened his window and shouted for the dog to shut up. He didn’t shut up. I realized he was making more of a whine now. I got up and looked out my kitchen window into the Barretos’ yard. The dog was standing on the back step, whining at the tree. A light was on in the Anderson’s, the house on the other side of the Barretos’.
Maria came out again and talked to Lucky in a low voice and petted him. She walked over under the plum tree, looked around, and after a few minutes walked back inside her house. The dog was quiet while Maria was outside, but he started barking as soon as she closed the door.
In the morning he was still barking and whining. I watched him for a minute from my window. He was sitting on the back step where it was dry, still barking at the plum tree. I drank a glass of orange juice, pulled on my boots and a hat, grabbed a broom, and walked out under the branches of the plum that stretched over the fence and shaded part of my yard, too. The morning smelled rancid, like the city. Petals were falling from the tree in the still air, and they mottled the grass. I thought it was early for the petals to fall. Maria walked out when she saw me poking around in the branches of the tree, knocking rain-water down on top of me. It would run down the broomstick onto my hands and up my sleeves.
“What’s up there?” Maria asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. The dog had followed her over and had stopped barking as if he were confident we were finally going to do something to put a stop to whatever was bothering him.
“I came out earlier and looked,” she said. “I couldn’t see anything.”
I couldn’t see anything either, or drive anything out with my broomstick. “There has to be something up there,” I said. I jumped over the fence and started thrusting my broomstick up in the branches on the Barreto side, but I could see there was nothing up there. The tree wasn’t that tall. I didn’t scare anything out. The dog started whining, then barking. He left us and walked back to the steps, sat there alternately whining and barking. Maria and I just looked at him.
“I’ll go get the boys off to school,” she said. She took the dog in the house with her.
When I got home from work that afternoon, the dog was outside again, and barking. My friend Ellen was coming over for dinner, and I needed to start cooking, but I thought I’d take a few minutes with the dog to try to calm him down. I didn’t want him barking during dinner. I hurried to change clothes. The old shoes I’d worn the night before were covered with a dusty film from the rain. I’d seen that sort of thing plenty of times. See it once, and you’ll never stick your tongue out in the rain again, like you can in the country. I brushed off the shoes and went for the dog.
“I walked him twice today — once in the rain,” Maria said when she handed me the leash. “But maybe you can do something.”
Lucky was glad to get out of the yard. He kept running ahead, pulling on the leash, then he’d suddenly stop and look back at me as if he were relieved to be away from his house, as if he wanted to say thanks. Dogs do things like that. They fe
el emotions, like relief, and — maybe because we’re both mammals — we feel the same things, and we recognize similar emotions. Some say we just anthropomorphize the animals, but I don’t think so. Lucky was relieved. I petted him when he’d stop to look at me. “It’s all right, boy,” I said. “We’ll work this out of you.”
I started running, and he darted out ahead of me, pulled on the leash for a while, then matched his speed to mine so we could run together. We ran east down Arapaho, north across Apache, then west back up Shoshone. I tried to dodge the puddles, and so would Lucky, usually, but sometimes he’d run right through them and splash us both. Good, I thought, the exercise should make him tired and calm him down.
The air stank, and I was surprised the rain hadn’t cleaned the air. Life in the city, I thought. I started thinking maybe the guys who jogged around with breathing masks over their noses might be smart after all. Who knows what I was breathing into my lungs?
Three blocks along Shoshone, Lucky started to slow down. And bark.
“Stop it, Lucky,” I said.
He stopped and whined and would not go forward.
“Come on,” I said, tugging on the leash. “We’ve got to get back.”
He growled at me. I began to wonder if he were sick. “Lucky?” I said. I walked back to him. He didn’t growl as long as I didn’t try to make him go forward.
I looked around the neighborhood to see what could be making him act like that. But I couldn’t see anything unusual or anything that could be connected with the Barretos’ back yard.
Except the four cherry trees on the corner of Shoshone and Blackfoot, three houses down from us. The trees were in bloom, and the petals were falling around the trees, carpeting the grass. Was this dog upset by flowering trees? Allergies? He didn’t seem stuffed up at all, or sick. Just on edge. Besides, how would a dog associate allergies with flowering trees? He wouldn’t.
How We Play the Game in Salt Lake and Other Stories Page 17