The Gardener of Eden

by David Downie

  Jostled forward by salty gusts and cheered on by the birds’ cries, James cupped his hands around his eyes and moved along the windows peering in, trying to remember the coils of rope, the crab pots and floats in the fisherman’s shack, and the timber and crates of canned fish in the warehouse. One summer, when he had worked as a timber-faller and firewood cutter, he had driven a tractor, delivering truckloads of wood to this warehouse. Or had it been one of the other warehouses demolished by developers?

  Two reconverted trawlers and a purpose-built ferry moored by a jetty advertised whale-watching tours and sports fishing excursions. Across their gangways dangled guano-spattered signs declaring CLOSED FOR THE SEASON. Splashing in the oily, slow-moving, brackish water between the boats was a family of sea otters. They dipped in and out of the dark river, pausing to glide on their sides or backs, barking and watching as James walked upstream, his hands clasped behind him, his windbreaker flapping like a flag.

  Farther inland on Yono estuary, at the eastern end of the parking lot, the old cannery built of red brick, with a kiln and chimney on one end, and a receiving and shipping dock on the other, was now a multilevel mini-mall emblazoned with the predictable name The Old Cannery. James spotted a sign on the ground-floor boutique closest to the main entrance. YE OLDE SMOKEHOUSE, it announced, PURVEYOR OF THE AUTHENTIC CARVERVILLE SMOKED SALMON AND POTTED CRAB. From Norway, he wondered, or Alaska?

  Spiderwebs on the doors and windows hinted at slow business. When James peered into the dusty panes he could see nothing but his own ghostlike reflection. More than ready for coffee and some breakfast, checking his watch as he went, he wondered aloud why not a soul was in the harbor. The tourists might show up later. Where were the locals?

  Climbing the coiling two-lane road from the parking lot to the bluff, and from there to downtown Carverville, James looked back toward the ocean. He could see now that the old abandoned trestle bridge had been flanked on one side by a concrete overpass, and on the other by a freeway bypass four-lanes wide. A few cars and several trucks rumbled along, disappearing and reappearing as the river mist and ocean fog thinned then thickened along their route. He could barely hear them over the gusting wind and crying or crowing birds. Gas stations, the Seaside Mall, and a series of big-box outlets were ranged on the rough denuded hills to the south. Ahead and to the east, an amphitheater of glassy condos with decks overlooking Yono Harbor had been built, probably in the 1990s or early 2000s, by the look of them, obliterating the switchback hiking trails that he and his high school friends had ridden their bicycles on, the balloon tires keeping them from sinking into the sandy loam. Counting the FOR SALE signs and shuttered windows, he guessed half the condos were unoccupied.

  The grid blocks of late-nineteenth-century streets on the windswept Plateau appeared little changed. Only a few cars and one comical pickup truck seemingly on stilts passed him as he marched along an alphabet of tree species. Starting with Aspen and Birch, and ending prematurely with Oak and Pine, the streets running from the treeless hills in the east to the ocean bluffs in the west were lined by modest one- or two-story houses and cottages, some of them a century old or more, built when Carverville had been a company town. Flanking them were single-car garages and oil-stained driveways. Most of the hard-driven structures were insulated from their neighbors and the street by tall cyclone fences topped with barbed wire surrounding untended yards where the crabgrass and raspberry bramble suffocated the tatty privet hedges. Counting on his fingers but soon running out of digits, he surveyed the abandoned houses, remembering how so-and-so lived here, and such-and-such lived there. Several places were burned out and boarded up, and one had a gaping hole in its tar-paper roof.

  The same small windblown houses and ticky-tacky cottages with peeling white or pink or green paint lined the numbered streets running north to south. The exception to this rule was the crossroads in the center of town, where Main and Bank streets met. Here, facing each other across an asphalt expanse, stood the post office, a bank, the old county sheriff’s office, and city hall. All were housed in surprisingly small wooden buildings from the nineteenth century, with false columns and slumping wooden porches. All were painted white, flanked by large modern or postmodern additions, and wrapped by parking lots.

  Alleyways led from the parking lots to a seedy unseen section of town. Here the front yards of tiny semidetached cottages stood behind tall wooden fences. The entrances to several abandoned flea-bag motels faced the back doors, receiving docks, and garbage can areas of the town’s remaining Main Street businesses. The entire downtown area was several streets deep and wide.

  Detouring west down Redbud Alley for half a block, James paused in front of the single small window of Mulligan’s Saloon. It was still too dark to see the architectural details above the porch, where the gambling den and cathouse had been way back when. But from the smell of bile, and the mounds of cigarette butts on the pitted asphalt, James guessed the town’s favorite hangout and pool hall had not changed a great deal since his youth. There was only the one window, about half a yard square, curtained off with thick brown material to a height of six feet, so no one, especially the ladies, meaning the wives of clients, could see in from the alleyway. Back in the 1970s, old-timers claimed the place got its look during Prohibition, when Mulligan’s became the town’s very own House of the Rising Sun, run by the notorious Kitten Caboodle. At some point after World War II, the gambling room had migrated upstairs from the back, Kitten and her hookers had moved off campus into the Redbud Motel next door, and the saloon’s owners had been required to take down the prominent sign inviting people of color and anyone wearing improper clothing to seek elsewhere for companionship and entertainment. The sign was gone, the spirit, no doubt, remained.

  Recalling now how he and his sometimes-pal Gus Gustafson had threatened to pay a professional from the motel to service young Clem Kelley, a dwarfish, effeminate boy always luckless in love, James smiled wryly and chuckled. Still shaking his head, laughing and muttering to himself, lost in the past, he made his way farther west to Fir Street, then north on Second, passing the whitewashed picture windows of Ocean View Realtors, the FOR SALE sign tacked to the door weathered and warped.

  Blown westward by powerful gusting winds, he stumbled on the sidewalk then lifted his eyes, finding himself in front of a new place he did not recognize. The name Cappuccino Milano was traced in gold filigree across the café’s shop front. Peering into the big picture windows as he passed, he studied as if at a zoo the clutch of frosty-haired retirees, all of them wearing bright elasticized sportswear, dipping long spoons into whipped cream atop a variety of hot drinks. Two of the café’s patrons listlessly or fearfully returned his gaze, keeping their eyes on him as they might watch a skunk, until he had marched out of sight. Outsiders, he grumbled to himself. Members of the ghetto of house-rich nearly-deads who had crowded onto the coast before the bubble burst. “And now they are stuck with unsellable albatrosses,” he said to himself, chortling with wicked satisfaction, unsure why. The town was not his, he reminded himself; on the contrary, he was the original outsider.

  On First and Heather, James pushed through the revolving door of The Logjam Breakfast Diner Deli, picking up a copy of The Carverville Lighthouse on the counter, and sitting in his habitual place, the last booth on the right, his back to the wall, facing the door. This had always been his spot, with his parents, his high school friends, and Maggie. Outwardly little had changed, except perhaps the color scheme of the tuck and roll upholstery, and the walls, though in truth he could not remember. The menu was a gem of hillbilly humor, except it wasn’t a joke. “Proud to Serve Gluten-Rich White Bread” it declared at the top. “No Buckwheat and Nothing Organic” it continued halfway down. Across the bottom it ended with a salvo “Support American Farmers: They Love the Land in God’s Country.”

  The newspaper was three days old and heavily creased. James did not care whether it was fresh and, for a moment, felt a surge of warmth and nostalgia, hoping ir
rationally an old pal might sit across from him and shoot the breeze. Searching his pockets for his reading glasses, he cursed under his breath, realizing he had left them in the RV.

  Leaning back, James observed his fellow patrons. The middle-aged men at the counter bending over their scrambled eggs and bacon did not look familiar and would have been children when he was in high school. Neither did the pair of blue-rinse ladies, at least his age, in a booth at the other end of the diner. Though he had gone to high school in Carverville, he had never been accepted; he was too old when his family arrived, and his father, a civil servant, and mother, a historian, were rejected as part of the “urban elite,” the persnickety city folks sent in to civilize the hicks. The hayseeds and rednecks, the KKK members and John Birchers, even the so-called hip-neck refugees born of hippies and the unionized millworkers who voted for “commies” and other Democrats, had not welcomed them. Worse still, he was an only child when every other family in town seemed to run from four on up.

  A similar fate had befallen Maggie, another only child, and her overeducated parents. Her father had been dispatched from the University of Virginia to create a series of junior colleges in this and adjacent rural counties. His brand of top-down liberal enlightenment was even less desirable than James’s father’s state-sponsored “environmentalism.” Social science, psychology, history, environmental studies, family planning, and public health—what were they? People needed real jobs and the freedom to create businesses. They needed vocational training, not higher education. And what was wrong with a big family? There was plenty of room. The government had no business telling folks what to do in their own homes and bedrooms.

  As to the Wildlife & Fish Department, the fish would come back of their own accord, the locals said. Why keep timbermen from doing what they needed, just to protect some lousy salmon for the Indians? If the trees didn’t grow back then so be it, the grasslands would replace the forests, and cattle ranching might stand a chance. Beef was better than fish, wasn’t it, and what did the Indians know?

  Righteous wrath was giving James a stomachache, so he was glad when the sleepy waitress poured him a cup of black coffee. Thinking of Beverley, he ordered a cinnamon roll. He was not sure why. He never ate cinnamon rolls or sugary breakfasts. Deconstructing the pastry with his fork, and then using his fingers, he fed its convolutions through his unkempt mustache and beard, disgusted at the memory of his reflection in The Old Cannery’s windows. He was not a ghost, he told himself. He was not Jesus J. Christ or even a troll from The Hobbit. He was the Grim Reaper.

  Facebook had been developed from the yearbook concept, he recalled now, remembering Beverley’s revelations from last night. Scanning the faces in the diner and the handful of people passing on the sidewalk, he still did not recognize a soul. Did Harvey Murphy and his brawny nephew, the deputy, hang out here, like true-blue locals? Almost certainly they did. Then might it not be better to get things over with, be done with the charade, show his hand and face and shave off his beard and long hair? Had he decided to stay? But how could he stay and why?

  James awoke to the realization that he was shaking his head and muttering out loud, drawing baleful looks from other customers. With a gesture of grumpy displeasure, he snapped open the newspaper and held it before him until the others turned away. If this is home, then I have no home, he said to himself. It’s too small, too incestuous, too narrow, a bastion of ignorance and prejudice as it always has been, made worse by the new politics and the new white flight. I might as well leave today.

  Preparing to fold the newspaper up and finish his breakfast, his eye fell upon the masthead. Thrusting the page out almost to arm’s length until he could focus on the small print, he read the name of the editor, reread it to be sure, smiled wryly, and called the waitress over, asking to pay. She arrived as he was pecking the newspaper’s phone number into his old throwaway cellphone and muttering, “That little jerk . . .” He hit the send button, but the phone squawked repeatedly as he squinted, trying to read the tiny screen, unsure why it was not working. The damn thing never worked when you needed it, he groused, thrusting it into his pocket and getting to his feet.

  Paying his check in cash and leaving a ridiculously large tip, James devoured the last of the cinnamon roll while standing by his table, tucked the newspaper under his arm, clasped his hands behind his back, and strode out of the café, heading west by northwest toward Alioto’s Hardware. “If anyone knows, Clem knows,” he said to himself, thinking of the newspaper’s editor, “to hell with the phone, I’ll drop by later in person and ask him.”

  His long shambling stride was accompanied by the tinny ringing of synthesized church bells. Surprised, he noticed the parking lot of All Souls Parish Evangelical Temple was full. Glancing up at the marquee, he wondered if it wouldn’t be more accurate to correct the third word in the name, replacing the “a” with an “e.”

  James was gratified to find Alioto’s still in business, one block beyond the new elevated highway and the abandoned freight railway yards. They had cut off the low-rent neighborhoods from central Carverville and the coastal strip since the town’s inception. The big-box stores and Internet had not killed off the venerable hardware store, possibly because, like the Eden Resort, it did not need to turn a profit. On the other hand, maybe it was still a cash cow. How practical would it be to order heavy building materials and bulky wood products online? Drones would have difficulty delivering them.

  As it had been decades earlier, the lumber was piled and stacked high in a wide yard and under an old ironwork hangar. James paused, watching a forklift scuttle like a giant crab between the stacks, lifting or lowering pallets. The store area abutting the skeletal hangar still covered an entire city block, offering aisle upon aisle of merchandise, from chainsaws and cement mixers, to coatracks and electrical appliances, plus screws and hinges and calipers. Feeling like a boy in Aladdin’s cave, James wandered up and down the aisles, an irrepressible smile on his face, occasionally picking up and examining screwdrivers, wire cutters, or bottle brushes, until he noticed he was being followed by a young employee.

  “The outdoor extension cords,” he barked, turning on the boy, unused to being taken for a shoplifter, “and whatever tools I need to rebuild a chainsaw.”

  Standing at the information desk, he asked if by chance they had a replacement chain and a rebuild kit for a vintage McCulloch. The employee swung a screen around, pulled out a keyboard, typed in the model number and said, “The chain we have—it’s standard. The rebuild we do not, we don’t stock that item anymore, no one does, but I could order it for you.”

  “How much would that be?”

  “Let’s see . . . $29.99, plus tax,” he said. “Want it?”

  “How long would it take?”

  The salesman searched again. “You could have it tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “You want me to order it?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” James said, “next time, thank you for checking.”

  Paying again in cash, he folded away the receipt, slipped his arm through the coiled extension cord, and stowed the chain and tools in his large pockets, along with the newspaper. Then unconsciously adopting his habitual handcuffed gait, he strode out of the store, eager to get back to the Eden Resort.

  Heading west by northwest, James veered away from city streets, taking a dirt alley out of a defunct freight yard and then an overgrown shortcut he remembered from high school days, reaching the Old Coast Highway a mile or so north of the resort. As he strode south down the ocean-side shoulder of the road, a cutting wind from the west struck an uppercut to his nose. Bending forward, he plowed into it, his eyes tearing up.

  There was no beach access on this stretch of highway, and nowhere to go but into the poison oak if a lumber truck came by. He was surprised and relieved to count only two cars and one delivery van going north on the opposite side of the curving, two-lane road. No vehicles so far were headed south. Then he recalled what Beverley had told him. Recurrent land
slides and a broken bridge had downgraded the old highway to a residential street, she’d said, calling it “the original roadkill.” There were only a few scattered houses in the vicinity, isolated down dusty dirt roads. The downgrade was good for sleep, but not for business, she had commented wryly. Fittingly, the old Road Kill Grill and the Spotted Owl Café two miles south of the resort had both gone belly up.

  The same narcoleptic state seemed to apply to nearly everything in Carverville. It had been sleepy thirty-five or forty years earlier, in his youth, a place that turned the young into dried fruit, as Mark Twain might have put it, but now seemed utterly comatose, on the point of death, a ghost town in the making.

  Like the billboards he’d spotted just south of the Eden Resort, a pair of rusty outdoor advertising panels on the inland shoulder of the highway were shrouded by tattered paper flapping in the wind. The first was unreadable. The second quoted from Gospel. “We know that we have come to know Him,” James read aloud, pausing and looking up, “if we obey his commands. 1 John 2:3–11.”

  Shaking a fist in sudden anger, he glanced from the words to the sky, thought of the Grim Reaper and Jesus J. Christ, fresh off the cross, and began walking again, faster than before. Were these the same people who generated fake news reports, he demanded of the sky. The pious crusaders, Bible in hand, ready to kill to preserve life, and eager to take down any opponent by any means? Obey his commands? Whose commands?