by Judyth Baker
“Does she know you mortgaged the house, “to the hilt,” as you put it?”
I bristled. “What in hell are you talking about?”
“My, my!” Jodie said, smiling. “Two swear words in the same day! My God, Tony, is your wife living in the same century as the rest of us? Does she think you can support her lifestyle on what you make creating publicity?”
“She never asked. She trusts me!”
“Of course, she does,” Jodie replied.
“She works as a reporter, she knows something of the world.”
“She makes chickenfeed. You make chickenfeed. Why, this is really funny! You thought you had me in a bad place. Over a barrel.”
“It’s my house, too,” I reminded him. “I had the right to mortgage it.”
“Sure, you had the right,” Jodie agreed. “Though you did it secretly! And the house is yours, too, until she finds out what you’ve done. How you’ve handled things.”
“You wouldn’t! It would break her heart, if we lost that house!”
“I won’t fire you, and I won’t ruin your reputation,” Jodie said, puffing away on his cigar. “But I have this over you, don’t I? You’re going to be a good boy, right?”
“I was a fool.”
“You got carried away when you saw some corruption, my friend. But you’re corrupt, too, aren’t you? On your own personal scale of things. You’re one of us, despite all your high standards. This is the way of the world, Tony. Better get used to it.”
He smashed the cigar out against my tie. It made a brown, acrid-smelling hole in it. “Nice tie. I think we’re even, now.”
“But what about Wendy?”
“I won’t tell her about the house. OK? I’ll just tell her we came to an understanding.”
I should have let him shoot me, finish me off, instead of thinking that everything was going to be okay now. Far better, that I had never had any hope, than to have endured what happened next! “And as for you!”
The Judge and Jury could hear Subject 1234’s thoughts, but now he was speaking out loud again, so loudly that they had to turn down their sensors. Tony spat towards the two green-clad workers who stood with him, as he struggled helplessly in the straitjacket.
“I hate green!” he yelled. “Do you hear me? I hate green! Take it off! Tell them to take it off!”
A shot of some medication produced enough calm in the man’s head that he was then able to continue his narrative, complete with vivid pictures that kept peeling off his brain and merging with what the investigators had collected. The result was vibrant and colorful; another reason this episode was so popular with viewers across the planet.
Tony’s voice was now softer…
When I finally made it home that night, I didn’t dare tell Clara about what had transpired. My Clara is sweet, gentle, and almost moronically trusting. She can be boring, too. I brag about her work as a reporter, but to her, an exciting day means she has found something to write about before the deadline. Anything. Boring as she could be, she would soon be a very rich woman: I had checked on her father’s situation. He was dying as fast as could be expected. It was only a matter of time… As I walked down our wide sidewalk up to the Big House – our mansion – I was filled with pride. I’d accomplished a lot in the past five years since the divorce. I knew Sharon had to be jealous of the good life I was leading with Clara. I would soon be a truly important man. All my troubles were just temporary.
Then, for perhaps the first time in our marriage, Clara came out to greet me. She was usually busy watching the news when I came home. It was dark, but the lights all along the sidewalk made twin paths of gold, between which my Pot of Gold, my Clara, now walked slowly toward me, her arms outstretched.
“My darling!” she cooed, embracing me. But why was she wearing a green-checkered shirt, just like Wendy’s? It was my first premonition of trouble. Nevertheless, I kissed her passionately, almost weeping for joy and relief. “It’s been a hard day!” I managed to say. “Sorry I’m late again.”
Suddenly, Clara’s soft, white arms relinquished their hug around me a little. She was looking down at the hole in my tie – I’d forgotten about it – and then, she dropped to her knees.
“Oh, Tony, look! It’s a four-leaf clover!”
I am proud of myself… that I was able to say that word. Proud, do you hear me? That damnable green thing! The clover! The clover! The clover! You know what I’m talking about. Don’t you?
At this point, the Cyber-Jury erupted with nods and laughter. Yes, they knew what Subject #1234 was talking about. As the laughs faded, there was a commercial break…
***
“Nice,” I said.
“It means good luck,” she said, giving me another kiss and tucking the damn thing’s stem into the hole in my tie. “There! May it bring you the luck of the Irish!”
“My family is Italian,” I reminded her, smiling and giving it back, with a grand flourish. “You keep it, sweetheart!” I told her. Yes! I gave it away! That was the most stupid thing I ever did!
I was such an idiot.
“They are very rare,”2 she told me. “Did you know that finding a four-leaf clover is supposed to be a guarantee against madness?”3
“No.”
“And that the chances of finding one is only 1 in 10,000?”
“My, my!” I answered. “What a fount of knowledge you are!”
“I looked it up once,” she answered, “after I found a five-leaf clover. They’re supposed to be one in a million. In 2008, a man named Martin made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with over 111,000 four-leaf clovers. He ended up with 160,000 of them!”
Then Clara hit me between the eyes with some new information. “Did you know this is the second four-leaf clover I’ve found, right here by the sidewalk? That’s one for you, and one for me.”
“Well, honey,” I told her, “why don’t you just keep them both? Double your luck!”
“They say, if you find one, there can be others nearby. They come in clusters. I think I’ll start a collection, Tony. Wouldn’t that be unusual? We could buy an album to put them in.”
“Sounds fun,” I said. “Maybe I’ll help you hunt for them.”
If one spends one, two, or ten hours, bent over grass, searching for a particular green object, and if one’s search becomes a quest, and if the quest evolves into a passionate objective, the element of hope has to play a part. A hunt is supposed to be something that ends up with a result for all your effort. One would hope. Surely, if one hunts long enough, in the three acres of lawn that this mansion possesses – surely, if one searches long enough, one would hope for success. Hope. It is a cruel word. And green is the cruelest color of all.
“Look, Tony!”
I tried to ignore her, but she insisted. Persisted. I felt the need to hide the grass stains on the knees of my trousers. This time, as I was seated, I used my unfolded newspaper, when Clara entered the parlor. I pretended to be relaxed. Calm. I would now pretend to be interested in the news, until Clara went away again. Though the election was only days away, Jodie had quietly obtained another campaign manager, and I was currently jobless. No big deal: Jodie knew I wouldn’t talk, and if I tried, he would say I was trying to cause trouble because he’d fired me. By now, all the records would have been altered, just like what happened in the Kennedy assassination, the 9/11 incident and the Fort Knox lead-covered goldbrick fraud, among a plethora of other unpunished crimes.
As for me, I was also coming close to my dreams: Clara’s father was just days from death. If I hadn’t been spending so much time searching for clovers, I would have visited him. As for Clara, she was usually at her father’s bedside. Good for her.
As Clara talked about her father, I noticed that she was holding something behind her back.
“What’s that?” I asked her.
“What’s what?”
“You’re holding something behind your back.”
“No, I’m not.”
I leaped from my chair and, grabbing her arm, pulled hard. She cried out, but there it was.
“Aha!” I gloated, holding it above her head, “thought you could hide it from me, eh? Well, you can’t!”
That green album was sickening. Inside, last I’d looked, Clara had managed to mount nearly a hundred four-leaf clovers that she’d collected from our several green acres. As for me, I hadn’t been able to find one. No, not one!
That hideous green album! Filled with those hideous four-leaf clovers! Green aberrations of nature, as unfit to live as the most twisted of Cyborgs! I was keenly aware of the stiffness of my joints, the grass stains on my nice pants, and the fact that my voice was shrill and harsh. But what could I do?
My poor Clara was looking at me with terrified eyes. I felt shame suffuse me: how could I tell her what this was doing to me? I lowered my eyes and stretched out a shaky arm.
“Sorry. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.…” Trying to force a smile, I added, “Aren’t you a little late, today? Tessie had dinner on for us an hour ago.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d hunt in the back yard for a few minutes. I got carried away.”
“You’re not the only one,” I admitted. “You seem to find them easily, though. Did you find any, tonight?”
“I seemed to have fund a patch of them again,” she admitted. “Do you want to know how many I found?”
“Not really,” I told her.
“Well, I’m going to tell you anyway, because you were so mean about the album,” she replied. “I found nineteen more four leaf clovers tonight. In just an hour.”
I pulled the newspaper up so she couldn’t see my face, for I was grinding my teeth. I finally managed to say, in a voice rational and soft, “Have you thought about another hobby, Clara?”
I said it as gently as I could, but sweat broke out all over my face and hands and I babbled, “Yes, yes, yes! Why don’t you just go and get yourself another hobby?”
Clara looked at me with new eyes. “I think you’re jealous!” she finally said. “Whoever would have dreamed our lawn had so many four-leaf clovers in it, just begging to be found? I don’t know what’s the matter with your eyes, but if you think your jealousy is going to have any influence on me, think again.”
“I think you should be spending more time with your father!” I burst out. “Instead of crawling around in the yard looking for clovers!”
“You should talk! And leave my poor daddy out of it, okay? When’s the last time you even checked on him? All you can think of is yourself!”
I turned away and kept my eyes tightly closed, until she finally left the room.
I am spending so much time on my hands and knees, searching through the green, that it’s becoming comfortable. I use a flashlight at night, sneaking out after Clara falls asleep. My determination grows. I shall find a four-leaf clover, or die in the attempt! Well, I don’t really mean that. As she slumbers in our bedroom, she has no idea that the cold dew is soaking through my bathrobe, that I have encountered biting fire-ants, a black widow spider, hop-toads, chiggers, crickets and a horde of stinging mosquitoes as I pursue my gallant quest for fulfillment! Yea, though I have seen my wife merely bend down, search for a moment, then show me her trophy, and I am crawling through the valley of death, I shall fear no evil, for mathematics and statistics are my rod and my staff: they comfort me! Surely I shall find a four-leaf clover at last, and I shall place my find in that damned green album, where it shall remain, forever!
My goal is frighteningly simple: I will find a four leaf clover in this enormous yard, even though there are very few clovers of any kind in the lawn’s green grasses. How Clara keeps finding them is, frankly, impossible. What trick does she have up her sleeve? Why, or how, is she doing this to me?
When Clara comes near, I always smile, so she won’t suspect the dark thoughts that are entwining themselves in my heart. Somehow, Jodie lost the election. He was a fool to drop me as he did. I am the best. At that particular thing, that is. I am not exactly sure when Clara’s father died: I have been too busy. Clara does not suspect my growing hatred of her, of her ugly green checkered shirt, of her equally ugly green album filled with its hundreds of clovers. More and more each day… or so she says. I refuse to look anymore. I have other things to do. I kiss her on the cheek when she comes near. Oh, darling Clara, how I would like to wring your neck! Instead, I smile kindly at her. Clara no longer hides the album from me. She knows I cannot bear to touch it. She leaves it right at the front door, so that the moment she finds another four-leaf clover, she can stick it at once into the album.
The last two days, I have been unable to sleep. If I close my eyes, I seem to hear her creeping past me, out the door. I sleep now beside the front door, so she can’t pass by me without my catching her. If necessary, I will find a more permanent way to stop her from leaving the house, because every time she does, she returns with more fucking four-leaf clovers!This has become a matter between her, and me, and the clovers.
Tonight, it finally happened! I found one! A four-leaf clover! At last! I have laid out gridwires, to section off various areas so that I will not return to that section for a while. In section 19, row 5, I found it. At last!
I trembled with an obscene joy as I plucked it from its place. I couldn’t wait until Clara got home – she was gone a lot these days – to show her that at last I had triumphed. I had persisted. I had never given up. I had conquered! And soon, Clara would know it. But it was not to be. As I reached for the album that was on the front steps, I dropped the clover, and it fluttered to the ground. At that moment, Cleo, our calico cat, pounced on it.
I couldn’t believe it! It was gone … the cat must have eaten it! Now, how in hell could I prove to Clara that at last, I’d found that elusive four-leaf clover?
I seriously considered slicing the cat’s stomach open, but before I could subdue the animal (it gave me several serious scratches), Clara had returned. She saw me with the butcher knife in one hand, the struggling cat in the other, and she blanched white, as she has done so often these past few days. Then she fainted away. In my confusion, I dropped the cat, and it ran off. Too bad.
Clara keeps talking to her therapist, refusing to speak to me. She also keeps going places without me. Sometimes I think I hear cars, and people’s voices, but nobody will tell me what is going on. There was a funeral. Yes, it was for her father, and now that means I am rich. Money could help me through all my agonies. But when I try to talk to Clara, she turns away.
Once I was sure I heard people out front, but when I went to get my gun, I found it missing, and Clara’s car was gone, too. She must have stolen my revolver. I have tried several times to catch the cat, so I can retrieve my four-leaf clover, but she is too fast for me. It’s too late anyway.
A bad night, tonight. In the dead of darkness, I tripped on one of my grid wires and fell on my face into the dark, green grass. As I did so, a dilatory bee stung me on my lip. I lay there without moving until the sun rose, at which time I was able to see a bed of clover that I somehow had missed in all my previous searches. Even so, it didn’t have a single four-leaf in it. This was the end.
Gasoline is cheap, and quickly turns things black. I have already chopped down every green bush and every bed of green clover with the riding mower. Now I will destroy the green lawn! The hideous green lawn! My bandaged knees and elbows will heal then. They have sustained so much damage, with all my crawling, and all for nothing! The clover had its way. The grass had its way. But see what they can do against gasoline! By God! I am a man! And I will have the last word. As I pour the exotic liquid here and there across the lawn and over the smashed bushes, and then set it aflame, I declare in a powerful voice of authority, Let there be Light!
I wept like a little child.
A neighbor patted my head, and he put his arm around me. “Couldn’t save much from the fire,” he said. “But the firemen rescued your cat, thank God.”
“Tha
nk God,” I mumbled, in a daze.
“Well there was one other thing that was saved,” the neighbor told me. “Might as well give it to you. We were able to grab it, it was by your front door.”
Then he handed me the album of four-leaf clovers.
When I began to scream, they came and pulled me away from the neighbor. The album that I was trying to shove down his throat just wouldn’t quite fit.
***
“I’m glad you didn’t see him go through his latest fit of rage,” the Psychiatrist told Clara, as they gazed through the thick plate glass windows at Tony, who was glaring at them with ferocity. The deep-freeze unit’s clear glass doors hazed up. Moments later, utterly frozen again, Tony’s face was set in a solid grimace.
“Even though it’s been forty-five years, I still feel sorry for him,” she replied. “I just think, ‘poor Tony, if only he knew!’”
“It was a cruel joke to pull on him,” the Psychiatrist told Clara. “You and your friends, collecting four-leaf clovers from everywhere. And then deciding to clone them by the hundreds! Making him think you found them all in your own yard…”
“I was just trying to punish him for mortgaging my house behind my back!”
“Glad you had all that insurance,” the Psychiatrist commented. “As for Tony’s rehabilitation, I’ll have to see what the Jury decides to do with him. After the ratings go down, and we start losing money. Then I’ll write a letter for his release. Chances are, we’ll be able to fix him up, good as new. And he won’t remember you, don’t worry. Right now, he’s pretty popular. Should be on this show’s re-runs another few seasons. You will be well compensated, of course.”
“He was saying something when his face froze over,” Clara said.
“Shall I play it for you?” the Psychiatrist asked.
“No, I’d prefer not,” she replied, after a moment’s reflection.
“Until next year, then?” the Psychiatrist said, offering her a steel hand.
“I don’t think I’ll be coming back again,” she replied.