Garden of Fiends

by Matthews, Mark

  “OxyContin, Tara. I got Oxy. Painkillers just like your grandmother had. I got me some Medicaid and got me a good doctor. Endless supply of hillbilly heroin.”

  He shook the bottle, and I heard the ca-ching, ca-ching sound of a newly filled prescription bottle. The noise echoed in my chest and tiny sleeping beings inside me awoke and stood at attention, wanting to know more.

  “Tara, this is perfect. To not do this would be foolish. It’s perfect, see. You can do just one, and you’ll not see me again, and you’ll go home tonight happy.”

  The man wasn’t waiting for an answer. He dug into a bag and pulled out a scratched up CD cover and put it right on the hood of the car. I was unable to look away, unable to breathe, and could only bear witness when he spilled out the OxyContin and started to chop. He knew what he was doing and had one hand cupped over the pills. Have to cup it so pieces don’t fly off, the more chopped the better. Chunks tend to fall out of your nostril, but tiny pieces shoot right to the base of your brain and tingle.

  No sign of my dad, no safe spot to hide, I watched as he put the dollar bill up to his nose, a finger over one nostril, and he inhaled with a rapid whiff. He jerked his head back, just a bit, and an electric jolt shot through my own spine.

  “Your night will be so nice, so nice. Tiny bits of Jesus to blanket your brain, right into that spot of yours that hasn’t been touched in so long. You’re next.”

  In one hand, he presented me with the rolled-up dollar bill, and in his other hand, the CD cover. A fat line of happiness spread before me, and it was all mine. It looked so lonely there, like it needed me, and I needed it. We were meant to love and hate each other for the rest of our lives.

  I grabbed the dollar bill and put a finger over a nostril. Don’t do it, a distant voice screamed in my head, but I needed to get high. Nothing could stop me. It was too late. The dam had broken, and the opiate orgasm got ready to flood my body and take me to heaven.

  I leaned in to snort, and my eyes caught sight of his grocery cart and a stash of half-eaten tomatoes. They were not fully ripe, and tiny tomato guts had spilled all over the cart. It was Lorenzo who had poached the place. Lorenzo had plucked the first bit of fruit and eaten from the garden.

  Chapter Seven: Gregory Snyder

  The garden had been poached. I could sense it soon as I left Tara back at the car. Footprints weaved through the new growth and led to a tomato plant plucked clean. I knelt in front of the ravaged plant and felt the prickly limbs where the tomatoes had been torn off. It felt like my own limb had been amputated, like I’d been violated, similar to the time someone had vandalized Tara’s first two-wheeler bike sitting in our driveway overnight.

  Whoever did this was probably close.

  If the scarecrow could speak, it would tell me. Instead, it just watched over me in amusement, knowing all but revealing nothing. If it could talk, I would need to put it down anyway since it had seen me burn and bury that ghoul of a man who had dumped my daughter’s body off at the hospital and left her for dead.

  I searched my feelings often about killing Brett, like prying around an old, disorganized shed, but found no guilt, no remorse, but I did find fear. Fear of being discovered, of being investigated, of the ghoul not really being dead. The grave was untouched, as I expected, and I felt happy with my choice for a burial ground. There was no reason to dig in that spot again and the body would not be found, but I often had the urge to come back and watch over the grave and sit with my thoughts and with my daughter. The memory of Brett’s nearly severed head and the smell of his burning flesh was an easy one to access. The heat of it still warmed my cheeks.

  Each breath I took standing out there at night was filled with tiny bits of the rich garden soil. I could taste it on my lips and feel it on my skin. And if I was silent enough, I swore I could hear the growth of plants sprouting from the ground. Underneath it all, Brett had surely decomposed quite a bit. Still, I felt a need to dig him up and make sure he was dead and hadn’t crawled out somehow after I left. If I could have stabbed into his heart just one more time, I surely would have. I needed to know he could not plot his revenge, that my daughter was safe, and that my deed would go undiscovered.

  These deep fears, this chronic worry, was something I would just have to live with. It was my burden to bear, but a small price to pay for removing the threat to my daughter. If only I had done it sooner.

  Tomorrow, Heather would assess the damage to her plant. I imagined her kneeling in front of the green stem as if tending to a wounded child, speaking to it in some vegan tongue, promising healing, and assuring the remaining green tomatoes they’d ripen to a plump and red old age.

  Time to move on.

  I turned to go. Back at the car, Tara had opened the door. The inside dome light was a shining oasis in this dark night and beamed down on her. But not just her, someone else was with her.

  I walked faster, then broke into a sprint, each stride faster than the next, fueled by the disbelief of what I was seeing. Tara’s head was bowed, something raised to her nose, and at the end was some powder laid out before her.

  She was ready to snort.

  “No!” I screamed, either at her or at the gods, I wasn’t sure, though I was loud enough for both to hear. She raised her head just in time.

  “No!’ I yelled again, and she tossed the powder to the side.

  I dashed to the passenger door. Lorenzo stood beside her, and his shopping cart full of rubbish was pressed up against the car.

  “What the hell, Tara? What the hell? You’re doing this? Right here, right now? With him?”

  Her defenses shot up, porcupine-type armor meant to hurt any attacker, something I’ve felt so many times before.

  “No, I didn’t. You’re wrong. I didn’t. I know you won’t believe me, but fuck it, just fuck it. I didn’t do a damn thing. It’s not my fault.”

  Lorenzo stood next to me, bearing witness.

  “It’s me, sir. I did it. I gave it to her. Just trying to get her a fix, same way you want your fix, same way we’re all just working for our fix.”

  He was missing his front teeth, and his lip hung into his mouth and flapped as he talked. Was he covering for my daughter?

  “She doesn’t do that anymore, and you need…” I took a breath before breathing fire with my next words, “…you need to get the hell out of here. Now.”

  I waited for him to scatter, but he stood tall.

  “Maybe so, maybe I go. Maybe I’m just trying to give Tara her last pill, same way you gave her the first pill she ever took. All of it made her sick in a way you can never know. But I know. You made her, but I know her.”

  If I there had been a spade in my hands, I’d have driven it into his neck. How would he know such things?

  “If you ever come around her again, I will have you arrested. Trespassing, for one. You will regret it. Stay. Away. From. This place.”

  I waited for him to leave, but instead he shuffled his feet in place, looking at each shoe, before finding his balance to joust some more.

  “Or else what? You’ll kill me? Kill me and bury me? She’s all yours. I’m not looking to trip her up. I’ll keep doing time for both of us. Tara will be expecting me some other day, but while I’m gone, why don’t you tell her why you keep coming back here at night?”

  “Why don’t you shut the hell up and get out of here.” I’d lost the option for polite words. The ragtag man seemed a puppet with the stars above pulling the strings, or perhaps a hand puppet, the devil himself with a hand up his back.

  “I live here. This is just your garden. I been living on this land before you gave a shit what we ate, and I own this as much as you. I ain’t scared of no scarecrows, and I’ll be eating again from your fruits first crack of sunlight. Can the air be owned? Can the land be owned? Can your daughter be owned? I know her like you don’t, and I will eat what you have planted, I will reap what you’ve sown.”

  Despite all my design skills, my years of trigonometry, my problem-solvin
g huddle groups, this man had skills of which I had none. He spoke to things inside me that I thought were hidden.

  “Enjoy your farming, my good man,” he said. “But just remember this—the red peppers are his veins, the tomatoes his plump heart, and the sage his uncut hair.”

  He finally pushed off. The rattle-rattle, clank-clank-clank of his shopping cart got sucked back into the night. I got back in the car, we were safely on our way, but burning questions remained. Tara looked out her side window.

  “I didn’t use, Dad. What, you think I brought it with me? You think I asked him for it? You’re the one that took me there. I didn’t. Sure, I was going to, but I didn’t.”

  “I saw you with drugs in front of you, and you weren’t stopping. If I hadn’t walked up—”

  “Then I’d be high as fuck right now and a lot happier. You’re right about that, but you don’t understand. I’m trying to stay clean, really trying, but part of me also wants to get high. It always will. Everybody sounds like Brett to me.”

  “I hoped you learned something. Jesus.” I pursed my lips to stop much angrier words that wanted to fire out my mouth. “Did you? Learn something?”

  “I can’t see Brett, for one, even when he gets out of jail. I can’t. And I can’t be around people like that. I can’t see drugs without getting high. I can’t have people stick them in my face and not want to use them. You’ll never get that, and you don’t have to, but it’s not possible for me. It triggers something stronger than you’ll ever know. That might sound like a bullshit excuse but it’s true. Try not to breathe for a second and you’ll understand.”

  Tragic as her words sounded, pride welled in my chest from her honesty. The idea that I would never understand was fine, what mattered was her clarity of vision. The night’s calamity had been diverted, with lessons learned.

  “I won’t tell your mother about this, but I’d like you to. You don’t need to say everything. I want her to see the plants, to judge for herself how much damage was done. I just hope the damage will heal right up.” I needed to believe this, that the damage would heal right up, that I, just like Tara, wouldn’t always hear Brett everywhere. His heart beat, the words he used; all of it threatened to thump in my eardrums all the days of my life. I had the urge to turn it off, to fill my ears with the sound of train whistles. With the infinite world of number 88.

  Chapter Eight: Gregory Snyder

  When noise gets into a car, it changes the entire driving experience. The task of reducing the noise emitted by commercial vehicles is complicated; not only are the mechano-acoustic aspects complex, but there are serious limitations arising from the cost of noise reduction in a very competitive industry. Everything needs to be modified without penalties in weight, cost, and space. The goal is to make the cabin as removed from outside influences as possible. Anything to stop the onslaught of outside noises and internal combustions.

  I had become an expert at this, at protecting the consumer’s experience from such threats, and I had worked with the same team for nearly eighteen years.

  But I couldn’t stop the noises I let into my head that evening. The words vibrated from afar and beat inside my skull. The red peppers are his veins, the tomatoes his plump heart, and the sage his uncut hair. I had nothing to shut them off, nothing to fight them back.

  Under the next day’s sun, Heather fixed the tomato plants. She tended to the peppers and gave care to her transplanted eggplant. All of the produce picked from the garden was a violation of something sacred, like a vandalized church with graffiti-sprayed sacraments. She saw the footprints and could tell exactly where the intruder climbed the fence. “Surest way to make them break in is to lock it up,” she decided.

  From that moment on, we left the gates open. “Why should we expect any different from Lorenzo? He’s been disenfranchised, left behind. This is his land, not ours, and of course he had drugs on him. Who wouldn’t?”

  Lorenzo was too scared to show his face, it seemed, for the days that followed were quiet. The sun grew hotter in the sky, and Lorenzo was just a worm baking in the summer heat and withering on some other sidewalk, but not nearby.

  I kept driving Tara to NA meetings, but we no longer went by the Garden afterwards, instead, it was Taco Bell or Starbucks—vanilla capp for me, black decaf for her. Conversation was fluid, lubricated by her sobriety. The tension was gone. She’d been working out, sleeping less, and smiling more. She kept busy watching all the movies that she never bothered to while getting high: The Hunger Games trilogy (“Of course Katniss chose Pita”); The Fault in Our Stars (“I cried hard”); and she started binge-watching Breaking Bad but then stopped abruptly (“I started feeling itchy”). My whole life revolved around this new clarity in her voice, this new shine in her pupils.

  My sweet-pea brought back to me.

  I was just as excited as she was after she told me about her interview at Costco. “Person who interviewed me has more tats on their neck than I’ll ever be able to afford, and she’s in recovery, I can tell.” Next summer, the plan was to run soccer camps.

  She had the joy of a person newly in love when she told me that Stacey agreed to be her sponsor. “Says I need to go to every meeting she goes to, wants me to write out a fourth step. I know, the therapists told you about that. And you’ll like this shit the best—she says no relationships for a year since I’d only attract predators and dope fiends right now.”

  The day I met Stacey was a lazy Saturday, summer hitting its peak. Heather had spent part of the day handing out garden vegetables to the homeless for the very first time, and afterwards, like a priest preparing communion, she started preparing dinner with her own pickings, starting with eggplant. The eggplant had grown into a big, bulging, deformed purple thing–but certainly well enough to eat. Home-grown, and soon to be home-cooked.

  “Closer things are to their original form, more it puts us as God intended,” Heather said more than once. I watched her work in the kitchen, her hair the color of golden maize and tied loosely in a ponytail. We had no obligations that day, no dope in our life, and it all felt like a perfect day.

  After a confident knock on the front door, I welcomed Stacey inside. She scanned our house with a discerning gaze but avoided my eyes. I was sure in private conversations she’d heard the worst parts of my life, but that was okay. I could see why Tara was drawn to her. The squinty slits of her eyes shot tiny rays of warmth, ions of energy zip-zapped around her body and made the room light up. She was older than I had figured, and as I shook her hand I thought of how I was looking at one version of my future daughter. Tara could be this woman ten years from now, with lines of experience drawn on her face and eyes that looked straight through you, not out of spite, but because your world was insignificant compared to what she’d been through. An aged redwood with wisdom you just wouldn’t understand. A stalwart of sobriety, scars inside making her unbreakable.

  Awkward silence followed while we waited for Tara, but I killed it quickly. “Thank you for taking her,” I said and meant it.

  “My pleasure, Mr. Snyder. Whatever it takes to stay clean, and we all need protection.”

  “Protection,” I said in agreement. My eyes finally locked with hers for one cold second and I felt the killer in both of us connect, for surely she would do exactly as I had done if she felt it was needed. If the cause was noble enough.

  Tara came out of the bedroom, her hair spiked sharp as knives, her eyes clear, her feet eager to move forward. “Thanks Dad,” she said. I wasn’t sure what for, but before I knew it, she’d kissed me on the cheek, stuffed her cell phone in her pocket, and was out the front door. I watched them drive off in a Hyundai, probably twelve years old and a hundred thousand miles on the vehicle, but quiet enough inside the car for them to share secrets I would never hear. I didn’t need to hear them, for I had killed the cancer. Remission had set in. No evidence of disease.

  I just had to keep the way I removed the disease a secret, and as Heather prepared the meal with the grace o
f a dancer, I realized she would never know that the man she was married to had poked a hole in another human’s neck and let his soul leak right out.

  “We are finally eating the fruits of our labor,” she said as she chopped a cucumber. “But these vegetables need to look better. The shapes, the bulges, the discoloration. I gave them out to at least a dozen people today and some were giving double takes. ‘They don’t look the same because they are natural, not genetically modified,’ I told them.”

  “You reminded the folks to wash them, right?” I said. The moment was coming I’d be asked to eat from the garden, and the thought was distasteful for reasons I pretended weren’t obvious.

  “Yes, of course, but organic veggies don’t require the same level of concern. There’s nothing unnatural, no pesticides, just some soil that remains no matter how much washing you might do. The group today wasn’t too picky, at least a dozen of them from the day shelter. One red-haired social worker lady drove them in her mini-van with a Meat is Murder bumper sticker on the back. Couldn’t help but laugh.”

  The crew from the day shelter had certainly had their fill, and it looked like I’d soon have mine. Eggplant parmesan, garlic bread, a sliced veggie tray: all of this waited for when Tara returned. I’d have no choice, I’d have to eat, and each moment that went by the words got louder in my head: The red peppers are his veins, the tomatoes his plump heart, and the sage his uncut hair.

  A buzz came from my phone. A text from Tara: Meeting’s done. Home soon, quick stop at Denny’s for pie.

  Heather didn’t like this idea when I told her. I wasn’t sure if it was the idea of pie, or that Tara was choosing Denny’s over a home-cooked meal. Either way, she started pacing back and forth, once in a while stopping at the veggie tray, crunching on a green pepper, then pacing some more. Her speed picked up, each step faster and louder than the last. She only stopped long enough to peek out the window, waiting anxiously for Tara to come home. I sat in silence, trying to ignore her but my head felt feverish, burning more with each step she took. I couldn’t hold out, so I finally asked a question I didn’t really want the answer to.