Backyard

by Norman Draper

  “No,” said George, confused and ashamed to put such dumbfoundedness on display in front of his sons. “You disguise your voice well, Cullen. And how did you two know about this contest? I don’t recall your mother and I talking to you about it.”

  “You didn’t,” Ellis said. “But it’s all over town anyway. The Abramses are in it. The Spearmans are in it.”

  “The Johnsons, the Gilders, the Messersmiths,” Cullen added.

  “And the Hardys and the Hoosenfoots. Hey, that’s alliteration. Pretty good, huh?”

  “Gosh, I didn’t know about the Hoosenfoots? Come to think about it, I didn’t know about the Messersmiths and Hardys either. There must have been more folks entering since Mom and I looked at the entrants’ list. Jeez, there must be hundreds of entrants now.”

  “It’s a pretty big deal, Dad,” Ellis said. “But we have full confidence in you and Mom winning and bringing great glory to the Fremont clan.”

  George smiled wanly at his two sons, whose Cheshire Cat grins reeked of sarcasm.

  “And have you heard, Dad, that other sponsors have jumped on board, and the prizes have been increased . . . a lot?”

  “A lot? How much?”

  “Well, Livia Farmer’s Bank and Trust is now a sponsor. And Jeepsons’ Family Restaurants.”

  “And Carpet King,” interjected Ellis.

  “Yeah, Carpet King. And Consolidated Industries.”

  “And Johnson Marine.”

  “And Johnson Marine. Shut up, Ellis. New World Semiconductors.”

  “New World Semiconductors?”

  “New World Semiconductors.”

  “And a couple of anonymous rich people who are putting up $20,000 each.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right,” Cullen said. “So now, not only does the winner get the $5,000 from Burdick’s PlantWorld, but there’s another $75,000 in additional prize money.”

  “That is the most astounding thing I have ever heard,” said George.

  “And it is absolutely true,” Cullen said. “It’s that Burdick guy. Very rich. He wants to get his name on the map somehow. So, this is his big rich-guy project. He will spare no expense and twist every corporate arm he can think of to make this the biggest blowout garden contest in history.”

  “So, Dad,” said Ellis, wrapping his strong pitcher’s arm around George’s shoulder. “We are now four-square in support of your obsession. We might even help you . . . well, at least lend moral backing. You and Mom gotta win this thing. We know you can do it.”

  George walked off in a daze, and soon found himself inspecting the far reaches of the yard. He wondered forlornly whether the backyard could even hold a candle to some of the magnificent gardens he and Nan had seen on their scouting expeditions.

  Their gardens began to look to him like the work of feckless novices: modest, uninspiring, and showing no particular original pattern that would stand out to judges who really knew their business. He sat down on the arbor’s bench to recover from a bout of wooziness; the result of either a contemplative moment coming on or a little too much sugar and fat partying their way through his nervous system; hard to tell which.

  On the way back to the patio, George detoured over to the angel’s trumpets. It was a good thing he did! The seed pods had been broken open and scattered about. In a panic, George searched his memory for the picture of what the seed pods had looked like when he and Nan placed them at the foot of the plant. Was he just imagining that something—or somebody—had gotten into them? Could his own irrational fears be causing him to hallucinate? No. The iceberg lettuce and baby carrots were gone.

  George examined that part of the yard and the area surrounding the compost pile and bordering the woods for something dead or dying. There was not so much as a dead blade of grass. Then, he remembered: death from angel’s trumpet poisoning was not instantaneous. It could take days to kill you. What about animals? They would presumably die sooner since they were smaller, wouldn’t they? He had not inspected the plants up close since yesterday. A rabbit might have come in the night, gone away feeling sated, and now be dying miserably in its warren out there somewhere in the woods.

  George began to think of their campaign against the rabbits as a persecution. After all, they were only doing what nature instructed them to do. And here he was conking them on the heads with rocks and battering them to bits when he couldn’t control himself, and now poisoning them horribly.

  How much different were rabbits from humans anyway? They felt pain, didn’t they? It was only one step up from pain to feelings of filial and paternal love. Rabbits were fathers and mothers. What if that rabbit’s kids were watching as he smashed Dad’s (or Mom’s) head with the shovel just last week? Might there be some fellow rabbits ministering to the one out there dying, wishing to whatever deity they had that a miracle would be performed?

  George grimaced and ground his heel down hard into the remnants of the scattered seeds and pods and little vegetable bits until earth and plant were all blended together in one squashed mess. Then, he ground it around some more. He kept on working his heel into the earth around the plants until it was indented into a little inch-deep basin. There are people in this world, he reflected, who would call him a murderer. George looked around, half expecting to see hordes of SPCA and PETA police bearing down on him.

  What he saw was a crowd in motion, gravitating at the sound of Nan’s urgings and some amplified static toward the patio, which was now one big clot of people. Pat had arrived. Another amplified squeal from the patio, then a hoarse sort of croaking, broke through the sad, self-mortifying spell. George kneaded his forehead to rid himself of the last traces of these terrible, enervating thoughts, but something more was needed, something with the kind of narcotic value that would take his mind completely off all these unpleasant things. He would have another root beer float.

  George would not be able to get to the root beer and ice cream. The crowd gathered on the patio had swelled to even greater numbers as he passed through the fence gate and entered the inner sanctum of the backyard. He found himself part of the migration of outliers drifting toward all the squawking and crackling that was coming from the patio. The crowd was five deep. George nodded warily to friends and acquaintances who, like him, were harboring some vague apprehensions about what sounded like a breakdown in the electronic equipment.

  As he scanned the crowd that was following behind him to join the packed-in group at the patio, he was at least gratified to note that their visitors were respecting the sanctity of the backyard, carefully picking their way through the gardens, and detouring around the flower beds and plant clusters. Nothing was being trampled, bruised, or even casually brushed against. The crowd, wedged in by the arbors and their trellises, was so thick now that he couldn’t see Nan, though he could hear her voice—what would be called a very average voice, but which had projection and the carrying power to be heard over many other sounds. Then came the grotesquely amplified thump of someone tapping a microphone to make sure it worked. Several in the crowd chuckled.

  “One, two, three,” came Pat’s booming voice, assaulting the crowd, then crashing into the side of the Grunions’ house and bouncing back again. “Twenty, forty-seven, eighty-six. I guess it works.”

  George could only see the top of Pat’s head bobbing up and down, her raised, gyrating hands and snapping castanets. The castanets cracked across the backyard like rifle shots, and Pat’s gravelly contralto began to make a noise that was somewhere between a hum and a groan.

  The castanets established a slow cadence, and Pat’s hum-groan grew louder. Could this be the debut of “The Men of Livia Are Drunken Wife Beaters”? George flinched. The groaning grew louder. This sounded like something sort of Mediterranean and Egyptian. Pat had mentioned that she was getting interested in the music of “the rest of the world.” But this groaning? The castanets clacked faster and louder.

  It’s some kind of flamenco music, only without the guitar player, thought Geo
rge. He was relieved to think that this debut number was to be a harmless rhythmic chant rather than an actual song about depraved Livians.

  George had to admit that Pat was wielding the castanets with authority. Then came the wail, a long, deep, guttural lamentation that, in musical circles, might be called “dissonant.” It rose in pitch and volume to the level of a shriek. Then, it stopped, and the castanets clacked, more slowly now until they settled into a monotonous andante.

  After about two minutes of this, there rose up a thick, fluttering groan the likes of which George had never heard. Pat was twirling her hands around now, forming little pirouettes in the air as she clackety-clacked away. Words were coming out of the groan, and George listened intently for anything that might signal Pat steering her music in a drunken, wife-battering direction. He couldn’t understand anything, though it sounded like something he heard once when he was watching a Travel Channel show about East Timor. As he scanned the crowd, he could see that others were straining to understand. A lot of them looked confused and a little annoyed, perhaps perturbed by the shriek, but not quite ready to walk away.

  Then came the change. In the front, people gasped, giggled, and turned to one another with looks of surprise and consternation, maybe even acute consternation. There were a few cries—more evidence of surprise—and some male tittering, which indicated, what? Guilty pleasures better left in the closet or swept under the rug?

  People farther behind began to shift their bodies and crane their necks to see better. At this point, George could still just see Pat’s weaving hands working those castanets like nobody’s business. What else might be going on he couldn’t tell. The very tall Jim Thebold, the very wide Martha Vinson, and five or six others he couldn’t recognize from behind were blocking his view.

  Louder gasps came from the front, and the crowd parted, allowing a red-faced, sputtering Caroline King to burst through, dragging along her twelve-year-old son, Jens, who was pulling back but losing the tug-of-war, behind her.

  At this point, George decided that, as one of the principals responsible for whatever was happening on the patio, he had to get up there to find out what was causing such a hubbub. He nudged past Jim and Martha What’s-Their-Names, and then Sarah and Bert Vines, who cast disapproving glances at him as he pushed past them with a whispered “Excuse me,” and a wink of recognition. There was Harry Adams (What was he doing here?). George struggled to squeeze between Harry, on the right, and Jenny Perkins and her boyfriend, Phil Grough, on the left. Jenny and Phil were both frowning with their arms crossed. He finally broke through the mass, into the vanguard of the semicircle of humanity that had formed a tight curve around Pat Veattle, the microphone, and the amplifier.

  At last, George could see what all these signs of an impending fuss were about. Could he ever! There was Pat, who was pushing sixty-five easy, though he and Nan had never asked. In normal times, Pat had a figure most often covered appropriately with billowing tent-like outfits. Here was a transformation of the most shocking sort! Pat Veattle was all gotten up as what could only be described as a genie who’d been living off her wishes for an eternal supply of triple cheeseburgers, chili-slathered fries, and malted milks. She was wearing sheer, plum-colored pantaloons, with her exposed midriff hanging quite noticeably over the elastic waistband that was just barely holding them up.

  Somehow suspended across her chest was a filmy mesh vest un-girded by anything in the foundation department, and which was decorated with little colored sequins doing a poor job of being strategically located.

  At least she was wearing something on her head. That was good, since her hair had been thinning so dramatically that you could see the little bare spots from forty feet away. What passed for head cover was a precariously perched red fez trailing a fabric pennant at least three feet long that had embroidered on it Pat Veattle Song Stylist Parties Weddings Call 642-888-1742.

  By twirling around in various directions, and at various speeds, and somehow keeping the fez from falling off, she worked that pennant so that you could usually see most of what was on it in one long twirl. A red bandanna was pulled, desperado-style, over her mouth and all the way up to her eyes, which George figured was probably the reason he couldn’t understand whatever it was she was singing.

  He saw Nan. She was standing in front, not more than five feet from Pat, and flinching to avoid the more extreme and wide-ranging of Pat’s moves.

  Pat made a spitting sound into the microphone, which, amplified, sounded like an old engine coughing and sputtering. George wondered whether this signified a sound effects routine, but then came another groan from deep within her ample abdomen. It was low, growling, and ominous.

  Then, the groaning and castanet clicking stopped. With one swooping motion, Pat placed them on the table next to the root beer kegs and picked up her Jew’s harp. As Pat began twanging away, George half expected her to break into a nasal rendition of “She’ll Be Comin’ ’Round the Mountain.”

  “Eeeehhaw!” he yelled.

  But what Pat Veattle started singing was more like a chant. And, yes, the chant marked the debut of “The Men of Livia Are Drunken Wife Beaters.”

  Oh, you men.

  Oh, you men.

  Oh, you Livian men.

  You drink too much.

  You drink too much.

  Yeah, you drink too much.

  You get out the belt.

  You get out the belt.

  You get out the belt.

  Yeah, you get out the belt.

  Then, you let her have it.

  Then, you let her have it.

  Then, you let her have it.

  Lord, Lord have mercy, you let her have it.

  Whip her on her butt.

  Whip her on her butt.

  Whip her on her butt.

  Yeah, you whip her on her butt.

  Now, it’s upside the head.

  Now, it’s upside the head.

  Now, it’s upside the head.

  Yeah, it’s upside the head with your naked fist.

  Men are worthless bums.

  Men are worthless bums.

  Men are worthless bums.

  Come to think of it, so are women.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah . . . yeaaah.

  She started to play her Jew’s harp again, and a gasp rose up from the crowd. Several people, acquaintances from outside of the neighborhood, stalked off. George felt his face redden. His nerve ends sang out “Code red!” He looked over at Nan, who saw him, and jerked her head angrily toward Pat.

  George steeled himself and walked over to the amplifier, which was throbbing from the noise of the Jew’s harp, and which George noticed had been turned all the way up to 10. He yanked the microphone plug out of its socket with a staggeringly violent electronic squeal. Nan picked up the threadbare overcoat that Pat had brought with her and flung onto the concrete when her act began, and draped it forcefully over Pat’s shoulders. She turned her away from the microphone and toward the steps leading down to the driveway, and gave her a little shove, but not before catching the full force of a vodka-fueled belch square in the face.

  “Go away, and don’t come back,” she said. “You have thoroughly mortified me and George, and embarrassed our guests.... You’re drunk! Do you need a ride home?”

  Pat pulled the overcoat tightly around her, despite the eighty-five-degree heat, lifted her head up in a show of regal disdain, and silently began to negotiate the steps, further angering Nan by kicking her much-abused pea gravel this way and that with her dainty, pointed, red dancing slippers.

  “The nerve of that woman!” she hissed to George, who was winding up the microphone cord and scanning the silently dispersing crowd for signs of shock and indignation. “Could you believe that?”

  George could not, but he also secretly appreciated what he anticipated to be some of the ramifications of Pat Veattle’s little display. For one thing, Pat had always been pompous a
nd temperamental, even during the years when they called her a friend. With any luck, they would never have to endure that insufferable attitude again. Nor would they have to serve as sounding boards for her compositions. George’s spirits were also lifted by the knowledge that his sorry little incident in the woods from a few weeks back would now be forgotten, to be completely overshadowed by Pat’s rather sorrier one.

  George and Nan, and a few others lingering in the backyard, watched with mingled contempt and amusement, and even a little pity, as Pat wove down the side of Sumac Street toward her home, three blocks away. A block down the street, she stopped to adjust and readjust her overcoat. Then, she plopped down violently onto her rear end on the Atchinsons’ lawn.

  “Well, this party will go down in the annals of Livia history,” Nan said with a sigh. “I just hope the teachers were all gone before it started.”

  She surveyed what was left of the crowd. Most of the guests were straggling toward their cars or forming little processions down Payne Avenue and Sumac Street.

  Those walking down Sumac, she noticed, were all crossing to the other side of the street to avoid Pat, who sat there clutching her overcoat, her head bowed down between her splayed-out knees. She considered asking George to walk down and offer her assistance, but his attentions were focused elsewhere at the moment. He was gazing, worriedly, at the angel’s trumpets, next to which two children and two adults were standing, their backs turned to George and Nan.

  “Hey!” shouted George, flapping his hands wildly. “Hey! Get away from that plant! It’s dangerous!”

  “George!” Nan said. “What on earth are you doing? They’re just looking at the plant. People do that when they come over here.”

  “But it’s angel’s trumpet, and it’s dangerous, and I was going to tell you that something has gotten into the seeds, and I tried to mash the rest of them into the ground, so it’s dangerous to be walking there, too, ’cause you can get all that mash on your feet.”