“I said I have a check here for $200,000—tax-free, I might add, since we prepay the taxes on the total amount—for winning the first-place prize in the Burdick’s Best Yard Contest.”
“But how can that be?” cried Nan, suddenly alert and feisty. “These gardens were destroyed two days before your judges came by. And when they did come by they looked for five minutes and we told them what happened. They said, ‘Sorry, tough tequila,’ and they left. Poof. C’est la vie. Et cetera. Et cetera. Besides, Myrtle Pupildinger won anyway.”
“No, Mrs. Poppendauber did not win.”
“Mr. Burdick, I know this must be fun for you playing your little joke here and taking advantage of a couple of folks who’re on the verge of getting shit-faced, but could you please explain what exactly is going on? Nan and I are on our third bottle of very, very cheap merlot and our senses—well, Nan’s especially—are a little scrambled. At this stage of the evening and considering the extent of our alcohol intake, we confuse easily.”
Mr. Burdick chuckled again with what seemed to the Fremonts to be genuine mirth.
“Okay, then. I’ll tell you the whole story. Marta Poppendauber did indeed win first place, but when I paid her a visit to deliver the news, she explained everything to me. A sad story, certainly. And I was indignant to hear that unscrupulous persons would stoop so low as to sabotage one of our contestants and stain our competition with corruption. But when you’ve got $200,000 at stake, well, you know how people are.
“At any rate, Mrs. Poppendauber insisted that we give first prize to you, not just because your efforts had been so cruelly undermined, but also because you so richly deserved it.”
“A little of our wonderful vintage wine, Mr. B?” said George, shakily dangling a half-empty wine bottle in front of him. Mr. Burdick waved it away with a smile.
“Not now, thank you, Mr. Fremont. I’ll just finish my story. So, as it turned out, Mrs. Poppendauber had hundreds—yes, hundreds!—of photographs of your gardens. Not only that, but she had made schematic drawings of your grounds, down to the tiniest little flower. I must say, no landscape designer we employ could have done better. Well, I took the matter under careful consideration. The judges were consulted and yesterday the decision was made: You get first place! You know, of course, that Dr. Phyllis Sproot’s gardens were also destroyed.”
“No!” said Nan.
“How?” said George.
“Oh, didn’t you know? Well, that’s for someone else to say. All I can say is any prize she would have won would have been nullified posthaste. Though the initial thought was to disqualify Mrs. Poppendauber from any prize at all, she did get points for her honesty and forthrightness and mostly for her willingness to forfeit her first prize. With all that in mind, the judges decided that awarding her the second-place prize would be quite reasonable. Plus, we offered her a job as special gardening and landscaping consultant to Burdick’s.”
During all this time, George and Nan had been getting thoroughly potted. George once again waggled the wine bottle at Mr. Burdick, and, once again being waved off, flourished it at Nan, who somewhat shakily held up her glass for a refill.
“But, Misther Budwink, how would any person want to see some firsth place gardens that don’t exist?” Nan hiccuped and perched her fingertips daintily on her lips.
“I’ve thought about that, Mrs. Fremont.”
“Nan-bee. You can call me Nan-bee, just like Georgie does.”
“Don’t call me Georgie! Not ever again!”
“Okay, Nan-bee, I have given that some thought, and the way I see it is this: people love to see disaster and devastation. Then, they love to see the comeback, the phoenix rising triumphant from the ashes. Do you know what I mean?”
George and Nan stared at Mr. Burdick.
“Please don’t be taxing our brains too much, Mr. Beatwash,” said George. “Just tell us up front what you’re getting at.”
“Well, they’ll want to see the devastation first, then they’ll want to see the resurrection when the gardens look even better. It’s what happened after Mount Saint Helens blew its top. It’s what happened after forest fires ravaged Yellowstone. It’s what happened to . . . Jesus.”
All three instinctively bowed their heads for a moment in respectful silence.
“Now it’s time for it to happen to the Fremont gardens of Livia.”
Nan giggled. George frowned at her.
“I’ve even seen a vision of what will happen.” George and Nan swayed from side to side. “I’ve seen your future gardens being more resplendent than ever, and people making pilgrimages to your backyard and returning to their homes awestruck and inspired. I have these visions sometimes, you know.” Mr. Burdick was looking up into the sky, so, to be polite, Nan and George looked up there, too.
“I don’t see nuttin’,” Nan gurgled. “And it’s right about at the stage when I should be starting to, whether there’s sumpin’ there or not.”
Mr. Burdick decided it was pointless to push the mystical element of the story any further. He lowered his eyes and adopted his most businesslike tone.
“I have to tell you that we’ve received certain inquiries from the press about this matter. I ordinarily disapprove of the press, but seeing as how the contest did get quite a bit of publicity that we actively sought in the first place, I’m not sure it does us any good to say no. It’s up to you how you yourselves want to deal with this.”
“Bring on the goddamn newshounds!” screamed Nan.
“We agree!” shouted George. “But under one condition . . . one eentsy little condition.”
“Which is?”
“Which is to call the guy who can do the story right. His name is Roland Ready and he works for the . . . he works for the . . . whacha name of that shtupid rag downtown? . . . Oh, yesh . . . oh, yest . . . the . . . the . . .”
“I’m familiar with Mr. Ready,” Mr. Burdick interrupted gently. “And he’s done a very fair job in his coverage, I must say. Not so much as a whiff of socialist bias. I will contact him at the Inquirer and let him know you’re willing to be interviewed. I’m hoping, by the way, we can leave some of the more sordid elements out of this. However, Mrs. Poppendauber’s confession can be an inspiration for gardeners everywhere.”
As Mr. Burdick got up to leave, George and Nan took turns hugging him four times each. Nan stumbled her way through two flower knock-knock jokes, praised the clematis for its stoicism, and insisted on introducing her pea gravel while the bemused Mr. Burdick listened politely. George got a quarter out of his pocket, grabbed Mr. Burdick’s hand, and slipped it into his palm.
“Thasha tip,” he whispered into his ear. “For alla good works you do.... No . . . I inshist.”
Mr. Burdick finally managed to slip away, with the Fremonts waving good-byes like maniacs and George crying out, “Y’all come back now, heah!” six times.
As George and Nan strolled around the backyard on a mid-August Saturday morning, they were astonished at how quickly their gardens had shifted into full recuperation mode. The lilacs, their leaves machine-gunned by the hailstorm, had dropped their damaged leaves and generated new ones. Hostas poked their clumped, giant, asparagus-tip points through the soil. The crab apples were crowned with clouds of white and pink blossoms, unusual for August, to say the least. Everywhere were new shoots, new leaves, and new blooms that were paying no attention to what the calendar told them they shouldn’t be doing.
“This is a miracle!” Nan cried. “Scientifically speaking, none of this is supposed to be happening!”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say someone cast a spell on our property,” said George. “A really good spell. Or maybe it was somebody’s vision.”
“Oh, c’mon, George,” said Nan. “You don’t believe in that kind of nonsense, do you? It does appear that we’re going to have another go-round this summer with the gardens. And next year, we can work both sides of the house, not just the back.”
George groaned. This was the cof
fee-fueled Nan talking here.
“The prize money gives us enough to do the entire yard. And, at least for the foreseeable future, we’ll have nothing but time. But, George, the money won’t last forever, you know. We can probably live off our winnings another year and a half, maybe two years at most. Lots of college expenses coming up. Shouldn’t we start looking for at least some regular part-time work?”
“Nah. Let’s put that one off a little longer. I’ve got this idea anyway that I’ll get around to someday: SpellCheck greeting cards.”
“Go on.”
“These greeting cards would have computer chips implanted in them that would be sensitive to the impressions your pen makes when you write your little notes. Your card would beep when you misspell a word. No more misspelled words for birthdays, graduations, get-well events, et cetera. Eh?”
“Sounds lovely, George.”
“Hey, Fremonts!”
George and Nan turned to shake hands with Roland Ready, who had parked his car on the street and walked up quietly behind them.
“Back for more flower drama, Mr. Ready?” Nan said. “You must be a glutton for punishment. Haven’t you had enough of our little garden soap opera to last you a lifetime?”
Roland laughed.
“I see you’ve still got your Burdick’s sign up. Pretty nice touch.”
“Yep,” Nan said. “We can keep it up all the way to Halloween, they said. Someone must have known we were going to have this late-season resurrection here. They’ll bring it back next spring and we can have it up for a few weeks in May. Then, I guess they save it for the next winners, whenever that might be. All they have to do is change the names. You won’t believe this, Mr. Ready, but we actually saw people pull up and take their pictures next to that sign. We must have had at least three hundred visitors; isn’t that right, George?”
George shrugged; he figured it was more like seventy-five, and even at that he was ready for the visitations to start tailing off.
“It was a big deal.”
“That it was,” Nan said, sighing, then laughing.
Roland’s contest story had run on Sunday 1A a week and a half after the Fremonts got the news of their contest victory. It had been thorough and accurate. George and Nan admired the way Roland conveyed the seediness of the sabotage conspiracies against them without making it the entire focus of the story. Marta came across as a beacon of righteousness, converted to the straight and narrow by an inner courage and determination to thwart evil. And Dr. Sproot, as it turned out, had gotten her comeuppance.
The first day of the judging, Earlene had brazenly tramped across her yard in broad daylight brandishing a McCulloch “Pro Series” chain saw that she could barely carry, and which would come in handy if you happened to have a stand of Douglas fir needed to furnish structural framing for a few subdivisions. She plowed through three beds of coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend, amputated every yucca in sight, and almost took off one of her legs before the police came and had to draw their service revolvers to get her to “Put down that chain saw, ma’am.”
Dr. Sproot had refused to be interviewed but Earlene had not; she and Marta were the ones who spilled the beans on the entire debacle. Those interviews and the police report of the night’s incident gave Roland enough to name all three culprits and flesh out his story nicely.
For this second, and more serious, infraction of the law Earlene had to do a week’s worth of time. She also had to part with a few thousand dollars and would probably be talking to Dr. Sproot’s lawyers before long.
When she got out of jail, Earlene decided to embark on another career. She signed on as manager for the newly rehabilitated Pat Veattle, who had burned all her silly costumes, emptied out fifty bottles of hard liquor, and was looking for a recording contract. Pat didn’t make it into Roland’s story because of space restrictions. Plus, Roland noted, as outrageous as she’d been, she had no direct bearing on the contest or the gardens.
The part about Edith’s spells never made it into Roland’s story, either, but for a different reason. Edith had categorized herself to the police as a mere accessory to Dr. Sproot’s diabolical plot. Those with direct knowledge of her part in the scandal either kept quiet about it because they didn’t believe it themselves, or believed it but didn’t want anyone else to know they did. At least as far as any public notice of the affair was concerned, Sarah the Witch remained unreported and, therefore, nonexistent.
The Fremonts, whom Roland had interviewed for two hours, came across as the victims of fickle fate whose gargantuan and magnificent efforts received their just desserts despite getting a good, hard swat from Mother Nature. They talked about “the phoenix of hope rising out of the ashes of tragedy” (Nan’s words), and made clear their esteem for Marta and their willingness to forgive all, even Dr. Sproot. Besides, whose fault was it that some mysterious power—perhaps even God’s—had decided to act up and visit a plague of hailstones upon their garden?
“What was weird was how localized it all was,” Roland said. “Your property bore the brunt.”
The Fremonts could only shrug their shoulders and marvel at the capriciousness of Livia weather. Roland was amazed at how easy it was for them to laugh it all off and extend the hand of friendship to one and all. They had immediately invited Marta and Ham Poppendauber over for an appreciation dinner, gushing gratitude and plying them with Sagelands and Bombay Sapphire and offering them a one-fifth share of their first-prize earnings, which Marta and Ham graciously declined. They even gave them two bottles of Sagelands to take home with them. When Roland pressed them they admitted that, sure, it was a little easier to let bygones be bygones when you had a check for $200,000 in your pocket and a first-place sign in your front yard.
“And Marta Poppendauber,” Roland said. “I confess I was mystified as to why she would so willingly give up the $200,000, no matter how good-hearted she might be . . . until I discovered something.”
“Discovered what?” Nan said.
“How strong her desire was to completely discombobulate Dr. Sproot. She knew Dr. Sproot would be absolutely stricken when she found out what she’d done. So, Marta’s Good Samaritan gesture wasn’t quite as saintly as it seemed. Besides, her husband’s long-lost aunt had just died and, much to their surprise, left him a pretty good-sized inheritance. They probably didn’t need the money.”
“Aha!” Nan cried.
“Hmmm,” said George.
“They just found out about that inheritance a few days before the judging. In fact, it was the day before your storm.”
“She never told us that!” Nan said. “But she did want the honor. I think we can attribute that to the goodness of her heart. So, why wasn’t the inheritance stuff in your article?”
“My decision. Marta Poppendauber is an honest person and told me in the interest of full disclosure, though I couldn’t persuade her to tell me what that inheritance is worth, except that it was ‘generous.’ I didn’t push it. But then I figured why spoil a wonderful story of redemption with mere facts? Besides, she was already helping you before she knew about the inheritance.
“Did that make it a little easier for her to forfeit first place? Sure, it did. Still, I think we can agree that Marta Poppendauber is at heart a good person. It wouldn’t surprise me if she turned most of that inheritance over to charity anyway.”
“I’d like to think she would have given up first place no matter what,” Nan said. “In fact, I will think that.”
“Well, I do want to do a follow-up on your gardens sometime before the summer ends.”
“Sure,” said Nan. “Anytime you want. I’ll mix up a pitcher of that lemonade you liked so much. If you look around, Mr. Ready, you might just find your material popping out of the ground even as we speak. Everything’s coming back from the storm already . . . in August!”
“It won’t be for the paper this time,” Roland said. “I quit my job there. I’m working as the editor of St. Anthony Gardener. I’ve decided to devote my
professional efforts full time to gardening now. I think we’ll be able to give your yard and its comeback a nice spread.”
“Well, you’d better hang on until you see how much more actually comes up,” George said.
“I don’t think there will be a problem there,” Roland said. “I have full confidence in the Fremont magic at work here.”
“Glass of merlot?”
“Nope. Was in the neighborhood and just wanted to check in. Gotta be off. I’ve got our next big edition to edit. I’ll be in touch. So long, Fremonts.”
“Look who’s coming,” said George after they waved Roland out of the driveway and out onto Payne Avenue.
Bounding his impatient way up the driveway with those long, loping strides of his was Jim Graybill, lugging along with him his TreasureTrove XB 255.
“George! Nan!” shouted Jim.
“Jim!” they shouted right back.
“I have a proposition,” said Jim, breathless from excitement and his semi-trot over the length of two blocks. “Let me sweep your front yard. I have this feeling there might be something down there worth finding. Call it my gut instinct, my nose for treasure.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Nan with a chuckle. “Well, what happened to that gut instinct in the backyard, huh?”
Their backyard destroyed, the Fremonts had allowed Jim to root around where his metal detector had signaled hot spots. What he came up with was a couple of flattened cans, a padlock, and a few large rusted screws that were undoubtedly very old. Jim went all sheepish and shy, and stared down at his shoes.
“Yes, that didn’t work out. Sorry. False alarm.”
“No harm done,” said George. “Perk up there, Jim. Nan says we’re digging up the front yard next year for new gardens. So, by all means, have at it. Not now though, Jim; we’ve got guests coming over.”
Once Jim loped off toward home, George retrieved two bottles of Sagelands from the wine rack; the McCandlesses and Winthrops would be arriving soon. So as not to put on big award-winner airs, George changed from the expensive polo shirt he had bought when he and Nan went on a shopping spree into his navy-blue Jethro Tull 2005 American tour T-shirt, and donned his sweat-stained Muskies hat.
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