Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Monday
By Wednesday, the gardener would have bruises on her forearms and ribs, a cut on her left index finger, and she would have seen a shattered bone. She would have found Icarus and lost a glove. And by Wednesday, she would have been heartbroken. She obviously didn’t know any of this. It was only Monday.
She wore green gloves—the kind that stretch a little—and they stuck to her hands, especially in the heat (which she was always in, on account of her being a gardener.)
But that’s not to say that she had big hands, because her hands were of average size—not petite, like a doll or a model, but she did have long fingers, with small palms, so on the whole, her hands were about the average size.
Her gloves were cheap. They were a mixture of cotton and polyester, with a green rubberized latex coating around the fingers and front of the palm, letting her grab whatever was necessary quickly and without hesitation. She wore the gloves whenever she worked, allowing her hands to stay smooth, assuming she remembered to use lotion on that particular morning. In the winter, her hands tended to dry out, but during the summer, like it was then, her hands would sweat under the heat, and the gloves would stick.
Monday wasn’t sunny. Still a warm day, though.
She usually would feel sticky as she slid into her car to drive home, but on Monday, the sky was cloudy and grey. That was good, she remarked, because generally, when it rained, the sky would be blue as a sapphire in the morning, but then by about noon, the thunder-caps would roll in and she would quickly pull her raincoat out from her backpack, and huddle in the rocks as she uprooted weeds, repaired a sprinkler, planted grass-seed, trimmed the bushes, or raked the mulch, but not watering anything, on account of the rain. Today would be fine. Today would be cloudy.
She was a fair-haired woman, with some strands that naturally seemed darker, and some that seemed lighter. Upon making a new acquaintance, like when she met her boss, the new acquaintance, (only in a few cases was this her boss,) would ask if she colored her hair with highlights and lowlights to add depth and texture and beauty, but she would reply that no, her hair was entirely natural. She had brown eyes and freckles as well, strong freckles that carried throughout her body.
She sat down heavily on the brick retaining wall, running a hand down her hair before donning her gloves. (She was near the tool shed on the East end of the property.) It was a nice area, expensive, only the rich folks ever lived there. Most people do gardening themselves, nowadays.
Her boss was a nice man, paid her well, and always checked up on her, sometimes kept her company when he was in town, though he left quite often. This wasn’t his only house. She hoped, however, that he didn’t have many gardeners, at least not gardeners like her.
The house was essentially a giant brick, with rooms carved into it, and shingles carefully bolted to the roof. It was a fine house, and the gardener ensured that the grounds (which covered approximately three acres) were always pristine.
In fact, he was gone more than he was there. His absence was regular and standard: she was alone. When he came home (though home is relative when one has so many houses) she would smile more often, and she wouldn’t listen for the bell-tower across the road.
A bucket sat to her left—she had just placed it there—and she reached inside to pull out a pair of black clippers. Really, only the handles were black, with a silver, stainless-steel body shining up at her, and a sharp blade for slicing through the plants, or whatever else needed slicing.
She unlocked the clippers and opened them up, leaning forward and nudging the branch of the lilac bush towards her. She raised the clippers and thus began the
Click. Click. Click. Thump as she dropped the dead branches into her orange bucket.
She heard a rustling beyond the corner, and she tilted her head out from behind the bush, but she saw nothing unusual—only the stone wall running along the edge of the property, past the tool shed.
Her boss told her about a mama-deer and a fawn that recently began living on the property, and the deer was ferociously protective of her young, nearly killing her boss’s friend’s dog, but the gardener had yet to see any of them—the fawn, the deer, or the dog.
Anyway, she heard the rustle in the bushes, but continued working.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Thump (the branches hitting the bucket, followed closely by the) Rustle. Was that really a second rustle in the bushes, or was it her imagination? She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t quite done with the lilac-bush, and she had no interest in getting attacked by a protective mama-deer, so she continued to
Click. Click—
No, that was a real rustle, for sure. Something was moving. She stood up, holding the clippers like a weapon, until she looked at her hands and realized how stupid the gardening tools were as a weapon, on account of them being a gardening tool, (and since she was never very aggressive,) the only danger they posed was cutting a finger, and deer don’t have fingers.
(She suddenly was filled with the image of her slicing a helpless man’s fingers clean off, just like a dead branch, and she was terrified the thought ever crossed her mind, but curious. Her hands seemed average enough, and clippers are mundane, but average hands with a mundane tool are more than capable of causing a regular mind to be terrified.)
She came around the corner cautiously, pulling off her gloves, poking her head around a tree, stepping carefully across the mulch,
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. (She needed to get off of the mulch.) The rocks were large enough to support her thin frame without shifting underfoot, so she made her way over to them,
Crunch. Crunch, and when she stepped onto the large rocks, she made no sound.
Crouching, she nearly crawled across the ground, curiosity pounding in her ears. Are you there? she thought. She didn’t want to frighten the deer, and she didn’t want to ignite her temper, but then again, curiosity killed the gardener, even though she only had one life, rather than nine. Where are you?
And suddenly she realized that the mama-deer had been standing not twenty feet from where she was crawling across the rocks like a fool. A copse of trees stood between her and the deer, obscuring all but the deer’s legs as she herded the fawn away (the fawn was hidden from view by a shrub,) and she didn’t even see the deer watching her through the trees until she scampered away, not entirely frightened, not provoked, simply cautious, but still curious.
The gardener watched her leave, and froze for a moment—should I follow? she wondered. No, back to work, she decided, and donned her gloves, but she was still curious.
She stood and stared off in the direction of the deer and smiled, and walked back to the lilac bush. She began clipping the bush once more, and this time she made sure to keep any thoughts of clipping off a man’s fingers out of her head. That was a disgusting image and she never should have thought of it in the first place, though to be honest, she didn’t entirely regret ever thinking about it, because it was an interesting—if not gruesome—topic to think about to pass the time. About half-way through trimming the lilacs, she removed her gloves and ran a hand down her hair. She began absent-mindedly rubbing the blade of the clippers as she stroked her hair, and she felt a prick in her finger. She looked down to see blood oozing out of a small cut on the tip of her left index finger. She winced and stuck her finger in her mouth, then stood to fetch a bandage out of her backpack, which was leaning against the tool shed. After the gardener bandaged her finger, she shrugged and said aloud, “What’s the point of living if you don’t chase a deer every once in a while?”
She stood and circled the tool shed, heading off in the direction the deer and the fawn had scampered off in. She didn’t see them, but she saw another copse of trees at the other end of the property, towards the back wall, that looked peaceful and suburban. She jogged over and ducked underneath a tree branch, examining the area. She saw clusters of pea-sized feces, and she knew the deer and fawn had been there recently. She saw pine needles nestled against a trunk in a cozy arrangement, and she figured the fawn had laid down there, at least for a short while. The gardener scoffed at the mother deer. Would she be able to settle down with a child? Would she be able to live with a man, and marry him—live with him for the rest of her life, and love him for the rest of her life, and raise a child? She knew she could, theoretically, do all of those things, but the thought was terrifying. She imagined if she were the deer, she would have dragged over fallen tree branches, to create an alcove for her daughter, and riled up a pile of leaves to keep the child warm at night. But, of course, if she were the deer, she wouldn’t be able to do that. The deer didn't have hands.
She walked back to the tool shed and finished clipping the lilacs, and packed the orange bucket full of the dead lilac branches, like sardines. She hadn’t finished everything she wanted to get done on Monday. The deer had cost her time. It was half-past three, and she usually left at four. There was a broken sprinkler head in zone five that she had meant to fix, but she would get to it tomorrow.
She stood and carried the bucket back to the house, to the trash. She took her time, however, poking her head around trees, zig-zagging across the property. She took five minutes to reach the dumpster. She now had twenty-five minutes until four. Twenty-five minutes until the end. She pulled the sardine-like dead lilac branches out of the bucket and threw them away, and grabbed a rake to kill time.
She walked down the garden-path to a large swath of mulch dotted with flowers and shrubs, and she hopped the short, metal, black fence lining the path in a single bound and began to rake, fluffing the dry mulch to turn over the moist side, and to give it depth and texture and beauty once again, to remove its age, to make it look young once more. She continued to rake, somewhat losing track of time, until the big bell-tower from the chapel across the street rang three notes:
(Bong. Bong. Bong,) indicating it was quarter-till—fifteen minutes until she should head home. She usually began to make her final rounds at quarter-till, but today, she continued to rake, though she seemed to be in a trance, watching the mulch grow from flat and small to deep and strong and graceful as she passed her solid rake, tearing through the ground like flesh and hair… And then her curiosity was piqued further.
She saw the fawn.
Technically, it saw her first.
The fawn was alone.
And she held the rake inches above where it lay. She had been about to stab the baby with her rake. The fawn was frozen in terror, and instantly, so was she. She had nearly killed it. The tines of the rake were dull, but she was strong, and gravity was stronger, and then gravity hit her—the gravity of the situation—because she was alone, and it was alone, and the mother couldn’t be far.
Morbidly she became a hunter, but she was terrified of the thought and immediately pulled the rake back, and gently set it on the ground. She looked left and right. She found the mother, fifty meters away, gently picking leaves and fruit off of a tree.
“I’m okay,” she said softly to the fawn. “It’s okay, I’m okay, I’m not going to hurt you.”
She pulled off her glove, which was sticking to her hand, so it pulled off her bandage as well. She reached out to touch the fawn, inching closer to it, but it trembled and shrunk farther from her. It was smaller than the gardener would have thought, but adorable: brown with white spots (that was why she hadn’t seen it, the spots were camouflage.) It let out a soft shriek. She looked back to the mother. The mama-deer was still at the tree.
Blood dropped to the ground. Her finger was bleeding. She retracted her hand and put her finger in her mouth. That was a terrible idea, she thought. Good thing my finger began to bleed. She kicked herself. That was a terrible idea. She grabbed the rake with her good hand and stood up. The bell-tower began to sing the hourly song. She should leave.
She checked on the mother once more. She gasped, pulling her bloody finger out of her mouth. The mother was glaring straight at her, not five meters away, edging towards her. She took a step backwards, realizing she stood between her and the fawn.
The mother stamped a foot. Lowered her head.
She raised the rake.
The deer lunged at her, and she dove out of the way at the last second, landing roughly on the mulch, as far from the fawn as she could get in a single bound, throwing the rake away, terrified, unwilling to strike a deer, the innocent animal, and she rolled over. The mother spun and raised her front hooves, and she froze as the clock struck four (home seemed far removed)— Bong.
She rolled on instinct alone, curiosity killed—Bong.
She was quick, too, and actually an animal—Bong.
She came down hard on her chest, and again on her face—Bong.
She reached for the rake.
Check back next week for chapter two! Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Image Source:
Lain, Ken. "Plant Care Archives - Watters Garden
Center." Watters
Garden Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 7 Jan. 2014.
<http://wattersgardencenter.com/category/plant-care/>.
Video Source:
Bastille. Overjoyed. 2013.
“Bad Blood.” Youtube. Web. 6 Jan.
2014.
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