V. H. King's Ink

I wrote the first draft of this story, called “A Well-Balanced Diet”, as part of a challenge to write a short story a week for an entire year.  The following is an excerpt from the version which will appear in Between Cracks in the Concrete. 

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“I think you’re going to love it.”

David didn’t jump, but his hand slipped as he screwed the hose onto the spicket.  The house’s brick foundation rewarded him with a bite to his knuckles.  Instead of turning around, he focused on getting the hose attached.

“Why would you say that?” he asked.

“It’s just a guess.”

Henry’s shadow fell away from him.  When David looked up, the sun’s glare against the window distorted Henry’s reflection.  Cold crept across David’s shoulders.  The word omen came to mind, but he wasn’t supposed to believe in those.

“A guess?”

“Yeah, a guess.”  Henry shrugged.  “Take it with a grain of salt.”

Any guess from Henry was as good as gold.  Henry, of course, didn’t think that way. 

“What about a pillar?” 

Darren smirked, dropping two buckets of gardening tools that he’d brought over from the shed.  He was off before David or Henry could say anything. 

David had always found it annoying, the way Darren seemed to scan conversations like radio stations.  Jumping in with sound-bytes that were alarmingly fluid.  A ghost in the airwaves, and a pain in the ass everywhere else. 

“People say that—to take things with a grain of salt.” David unwound the hose, trying to shake out the kinks.    “I always think of that Bible story where some guy’s wife gets turned into a salt-sicle just because she looked over her shoulder.”

The trouble with garden hoses was that they were always heavier than they seemed.  Maybe he was just inexperienced, but he thought they were stubborn too.  Strange, that something made to be flexible could be so set in its ways.  Unwilling to unwind, unless you twisted its arm.  Not that hoses had arms, but—

“That’s what you’re supposed to think of.”  Henry pursed his lips as he pulled on a pair of work gloves and started sorting through tools.  “The whole point of the saying is to have a healthy amount of skepticism.”

“But the dude’s wife died for not having blind faith.” David shook his head.  “Don’t you think that’s a little…harsh?”

“Blind faith can get you killed these days.” Henry shrugged.  “But so can being a royal dick.  Who cares how much faith you have?  It doesn’t get you anything in the end.”

“Is that just a guess?”

Henry looked up, narrowing his eyes for a moment before laughing. Sometimes David wasn’t sure when Henry would take a joke—or how.  He wasn’t even sure why he’d said it.  The words just came out of him before he could stop them. 

This time, the joke landed on its feet.  Henry moved several yards away, troweling soil to excavate new homes for vegetable seeds.  It wasn’t anything weird to have your convictions or whatnot, but David couldn’t guess exactly what it was that Henry believed.  David wasn’t sure he would know he’d crossed a line with Henry until it was too late. 

The hose twitched in the dirt.  David stepped on it—mostly out of reflex.  He squatted, checking the nozzle.  Water gurgled, then drooled onto the ground.  He twisted the nozzle this way and that, trying to make sure the thing wouldn’t suddenly start spewing all over the place.  After careful coaxing, he managed to get a rainfall of water to douse the carrot shoots. 

Did seeds have blind faith?  Were they afraid of being buried, or did they know that they would emerge top-side again?  Stupid.  Plants don’t have feelings.  Could that lady feel anything after she had been turned into salt, or had it been an instant death?  How long did salt last, anyway?  Somewhere on the other side of the world, was there a lonely pillar at the base of a mountain with a soul trapped inside of it?

“Cauliflower!”

David rolled his eyes.  Darren would never get tired of that joke, and it hadn’t even been funny the first time.  David curbed the water and went to the shed, where Darren was hefting bags of fertilized soil into a wheelbarrow. 

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“What do you want, Darren?”

“What are you and Henry talking about?”

As if Darren didn’t already know.  Maybe his cosmic eavesdropping was like white noise, and everything blended together into the background.  David scowled. 

“What does it matter to you?”

“Why is any conversation with you only questions?”

David blew out a breath.  The day wasn’t humid, but the sun seemed to choose that exact moment to turn up its voltage. 

“Did you actually need something or are you just being nosy?”

“I’m saving your ass, is what I’m doing.”

The words came out in something like a growl.  David blinked.  A shrinking feeling crawled across his shoulders; the sensation he always got when it felt like he and Darren switched places.  When he suddenly became younger and maybe a little bit naïve.  When he could feel the innocence leaving, childhood faith crumbling.  Knowing it was happening and knowing he was powerless to stop it. 

“Why would you say that?”

Darren didn’t say anything.  Instead he hoisted the wheelbarrow up and left the shed, heading for the crumbled dirt that had been marked off with little wooden stakes.  Blue, yellow, and red ties marked the borders for the different sections.  They fluttered when the wind blew—sometimes with what looked like terror, other times with what seemed like joy—but today they were still.  

David stayed where he was a moment, hoping the shed’s shade would help him shape up.  That was probably what he hated the most, about Darren’s weirdly accurate pitch-ins and sudden mood switches: the way it left him feeling so disoriented.  Like he’d just realized he was on the wrong side of the glass in an aquarium, and it wasn’t the penguin exhibit he’d landed in.  It was the shark tank. 

This whole community garden thing had seemed like a good idea when Henry had first brought it up.  It was work, but David and Darren were used to that.  Digging holes, weeding and watering—it was better than sitting in front of a screen all day. 

Henry had other reasons for the garden, reasons that seemed to make sense but weren’t really the type of things that David concerned himself with most of the time.  He’d never really considered himself much of a tree hugger or anything.  It’s not like he wanted the sun to collapse and the world to end, but he never thought it would happen in his lifetime. But hey, if a community garden somehow helped appease Mother Nature, who was he to object?

He didn’t much like the idea of Mother Nature being a righteous bitch—even though she probably had every reason to be.  But honestly, who had messed up the planet in the first place?  Skyscrapers and steam engines hadn’t been invented by otters, after all. 

There was too much wrong with the world, too much that he couldn’t do anything about.  Feeling guilty that he didn’t feel more guilty might have been another form of self-pity, but he didn’t want to think about it.  He went back to the vegetable patch and started tending to the pea plants.  Henry and Darren knelt side-by-side in the dirt, planting pumpkin, zucchini, and yellow squash. I’m saving your ass, is what I’m doing. 

But why?  And if you jumped in front of a shark when it was hungry for lunch, who did that leave when the shark wanted its dinner?  For that matter, who was the shark?