.:I {Don't} Feel It Anymore:. [open]

Yesterday we planted some tulips. Right out in the little plot on the side of gram’s lean-to. Briar was complaining about how hot it was for September; I just kept digging out the weeds. Feels good to get the dirt up in between my finger nails and skin. There’s a stickiness that stays, makes you feel good about a day’s work. Guess I just like to feel like I’m doing something, that I’m alive. Hard to say that with a straight face around some people, not that I’ve got to talking much. There’s folks that would rather run off at the mouth, and take all the oxygen in the room. They got the world hanging on their breath, but—by and by, don’t see much use for it.

I used to think that I wanted to be the same as them, eyes on me, surrounded by more than just my sister. How much it would’ve been easier to have someone else to tell tales, or shovel the cattle shit. All the years, from when we finally was old enough to be farm hands until now, spent in a wide open space—lonely. Briar says we exiled ourselves; the world was better shared with just the two of us. And that’s easy, because you don’t have to share with nobody else. This worlds a dangerous place to be giving out your heart and thinking anyone else knows how to handle it, much less wants to break it. I don’t think nobody’s bad though, not to start. Would be a pretty cruel joke to think that the world starts off bad and has to be built good. It’s plain to see that we start off blocks of wood that get sanded down and chopped up. Some of us turn out beautiful, some of us get thrown to the scrap pile.

I thought today was as good as any to be here, in Scutcher’s special garden—the sign’s all faded now, and the little wire fence is rusting up. Ten years or more have passed since anyone put any thought into it. Now it’s a bunch of overgrown weeds, scrambling up the little prison walls and growing every which way. There’s still some beauty, though. Little violets that peek out of the tall grass, searching for an answer. What happened here, where the world was something special and important? Tall grass is as high as cat tails, and get close enough you’re liable to hear some small animal creeping. Briar stopped coming here a few years ago, said she gets a chill every time she comes to the gate. Besides, she said, You’re liable to get bugs on you walking through there.

We were supposed to take care of it, but—we weren’t old enough, didn’t know enough. Just would come and play, would make believe in the little garden with the wooden cross. We knew what it meant, what it was, but pa didn’t make us take care of nothing. She had this place, this special little garden made for her by a man I’d never meet. Then we stopped coming around so much, and I’d walk by, thinking that I could come right through that gate again. We used to laugh for hours, running back and forth imagining. We could fly to the moon, through the stars and off to our own little corner of space. Or drive a ship right across the sea, back to the start of the world, to see all that’s never been seen. Briar was always the captain and me the first mate, making sure we got where we needed to go.

I kept thinking when I walked by that I’d get that same feeling I used to get. The electricity that would crackle through my veins and the giggle I’d get, I thought it’d come back for us. It’s why I’m standing here, now, hand on the gate and look through all the mess of weeds and underbrush. But there’s not a jolt through my arm when I pry open the gate. The creak of the spring doesn’t send a shiver down my spine, and the feel of grass between my toes hasn’t got me remembering summer days gone away. Instead I see a garden, what’s left of one, grown up and changed, not like I remember. I press in and stop at the little wood cross, grass up and around it just as tall. And I start to pull at the grass, to clear away so that it can be seen. My hands grab thick clumps of grass and pull them right up and out of the ground; sweat comes down my neck but I keep going.

But after a few minutes, I look up, face red, and see the whole wide garden, the grass and the weeds, the trees with roots sticking through the soil. And I sit on my knees in front of the cross, hands in my lap. I take a breath and think about how—I could come back tomorrow, pull out some of the weeds, start clearing the grass and make some room for something else to grow. Or I could focus on trimming back branches and uprooting the grass. And I could repaint the little sign on the tree, make it like it was. Except I can’t tell if the letters were red or orange, if I should add the apostrophe or not. And I wonder if I can do it all on my own, whether or not it would matter.

Because I still like the little garden, even with all the weeds and shrubs. And if with all the time and energy—what would making this place look like it did get me? I sit, weeds swaying next to me, and smile.

She would’ve liked it any which way, I think.