The Small Garden

The Small Garden
Eight years old – I could only remember four or so, and Alpharetta Georgia was all I knew and all that needed to be known. That and jumping in great piles of raked leaves. It was early summer. My parents were planning a trip, just the two of them, to Europe. Ma and Pop told us it was a long ways away from Georgia and that We, my two brothers and I, were spending the summer in West Hartford Connecticut with granny and grandad. So come August we packed the 92 navy blue Chevy Suburban and headed north.
When we arrived in small white Victorian town it was dark and outside, dark and hot – hot and humid. I was irritable and covered in my own stick. We got out of the car and stretched our legs. My knees felt buckled bent and weak. Out the door side door came granny and grandad Walker. Granny was thin good-looking women with delicate wrists. Grandad was as shocking as his think milky white hair and winking eye. I always noticed his big funny shaped thumbs. They were good thumbs – strong and malleable, think skinned and broad.
My brothers and I slept in the bedroom across the hall from granny and grandad. I had found a wooden cylindrical object in one of the dresser drawers. I began to blow and mime a tune.
“Guess what song this is?” I blew into the wood; it sounded like the inside of a seashell.
“No idea. What is it?” Robert asked.
“I made it up.”
“Let me try!” mumbled Kevin. I passed the flute over to Kevin who was laying next to me on the floor. Robert got the steel rod-iron bed (he was the oldest). We made up our own songs well into the night before sleep came over us. The next morning mother and father were off to Europe. Grandad drove them to the airport while Granny made us buttered toast and scrambled eggs and sliced fruit – we just poked the food around our plates and excused ourselves into the basement to play. There were two big wicker baskets filled with cardboard brick blocks (reds, yellows, greens, and blues). We built fortresses and tumbled them down; we played hot potato; we stacked the bricks as high as we could reach and bowled them down. We loved to see all the bricks come crashing and tumbling down.
The back yard was long and narrow. At the back of the house there was a swinging screen door that opened into a screened portch with launging chairs and coffee tables. The grass was well manicured and watered. On one end of the yard there was an old white barn – tall and narrow. Gandad parked his car inside. He was an inexplicably organized man – he had a place for everything, and when you were doing with something, it went right back in that spot. But above all of his posesstions, grandad delighted most in his garden – lush and full, each branch trimmed and tended, each fallen leaf racked, every diseased or failing growth cut off and thrown out.
It was about two weeks since Ma and Pa had left, and that back yard was looking a might bland. I decided to go into the garden – I would pretend I was in a great African rain-forest – imagine I was an archiologist searching for an ancient treasure. There were advarks and bushbucks, bongos, gorillas, and even the forest elephants. Naturally, I needed protection. I grabbed the shears leaning against the barn and began hacking my way through the brush. A mound of – ten feet tall, stood before me, filled with driver ants swarming about. I stop suddenly and duck behind a Kapok tree. I see a kinkajou licking its fur coat – its stops, sensing a disturbance and looks at me briefly before returning to its bathing. I continue walking – there are three sloths hanging from the high canopy above – the great roof shading the forest floor. Further along I see two eyes each the size of Guavas, stairing at me – the tarsier. A pack of zorro stampede past. I am hungry now – all of this exploring has worked up my appitie.
I hack deeper into the rainforest – until I reach the fence. I can hear granny calling us for dinner. I sit down at the table. Granny asks me,
“what have you been up to this evening?” I reply,
“I’ve been playing in the backyard.”
“I didn’t see you back there?” she inquires.
“I was playing the garden.”
“You were playing in the garden!” He town suddenly becomes sharp.
After dinner granny and granddad took me outside and made me show them what I had been up to in the garden. The hacked branches and broken limbs were strewn all around – laying lifeless and without their former glory. Granddad began to cuss. I suddenly got very scared – my face went flush with fear. I knew I had ruined the garden – I knew my imagination had taken hold of me, I knew – my imagination was no longer a reality. I wanted to be away – far away and never return, never face granddad again, never look into his eyes filled with rage and disappointment. But I could not – could not be far away, could not imagine I was back in that rainforest. I cut it down – it lay lifeless and without its former glory.