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Wondergirls
By Carol Reid

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SLUSHPILE TOP SURVIVOR

From the first day of creation when I commenced to make my rounds collecting trash, it struck me that the residents of Hammersea Road were not the most neighborly of neighbors.

Seems living south of town brings out the lone frontiersman in a person. First one to clear their seven-eighths of an acre feels a real proprietary interest in the place…watches the next one to build on a parcel near him with a bleak suspicious eye…suspecting that his neighbor's well is going to siphon off his own, suspecting that his neighbor's septic field is not deep enough nor set up right and that the effluent will taint the land, and each angles up his house whatever way is best not to see his neighbor's face, for the only welcome view of a neighbor is the backside.

From where I drive my truck down to the flats the houses look like a clutch of sisters forced to share the same room or the same man, each one's back turned to the other's, each one truly believing the thing to be theirs alone. And beyond the houses the great grey sea bashes against the built up cliff, picking away the earth, crumb by crumb.

They pay me, each of them, seven dollars and fifty cents a month to haul away their trash once a week, that's providing they pack it up neat and tight and leave it at the bottom of the drive. Right to the house service costs more, ten dollars monthly. Most go for the seven fifty and those I hardly set eye upon, except to extend greeting in the holiday season. But those that pay ten, with those I get acquainted a little. If I cared to know, there'd be little I couldn't tell you about a man, knowing the nature of his offal, though once in a great while they do surprise you.

It was probably in June that the trouble started. Spring had come late and it had stayed wet, even after the warm-up and after the blossom had come out.

"Too damn late for the honey flow," Semple Ferguson growled at me as he handed over two limp plastic bags, each knotted at the top to make a handle. He cocked his head strangely and I imagined he was squinting up at a narrow blue crack that had appeared between the clouds. To this day I wonder what Semple looked like behind that veil.

First day he come out to meet me all decked out in his beekeeper's garb, boots and gloves taped tight to his legs and wrists, hard hat festooned with yards of black net veil, trash bags in one hand and smoldering smoker in the other, I admit I choked a little.
I seen a movie once, years ago, Robot Monster was the title. That was what come into my mind at that moment, though at the movie I wasn't scared. In the movie you know it's just a guy inside a costume pieced together on the cheap from deep sea gear and a gorilla suit, but when Semple came stumbling toward me, no face, no skin, no eyes showing that I could see, for a minute I just didn't know what was in there coming at me.

By June, though, it not longer rattled me in the least to pick up trash from Semple, for in fact he turned to be a regular type guy, a bit too serious about human life, maybe, but who isn't when you come right down to it?

That business about the honey flow had him almost as riled as it had the bees. I could hear the hives behind the house rumbling like little volcanoes as the mist settled down again into heavy rain.

"No good," he snarled through the black netting, "bees won't go out, trees won't get pollinated, no honey for the comb…" He growled again, but resigned, like a beast that's given up struggling in the trap. I thought of my own little patch of garden at home, growing quietly, unbothered by the buzzing things. When the time was right, the bees would come.

"Well, old Mrs. Bradley will be happy," I said and wished I had just shut up, but I kept on talking, didn't I?

"Yes, she been praying for rain ever since she put in those new tomater plants. The Wondergirls. Need 48 days of rain to set fruit in 96, so it said on the crates I hauled away last week."

Semple said nothing, but his veiled head was pointed like a pistol toward the back side of his neighbor Bradley's house. I threw his trash into the back and got into my truck, and even with the doors shut and the windows rolled up tight, still I fancied I could hear the purring of the hives and the little sucking sounds of Semple's breathing behind the veil.

Somehow that day I was all het up and hungry for conversation, and I was happy to see young Harlow McKay puttering in his greenery as my truck rattled up the drive. I chalk it to just plain neatness that Harlow was persuaded to pay the extra for right to the door service. He had one carton for paper waste, another for cans, (neither of which I was to take away) and next to this, two sleek black plastic bags were waiting for me, just like every Thursday. Some suspect such persnickety tidiness in a man, but I'd come to know Harlow for what he was, and it didn't rattle me any longer. I tossed the trash into the carrier, making noise enough, but Harlow stayed crouched as he was, fussing over some seedlings he was setting into raised beds.

"You and your neighbor Semple should get together and curse out this rain," I said, not meaning anything by it of course. Nothing they or I could do about the weather. He looked up, looked through me for a minute, then his faded blue eyes sort of focused in.

"Beck," he said. No "howdy", no "thanks for not messing up my trash", just "Beck". And then he laughed a little, though whether at me or at himself I'll never know for sure. Then he motioned for me to come into his garden.

"Prince of Reds, Beck," he said, cupping his hands over the little tomater plants like the Pope giving blessing. "Hardy to forty degrees, early bearing." He tweaked the tiny leaves, a bit too hard I thought. "I'll be harvesting by the first of August, rain or no rain."
I believe he would have too, had he lived so long. He stood up then, so tall all of a sudden he could stuck his head right through the cloud cover into the blue, had he stretched his neck just a little, but he didn't.

"Semple's still grumbling about the weather, eh?" I nodded yes. Maybe Harlow really didn't care whether he saw the sun again, as long as the garden grew fast and strong enough to suit him. Semple wanted sun, and all there was was rain, and that seemed to satisfy Harlow.

Like most Thursdays I was glad enough to leave Hammersea Road behind as I hauled my load to the dump site. The place depressed me after a while, all those people living out their separated little lives, keeping as apart as if the other has a catching disease, though I suppose that's as must be.

I believe in working together, I do, working together for the common good. We're a community in Nature after all, aren't we? Tell them that on Hammersea Road and see where it gets you.

Well, a like thought, maybe not in so many words, got me beckoned into Ma Bradley's kitchen, Thursday next. She was stepping smartly up to her letterbox as I come up her driveway, and I wished her good day as I drove past. At the house I slung the trash bags over my shoulder and tossed them into the back. As usual, they were light as a feather, and slack, tied loosely at the top with paper covered wire. I watched her walk up, shuffling through a fat wad of envelopes, arranging them in some order that made sense to her, I reckon.

"Nice to know you're not forgotten," I said. I get little correspondence myself. Never could get into the habit of letter writing. The old lady studied me for a bit, and I wondered if she'd forgotten who I was.

"Can you stop for tea, Beck?" she said, finally. Sounded like she sighed when she spoke, but I think it was the bronchitis bothering her. No matter how chipper these little old ladies look, just get to know them a bit and nine point nine times out of ten, you'll discover some damn thing wrong with them. Either that or they're completely off their nut. You'd think the race of man would have worked itself out better after all these generations; a little stronger or more perfect somehow. Wiser at least.

I didn't say no to the tea, though. It's thirsty work, hauling trash on a summer morning, rain or no rain.

"How are the Wondergirls growing?" I asked her as we sat at her dinette drinking dishwater tea out of little cups so thin and brittle it was like sipping off a butter knife. There was a hairline crack in mine, stained orange from tea. All I could think of as I drank was that crack, like the trash man didn't rate a first class cup. People don't expect that I would notice things, but I do.

I reminded her, "I picked up the crates week before last. Vandermere's Wondergirls."
The old lady's face went shadowed and she chewed on the inside of her cheek.

"Come on with me," she said, and led me out back to her vegetable garden. It was kind of a weedy patch, and with the long wet spring the crops weren't up to much. The bush beans were lying squat against the ground and the corn stood about knee high, to a grasshopper maybe. But the tomaters, my god Mabel! They stood tall and lissome against the stakes, covered with blossom. On the lower stems the fruit was already perfectly formed in miniature, smooth green as Chinese jade.

"They're doing all right, aren't they, Beck?" she said in a faraway kind of voice. Then she put her hand out to the tallest of them and Lord Almighty Jesus strike me dead as I speak if it didn't stretch out its leaves to meet her hand and let itself be petted and stroke like a living, knowing thing.

There was such a look on old Mrs. Bradley's face, no look at all if I had to describe it. The plant itself had more expression. The scene gave me a damned odd sensation, the kind that makes you look over your shoulder when you know you're alone.

"Wondergirls," I heard myself say, and there and then I made up my mind to take a run out to the Dutchman's. I thanked the old lady for the tea and the tour, finished my rounds without talking to another solitary soul, and headed down the highway toward the greenhouses, stopping only to tip out my load of trash.

John Vandermere and his wife had started out the nursery from nothing but a tumbled down shack and a couple acres of rocky but workable land. John had been a drunk and she had joined him, though she had never been as devoted to the life as he. Don't; take me wrong, I've had my tussles with the almighty bottle myself and I know the hold it can take on a man, though lately I haven't touched a drop. Then John got sick, too sick to drink and, the way it does with some, the spectre of death snapped them both into at least trying to live again. They took to the land, wringing life out of every arable inch of it, like they'd once squeezed the last drop from a bottle. Because he sold cheap, folks took to buying their seedlings and annuals from him and when those flourished, they'd go back and buy more, bringing friends and family along. Within two years, the one ramshackle greenhouse had sprouted into six more, each full of sweet, neat rows of green.
Why, the truck I use to haul trash was his, once. He leased it to me darn reasonable when I took up the job of trashman.

Flowers and succulents, vegetables and herbs all bursting with life; that's what I saw when I come around the last turn of their twisty drive. That, and the Vandermeres, standing like two sad scarecrows in the path between the greenhouses, with an open bag of lime scattered like ashes at their feet.

I got out of the truck making some noise, since it seemed they hadn't heard me coming.
"It's all looking really good, John, "I said from about ten feet back. I was beginning to get the creeps, them standing there so stiff and straight, like the cat in wait for the canary. The wife turned around first and at first she looked kind of dark in the face like old Mrs. Bradley had looked, but when John swung his face around at me I could see that he was all right.

"Yeah, real good," he agreed, sounding a little bowled over at the extent of it. I guess like me John wakes up in the morning sometimes wondering how he got so lucky in life, how everything had just sort of come together for him, a day's work for a day's pay, knowing he was of service to the community. Like me. Me and John we both believe in the common good.

I walked around the greenhouses with him, asking after the new hybrids, the Prince of Reds and the Wondergirls. Didn't mention what I'd seen at Ma Bradley's though. Straight as he is now, him and me both, we're just one drink away from something that don't bear thinking about. So I thanked him and shook his hand and went on home.
Well, the week passed, as weeks do, before you know it. I made my pickups and deliveries, and dumped my trash from Vickers Place and Cedar Point and Dancerville, and then come Thursday and back to Hammersea Road.

It was a restless day, close and damp, and the sea was dull as lead. I hoped a storm would come and clear out the heavens, big and bright and full of thunder, like the left hand of God coming down to clear the darkness away. Funny how sometimes I still think in the old way, the way my ma or granddad would have thought, of God being a big old angry bearded man, ready to slap down what he don't like and no talking back either. If I were to think about a lord and master now, I would think about a lush green vine that grows like ivy over everything, knowing without thinking, only good, not right or wrong.

Well, Semple's place was in a shambles. It was hard to know what he meant for me to take away.

"Semple!" I called out. "Semple, where's your trash?" Piles of stuff were scattered all around the back of his workshop; broken frames and crates of jars tipped over. A half-growed dog dragging a length of dirty rope bounded through the yard from who knows where, and that bothered me. You can't have untrained animals running loose, tromping through gardens with their fat, unthinking paws. His feet rolled like thunder through the place, so still and quiet it was. Maybe I should have grabbed that dog then and there and wound that length of rope tight around his neck, but notions like that don't come so quick to me anymore.

"Semple!" I called out again, picking my way over the stuff that was scattered around. Surely to Christ, I thought, he doesn't expect me to gather up all this by myself and bale it up. Not for ten goddamn dollars a month.

I heard a sort of rumble as I went round back the house and I looked up at the sky expecting storm clouds, but there were none. The sky was still and solid as cold fat in a fry pan.

The hives had been moved alongside the house, but that wasn't where the sound was coming from, for the frames were open and clean as new. The bees were all in the house, and Lord Almighty Jesus but the place smelled good. It reeked of warm clover and blackberries overripe in the summer sun and sweet wood smoke. Maybe that's why what I saw inside didn't move me any. It seemed like a good place, smelling so fine, even with the walls and floor crawling with humming bees. Even with what was left of Semple crumpled up in a corner, with a swarm of them moving under his clothes, up his legs and arms, across and down his chest. They moved slow, like they'd had their feast already and were strolling back for seconds. The veil over his face was thick with them, inside and out.

I didn't touch anything. The bees didn't touch me. A lot of them were covered with orange pollen, heavy with it. After a while I went back outside and straightened up some of the mess, picked up the stuff closest to the truck and threw it in, though I wasn't obliged to, really.

At Mrs. Bradley's there was no one to offer me dishwater tea in cracked cups, though she had got around to stacking up her bit of refuse for me to cart away. I took a peek into her garden and saw her legs and feet sticking out from under the stand of Wondergirls. When I looked closer it made me think of this woman I saw once playing on the grass with some children. Their lips were sticky with jam and muck, and she was letting them kiss her all over her face. The marks on old Mrs. Bradley were like that, but deeper.

The plants were thriving t, hearty enough to feed alone now, their leaves so glossy and green, fruit and flowers both flourishing on the stalks. Huge flowers like I'd never seen, red as ripe fruit, with centers dusty with bright orange pollen.

There was no sign of Harlow at his place. Well. the Prince of Reds had promised to be a hardier and hungrier breed. I looked at the stand of thick-stemmed, eight foot tall plants, thought of Harlow tweaking at the little leaves just a week before and it just about made me laugh.

So next Thursday I think I'll take a day of rest. Both Cedar Point and Dancerville should be setting fruit and flower any time now. Vickers, round about my place, is a little slow, but in ten days or so it won't matter. We'll all be working together by then, like a real community, all for the common good.

But you know, there's one thing I just can't get off my mind; that day of the tea taking at old Ma Bradley's- the Wondergirls letting themselves be stroked by the old lady, reaching out to her even. Odd trait, most probably wiped out in the next generation. I've got Wondergirls myself of course, as well as the others, and I keep thinking…I dream about this sometimes, though I dream little no, of wading naked through those cool green leaves, carefully of course, I wouldn't be crushing any of them underfoot.

I dream of them reaching out their flower heads to me like a cat offering a velvet ear for scratching. Perhaps tonight, just once and then be done with it, I'll go out there after dark, and hold out my hands to them. Nothing will happen. I know that. But just the once, perhaps I'll try. And then I won't have to think about it anymore.