Weedwhacking

Weedwhacking
There was a child sitting in the center of the road. Why it was there I do not know. I had thought children of such young age would have parents, moreover parents who would be concerned about their child sitting in a road where they could so easily be hit by a passing car or be kidnapped.

As I looked, the child started singing in a strange language. There is only one language allowed nowadays: English. Languages other than English are no longer taught in any country. But I have not obeyed all the strictures the law has imposed: I noted the language the child sang in was Gaelic.

As I approached the child I caught a glimpse of its face. A little girl. She saw me and ran.

Well, I was not surprised. Many react that way when they look at me, hideous as I am. But I meant no harm. Besides, if she runs home, perhaps I can reprimand these parents who allow their child out so late without chaperone.
But she did not run to parents, but rather to a gutter. She wormed her way through, and I noticed her thinness. Malnutrition, no doubt. I am too large and deformed to fit through any gutter, so I could not pursue her.

After a while I forgot about her. I am old, and a gardener, which requires great physical labor (last week I had to remove weeds nearly as tall as myself). The strains of my days were too great for me to remember much a month in the past.

The day after this I went to work at a very rich, snobbish woman’s home. She sat in her comfortable velvet chair (outside!) and asked me about vegetables. I am not a vegetable farmer. I am a gardener. Most will agree that not many vegetables flower in spring. The woman was perfectly inane, and did not contradict me when I said peas grew white flowers that looked like lilies of the valley. Why do such people exist?

“And what about potatoes? Is it true that they grow eyes? Oh, how gruesome, to have your baked potato spying on you while you eat it. . . .”

“Mmm,” I answered, working on a particularly tough weed to pull out, not really interested in a conversation about potatoes. This went on for perhaps a week, every day she asked me about a different vegetable, and I nearly always answered “mmm."

Then I saw the child again. She was sleeping beneath some of the rosebushes. Despite the thorns, the little girl appeared unrent, untroubled by the prickles. I decided to watch her, wait until she woke up to do anything. What I would do was still unclear to me, but I was thinking something along the lines of food, shelter, and school.

Well, maybe not school. They teach you nothing there anyway, except how to be intelligent and loyal slaves to whoever is lording over you at the moment. I had never enjoyed school, partly because of my deformity, partly because I was smart enough to tell the difference between knowledge and coercion. I had been kicked (quite literally) from my corporate executive job because of this.

The child was stirring. I moved out of sight behind some vines of ivy. She woke, stretched, and looked about. Then she moved silently from her hiding place beneath the thorns. I came out from behind my ivy shelter.

She screamed and ran again, as is to be expected.

All right. I cannot get through to the child by words. Another tack.

From then until the end of the job at that wretched woman’s house, I put food by the rose bushes. Whenever I looked (I checked every hour) the food was gone, though by child, rodent, or bird, I could not say.

Then, the last day of the job (imagine my immense joy) I hid behind the ivy curtain and waited to see if the child claimed the food I had set. There was a snare set there (not a painful one, but it would catch her foot) so that perhaps I might catch this elusive child. She had evoked my interest, and I wanted to learn more of her.

The child came and claimed the food, ate it with gusto. Then, when she moved away from the rose bush, the snare caught her foot.

I moved, and she saw me. She did not scream, but the look of utter dismay in her eyes was enough to break any old man’s heart.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said. I was angered by the roughness of my voice.

She whimpered. “Mommy told me not to get caught. She said I’d get in trouble.” She bit her lower lip, looked about to cry.

“Where is your mommy?” I asked.

“She and daddy got taken. Far, far away. But they told me not to get caught.” Then she did start crying, small sobs that could barely be heard. “And now I’m caught.”

“Listen.” Her head snapped up attentively. “Who took your parents?”

She bit her lip again. “Men with white birds on their jackets. They held a black thing to my head, and it scared me.”

The Peace Corps. Well, that’s not surprising; everyone knows they’re more trouble than they’re worth. But to forcibly remove people from their homes was a little much, even for them.

I sighed. “I think you should come with me.”

The snobbish woman who employed me came out of the house just then. I looked over. “Gardener, oh gardener! The weeds you pulled yesterday are growing! They’re taller than me already! Hurry!”

I muttered curses, turned back to the little girl. She had vanished.

Then I went back to the woman. The weeds were, indeed, growing. Exponentially. There is no product that can do this to a plant. I am sure of it. I grabbed up the weed whacker from my jumble of supplies and started hacking.

But they just grew more, and more, and more, until I was spent, exhausted, in a futile effort to stop the avid, unceasing growth of the plants. The snobbish woman called 911, there was no answer. I threw down my weed whacker in defeat.

I realized instinctively that I had been cut off from help. Or perhaps not me. It could be the child. So these weeds could just be a diversion, show: I do not doubt the government’s ability to create such a growth agent as what I was fighting against. I do not put anything past them.

With the remnants of my strength, I listened for sirens, movement, anything that would give me some knowledge of what this diversion was for. There was a keening sound just out of my hearing (those weed whackers are damn loud), and for a while I did not comprehend what I was hearing.

When I did comprehend, I ran with all speed and purpose to the front yard of the snobbish woman’s house.

There were cars there. Police cars, SWAT, fire department—everything. What the? Then I located the keening sound, the screaming. The little girl had been caught, again, but he felt that this time there would be far more consequences from the police.

I saw the girl running from them, but I knew she wouldn’t get far. Already she had their guns trained on her. Death by firing squad. Not the best way to go, to be sure.

Remember when I called myself ‘hideous’? This is due to a birth defect that left my ribs and back so brittle is was a miracle I had lived. As a result of my deformity, my spine is entirely encased in metal.

Well, they don’t know that, do they? I broke into a run and shielded the girl from the guns just as they fired. When they saw that neither one of us died, they paused in mild surprise.

It was enough. Swinging the girl over my shoulder, I ran as fast as I possibly could past the range of the guns. Where could someone as deformed as I go to hide?

“Hey, mister,” the little girl said. “I know a place you can go.”

Me? “What about you?” I asked.

“I can always outrun those guys. They’re stupid. But you don’t look like you can, mister. So you can hide in the sewer.”

I looked at the nearest sewer opening, and grunted. I could never fit down there in a hundred years.

The little girl saw me look. She said, “There’s one opening that’s really, really huge. I’ll show you.” She slipped from my grasp easy as oil, and then began running like her life depended on it.

We came to a huge opening that undoubtedly linked to the sewers. “See, mister?” she said. “I told you.” Then she turned in the opposite direction and ran. I called after her.

“Yeah, mister?” she asked. She stopped and turned.

“What’s your name?”

She shrugged. “Aislin, I guess. Not really sure anymore.”

“Do you have a last name?”

“Nope. Just Aislin.” She turned and ran, so fast I was impressed. Then I crawled through the sewer and wound up at the other end of the city covered in shit. But at least I had escaped.

The little girl got money somewhere (I have no idea where) and she said, shyly as if she were going to be punished by me for her knowledge, “Daddy said that if you’re ever seen by those guys with the black things, you should change your looks and your name so they can’t find you.”

So I did. I took the money to get the metal casing on my spine straightened out. (A costly and painful job, but I won’t go into details). I shaved my head and started wearing sunglasses. I changed my name to Nathaniel Sador. I got a new job as corporate executive.

I took care of the child, though she had never lived in the same house. I gave her food, blankets, clothes, toys, etc.

They didn’t find us for a long time.

But that’s another story.