El Jardinero

 My foot tapped to the rhythmic creaks of the ceiling fans as though to some strange, transic song. Like the tick of a grandfather’s clock, the “click, click, squeak... click, click, squeak” of the fans begged attention during the mid-day doldrums, loud it was, as the pulsing blood echos loud in my head at night when insulated by a down pillow. We natives know that the Mississippi heat exposes the drawl of time, tuning it to the ear, just as the drawl of Mississippi’s dialect is tuned to the ear, they being essentially the same, the measures of each played to the sleepy beats of a Delta Summer.

The fans themselves were beautiful, antique, ornate with silver and brass pipings. Their Irish Green canopies sported elegant, golden script too small to make out from below. A single motor hung between them, it’s red, serpentine belt tying them all together. Their spade shaped paddles of rattan were woven like the saw-grass baskets of the black women along the South Biloxi beaches. The paddles themselves were crusted with dusty layers which the slow speed of the fans could not sling off. I thought that if you could up the speed of the blades they might cool the store better and even cleanse themselves in an asthmatic rain of dust and time, whip-saw fashion. Mary-Ellen should know about the dust on those blades, but she would only make me get the ladder and clean them, and who was I to show her anyways, and thus destroy the slow industries of time?

Mary-Ellen was working behind the counter in-between our chess moves. It was her turn now, but she was in no rush to take it. There were no customers and this being the South, there was no hurry. It was hot, so hot that everyone had already found themselves cool spots to wait out the furnace of mid-day. The drug store was our family business. I worked here on occaision for bubble gum cards, or for cowboy movie money. Mary-Ellen, on the other hand, would have worked for no pay, and many times had. Mary-Ellen was smart, and she was good. Her heart was good. She loved the store, and she loved the people who patronized it, most of them the same ones she saw at church on Sundays. She liked being able to help them get well. She liked that they asked her for health, or beauty advice. And she liked that they brought their children in for a grilled cheese sandwich and a root beer float. The store gave Mary-Ellen a purpose. She was very much like Father in that way, and because of it she was well vested in the store’s success, as it made her want her customer’s to come back, and often. She needed them as they needed her. 

Father was good, too. Father was so good, and so well liked, that he had been appointed the Mayor of our little town. As such, he trusted his business to his seventeen year old daughter to run. That trust had proven to be well placed. The town’s people had chosen their Mayor well, and he had chosen his business’ successor well. It was simply good fortune that she also happened to be his own daughter.

The dregs of the sweetened root beer slurped through my straw just as the brass bells tied to the glass entry door tinkled their warnings. Two buzz-cut farm hands in denim pants and chintz shirts pushed rudely into the store, laughing loudly at life’s joke, spanking the afternoon’s quiet as they would a bad dog. Although my distaste for them was immediate my eyes were drawn to them, as they are wont to do when something appears out of place. These boys had leathered, chestnut arms and skin with a fresh, pinkish-red tinting. Theirs was tight skin, weathered like the soil they turned and the soil that stained their clothing, skin like hard, molded clay burned red by the sun. I had the thought that I should get out of the store more, as maybe my skin might bronze just so. Mary-Ellen stepped to the counter to meet them, but sweet, good Mary-Ellen was no match for loud, rough looking boys, they being far different from the usual sort who frequented the store. She showed her trepidation, allowing the boys all of the opening they needed.

The one with the pock-marked face leaned over the counter, whispering something that turned Mary-Ellen white, and turned her away from the bar. She left the counter, hurrying to the stock room while the boys guffawed at one another, proud of their rudeness. Mary-Ellen was a sheltered seventeen, and was unsuited to handle the situation provided by two rough-necks unfamiliar with town ways. These boys hadn’t even bothered to take off their hats when they came inside. Nothing but, “red-necked grits”, was what Grandfather would call them.

I had watched Father throw a drunk out of the store once. It hadn’t looked so hard to do. “You fellas had best go on, ” I stated as matter-of-factly as I could muster. “I know things are a little different in Stone County, but ’round here my Uncle Harmon keeps the peace with a Louisville Slugger. I expect my sister is back there calling Uncle Harmon this very minute.” For effect I took another loud slurp from my float. I had been keeping up on the articles from North Mississippi about Buford Pusser, and on their account I probably carried an over-inflated notion of my uncle the sheriff, but at this point I was still feeling good. “But you do what pleases you.” I did my best to act interested in the chess board on the counter-top in front of me.

I was getting the “look-see” at that point, and they would not be impressed with what they saw, an average sized thirteen year old dressed in mustard colored shorts and hemp sandals, which together revealed my lilly-white legs and feet. Once again Mother had managed to humiliate me even when she was not around. I looked up from the chess board, “Uncle Harmon... that’s ‘Sheriff Harmon Theriolt” (I made sure to emphasize the ‘sheriff’ part) is up to two bus loads on his work gang right now. You boys might just afford him to buy a whole ’nuther bus!” I allowed myself a crooked grin.

“And he’s partial to his niece back there too, Shit-for-Brains!” I gave my atention to the pock-marked one. “Why don’t y’all just go on back to your cotton patch before you get yourselves into trouble?”

Crater-face took a step towards me. I came off of the soda stool quickly, assuming the “Queensbury” position. Crater-face clenched his jaw at that. The closer he got, the bigger and tougher he looked. His neck was square, his rolled sleeves bulging. This was where we were supposed to talk about what we were going to do to one another, and one of us would probably find a way to back out without losing too much face, but then I was a slightly entitled, unexposed rich kid who had never “really” had his ass kicked before. That was about to change.

I had been in a few school yard tussles. Grandfather had given me some tips, so I reasoned that I could hold my own with anybody, but Crater-Face made short work of me, grabbing my “Visit Ship Island” t-shirt with one hand and offering up a ringing slap to the side of my head with the other. The stars did their light show and I heard the ring of the bells. I didn’t remember sitting down on the floor, but there I was. The whole affair lasted seconds only, not really even long enough to call it a fight. In fact, most times my story, when told a few days later, might have become one about a “lucky sucker-punch”, but not this time. This was not a story I wanted to tell at all, it being my first encounter with outright meanness. What surprised me about the whole thing was the ferocity, and the strength in the punch. It had not been the, “shut up, kid” slap one would have expected from an older, larger person. No, that boy had meant to hurt with that slap.

The tinkling bells meant they were gone, but I couldn’t see them go through my watery eyes, so I stayed seated where I had fallen. Mary-Ellen ran to me, concern heavy on her face. I told her to leave me alone, but in truth I wanted her comforting and she seemed to know it, holding tight to me while I sobbed. It was a damned hard lesson I would learn that day, but I did learn it, and I was left a lot more wary of strangers for it. Don’t everybody in this world care a whit about you, or who you are, or even if you are alive to see the sun rise tomorrow. I had been taught my life long, at home, at school, and in church that life is a precious thing, but to some it just ain’t so. I was certain that had we been in an alley instead of inside the store it would have gone much worse for me. It would not have ended with that one vicious slap. I sure believed just then that I was feeling about as low as I could feel. The burn of that slap was stinging me inside and out, but it turns out that there was plenty of time for conditions to worsen. 

He was the gardener, “El Jardinero”, the yard man of Gautier. He had been El Jardinero for as long as I could remember, but he was not an old man. Most of us did not know his name. We never bothered to learn it. El Jardinero was enough for us. When there was heavy yard work to do, mulching, tree removal, ladder work, Mother would send me for him. El Jardinero “kept store” in the alleyway behind our drug store where he ran his “first to come, first to be served” business. Folks from all over drove in to town early when a man was needed in hopes of catching El Jardinero before he took other work for the day. El Jardinero could, and would, do most anything that required a strong back. He was a fixture in Gautier, as important as the mechanic, the undertaker, or the barber. He was also a curiosity, being our only Mexican.

El Jardinero wore knee length dungarees with vertical stripings and a white dress shirt that somehow stayed white through the work and the heat. His head was shaded by a wide brimmed straw hat. He wore sandals until he set in to work, at which time he pulled a worn pair of combat boots from his cart and laced them on, sans socks.

He worked out of a converted handcart, actually a large, wooden pushcart with makeshift bicycle tires holding the contraption aloft as he pulled it behind his rusted Snapper lawn tractor. Inside the cart were the tools of his trade, shears, pruning saws, rakes, edging blades, a fold-up shovel, etc. The tools had accumulated over years, some purchased, some salvaged, some fashioned for odd-jobs long since completed but the tools themselves still useful. Driving down the shaded streets of Gautier his handiwork was visible all around, nearly every yard being made more beautiful by El Jardinero’s presence in our little town.

He was enjoying his siesta as I passed homeward. He lifted his head from its patch of grass and removed the sombrero that covered his face, giving a long look to the red swelling around my eye and cheek.

“Que es esto?” His words were spoken slowly, like a true Mississippian, but were strange to my ears. Curiously though, I knew what it was he asked.

I shook my head. “It ain’t nothing.”

He climbed sleepily onto bare and calloused feet, his sandals arranged neatly on the ground beside his blanket. “No es nada.” It’s not nothing. “Tu padre?”

“No. It was not my father. It was two rednecks. Strangers. They said something rude to Mary-Ellen.”

El Jardinero’s face tightened noticeably at that. A flash-flood of rage filled his eyes, but quickly washed away. I had seen Mary-Ellen many times carry sandwiches, or ice cream through the back door to the lonely Mexican in the alley. Could the charity have been more than the innocent gesture that it seemed at the time? I looked at him again, differently this time, as a potential rival for my sister’s affections. His age was difficult to judge, probably in his mid-thirties? He was not tall, but neither was he short. He wore the striped pants that ended just below his knees and the same wide-brimmed hat that he always wore. His arms and calves were thick with muscle. He had a proud carriage, and devil-may-care eyes. I recalled that fleeting moment when anger had seized his face. Maybe they were not devil-may-care eyes after all. Maybe they were the devil’s own eyes. They were certainly black and deep. That flash of anger had made them appear evil, like in the stories of Old Scratch, or like Kipling’s Kaa.

“Come on now,” I thought to myself. “It is only El Jardinero! He has been around for years! Everyone knows him. He is a good man, and a hard worker.” I tried to convince myself of these things, but the flickering instant had tattooed itself in my memory. I wanted to be home. My safe little world had suddenly become dangerous. People that I had known and had taken for granted, that I had looked down upon even, were exposing unknown and unwanted secrets.

Mary-Ellen had telephoned ahead. Mother had a frozen flank steak waiting at the door when I arrived. The air in the family room was cooled by a window air conditioning unit which hummed its usefulness and progress mightily, it being triumphant over the, “click, click... squeak” of the antique ceiling fans at the store. I sat in the arm chair beneath it, feeling its icy breath on my neck and the icy steak on my cheek. My headache faded. Sleep came with wild dreams of rednecked bullies, angry fists, and Python Kaa eyes hypnotizing and wrapping me in ever-tightening coils.

The sun woke me in my bed. Dusty, slanted beams reached through the window, feeling for my pillow and for my eyelids. From the kitchen hushed tones made it to my ears, but no words. The morning had an unknown, unwanted feel. The knot in my stomach together with my flitting heart told me that something was happening, that something was wrong.

I slipped down the hallway in cotton pajamas, my bare feet noiseless on the carpeted runner that covered all but the edges of the hardwood floor. Father, Mother, and a uniformed, on duty, Uncle Harmon sat at the dining room table hunched over steaming, porcelain cups. Uncle Harmon was speaking, ”... at ‘The Doghouse’, drinking all afternoon, apparently waiting for the store to close. When Mary-Ellen locked up, they were there waiting, ready to pull her into the alley when she walked by. Being strangers in town, they couldn’t have known about El Jardinero.

I ran some checks on him, by-the-way. You ain’t gonna believe this! His real name is Camilo Anche’. Turns out he ain’t even Mexican at all. He’s Argentinian. A henchman of that commie Guevera. Followed Guevera to Cuba, and then back to South America. He dodged the CIA in Columbia and made his way here, hiding in plain sight amongst the enemy capitalists! Crazy, ain’t it?” Uncle Harmon’s excitement was palpable.

Mother, on the other hand, was ashen with shock. “Do you mean to say that the gardener is a communist?”

Uncle Harmon glowed with self-importance. “Ran with that damned Castro himself. Helped him win that revolution down there in Cuba!”

“Forget that, Harmon. Tell us what happened last night?” Father wanted the story, as I did.

Uncle Harmon’s brow furrowed. He was again a serious officer of the law. “Mary-Ellen was some shook up, so her story was a little crazy sounding, but it seems that when those fellas pulled her into the alley El Jardinero was there waiting. He had one of those folding shovels like an infantryman carries. El Jardinero pulled Mary-Ellen away from those boys and then he cut them up something awful with that shovel. The blade was sharpened like a butcher’s knife. It cut deep when Anche’ swung it. He is a very strong man and a trained soldier. He knew where to strike. Those kids were dissected like a science experiment.”

“Who were they? The boys?”

“Hard-cases from up around Laurel, or Ellisville. Been in trouble here and there. Nothing big yet, but they were heading that way.”

“Jesus.” Father was stunned. Things like this just didn’t happen around here. “And he just killed them? Just like that?”

Uncle Harmon leaned into the table, his voice little more than a whisper. “He didn’t just kill them, he hacked them to pieces! One was...”, Uncle Harmon glanced over at Mother as though he had forgotten she was sitting at the table... “well, let’s just say he hacked them up good.”

There was a long silence as everyone, myself included, sought to comprehend. One of my legs was cramping, but I daren’t move. I would die if I was discovered and could hear no more.

“And Mary-Ellen saw it all?”

Uncle Harmon was silent. He leaned back in his chair, his posture supplying the answer.

“Oh, my God.” Father reached across the table for Mother’s hand. “Where is he now, El Jardinero?”

“We’re not sure. He got through our dragnets. He is on foot, though. He cannot have gone far.”

I recalled El Jardinero’s face when I told him how the stranger had accosted Mary-Ellen in the store. His anger had not shown from the blow to my cheek, but from the news of the stranger having spoken to Mary-Ellen. I had not even told him what it was the stranger had said to her. His angry reaction seemed uncalled for coming from someone uninvolved. The riddle’s answer came to me much slower than it should have. El Jardinero was in love with Mary-Ellen!

He was out there now, El Jardinero was, running loose, hiding. Remembering his eyes I was glad I was not the officer sent to catch him. I felt a strong desire to see Mary-Ellen, to validate her presence. Where was she? Was she still in bed? Mother and Father seemed to think so, but I wondered? After all, I now knew a secret! I remembered again the sandwiches, and the colas, and the shared smiles that had seemed so innocent at the time. I had to see her!

The third step had a creak. I stepped lightly over it. She would be gone. I knew she was gone. I was so sure she was gone that I didn’t really need to go see, but I did have to know, didn’t I? I took each step faster than the last, silence seeming less important the higher I climbed. Her room was at the far end of the hall. I raced past the smiling family photos in their pretty frames, a frantic hum in my breast. I stopped at her door, the same door she had painted the beautiful magnolia bloom on just last Summer. I was afraid to open it, afraid she was gone, afraid that she might love a murderer more than she loved Mother and Father, more than she loved the store, and the church, and the town... and more than she loved me.

The door swung upon silent hinges. Sneaking feet padded to her bedside.

She was there! Long curls covered her face and pillow. I brushed them away. She slept quietly after a night of wake and worry, but the dried-up tear tracks striped her cheeks yet.

She had stayed! I shook her easy. Her eyes flared open. She looked at me, her face expressionless, a face that always smiled when it saw me, but not today.

“You are here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you love him?”

She hesitated. “Maybe, before. How did you know?”

“His eyes told me.”

“Yes... his eyes. They always did say too much.”

I climbed into the bed with her, holding her while she slept, glad that she was not out there running, but knowing it had been a close thing. I put my head on her chest, listening to the rhythmic beat of her heart, my foot keeping time with its transic song.