In The Desert
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Ambush in the Iceplant
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Writer's Cafe
One minute it is a peaceful morning, quietly sharing the day with a dear friend as we arrange for the gory death of a small rodent. The next moment, the air is split with screams, chaos and carnage. The trap is forgotten. More metallic whirring sounds slash overhead.
"Stay down!" I command
GB is struggling on the ground, grasping his chest, screaming. "Damn! That hurts! What is it? What hit me?"
"Stay down!" I repeat as I crawl over to him.
His eyes are filled with terror as they dart around. Just then, I see it, rising off the ground near GB. Iridescent green and blue, the creature drunkenly wheels around in ever widening circles, then staggers off down the hill, unable to maintain either a straight direction or consistent altitude. GB's eyes are wide open.
"What the hell was that?"
"June Bug," I gasp. "A big one."
"THAT WAS A BUG?"
GB's jaw drops open.
"I was knocked flat by a bug?! I've seen birds smaller than that!"
Actually there are entire varieties of humming birds that are smaller than the June Bugs in my garden. I open my bellowing Buddhist buddy's shirt, and cringe. It hit him straight in the right nipple. It is already beginning to swell.
"DAMN! That really hurts! Did it bite me? Is there a stinger?"
"They don't bite." They don't have to, I think, even as I try to sound reassuring. "Stay calm."
"That damn thing hit me! It must've been doing five, ten miles an hour! What if it had hit me in the eye?"
"They always go for center of mass," I answer grimly.
"Christ A'mighty! DAMN that hurts! I don't mean kind'a sort'a maybe, I mean this hurts! OW!"
GB's eyes search wildly. The metallic whirring starts again. They are coming off the nectarine tree. GB cannot know the carnage they have committed there. He lays back, pressing into the ice plant. He looks at me.
"How long has this been going on?"
I glance around, several more, smaller June Bugs careen overhead, the distinctive metallic whir unmistakable, and loud. "How long have insects had wings?"
GB comes up on one elbow, a hand still massaging his chest. He sputters several times, then finally finds words.
"Well, wha'cha gonna do about it?"
I feel like I'm making excuses.
"When I till I gather thousands of grubs --"
"Thousands?!? Thousand!?!" GB gasps. "Christ A'mighty, I thought Starship Troopers was a campy scifi movie!"
"I set traps in the fruit trees," I go on. "Big red Christmas ornaments smeared with peanut butter. I get hundreds like that."
"Well," he gasps, "isn't there a spray 'r something?"
I blink.
"Well, sure, there's insecticides."
"Then let's do it! I'll buy! Malathion for everyone!"
I gasp.
"GB, this is an organic garden."
"What are ya', some kind'a fanatic? There's kamikaze sumo insects drunkenly wheeling over your garden trying t'ram us. Kill 'em before they kill you! Kill 'em anyway y'can!"
"Calm down, GB." I sigh, look into his terrified eyes. "I don't use any chemical poisons or any chemical fertilizers. I'm struggling to find The Balance. If I spray a pesticide, I kill the good bugs along with the bad."
"For Pity's Sake, kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out!"
I open my mouth, but gasp instead of saying anything.
"Best we get you out'a here," I finally offer.
"Damn straight. I'm gonna get back to my bio-tech lab, where it's safe. Man, this is gonna bruise!"
I sit on the patio, contemplating the morning. I try to rationalize GB's words. He is, after all, a condominium owner, he doesn't even have a lawn, let alone a garden, let alone an organic garden. He is a civilian. When he goes into a garden he sees the tomatoes on the vine, the grapes hanging from their branches. He doesn't see the cut worms, the aphids, the horned tomato creatures I see in my nightmares. Nor does he see the pesticide on the skin of the perfect tomato, the waxed cucumber he buys at the store.
The Woman has brought the Twin Progeny home, the six-year-old still at school. They sit in their high chairs with bowls in front of them. At seven months, they are insisting on using their own spoons. Kellian clumsily works her utensil into the orange mash in the bowl in front of her, spills most of it, finally comes up with a spoonful, proudly shows it to me as she scoops it off the spoon with her free hand and shoves it into her face. Nicholas takes no chances, he scoops up a spoonful, then scoops up a handful, then feeds intermittently from both. A sudden great depression overwhelms me. Why not give up? Why not spray the hell out of everything, buy MiracleGrow and guarantee success? Every season I enter the garden, idealistic dreams of a bountiful pesticide-free harvest in my mind's eye, the food rich and alive beyond even other home gardens, and every harvest having to deal with grim reality, half eaten eggplant and blemished tomatoes. Lay out snail pellets and you never see the mass death you've caused, pick slugs and snails one by one, and you can taste their slimy blood on your soul. I have gone the extra mile. Indeed, I have traveled beyond the parameters of time and distance to battle the Enemy, yet still the Balance eludes me. I still do not understand my adversary.
Better still, why not just give up gardening altogether, let the forces of darkness and Bermuda Grass overrun my fallow fields.
"They really love this pumpkin," the Woman says as our plump children eat ravenously. "Can't even buy pumpkin baby food at the store."
She looks over at me, perhaps she is angry. I haven't slept in our bed for two weeks, staying in the heart of darkness, struggling with whatever beast nature chooses to throw at The Garden. "We're gonna have spaghetti tonight. You gonna be here?"
I grunt and nod.
"Looks like the spaghetti sauce is actually going to last to winter. The romas on schedule?
"Lookin' good," I say, hoping it is so. "End of this month."
"Better get the canning gear ready."
"We may end up straining and freezing them, hold out for the garlic and onion t'come in."
Would Ragu be so awful, I wonder. If I were not a Gardener, I could come home from work, play with my children, sit down in front of the tube and drink beer, watch re-runs of the Simpsons, go to bed, maybe have sex, if I catch the Woman off guard. I would not have to crawl out in the middle of the night and do battle with the Darkness. I look down upon my precious ones. Kellian is my Little Golden Girl, plump round cheeks full of color, long eyelashes. She is reaching up to me with the most curious look of awe. Nicholas, with hair so blond it's white, chucks a glob of pumpkin, smacking his twin sister in the back of the head. She does not notice, she is so affixed on my face. They are beefy, solid kids. She and her brothers have never tasted canned vegetables or commercially processed baby food. I lean down and her gooey fingers start gently touching my nose, my cheeks, sliding toward my chin. I imagine that she thinks she traces the face of God.
I lower my head, first in resignation, then with resolution. I will take up the yoke and return to The Garden. Someday my children will leave to start their own gardens. I pray it will be in flat warm fields with easily available water and good drainage, but even so, how will they know how to build a compost pile and keep it cooking? Who will warn them not to grow potatoes too close to tomatoes, to sprinkle radishes around them to keep down the white flies? Who will tell them about the mass media lies and cover-ups of Dow Chemical and the real danger of pesticides? How will they know the joy of the harvest without having lived the season, know what they reap is what they have sewn? How will they know that eternal vigilance is the price of maggot free nectarines? How can I teach this if I do not live this? And perhaps, just maybe, if I pose the right questions, they will, in their time, find the right answers, the ones that elude me.
My right eye tear duct starts foaming. I sigh and scoop up my camouflaged boonie hat.
"What?" the Woman asks.
"GB's trap just fried a gopher."
"When you come back, will you bring some zucchinis?"
Yes," I say. "I will."
For the children.
