Strangers Among Us

The Weeds and the Wildness-1

THE WEEDS AND THE WILDNESS

Tyler Keevil

“Always this bending process, this landscape gardening to make the mind more attractive.”

—Henry Miller

There are vans driving around the city: large white vans without any markings on the bodywork. I saw the first one last week, can still see it in my mind. The paint was so fresh and bright it hurt my eyes to stare. I was standing in the garden, watering my marigolds, when it drifted by—smooth and silent as a shark. All the windows, including the windscreen, were tinted so the driver appeared as a vague and featureless shadow. It’s hard to say what struck me most—its secretive nature or the predatorial efficiency with which it moved.

In the week since the first one, I’ve seen more and more of the same.

It’s not the same van—it can’t possibly be the same van—but I’m hard-pressed to spot any difference between them. They are all in immaculate, pristine condition: no spots of rust, no dents or grooves or scratches. The face of the driver is always similarly obscured. I never catch them speeding, but neither do they seem unhurried. Rather, they prowl about the streets with identical, mechanical purpose. What that purpose is I can’t possibly say, but their very existence unnerves me. I can’t help but feel as if this is the start of something.

These days, I spend most of my time in the garden—if it can be called a garden. It’s more of a jungle, a thriving tangle of grasses, heathers, evergreens, bulbs, corms, perennials, shrubs, ivies, saplings and flowers. This is the busiest time of year. Bluebells are popping open like tiny firecrackers. A multitude of crocuses, daffodils, tulips, and dog’s tooth violets are coming into blossom—splashing the lawn and beds with paint-box colours. The next phase of perennials is starting to emerge: hot red bleeding hearts and gold-petalled leopard’s banes, alongside the delicate blue and pink wood anemones. My shrubs flower early in the year as well: rhododendrons, magnolias, azaleas—the list goes on and on. Yes, my garden is running rampant. As is the case every spring, complaints come to me in the polite manner of neighbourly concern. They ask me: Would you like to borrow my lawnmower, my trimmer, my pruning sheers? Some even offer to do it for me. Since my retirement, I’ve learned that people in suburbia don’t like things to be too different, too wild.

But that’s their problem, not mine. I see my garden as a form of personal expression. Maintaining such disarray is a full-time occupation. I reserve evenings for my business dealings (I make a small profit selling organic fertilizers and lawn supplies over the internet) but my days are entirely devoted to my plants. With the countless hours I spend among them, feeding and watering, tending and trimming, it has been impossible for me not to notice these vans. So far, they seem content to go about their business, as I go about mine.

I would like to make some enquiries on the block. If I weren’t such a coward, that’s exactly what I’d do. But even the thought of it opens a gaping pit in my stomach, brings a sheen of sweat to my back and a hot, allergenic flush to my cheeks. My garden is my refuge. The notion of venturing out, of interacting and engaging with people, unsettles me. It’s nothing serious. I’m simply more comfortable in my own space, with my plants. I suppose that makes me an eccentric. I’m sure that’s what they call me, anyway, behind my back. What of it? Every neighbourhood needs one. I give them something to talk about over dinner. The eccentric and his garden: wild, unkempt, madcap, bizarre, unmanageable.

Strange how gardens reflect personality. Though I’ve barely exchanged more than a few awkward words with my neighbours in as many years, I feel I know them. I know Mrs. Crenshaw, with her obsessively trimmed lawn and manically pruned hedges—squat and square as slices of frosted cake. I know, too, the young couple on the corner, who neglect their yard for months and then decide to attack it, apropos of nothing, with ferocious zeal. Grass clippings and leaves are left where they’ve fallen, covering a lawn devoid of style, care, or character—like a haircut executed by a drunken barber. And what do I know of Mr. Amonte and his brood? I know the first thing he did, upon moving in across the street, was to drown his yard in a sea of cement. The only lawn he has left is a small plot, about two by six feet, that rests in the centre of the patio like an unkempt and overgrown grave.

The thought of approaching these people, or most of the others, horrifies me.

There is only one yard, one person, on the block that I find interesting. Like myself, Jay is something of an anomaly. A weed. A thirty-something divorceé. Her husband was the gardener, studious and conventional. Since their split, she has taken secret pleasure in allowing his carefully tended beds to run rampant. The lawn hasn’t been cut for months. It’s become a raging meadow, filled with knee-high stalks of grass, dandelion heads, snowdrops, buttercup clusters, and chains of Michalmas daisies. Along the perimeter, fierce japonica shrubs vie with smoke bushes and holly trees for dominance. It is a garden to fall in love with.

I know Jay has gone back to school recently. I see her coming and going, head down, a load of books clutched to her chest. She would be worth talking to, and I’ve had the opportunity on occasion when she’s ordered supplies from me (I offer her a discount). But whenever I deliver she is as reticent and tongue-tied as me. She’s like a furtive jungle animal hiding out amongst all that foliage. Our very similarities make communication between us difficult.

It is impossible to say if she’d understand about the vans.

I’ve developed a system. It is not enough to observe. I must also record, analyze, and assess the nature of the threat posed by these vans. Already I’ve had several breakthroughs. I’ve discovered they come only during the day, during which they pass by no less than two and (so far) no more than five times. There can be no doubt they wish to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Their ultra-quiet engines and alarmingly inconspicuous exteriors are proof enough of that, but today I noticed something far more menacing: the vans have no license plates. Or rather, the plates have been deliberately obscured. They seem to have been coated with some sort of reflective material, which catches the sunlight and cunningly foils any attempt to discern the lettering. There really is no way to differentiate among them. The only reason I can assume I’m seeing numerous vans, rather than the same one over and over, is the sheer number of sightings. They seem to be increasing by the day. Surely it can’t go on like this? Surely—the authorities or somebody—will put a stop to it? We can’t just have these anonymous, impossibly efficient vans cruising up and down the block, the neighbourhood, the city, unchecked. Yet, that’s precisely what seems to be happening.

I jumped just now, at the sound of a distant car. They have me on edge, you see. But night is falling as I write, and with it comes the safety of darkness. At twilight, the grass whispers and the leaves mutter to one another. And the smells! It’s impossible to describe the smells—a perfume of cherry blossom, honeysuckle, and magnolia. I know if I put down my pen and stepped off the porch, if I placed a palm on the dew-wet grass, I’d be able to feel the vibrant hum of nature, flowing like a current. This time belongs to things natural and pure. The thought of one of the vans suddenly appearing is not only abhorrent, but unthinkable.

Disturbing. That is the only word I can think of to describe what I saw today. I was in my garden—carefully pruning my clematis—when I heard the unmistakeable purr of an approaching van. I reached for my notebook (which I always keep at the ready) and jotted down the time, as per my custom. But I was to witness something new. Instead of cruising past, the van began slowing down. I watched in horror as it pulled to a stop in front of Mrs. Crenshaw’s place, and two figures (I hesitate to call them men) clambered out. They wore white jumpsuits, like painter’s coveralls, along with white hats, white gloves, and white boots. Surgeons’ masks muzzled their mouths, and clear plastic safety goggles obscured their eyes. These goggles, like the license plates of their vans, seemed to constantly reflect sunlight, making it impossible to see anything behind the lenses. Petrified, I watched these men open the rear doors of the van and unload a large supply of everyday gardening tools. I found that more alarming than if they had pulled out an arsenal of weapons: machine guns, bazookas, crates of grenades. For they acted as soldiers, and it was this incongruity—between their military manner and the banal nature of their task, which unsettled me most.

The first one slipped a pesticide pack on his back and immediately set to dosing Mrs. Crenshaw’s entire yard, like a marine spraying a flamethrower. Meanwhile, the other turned his motorized trimmer on her privet hedges, shearing the tops and sides with mercenary precision. Last, they attacked the lawn, which was cropped until it resembled a monstrous putting green. The whole incident seemed to occur in fast-motion, as if I were watching a film being played back at twice the normal speed. Before I could make a single note, the tools were disappearing back into the van. One worker slipped behind the wheel while the other deposited something in Mrs. Crenshaw’s mailbox. Then the engine purred to life. Both doors swung shut, scarcely audible. Wheels turned silently on silky-smooth tarmac.

They were gone.

The world slipped back into real-time. The street was quiet, dead, save for the chirruping of a lone blackbird overhead. Nobody else had witnessed the travesty. I was shaken and stunned, almost shell-shocked, but I walked—as casually as possible—over to Mrs. Crenshaw’s, and checked in her mailbox. Within was a quarter sheet of white paper. Plain black letters in a nondescript font read: Your lawn has been serviced. That was all. It was so shockingly absolute I dropped the paper as if it were infected, diseased, contagious. I rushed home, slamming the door and snapping the deadbolt behind me.

In my notebook I wrote: They have stepped up operations.

The rest of the week has proved me right.

Just as the sight of cruising vans became familiar, so too have the sightings of men in white suits. A day doesn’t pass when I fail to spot them, on our block or those nearby, wielding their vast array of weapons: lawnmowers, trimmers, clippers, hedgers, saws, power rakes, edgers, rollers. From daybreak until twilight they are busy, like swarms of ravenous white ants scrambling over the city. They fill clear plastic bags with grass clippings, weeds, twigs, moss, flowers, leaves—anything. Anything that stands in the way of their generic, pristine lawns.

This afternoon I had a harrowing encounter with Mrs. Crenshaw. In the middle of loading sacks of fertilizer on my flatbed for the weekly deliveries, I stood up to find her hovering nearby. Rake-thin, long-limbed, and hook-nosed, she had the look of a wingless, featherless bird. I forced myself to smile, even asked after her health. Perfectly familiar, perfectly friendly, even though all our previous conversations (or altercations) had been based around my unruly lawn encroaching on her pruned paradise.

Yet she had a smile for me, as well. Quite dazed. It matched the look in her eyes: as if she were gazing through me rather than at me. Encouraged by this congeniality, I asked her about the vans, and the men I’d seen. “Oh yes,” she said, her smile broadening. “Them. I hired them, you see? I am weary of my lawn. It is so much easier to let them take care of it.” I pressed her further, asking who ‘they’ were and how she had contacted them. To these queries, she merely waved her hand airily. She’s not quite sure, she told me. Perhaps on the internet, or in the phone book. Perhaps through a friend. It’s even possible, it seemed to her, that she hadn’t hired them at all. But what troubled me most was the dull, glazed expression on her face—like a lobotomy patient. As if she herself, like her lawn, had undergone some kind of treatment. She, oblivious to my suspicions, began to wax enthusiastic about ‘them,’ telling me I should consider hiring them to take care of my own ‘yard problems.’ She said ‘them’ like their service was some kind of a miracle cure, a new drug her doctor had prescribed. Soon it will be the talk of the town, she promised me.