Watermelon Summer (13 page)

The Secret Garden
,
which had been my favorite book between the ages of nine and eleven,
and which I had been flipping through nostalgically when I realized I
was going to be away from home for the first time on my birthday, coming
up in just a few days.  How had Glen known I'd open the book at
all, or that I'd look inside so close to my birthday?  The note
gave me no clue about what my bio-dad had been thinking since it was merely a
typed poem by Walt Whitman without any commentary:

 

 

 

 

 

I had to admit that Whitman's words were brilliant, but what was Glen
trying to say by sharing them with me?  I hadn't the foggiest clue.

 

    "Is Glen ready to meet me yet?" I pressed Arvil, who
had just finished his rundown on my bio-dad's health. 
Apparently, Glen was out of the hospital, although still needing lots of
rest.  But, no, Arvil answered, my father was still being coy about
meeting his youngest daughter.  "Although, if I were you, I
wouldn't let him stew in his own juices for too long," Arvil warned
me.  "Glen doesn't always know what's good for him, and I think you
would be very good for him indeed."

 

    Arvil paused, looking out across our garden as he
shifted mental gears, and I couldn't help being buoyed up at the
admiration in his glance.  "You've done a lot in a few short
weeks," my neighbor said approvingly.  "But I see you've got some deer
damage."

 

    As usual, Arvil struck the nail on the head. 
While my wire-and-stick contraptions had served to keep the chickens
from scratching up my seedlings, the deer were more than happy to
consume any young plants that pushed past the barriers.  Jacob had
told me of two Appalachian remedies for the situation, but I wasn't
willing to give either one a try.  The less-bloodthirsty option
would be to stake a dog in the garden at night; however, Lucy liked sleeping
on the couch in the farmhouse (or, sometimes, outside my tent), and she
seemed too accustomed to her freedom to be chained up.  Which left
shooting the deer, legal if we got a permit from the game warden, but
adamantly opposed by my half-sister.

 

    Instead, Kat and I had been running through a variety
of
home remedies, none of which lasted past the first rain.  (And it
seemed to rain every other day here in the mountains.)  We
tied stinky soap to branches around the boundary of the garden,
sprinkled Dollar-Store cologne on the ground, and even sprayed the
plants with a mixture of garlic, soap, and hot peppers. 
Apparently,
our local deer liked things spicy and were fans of heavy perfumes.

 

    But Arvil had an ace up his sleeve.  "In my
garden, I've been playing with deer-scaring sculptures," he told
me.  And out of his pack came some wire, bamboo, and a length of
plastic pipe.  "We'll just tap into the line from the spring and...."

 

 

 

    "That's ingenious!"

 

    Arvil and I were so engrossed in our bamboo sculpture
that Jacob had walked right up without either of us noticing.  Now
that he'd caught our attention, my eyes were irresistibly drawn to his
face, and out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that Arvil noticed my
attention shift.  Instead of commenting on it, though, he drew
Jacob into our project, and soon the two guys were bouncing ideas off
each other at a rate I couldn't keep up with.  Clearly, Jacob and
Arvil were kindred spirits.

 

    Arvil's original sculpture was a traditional device
he'd found on the internet, consisting of a length of bamboo attached to
a tripod so that when water from the spring filled up one
end of the bamboo, the cane tilted and dumped the load, clanging onto a
rock in the process.  Jacob liked the idea but figured the need
for running water would drastically limit the  number of places we
could rig a deer scarer around the garden.  Instead, he wanted to
use the bamboo-water trick to raise marbles up to a higher level so they
could run through a noisy course around the garden perimeter, losing
altitude at intervals, then ending up back at the base of the deer
scarer, only to be pushed on their way once again by the power of water.

 

    "Or we could even use a solar panel to lift the
marbles up," Arvil suggested.  "I think there are some old solar
yard lights in the shed we could dismantle."

 

    "There're some little motors from broken kitchen
gadgets out there too," Jacob agreed, walking off beside my neighbor
without a glance in my direction.  I should have been miffed at
being ignored, but instead I was just thrilled that
someone
saw Jacob's potential, so I picked up my hoe and got back to work, a smile on my face.

 

 

 

    "What
are
your intentions toward Forsythia?"

 

    Arvil and Jacob had been puttering together in the
shed and garden all afternoon while I dipped in and out of their orbit
at intervals, so it was pure chance that popped me into their presence
in time to hear Arvil's question.  The actor had put on the persona
of an intimidating father for the occasion, which mitigated his words
with a bit of humor, but I was still mortified by Arvil's intrusion into
our relationship (or lack thereof).  Sure, Arvil had warned me
that he was present as a spy for my mother, but did he have to be a
mouthpiece for her too?

 

    The guys were picking through odds and ends of what I
would have called junk, but which they seemed to think was prime
inventing material, when Arvil spoke.  They obviously hadn't
noticed I was there, probably because, although the whole front of the
shed was open to the world, I was hidden by the side wall as I walked
toward them from the house.  Eavesdropping isn't my thing, but I'll
admit that I dawdled a bit on my approach so I could hear what Jacob
would answer if he didn't think I was there.

 

    Unlike me, Jacob seemed to think Arvil had every
right to ask nosy questions.  Rather than hemming and hawing like I
would have if faced with such an overt interrogation, Jacob looked
Arvil right in the eye and replied, "If you're asking me whether I like
her, I do.  A lot.  That's not the only reason I'm working to
save Greensun, but it's a big one.
  But she's older than me...."

 

    "By less than a year," Arvil interjected.

 

    Jacob shrugged.  "Okay, by less than a
year.  But I'm not sure she's interested in dating a
hillbilly.  Thia is going places, and I don't want to be an
anchor."

 

    "Maybe a rudder," Arvil murmured, but motioned for Jacob to keep on talking.

 

    "The way I see it, the ball's in her court," Jacob
continued.  "I don't want to ask her out and make things awkward
for the community if she isn't interested.  She doesn't treat me
any differently than she does Kat, so I've been trying to follow her
lead."

 

    "Ah, the folly of youth," Arvil said, pretending to
be exasperated with Jacob's density.  "You didn't notice the doe
eyes Forsythia has been sending your way all afternoon?  I'll tell
you what, you ask her to go with you to the used bookstore in town, and
if she says no, I'll make sure she thinks you were only asking her to
tag along as a friend.  Her birthday is a week from Thursday, you
know...."

 

    Jacob hadn't known, but as I skipped back toward the
farmhouse, I felt like Arvil had already given me the best birthday
present ever.

 

 

 

    The days before my birthday seemed to expand into
eons.  But even though I was impatient, I still drifted along in a
haze of excited contentment.  Every once in a while, I'd forget
about Arvil's and Jacob's conversation, then it would jolt back into my
memory—Jacob liked me!  The warmth of that knowledge filled me
right down to my toes.

 

    "Earth to Thia," Kat sang, waving a hand in front of
my eyes.  "People are going to start showing up any minute. 
Do you mind taking the sign to tape to the mailbox so they don't get
lost?"

 

    While the rest of us had been working on the garden,
Kat had been planning an event to suck in her city friends, and today
was the big day.  Along with the idea, Kat had also come up with a
flier to plaster the communities closer by, but I doubted we'd see many
local participants.  Below a line drawing of a
tomato plant and above the necessary contact information, Kat's
flier
had proclaimed:

 

 

 

    Jacob had started rolling his eyes before I'd even
finished reading, and I could tell why.  As much as I loved
her, Kat's big-city ways sometimes seemed even more obvious than
my own.  In her old stomping grounds in Knoxville,
words like "permablitz" probably attracted positive attention, but
around here, I suspected folks' initial reaction might be to assume
the word was German for something decidedly nefarious.

 

    "Hmm, the potluck is a good idea," I said while
trying to think of a way to completely rewrite the flier (and add
some non-exclamation-point punctuation) without hurting Kat's
feelings.  Jacob had no such compunction.

 

    "What are we talking about here?" he asked. 
"I thought we were going to invite people interested in Greensun to come and help us expand the garden."

 

    "That's what I wrote!" Kat exclaimed, clearly
stung by Jacob's bluntness.  "Whatever.  You do it," she
added, thrusting the flier into Jacob's hands.

 

    And Jacob did it, focusing on the food and
calling the event an open house instead of a permablitz.  But upon
further reflection, the two of us had opted not to invite our next-door
neighbors, figuring Kat's Knoxville cronies might be too much for their
rural mores to handle.

 

    Which was probably a good thing, since even the cars
turning into our driveway as I attached the sign to the mailbox were out
of the ordinary for rural Kentucky.  Some of the vehicles were shiny hybrids while
others were hand-painted with eye-catching designs.  The last car
to turn down our drive, though, looked more like something Jacob would
drive—an old clunker whose exhaust pipe was tied up with wire.  And that's how I met Carol.