Watermelon Summer (7 page)

 

    "Mammy tried to keep the peace," Arvil was saying,
"But 'fore long, I couldn't keep her happy either.  All my poor
sainted mother ever asked of me was that I dress up in my Sunday
going-to-meeting clothes once a week and come along to church, but soon
religion started feeling like part of the problem.  We were raised
to submit to the will of God, but I wasn't feeling particularly
submissive.  It seemed to me that the the preacher taught us to
listen to the man in charge, and that's why no one talked back to the
coal-mine boss-man."

 

    I could hear the Appalachian mannerisms drop away as
Arvil went on to tell me that he'd worked hard in school, gotten a
scholarship, and left the mountains to go to college.  Even though
he came back, there was no real home to return to.  "My boy cousins
were already working in the mines," Arvil said, "Or at McDonald's if
they were less lucky, and each of my girl cousins seemed to have at
least two babies on her hip.  I was trying to decide whether to cut
my losses and leave the mountains, this time for good, when I met your
father...and Greensun.

 

    "Greensun seemed to be the answer to my
prayers.  Here was a group of people who believed what I believed,
and who were making their own puppy pile.  I was the only one from
around here, but the Greensun folks only laughed at my accent in the way
you tease cousins to make them know they belong.  I hadn't
realized that if you left your family, you weren't leaving the puppy
pile forever, and I was ecstatic."

 

    I was pretty happy myself. 
This
is
what I'd been dreaming about; it was why I'd thrown away my European
adventure to spend the summer at Greensun.  I couldn't resist
nodding along as Arvil told me about the community in its prime.

 

    "I spent a couple of years so in love with the idea
of Greensun that I was 100% happy to never go beyond that mailbox,"
Arvil told me.  "We dug potatoes together in the fall, ate them all
winter, and planted more in the spring.  You've never met him, so
you don't know how magnetic your father's personality is, how he can
pull a dozen people into his dream so we're all drifting right along
with him.  But he can, and we were.

 

    "Eventually, I fell into a part as an extra in a
movie that was being filmed locally.  That seemed like just as much
fun as digging potatoes, so I got an agent and started going to
auditions in Atlanta.  Then I landed a couple of bigger roles where I
spent a week or two on set, and after a while, it seemed like I was
spending half my time away from Appalachia."

 

    You know how the music starts to change in a movie,
and you're sure something bad is going to happen?  Arvil was such a
good storyteller that I could almost hear the ominous tune overlaying
his words.  (No matter what had happened in the past, it was clear
the movie business had worked out for him.)

 

    "Sometimes, when there's a sudden drought after a lot
of rain," Arvil continued, "your potatoes will look perfect on the
outside, but when you cut into them, they're starting to rot out
inside.  That's how Greensun was, although I only caught little
hints of the problems in between my movie trips.  By then, I'd
built this house at the far corner of Greensun to give myself a little
space from the puppy pile...."

 

    "Wait a minute," I interrupted, despite myself.  "You're saying we're on Greensun land now?"

 

    "Not quite, but it once was," Arvil answered. 
"Here, have a cookie to follow that soup."  Which seemed to be his
polite way of saying "Shut up and listen."  So I did.

 

    "By that time, Glen's first wife had left him, and
the rest of Greensun's inhabitants had drifted away.  Glen and I
were the only ones here, which made a sort of sense since we were also the
only ones who'd put any real money into Greensun's infrastructure. 
Your father wanted to start over, to pull in a new set of idealists to
keep him company, but I thought maybe we should go back to basics and
remember what it was that had made Greensun tick in the early
years.  I was starting to wonder if a Greensun-style puppy pile was
even possible, or if we'd all just been swept up in Glen's enthusiasm, like
the way you suspend your disbelief when watching a particularly good movie.

 

    "To cut a long story short, Glen's and my visions
didn't match up.  I ended up buying this one corner of Greensun from your father,
and Glen tried again with a new set of people, and a new wife. 
This time, the rotten core of Greensun erupted much sooner, and I was
glad I'd left when I did.  Because even though it had hurt his
feeling when I bowed out, the little bit of distance between here and
the main house was enough to keep my friendship with Glen alive. 
After a while, I even realized that a friend like your father, who spans
decades of my life, was really what I was looking for when I fell in
love with Greensun in the first place."

 

    We sat in silence for a minute until I was sure the
story was over.  Then I ventured, "So, when you said I'm looking
for Greensun, you meant I'm looking for friendship?"

 

    "Not really," Arvil answered.  "I meant you're looking for something that doesn't exist."

 

 

 

    Both of us needed a little space after that admission
(which might have been more than Arvil originally meant to say), so he
disappeared into his garden and I settled into the guest room.  My
neighbor had warned that Greensun's creek usually takes a day or so to
go down from flood levels, and due to my fainting episode, he really
preferred I not walk back across the log anytime soon.  Arvil had
been given the Mom seal of approval, and he was genuinely excited to
have a house guest, so I told him I'd stay the night and walk back home in
the morning.

 

    I thought I'd take a nap to finish resting up from my
bout of illness, but I couldn't seem to get to sleep, so I ended up
wandering through Arvil's house.  (He'd told me to make myself at
home and seemed to mean it.)  The structure was clearly hand-built
with love, framed with whole trees (the bark removed), and full of
polished wooden shelves lined with contraptions that I suspected had some
sort of ingenious use.  I was riveted by an eight-foot-in-diameter
lemon bush in one sunny window, a few ripe fruits gleaming amid the dark
leaves and hundreds of fragrant flowers heralding fruit to come. 
In the kitchen, honey dripped into a five-gallon bucket from a
stainless-steel vat full of wax in wooden frames.  I snuck a
fingertip full of honey into my mouth and had to close my eyes for a
minute to relish the flavor.

 

    With my tour complete, I wandered outside to see if I
could help Arvil in the garden.  Blueberry bushes arching over my
head were dripping with fruits in all stages of ripeness, and my host
soon set me to work plucking.  A considerable number of berries
ended up in my stomach, but it still didn't take long to fill my bucket
with a gallon of the ripest fruits, at which point we moved on to
weeding a nearly immaculate vegetable patch.

 

    "We didn't really talk about your father," Arvil said
after a while, when the sun and earth had begun to fill my mind with
the pure silence I usually only achieve after a long hike.  But I
wasn't sorry to be interrupted from my reverie, though I was relishing
the peace.  Thinking about my bio-dad was one of the reasons I
hadn't been able to fall asleep this afternoon, so it was good to get my
worries out into the open.

 

    "You said he'd be okay?" I asked tentatively, not
really sure what answer I wanted.  "Is there a way for me to go see
him in the hospital?"

 

    "I'd be glad to take you there anytime you want—I'm
going to visit him soon anyway," Arvil answered, "But I don't
recommend that you come.  Glen can be a bit vain, and I suspect
he'd rather meet you under better circumstances.  He wants to make a
good impression."

 

    I thought of all the crazy notes scattered around
Greensun and almost laughed, but I just hummed noncommittally
instead.  "Okay, I'll wait then, if you think that's the best thing
to do.  If you're going to go see him, though, maybe I could send a
card along with you?"

 

    "Sure," Arvil answered, and we moved from one topic
to another at the same time we moved from the squashes to the tomato
patch.  "Are you thinking of planting a garden while you're here?"
Arvil asked me, about the way Mom asks me if I plan to do my homework—the correct answer is always yes.

 

    I admitted that I'd never grown anything to eat but
thought I might try it.  I didn't add that I was enthralled by the complex
beauty of Arvil's garden and was blown away by the flavor of everything
I'd tasted here so far.  Staying for supper and breakfast was
starting to feel like one of my wisest moves to date.  But, "Do you
think I've got enough time to grow anything before the summer ends?" I
queried.

 

    Arvil did, indeed, think I had enough time. 
Especially if I started with some tomato stems that had drooped to the
ground and rooted—"They should be blooming in a week or two," he
promised—and seeds from the crookneck squash he'd selected as being
the most resistant to the wily squash vine-borer.  Swiss chard
would soon give me leafy greens, and how about some of these ultra-fast
hybrid cucumbers?

 

    Before I knew it, we were back inside, filling
homemade seed packets with this and that, my head once again over-full,
but this time with instructions on planting and days to maturity. 
Arvil also filled a basket with ripe produce for me to take home the
next day, just to tide me over.

 

    "I shouldn't accept all this!" I exclaimed, wanting
the delicious, brilliantly colored food, but not knowing what I could
give Arvil in exchange.  The seeds, especially, seemed like a
fascinating project but also a major gamble.  After all, "I really
might be leaving in early August," I warned him as the bounty began to
overfill my pockets.  "I don't want to waste your seeds."

 

    "Don't worry, I have plenty," Arvil answered. 
That did, indeed, seem to be the case.  It also seemed like my
neighbor had loaded up his seed box primarily from his own garden, and
he soon explained that he'd be harvesting more seeds shortly to refill
his coffers.  "If you want to pay me back, you can come weed
another day and listen to my stories.  You know I love an
audience."

 

    I smiled—being an audience, at least, was
something I did well, even though I had seemed barely more than a
hindrance in the weeding department.  Arvil was able to zip down
four rows in about the same amount of time it took me to pluck the weeds
from one.  "If you're really sure you can spare all this..." I
wavered.

 

    "I'm sure," Arvil answered.  "And, about you
leaving in August—sometimes you have to plant things even if you
don't think you'll get to see the harvest."

 

 

 

    I'm not sure if Arvil meant his statement
figuratively, or whether he was just speaking as a good gardener, but
his words inspired me to turn the last couple of gifted mailbox fruit
into banana bread and to put the treat back in my box the next day along
with a note to Jacob.  Sure, Jacob and I would be living in different
worlds in just a few short weeks, but sometimes you have to plant things even
if you don't think you'll get to see the harvest, right?

 

    After the drama of my first few days in Appalachia, I
was glad to spend the next week getting to know Greensun.  I found
a good-looking spade and a sad-looking rake in the shed and dug up a
little patch of garden by hand.  The soil was loose and dark, and I
suspected I'd discovered a spot that had grown vegetables not too long
before.  I planted all of Glen's seeds and put out the tomato
cuttings, settling them in with with the help of a bucket of water from
the creek.  Within a couple of days, the tomatoes seemed to have
their feet under them and to be visibly growing, while the first seedlings
were popping out of the soil nearby.