HI MortalAngel! Sorry it took me so long to unlock this. Thanks for the review!
-Sam
Short Story / Jonah's Garden
The first memories that I have of Jonah are of him working in his garden. Even in my youth he seemed older than you can imagine. When you are younger, the old seem so unreachable … and then you find you’re there yourself.
I have a garden now. Now that I can see my son, John, playing in nature, I’m beginning to feel for my garden. Maybe I’m even beginning to understand. I owe so much to Jonah. When you reach your forties, a sense of ownership becomes incredibly important, but maybe ownership isn’t the right word. I certainly don’t own the garden. It’s more a sense of kinship, but it still feels really good to look at it, and to know that I had a hand in its growth.
My garden awes my neighbor, Mr. Black. Mark Black is older than I am. He’s a grandfather now, with several wonderful grandchildren, but none quite the equal of my John. Mr. Black slaves over his garden. He beats it and beleaguers it with pesticides and fertilizer. He fights it with his hoe. He just doesn’t understand. His approach to the whole operation is constructed like a military attack, and his garden rewards him in kind. His spent, tired soil gives him anemic tomatoes and blighted onions.
In my garden thyme, rosemary, cumin and laurel all grow luxuriantly in the same plot of land, in the same northern latitude and with the same slim rainfall. I don’t even have automatic sprinklers to assist them. That would baffle most botanists. It infuriates Mr. Black, but that is the way of older men in suburbia. They are very prone to petty grievances; sometimes such minor annoyances are they are all they have.
“Nice tomatoes you got there,” he’ll cry out. I know he’s being sarcastic, but he knows every word is true. They are nice tomatoes.
My garden is really quite a marvel, but it’s nothing compared to Jonah’s.
We moved to Kansas when I was about eight years old. It was quite a move, because my parents were New Yorkers. I guess it was hard for them, because New York was all they had ever known. I have to look back kindly for all of the gifts that Kansas brought me. Later, when I went to school back East, I couldn’t help but tell people that I was from New York. Kansas City just seemed so parochial. Looking back, I’m embarrassed at my weakness. Kansas was my home. I can’t even remember New York any more. I’m not sure I could really see New York even then.
I remember Kansas seeming so open. The move was very sudden to me. My family disembarked from the plane and we drove for what seemed like an eternity. I remember peering out the windows of our car and seeing boundless horizons for the first time. The great seas of green and brown that made up the natural world were unlike anything the city had to offer. Even after I had lived there for years, Kansas only grew more mysterious. One minute, it would be sunny and calm, and then in the next, hail the size of golf balls would be ricocheting off of the porch. All of Kansas was magical, but most particularly it was Jonah, always laboring in his garden, that attracted my attention. Something about the elderly always seems intoxicating to children. They’re so different because their experience is inaccessible to the young.
My parents enrolled me in Jesuit school. The Jesuits were very strong in their beliefs about education. Everything I learned from the Jesuits was by the book. Their world was crisp, clean and academic. Everything Jonah taught me was so different.
I made the expected coterie of friends upon arriving in Kansas City. Kids can be very mean to one another, but cruelty is a learned behavior. I arrived before the neighborhood kids had formed their own exclusive cliques, so I was assimilated in to their simple world without too much difficulty.
Jonah lived right next door. If I cast my memory back, I can remember it with alarming clarity, especially the smells. My parents bought a large house, a piece of Americana. If you were to imagine what sort of a house you would buy after moving from forty years of cramped apartments into a quaint and spacious suburb, I think you might get our house just about right. It was a large whitewashed colonial, with two floors and a giant basement. I remember the backyard very well. It was mine, and it was much prized because such space would have been so unimaginable in New York.
My room was in the top floor of the house. I had one of those circular windows that didn’t really open, but rotated on a hinge. My window looked out over Jonah’s garden and it all started there, looking out the window. I had a lot of space upstairs and my friends and I would all come up to build forts and clubhouses out of blankets and sofa cushions. It wasn’t until far later that Jonah taught me how to build a proper tree-house in my own backyard.
The first time that I saw Jonah, he was in his garden. My friend Magnus had come over to spend the night. He was my first friend in Kansas and he stayed one of my closest until the plant moved and his dad had to relocate his family. I think that children would stay together forever if it weren’t for the things their families did, or at least they’d stay together until they became adults themselves.
It was about my second or third week in Kansas City, and I was just getting used to school. I hadn’t seen him yet, so Jonah must have been gone for the first few weeks, although that seems unlike him. He was never away from his garden for long. Maybe I just hadn’t been paying attention and missed him. A stooped old man plodding around in his garden doesn’t hold that much attraction to young boys.
But that night Jonah seemed noticeable indeed. I suspect it must have been a Friday, and early in the fall, at the beginning of the school year. He’d left the floodlights on in his backyard so he could work into the night.
Magnus and I looked out the window and there he was, stooped over the rows, moving incredibly slowly. Slow isn’t in the vocabulary of a child. We needed to do everything with alacrity. Maybe that’s why Jonah’s pace was so fascinating to me. I have to imagine that then, in my eight-year-old body, it would have taken every ounce of my restraint to remain hovering like that for so long over those rows, plucking weeds with my hands and planting seeds with my fingers.
Jonah was bathed in the floodlights, but the rest of the night was black. We could see every crease in his wrinkled face and every little shake of his aging body. Jonah must have been approaching eighty even then, but he seemed even older to my young eyes. It really wasn’t natural for him to be crawling around on all fours at his age, but I was enraptured by the delicacy of his movements. Gentle motion wasn’t something of which I had seen a lot, between New York and my childhood. I think that I was somewhat intimidated.
Magnus felt no such hesitation about approaching the man. He reached out, spun the window open and yelled, “Hey, what are you doing?”
At the time, I didn’t think that Jonah heard. Now I know better. Regardless, he didn’t look up and kept at work. The lingering silence began to scare Magnus, so we both pulled away from the window and crawled into our sleeping bags.
My next encounter with Jonah was later in the fall. Football season had begun and I’d ventured into my backyard with all of my friends to play. My father was looking out the window with a careful eye, but he let us play and learn without interference. I was a small child, but I was quick, so I did mostly receiving and running. I don’t think that I managed to tackle anybody until I was at least twelve. But we were having fun, my friends and I.
The game was children’s football, complete with “Statue of Liberty” plays, laterals and other maneuvers that only seem to work for kids, and even then only for a few years. I was playing quarterback and for a few glorious moments Billy Ketchum was catching all of my passes. I think that maybe if I’d known a bit more, I could have guessed that our success was due far more to Billy than to myself. He went on to play for Notre Dame, first string.
I got very involved in the game and focused on nothing but Billy. I don’t remember when or how Jonah entered his garden, or what it was that he was doing there so late in fall. Now I know I shouldn’t ask questions. He was always there.
I was yelling, “go long,” and I threw a bomb. I couldn’t believe how far it seemed to fly. Billy Ketchum ran wide, right up against the out of bounds of our yard. Then he stopped, as though some force had arrested his movement.
My ball kept on going, a perfect spiral thrown by my little hand. Where else could it land but deep in Jonah’s garden? It hit one of his giant pumpkins with a mellow thud and bounced over to the potatoes. We all looked at each other. I think that my father was watching out from the window, but he wasn’t going to do anything. I suspect he was amused. Now that I’m a father, I understand that a lot better.
Eight kids were standing there and we all looked around. No one wanted to focus on the problem. Meanwhile, Jonah seemed oblivious of us. I didn’t even know his name then, but now I know how deeply Jonah would become involved in his gardening. Even so, I have little doubt that he heard the football. Billy had begun to retreat from the property line in a very subtle way. He looked nervous. All the other kids, including myself, were looking at him, and he was scared. We were scared too.
But the matter was pretty clear-cut. The unspoken consensus was that Billy was off the hook. He’d missed the ball, but we all understood. None of us would have taken those steps into Jonah’s property. It was my ball, my neighbor, my house and I had thrown the errant pass. It was entirely mine to recover.
My watching father didn’t need to hear any conversation to understand either. What needed to happen was very clear. I walked slowly over to the garden. All my friends were staring at me so I couldn’t back down. Even at eight, boys know a lot about ego and a lot about machismo.
I crossed the threshold into Jonah’s garden and immediately I felt as though something happened. I guess I felt a certain calm pass over me, but you couldn’t tell by looking at me. My heart slowed, but my hands were still shaking. I stepped over all sorts of fruits and vegetables to get to my ball. Raddicchio, romaine, fennel, chives, they were just greens and browns then, but now I know all of their names.
Jonah was about fifteen feet to the left of the ball, and the ball was about twenty feet from me. I walked very carefully. It took an eternity for me to reach the ball. Everywhere around me were plants I knew I couldn’t step on. My attention wandered from the vegetation to Jonah. Jonah was still bent over his crop and he was mumbling very softly under his breath. He was wearing a large tan gardening hat and was covered in dirt. It seemed that he was aware of me, even though his hat obscured me from his view. Given my options, I chose to focus on the football.
Jonah’s arrival was very subtle. I had successfully convinced myself that I might recover my ball without actually needing to face him. Even my friends were somehow unable to actually recount the circumstances that brought him from his stooped perch to a position directly between my football and me. But there he was, a great, earthen apparition, towering above me.
Jonah smiled down at me with his crinkled face. He held the ball with a bony arm for me to take. The one vision that stays with me is his eyes. Jonah had the greenest eyes I had ever seen. They paralyzed me. After standing for quite some time captured in this awkward rapport, I reached out, snatched the football and immediately sprinted back to the shelter of my friends.
We hadn’t spoken a word. It would be at least four years before that would happen, although I watched him every day. Never again were my friends and I so bold as to let a toy stray into his yard.
When I turned twelve, I wanted a bicycle very badly, not just any bicycle, but a “ten-speed.” In that era, they had a special cachet. I engaged my parents in the usual rounds of begging and they wouldn’t budge. Ultimately it became clear that I was expected to take some degree of “responsibility.”
For me, responsibility meant a paper route. Considering the amount of travel that I would need to be doing for my job, my parents gave me the bike as an advance. I was delighted, but it didn’t take long to realize the ramifications of my commitment.
The route covered my neighborhood, and one Jonah Ramsey, my neighbor, was the very first subscriber on the route. I was going to need to speak to him eventually, although I did my very best to avoid it. I made him the only flexible stop on my route. Depending on his gardening habits, Jonah Ramsey was the first stop, somewhere in the middle, or even last. I only made it to his door when I knew he was deep in the back of his yard. I’m not sure he even knew he had a paperboy. It must have been as though the paper arrived by magic.
This precarious arrangement only lasted for about a month, until I needed to collect. For collection, the game was the opposite. I had to arrive at a house when the subscriber was in. I saw to it that Jonah Ramsey was the last subscriber that I collected from.
I rang the bell. It wasn’t long until Jonah opened the door, but by then I was shaking. He was still there, exactly as I remembered him from the pumpkin patch. Giant brown splotches ran from his knees to the very bottom of his pants and I noticed the dirt that had collected under his fingernails. He was wearing a straw hat, but I could still see his unbelievably green eyes shining out from under it. All of these things I was prepared for, but I wasn’t ready for his speech.
“Why hello neighbor,” he exclaimed. It was the richest, friendliest voice I had ever heard. I could scarcely believe my ears. ”I suppose I owe you some money for that paper subscription.”
Seven fifty please.”
“Well, why don’t you come in for a snack first?” He held out a lustrous red apple for me to take.
I felt weak as I stepped over the threshold of his door. I took the apple from his hand and bit into it. I don’t think that in the subsequent thirty years, I have ever tasted anything that was its equal. The fruit was utterly succulent.
“Remember the time you lost your football in my garden?” he asked. ”I do. You were frightened of me. I guess sometimes children are like that, but I can tell you’re much older now.”
Later I would learn that was just like Jonah, to come right out with things when someone else wasn’t talking. It really defused the situation. I can’t imagine how much I would know now if Jonah had been as forthright about everything else he knew.
The whims of a child are very simple after all. I was never afraid of Jonah again, although I was always in awe. After that day, I found all sorts of tidbits intended for me. Jonah would carve things and leave fruit for me, but I never got another apple.
He was always there to talk, and occasionally he would teach me something. Jonah fixed my slingshot and explained to me how it worked, but taught me not to use it on living things. When he talked to me about animals, I felt as though I were one, just for a moment. Thirty years later I’m still a vegetarian. Jonah had a way of explaining things that made me feel as though I were a part of the issue. I don’t think he ever told me something that he didn’t understand intuitively, and I know that he was never wrong.
From there, our conversations spread into all manner of nature. Jonah taught me how to tell the age of a tree by counting the number of its rings. He taught me about how to break fossils along their fault lines so that the image inside would be preserved. Occasionally he even ventured into the realms of technology, like explaining how ailerons work on the wings of aircraft. Of course, he wouldn’t have been Jonah if he hadn’t also explained why a bird’s wings work more efficiently. He knew everything and I was always interested. No matter what question I could ask, Jonah could bring it back to nature.
“That’s what science is,” he explained.
Jonah Ramsey is why I’m a scientist today.
As we grew closer, we began to focus on botany more and more. From time to time, I would follow him out into the garden to pluck and savor the best fruit myself. In time, I dropped my paper route and Jonah hired me to help him in the garden. Working with Jonah in the garden was a very different experience than talking to him in his own home. In the garden we barely talked although Jonah mumbled constantly. It was a stark contrast to his eloquent speaking voice.
Jonah explained his personal principals of gardening and put me straight to work. He had me pulling weeds by hand, digging by hand and planting seeds by hand. Everything was done by hand. I don’t think that Jonah owned a single metal implement. We watered heavily and practiced crop rotation. Jonah taught me that different plants use different elements of the soil, so rotation allowed growth without the use of chemical fertilizer. Jonah made certain to return dead plants to the right soil and to dispose of diseased plants immediately. The only fertilizer that he ever used was the occasional animal that died naturally in his yard. Jonah said that living things made the best fertilizers; people were bound to befoul whatever they got their hands on. My neighbor, Mr. Black could have learned quite a lesson from Jonah.
While many gardeners would have spent their time and energy carrying giant bags of chemicals, I spent my energy elsewhere. Jonah had really learned to “know” the plants, or at least that’s how he put it. Most gardeners took the time to treat ailments when their plants began to die, but Jonah would know about problems long before. He watched carefully and taught me how to prevent illness instead of fighting it.
But most of all, he taught me to love the garden. For Jonah, a garden without love and joy was as good as dead. What he was doing, crawling around on all fours and mumbling, was talking to his plants. Nowadays, that seems almost a cliché. Then, it was unheard of.
In those days, when I talked to the garden I was going through the motions. I felt really stupid talking to plants; I was really only talking to myself. It was a lot easier for Jonah because he claimed he could hear the plants talk back. Of course, I didn’t believe him. I did see the results, but I figured that his belief that he could communicate with them was just the eccentricity of an inspired gardener. Now I know better; he loved the garden and the garden loved him too.
One fall, he decided to grow tulips. I was under the impression that they really only grew in Holland. Jonah shrugged off that concern and we had tulips in Kansas in the winter, Jonah and I. Our bulbs had burst through the crust of snow, just because he asked them to. Jonah could grow anything. After that, when my next birthday came around, I asked him if he might be able to grow me a girlfriend. I got a knowing smile and a beautiful walking stick. He told me I might need the cane some day, but that for now, I could probably take care of the girls. Maybe he could have grown me a girlfriend, but I’m glad he didn’t. Jonah was right, as always. Adolescence ran its natural course and the summer went very quickly for Sabrina and me.
That little garden was something incredible when both of us were working on it. It looked amazing. Maybe that was the first time that I noticed how fragile he really was. Jonah was old, but the older he got, the better his garden looked. It was as though he was putting himself into it.
From Jonah I learned so much more than gardening. Jonah helped me with science in high school and was instrumental in my acceptance to college. It must have been hard for him to let me go, but I’m sure that he of all people knew when I was ready to continue growing without his support.
He pushed me away that last summer, telling me that I needed a job that could pay more than gardening. At first I was reluctant to go, but he convinced me that I needed the money for college. Selling clothing at the mall didn’t provide the same satisfaction as digging at his side, but once I arrived at Penn it didn’t take that long for me to forget Jonah. I was busy with the living of life, but I think that his influence remained there in all of my work. Jonah would have wanted it that way. Everything I did absorbed me completely. Compared to the long, slow labor of gardening, my college studies all seemed to move really quickly.
Years later, I returned home one spring to visit my parents. My wife Stephanie and I had just bought our first house in Illinois. I brought her with me to show her the grounds of my childhood and to spend a little bit of time away from Chicago. We’d been trying for so long to conceive a child that the stress was beginning to show on both of us. She wanted one so badly. We both had blue eyes and big imaginations, so we fantasized a lot about our blue-eyed boy, but he never came.
I guess I just felt it necessary to take her back to the root of my childhood. Of course, I saw Jonah again and I introduced Steph to him.
Jonah had become a large part of my childhood lore, and my wife had heard it all. By then, he didn’t seem so frightening; he just seemed frail. Jonah must have been nearly one-hundred by then, but he never would have admitted it to me. He didn’t really look much older than I remembered, but I could see that he wasn’t as spry.
The old man was delighted to see me and we just talked for hours. With Jonah I felt like I understood things again, and not just botany. He taught me so much, even in those few short days as we talked about life, work and living. It seemed as though he even knew what was troubling me, though it remained unspoken. I’d often wondered why Jonah had never married or had children, especially since I knew he would have been an incredible father. Our conversation had come full circle, because I was facing him with the same problem, wondering how to live without children.
Even so, those were good days, back home in the spring. Jonah’s garden was an explosion of bloom, although he seemed to have weakened. We had been there for about two weeks and it was so refreshing. His garden looked lush; he was out there in the sun every day. I was tempted to go out and tell him that perhaps he ought to spend a bit of time indoors, but when I checked, I was surprised to see that he wasn’t out in the garden. The next day we learned from the mailman that he had passed away.
There weren’t very many people at the funeral. It was as though he hadn’t known anyone at all. I guess that I wasn’t altogether surprised when I was charged with scattering his ashes. There was little doubt in my mind where they needed to go.
I walked into Jonah’s garden with his ashes and it was like walking into my childhood. I opened the earthen urn and looked inside. The gray ashes didn’t seem to suit Jonah at all. I let them go and they swirled around me with the wind. They didn’t drop, but floated gently into the dirt of his garden. Looking down at what I had sown, I noticed that the gray of Jonah’s ashes had already become indistinguishable from the rest of the soil. For a moment, I wondered what Jonah would grow.
All the doctors in the world had looked at my wife and me. No matter what tests they gave, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong. No doctor could tell us why we couldn’t have children. Of course, we both blamed ourselves. Stephanie tortured herself with the thought that she was barren, and I did my best to convince her otherwise. At the time, we didn’t know who had the problem, but I’m pretty sure now.
I walked out of Jonah’s garden with the feel of the earth against my bare feet still fresh in my mind. My son John was born nine months later. He has the greenest eyes.
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
MeGgiE reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100%% of the Item
Hey! Sorry I haven’t done this earlier, things got quite busy around here. :) Anyway, I really enjoyed this story. It’s a great character study and very easy to read. It held my interest and I loved the ending. Jonah reminds me of my grandpa. He can get anything to grow and it’s always the best thing I’ve ever tasted! Great job! :)
- add/view comments (1)
DragonQueen reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100%% of the Item
It was pretty good,it kept me all the way through. You are a good writer.
MortalAngel reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100%% of the Item
Yes, I finally get to review this! I’m more for the bloody battle and conflict stories, but I actually enjoyed this quite a bit. I liked how you narrated this. It flowed really well. The only thing I had a small problem with was that I kind of wanted to know a bit more what Jonah’s garden looked like. Other than that I can’t complain at all. You should definately get this published. Thanks for this one! I hope Jonah’s ashes grew something nice (you know, besides the son)!
catwoman reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100%% of the Item
Well done!.. I loved the story… A really touching portrayal of childhood.
There was a real sense of innocence, it was truly evocative
goldenrose reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100%% of the Item
This 808 word review has not been unlocked.
nosebleed reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100%% of the Item
Hey, I really enjoyed this story. It is an interesting and insightful look at childhood, along with the fear, the mentors, the play that turns to work as we grow older and many other aspects that childhood means. Is it based on experience? It is written in a way that almost makes it feel like a memory. The ending was really very good as well, especially how you left it slightly ambiguous so that the reader would have to think about it even after they had read the story. In this way, it leaves a bigger mark on people.
Well done
stephanloy reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100%% of the Item
This 179 word review has not been unlocked.
Curtastrophe reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100%% of the Item
This 638 word review has not been unlocked.
Roland_D reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
I really enjoyed reading this short story. The story flowed very smoothly without many rough packs in the story. I liked how you used short dialog and long narrative through out the story. I just wish you were more descriptive of they way Jonah’s garden look. If working in Jonah’s garden had such a major impact in the characters life, i think the garden should stand out more to the readers. All in all it was a great short story and i think you should get it published. Goodluck on your endeavors.
tstone reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
“My garden awes my neighbor, Mr. Black.”—awkward, maybe: “Mr. Black is in awe of my garden.”
“I know he’s being sarcastic, but he knows every word is true.”—‘sarcastic’ implies saying as true what one knows is not… maybe ‘facetious’ would work better.
“I’m not sure he even knew he had a paperboy… the paper arrived by magic.”—good, subtle comic-relief. some more of this might help keep interest while you set up the main story.
- it was frustrating at first.. the build-up to finally ‘meeting’ jonah. but it served nicely towards putting the reader in the narrator’s young footsteps. once we finally get to hear jonah speak, however, i feel it was rushed. after all the build-up, and finally the release, i wanted a little more from jonah himself… rather than returning immediately to the narration.
”...burst through the crust of snow, just because he asked them to.”—gold.
- great story. a little slow at first, but i was near tears by the end. hope my suggestions are helpful. very publishable w/ some revision.
Showing 1 - 10 of 15
Next →
Review item
Add to favesCreator
Relevant Links
Item Stats
GENERAL
15 Reviews 3 Comments
Version 1
Latest Activity: 8 months ago
REVIEW QUEUE
Appeared in Queue: 105 Times
Skipped: 0 Times
Ratings & Rankings
