Brief Interruption

“Ding dong.”

“There’s the bloody doorbell,”  I muttered to myself. “Hell!”

I tapped command S on the keyboard and got up to see who was at the door.

“Hi,” said a young man when I opened it. “Ah, yeah. Hi. I was admiring your garden. Well, really my wife was admiring it… and she asked me to to ask you…what was that tree over there in the corner? The big pink one?”

“Oh,” I said, stepping outside. I was wearing my usual winter writing attire. Worn-out hoodie, faded T-shirt, flannel pajama bottoms and fuzzy slippers. The slippers were a Christmas gift from my wife, who I still believe loves me in spite of the slippers. They are truly hideous, but they are warm and comfy. I like to be warm and comfy when I write, or at least my feet do. 

I politely looked to where he was pointing, although I knew without looking which tree he meant. “That’s a Tabebuia tree,” I said.

“A what?” he asked. 

“A Tabebuia tree,” I repeated. He doesn’t look like a gardener, I thought to myself. Not that they have a definite look. Anyone can be a gardener. All around the world, anywhere you go, people tend to gardens. From paupers to kings. But he doesn’t seem to fit the mould. He’s in his mid-thirties, wearing a Yankees baseball cap (backwards), closely trimmed beard, sunglasses and sports clothes.

“Let me write it down for you,“ I offered. 

“Thanks,” he said. Over his shoulder I saw an Audi parked at the curb, with a large dog half hanging out the passenger window, its attention unwavering from its master in the Yankees cap. 

“Sure, no problem,” I replied. “Would you like to see the rest of the garden?”

“Uh, no, not really. I’m late for the links. Golf’s my thing, and I’ve got to drop my dog off at the vet first. Dixie’s her name.”

“Dixie’s your dog’s name?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. 

“Dixie’s your vet’s name, then?” I asked.

“No,” he answered.

“Your wife’s?” I wondered.

“Right,” he answered. “She’s into gardening and wondered what that tree was.”

“The vet?” I asked.

“No,” he answered.

“Your dog?” I asked.

“No.”

“Your wife?” I said.

“Right,” he laughed.

Then I remembered it was Saturday. Probably his day off, and here he was wasting it talking with me. How nice to be a writer, I mused, and work whenever I wanted to, and not work whenever I didn’t want to. 

I hardly realize what day it is anymore. 

Ha! Ha! Some people have been saying that about me for years!

“Yeah,” I agreed. “My wife too. 

“Your wife’s name is Dixie too?” he asked incredulously.

“No!” I laughed. “My wife’s name is Saucy Boy. She’s very proud of her garden and enjoys working in it too, like Dixie does.” 

That was true, her nickname is Saucy Boy and she is an avid gardener. Our garden had even won ‘Yard of the Month’ in the neighborhood more than once, and, like today, complete strangers sometimes knocked on the door to ask what was this plant or that shrub in the front yard.

“Your wife’s name is Saucy Boy?” he asked.

“Uh-huh,” I nodded. “She got that name because she’s saucy, not because she’s a boy.”

Yes, I thought, my wife is saucy. And she loves to work in the garden. It’s one of her favorite things to do. She is curious about life and nature, and takes delight in beauty. I like to work in the garden, too. We have a very nice suburban tropical garden, with many palm trees and some interesting bamboos. The private garden in the back is colorful and cozy and contemplative. 

Over the years my wife and I together have made our garden what it is, achieving more as a team than we ever could as individuals. Sharing the joy of work and the satisfaction of a job well done. And maybe sometimes, as happens when you’re married, disagreeing about what to plant where or when to water it or even why the heck one bothers trying to get along with you in the first place in this blasted Florida heat and humidity!

“Be right back,” I said. I left him there and went to fetch a pencil and paper.

He turned towards the Audi. “Just be a minute girl!” he called to the dog. 

I presume he called to the dog. He’d be pretty stupid if he’d called that out to the car, now wouldn’t he?

“Here ya go,” I said when I returned. I handed him a piece of paper with the name of the tree written on it.

“Well …nice garden,” he said. “Thanks for the info. Dixie’ll love it! See ya.” 

We shook hands, then he turned and walked down the path, pausing to glance at the Tabebuia tree.

His dog was happy at his return, excitedly welcoming him into the car. 

I watched him start his car and drive it to the end of the cul-de-sac, turn around and drive past the house. I like cars and sometimes watching them is a pleasure. As he passed me he waved his thanks. 

I waved back, closed the front door and started towards my office.

Buck and the Hawaiian Maiden

(Auckland, New Zealand, 1970)

Buck and I got stuck-in and cleaned up the offices. 

Me working, him supervising.

With the Auckland Northern Motorway extensions, our depot was growing and we were soon to have our own survey staff. The surveyors were due to start next week, so before that the offices would have to be cleaned up and painted. 

They’d lain unused for years, Buck said. 

I hauled out the junk while Buck rolled and smoked cigarette after cigarette, telling me which junk to put where and what to throw on the bonfire that was always burning in the yard out back by the mounds of gravel and road chip.

I had just been promoted from a laborer digging ditches with the work gangs to a ‘Chainman, Second Class,’ which is a sort of an assistant to the surveyors. 

It was still manual labor, only now, I was promised, with arithmetic.

That ought to make it fun, I thought.

I was sixteen-years-old when I’d started at the depot, where men were men and the work was rough. Buck had taken me under his wing and shown me the ropes. Now, almost a year later, he had become like a profane, kooky old uncle to me.

An uncle always ready with a tall tale. 

We stopped for a smoke and I asked him about a tattoo he had on his forearm. It was a sailor’s tattoo of a hula girl complete with grass skirt and suggestively out-thrust hip, coyly strumming a ukulele which barely hid her magnificent chest. I thought her charming, and a little sexy. The tattoo was faded now, and spotted by little scars and crusts as a man’s arm might accrue over time, but somehow it had not lost its allure. 

“Meet Aolani,” Buck said, glancing down at her. He clenched and unclenched his fist, making her shake and dance.

I settled myself down in anticipation of the coming story.

“I got that tattoo in Honolulu, lad. Before the war. Ever been to Hawaii, Rusty boy?” 

Before I could say yes I had (for the ship that had brought my family to New Zealand from California had docked there) he continued, “Too bad, mate, it’s a beautiful place and the girls are willing!”

Buck removed his glasses and while absentmindedly cleaning them squinted up into the bright summer sky. “I was a sailor on a tramp steamer out of Hong Kong, bound for Suva. Back in thirty-eight. 

“That’s nineteen thirty eight. Blast it all! I’m not that old!” 

I laughed with Buck. He was teased a lot at the depot about his age. Nobody knew how old he really was, but he was older than anyone else at the depot. He’d had an accident many years before that had left him somewhat crippled, so he didn’t go out with the work gangs, but remained behind at the depot making tea for smoko breaks and cleaning up around the place. ‘The tea boy,’ he called himself.

“Anyway,” he continued. “Six days out of Hong Kong, we was shipwrecked. A freak wave from nowhere caught us and over we went! She must’ve been ninety feet tall, that wave!

Buck described the shipwreck, with plenty of exciting details.

“Ever heard the saying about a captain going down with his ship, lad?”

“Sure.” I answered.

“Well, the bloody captain went down with his ship that day, but blast him, he bobbed right back up again!” Buck changed his tone, becoming more reflective. “He was a right bloody bastard, he was. Drunk all the time… We were the most overworked and underfed crew in the East!” 

Buck grimaced in disgust at the memory of the detested captain. 

I hope to god that no one ever grimaces about me like that.

That captain sounded like a real so-and-so, I said.

“Blast it all, lad, watch your blasted language!” replied Buck with a laugh. Buck was secretly delighted with my profanity. Between him and my father-in-law Mick, I was learning a new imprecation or blaspheming insult almost every day.

As the morning wore on, Buck regaled me with Hawaiian tales of love on the beaches and brawls in the bars, complete with grass skirts and the women of loose morals who wore them, a cast of crazy shipwrecked sailors and an older brother out to avenge his sister’s deflowering. 

Buck insisted that the girl in question was vastly experienced and certainly no virgin when he met her, “If she ever bleedin was one!” and painted the brother in extremely comical terms.

“Finally, him and his whole blasted family tracked me down and cornered me! They were going to throw me into a blasted volcano, lad, after first cutting off little Bucky, but I was too quick for ‘em and escaped to tell the tale!” 

I didn’t mind that Buck’s tales were mostly untrue, it was the telling of them I enjoyed.

“Yes mate!” affirmed Buck. “Those island girls had me going like a one-armed paperhanger in a hurricane!” 

After a moment he added, as if to himself;

“Ah, those beautiful brown-skinned island girls.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. My wife Ethne was part Maori, so I understood the allure of a beautiful brown-skinned island girl.

Ending his story, as all fairy tales must, with a moral, Buck finished by saying, “Cut us in half and what do you find, Rusty lad?” 

He paused for effect, then added; 

“We’re all pink inside, mate!”

With that, Buck hobbled off downstairs to start the tea brewing.