Pence Read online

  Chapter IX

  When he came back to the stump at midday Pence marched purposefully over to a white root that swam through the ground like a sea serpent stuck in frozen waters, to a coil of its back that hunched up near the gardener’s knee. He dashed up the root’s cresting spine, sprang into the air with a spry somersault and a high-pitched “Alley-oop!” and landed sprightly on the old man’s leg. He flung his arms wide and bellowed, “Behold, the prodigal son has returned!”

  The gardener did not stir–indeed he looked no more likely than the stump to stretch out and wake up–but his knee did twitch where Pence stood; to the boy, so pithy a spasm was like a wave roiling in a fevered storm. “Avast!” he shouted and dove away, his arms spread like the wings of a gull before he tucked into a ball at the last possible instant.

  Rolling through a smooth landing, Pence popped to his feet with one hand deftly flourishing what appeared to be a makeshift cape: he had looped the stem of a violet-hued velvetleaf around his neck and smushed the end into a crude knot. The tip of the leaf curled up and away behind him, revealing a spidery hint of crimson underneath its veins.

  The old man let out a timbering, ribbed yawn that sounded more like creaking floorboards than any noise a man ought to make. A sleepy tear ran down the side of his walnut nose. “Haven’t missed anything, have I?”

  Pence unhanded his cape and stood up rigidly. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  The gardener cracked an eyelid. “Got yourself a little mantle, have you? Looks like you fell in a rubbish heap, but all right, it’s a good color. Regal.”

  Pence said, “Thank you,” and politely curtsied.

  “Pence, generally young lads prefer to bow instead of curtsey.”

  “I know that,” snapped the boy in defense of his manhood, “but my sunhat will fall off if I bow.”

  “Your sunhat? Is that…? Are you wearing an upside-down moondaisy like a bonnet, boy? That’s not what I meant about gardeners wearing hats… oh, never mind. If you want to flop a flower on your noodle,” the old man sighed, more to himself than to the boy, “who am I to stop you?”

  “You’re nobody to tell me so,” Pence sang merrily.

  The old man began to grumble a response, but thought better of it and instead gave the boy a curt nod.

  From under the canopy of the moondaisy’s petals, Pence flashed his biggest smile. “This baby’s going to make all the difference when I finally go toe-to-toe with the Sun. Just imagine the look on his face,” Pence giggled with rebellious bliss. Then, from behind his back, tucked snug into the topknot of his cape, he violently whipped out what could only be one thing.

  “And don’t forget the sword!” he called up in a tizzy of vanity. He lunged forward, brandishing a sickly, splintered black twig. He parried and thrust, sliced and slashed, icily dispatching hordes of invisible foes with a bloodthirsty snicker.

  “That’s a marvelous ensemble you’ve got yourself there, my boy,” the old man eventually surrendered.

  Pence could not conceal his excitement, nor did he try. “Do you like it? Truly, do you? I knew you would!” He barked a laugh and whirled around twice, showing off the leaf-cape, daisy-bonnet, and twig-sword from every angle. “And the ladies do appreciate a fellow in a smart manteau–always have, always will.”

  “But whatever happened to going as nature intended?” asked the gardener innocently.

  “Yes, excellent question. I suppose I still support as much for the common man, for slouches and layabouts such as yourself,” Pence pontificated, using the black twig as a walking stick while he paced and prattled on, “but it’s simply not good business for a man of aplomb, such as myself, don’t you see? I’m going to be a role-model. People are going to look up to me one day. I’ve got to be vigilant against getting any bad publicity–obviously, I can’t embrace my destiny in the out-and-out raw, if you see what I mean.”

  “Though you were eager enough to embrace as many womenfolk as you could find,” noted the gardener.

  “Fulsomely!” chimed Pence, dipping into a stately curtsey. “People do love a cad. But I can’t very well meet kings without clothes.”

  “Pray you don’t,” the gardener said with a dry snort, “seeing as most kings are nearly as old as I am. That’s a lot of wrinkles, son. Wrinkles in places–”

  “Right,” Pence said with a shudder, “that’s the kind of lingo that scares the ladies away. Old man, if you do see your princess one last time–although good money says she’s just a figment of your delusions–we had better let me do all the talking.” The boy accommodated himself with one last theatrical shudder, then turned around and stalked over to the discarded purple jewel. He pursed his lips and admired his reflection. “She may not want to kiss you, either, when she sees you and smells you and hears that graveyard voice of yours, so I’ll be gallant enough to handle that part of the negotiations on your behalf.”

  Wielding the misshapen twig in both hands, Pence set the blast-ended point upon the jewel’s gleaming surface. “Now, let’s see what this killing machine can really do.” With all his strength he swung the charred-looking weapon up and back over his head. “Forgive me, old bean,” he whispered to his former brain.

  “Pence, you found my finger!” boomed the old man in an instant of revelation.

  Pence released the dismembered digit at the peak of a prolific backswing.

  The gardener flinched as the black stub sailed past his face–a fingertip away from lodging up his nose–and landed on the stump, where it briefly hissed like a candle flame pinched between moist fingers.

  The old man cringed as if expecting cannon fire to sound behind his head, but nothing further came of it. “Never fear, my boy, never fear,” he said a moment later with another elusive wink.

  “Great–now I’m unarmed!” Pence glared at the gardener. “I don’t stand a chance without a worthy sword!”

  “A chance of what?” the old man tried to ask, but the boy was in no mood to be patronized.

  “In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m the size of goat stool! I’m smaller than a peapod! I bet I’m even smaller than your wrinkled, old–”

  “Pence! We are civilized men.”

  Pence kicked the purple jewel. “Ow! Darnation! Who put that there?” He sat down and nursed his foot in misery. “All my wonderful dreams will never come true,” he mourned, “if I can’t threaten, maim, and backstab my way to the top.” Unhanding his foot, he pointed high to the white stump. “There’s no other way; I need my sword; I must get up there. I’ll have to climb your beard. I hope you won’t feel less of a man, if that’s even possible.”

  “Pence, my boy…” the old man chuckled, slowly shaking his head, “Pence… I don’t know quite how to put this…” His voice fell. “There is a symmetry to life, Pence, and the heartseed in your breast is a point of correspondence. This stump is where you were brought to life. But it’s more than that. If you seek to climb it, I believe it will possess you and never let go. I must proscribe, for now…” the old man trailed off, noticing the look of complete confusion on the boy’s face, and switched approaches. “Ah-ha! But I have just the thing for you! How would you like a blade of champion quality, eh? How would you fancy that?”

  Pence’s eyes hastened from the upturned triangle carved in the stump’s edge–to which he had been transfixed–down to the old man’s whittling knife. “I’m listening,” he begrudgingly admitted.

  “Near the garden gate there is a particular slat in our otherwise monotonous fence that has the meagerest sliver spearing out, waist-high. If you find it, and can manage to free it, it will serve you well.”

  Pence jumped up. “I can’t wait any longer! I have to go at once! Why, I’m as giddy as a groom bachelor at bunting time!”

  “I will tell you which path leads to the gate when it is time for you to leave–”

  “But I already left, and just returned,” Pence cut in with a critical laugh. “I had galoots of adventures while you slept like a slug, or have you forg
otten already?”

  “Forgive me if I’m still a bit logy,” said the old man. “And what of your adventures? Were they adequately grand? Any real sockdologers?”

  “I exceeded all expectations, as I had no doubt I would. The feats I accomplished are purely the stuff of legend. No sock-dollars, though,” Pence added glumly. “Are those worth more than regular dollars?”

  “Never mind,” said the old man. “Carry on.”

  Pence waved his arms about passionately while he spoke, highlighting the peaks of his story. Just as he had claimed, there was no end to his resume of bravado: he had conquered anthills, co-invented the cartwheel along with a bit of cottonwood tuft, and raced a snail. He had had a staring contest with the Sun, which he vehemently swore he won because the Sun had cheated and made him look away by making his brain grow too hot. He had seen the shapes of terrifying monsters emerge from the clouds and, by only his willpower and a dash of patience, had caused them to melt away again. He had counted the stars in a single glance, though he felt it was a strange sign that the sum came to zero, excepting the Sun, whom Pence suspected was to blame once again.

  “Pence, sometimes a man’s travels are best relived inside his own head,” said the old man when he could take no more, “kind of like reading a good book.”

  “Hogwash! I’ve got to spread the word. Children around the world are going to aspire to my example, one day.”

  “Well, maybe not a good book…”

  “You don’t like listening to me? Outrageous! What’s wrong with you? This stuff is pure gold! I know what the problem is: those curses must be all up in your head-bones. It’s a shame you’re not as durable as me.” Pence knocked on the side of his head and grinned proudly at the rock-solid thud. “I’ll have a look-see up there for you and straighten everything out. I think I can squeeze in through one of your ears. Probably I’ll need a torch.”

  “My boy, your stories are the grandest in the kingdom. Only think what stories you’ll have to tell after you’ve left the garden! Out the gate, Pence… Beyond the fence, if your heart can bear it.” The old man was deathly still but for a twitch of his left arm at the wrist.

  Pence considered the gardener’s words. “I get it. You don’t want to hear what I saw in some old well–you want a piece of the action, eh? Fantastic, I say!”

  “What you saw in the well?” the gardener echoed in a sudden sort of daze.

  Pence ignored him even while speaking to him just the same. “Where will we go? When do we leave? What will we do in inclement weather? Because I am not standing underneath your butt if it rains.”

  “Impossible… no one can see the bottom of the abyss,” the gardener said doubtfully.

  “Come to think of it,” Pence wondered aloud, studying the old man with an atypical glimpse of deliberation, “can you even walk? You look downright pitiful–that I won’t argue–but it would be plain bad form to ask me to carry you.”

  “Did you really–could you really–see so far?” the gardener asked. “What saw you there?”

  By now, Pence was an old hat at sidestepping the gardener’s questions in favor of his own breadcrumb trail of new ideas. While the old man waited, prayed, and suffered for an answer that only the boy could give, the boy gave his thoughts to no one but himself. Pence pounded one fist into an open palm and shook his head in disapproval–at what, he did not say–before stoically raising his eyes to the sun. “I can’t wait to fetch my new sword. It’s going to be bloody brilliant. I’m going to maim so many–”

  “Wait, wait! Not we, my boy. I walk no more. Every path hereafter is yours alone, all the way full-circle and up to the end. I expect to die where I am, just here. On the bright side, you’ll know right where to find me if you happen to survive your return.”

  This had a punctually sobering effect on the boy. He stopped bouncing from foot to foot. His hands unhinged from one another and his mouth fell into a peculiar shape like a turned-down heart. He stared at the gardener with the bewildered, betrayed eyes of an abandoned animal.

  “Tonight, my boy,” the old man was careful to lock eyes with Pence before he continued, “tonight you will see a thing I myself have not witnessed in a hundred years. What lies beyond the fence? I cannot say, but you–you!–a boy from a potato, you will see it all. You ought to be overjoyed! You ought to be ebullient!”

  Pence’s lip quivered.

  “Oh no, not this,” said the old man. “Anything but this.” He turned his head away, grinding his teeth as if he expected to be battered with ungodly sleet and snow at any moment.

  And Pence began to cry. “You don’t like me! You want me to leave,” he sobbed, every word exploding from his throat like overstuffed water skins bursting apart. “Just when I was starting to think I ought to try to like it here with you!”

  “Pence, Pence, Pence,” smiled the gardener, “courteous to a fault.”

  “So this was your plan all along?” Pence accused the old man venomously. “Is that right, you great bully? To create me, to give me life, to guide me like a father guides a son as I learned the ways of the world? Only to turn around and show me the door? To push me out of the nest? To trust me on my own? How dare you?”

  “Pence, there comes a time in every boy’s life when–”

  “I thought you were my friend!”

  “Well, you do have an unusual way of–”

  “I thought you were my Mother!”

  “We talked about that, boy, I said–”

  “You said you liked my ensemble!”

  “Did I really say that?”

  “But you lied! You lied! Admit it: I’m nothing but a dandy to you! A devilishly handsome dandy! With great taste in capes!” With a final train of anguished wails Pence ran back to his hollow husk, flapping his velvetleaf in busy little waves as he ran. He catapulted himself inside and rolled the whole skin over so his lone portal to the outside world lay flush with the ground.

  “You’re being unreasonable,” the old man urged.

  All was silent for a short time. The gardener shook his head like a gambler whose horse has decided to trot the entire race.

  “Nuts to you!” came the boy’s reply a moment later.

  “Confound it, boy! I never acted this way! How then you? Get a hold of yourself and stop sniveling like a yellow-bellied ninny!”

  Of course, this made Pence cry with far greater motivation. “My belly is yellow, you cavalier horse’s rear! See? I told you so you were cavalier! You big, heartless baritone!”

  The old man closed his eyes to wait. What ancient thoughts swirled through his head then, what lessons of long-forgotten history, no one can say. Such is the mystery of old men.

  The potato rolled over. Pence popped his head out to see why the gardener was not hurrying to apologize to him. “Hey! Aren’t you going to say something?” His voice was decadently bitter. “Hey, you’re not sleeping again, are you? You better not be sleeping!”

  “Think of the adventures you’ll have!” the old man blurted impulsively. “The world is soooo… so much grander than one garden.”

  Pence ducked back out of view and hurriedly flipped the potato face-down again. The crying recommenced.

  “Think of the fortunes to be made!” the old man coaxed.

  Pence seized this opportunity to launch a dizzying new orchestration of howls and moans, wheezing and huffing between every soaked-dry sob.

  “Boy, listen you to me,” the gardener said in his most commanding tone. “Think of the comely ladies.”

  This did the trick. The potato rolled right-side-up and out peeked Pence, smiling as sure as the first time he stepped into the morning. His eyes were stone dry but his voice cracked as he asked, “Why must I leave? Have I turned out a failure?”

  “Tsk tsk, no, Pence. You are an unimaginable success!” The gardener’s wrinkles gathered around his eyes. “Well, except for your hands. Carving out thumbs proved more difficult than I would have guessed.”

  Pence looked closely at hi
s fingers and grinned like a schoolboy with a new slingshot.

  “You’re going to have a hard time picking up anything very small,” said the old man.

  “That’s all right!” Pence replied. “I’ll not concern myself with small things, anyhow. Folks might think I was a sally. Only big things for me from now on.”

  “Sometimes the most important things to concern yourself with are the smallest, Pence.”

  “I disagree, old man. I’ve been small my whole, stinkin’ life. I’m sick of small. You wouldn’t understand.”

  The gardener looked up at the sky in such a way that Pence likewise turned his gaze to the heavens. “Pence, even I am very small. Beyond our fence, here, I am as small in the world as you in this garden. I understand your perspective very well, I think.”

  “If you say so,” said Pence while scratching his hindquarters absentmindedly.

  The gardener’s left arm twitched again, causing the tip of the whittling blade to scratch across the parched dirt path. The boy watched the skittish play of the sharp point on the ground. When he looked up, the gardener was staring a hole through his chest with zealous, bloodshot eyes, the tiny veins therein tinted black of the earth.

  “You really are ate up, aren’t you?” Pence asked nervously, forcing a laugh. “Just, you know, make sure to think things through before you do,” he gulped, “anything brash.”

  With a resinous groan, the gardener shifted his left arm at the shoulder, lifted his elbow, quivering and failing, and slammed his fist into the right side of his body. The unsheathed blade of the whittling knife plunged deep into his chest.