May 28, 1998
Humming softly to himself, David Van Driessen gently placed his bag of gardening implements onto the ground and dug out a spade, setting it on the grass beside a few bags of soil and a small collection of seed packets. A car passed by behind him, its exhaust lingering in the air and making David wince at the thought of the harm it was doing to the atmosphere as if he didn't have his own vehicle; granted, he tried to walk when he could, which wasn't very often. Home alone because he'd sent Bradley to pick up a few articles of clothing from the dry cleaner, David was tending to the lawn in relative peace. Since the backyard was bordering on growing into a miniature jungle, David had decided that he would be gardening in the front yard today, so he would have to bear the polluting fumes of passing cars and make sure to play music later for the sake of his plants' health. Taking a few deep breaths while tugging on his work gloves, he reminded himself to relax and focus on how much he'd been looking forward to gardening. The past few days had been busy and he hadn't had enough time to cater to his plants. Aside from the usual duties and long afternoons that came with being a teacher, he had ended up temporarily taking in a mildly injured hen after going on a hike near the edge of town. Although she'd healed very quickly, likely because she was no more than three years old according to Bradley, David had been reluctant to let her loose; aside from having formed a close bond with her, he had rationalized to himself that she would've ended up eaten by a human if not an animal. Unfortunately, Bradley hadn't been as enthusiastic about helping look after the hen and had actually gone to all the effort of putting up "missing chicken" posters all over town yesterday in the hopes that her original owner would come for her. Hardly two hours later, the elderly recluse who tended to unusually prosperous cotton fields a few miles out of town had ended up on their doorstep asking for "Little Miss Honey" because he'd seen Bradley's posters when he'd gone to get groceries; that was the very first time David had ever heard his voice. Apparently, the old man had a small flock and had recently lost one of his best egg-laying hens, which happened to be the exact same hen that David had rescued. Thus, David and Little Miss Honey had been forced to part ways. Now, after a hard day of teaching while struggling with what was probably the onset of empty nest syndrome, David was more than ready to find solace in his familiar gardening routine. As he reached for one of the bags of soil and a rusty pair of scissors that begged to be replaced, he heard footsteps growing louder on the sidewalk behind him.
"Why, hello there, Todd!" David called over his shoulder as he cut open the bag of soil and set the scissors aside. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Have you been making any new friends lately?" Dumping the soil onto the designated patch of lawn he'd be tending to today, David neatly rolled up the empty bag and set it beside the seed packets Bradley had bought him before fully turning to face Todd Ianuzzi, one of his former students. Struggling not to let his smile slip off of his deceptively youthful face as he absent-mindedly shooed a fly away from a nearby gladiolus flower that had just blossomed yesterday, David tried to pretend that his bitterness was optimism. A small part of him insisted that there was no use in trying, though. At some point, he'd stopped hoping as much as he used to and started dreading the inevitable failure of his efforts because no matter how kind he was, he almost always drove away everybody he wanted to help. It was almost as if the more people needed kindness, the more they resented it. Unfortunately, that seemed to apply to nearly half of the students he had ever taught, including Todd. Well, Todd hadn't really seemed to have struggled with anything as bad as some of his other students had, but he'd always been a rather problematic and disobedient student. David, whose personal mission had been to help all of his students better themselves, couldn't help but feel like a failure every single time he saw any of the students he'd never gotten through to, especially when they ended up worse off than before if not unchanged; on the bright side, Todd hadn't really changed very much, clearly still as rebellious and respected as ever. Regardless of whether he would fail or not again, nothing could stop David from wearing that same friendly smile he'd worn for years. He might fail again, the chance was high, but he would at least do so with a smile. As a teacher, David was the one in charge of grading.
"That's none of your business, old man," Todd muttered as he trudged down the sidewalk, his face immediately hardening at the sound of Mr. Van Driessen's irritating voice. Of course the dumb hippie was already interrogating him about the most useless things. What a stupid question. Todd had many friends. He'd always had friends, and a super cool albeit distant uncle to boot. He didn't need to be constantly questioned about everything, especially not by some blatantly insecure teacher trying to make himself feel better by treating everybody else like a charity case or something equally dumb. It was annoying as hell and he didn't have time for that bullshit, especially not when he was this badly hungover; to be fair, the party last night had definitely been worth it. Hungover or not, though, he didn't need to be fussed over by some hippie freak. Todd genuinely liked where he was in life. He liked having a car, booze, and sluts. Really, he had everything he'd ever wanted. He was, as Gina and Slade put it, a real catch. All he wanted right now was to finish walking home since Pork still hadn't brought the car back. Although his anxious half-brother was more than capable of driving, Pork wasn't very good at navigating on his own and could turn a five-minute drive into a twenty-minute tour all over town if he wasn't given directions every few seconds; for some weird reason, he had a nervous tendency to overthink when left to his own devices. Todd, who was much more laid-back and didn't get what the big deal was with the guy always having to overthink everything, still should've known better than to leave his half-brother to get gas on his own. However, everybody else he actually trusted was waiting back at his place because a few of those San Antonio guys with the Spurs logo and certain sets of numbers inked into their necks had come all the way down to Highland for the week so they could finish sorting out a deal originally proposed by one of the uptown Dallas guys; besides, being cooped up in the car had been making him feel sick. On top of all of that, Todd hadn't wanted to run into one of those ugly sissies that never stopped laughing since one of them worked at the gas station now; out of all of the wimps he bullied, he hated those two the most because they always tried to keep following him every single time they crossed paths no matter how many times he beat them up. Todd would rather walk the rest of the way home- which was only about a quarter mile away anyway- than wait around the general vicinity of the gas station and risk having to deal with one of those annoying turds who never seemed to learn a thing no matter how often they were beaten. Sometimes he liked to mess around with them and show them who was the real boss, but his head was being too much of a pain in the ass- well, technically, cranium- for him to deal with their wimpy asses and grating voices today.
"Mm, I'll take that as a yes," David cheerfully replied as his shoulders sagged. "Say, are those new sunglasses? They look good." Oops. That was probably the wrong thing to say. He of all people should've known not to comment on that. Mentally giving himself a D minus, David sheepishly looked back down at the pile of soil on the ground and crouched down to reach for the spade off to his left as Todd stalked away without further comment. Oblivious to the fact that Todd was severely hungover and didn't want to talk about anything at all, David timidly clutched the spade and assumed that he'd driven away his old student by bringing up a supposedly sensitive subject; David had a very, very old habit of worrying about saying or doing anything wrong. Granted, Todd did have a bit of a history with sunglasses. By the time he'd entered high school, he had always worn sunglasses in class and David had never been able to get his student to take them off despite the blatant dress code violation. A few months after first meeting Todd, David had given up entirely on trying to enforce the dress code since the former always seemed to magically go deaf whenever the latter opened his mouth; besides, none of the other teachers cared about the dress code anyway, and although David believed in being the change he wanted to see in the world, it was disheartening for him to do that all on his own. The only time David had ever seen Todd without sunglasses was when Leroy, another troublesome student, had picked another one of those fights that either ended up with a few bloody noses or a whole lot of bruises. However, that time, Leroy had managed to knock Todd's sunglasses off of his face and had taken the opportunity to mock him for having his mother's eyes between punches; unlike in any other fight between the two that David had ever witnessed, Todd's face had been red with pure, unbridled fury.
To this day, David still had no idea what the big fuss had been over Todd's mother nor what Leroy had to do with her, but both students had looked fit to beat each other to death at that moment. In retrospect, David would wonder if there was more he could've done instead of calling his coworker Bradley to help separate the boys and eventually agreeing to have them both sent off to Hope High School in the neighboring town where all of the other difficult students and a ton of juvie kids went, but neither Todd nor Leroy had ever liked David enough to answer any of his questions about algebra in class let alone talk about anything personal like a pair of sunglasses; maybe there really wasn't much more he could've done. Ever since that particular fight, David had decided to avoid talking about Todd's sunglasses entirely. To be fair, that decision was made mainly out of fear because David was notoriously horrible at defending himself in physical altercations, but he still cared about other people's feelings a lot. Yet, no matter how patient or careful David tried to be, he rarely ever felt like he'd done anything substantial for anybody and couldn't help but fear that his efforts were shallow; one of his biggest fears was that he would one day wake up to realize that he'd become one of those fake people who acted nice but were rotten deep down. After all, despite how hard David tried to help people clearly in pain, all he ever did was slip up and say all of the wrong things while being generally useless. David hated being wrong, but a part of him would always believe that his father had been right. Letting his tired smile slip as he tenderly maneuvered the spade through the dirt, he glanced to his right at a pair of bluebonnets that had finally popped up after weeks of pampering the stubborn seeds so they could settle into the soil. He let himself feel a bit proud on behalf of Mother Nature's uncanny but undeniably admirable ability to coax such gorgeous life out of this harsh climate, his own two hands a humble conduit yielding to her power.
"Brad-leeeeeeeeeeeeeey!" David clumsily clambered up the rickety fence bordering Bradley's chicken yard and sat himself right in front of the latter's path, who had been carefully walking down the narrow strip of wood with his arms spread out like a scarecrow to remain balanced. David knew what a scarecrow looked like because he'd dressed up just like one last Halloween and it had been super fun! Making himself as comfortable as he could on the poorly smoothed mesquite wood, which still had bark and thorns in a few spots, David giggled as his new friend leaned backward in shock and nearly fell off. One of the hens peered curiously up at them for a few seconds with her bright orange eyes, and then she turned to chase after a field mouse that had crawled out from behind a forgotten plank of wood on the ground.
"WHA-!" Quickly recovering from having his intense focus interrupted and hastily regaining his balance before he fell into the patch of cacti to his left, Bradley sat down next to David and happily kicked his legs out a few times. He shot a glance at the winding gravel driveway leading to his house, where there was no sign of the Van Driessen family car nor a lingering dust cloud bearing testament to its departure; always excited to see his friend if not wary of his own parents returning to give him something else to work on, there was absolutely no way Bradley could've missed the sound of tires- or heavy adult footsteps- crunching on gravel when he'd trained himself to specifically keep an ear out for that sound alone. All he had heard up to now had been scattered birdsong and the occasional bellow of one of his grandmother's favorite cows- though large, they were such gentle, harmless creatures- drifting over from the shoddy pasture. Nobody had ever snuck up on Bradley like David had done just now.
"Guess what! Guess what! Guess what!" David squirmed in his spot, something he did when he was either anxious or excited. He was probably excited. They'd visited each other outside of school exactly eight times by now- David was very good at counting, Mrs. Higgins said so and teachers were always right- and he had decided to pay Bradley a surprise visit today. In his friend's eyes, David must have been very excited about something to show up unannounced, but that wasn't exactly the case. Since his mommy had been out of town for the past week to visit a sick uncle in Arkansas with no signs of coming back anytime soon and his older brother Tom was always busy playing all sorts of sports or talking to the other big kids after school, David knew that he'd be home alone whenever his father came back from work, and that wouldn't be very fun; his father usually made him feel sad. David would rather spend his free time with his new friend Bradley instead!
"Whaaaaaat, what is it?" Much more at ease and slightly annoyed- but not that annoyed- now that he knew that it was only David, Bradley tore his eyes away from the gravel driveway, though there was an inkling of doubt in the back of his head that made him feel uneasy. David, who still hadn't gotten his own bicycle yet but insisted that he would get one for Christmas so he could race Bradley on the streets next year, didn't exactly live within walking distance. In fact, his neighborhood was about four miles away from Bradley's ranch; neither boy was aware of the exact distance between their homes at this age, but they knew that they couldn't really just walk to each other's houses. A distance spanning what equated to at least four miles was a very long way for a first grader to walk just to visit a friend on a whim.
"I saw bluebonnets today! I saw them on my way back from school!" Cramming a hand into one of his back pockets, David tugged out a few bluebonnets he'd impulsively picked on his walk home from school and shoved them onto Bradley's lap, hoping the latter wouldn't be mad about the surprise visit if he got a gift; his father wasn't very fond of his surprises, so David had learned to be careful about who he surprised. Although Bradley seemed fairly relaxed, David was still a little bit nervous since he wasn't exactly sure if his friend actually liked surprises that much. What if Bradley was just pretending to be nice for now? What if he was going to get mad later? What if Bradley, the only person he could count on right now, would turn out to be just like his father? What would he do? Where would he go? Despite his worries, David calmed down a bit as he glanced at the chickens, who seemed to be somewhat interested in his surprise visit; upon his arrival, they'd all poked their heads out of the patches of grass they were pecking at to blink at him with their curious little eyes while Bradley had been busy balancing on the fence, their wings held apart from their bodies as they lightly panted in the spring heat. Now, as David nervously squirmed in his seat, his mouth subtly dropped as he squinted at the panting chickens standing in the small tubs of water to cool their feet and realized that they had tongues; he'd never even imagined that being a possibility. Chickens had tongues, just like people. That was pretty weird, did they have teeth too? His eyes lit up in utter fascination and he leaned forward to get a better look at their open beaks, any residual anxiety gone for the moment.
"Bluebonnets? That's it?" Bradley furrowed his brow and reluctantly picked up the flowers in his lap, which were warm and slightly sweaty. David did like flowers a lot, but surely he hadn't walked all the way over here just to talk about flowers, had he? Well, that actually wasn't entirely out of the question; David liked flowers very much and probably would go to great lengths to talk about them. In fact, the longer Bradley thought about it, the more likely it seemed that David really had walked all the way over here for some weird reason, even if it was just to talk about flowers; there was no sign a car had ever driven up, and David definitely didn't have his very own bicycle. Although Bradley didn't really know what miles were yet, he could tell that there was a difference between biking and walking since it took him forever to walk down the driveway and back- a round trip that covered about three quarters of a mile- to get the Sunday paper whereas it only took what felt like a few seconds when he rode his bike. He could only imagine how long those minutes he spent riding his bike to David's house would've stretched out if he had gone on foot instead. Not wanting to believe that his friend had walked all the way here because the thought made his own feet ache, Bradley chose not to question how David had arrived. He was just happy that they were going to play today!
"Yeah, that's it, bluebonnets. What's wrong with that? My mommy says they stand for Texas and, um, pride and… uhh… mm, what was it again… oh, yeah, ad-mir-a-tion!" After carefully sounding out the big word with surprisingly accurate pronunciation, David looked up from the waddling chickens and beamed at Bradley, very happy that he'd been able to remember what bluebonnets meant long enough to tell his friend something new. Earlier, David had randomly decided to pick the flowers for his mommy so she could plant them in her garden, but then he'd remembered that she was still out of town, so he'd ended up saving them for his friend as a gift or apology for being bothersome. Still, he hoped that Bradley would like the flowers half as much as his mommy would have. His mommy loved flowers and she liked to teach him all about them. She taught him what they looked like, how to take care of them, and what they stood for; that also meant that he usually ended up learning lots of big new words he'd never heard before, like admiration. His mommy loved flowers and David loved flowers too, but he loved his mommy more. Sometimes he wasn't sure if his mommy loved him as much as she loved spending time with flowers, though, but it was okay because she was always nice to him. David liked it a lot when people were nice to him because it made him feel loved!
"What's admuh… admerr… uh, that last part?" Bradley scratched at a freshly formed mosquito bite between his shoulder blades- this was why his mama always nagged him to wear a coat even when it was hot outside, though he never listened- with one hand and set the bluebonnets off to the side with his other hand, making sure not to place the flowers on any spots with thorns. There weren't that many thorny spots and the section of the fence he was sitting on right now actually didn't have any bark at all, but it was a well-formed habit like shaking shoes to get rid of scorpions before putting them on; sitting on a mesquite branch's thorns was just as bad as sitting on a cactus, maybe even worse if it was covered in ants. As Bradley scratched at the mosquito bite, one of the hens flew up- the roosters were too fat and busy fighting each other to fly- and perched atop the fence beside the flowers, curiously poking at them with her beak. Bradley shooed her away with a wave of his hand and returned his focus to David, who had leaned so far forward to stare at the chickens that he looked like he could fall over the edge of the fence at any moment.
"Hey!" David's hands flew up in shock as he felt himself get pulled backward by his shirt collar. Rapidly clamping his hands back down onto the rough wood to secure himself, he turned to look at Bradley with a nearly petrified stare, who promptly let go. Meanwhile, the cows out in the fields continued grazing without a care in the world, an occasional bellow serenely drifting through humid air that faintly smelled like cow patties.
"You were gonna fall," Bradley stated bluntly as he gripped the worn wood to also steady himself, his sharp, matter-of-fact tone dissuading the potential comeback in David's throat. His voice had taken on a noticeably stern edge that could intimidate third graders. Unlike David, who probably apologized for breathing, Bradley was stubbornly unapologetic with a strong sense of conviction despite barely being able to do addition with double digit numbers. Despite being bad at a lot of things, he had a natural air of authority.
"Oh, um, sorry," David mumbled as he sullenly looked down at a young red hen, who was inspecting his shoes. He'd barely been here for a few minutes and he was already in trouble. He should've just stayed home instead of walking for what felt like forever only to get in trouble again. He didn't like to get in trouble, but if he had to, he would rather get in trouble at home because at least he could play with his toys afterward. He didn't know if Bradley had any toys. Bradley always said that he only played outdoors. David liked to play outdoors too, but he preferred to play inside when the sun got too hot like right now. He really wanted his toys right now. He was in trouble and he wanted his toys, but his feet hurt and he didn't want to go home.
"Oh, no, no, no, you're not gonna cry," Bradley commanded in a slightly nervous tone as soon as he'd noticed the way David's face had scrunched up. The former had made lots of kids at school cry before- including the big kids- so he was well accustomed to the warning signs of an oncoming tantrum. Bradley had no idea why his friend was crying, though, but he needed to get him to stop as soon as possible. Kids who got caught making other kids cry always got punished, and he really didn't want his mama or papa to find him like this; for some reason, grown-ups never seemed to get in trouble for making kids cry, but that was a different problem for a different day. Right now, Bradley didn't want to be punished because his friend had suddenly decided to start crying for no reason, but he didn't know how to get him to stop. In fact, David, who was amazingly well-behaved in school and emotionally composed even when he got pidry clcked on by the big kids, was currently wailing loud enough to make every single living creature on the ranch stop and stare despite Bradley repeatedly instructing him to stop.
"I can't- I can't st- I can't stop," David finally choked out after about three minutes of sobbing into his hands while Bradley had awkwardly stared at the bluebonnets sitting beside him. Bradley hadn't wanted to stare at David while he was crying, but he hadn't wanted to leave his friend all alone, either. Although David was aware of just how obvious it was that he was crying, he kept his face hidden in his hands anyway, and not necessarily just out of embarrassment; hiding his tears was a staunch habit that he wouldn't break until he was 28 years old and living in his very own house bought with his very own money. Then, David finally lifted his head out of his hands and set his eyes on a hen happily drinking water while absently wiping at his face with a trembling hand, not saying anything.
"What, what'd I do? What'd I do this time?" Disregarding how red David's face was, Bradley nervously tapped on the wood below his fingers and tried not to panic even though his friend had slowly managed to stop crying. Bradley knew that his mama and papa were taking some uniforms to the local dry cleaner in preparation for Memorial Day next week, so they definitely wouldn't be home anytime soon, but he was still kind of worried that they might come back early and get mad at him for having a guest over without permission; he wasn't sure if they would get mad at David too, but he didn't want to think about that. What bothered him more, however, was that he had no idea what he'd done to make David cry in the first place. He'd never made David cry before. He didn't want to accidentally make his only friend cry again in the future. He wanted to keep his friend, not scare him away. Being alone wouldn't be very fun.
"N-nothing," David quietly said with a discreet quiver still in his voice, watching a nearby gang of chickens mill about as if nothing had happened. He didn't really know why he'd cried since he was usually very good at being on his best behavior, especially in front of his friend of all people, but it was okay since he wasn't crying anymore. All that mattered was that he'd stopped crying. Now he could focus on trying to be happy again. He tried to smile at the small black hen who had waddled over to join the little red hen in pecking at his shoes.
"Is it bee-cause of your flowers? I didn't mean to, uhh, not know the words." That was the only thing Bradley could come up with as a possible explanation for the unexpected meltdown. Maybe David just wanted a smarter, nicer friend who could understand things better. The thought made Bradley feel kind of jealous, but he knew that it was probably true.
"What?" David's voice had completely mellowed out by now, his eyes drifting away from the chickens to the bluebonnets on the fence. "The flow- oh, you mean the bluebonnets. No, no. It's okay, and, um, ad-mir-a-tion is when you, mmm, like someone so much that you, mmm, what was it, oh, that you wanna be like them. You know, like a mom- mother , or, um, the person who drives the ice cream truck. So, the bluebonnets, the bluebonnets mean, um, pride, and Texas, and, um, ad-mir-a-tion."
"Why?" Bradley asked. Flowers were just things that grew out of the ground. They weren't anything special.
"Why not?" David contested. Flowers were things that could spring to life out of something as plain as dirt. They were miracles.
"Well, uhhh, isn't that for people?" Waving away a fly, Bradley picked up the limp bluebonnets and held them up in front of his face to get a better view. Naturally, he was taking this a bit too literally.
"What? What do you mean?" David couldn't tell if he felt confused or frustrated. Maybe he felt both. Had Bradley even listened to a single word he had said?
"Pride and ad… uh, the big word, isn't that for people?" Bradley inspected the slightly smushed petals and how the colors looked in the sunlight; he rarely had time to notice little things like that. "Bee-cause, uh, well, I guess flowers can live in Texas too, bee-cause they grow here, but they don't feel proud or, uh, the other thing. People do."
"Wh- m'kay, that's not the point," David said, not knowing how to respond to that. Bradley wasn't exactly wrong, but he was also kind of missing the point.
"Then what is the point?" Bradley argued, loosening his grip and letting the flowers fall into his lap.
"Umm, well, flowers mean things, and, mmm, you can give flowers to people to tell them things," David shyly replied. What little confidence he normally had almost always disappeared whenever he got into arguments, especially with somebody as self-assured as Bradley.
"Uh, then why don't you just tell people stuff? Y'know, by talking?" Bradley didn't understand why everything had to be so complicated.
"Umm, maybe because people lie," David said. He wasn't exactly sure as to why that had been the first thing to come to mind, but he did have a point. People did lie.
"Oh, yeah? What if flowers lie, too?" Bradley poked at one of the petals in his lap, surprised yet again at how patient David was. Every single time they argued, David never seemed to get overly upset. Most other kids their age would've yelled or thrown a fit by now.
"I… um, I don't think flowers lie," David said, glancing at the bluebonnets on Bradley's lap before meeting his eyes. "They don't have anything to lie about."
"Uhh…" Unable to think of a decent comeback, Bradley gave up and nodded along, also maintaining eye contact while fidgeting with the flowers on his lap. For a moment, he silently questioned why he hadn't thrown the flowers onto the ground yet. The chickens would've liked the flowers more than he ever would.
Both boys flinched slightly when the gentle lull in conversation was abruptly interrupted by one of the roosters letting out what could only be described as a battle cry. As the young rooster ran off to torment the local insect population, David's eyes widened as he turned his head and caught sight of a brown cow nursing her calf out in the pasture. Before Bradley had a chance to share his thoughts on cows- he wasn't an expert on the subject, but he had a fair amount of firsthand experience- David promptly started an argument over whether cows made chocolate milk or plain milk, an unsettled debate that had originated from a very serious lunchtime quarrel about brown cows during the school day. Bradley conveniently forgot what he was originally going to share and eagerly bickered in tandem, bluebonnets still on his lap.
Turning away from the bluebonnets and closing his eyes for a moment to savor Mother Nature's stiff but stubbornly present breeze, David set the spade down as he imagined himself sitting on a cloud in the middle of a bright, benevolent sky where the birds sang freely; it was a very old habit that he'd formed way back when he was a little kid stuck in a cramped house where his father's footsteps echoed. In his head, clouds were soft and gentle. In his head, birds were free to sing as loud as they wanted. In his head, the sun chased away every lingering shadow. In his head, David could have whatever he wanted. Even if the outside world was rough or cruel, he had his very own special place where everything was gentle and kind. David had always tried to be nice to everybody because he liked it a lot when people were nice to him, but when nobody wanted to be nice to him, he had learned to be nice to himself. He knew that he couldn't realistically hope that most people would be nice to him, but he couldn't let himself get hurt all of the time, either. That was why he had a special place in his head, just for himself. Unlike nearly everybody else in this town, David persisted in believing that peaceful demonstrations of mindfulness and love were the best weapons against hardship.
Opening his eyes, he assessed the seed packets nestled in the grass nearby with a gentle but critical eye, serenely contemplating what to plant first. He had a few new packets of seeds to work with thanks to Bradley's trip to the store a few days ago. Following a heated discussion about why bringing dead animals into the house for the sole purpose of consumption was unacceptable, David had sent Bradley to return a bag of dead mealworms and find something proper for Little Miss Honey during her stay. Despite complaining about how ridiculous the entire situation was, Bradley had ended up going to the store- albeit with a glare that had nearly made the pair of cashiers at the checkout wet their pants- and had bought fruit for the hen as well as a generous handful of random flower seeds for David as some sort of unspoken apology; Bradley was severely incapable of sincerely expressing himself with words, but he still had something that beat in his chest. Even though they'd always argued a lot ever since they'd first met, they still somehow almost always managed to get along.
Shuffling through the packets as if they were his aunts' tarot cards, David let out a deep breath. He couldn't pick what to plant first. Leaning back on the heels of his sandals, he idly studied the thoughtful arrangements of colorful rocks that had been collected over the years. Although most of the rocks were in the backyard where the rest of the plants were, David had made sure to place some of the rocks in the front yard. He personally preferred flowers, but these rocks were still special. When he was a kid, his mother, the only beatnik in this tiny town, used to have a garden in the front yard because the backyard gave way to a patch of woods; the garden was small but full of life, rife with flourishing plants and insects. Whenever Bradley had come over to play and got tired of being indoors, David brought him out to play in that garden, even if it was hot outside; over time, David had taught himself to become more and more comfortable outdoors so he could spend more time with his friend. One day, Bradley had brought expired acrylic paint to their playdate and painted little faces on two of the rocks in the garden. At first, David had been terrified that they'd get in trouble and had tried to turn the rocks upside down, but his mother had found out before he had a chance to do that. Luckily, she had been very pleased with what had happened to her rocks and encouraged them to paint more, even going so far as to buy them new acrylic paint. So, they did. Ever since that day, David joined Bradley in painting every single rock in that garden and anywhere else that suited their creative needs; they even tried to paint some of the rocks on Bradley's ranch when they could get a chance. Faces, animals, patterns, or mishmashes of color, they painted anything and everything they could think of on rocks. They painted together for years.
Time had passed and Bradley had stopped painting on rocks as much as he used to. Eventually, he'd stopped painting entirely, too busy playing sports, helping run his family's cattle ranch, or working one of his part-time jobs to spend much time with David. Despite having other friends, David had felt lonely. So, when he had begun attending classes at his community college and saving up for his own house after Bradley had left to work on an alleged construction project, David had collected and packed up every single rock with so much as a single speck of paint. For years, those rocks had sat in crates and boxes, sitting untouched and collecting dust. Then, they'd finally been unearthed when David had successfully moved into his very own house bought with his very own money. To finish moving in, he'd neatly arranged those rocks in the backyard and front yard. His home simply wouldn't have felt complete without those rocks. Even now, those rocks were as vital to his home as the roof over his head was. Tracing the faded outline of what a once-innocent Bradley had claimed was a cow decades ago, David pulled his hand back from the rock and tried to focus on what he would plant first. After a few more seconds of careful consideration even though it didn't actually make a difference as to what he planted first, he made up his mind and settled on a packet of seeds that promised to grow into white gardenias.
"Hello there, I brought you something," David said, offering a box full of wooden beads to the two young women in front of him. He'd accepted that these particular beads would never be put to use. Bradley had been gone for a long time now. Two whole years. David couldn't help but wonder if that "construction project" was something else, like maybe an affair or possibly even incarceration for who knows what. Sometimes he even went so far as to wonder if Bradley had gone to war. David felt bad for questioning his friend, but he couldn't get rid of the incessant doubts rushing through his head. He tried to take his mind off of the matter by smoking weed when the Xanax his mother urged him to take didn't kick in- probably because Xanax wasn't organic- and spending even more time with his other friends between studies, which wasn't that much of a change anyway since Bradley had visited less and less every year before completely disappearing; his friend had never been the same ever since his grandmother had died beneath the hooves of what had once been considered gentle, harmless creatures, but then again, very few people ever did learn that there was no such thing as pure innocence. Naturally, Bradley and David had still exchanged letters, but that wasn't nearly enough for the latter. A horrible thing in the back of his head warned that even the letters would stop one day. David needed to see his friend, hear his friend, maybe even touch his shirt or hand, but Bradley simply wasn't here, so his other friends would have to suffice. Besides, his other friends were nice and sociable. They liked to read and garden. They showed him how to make good yet affordable vegetarian meals. They protested the war with him. They taught him how to make biodegradable love beads out of leftover wood from the community college's wood shop and how to decorate them with homemade paint. They gave him advice on what to wear. They helped him build up enough confidence to practice giving speeches to crowds so that he would be prepared to give lectures in front of classes by the time he finally became a teacher. They recommended what types of music records he should add to his collection and what songs to add to his 8-track tape. They were always very open about their feelings and encouraged David to express himself more. They helped him buy and decorate his very own van. They were never too busy to visit him. They were nothing like Bradley. Having friends like that should've made David happier than ever before, but they didn't. They really didn't. They'd changed his life in a whole lot of really good ways and made sure he never felt alone, but they'd never been able to fully get through to him. Just like many of his future students, David had unknowingly closed off a part of himself that nobody would ever get to see. It was the part of him that stayed up late every night, no matter how tired or down he felt, to carefully carve love beads regardless of how much he hated getting splinters just so he could pretend that those beads would be worn around his best friend Bradley's neck one day.
"The hell is that?" Shirley Beavis said, sticking a hand-me-down sewing needle into the wooden armrest of the patio bench she was currently sharing with her lifelong companion Judy Head. Pinching Judy's shoulder to rouse her out of her hungover stupor, Shirley looked up at that no-good hippie neighbor from the ugly white dress she'd been inexpertly working on despite being a little tipsy herself; she was trying to make a wedding dress for Judy. Now that both young women were finally 18, they could do whatever they wanted, like dropping out of their senior year of high school to watch movies all day and look for potential husbands who would treat them well. Currently, both young women were squatting in an abandoned house since the local cops were too busy harassing teen drivers who had the misfortune to go two miles over the speed limit to do jack shit about the whole "no trespassing on private property" deal, but their housing situation would definitely get better once they saved up more money and got married to the men of their dreams. They didn't have much money to start with since their last foster parents had taken every cent they earned to "discourage" them from buying cigarettes and illicit substances- which hadn't done a thing since they stole or traded for what they wanted over half of the time anyway- but they could manage being broke for a while. Despite the hungry nights and extreme temperatures in unkind environments, both women were happier than ever before because they had their very own place to live without having to worry about anyone else controlling every little thing they did or punishing them for basically being alive. Freedom was a beautiful thing, and now that they dictated their own lives, they wanted to have their own families. They were young, but they were determined. They'd spent most of their childhood sneaking into theaters when they could and had been raised by cheap movies. In the movies, the women always got rescued by the men, so Judy and Shirley had learned to expect that the same thing would happen to them one day, which was ironic considering how distrustful they were of anybody that dared look their way. Yet, it was all they knew. Though they'd both always been free spirits, the thought of somebody rescuing them to give them a better life full of love and happiness was tempting. Judy and Shirley had decided that they wanted to become wives if that was what it took to be loved. They wanted to have husbands that would show them what it felt like to be wanted. They wanted to be mothers who raised children that would never know bitterness nor pain. They wanted to build families so perfectly complete and loving that they would forget about their own childhoods. More than anything, they just wanted families . According to the movies, the first step to make their dreams come true was to get married, just like in all of those happy endings they'd watched in the theater; after all these years, getting married still meant the end to all pain and sorrow in their distrustful yet childishly naive eyes. Shirley and Judy were gullible in some ways but undeniably resilient. Their past boyfriends had always been prone to cheating and never cared much about anything that wasn't purely physical, so both women would have to be much more selective before getting married. They weren't going to be aimless kids fooling around anymore. They were going to be responsible adults who had their lives together. Shirley hadn't found her match yet, but Judy had and she was going to get married soon. Shirley didn't really like Judy's pick, but she let it slide because she didn't want to act like any of their old foster parents, always breathing down their necks and criticizing every little choice. Judy could handle herself just fine. They were in charge of their own lives now and nobody could stop them.
"Oh, that doesn't matter," David said with a strained smile, clearly not wanting to elaborate. "You can use these as, um, fire fuel, if you'd like. I know you're rather fond of fires, though I really don't think it's good for the atmosphere." Normally, David would've recycled or donated anything made of wood because fires were quite awful for the environment, but these beads were different. He needed to make sure that they were gone for good, and he knew that Shirley was very good at getting rid of things. She knew fire better than anyone else in the county and she could burn things people would've never even considered to be flammable. For Shirley, burning a box of wooden beads would be like making a bowl of dry cereal, and David wanted those beads gone. Those beads were too painful to keep. He couldn't keep hoping until the letters in the mail stopped. He knew that the letters would stop soon. He had a feeling that something was going to happen. For all he knew, the next letter he received could change everything.
"Heh, and what's in it for you?" Shirley glanced at a disinterested Judy, who shrugged and poked at the hem of the dress with fingernails yellowed by nicotine. Neither woman had ever liked David very much, but he was tolerable in comparison to other kinds of people. Still, David was always too nice and never fought back when other people picked on him. He was kind of annoying and wore weird clothes. He was a people-pleaser and had spent all of elementary school trying to befriend every single student in the building. He was such a rich, sheltered goody-two-shoes that it was nearly painful to look at him. Here he was now, trying to give them something without stating what he wanted in return. Shirley and Judy especially disliked being given things out of nowhere like that. As much as they loved free things, they both knew that nothing ever came for free. There had to be a catch. There always was.
"Um, I just need more space for my books, m'kay?" David replied, not exactly lying. He did need more space for his books, but he felt his cheeks grow warm. The confidence he'd mustered up for this visit- Judy and Shirley had always intimidated him despite the fact that he was older than them- was rapidly waning. He wasn't so sure what he was doing anymore. No matter how polite and understanding he tried to be, they'd never really liked him and he could tell. He wished that he could help them and take away the unseen thorns that had put blatant pain in their eyes, but they were difficult to really talk to. Granted, he did talk to them much more than most people did, but never very much. Shirley and Judy had put up barriers years ago, likely to shield themselves from future pain and thorns, and that had made them extremely difficult to talk to outside of whispered exchanges in the dead of night or purely transactional hookups. David didn't like the idea of other people in pain and wanted to help everyone he could, but he'd never been able to help most of the people he really wanted to help, like these young women or the fraternal Ianuzzi twins. God, the twins were even harder to talk to. Maybe there was a reason why David just couldn't get through to anybody he feared for the most. Maybe there was a reason why neither Ianuzzi- one would grow up to become a successful hotelier and cocaine dealer in uptown Dallas, and the other would grow up to a very respected employee at Highland's only dry cleaner as well as a mother to a few of David's future students, but neither would ever hold a full conversation with David- had ever given him the time of day let alone willingly spoken to him. Maybe his own mother, who'd talked to Cheryl Beavis and Judy Head on a few occasions before their deaths, had been the tiniest bit right when she'd told him to "stay away from those dirty people" every time she'd caught him talking to their daughters Shirley and Judy. Although David didn't agree with his mother's reasoning, he couldn't deny that trying felt pointless sometimes. Every time he tried, he always ended up flunking as if he'd never bothered to study at all.
"Uhhh, ever heard of a trash can, dumbass?" Judy said, leaning forward from her previously slumped position and snatching the box out of David's hands with no intention of giving it back; she stuck her hand in the box and played with the beads inside, letting them slip through her fingers. "Yer the stup'est nerd I ever seen." Reading books and paying attention in school didn't automatically make people smart. Experience did. David was clearly one of the most sheltered people Judy had ever laid eyes on and sometimes she couldn't help but pity him. She knew that he was just trying to be nice for some inane reason, but his ignorant sweetness made her gag more often than not. Tough love was much easier to stomach.
"Say, what's this?" David said, gesturing to the unsightly dress in Shirley's lap while blatantly ignoring Judy's remark. He was used to their bluntness and incapacity for pleasantries.
"A dress," Shirley vaguely stated while scooting an inch closer to Judy, eyeing the beads in the box. They certainly did look flammable. Her fingers couldn't help but twitch, though the motion wasn't necessarily out of withdrawal this time.
"Not just a dress!" Judy butted in, jerking her hand out of the box to smack Shirley upside the head. "That's my weddin' dress! Don't talk 'bout it like it's nuttin' special!"
Shirley continued inspecting the beads, making no move to apologize.
"Oh! Well, um, congratulations, I suppose," David said, visibly surprised as he processed what Judy had said. Though they'd gone through many boyfriends before, David had never imagined Judy or Shirley actually settling down and getting married. Not just because they were difficult to befriend, which was also very true, but also because they had always seemed so… independent, to put it politely. For having grown up in such a small, restrictive town, those two had always been outstandingly free-spirited.
"That's right! I'm gettin' married to a hot rodder, and the wedding's gonna be next month so I won't be sweatin' like a hog in my dress, and there'll be free food for ever'un, and there's gonna be a band playin', and yer not invited!" Evidently, Judy was still drunk and not just hungover. She usually had better control of her attitude and watered down her accent when she was sober because she'd get treated like a sewer rat in a fly trap if she didn't. When she was drunk, all social cues- well, the social cues she cared about enough to follow- went out the window. At least she was coherent this time.
"Daaaamn," Shirley said, snickering at the sudden outburst.
"Um, well, I wish you and your husband a very happy wedding," David responded as he quickly put on a smile and nervously pushed his glasses up his nose; he shouldn't have been surprised. "You're more than welcome to stop by my house if you need flowers for your bridal bouquet, m'kay?" What was he saying? He wasn't even invited to the wedding, let alone having the slightest idea as to who the groom was. It wasn't his place to offer flowers for a bouquet, but here he was, already thinking about what sort of flowers would be best for Judy's wedding. Although he had his own plants in his bedroom- he hadn't moved out of his childhood home yet because he had minimal financial support from his parents and still had a lot of saving up to do before he could even afford something like a studio apartment, but that didn't stop him from fantasizing about having his very own garden someday- his mind immediately went to his mother and her garden in the front yard. Despite the harsh climate, she'd recently been trying to grow gardenias. White gardenias, to be precise. Flowers that embodied purity and innocence, classic wedding motifs as well as what Judy deserved more of in her life. No matter how everybody else saw them, David truly believed that Judy and Shirley deserved a lot more good things in their lives. White gardenias would be perfect for Judy's wedding.
"Uhhhh, shut up," Judy said, slumping back against the backrest of the worn bench with unfocused eyes. An awkward silence lingered for a few excruciating seconds, the only sound coming from a pair of cars racing each other about a block away.
"We will," Shirley eventually said as she continued staring at the beads while making a shooing motion at David with one hand. Though she hesitated sometimes, she had a steadfast habit of never passing up free stuff. Besides, David had always brought them good stuff, even if he was a little weird about not wanting anything in return. Maybe one day there would be a cost for every free thing they'd ever received, but there was no cost right now. Somehow, David had always managed to break through their distrust a little. Hippie freak.
"Wonderful, I'll see you soon!" David exclaimed in a surprisingly happy tone as he began to walk down the porch steps in response to Shirley's gesture. Honestly, just thinking about flowers was enough to negate the sharp sting of rejection, even if it had been delivered drunkenly. He had learned to find joy and hope in everything Mother Earth provided. Even if he couldn't take away the unmistakable pain in Shirley and Judy's eyes, he could keep trying to make their thorn-choked lives better with one little gesture at a time even. Even if they would never be his friends, David couldn't bear to see them in pain. He just couldn't stand the thought of other people hurting. It hurt him too much.
Shoulders tensing, David leaned to the side and warily used his spade to gently push a scorpion away from a patch of yellow chrysanthemums.
Approximately one month after that exchange, David opened his mailbox to a misaddressed letter at the exact same moment that Judy stood sober at an empty altar, anxiously clutching wilted white gardenias when she finally gave up on hoping for a husband that would never arrive. The only other person in the building was Shirley, who was sitting in the front pew and flipping through a magazine. There was nobody else she could rely on but Shirley, who was madly unreliable and had a bad habit of disappearing for weeks on end with little to no explanation. Judy hated uncertainty, but it was all she had. She would just have to deal with it even though it was slowly doing her in. Had she ever been given a choice, she would've left Shirley for good, but she couldn't do that. They weren't friends or biological sisters, but they'd stuck together for the entirety of their childhood. They didn't love or even like each other very much, but they were all they had. They were all they had until that beautiful day when both of them would finally be happily married to the men of their dreams. Only, it looked like neither of them were getting married anytime soon. No husbands for them. No children for them. No families for them. They would always have to be alone, together. Luckily, Shirley had ended up being physically present for Judy's wedding day, probably not having anything better to do. However, Judy herself had never felt more alone than she did at the exact moment that she realized that nobody was going to rescue her and give her a better life like in the movies. She was stuck with Shirley, and Shirley was stuck with her. They'd both been crazy to have ever even entertained the idea of somebody swooping in and magically filling their lives with love and happiness. Movies were fake. The whole premise was ridiculous. It was something that only a little kid would've believed. Judy wasn't a little kid, and neither was Shirley. They'd both grown up by the time they had hit second grade. They were legal adults by now. They didn't have time for fantasies. They should've known better. Nobody in their lives had ever stayed for long. Nobody had ever showed up for anything that was important to them. Nobody had ever cared about them. Nobody would ever care about them. After all, not even that hippie wuss David, the only half-decent and semi-trustworthy person who had ever made an effort to talk to them and might have genuinely cared about them, had bothered to come to Judy's wedding. The closest thing she had to his presence was the bouquet he'd brought her earlier that morning with minimal explanation. Now, standing in an itchy dress and looking down at those wilted flowers which looked back at her without a hint of discernible emotion, she felt mocked. Not even David had really cared, had he? It was all just a facade so he could feel high and mighty just like many of her old foster parents, who'd been adamant churchgoers but definitely not good people. Everybody she had ever met only cared about appearances. She'd been stupid to think that he could've possibly cared. Even if she'd given him a real chance- she knew she hadn't, but she couldn't just let anybody into her personal life that easily- he probably would've never actually wanted to be her friend. Nobody would want to be a friend to somebody like her. Judy should've never hoped for anything remotely good in the first place. Needless to say, that bouquet of white gardenias had ended up crushed beneath her plastic heels.
Once David had finished securing the gardenia seeds into the soil while the scorpion disappeared into a crevice between a few colorful stones, he gave the fresh grave a light pat and cheerfully returned his attention to the two remaining seed packets while his nearby patch of yellow chrysanthemums silently swayed in the slight breeze. As he peacefully considered his remaining options, he heard approaching footsteps on the sidewalk behind him again. This time, the footsteps were accompanied by a familiarly irritating laugh.
"Why, hello there, Butt-Head," David gently called out over his shoulder, his soft eyes widening a bit as he noticed the fresh bruises on the young man's face. "Um… are you alright?"
"Uhhh, what?" Butt-Head said as he readjusted his Burger World visor, which had gone slightly askew when Todd had beat him up earlier. Normally, Butt-Head would've stuck around a little longer to see what other cool things Todd might've done, but he unfortunately had a shift at Burger World soon and nothing was as fun without Beavis anyway- Beavis had been busy working a full day shift at the Maxi-Mart today- so he'd forced himself to get moving.
"Your face, um, looks a bit bruised," David explained patiently, understanding that Judy's kid could be a bit on the oblivious side. "Would you like any ice or anything?"
"Uhhh, no, I'm not drinking anything, dumbass," Butt-Head replied, rubbing his sore cheek. Everyone knew that ice was for soda and stuff. Ice had nothing to do with his face. He didn't understand how Mr. Van Driessen had gotten a job as a teacher of all things when that guy clearly needed to retake his classes.
"M'kay, let me know if you change your mind," David said with a small but genuine smile as he pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. Of course, they were separate people, but Butt-Head reminded him of Judy sometimes. Even when Butt-Head had been in kindergarten- David had been a substitute teacher for the elementary and middle schools for a good amount of time before becoming a full-time teacher at the high school- his little mannerisms and facial expressions had made it clear that he was Judy's kid. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a little sad, but not bad.
"Uh huh huh, you have dirt on your butt," Butt-Head said, stalling. The more he worked at Burger World, the less he liked it. It already sucked not being able to work with Beavis anymore, but getting longer shifts was super lame and ate up the time he got to spend at home. It was like his manager wanted him to actually do more stuff. Managers were really stupid. Butt-Head had signed up to be a cashier so he could get money, not do work. Sometimes, he found himself wondering if he shouldn't have dropped out of school just so he could sit around and do nothing in a classroom all day. School was boring, but it was easy.
"Oh dear, I'm sorry!" David stood up from his crouched position and brushed off the seat of his pants. Gardening was a messy pastime and he was used to getting dirt all over himself, but he didn't want to come off as indecent in front of his visitor. For all he knew, Butt-Head could have miraculously developed modern human standards by now.
"Uh huh huh, it's the same color as poop," Butt-Head continued, laughing even more. It suddenly occurred to him that Beavis would've loved this. Beavis loved anything related to poop. It was one of his favorite words. Everything suddenly felt less funny.
"Mmm, and do you have anywhere to be?" David patiently asked while silently wishing that Butt-Head would stop laughing. David loved seeing his students feel happy, but Beavis and Butt-Head were something else. Those two almost never stopped laughing. Before they'd finally dropped out because David hadn't done a good enough job of helping them reach their full potential, Beavis and Butt-Head's nonstop laughter had given him actual nightmares on more than just a few occasions.
"Uhhh… no," Butt-Head said. He'd decided that there would be no point in going to work today. He'd be alone either way. He was tired of trying to pretend that it wasn't , he wouldn't have given a shit about something like that, but he felt pretty shitty since he'd barely slept more than a consecutive hour last night; Beavis had kept shoving him off of the couch all night long.
"Oh? Are you sure about that? You look like you're going somewhere." David motioned toward Butt-Head's work uniform while stepping past a pair of marigolds. He knew that Burger World was in the direction the young man had been walking toward earlier, and the latter almost always had a bag of takeout on the way back from work. David was very sure that Butt-Head hadn't gone to his shift yet.
"Uh, I said no, dumbass," Butt-Head bluntly replied, his eyes hardening- just like his mother's eyes had used to do whenever David said the wrong thing- for just a second. No was supposed to mean no. He hated it when people tried to skirt around such a simple fact.
"M'kay, if you say so," David said, briefly examining the tattoo on his visitor's arm with little interest before looking down at the two marigolds. "Um, you can stay here for a while, if you'd like." David wasn't very fond of the idea of a high school dropout skipping work, especially a lone one. Something about Butt-Head dropping out of school, skipping work, and walking around all alone with those marks on his arms and god knows elsewhere just like the ones Tom used to have left a very, very bad taste in David's mouth; at least Butt-Head's marks seemed to be mostly healed for the time being, but David knew very well that old wounds almost always reopened at some point. At first, David had been very glad to see Beavis and Butt-Head spending more time apart, assuming that they were growing up and becoming more independent. However, that belief had quickly died as soon as he'd realized that neither of them seemed as happy as they used to be a few years ago, and they were still both horribly incompetent at taking care of themselves. David couldn't just watch and do nothing, but he wasn't sure what to do since he never did anything right. No matter how hard he tried while trying to be mindful of not overstepping potential boundaries, he never tried hard enough. It was like dealing with Shirley and Judy all over again, but dumber.
"Why?" Butt-Head asked. Hippies sucked and did stupid things, like "medi-tazing" and singing lame songs, or even talking about feelings like a bunch of crybabies; all the feelings he cared about were the ones that made him feel hungry or horny. He didn't want to spend his free time with a wussy hippie like Mr. Van Driessen, who was hopelessly boring and didn't know how to have real fun. Besides, watching TV alone in his own house would be way better than looking at some dumb pile of dirt in his old teacher's yard.
"Why not?" David contested. Butt-Head didn't have anywhere to go. Surely the young man wouldn't mind having a place to stay for a bit until Beavis returned; David didn't have to ask to know things like that. While driving to school, David had seen Beavis enter the Maxi-Mart in full uniform earlier that morning. Butt-Head had definitely spent the entire day alone and he almost never stayed apart from Beavis when he could help it, not to mention that his mother was out of the question since David had finally realized that Judy and Shirley were actually gone last year; he really should've pushed aside his bitterness and looked for them much sooner, but it was much too late now, not to mention that their kids were adults already. Basically, David was more than certain that Butt-Head really had been alone.
"Uhh…" Unable to think of a decent response without Beavis' priceless input, Butt-Head gave up and nodded along. He didn't feel like being alone in his own house, he didn't want to go to work, and there would be no point in walking all the way to the Maxi-Mart because Beavis should be coming home any minute now. He was tired. Mumbling something dirty under his breath, Butt-Head kicked over a rock with a weird picture on it- ugh, it looked like something a first grader would've drawn- and sat down on the stupid itchy grass of Mr. Van Driessen's stupid itchy lawn. The moment he would see Beavis come walking down the street, Butt-Head would immediately get up to join him, but for now, he would have to wait with this dumb hippie in this dumb yard because he was too tired to do anything else. This sucked.
"I'm planting flower seeds, if you'd like to help," David said, hoping to stimulate his visitor with a relaxing activity. Of course, Butt-Head didn't even look his way. The young man just sat there, laughing at a pair of ants mating atop an overturned rock. Well, if one good thing would come out of this visit, it was that the profound beauty of insect life had been greatly appreciated. Crouching down to inspect the two remaining seed packets while his visitor laughed in the background, David impulsively grabbed both and ripped them open at the same time. He had… mixed feelings about this combination, but he mixed the seeds together regardless; he knew that Bradley hadn't paid attention when buying the seeds, but the selection hadn't exactly been ideal and David just wanted to finish up. Tucking the seeds into the soil, David knew that they would grow up into an earth-bound bouquet that would make Bradley do a double take once they blossomed, but planting them separately would be too much of a pain. David would plant them together because they were meant to be together. They were meant to be a bouquet. A bouquet of mixed feelings. A bouquet of yellow daisies and red gardenias.
Hooray, all of the baby-killers were finally back from fighting a pointless war and they were proudly marching through the streets of downtown because every small town in Texas collectively valued domination over peace. Who would've guessed that Bradley had been one of them for these past three years, smugly flaunting a rifle and wearing the uniform of a heartless murderer. Hardly six months earlier, David would've been ecstatic at the thought of reuniting with his childhood friend after years of nothing but letters keeping them together, but that'd changed by now. Instead, he was listless and so, so disappointed after the initial anger- yes, anger- and lingering heartbreak. He should've known better. A construction project? A goddamn construction project? He was a complete fool to have believed a single word he'd been sent. Of course Bradley had gone to war at his parents' command. Everybody knew that Bradley would've done anything for his parents. He was nothing but a spineless coward hiding behind a loud voice and big muscles. A spineless coward that could and would resort to grotesque acts of brutality, as made evident by the letter meant for Bradley's parents. Although the cattle ranchers avoided David at all costs just like his own father did- nobody liked a weak hippie freak with long hair and weird glasses- he should've known much better than to eagerly accept every fake letter he'd received. He'd been a desperate wretch clinging to childish fantasies, but today, he would grow up and face the truth. He couldn't put it off any longer. He'd already refused to answer the door and had hung up the telephone when Bradley had tried to talk to him, but he couldn't go on like that forever. He needed to send one last message, and this parade of grotesquely delusional nationalism would be the perfect opportunity to give Bradley a piece of his mind. Forcing himself to unclench his fists so he wouldn't crush the fragile flowers firmly gripped in his dominant hand, David waved a sign advocating for peace with his other hand as he marched toward Bradley alongside his fellow hippies. They were his other friends. His compassionate friends. His peaceful friends. His honest friends. His agreeable friends. His helpful friends. His nice friends. His nothing-like-Bradley friends. His real friends.
"Here you go, man," David said as he leaned forward to get the attention of the person he'd relied on for most of his childhood without a hint of his usual hesitation, confidently approaching Bradley as if he was just another stranger on the street and reciting words as if this was all just a performance. "Just remember, the Viet Cong never have a nice day."
Bradley, who had been about to yell at Mrs. Higgins' eldest daughter for having stepped on his foot, paused with his mouth still open and turned his head while the surrounding voices trailed off into silence.
David stared back silently with a smile devoid of life, his warm eyes mercilessly cold for once in his compassionate life. He began to open his mouth and, thinking better of himself, closed it. There was nothing left for him to say. Bradley didn't deserve to hear his voice.
Every noise and face around them blurred into nothing, all sense of time lost to the dead.
All either of them could see was the bouquet.
All either of them could see were the flowers.
Four flowers.
An unlucky number, that was what one boy's mommy believed.
Two yellow daisies.
Positivity and friendship, that was what had kept two children alive.
Two red gardenias.
Secret, passionate love, that was what two men would never get to have.
Flowers never lied.
"Do you understand?" David sternly commanded with a question that wasn't a question.
Unable to think of anything worth saying, Bradley shut his mouth and obediently nodded along just like the follower he truly was, understanding perfectly well what each and every flower in that bouquet of four meant. Over the course of their childhood, David had taught him very well about the hidden messages within every single flower they had ever found together. David had always been an astute teacher. Those flowers they had found included yellow daisies and red gardenias. Bradley, who still had a woefully sharp mind even after all these years, had remembered them all. Bradley had remembered everything that he personally considered important, and that included everything that had to do with David. Bradley had remembered exactly how they'd found every flower together. Bradley had especially remembered listening to David explain the meanings behind yellow daisies as well as red gardenias. Those two meanings had given him a secret sort of hope beneath his parents' suffocating grip on his life. He had truly thought that David was his friend and vice versa. He had truly thought that maybe, just maybe, they might get to have something more than that one day. He had truly hoped that even after everything he did wrong and everyone he pushed away, they would still end up together just like those yellow daisies and red gardenias that they'd found growing side by side in Mrs. Higgins' front yard one lovely spring morning. He had truly hoped that by trying his best to be that good strong boy and winning over his mama and papa's approval because they always came first, he would finally be given a break and allowed to have a chance with David. He had truly hoped that if he ended up not being good enough for his mama and papa, he could be good enough for David. He had truly hoped that even if his mama and papa didn't want him, David would. He had truly hoped that his doubts weren't real and that he'd been doing the right thing all along. He had truly hoped that the next time he knocked on David's door, he would be greeted with open arms. He had truly hoped that the next time he dialed David's number, the voice on the other end would melodiously carry on for hours. He had truly hoped with all of his painfully present heart that those bulbs of red and yellow would become his reality. He had truly hoped for a future that only a gullible child would have dreamed of. He had truly hoped. Only, that hope had turned out to be truly poisonous. All of the red and yellow he would ever have would be blood and jaundice. Flowers were for people like David, and Bradley wasn't like David at all. David was a leader. Bradley was a faker.
Lovelessly tossing the bundle of unlucky truths at Bradley, David turned away and didn't look back. He was weak but strong. He was too weak to look back, but he was strong enough to refuse to turn his head at the sound of his name slithering out of a thorn-lined mouth. Instead of wasting his time on someone he'd carelessly put too much of his heart into for years, he resumed marching ahead with his other friends. Leading them. He was leading his real friends because that was what he really was, a natural leader, and the burden was unimaginable. He had to lead these real friends. The friends he would never be able to care about in the same way as Bradley but the friends he would have to settle for. The friends he would never have to worry about letting down in the same way he'd worried whenever speaking to Shirley and Judy. He'd seen them around town, by the way. Shirley and Judy. Both unwed. Still single. Eyes harder than ever. Thorns lacing every word that came out of their mouths. Uneven gaits from long nights of working at seedy motels with rough clients. Fresh needle markings around Shirley's veins. Tremors of withdrawal in Judy's hands. Hopelessness in each and every breath they took. Finally independent and free, they'd both trapped themselves in the belly of an entirely new yet unnervingly familiar beast. Once again, they were bound beneath pressure and pain. They may as well have never left their foster parents. There wouldn't have been much of a difference anyway. They really would never escape what they'd been trying to break free from their entire lives. No matter where they went, they'd always be stuck somehow. Stuck in false hope. That was the worst part. They kept hoping. Unlike their mothers, they kept hoping. To make matters worse, they were salvageable. They may have been thorny, but they weren't poisonous. Cursed with his own mother's knowledge, David was an unofficial expert at identifying every living thing around him. He could see the truths in everything. Shirley and Judy had meanings that he would never fully know, but he was very sure that they weren't some sort of jimson weed that needed to be removed. He knew very, very well what a true jimson weed was like.
Definitely not jimson weed but certainly not something as simple as a typical buttercup, Shirley and Judy were something else entirely. Something thorny but not poisonous. Something bitterly sharp but still beautiful in a discreet sort of way. Something that he would never get the chance to identify because he'd never given them a chance. David knew that he should've done something sooner, but he hadn't, pretending that it wasn't his place to intervene as if anybody else would've cared as much as him. Nobody else had cared about them nearly as much. Very few people cared about them at all. David knew that. David knew that he cared more than most people because of the knowledge he was burdened with and the responsibility that sucked on his bones like a coyote savoring a scarce meal. David knew that he could've done more because he cared more. He could've done so, so much more, but he'd done nothing. Was it because he had no idea what he would've done? Did that matter? He'd still done absolutely nothing. Even now, he did nothing. There they were standing on the street corner, sharing a pilfered pack of cigarettes and fiddling with a deck of cards they'd somehow managed to steal after staying in one of those jails around San Antonio; the Bexar County cops apparently had to get all nosy with people who didn't have matching license plates and registration stickers. For some reason, the missing persons unit in that area tended to send out playing cards with photos and information to all nearby jails in case any of the inmates there had a half-truth to share about any of the missing people and juvenile runaways in question, but Judy and Shirley obviously couldn't have cared less since they'd only gone on the five-hour road trip in a hijacked car since the former had been hellbent on seeing the Alamo in person and there'd been nothing better to do; frankly, neither woman had an inkling of an idea who the hell all these missing people were. So, there Shirley and Judy stood on the street corner back in their hometown since there was nowhere else for them to go without getting sent to some crappy place where everybody got strip-searched with little to no explanation and some idiot at the end of the hall kept flooding his cell every day as if the place didn't stink enough already.
There they were, messing around with a deck of cards displaying the faces of strangers who'd apparently gone missing while crowds of their fellow Highlanders passed by without a second glance, and David did absolutely nothing. He could've done something, but he hadn't. Inaction may have been the soldier's greatest mistake, but purposeful ignorance was the worst injustice a gardener could commit. As much as he hated to think of it, soldiers and gardeners really weren't that different. Even after having been intentionally deceived for a terrible length of time, David knew- even as early as now- that he would never be able to fully let Bradley go simply because they had much more in common than anybody could have imagined at first glance. Bradley was a soldier, which meant that he had blood on his hands, whereas David was a gardener, which meant that he had soil on his hands… and soil was what soaked up blood. Everybody always underestimated just how cruel somebody as sweet as David could be, but he was a gardener above all else. Nobody else ever seemed to understand what it was really like to be a gardener. Nobody else ever seemed to understand just how the love and the responsibility clashed so violently within his heart that he feared one day he might fall apart and never be put back together just like the tragic Humpty Dumpty story he'd read in first grade. Nobody else ever seemed to understand how he saw nothing but flowers even when he tried to trip out to find a respite from the thunderstorm he called his life. Nobody else ever seemed to understand how difficult his reality was. How beneath all of that genuine sweetness was a cruelty that was equally real. How beneath his apparent weakness was raw strength. How painful his power, all his, really was. Yet, he only kept marching forward like a leader with a heart as frigid as the ones belonging to the soldiers behind him, bearing the knowledge of a gardener that would weigh the rest of his life down. Now that he knew what it truly felt like to be a leader, he knew for a fact that he'd rather be executed. Yet, instead of honorably dying, he lived on as a gardener.
Old, misaligned tires covered in patches screeched down the street, jolting David out of his serene concentration and nearly causing him to drop his spade, which he'd been using to smooth over the soil now blanketing the freshly sown seeds like a shroud resting over a corpse; David may not have been an executioner like Bradley, but he was a gardener, and surely everybody knew that gardeners tended to the living just as much as the dead. Crows burst forth from the few neighboring trees as Todd's car roared by. Even Butt-Head had stopped laughing at the mating ants long enough to look up at the car skidding down the street before losing interest and rolling up one of his pant legs to scratch at a fresh mosquito bite on his knee; he liked it better when there were two cars because that meant they had a chance of crashing into each other just like on TV, and car accidents were very cool. As David brushed the dirt off of his gloved hands while Butt-Head contemplated the importance of car accidents, he caught sight of Pork in the driver's seat as Todd's car sped by. David waved feebly at his old student even though all that was left was a cloud of exhaust lingering over the blue columbines at the edge of the yard by the time he'd raised his hand. His old student Pork, who had refused to be called anything else although a few other students had also referred to him as J.D. a few times, had been a moderately nice kid and still waved back at David sometimes. As a student, Pork hadn't been very bright or exceedingly polite, but he'd still been somewhat nice beneath the initial toughness he presented himself with. Unlike Todd, David had actually gotten along with Pork fairly well for a while and had actually managed to help him get through a few years of school with mostly passing grades until Todd had ended up getting sent off to Hope High School after one too many fights with Leroy; without warning, Pork had followed his half-brother to the other school immediately thereafter. David had never gotten a chance to really help Pork with whatever the real, unspoken issue was. He'd only helped in motivating his student to keep up superficial grades and not much else, let alone contributing anything that actually mattered. Although he'd been disappointed in the situation as well as frustrated with himself, having assigned himself one of many Ds that year, David had understood. Most kids in this town had a habit of sticking together. Where one went, the other would follow. It was an unspoken rule. David had grown up clinging to that exact same habit himself, and so had his laughing visitor.
"Say, Butt-Head, how is your friend doing?" David politely asked in an attempt to start up a conversation and make this particular visitor feel welcome, as if he'd ever succeeded at that before. "Have either of you made any new friends or, um, learned to respect women?"
"Uhhh… what?" Butt-Head stopped picking at the scab near the mosquito bite just above his exposed knee and stared back blankly, laughter momentarily pausing. He didn't, like, really have friends or anything. He was too cool for that. Wait, had Mr. Van Driessen said "inspect" women? Butt-Head had definitely learned to inspect women. He liked to inspect their boobs and butts a lot. His laughter resumed.
"How's Beavis?" David reattempted while wiping the leftover soil off of his spade. "Have either of you made any new friends?" He decided not to bring up the topic of women again since Butt-Head had started saying something about "thingies" in between his laughter. David would rather not know if Butt-Head and Beavis had learned to stop objectifying women or not. Those two were basically lost causes in that regard. Worrying about things like that would only mess up the serene flow of energy that David and the collection of geodes in his bedroom were already struggling to maintain. Today was probably going to end with an especially thorough session with the Tibetan singing bowl right before bed.
"Uh huh huh huh, what about me?" Butt-Head responded as if he hadn't evaded every prior question his old teacher had asked in regard to his well-being. Granted, he actually was too dumb to catch onto much of the hippie's subtly phrased way of speaking.
"Um… how are you, Butt-Head?" David asked as he put his spade back into his bag of gardening tools, feeling like he was getting nowhere. Butt-Head's laugh, though much more subdued than usual, was already setting him on edge. After his first six months of teaching Beavis and Butt-Head, David had subconsciously developed a flight or fight response every single time he heard either of them laugh. Despite how composed he'd almost always been when working in the classroom, teaching those two had made up some of the most stressful experiences in his life.
"What?" Butt-Head adjusted his Burger World visor as the sun came out from behind a cloud and painfully shone into his eyes. "Why the hell do you wanna know?"
Typical. David took a deep breath and closed his eyes to focus on the happy place in his head for a few seconds.
Bored, Butt-Head assessed all of the weird plants in the yard and debated which ones to stomp on first. Crushing things was fun. Beavis had shown him all sorts of ways to have fun when they were little. Usually, Butt-Head was the one who knew how to do things, but sometimes, Beavis had his own little bits of wisdom to share here and there. Settling on a weed-choked patch of those dumb white flowers that always popped up after a rainy spell, Butt-Head raised his foot.
"No!" David inadvertently raised his voice as he pulled Butt-Head backward by his shirt collar, but he managed to gradually tone himself down as he anxiously rambled; he had a tendency to over-explain when he was nervous, even if there actually was no need to justify anything. "Don't touch those, they're dangerous and need to be handled carefully! Veeery carefully! I'll remove them later, but you can't touch them like that. See, your ankles are exposed. You could get hurt."
Butt-Head wasn't sure how to respond to that, so he just continued laughing as if he didn't have a care in the world. He had been very sure that having fun would've made a total buzzkill like Mr. Van Driessen upset or maybe even a little mad, just like when he and Beavis had destroyed the hippie's 8-track tape a few years ago. Yet, Butt-Head knew that he shouldn't have been surprised that he wasn't going to get a dirty look or yelled at by the most soft-spoken man in town. Granted, it was really easy to forget that Mr. Van Driessen actually was different from other people. Loud voices always drowned out soft ones. Basically, this was lame.
"There, go sit over there," David instructed as if he was seating a student on their first day of school while nudging aside his bag of gardening tools. As Butt-Head aimlessly wandered over to the porch and sat himself on the lowest step, who looked out of place without his fellow menace to organized society by his side and dressed in a uniform for a job he was skipping, David also stepped away from the patch of flowers overrun by weeds to avoid hurting himself. Although he was wearing gloves and vegan jeans- he made sure to never buy any pants with leather patches- that were long enough to cover his ankles, he was also wearing open-toed sandals and one of his favorite shirts- this one had been embroidered with various shades of amaryllis blossoms- which also happened to have short sleeves. Basically, he had too much bare skin to risk exposing to the native vegetation he'd never wanted; Texas was a naturally harsh place, so its own species had naturally adapted. He'd been putting off getting rid of the flowers overrun by weeds because he'd just been so busy lately, but he would have to get rid of them soon before the deadly combination ended up killing everything else in the yard. The evening sun was already hanging low in the sky and Butt-Head didn't seem to be leaving anytime soon, so David would probably have to deal with all of that tomorrow, but he couldn't wait any later than that; for the sake of the rest of his plants, he would have to put off grading papers or decline conversations with students after class just to get rid of the unwanted growth in his yard. These were the only two living things in his yard that he'd never planted with his own hands. These were the only two living things in his yard that had grown into the world of their own accord. These were the only two living things in his yard that he would need to remove. Nearly like an executioner, being a gardener meant that it was his responsibility to tend to the living just as much as the dead. Sometimes, that meant that decisions needed to be made and sacrifices needed to be chosen. Gardeners were well known for being nurturing and conducive of life, but Mother Earth wasn't the only one who they worked with. Gardeners also worked alongside Death, whose very scythe was a tool reserved primarily for anything capable of living and growing. Anything.
No matter how good something could grow up into, there was no escape from the scythe. David had never dreamed of bearing such a responsibility, but he'd been born a gardener and every human interaction he'd ever had always ended up bringing his innate responsibility into play. Always. That was one of the reasons why he'd never been able to completely cut Bradley out of his life and why he had always listened even during those times he had doubted whether he should even be associated with a killer. Aside from what Bradley had ever told him, many details noticeably left out despite the supposed pride on his childhood friend's face, David knew that they still had a lot in common even after all these years. In fact, they had even more in common because of their differences. David wasn't better off just because he hadn't drawn blood. Not at all. He'd failed too many people. He'd touched countless hearts but, in his lifetime, never truly held more than five at most. He'd let people suffer and inevitably die, wearing a cheerful smile the whole time as if that would've made anybody feel better; he certainly hadn't felt better himself. He'd seen growing lives that could have been nurtured but never had actually flourished because of his own shortcomings and his abnormal sweetness that most refused to believe was genuine. However, despite the cruelty he was capable of, his sweetness truly was one of the most real things about him, nearly as tangible as a diamond; his sweetness was a delicate thing formed after years of unrelenting pressure- natural and manmade- that was equally prone to chipping under rough handling, and he indeed chipped from time to time. Yet, sweet or not, he still failed. Regardless of whatever he tried and what other people said, he'd always ended up failing. David was just as guilty as Bradley, even if their methods were different. They had too much in common. Way too much in common. Sweet and sour went together perfectly as long as they both worked for Death. Now, looking down at the ground, David had yet another choice to make. He couldn't refuse his responsibility. Being simultaneously strong and weak was a most painful conundrum. What was weak and what was strong had no distinction in his world anymore. All he could do was make another choice. It was life or death. Jimson weed and white prickly poppies, though not inherently bad and actually quite capable of being used in good things like medicinal practices, were too wild and dangerous to let grow among the fragile in this supposed safe haven for all. Frankly, these lives capable of good were too toxic to save. Gardeners had a cruel, cruel power.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Brittle bits of gray bark adorned with various shades of lichen stung David's hands as he awkwardly but steadily swung the heavy axe at a terrible angle- no amount of practice could compensate for his lack of coordination in any outdoor activity- his heartbeat thudding strongly in his ears after his most recent punishment; his adrenaline always skyrocketed after being punished. Although his shamefully narrow shoulders would be especially sore after this, he relentlessly continued mutilating the innocent life while blinking away the harsh pain that persistently kept welling up in his eyes. Everything hurt and he felt like his legs would give out at any moment, but he couldn't stop swinging. No matter how badly the fresh bruises throbbed or how severely his limbs wearily trembled, he couldn't stop until this tree was severed from its roots by brute force. He couldn't stop until this tree was dead. At that moment, he would've preferred to be the tree. Once it fell, it would be free.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
This gray backyard was a slaughterhouse once founded by his father's long-abandoned hope to help his youngest son become more like his oldest son, or even like that kid from the cattle ranch. That old, nearly forgotten hope would never be rekindled. David would never live up to his father's expectations. David would never be enough for his father. David would never be approved of by his father. David would never be a source of pride for his father. David would never be liked by his father. David would never be a good son for his father. David would never be loved by his father. No matter how much love and devotion he gave, David never received anything from his father but scorn and contempt in return. This backyard was a slaughterhouse where dreams were led to their deaths. Every fallen tree was a sacrifice of dignity. Neither father nor son should've expected anything else, but for years, they'd both been blinded by the illusion of a surviving shred of hope that had turned out to be a meager mishmash of heavily misunderstood memories. Thankfully, the recent death of Tom, David's older brother and their father's clearly favorite son, had brought them both back to reality.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Every new mesquite sapling that had ever made the mistake of growing into this backyard had been destined to be murdered early into its adulthood if it survived long enough. Not a single trunk was safe from the unforgiving metal wielded by two vastly different but equally relentless people, one who cared too much and one who cared too little. David was supposed to have learned something from this violence, but he still had no idea what it should've been. All he'd ever gleaned from this useless activity was the plain fact that he hadn't done anything right, but he'd never gotten to know why. David had always cared too much to restrain himself from timidly asking questions, but his father had never cared enough to elaborate on the few occasions he'd answered. Yet, here David was now, nearly 40 years old and having taken time off from his duties as a teacher just to chop wood beside his father in the backyard as if they hadn't just gotten word that Tom had died in one of many foreign lands ravaged by one of Mother Earth's worst chronic illnesses, war. Of course, neither set of eyes in that gray backyard bore so much as a speck of hope. Chopping wood was nothing but a routine, the lives being sacrificed worth nothing but a resented pastime. If David had to mourn, so would Mother Earth.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Never having been fully fenced in since it was situated at the very edge of David's childhood neighborhood, the backyard opened onto a thick patch of brush and mesquite trees. At any moment, David could've dropped the axe currently clenched in his freshly calloused hands to run away from everything, but he hadn't. He was bound by his father, who had taught David very well about the consequences of disobedience. Rules and discipline were very, very important when his father was involved. As independent and rebellious as David could be when he went out to protest war in the plaza downtown, traveled to the Texas State Capitol to campaign against laws encroaching on environmental justice, or grew his own cannabis, he didn't like his father's consequences. When his father commanded something and there was no way out, David obeyed. Even when his father had first begun insisting that cutting down the trees in the backyard was the perfect way to toughen up his youngest son, David had obeyed despite how blatantly unfit he personally thought he was for something so physically demanding. His father was like a wild patch of jimson weed, a native yet invasive being that strangled every living thing into submission and seared the skin of anybody who dared act out; there was good in both his father and jimson weed, but the toxicity and pain almost always won out. David probably had been right all along, but not once had he ever said a word to defy his father. David had hated every moment he had ever spent in that backyard, but he'd never been able to leave, not even now. Instead of stopping and groveling for his brother to come back like his heart begged to do, David carried on as if he'd stepped back in time and was just another gullible schoolboy trying to impress his father on just another ordinary afternoon while his brother was just another good kid practicing sports after school. However, David knew very well that Tom wouldn't be coming back this time. The lichen on his hands stung, but at least it wasn't jimson weed this time.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Soldiers' boots sang a special sort of song. It was the only sort of song David's father had ever approved of. David's singing had never gotten through to his father because he'd never sung the right type of song. No amount of poetry and prose would be good enough to change his father's mind. No perfectly tuned instrument would be good enough to serenade his father's ears. Only the steady beat of dedication to ruthless strength had a place in his father's heart. David had never sung the right type of song and he never would. Tom, on the other hand, had sung the right type of song. Ever since he'd been of age, Tom had put on one of his father's pairs of old but remarkably intact boots and sung that special song. Despite how badly he wished he could've taken David with him, Tom had been extremely eager to leave his childhood home and knew that it wouldn't have been safe nor wise to bring somebody so weak to such a harsh environment. So, he'd left David behind with a quick goodbye- Tom had to make it quick, or else he would've lost his composure right then and there- and had trekked through distant lands with that special song beneath his feet to keep him company. Tom and David both sang, but never in harmony. David, left behind with only his loveless father for company since his mother had divorced and left for Arkansas in 1982 since gardening hadn't been enough of a distraction to avoid a failed marriage, had continued to make up his own songs with his own words regardless of the proven futility of his efforts. Forever clashing with the steady beat of soldiers' boots but never too far off, David's voice sang on in a different key.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Unlike their father, Tom truly had liked David's singing and had never gone a day without wishing to hear that voice once more, but he'd quickly lost himself in the steady rhythm beneath his feet as he walked over fields that would become graveyards. The reputation his many strengths brought about had given him an addicting sense of direction in his life. Before he knew it, years had passed and Tom had become a seasoned star in the Special Forces unit, a place where he truly belonged; for him, the military had become sacred enough to have been not just a career but also a home. By then, his fellow soldiers had become his makeshift family and the thought of returning to his hometown was more like a dream rather than a desire. He didn't miss his father at all and he didn't miss his mother very much. As for David, he couldn't afford to miss him. The concept of his biological family was difficult for Tom to wrap his mind around since he had grown so content with the one he'd formed overseas. After all, his father cared more about honor than love and his mother had never shared any interests with him, so it really shouldn't have been that difficult to not care about his family. Yet, his little brother, as different as he was, had always given him an odd sense of responsibility and possibly even purpose. Even after decades of doing anything and everything to avoid having to go home to parents that weren't really parents to him, Tom had never been able to resist the natural connection he had with David; many of his regrets stemmed from those countless afternoons he spent playing sports or talking to his friends after school, knowing full well that his little brother had been home alone but too scared to do anything about it on more than one occasion. Kids could be so unbelievably, painfully stupid. Despite Tom's many regrets in retrospect, David was the only person in his blood family that he had ever seen as family; his father's love was too tough and his mother's love always felt reserved for somebody else, whereas David's love was pure and sweet. Therefore, David was the only person that Tom had desperately tried and failed to forget. However, instead of forgetting, Tom had ended up in a ditch far from home, slowly bleeding out beneath suffocating, powdery rubble that stung his eyes as faceless angels of death played their funeral hymn overhead. Not that David could have possibly known. They had never been given a chance to sing in the same key.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Here David was, swinging an axe at a tree with his heart thudding in his ears as if nothing had ever changed when everything had, in fact, changed very much. Beside him, his father stood with the last vestiges of his sanity and watched with a critical eye, crumpled flowers beneath that man's feet. Naturally, his father hadn't taken kindly to the flowers David had painstakingly gathered prior to their visit; in the wake of Tom's death, they were all they had since any other family members lived at least a few hours away, and of course David had tried to bring his father flowers. As if that was worth anything. There was no way he had a chance with the man who cared more about a dusty Cadillac than his youngest son's ability to afford basic things like glasses with an up-to-date prescription or shoes that didn't leave his feet blistered; there was money in the family but that didn't mean that it got distributed proportionally, because it sure as hell didn't. However, regardless of his father's general disapproval, David refused to give up on flowers. He would memorialize his brother with flowers and nobody would stop him. Unlike what his father had always hastily assumed, David knew that flowers couldn't be simply categorized as delicate little things that solely existed for girls to fawn over. Like people, flowers were nuanced. Flowers could be weak and fragile, but flowers could also be resilient and tough, or even dangerous. Flowers could require endless coaxing just to sprout in a pot, but flowers could also rise up through the cracks of concrete or blossom atop thorny cacti. Flowers could have smooth petals and dainty stems, but flowers could also be covered in thorns or carry poison within. Flowers could be straightforward and mean nothing more than simple happiness, but flowers could also be unexpectedly complex with contradicting truths that boiled down to nothing but primitive despair. Flowers were very, very nuanced. There was so much more to these living beings than superficial beauty. Like humans, flowers contained endless truths that teetered on the edge of clarity. So, no matter what his father thought- not that his father's opinion would matter for much longer since he'd been diagnosed with Alzheimer's far too late for his lifespan to be salvaged- David would remember Tom by seeking the counsel of flowers. Whether the flowers ended up beneath his father's feet or arranged around an urn, David wouldn't give up. Once he finished making Mother Earth weep over the mesquite being forcibly severed from the roots connected to her womb, David would ignore the soreness that had been violently scattered all over his body and collect seeds for Tom's flowers. There were flowers for every single occasion. Even for Tom, there were flowers. White prickly poppies, to be precise.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Like people, flowers were very nuanced. White prickly poppies weren't just pretty flowers and Tom wasn't just a handsome face. They had a lot in common that belied the eye. At first glance, white prickly poppies could be mistaken for regular white poppies. At first glance, Tom could've been mistaken for just another unremarkable guy. On the outside, plain white poppies were gentle and sweet, common representatives of remembrance at funerals for soldiers and veterans. On the outside, Tom was brave and strong, an exemplary son and perfect citizen. Plain white poppies promised a peaceful rest and remembrance, but not much else. People like Tom- but not Tom himself- promised empty words and false hope, but not much else. Surely white prickly poppies shouldn't have been much different from regular white poppies, but they were. Surely Tom shouldn't have been much different from any other respectable guy, but he was. White prickly poppies were beautifully fatal, brimming with poison beneath their spikes. Tom was perfectly flawed, brimming with regret beneath his toughness and courage. White prickly poppies were native Texans that either nourished or killed wildlife, nothing in between if not both. Tom was a native Texan who either protected or abandoned family, nothing in between if not both. Despite their inner toxicity, white prickly poppies were some of the most peaceful, cleansing beings to exist. Despite his inner turmoil, Tom had been one of the most devoted, loving people to live. White prickly poppies purified the heart and protected the vulnerable. Tom had wiped away David's tears and skipped his own playdates unnecessarily often just to stay home to hear his little brother's voice. Neither poppy nor man was fully innocent, but it would have been a grave mistake to assume the exact opposite. Tom and the white prickly poppies by which he would be memorialized were undeniably nuanced with the utmost good waiting to be salvaged from what many would have considered lethal. Unlike any other poppy, white prickly poppies were a very, very different sort of flower whose sap whispered a very special song to Mother Earth. Unlike his father or childhood friend, David's brother was a very, very different sort of soldier who had played a very special role in his life. Whoever believed that flowers were nothing but pretty, fragile little tokens of admiration were terribly wrong. Whoever believed that Tom had been nothing but a strong, brave perfection of a man who only cared about reputation and nothing else had been terribly wrong. Taking anybody and anything at face value was the biggest mistake that could ever be made. Nuance changed everything, and it took introspection to uncover the hidden nuance in anything that dared sprout forth from Mother Earth's womb. People and flowers may as well have been cousins, what with the endless depth of nuance they shared. So, so much blatantly human nuance.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
All alone with nobody but a dying man for company, David continued swinging at the thorny mesquite, loose clumps of lichen searing into his skin. His mother was in Arkansas, his childhood friend was probably holed up in his apartment, and his brother was dead. Everybody that had permanently taken up space in his heart had never physically stayed around for long. Not even Shirley or Judy seemed to be around anymore, but David had stopped looking for them years ago when he'd realized that he would never be able to make a difference in their lives no matter how hard he tried. He didn't give up on anything easily, but there was a point when clinging onto hope for other people felt more and more like trying to rouse a corpse out of its grave; it was unnecessarily intrusive and obscene. Unfortunately, the need to let go had ended up applying to a lot of people. A lot. Even after years of experience, letting go was still hard, really hard, but he had no other choice sometimes. The appeal of the thought of a second chance often risked turning out to be a betrayal or failure under the guise of hope. No matter how hard he tried to pass the unseen test that permeated every waking day, David always ended up having to make difficult decisions to narrowly avoid failure. It was life or death. Luckily, letting go of his father had been one of the easiest things he'd ever done; it had nearly felt more like finally feeling relief from a lifetime of an unspoken burden rather than making a conscious effort. That man would be dead soon. Another fallen tree soon to be set free. Whether David had been jealous or not was irrelevant to the matter. He was a gardener, and gardeners always had to make decisions. Even though he was prone to error, it was simply how he'd been born and raised. Death and Mother Earth always sang in harmony, and he was their bastard child who couldn't help but occasionally sing off-key.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Alone. David had always ended up alone. He hated being alone. He hated loneliness more than he feared failure and his father. Hate was fear, but stronger. Hate was what kept David up at night, wondering if it was worth trying so hard every single day. The harder he tried, the further down he fell. One day he would hit rock bottom, but he hadn't gotten that far yet. He wished that he had, though. He wished that he wouldn't have to keep climbing back up in the hopes to watch the sun rise high in the sky only to watch it set once again. He wished that he wouldn't have to keep trying so hard for something that felt more and more like a losing battle every year, though he would've sworn that he wasn't a soldier if asked. He wished that he wouldn't have to keep putting that same old smile on his face and hoping that everything would be alright while knowing full well that he would end up all alone again. He always ended up alone and missing everybody. He really did. He missed his mother and her garden, but she'd left the state a few years after he'd gotten his very own house with his very own money. He missed his brother and his surprisingly gentle touch, but he'd left the country after finally snapping beneath his father's back-breaking expectations. He missed his childhood friend and his warm eyes, but he'd left his life before they'd ever had a chance of having something more. He missed everybody he'd tried to get close to but had ended up failing instead. He even missed his father sometimes, which didn't make sense since the man was still right there. Yet, David missed his father. He missed what they had never had together. He missed the moments they had never shared. He missed the words they had never told each other. He missed the games they had never played together. He missed the songs they had never sung in harmony. He missed who his father could've been. He missed nothing but childish fantasies. No wonder why David had always ended up alone, always caught up in one fantasy or another.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
I am happy because everyone loves me. Just as he'd always done, David forcibly repeated that loathed phrase in his head between strikes at the tree. That had been one of his mother's favorite quotes; she had used to recite all sorts of sayings because she had been an avid reader and local socialite, always picking up new phrases from all sorts of things. However, David had never really paid attention to much of her sayings when he was little because he'd always been too busy playing with the toys his brother had clumsily but happily carved out of leftover wood scraps, reading picture books about monkeys who had to learn to share spaghetti and puppies that had to take baths after getting all muddy, or learning how to plant and care for seeds that required various types of soil. However, that particular saying had shaped much of his life. Regarding its context, all he knew about that phrase was that some man who'd made the illustrations for his mother's postcard collection had written that on of his drawings once; he'd never bothered with details since he'd just been a little kid trying to write a poem about armadillos for an English assignment when he first heard his mother talk about it. His mother had really liked that saying a lot, though. Whenever somebody had made him feel sad, like his father usually did, his mother had always reminded him to smile because everyone loved him. After all, it was impossible to love without being loved. His mother said so. David wanted to love everybody just like his mother seemed to do because he thought that his mother was a very special person, so that meant that everybody had to also love him back. Even if he hadn't quite believed that he was on the receiving end of love much of the time, his mother had always reiterated that saying and had never left room for argument. She said that he was supposed to be happy because everybody loved him and nothing was wrong, so happy he would have to be. He would have to smile and be happy no matter how sad he felt. He would have to embrace the role he'd been given because it was all he knew how to do. That was one of the reasons why he had that special place in his head that he always returned to no matter how old he got or how many friends he wasn't sure he'd actually made. Well into his adulthood, he still wore that same gentle smile and tried his best to love everybody because, in that special place in his head, everybody truly loved him back without anything to be expected of him. In his head, he was loved unconditionally. That should've been enough to make him feel loved and happy. Whether he actually felt loved and happy or not was irrelevant to the matter. He was a gardener. He still had too many flowers to nurture. He still had too many decisions to make. He still had too many songs to sing.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Death crept along painfully slow because life was agonizingly reluctant to let go.
Thump.
Thump .
Thump.
Thump .
Thump.
Thump .
Across the street, his father's old acquaintance Tom Anderson- his father had used to think of Mr. Anderson as a bumbling, screwdriver-obsessed idiot who'd been blamed as one of the reasons why the Battle of Anzio had gone so poorly- lugged an overpacked suitcase down his driveway while his wife started the car; the Andersons were probably going on one of their road trips again since they had nowhere near enough money to go on cruises. Due to the additional weight of the suitcase, Mr. Anderson's typically heavy footsteps were now loud enough to rival a young, confident soldier's stride. Even if they'd been left untouched in the back of a closet for half a century, a soldier's pair of boots never stayed silent. Every single soldier's boots played a special, inescapable song that may as well have been this town's anthem. No matter how much David abhorred war and refused to associate himself with it in any way at all, he just couldn't seem to escape any of it, not as long as he lived here in Highland. Many men and a decent fraction of women in this town had a history with war, and everybody here almost certainly had somebody in the family no more than two generations apart who'd been on the frontlines. In this small town that had seemed to primarily consist of undesirable and painfully disposable misfits ever since it'd been first established sometime during the nineteenth century, it wasn't exactly uncommon to send young men off to the military in the hopes that they could contribute something somewhat useful one day. Sometimes, women went off to war too- the very first generations had consisted solely of nurses, but many now had the option to be soldiers themselves- but not nearly as often as the men; in places these, men were valued for a potential they would never fulfill whereas women, whether they liked it or not, were typically valued for physical attributes that would inevitably end up discarded or scorned. Options in towns like these were cruelly limited and few men or women had a chance of having a decent future, and anybody who didn't fit in was invisible. Everybody that had ever lived here was objectively hopeless, yet their own individual hopes were still unmistakably present even if their physical bodies were already dead. Humanity just seemed to share a universal need to be worth something, anything, and even the hopeless weren't immune from that sentiment. That was why over half of the men and a good portion of women here were closely related to veterans if not veterans themselves. Just like the contraband and bruises, war had permeated this town for generations, and that wouldn't be changing anytime soon. Like Highland, some towns had been infused with blood from day one. Nobody was innocent here.
Pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose while the heavy footsteps sang from across the street, David reached down for his hand-me-down bag of gardening tools and carried it over to the backyard while Mr. Anderson dragged a bulging suitcase into the travel trailer hooked up to the back of his car. Smoothing out his jeans, David shot a brief glance at Butt-Head to make sure the young man wasn't about to do something reckless before pushing through the fence gate and walking toward the small shed, which sat past a flourishing row of cherry tomato plants that were just beginning to sprout their little yellow flowers in a testament to their youthful ripeness; he silently reminded himself to plant more carrots and strawberries to share with the local rabbits, who came by less often now that more businesses and homes were popping up where undeveloped land used to be. A small murder of Tamaulipas crows croaked in one of the neighboring trees overhead as they fought over a fat scorpion while David navigated past shovels and rakes to carefully set his bag on a shelf inside the shed. His tools were very important. They had once belonged to his mother, having been passed down from one gardener to another. Responsibility was a starving beast that transcended generation after generation with no end in sight, never wholly satisfied no matter how hard its faithful lieges tried. Hunger had a stubborn tendency to outlive all else. Whether hunger belonged to Death or Mother Earth was nearly impossible to discern, though. Perhaps it was their child, or perhaps it was some entirely separate thing acting of its accord. There were simply too many governing forces to keep track of sometimes, which was why every truly dutiful gardener needed to be quick to adapt to the changing seasons and volatile elements. Luckily, none of this was new to David, who had been born a gardener. It wasn't just how he'd been raised, it was what ran through his veins. His responsibilities were innate, eating him from the inside out. Few people could carry responsibilities like these if they weren't natural gardeners. Blood permeated the same soil from which flowers sprung forth, and it was none other but the gardener who could devote a lifetime to coaxing those new, innocent lives from Mother Earth's wounded womb while Death silently watched in anticipation of the inevitable. That was an unspoken sort of strength that nobody ever seemed to talk about in this town, but it was a very real sort of strength. David was often seen as weak, but really, to take anything at face value- though most people unfortunately did make this error often- would have been a very grave mistake. His endless sweetness and gentle smiles hid multitudes of meanings which might never live to see the day when his sun would finally rise high in the sky, but they were very real and very nuanced. After all, it was the gardener who worked on behalf of both life and death.
Quickly stepping out of the shed before he could give into the temptation of slipping into one of his soothing meditative spells and lose track of time, David made his way back to the front yard to keep an eye on his disreputable visitor just as the Andersons drove away and a beautiful murder flew off into the big, blue sky. Although Butt-Head had always seemed a lot more subdued whenever Beavis wasn't by his side, he was still fairly prone to trouble. Miraculously, nothing was on fire and nobody was bleeding when David returned to the front yard, though Butt-Head did look like he was at risk of dying from boredom. Glancing at Mr. Anderson's driveway again, David saw that his neighbor's car and trailer were indeed gone and let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding as he looked back at Butt-Head, who seemed fairly alright save for the fresh bruises littered all over his face. David didn't necessarily having anything against Mr. Anderson or his amicable wife Marcie, who he actually got along with pretty well, but their son was different and made him fear for the safety of any and every last one of his students. Technically, the Anderson boy had been a grown man for a long time, but he always changed names every single time he returned to Highland for a spontaneous fundraiser or open counseling gig hosted by the school district and was therefore referred to as "The Anderson Boy" in David's mind if not something much less polite. Although the Anderson boy had never stayed in Highland for more than a few months at a time ever since moving out for the first time, David had wished on more than one occasion that he would never return at all. Whenever the Anderson boy returned for some random gig at Highland High School while staying with his parents because neither ever seemed to catch onto anything, David couldn't help but wait right out the classroom door for the entirety of whatever the former was presenting at the school, painfully unable to do more than that short of doing something that would cost him his own job. From a rational standpoint, there was no reason for David to worry so much about somebody who never came to stay in town for that long and definitely not very often, but the Anderson boy was one of the few people that he couldn't look at without his mind immediately taking an uncharacteristically violent turn; most of the time, David was level-headed enough to suppress that unnecessary part of himself, but that didn't mean that it didn't exist. Unfortunately, no matter what David did while remaining sensible and mostly peaceful, justice was rigged and his voice was too soft to be heard over the resounding bellows of the wealthy. Frankly, he always gave himself an F every single time he tried to retake that hopeless test. Good God, David could never go a single day without being reminded of everything he'd failed to do, not that his responsibilities ever let him have a chance to properly grieve. Rain or shine, a gardener always had to move onto the next plant and hope against hope that it wouldn't be a black dahlia.
"Uh-oh," Butt-Head said as a familiar beige car rounded the corner and slowed as it approached the hippie's house. He didn't remember many things, but he definitely remembered that car. Within a matter of seconds, he'd rolled down his pant leg and made his way back onto the sidewalk, this time headed in the direction toward his house. Beavis was taking forever to walk home from work and Butt-Head wasn't going to wait up for him if that meant getting beat up by Coach Buzzcut. Sure, he was kind of cool, but Coach Buzzcut also kind of sucked because he was super strong, which meant that it actually hurt a lot when he beat people up. Butt-Head didn't want to have to deal with that guy all on his own; Mr. Van Driessen was literally standing about three skateboards away at the moment, but he didn't really register as a person in Butt-Head's worldview. Besides, Beavis didn't even know that Butt-Head had been waiting for him anyway, so it wouldn't have made a difference if he gave up on waiting to save his own butt from one of Coach Buzzcut's ass-kickings. Unlike Beavis, Butt-Head had actually managed to develop a semi-decent sense of self-preservation over time, though it still didn't apply to important things like trying to befriend Todd.
"Butt-Head?" David called out as he tugged off of his gardening gloves, shoving them into the back pocket of his jeans with practiced ease. "Where are you going?"
Receiving no response save for the laughter gradually tapering off as his visitor disappeared down the sidewalk, David stepped onto the sidewalk and stood there, watching the kid he'd failed yet again walk away. Of all the people he had ever met, Butt-Head and Beavis had been among the most difficult to talk to, let alone the matter of actually touching their hearts; sometimes he wondered if it was better that way, but the uncertainty pestered him like the weevils chewing on the roots of his plants. There David stood as Bradley pulled into the driveway, briefly obscuring the other side of the sidewalk for a few seconds. That was just enough time for Butt-Head to round the corner and walk out of sight. There David stood in a cloud of exhaust as Bradley grumpily dragged a few garment bags out of the backseat, wondering what he'd done wrong this time while fuzzy bumblebees dutifully stuffed their little sacs with pollen from the flowers he'd successfully raised in his yard. Flowers and people had a lot in common, but sometimes, gardeners needed to remind themselves that they would never be the exact same thing; unlike when dealing with flowers, gardeners needed to remind themselves that they had no say over the lives of people lest their minds break. So, there David stood, revisiting the special place in his head before going about the rest of the evening with that same gentle smile on his face as if he hadn't just let another person slip away for the umpteenth time while humming softly to himself.