Epitaph

TWENTY-FIVE

They were finally going to do something about the local lot-the Garden of Weeden as Mrs. Simpson so aptly called it. She'd gone and organized a committee, not, to be sure, a very large one, but with just enough pluck, and more importantly, enough hands, to get things done. That something needed to be done was obvious to one and all-even to Mr. Jeffries, who used it as a literal dumping ground for his household waste, not to mention his dog, Bumper's. Just fertilizing, he'd say.

And perhaps he was right. For the weeds had reached Olympian proportions this year, snaking out over the sidewalk and even pushing up through the cracks, so that the neighboring block was beginning to resemble nothing so much as a Mayan ruin-that is, civilization gone to seed. The houses that bordered the lot-including, of course, hers-seemed to be only awaiting their turn-just more fodder for the predatory jungle. Mrs. Simpson was determined to fight back. They had three large cutters-they being the committee-plus one rather ominous-looking machete that Mr. Jeffries claimed to have wrestled off a Japanese soldier in the Philippines. Work would begin soon-she had pledges from both Mrs. Tyler and her husband, though she had a sneaking suspicion it would turn out to be mostly her out there, hacking away like a geriatric Jungle Jim.

Her husband, of course, was indifferent to it all. He'd taken to sleeping a lot lately, that is, sleeping even more than usual, and she lacked the heart to pester him. Though sometimes, in her more anxious moments, she wondered if this was the way it was going to be-him sleeping more and more till one day he just wouldn't wake up. The doctor had told her not to expect miracles-after all, to be up and about after two massive strokes was, in a way, miraculous enough. But she couldn't help hoping for a return to the way things used to be-if only for a while, if only for a moment or two at the end of a summer day.

In the meantime, she had her gardening-and she had her lot, her mission improbable.

And sometimes, when she was bent over a particularly stubborn shoot of crabgrass, or poised like a fountain with the sprinkler in her hand, she had him. Her little watcher. Her memories of him.

For she had never been able to completely remove him from her thoughts-perhaps had not really wanted to. In a way, they were linked together-the lot and him, though the fact that he'd stood in its shadow was the least of it. Maybe it was that both of them were projects, her projects, and just as the lot both frightened and frustrated her-so had he. There was something uncivilized about both of them-something stalkish. And now that she was about to root one of them out of her life, she couldn't help thinking of the other.

And the truth is, she felt just a little guilty. As if she was about to destroy the nest of last season's bird-who might, or might not, return. She was betting the house on might not, but reality, after all, didn't have much to do with it. It was more a psychic murder she was committing here, a cutting of ties, and she wasn't at all sure she wanted this particular tie cut.

She had, of course, fled from him, right back into her garden mitts, to her shears, weed cutters, and root grouters, back to more harmless pursuits. But after a while, after he'd refused to show up again, she'd begun to realize just how close harmlessness is to death. And she'd recalled what that woman had said to her frightened child the day they'd stumbled onto a convalescing Mr. Simpson in the front yard, just weeks after his stroke and still mostly drool and grimace. He's harmless, the woman had said. That's all. And she'd been right of course.

Life had turned sort of harmless for both of them- and she, for one, didn't like it. Most people her age wanted to be left alone, but she wasn't most people. She was-as her grandson might have put it-a bit harm- lessed out.

Which made it all the more remarkable that on a certain Monday morning, two days before the committee was due to begin its dire work, nine and one half weeks After Noticing Him-another one showed up.