Though a groundskeeper by profession, I was a writer by predilection. Not that I ran around broadcasting that. No, you'd be hard-pressed to get me to say, "I'm a writer." It was enough for me to lay words on paper. Or, like now, air a little something on behalf of beautiful Apolena, here.
What I was looking for was a little something that breezed in an ear like prose, but, afterwards, festered in a head like poetry. Something personalized, say. Let's see, what did I know about her?
Apolena was twenty-two, an exchange student from the Czech Republic. Though her hair was dyed way too orange for a nature boy like myself, still, she was beautiful, and her Czech accent warmed me like Saint-Emilion, my favorite red wine.
Coming round the pumpkin, I was wetting my lips to touch on wine, women and warm, when Apolena threw me an eye so on the level, all I could say was, "My, what a nice day for a picnic."
Apolena raised her fork, shaped that hand into a visor. "Nice, yes," she said, "but my eyes; they're burning in the sun."
But my eyes; they're burning in the sun.
Because Apolena struggled with English, she'd string the sweetest words sometimes.
I looked at my shoes.
Hard, wearing the shoes of a writer. Where the one shoe wanted to run off, hole up, write an ode to every word the girl had birthed, the other shoe--the nether shoe--wanted to stay put, use the writer's craft to woo the girl.
I looked at the fork shielding her eyes.
"Apolena," I said, removing a glove, "don't let the sun burn your eyes. I like your eyes just the way they are." I chopped my hand towards her forehead. I'd wanted to help shield her eyes, but, damn, my knuckle had run into a tine, knocking the fork out of her hand.
I grabbed the fork off the patio, tried handing it to Apolena. Instead of taking the fork, she looked at me guardedly. "My eyes," she said, "what way; just the way they are?"
I licked my puncture wound. "Your eyes are . . . are powerful just the way they are. And if you ever put a lick of make-up on them," I threatened her with her fork, "I'll personally attack you with make-up remover."
Apolena laughed, said something with too much Czech for me to understand.
I faked a laugh, wiped her fork on my soiled pants, laid it next to her plastic food container.
Apolena made a face at the fork, then eyed me from the side. "Your eyes, Anton; are they, too, burning in the sun?"
"Yes," I said, placing a dusty boot on the bench of her picnic table, "I hate the sun. Can't wait for some good Pacific drizzle. What about you Czech Republicans; get anything in the way of drizzle?"
"Yes, many many days, clouds over Prague."
Having asked several Czech Republic questions, Apolena cut me off. "You," she said, "last week, you . . . so many questions it made me late."
Turned out Apolena had been on her way to a meeting that day I'd stopped to introduce myself and then some. An important meeting with Ezra, her Photo prof.
"I have worry now," Apolena said. "Worry I will get bad grade."
Nausea hit again. No, Hayward wasn't returning; my old ways were returning. Here, again, I'd interfered with a student's better education.
"Anton, you went white. What's wrong?"
"Nothing untoward; probably just something I et."
Of course, Apolena couldn't make hide nor hair of that kind of English. Hard-pressed, I had no choice but to touch on the fact that I was a writer. "I'm a writer, Apolena."
Apolena didn't say anything.
"Hard, being a writer, though. Hard in America, anyway; a country where immigration has made a goulash of your mother tongue, ha, ha."
Apolena didn't laugh.
"English, Apolena. I don't know how Czech goes down in your republic, but here, in america, English is a such a bear all we writers can do is make fun of her."
"Anton, my English . . . I try hard. Please don't make fun of me."
"Oh, no, I didn't mean--" I stopped, stared at my shoe. Hard, wearing the shoe of a writer. No, I didn't know whether to compose another line of English, or kick myself in the ass.
Because groundskeeping involved little stress, we groundskeepers didn't know how to manage stress. Take the guilt I felt for victimizing innocent Apolena. I processed that by getting angry at another student who had victimized innocent me.
Every one has little bugs inside.
In the pine grove behind Metals--where I stored my tools, I picked up my shovel, cocked it like an axe. "Call me sick, will ya?"
Though I didn't like being wronged, I did like reenacting the scene in which I'd been wronged; getting in the face of the person who had wronged me, saying all the mean things I should have said right after they had wronged me.
I closed my eyes, recreated the scene. There she was, the orchard woman, looking up at me. I opened my mouth to say my mean thing, only to close it. It was her eyes; the way they were looking up at me--up at me and me alone.
Or, was it something else?
No, it was her eyes; the way they spoke of promise--dark, full, spilling over.
For everything that presents itself in life, we old souls have trained ourselves to ask: Is this a gift or a test? I asked that question now. Asked it so I wouldn't have to ask the question young souls were always asking themselves: Why is the hook line and sinker so hard to digest?
Though my head was leaning towards test, my body, clearly, had already concluded gift. Gathering in the legs that had gotten away from me, I peered out of the pine grove. "All's clear," I said, thankful no one had observed my ape performance; bouncing in circles, using my shovel as a dance partner.
"Can you believe me?" I said, leaning my dance partner against my chest.
My shovel didn't say anything.
"I can't either," I said, blowing clear one nostril, then the other. "I mean, a girl calls me sick, and the next thing I know, I'm bouncing around in forest clearings as if I've already got her in my pocket."
Which reminded me of something. I placed my hand on my heart. No, my reading glasses were still in my pocket.
I threw my rusted shovel in my squeaking wheelbarrow, wheeled my way out of the pine grove. I was in the market for fill dirt. The damned camp kids, over the summer, had worn down all my earth berms.
My eye peeled for mole mounds, I got back to my shovel. "Why so down, shovel?"
"You," I had my shovel say, "dancing me around like the girl you want. Would it kill you to show me a little respect?"
I shaped my face into what I suspected a little respect looked like.
"Don't give me that," my shovel said. "Save that shit face for after you break your vow."
"Vow?" I said. "What vow is that?"
"That woman vow you made when you turned forty--no more twenty-somethings."
I parked by a mole mound, forced a laugh. "You're a shovel. Vows we humans make shouldn't concern a shovel."
"Vows made in the face of a shovel, concern a shovel."
That shit shovel of mine. Maybe it was time I got me a new shovel.
****
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