Clever Magazine, Spring '05 " The Neighbor " (www.clevermag.com)

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The Neighbor

by Jared Carter

Jared lives in Indianapolis. He has published three books of poetry with the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Two of his previously published short stories appear on his web site, Jared Carter Poetry, and two others may be found at Animal Liberation Front and at Melic Review.

After we had lived in the old house on North State Avenue for two or three years I had learned the names of all the flowers that grew in the yard, even the wildflowers. This was not easy, since most of them had more than one common name.

Along the south side of the house, near the brass faucet, where I hooked up the garden hose each spring, there were wild daisies and swamp buttercups and soft, carrot-like plants that produced purple blossoms on long ferny stalks, and then toppled over. When we first noticed them, my wife called them starflowers. She was fond of them, and weeded around them so they would spread.

Gradually we learned the names of everything else: tiger lilies and day lilies, tulips, lilacs, iris, several hues of peonies, poppies, spiderwort, lilies of the valley, phlox, and four or five kinds of roses. Honeysuckle climbed the back fence; hollyhock, chicory, and Queen Anne’s lace ranged along the narrow space between the garage and the alley.

A neighbor explained to us that what my wife called starflowers were actually a variety of yarrow. All of these things had been growing there for many years, planted by those who had lived in the house long before we were born.

In April, when a thick carpet of tiny white flowers appeared in the front yard, people would stop – the letter carrier, the UPS driver – and say: “Those are what we used to call ‘spring beauties.’ And those over there, the purple ones, they’re called ‘ajuga.’” Some thought the columbines were wildflowers, others claimed they were domestic perennials.

In June, mixed in with the peonies, I noticed a plant I had never seen before. At the ends of long, symmetrical branches were small yellow flowers that opened early in the morning and closed before noon.

Some of these newcomers were overshadowed by the peonies, and had grown crooked, but I found one, in the alley, that looked like it had been sketched by an architect. Slender branches radiated from the stalk with geometric precision, and at the top of this cathedral, like a globe of light, was a large, airy flower. A perfect sphere, it had the hue and texture of a dandelion just before it begins to blow away.

This stranger had come to the yard of its own accord, and now was turning up everywhere, along with the spiderwort, and mixed in with the blue cornflowers. No one knew what it was – not the paperboy, not the old gentleman who lived across the alley, not Billy, the boy next door, who used to help me with the lawn, and who was home from boot camp for two weeks.

I began to suspect it wasn’t a flower at all but a weed. There were always lots of weeds in the yard, and I always pulled them, or mowed them, without knowing much about them. Milkweed I could recognize. Dandelion. Burdock. Mullein. Lamb’s-quarter. Two kinds of plantain, dooryard and buckhorn. A few others. But basically I was weed dumb.

When no one could identify the new plant, I walked down to the foot of the hill and asked Mrs. Bayliss, who was ninety years old, and blind. Everyone said she would know. In case it really was a flower, I didn’t want to uproot it, so I couldn’t take along a sample.

We sat on the screened-in front porch, where she kept big Boston ferns on wicker plant stands. Her daughter, Lucille, who was sixty-eight, brought us iced tea in Smurf glasses. I described the plant for her.

“How does it come out?” she asked.

“Out?”

“Out of the ground. When you pull it. Hard or easy?”

I told her I didn’t know, I hadn’t pulled one up yet.

“Every plant comes up a different way. Especially weeds. They all have a different feel. I gardened for ten years after I lost my sight, didn’t I, Lucille? Didn’t make a bit of difference.”

Her daughter agreed.

“Go back, pull up a few,” she said. “Pull up every other kind of weed in the yard, along the fence there, and in the alley. Then come back. We’ll talk.”

I went back a week later and told her it felt like pulling up a bar of soap that had gone spindly and gotten stuck in the ground.

She nodded. “It’s salsify,” she said. “Some call it the noon-flower. Others call it the Jerusalem Star. Or the oyster plant. Some fancy it, some don’t.”

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Do?” she said. “There’s nothing to be done. You’ve got a new neighbor, that’s all. It’s there in your back yard, along with all the other weeds and flowers. Most of them came to visit a long time before you showed up. They haven’t worn out their welcome, have they? Do?”