English Garden Late in my junior year at college I was accepted to study abroad in England. It was a three week trip, designed to study foreign journalism in a time of war. I’ll admit I only signed up to get a free trip to England, and for the first few days there it was truly a vacation more than school. Four other students came with me to England, and we all stayed on a campus of a small university about ten miles west of London. The university’s dormitories were much too large for the college, so I was given my own room. I didn’t know the other students who had come along, and they seemed to know each other quite well, so I stayed out of their business. My first night there was spent trying to find the source of an eerie noise that had kept me up half the night, and a Monty Python Marathon on the BBC. Being a starving student, I was forced to take the cheapest form of transportation to my class in London each day, the bus. Skipping breakfast to go in search of someone who might know where the nearest bus stop was, I got my first look at the campus. I dearly wish I could remember the name of the university so I could highly recommend to everyone I know to never think about going there. Surrounding the campus was an overgrown excuse for a forest, and evidence of its creep closer and closer to the school was obvious. The school itself was formed in a giant L, the butting out section being the dormitories and the rest halls and class rooms. Running past the north side of the school like a graceful white ribbon was a gravel road. Not a gravel road like we imagine here in America, it was a highway dirt road. Four lanes at least. Passing missing person signs at the front of the campus, it was down this road that I began to stroll on my first morning. Having a keen natural sense of direction, I thought it smart to walk east down the road towards London. After walking along the path for an half an hour or so I finally noticed the position of the sun and realized I was a half an hour farther away from London than when I had started. Luckily it was then that I also came upon what looked like a bus shelter. I strode in proudly, enjoying my luck, when I discovered two benches. On one sat two of the students I had traveled with, engaging in something more than just sitting. Grumbling in disgust I chose the second bench, next to which was a man I assumed was homeless. Catching his eye, I rolled mine in regards to the overly affectionate couple, and he grunted in reply. He wore dirty brown slacks, ripped and scuffed at the bottoms. His jacket was black, and had a large patch on the right side, and around his neck was wrapped a velvet green scarf. Unshaven gray stubble stuck out at odd ends on his face, and his small remains of hair were uncombed and greasy. Having gone to school in Chicago for three years I had assumed most homeless people, if they weren’t drunk, high, or insane, were quite friendly, so I sat happily next to him waiting for the bus, trying to ignore the smell of scotch coming from his breath, and the noises from the other bench. When the bus finally came, the man did not get on, and neither did the couple, if they had heard the bus at all. My class turned out to be more of a history class than anything, and I was surprised to be released only two hours into the lesson. When I arrived back at the stop, the man and the couple were gone. So the first week passed in sunny weather, and I contained a cheery attitude of a tourist. I visiting sites in London after my classes, and soon was providing a steady stream of tourist shots to my friends back home. Soon I became lonely, turning to depression. I did not know the others at the college, and the local students were hard to find. They scurried to and from their rooms and classes without pausing to enjoy the sights or talk. I supposed the were used to it all, and didn’t appreciate it, just as I didn’t appreciate the beauty of Chicago as the tourists there did. The second week began with rain on the window, and a knock on my door. It was another student who had come with me, a short girl with bright red hair, who I seemed to recall had been quite intoxicated at a sophomore party I had been to the last year. She looked flustered, and asked that the next time I went to London for classes I ask about two students who had come with us. I said I would, knowing I would forget their names two minutes later. She suggested that they might have taken a hotel room in London, as they were dating and all, and they were skipping their classes and she wanted to go shopping with them or something. It rained the whole of the second week. As a result I spent most of my time cooped up in my room with my laptop, trying to finish a draft of a report having to do with British newspaper dispatches in World War One, absent mindedly also touching up a music review for the magazine publication back home. I spent endless amounts of time online, silently praying that an old friend would log onto our long deserted chat programs, or send me an email, or simply call to say hi. Desperation mixed with depression and I began to get my typical migraines. I discovered an online site for my class, and found that all the notes from that day were posted by the teacher. As a result I started to skip classes. I began wandering the campus, losing sleep, writing endlessly long rants in notebooks next to notes on editing skills. I began walking in the rain, around the campus, through the empty halls, into the surrounding forest, and back and forth to the bus stop. Secretly I hoped to find the homeless man again so I could have someone to talk to, but he was always gone. Towards the end of the second week I was walking around the campus late at night, trying to count the stars in a patch of sky where the rain clouds had broke through a window a few floors up in the dormitories. A moving figure caught my eye on the grounds below. It was the redhead, obviously drunk, trying to make her way into the forest for some reason or another. I scoffed annoyingly, wishing those types of people had been left behind in high school. I then returned to bed, trying to formulate how I could "innocently" contact my ex girlfriend from four years ago. At the start of the third week I decided to go back to classes to have something to do. On Monday morning I walked down the soggy gravel road under a cold gray drizzle. To my joy, the homeless man was sitting bundled up under the bus shelter. I quickly sat beside him and commented on the rain, to which I got a grunt. I gathered my courage and asked, "Do you live near the university?" He lifted his eyes and stared at me, I shifted in my seat uneasily. "Live near it, egh? I live on it." He said in a gravely voice. It still smelled of scotch. I waited. "..on it?" I ventured. "I’m the gardener dontchaknow. Been that for high near thirty years now. Keep the grounds clean." At this I just kept myself from chuckling and commenting on the dirty state, and the unchecked creep of the forest. "Really?" I said instead, grasping for something to continue onto. Then I remembered the previous night. "Then I feel I must apologize." "Apologize?" he started and looked at me, confused. "Well, yes. You see one or two of my fellow students, oh we’re from America, for a few weeks you see, well," "What?" he was losing me. I started over. "Well, one or two of my fellow students must have been partying-drinking, last evening, and I’m afraid they might have caused some problems on the grounds. I saw one last night near the edge of the woods." He sniffed loudly. "Yea I saw dem, two of them, crawling and laughin and spittin and throwin up all over my beautiful garden. You Americans, no respect for anything here. I ain’t see you ‘students’ do nothin but drink and hump and make a mess since you got here." I started in surprise of the strong answer. "I am afraid they do that, they are college students. Don’t the students here act in a similar way?" Thunder rumbled gracefully down the gravel road. The man looked at me with cold eyes that caused a greater impact in me than the thunder had. "In my garden," he began, slowly, "I keep careful watch y’see. The flowers especially, they’ve always been my favorites y’see. Ya like flowers?" He looked at me. I nodded sheepishly. He smirked a toothy grin and continued. "Good lad, every morning I go out to the flower bed and search em. Real careful like too. I look at the heads, tulips, roses, petunias, lilies, all of em, and remember em all. Every morning I do. I remember the shape the color the leafs the size, everythin." He turned towards me and smiled, clutching his hands to his chest comically, "They’s my babies." I chuckled and leaned in closer, it was like listening to a story from my grandfather. "Why?" I asked. "To keep em perfect. My garden is precious, precious based on its uniqueness, no color twice, no size repeated, every bad flaw taken away. Every morning I look y’see, look for the ones that copy one another, that aren’t unique, grow badly, aren’t right, and I clip ‘em away. Keeps my garden clean y’see? Any new weeds or whatnot come in, clip those too. Gotta keep my garden clean, gotta keep it unique and perfect. Wonderful egh?" And he smiled warmly at me, and I couldn’t help but return the smile. He then looked about in thought, and finally came said to me, "Say, I’ve seen you leave and come back quickly these days, think you would have time to help me clip some flowers, in the mornings? Not too early y’see, help an old man with his labor?" I smiled, "I’d love to." Before I could ask more, my bus pulled up, and I got up to get on. The old man jumped up and wrapped his arms around me in an embrace. "You’re a good lad," he said, "come help with the gardening. I’ll make tea!" And he ran off. I laughed to myself, feeling very warm and comforted, despite the pounding rain around me. That night I walked around the campus, hoping to find the man’s garden. He did remind me of a grandfather, and I expected to find a small garden, untidy and weed filled, but still his pride and joy. I found no such thing, and after circling the school many times, I found a student scurrying through the hallways. I caught him and he started. "What? Wadda ya want?" "Sorry, I was just wondering, where might I find the garden on campus?" "What garden?" "Well the gardener’s garden, a little flower patch perhaps?" He looked at me like I had been wearing a chicken on my head and offering him an egg. "There is no gardener here, hasn’t been for at least ten years, it’s rude to make fun of your hosts like this." And with that he ran off, cursing America and such. Confused, I went back to my room to study for the test on my last day of class. I didn’t see the man again, and on my last day I waited outside by myself for the van to come to bring me back to airport. I couldn’t find the other students. Three of the rooms were locked, and the last door fell open to the touch, and the room was covered in empty beer bottles and an iPod still played in a corner. At first I worried that I had been a day late, but when the white van pulled up I figured they must all be in London seeing the sights. Two weeks after returning home, an investigation provided the bodies of the four other students. All had been decapitated, their heads clipped off. They had a suspect, and asked me to identify a photo of him they had emailed over from England. He was wearing a tattered black jacket with a path on it, and wrapped around his neck was a velvet green scarf. He had asked me to go gardening. To clip the flowers. To make his garden perfect and unique. I had said yes.
Copyright © 2006 Michael Schmitt |