Story One : The Garden
By: S. Chris Sanford
From the collection of Kansas Stories – Childhood Memoirs
Dedicated to my Father and Mother
When I was five, my father got a job that required us to move to Topeka Kansas. For one year my world was a gravel street that ended in a dead end that met the forest. Our house was situated down a sloping driveway and beyond the house continued a grassy field that terminated at a creek that rimmed the curve of that same forest.
If you consider a rural community, you might imagine a pack of wild neighborhood dogs, all of varying shapes and sizes that might tear through the yards and across the town. Perhaps they spent time at the lumber yard, or behind the general store.. In my neighborhood, it was a pack of wild children.
Every day, a mix of tall and short boys, ages three to seven, black haired, sandy haired, scruffy and unkempt, we ran from house to house terrorizing the community. One of our favorite stops was Old Man Johnson’s vegetable garden. Daily we would climb up on the rock wall of the stretch of turf that framed the backside of his house. Jumping from stone to stone we chased each other amidst the pepper plants and cabbages. We would fall into the carrots, and poke through the tomato plants picking off fat caterpillars with large red horns.
This was our routine, and we did this until we would hear the familiar rattle and slam of the screen door, and the towering overall clad presence of Old Man Johnson himself, eyes piercing and fists hammering in the air.
Old Man Johnson would rage against us every day. We hated that mean man who would always chase us off from that great garden we loved to play in. Down the hill we would fly on those summer days. We would do this every day, play in that amazing garden. And every day, that rotten old man would wreck our fun and chase us down the hill.
One day, we had spent some time behind the general store, worked our way across the tracks to the dump, then wiggled our way through the fence and back to the track of houses that was our immediate neighborhood. Around the corner we flew, anticipating a quick romp through that wonderful garden. Up we hopped to the rock wall, and we all stopped dead in our tracks.. Standing in the garden in those coveralls, back to us, large brimmed hat glinting white in the sun, was Old Man Johnson.
Adrenalin shot through my five-year-old veins, and the instinct of flight began to kick, but as we all made to leap from the wall, Old Man Johnson spun around and smiled. It was the oddest thing, completely unexpected and absolutely foreign to us. We were transfixed. A kind voice said “Hey boys, wait a second!”
On that day it was seven of us who stood in that garden facing the normally mean man. It took a moment, but then I realized that in front of him, nested between two prolific squash plants was a white bucket. “Come on over here,” he beckoned us. “I have something I want to show you.”
It was Marc, one of the older boys, with a dirty mop of red hair who took the first step.
“That’s right,” the old man continued. “Come on over and have a looksee.”
It was a timid few moments that passed as each of us processed this strange shift in routine. But it wasn’t long before all seven of us gathered close to peer into the white bucket at the feet of Old Man Johnson.
Marc flinched back then leaned in excitedly. Two others surged forward and I had to push my way past them to see what had caused the fuss. Then to my amazement and wonder, I saw it. The most beautiful rusts and yellows, the sleek spiral of body and a coned beak of a head with a flicking black tongue. It was something I had never experienced before, a vision that both excited and frightened me.
Old Man Johnson kneeled down and smiled. In a gentle voice “This here is a corn snake. They eat rats.” We were enthralled. “Look at the power in its body.” Each one of us had eyes glued.
Then he took a gnarled spotty hand and tipped the bucket carefully. The seven of us jumped back, then returned close again, as the spiral animated. The corn snake slithered from its white enclosure and found its way onto the garden soil. It’s head probed, but not for long, and the entire body in a flash disappeared into a hole.
We looked up curious and confused as Old Man Johnson stood once again to his towering height blocking the sun. He still smiled, but it was subtly ominous, a sardonic twist to the side of his mouth, or an intensity in his eyes. “From this point forward,” he began, “it will live in my garden.”
On that day, the seven of us ran far into the forest, down beyond the grassy hill. Only one summer passed for me in Topeka. But every day was filled with adventure. I can tell you though. Never once did our wild pack ever return to the amazing garden of Old Man Johnson.
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