A Cut Above, Part VII "A Big Mistake"

The next morning I shake Kevin awake. “Kevin, come look. I can’t believe what they’ve done.”

     “Who? What?” Kevin rubs a hand through his tousled hair and across his face.
     “Jilly. Lorene. Lyle. I heard them laughing out there this morning. I thought for a minute that they were drunk, but it’s way too early.”
     “What’d they do?”
     “They’ve drawn bars on the windows of his car with shoe polish or something, and they’ve written stuff like ‘Dirty Old Monkey’ and ‘Beware the Beast.’ He’s still in there, asleep.”
     “Oh, he’ll think it’s funny. He doesn’t mind. They’re always joking over there, calling him ‘Stinky’ and whatnot.”
      “I don’t know. Somehow, this is worse. Too personal. Come look.  ”

      Kevin gets up and wraps himself in his robe. I follow him downstairs and out onto the back porch. Over Kevin’s shoulder I can see Nigel’s battered station wagon parked near the shed. Nigel’s sitting up in the back, his hair matted and poking at odd angles away from his head. The windshield has bars drawn on it with something that looks like white paint, and the words, “Come see the Monkey,” are written across the vertical lines. The side and back windows have more bars drawn on them. “Dirty Monkey” says the window on this side.

      We hear laughter. Lyle and Jilly and Lorene are standing on the back steps of A Cut Above. They point at Nigel, still sitting in his car, and make monkey noises, “Hoo-hoo-hoo.” Lyle jumps off the porch in an ape-like crouch, holding his arms low to the ground. He throws himself around the garden, hoo-hoo-hooing and pretending to swing from the trees. His thongs smack the bottoms of his feet loudly.

      Nigel opens the back door of his car and crawls out. He brushes out the wrinkles in his overalls and rakes his hair back under his cap. He turns and looks at his car, moving around it, reading the words on the windows. Even from our porch, I can see his ears get redder. The weathered back of his neck glows above his crumpled collar. I put one hand on Kevin’s shoulder in front me and lean on him.

      Nigel turns to the laughing trio. I’ve never seen him so pink, so freckled, so burned. He opens his mouth, but it takes him a few tries before any words come out. When they do, they sound torn. “You assholes. You fucking assholes.” His voice wavers and cracks its way up an octave. “I may just be an old queer, but I’m not a monkey, dammit!” He stops. He takes three sweeping steps to the corner of the shed, where the Weed Scourge is propped. He grabs the Scourge with both hands and waves it over his head, hoeing the air. Jilly and Lorene shriek with laughter. Lyle hoo-hoo-hoos and dances from one foot to the other. 

      Kevin turns to me, his face ashen. “This is a big mistake.” I nod and watch. 

      “Stop it. Stop it!” Nigel runs at Lyle. He lifts the Weed Scourge high and throws it. It falls about three feet short and bounces once in the grass. “Stop! It!” Nigel screams.

      Jilly and Lorene fall silent. Lyle freezes in mid-crouch. Nigel strides over to him and picks up the Scourge. Lyle flinches, moves sideways. Pretty quick for a fat guy, I think. Nigel holds the Scourge more carefully now, almost tenderly. 

      Lyle straightens. “Hey, guy. Can’t take a joke? Come on. Can’t take a joke?”

      Nigel turns back toward his car, holding the Weed Scourge close to his side. He puts the Scourge in the back and walks around to the driver’s side.

      “Come on, Nigel,” says Lyle. “Don’t go. Can’t you take a joke? Come on. Don’t go.”

      Nigel gets in and backs his car away from the shed. He stops, opens his door, and reaches out to wipe the windshield with his shirt sleeve. The painted bars smear across the glass. Nigel drops back into the car, slams the door, and drives away, leaving us staring after him, locked in a wordless tableau: Lyle on the edge of the parking lot, his hands still monkey-clenched; Jilly and Lorene on the Cut Above porch steps. Kevin and I draw back into our house and close the door softly.

It’s late, but I can’t sleep. Kevin’s been lightly snoring beside me for two hours, but I stare and stare at the wall. There’s a full moon tonight; even with the curtains drawn, there’s enough light in the room for me to see the pattern on the wallpaper. I haven’t seen Nigel since Saturday. He hasn’t come back to get the week’s check, Lyle tells me, and the waitress at the Whitman says he hasn’t been there in four days. 

      The garden committee came this morning and gave Lyle his blue ribbon and a little plaque that says “Best Wild Garden.” There were still a few things left to finish up, but neither Lyle nor I got around to them. Guess it didn’t matter to the committee. I didn’t go outside while they were here, I watched Reverend Bleat and Mrs. Farnsworth and some other woman walk around and ask Lyle questions. Mrs. Farnsworth even patted the new Boner on the head while she was showing the other woman the berms. 

      It’s hot, hotter than it’s been so far this summer. We kicked the sheets off right away, and Kevin is clear over on his side of the bed. I sit up and lift my damp t-shirt away from my body. Then I get out of bed and pull back the curtain. The moonlight makes everything the color of cement. If I look far to the right, I can see the new Boner sitting obediently between the berms. His sightless eyes are fixed on a bushy azalea, its grey blossoms heavy with moonlight. 

      There’s another statue in the garden tonight. A man leans, motionless, on the Weed Scourge, one heavy, rubber-booted foot cocked behind the other. He surveys the last of his labor, the filled borders, the graded berms. He tucks a grimy bandana into his pocket, props the Scourge against a low tree, and, with gloveless hands, lifts the hem of his shirt high over his head, sweeping his cap off with it, too. He bundles the cap and shirt against his chest, then drops them on the ground. The moonlight washes the hard knots and sinews of his shoulders and back. The silver planes of his chest rise and fall rhythmically. He’s beautiful, and, from my window, I love him.


[To order a copy of the book, Walking Pocatello, call the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237, or send me an email.]

A Cut Above, Part VI "Boner"

At noon, I find Nigel sitting at the counter in the Whitman, slurping the special of the day, barley and beef stew. “You shouldn’t have done it, Nige,” I say, sliding onto the stool next to him. “He’s sooo mad.”

      Nigel shrugs. “Have the stew. It’s good today.” He goes on slurping, but I can see in the mirror over the back of the counter that he’s smiling into his spoon.

      “I’ll help you load it back in your car. Did your friend Tony make it?”

      “Pretty good, huh? I call him ‘Boner.’”

      “Well, that’s appropriate.” I laugh. “You should have seen old Rev. Bleat.”

      “That asshole. What about Mrs. Farnsworth?”

      “Well, actually, I think she thought it was funny. But they whisked her out of there so fast.... You know, I like the idea of a dog. Just one a little tamer. A little smaller, maybe.” I see the waitress approaching with her order pad and wave her away. “Nothing for me, thanks.”

      Nigel dunks a piece of bread into his bowl. “I won’t be over today. Got some work on the West side. I’ll come by after the shop closes and get the dog.”

      “Okay. See ya later. You know we’re going to have to work extra to make up for this.”

      Nigel shrugs again and turns back to his stew. “Yeah, yeah. See ya later.”

 The next day Nigel and I start early and work silently and hard. About two-thirty, we take a break and go over to A Cut Above. Jilly and Lorene are each with a customer, so Nigel and I stand in the doorway to talk. The customer getting her hair cut eyes us with some alarm, and I’m aware of how disheveled we look.

     “Where’s Lyle?” I ask. “I haven’t seen him all day.”

      “Over at Mrs. Farnsworth’s house. He talked to her this morning.” Lorene’s got her name badge on today, so I know it’s her. She rolls her eyes at Nigel. “He was so pissed yesterday. He stomped around here for an hour. Couldn’t even cut his appointment’s hair. I had to do it. Good thing you were gone.”

      “So, what’s he doing with the Farnsworth woman? Apologizing?”

      “No. That’s what’s weird. She called him, and I’m not positive, but I think she was laughing about it. Don’t you think, Jilly?”

      “That’s what it sounded like from this end. I think it’s Rev. Bleat who’s the most up-tight, but I saw him when he was stuffing Mrs. Farnsworth into the car, and I think he was laughing, too. Just didn’t want anyone to know he was.” Jilly’s bending over the sink, shampooing her customer’s hair. The customer, her head a bubble of soap and curls, tries to sit up, but Jilly pushes her back into place. Jilly flips soapsuds in Nigel’s direction. “You knot head. You had to know Lyle’d be pissed. They might have disqualified him.”

      “No, Honey, that’s just what they wouldn’t do. I’ve seen some of the other entries. There’s nothing in town that comes close to this yard. Not even my other gardens.” Nigel tweaks the points of his neckerchief and turns to me. “Com’on. Let’s get back to work.” 

      We strain over the granite stones of the pond, heaving them into place, and Nigel mutters, “Boner or no Boner, this yard’s going to win. Lyle knows it. That stupid committee knows it. Just wanted to give him a little jolt. That fat queen has been bossing me around for years. ‘Nigel dig this.  Nigel plant that. Can’t you get me some birch bark? Why did you give so-and-so my baby pines?’ You watch. He won’t say a thing to me about this.”

He’s right. We spend the next three days finishing the pond, laying some stepping stones, and planting a pile of chrysanthemums Nigel’s rescued from a dumpster in back of K-Mart’s garden center. We stay out of the shop, and Lyle busily comes and goes from A Cut Above, pretending not to see us. Our backs bent over our work, we pretend not to see him.

      I bunch together straggling stalks of baby’s breath, and Nigel binds them with twine. “Nige, I’m curious. What did your friend Tony say when you took the dog back? Did you tell him what happened?”

      “Oh, he knew what would happen. He laughed the whole time he was casting it.”

      “What’s he going to do with it? I can’t imagine anyone else will buy it.”

      “Sure they will. He just took his little chipping hammer and--bonk!--performed a doggy circumcision. Boner’s fine. Just not as well-endowed now.”

      “So, are you bringing him back? I’m not sure the garden committee could stand seeing him again, even in his ‘altered’ state.”

      “Naw. I’ve got a new Boner. Very modest. Paws together and all that. I’m bringing him by tonight.”

On the fourth day, Lorene asks Nigel to go get her some wine, so I dig up a bulb of garlic and pick a plateful of beans, and we take them into A Cut Above for a little snack. Lyle’s there, finishing up a cut and style. We’re in the back, zapping the beans in the microwave when Lyle comes in, his flip-flops trailing snippets of hair across the tile.  

      He pours himself a glass of wine. “Everything goin’ okay?”

      “Sure, sure. We’ll have it all ready by Tuesday. No problem.” 

“Need anything?”

      “Nope, we’re fine.” Nigel casually peels a slice of blistered skin off his arm.

      “Okay.” Lyle shuffles back out to the front of the shop. “By the way,” he says, without turning his head toward us, “the new statue looks good.”

A Cut Above, Part V "Quite a Dramatic Treatment"

A few nights later, I’m awake again because of noise in the yard.  I get up and look out the window, then sit down heavily on the edge of the bed. “God, he’s at it again.”

      Kevin leans up on one elbow. “What’s going on?”

      “Nigel. He’s out there in the garden. His car is right up on the lawn.” I pick up the clock and hold it close to my face. “It’s two-thirty. What can he be doing now?”

      Kevin climbs across me and draws back the curtain. “He’s unloading something out of his car. He wouldn’t be burying a body or anything, would he? It looks like he’s got one wrapped in a blanket.”

      “Oh, who knows. I just wish he’d quit clanking around. Why can’t it wait ‘til morning?”

      “D’you think I should go down and see?”

      “No.  Especially if it is a body.”

      “Maybe he hit a dog and he’s burying it. It’s about that size.”   

      “Well, he is a terrible driver. Oh, hell, come back to bed.”

The next morning I wake up late. Downstairs, there’s a note stuck on the cupboard above the coffeepot:
      
I pour a cup and wander into the front room. Kicking a pile of newspapers away from in front of my favorite chair, I sit and sip and try to wake up. Car doors slam out front, and I can hear Lyle’s businessman’s voice, a blend of officiousness and conciliation that I’ve heard him use at City Council meetings. “So glad you could come early, Mrs. Farnsworth. Reverend Bleat, how are you? I’ve got the forms all filled out. As you can see, the work is well under way.”

      A woman’s voice murmurs a reply. This must be the screening committee. Lyle had said something about a selection process for the contest. Mary Farnsworth--“Mrs. Dr. Farnsworth,” as she likes to refer to herself--is a Martha Stewart wannabe. She’s always organizing chocolate festivals and garden awards and tours of people’s houses. Reverend Bleat is the pastor of the Presbyterian Church and president of the Pocatello Gardeners’ Club. We’ve never heard him preach, but Kevin and I like to joke about his name reflecting his oratorical style.

      Lyle is giving them a tour of the grounds. Maybe I should go out. After all, half of it is my yard, too, and I’ve done part of the work. I don’t hear Nigel out there. Probably Lyle has scheduled the committee’s visit for when he knows Nigel has something else to do. Maybe he doesn’t want either of us out there. I don’t know if Lyle has told the committee who’s doing the work. Surely, he’s not pretending to have done it all himself. I check myself in the hall mirror. I look presentable. I’ll just wander out as if I don’t know what’s going on.

      I step out the front door, coffee cup in hand. Lyle has discarded his usual t-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops in favor of a grey-green polo shirt, tan slacks, and loafers. He’s wearing his toupee, of course, and he’s leading Reverend Bleat and Mrs. Farnsworth around the first low berm. He indicates the location of the pond. “Ahh,” says Mrs. Farnsworth. 

      “Very nice,” says Reverend Bleat, making a note on the clipboard he carries. Lyle nods to me over the committee members’ heads, and I step closer. Mrs. Farnsworth turns and smiles politely, but without much interest. Rev. Bleat glances my way and returns his attention to a flowering quince that Nigel has planted in the space between the pond and the second, higher berm. I can tell that Lyle has already explained my status as his tenant. I’m not going to figure in the contest as either land owner or gardener. I smile and nod politely and drop back behind the group.

     “We’ve staggered the berms, you see,” Lyle explains, “so as to minimize the views of street and parking lot. The second berm is high enough to effectively block the view of both the street and the alley. This creates a private garden within the garden.” At his mention of the parking lot, I stretch on tiptoes to see if Nigel’s car is gone. Sure enough, it is. 

      “This is quite a dramatic treatment,” says Mrs. Farnsworth. I wonder what errand Lyle’s sent Nigel on.   

      “Step around here, Mrs. Farnsworth,” Lyle says unctuously. I notice that Nigel’s tires have left faint marks on the grass at the side of the larger berm, but it looks as if it’s been raked over, so he must have been here earlier this morning. I wonder what he could have been doing out here last night.

      I look up, suddenly aware that the committee has stopped its appreciative murmuring. Lyle, Reverend Bleat, and Mrs. Farnsworth are standing just on the other side of the high berm. Mrs. Farnsworth is breathing hard, as if she’s been running. Lyle looks apoplectic; his face and neck are so tightly strained that his toupee rides high on the top of his head. His mouth opens wide, but all that comes out is a strangled “Erk.” Reverend Bleat jerks his clipboard up in front of Mrs. Farnsworth’s face, grazing her nose. I remember Kevin’s note.

      The trio whirls about and begins stumbling toward Reverend Bleat’s car, Lyle and the Reverend hustling Mrs. Farnsworth along between them. Reverend Bleat is still trying to keep his clipboard in front of Mrs. Farnsworth’s eyes. Mrs. Farnsworth begins to laugh, and Lyle and Bleat hurry her faster toward the car. As they brush past, Lyle glares at me over Mrs. Farnsworth’s head.

      I turn away from them and step around the corner of the berm. At first, I think that the animal, a large grey dog, is real and has wandered into the yard by accident. Then I realize that this dog is unlike any other dog that will ever stray into this or any other garden. About three feet tall, solid cement, rearing up on his back legs, he paws the air playfully. He grasps a cement bone far back between his jaws, and his smooth grey eyes stare blindly. A happy dog, a rambunctious dog, a virile dog. A very, very virile dog, I think, as I identify the likely source of the committee’s embarrassed retreat. The penis of this dog is not a regular-sized doggy penis; it appears to have been modified by the sculptor. No, not modified, augmented. This dog is rampant in more than just stance.

      “I’m going to kill him!” Lyle stands beside me, hands on hips, toupee swiveled over one ear. “Is this his idea of a joke? Did you know he was having this made?” Without waiting for my reply, he turns and lurches into the shop.

A Cut Above, Part IV "Someone Gets Pissy"

This afternoon, as I dig a drainage trench around the pond, I find myself thinking back on that wedding a year ago, that meeting between Nigel and Dad, and I stab my shovel into the dirt, turning over the clods and whacking them hard with the back of the blade. Nigel’s creaky laugh filters through the forsythia bush behind me. “It’s just a trench, Honey. You’re not digging to China.” I bury the shovel blade in a pile of earth and wipe my forehead with the back of my arm, smearing sweat and dirt together. Nigel comes around from behind the forsythia and hands me an extra bandana. “Looks like you need a break. Let’s pick some nasties and go have a drink.”

      Jilly and Lorene, the two women who work for Lyle at A Cut Above, look just alike to me. They aren’t twins, not even sisters, but I never can remember which is which. They’re both trim and dark-eyed, they both wear jeans and black t-shirts that say “A Cut Above,” and they change the color of their hair so often that it’s confusing. Their stations are side by side in the shop, and they share hair dryers, curling irons, clippers, and even customers with equanimity. 

      The two women like to drink in the afternoons if business is slow, and if Nigel’s around, they’ll give him a twenty to walk over to Albertson’s and buy them a bottle of wine. When the garden’s going full blast, Nigel often takes them handfuls of fava beans to eat. Fava beans, zapped in the microwave of the little kitchen on the enclosed back porch of the shop, taste really good mashed and mixed with cream cheese and freshly-ground black pepper. 

      Most days, Nigel and I take a break around three o’clock and join Jilly and Lorene for a snack. Today, Nigel serves us pansies and nasturtiums with our wine, and, after a couple of glasses, we have fun imagining what other flowers we could cook up. 

      “How about ‘Holly Ham Hocks’?”

      “’Banana-Daffodil Delight.’ It’s a blended, frozen dessert.”

      “Pan-fried Petunias. With gravy.”

      “What kind of gravy? What flower begins with ‘g-r’?”

      “Geranium gravy.”

      “That’s ‘g-e-r.’ Pour me another glass of wine.”

      Jilly or Lorene--I don’t know which--looks out the back door of the shop. “Oh, Ni--gel,” she says in a sing-songy voice, “there’s someone here to see--ee you.” She points toward the parking lot where a slender young man in tight levis and a western-cut shirt poses against Nigel’s battered Rambler.

      Nigel looks out over her shoulder. “It’s Trey.” He tosses the plate of flowers on the counter and hurries out the door and down the few steps to the parking lot. Jilly and Lorene stand at the window and watch.

      “He’s so gorgeous.”

      “I don’t get it.”

      “What a waste.”

      “You said it.”

      They go through this every time Trey comes around.           

      Suddenly Lyle looms in the doorway of the break room, a bundle of towels in his arms. “Don’t you two have anything else to do?” He puts the towels on the counter, shakes one out with a snap, and begins folding. 

      Jilly and Lorene say “No” in unison and laugh. Then they peel themselves off the window and begin clattering the plates and wineglasses into the sink. I pop the last nasturtium into my mouth, squeeze past Lyle, and head for the front door of the shop.

      “Out the back door with those boots,” says Lyle, and I swivel around and  march back through the break room. Lyle follows me out the back door. Nigel and Trey are leaning together on the car, passing a beer bottle between them. Lyle frowns. “Am I paying you for that?” he calls.

      Nigel laughs. “You couldn’t afford this, you old queen.” He takes one long, last chug of the beer and tosses the bottle into the back of his station wagon. Trey smiles a slow, tantalizing smile at Lyle--the kind of smile you see on beefcake calendars--then turns to Nigel and holds out a hand, palm up. Nigel unhooks a key from the bunch he digs out of his pocket and places it carefully in Trey’s hand. “See you later, kiddo,” he says. Trey folds his long legs into Nigel’s car and backs it out of the parking lot. He flutters a wave at Lyle as he drives off.

      Lyle stands with his hands on his hips, fuming a little. I don’t think he’s really in a bad mood; he just thinks he ought to be. Nigel laughs again, and picks up the Weed Scourge. “Let’s get back at it,” he says, giving me a wink, “before someone gets pissy.”

A Cut Above, Part III "The Wedding"

The next day--the day of the wedding--Nigel was around all morning, fussing with huge jars of zinnias and marigolds, weaving garlands of tiny rosebuds in morning glory vines for the bride and her sister to wear in their hair. He fashioned a cascading bouquet of poppies, daisies, and columbine for the bride to carry, and he placed leis of cosmos around my neck and Kevin’s, kissing each of us coyly on the cheek and croaking, “Aloha.” In the yard between our house and the barber shop, Nigel had tied willow branches into a heart-shaped arch under which the groom, the bride, and the mayor, who was performing the ceremony, would stand.

      About eleven-thirty, I noticed that Nigel had disappeared; the Scourge was propped neatly against the back porch, and his car was gone. By the time the wedding guests--about 30 family members and friends--began to arrive, he was still missing, but by then we were so busy greeting people and moving chairs out to the yard that neither Kevin nor I had a thought to spare him. The sky was alternately greying then clearing; the sun retreated, then burst back warmly from behind skittering clouds. Elderly guests whined their preference for an indoor ceremony; children raced in and out of perpetually-flapping doors. At one-fifteen, the mayor arrived and, checking his Daily Planner, bounced impatiently from one foot to the other, asking, “Where’s the bride? Who’s the groom?”

      By one-thirty, rain was dotting the sidewalk, and we yanked chairs back into the house, instinctively arranging them in concentric half-circles facing the wide, black, wood-burning stove that crouched like an iron altar on a raised tile dais on the far side of the front room. Nigel had created a particularly riotous arrangement of gladiolus, sunflowers, and huge stalks of pig weed which sat on the cold stovetop, and the mayor took his place before the stove-altar, turning solemnly to face the guests, his hands folded prayerfully around his Daily Planner. I noticed that the deep purple, fuzzy tops of the pig weed jutted wildly from behind him, and that by closing my left eye, I could make the pig weed appear to protrude directly from the mayor’s ear. I called Kevin’s attention to this, and, as the bride’s sister took her place as Matron of Honor and the groom took up his position, we amused ourselves by opening and closing first one eye and then the other, making the pig weed emerge first from the mayor’s left ear, then from his right.

Just as the bride came down the poppy-bedecked staircase, the sun broke through the clouds with an intenseness that caused her to exclaim, “I wanta be married in the garden.” So, over the grumbling of the older guests, we all trooped outside, and the wedding party arranged itself under Nigel’s arch. As the mayor hurried through the ceremonial words, stumbling a bit over the do-you-takes, out of the corner of my eye I saw Nigel come out of the shed at the back of the yard and join the ranks of guests standing under the dripping eaves of the house. He paid little attention to the other guests or the ceremony; instead, he rocked back and forth on his heels, admiring the flowers.  

      The ritual was soon over, the mayor dispatched to his next appointment, and the elderly relatives escorted back inside for refreshments. The bride and groom moved around the room, receiving congratulations and advice, and Kevin and I poured champagne and juggled napkins and forks and tiny plates of pink-frosted wedding cake. I could hear my father’s comradely “Ha, ha, ha!” boom from the kitchen. He and the bride’s sociology professor hovered around the beer keg, refilling their glasses and squeezing thin slices of turkey and prosciutto together with their fingers before stuffing them in their mouths. The groom’s parents sat on the stairs, plates balanced on knees, while my aunt Margaret quizzed them on the details of their son’s up-bringing. “So, you said he played football in high school,” I heard her recapping. “Didn’t he wrestle, too?”  

      Everyone raved about the flowers. 

      I was shouting an offer of more cake to the groom’s hard-of-hearing grandmother when Nigel appeared at my elbow. “Oh, there you are, Nige. I wondered what happened to you. Everyone’s talking about your handiwork.”

      “D’they like it?” He exhaled heavily, and I could tell he’d already had several refills of champagne. “I’m ‘shpecially pleased with the pig weed.”

      “Yeah. That arrangement’s quite, ah, entertaining.” I looked at Nigel more closely. His costume incorporated elements of his gardener persona with a jaunty interpretation of the joyous wedding guest. The overalls had been replaced by khaki riding jodhpurs and the puttees freshly rewound over his rubber irrigation boots. His shirt was buttoned high, as usual, and a virulent mustard-colored bandana was knotted so tightly around his neck that one end pointed determinedly at the ceiling and the other at the floor. A snug-fitting tan bush jacket constricted his shoulders and torso, shrugging up an inch or so further whenever he lifted his arms. His hat--brown and wide-brimmed, like Smokey the Bear’s--sat far down on his brow, secured by a cracked leather chin strap. The most noticeable detail of Nigel’s costume, however, was his scent: a confusing mixture of Old Spice, paint thinner, and unwashed man. Unvarnished. 

      “D’you get something to eat? Come on.” We squeezed past two inebriated guests--former boyfriends of the bride--propped one on each side of the kitchen doorway. 

      “Nigel, you haven’t met my father.” Dad looked up from his close examination of the beer keg’s spigot. “Dad, this is Nigel. He did the flowers.” 

      Nigel extended a peeling pink hand to my father, who rapidly shifted his glass of beer from right to left. “A pleashure, sir,” rasped Nigel, grasping Dad’s hand and pulling him forward, off balance. Nigel’s rich breath poured into Dad’s face. “A real pleashure.”

      Dad reared back, sloshing his beer. Nigel’s scabby pink thumb pressed into the back of my dad’s hand. Dad looked down at their joined hands, then up into Nigel’s flushed face. “Yeah,” he grunted and shook Nigel’s hand away the way I’ve seen him shake blood and feathers off his fingers while cleaning game birds.

      I steered Nigel away toward the table. “Uh, how ‘bout some cake? Here, take a plate.” I cut a large chunk of wedding cake and put it on the saucer Nigel held. Behind us, Dad yanked open the door to the pantry, slammed it shut, then opened the door next to it. He stomped into the bathroom, and I heard him snap the lock and clap the toilet seat up. Neither Nigel nor I turned around. “Sorry,” I said.  “I think he’s had a lot to drink.”

      Nigel shrugged.  “Honey, who hasn’t?  Le’sh go look at the flowers.”

      I could have predicted Dad’s reaction, I guess. About the only thing he’s ever said about my relationship with Kevin is that he’s glad my mother’s not alive to see it. Dad and I have never been close, and it’s not like he had a lot of expectations of me that I disappointed, so I suppose I should be glad that he doesn’t completely boycott every event in my life. Of course, he’d say he was at the wedding because of his granddaughter, but actually, he was never any closer to my two daughters than he was to me. 

A Cut Above, Part II "Unvarnished"

 Late that night, a noise from the yard rouses me, and I get up and open the curtain in time to see a battered car drive off the curb. Its muffler poots a soft farewell down the street. Kevin rolls over and opens one eye. “What the hell time is it?”

      “About midnight. I think that was Nigel. What can he be doing? He drove right up over the curb.”

      Kevin yawns. “That guy. Who knows? Probably drunk. You know he’s been sleeping in his car in back of the shop? He gets up early. Thinks Lyle doesn’t know.”

      “I don’t think Lyle would care. At least, not as long as Nigel’s working on the garden. It’s a long drive back out to Tyhee.”

     I let the curtain drop. I raise the blankets high and stick one cold foot into the bed, planting it firmly on Kevin’s warm ass. He swats the covers down over my leg. “Hey!  Are you crazy? Get in, and don’t put your feet on me. They’re like ice.”

      I laugh and settle in the bed. Kevin scoots a few inches away, toward his side. He exhales forcefully, his way of indicating annoyance. I turn toward him on my side and sneak my arm around his waist. There’s a brief, token resistance, then he lets me pull him close, in spoon position. I put my face into his thick hair and breathe into it warmly. I match my breathing to his, and soon we’re both asleep.

      Next morning, I see that Kevin’s right: Nigel is sleeping in his car. It’s six a.m., the coffee’s on, and from our back porch, I can see him curled up in the back of his faded-orange Rambler station wagon. That has to be uncomfortable, but then, Nigel often looks uncomfortable. He’s got pink, freckled, Scottish skin that blisters and peels all summer long, even though he’s the most covered-up person in town, cold weather or hot. His rusty, greying hair is usually plastered under a hat, his weathered throat strangled by both top shirt button and knotted neckerchief, and the backs of his calloused hands are blistered through tattered gardening gloves. Even his voice is uncomfortable--certainly to hear and surely to use. His words yank themselves up and down the register, jolting and grating on the listener’s ear, as if he were perpetually afflicted with a case of strep throat. 

      I realize that Nigel must sleep in his car a lot. He has a house out on the reservation, but he spends most of his time in town, traveling a spider web of routes between the Oasis Bar, the Whitman Cafe, and the many gardens he creates and tends.   

Nigel’s married. At least that’s what he told me last summer when we drove up into Portneuf Gap to cut wild daisies and larkspur. His wife is a Shoshone-Bannock woman--that’s why the house out on tribal land--and they have some kids, too. “Half our kids are pink, and half are brown,” he said. I don’t know how brown his wife is, but it’s hard to imagine anyone pinker than Nigel. 

      I remember wondering at the time What could Mrs. Nigel be like? Nigel says they don’t see each other much anymore, that the kids are pretty much grown, and his wife is content to spend her time visiting with her sisters and playing bingo several nights a week at the reservation casino. He goes home once a month or so, but the rest of the time he spends in town, gardening and sleeping at Trey’s or in his car. Nigel and his wife have a pretty casual marriage, and I gathered that was all right with both of them.   

      My mind was on couples and weddings that day. My daughter was about to be married from our house--a garden wedding, if it didn’t rain. Nigel was doing the flowers. Even though A Cut Above’s yard was crammed with every standard variety and experimental Nigel could steal from gardens around town, that wasn’t enough for him; the day before the wedding, he and I drove into the foothills south of town with buckets and clippers and the Weed Scourge. Nigel knew where there were whole hillsides of larkspur, ditchbanks glutted with ferns, roadside stands of hollyhocks. We harvested gullies and the edges of farmers’ fields. All morning we cut and bagged and twist-tied, until the bed of my pickup was full. 

      Then Nigel flipped open a burlap bundle he’d loaded in the front seat earlier that morning and pulled out still-cold bottles of beer. We sat in the sun and looked down through the Gap where the Portneuf River slices the hills just wide enough to fit Pocatello in between, and we drank our beer and talked about marriage. I wasn’t too happy about my daughter’s choice. They didn’t have much money and neither did I, so the wedding was going to be one of those home-grown affairs, where everyone pretends that love is what really matters, as if that’s enough to keep couples together. 

      I remember telling Nigel a little about my failed attempt at marriage, and he told me about his wife. He also told me--not for the first time--about Trey, the guy he’s with now, about how it surprises some people that an old queer like him managed to attract a beautiful young creature like Trey. I’ve seen Trey, and I didn’t say so to Nigel, but I’m one of those surprised people. Nigel explained it by saying that guys like Trey don’t want someone soft and unblemished like themselves; they want a really masculine man, one who acts and talks and smells “unvarnished,” I think his word was. I don’t remember what I said in reply, probably just swigged my beer and looked down the Portneuf Gap.

A Cut Above, Part I "Nigel's Little Helper"

From my room upstairs under the sloping eaves, I hear them in the yard, planning what will go where. Lyle sounds irritated and determined. He knows what he wants: the “Best Wild Garden” award at this year’s show. He thinks he knows how to win it, and he knows he needs Nigel to translate his plans into reality.

      Nigel has his own ideas. His creaky voice rises. “If you think anyone’s going to be impressed by a lot of scraggly dahlias and a couple of cement statues, Honey, you’ve got another think coming.”

      “You don’t like the lions?”

      “Everybody’s got lions. You need something different. Something unexpected. Something lurking behind a berm. Those judges turn the corner and say, ‘Jeez Louise!’ Then you’ve got their attention.”

      “I dunno, Nigel. Don’t want to give anyone a heart attack. How about a wicker swan?”

      Nigel snorts. “No-no-no. You let me take care of it. I’ve got a friend who casts garden sculptures. He’ll make something special for you. But no lions. No swans.”  

      I turn my book face down and push back the curtain. Lyle has left his wig inside the shop--it’s hot today--and his bald head shines up at me. Every few seconds he tugs his t-shirt back into place over his paunch. Lyle tells everyone that fat is a healthy sign now. He says that if you’re fat, you can’t be sick yet. His feet in rubber sandals splat-splat on the sidewalk and across the driveway.

      Nigel’s dressed for garden work in grass-stained overalls, a threadbare dress shirt buttoned up to the neck, rubber boots, and a paint-splattered golfing cap. His lower legs are wound in strips of rags--Nigel calls them his puttees--and he carries a garden tool he designed himself: part hoe, part shovel, part bird-in-flight. Its wing-like blades gleam wickedly. Nigel calls it the Weed Scourge.

      They cross the lawn between the two houses, the one Kevin and I rent from Lyle and the one that contains Lyle's barber shop, A Cut Above. Lyle ties red string on bushes to be yanked and trees to be pruned. Nigel gestures hugely to indicate the layout of the next berm.  He tamps the ground with the Scourge; he’ll dig a small pond here. He shows Lyle how he’ll rim it with granite blocks. Lyle looks hungry but doubtful. I can see from my window his struggle between desire to win and fear of what all of this is going to cost. He doesn’t know that late last night, in between watching for police patrols up and down Main Street, Nigel and I salvaged the rest of the granite from the old Pioneer Building rubble and loaded the blocks into the back of my truck. They’re in the shed right now under a tarp. Lyle doesn’t know how much Nigel and I want to win, too.  

      I met Nigel a couple of years ago when Lyle hired him to take care of the grounds around A Cut Above and our house next door. I’d heard people talk about Nigel’s talent, but it wasn’t until I saw what he was doing with our yard that I got interested enough to ask if I could work alongside him and learn. At first I just followed him around on Saturdays and afternoons when my classes got out early, but then summer came and I decided that a season with Nigel would teach me more than the botany lab assistantship my professor had arranged. When Lyle learned I was going to be Nigel’s assistant, I had a little trouble convincing him that I wouldn’t ask for pay or want to knock any money off the rent he charges us. Now he calls me “Nigel’s Little Helper” and expects to see me out in the yard, especially afternoons and weekends.

      At first, Kevin thought I was nuts. “You’re gonna work for free?” he said. “Fixing up somebody else’s property?”

      “You said yourself that we should try to get Lyle to sell us this house. Look at it as an investment in our future home.”

      He bought my logic. Like Lyle, Kevin’s a businessman, an accountant. That’s how we met, in fact. He handled my taxes the first year I was divorced, first helping my ex-wife and me sort out the money tangles, and then--later--helping me sort out the emotional ones. Kevin made it possible for me to save enough to go back to college. We’ve been together for six years now, and my finances and lovelife have never been in better shape.