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.
“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.
