There were no orchards in my childhood. There were occasional stands of oak, or mountain retreats of pine which one drove hours and hours to reach.
But this, this is different. This is Nature tamed and made to march in orderly rows. At Auntie Nesbit’s ranch, they have an extensive vegetable plot that they call a ‘truck garden,’ and I imagine shiny blue Tonka toys hanging from the tips of bushes. But no, it is herbs and roots, incubating inside a cinderblock fence, tended like cows to produce the right cuisine, on schedule and without flaws.
They say the country is quiet. They say it is natural there. But I don’t see that. I see Nature as a naughty schoolchild, made to face the corner and sit still. I see a place cleaned of predators and competition. Granted that it is more quiet here, it is the stillness of humans, scoured of danger, set to a production schedule; it is the wild gentrified.
Don’t get me wrong. I like it. I do not want to be pounced on by anything untoward. But I am dogged by a feeling of basic deceit, like a person admiring cherrywood only to find that it is veneer.
And I think I might almost prefer the city. The city is a complete denial of Nature, but that at least is honest. “We don’t want you,” it says to Nature. “You do not exist. Go away.”
The country says to Nature, “Behave, and we might let you live.”
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BEANSTALK and other shorts
Short StoryA collection of flash fiction and short pieces from my archives. An older woman who sees her marriage as an interruption; the real story behind children playing "Cowboys & Indians"; a girl who has stopped living; a man who knows exactly why his woma...
