Chapter Three #3
Well, get ready for some more today, Tom, because, just looking at these subject lines from our call screener—Small Green Worm, White Powdery Mildew All Over Watermelons, Could It Be the Frogs?
—it’s just so hard to choose. But first come, first served.
Let’s go to Bev in Corbury Junction. Bev, you’re on.
Yeah, hey. Thanks for taking my call. Don, love the show.
Sorry, married, sweetheart.
Ha, you big flirt. Been listening to you for years, and you never change.
They’ll be coming for you soon, though. Anyway, I have two questions.
The first is pretty straightforward. Two weeks ago, I was eating some lettuce and realized a bit late that it was totally infested with snails.
I mean everywhere. I stopped when I discovered them, but you know…
…it was some crunchy lettuce, is what you’re saying.
Like Fritos. But my question is, should I worry?
You’ll need to call back on “Medical Minute” for that one, Bev! But, seriously, Tom Franks, tell us: health effects after a mollusky mouthful?
Well, I run a nursery, Don, so I can’t offer medical advice, but my sense is that, if you’ve made it two weeks out, you’re probably safe.
My sense, too, Tom. Hope that reassures you, Bev?
Yeah, guess so.
You had a second question?
I did; that okay?
Sure. Just gonna have to pay extra.
Aw, you’re a cad, Don. My other question has to do with a worm that has been eating my tomatoes. It’s green, about ten inches long…
Tom?
Sounds like some sort of caterpillar, Don.
That’s what I was thinking, too, Tom. But ten inches is a whopper—
No, guys. Not a caterpillar. It’s round, like an earthworm. No legs, just a smooth body, with little blue eyes that watch you when you are looking at them. A little red mouth. You can’t see it at first, but when you look real close…
I’m just a radio guy, Bev. Tom?
I’m stumped.
Come on. I mean, I have them everywhere. Every time I bite into a tomato. They even eat the jalapenos. I have these pumpkins that I grow each year for friends, and just yesterday I saw these little holes…
You know what I’m thinking, Tom?
What, Don?
Maybe those snails weren’t harmless.
Ha, I was thinking the same thing, Don.
Bev, thanks for your call. Next one is an email from Gordon, who writes: “Hello, love your program. I planted watermelons in June, did everything I was supposed to—weeded, watered, et cetera. Then, yesterday morning, I go outside and I find a patch of giant fuzzy spheres. What went wrong? What should I do?”… Tom Franks, help us out.
All right, well, this one I know. It’s called Sudden Watermelon Powdery Death, or SWPD—in the trade we call it Swip-Dee. It’s a fungus. Appears from nowhere, devastates completely.
Anything Gordon can do? Can’t eat them, right?
Not too many people would make that mistake, Don.
Not Bev?
Well, maybe Bev.
—
Miles pulled into the lot, reluctantly turned off the radio, and made his way to the school entrance.
He recognized some of the parents from the morning, and waited to see if any might recognize him.
It was a small town; wouldn’t they be curious?
And he imagined telling them about the long trip from California, and how lovely he’d found Vermont, and how inexpensive everything was, but then decided against this last part.
He’d brought Giuseppe with him, thinking the dog might help generate small talk, but awkward is the conversation when the only connection you have with someone is that your dog just goosed them.
Muttering an apology, he went and stood near a couple of men his age.
But they looked through him when he smiled in greeting, and he turned back toward the school.
A bell. The doors opened; little bits of dancing color rushing out.
And from the mass, a streak of blue and pink and slapping sandals. “Daddy!”
—
How was Olive’s day as described on the way home by Olive to her father?
Olive’s day was the best day ever.
How is Olive’s teacher?
Olive’s teacher is the best teacher ever.
She is Kayleigh Swan. This summer, she got married to her boyfriend, Mr. Ricky Swan, who proposed to her at the reservoir and made a joke where he pretended to drop her ring into the water and then dove down and came up with a bigger ring that he had hidden in his pocket, but then he accidentally dropped it, for real.
She has a cat named Scratcher. She wore a pretty wedding dress that she has lots of pictures of.
Maybe she will bring it in for Show and Tell, but they’ll have to wash their hands, especially the nosepickers, because she is saving it for her daughter.
She looks a little puffy in the photos, because she’s having a baby, and Olive will have a new teacher in May.
Did Miles know this?
No, he did not. Miss Kayleigh has not made it public, nor has she told the school district, just the third-grade class.
“Mrs. Swan,” right?
She says “Mrs. Swan” sounds old, and she’s not there yet. Also, lately she’s had mixed feelings about Mr. Swan, especially when talking about the loss of the ring, which is part of a general pattern.
Got it. But if she is having a baby in May, isn’t it a little early to know it’s a daughter?
She found a special crystal.
And where did Miss Kayleigh / Mrs. Swan find this crystal?
This they would be getting to later in the year.
Is this all that Olive learned about her teacher?
Not at all. She learned that Miss Kayleigh loves reading. She loves cats. She loves having parents come to class, and sometimes uses the time to take a much-needed breather. She loves archery, compound and crossbow.
And how about the other kids in Olive’s class?
They’re good.
Specifically, were there any children Olive made friends with?
There were.
Did these children have names, and if so what were they?
All children have names, silly. These specifically: Madison, Sophie, Augusta, Harper, Lisbeth, Tucker, Anna, Fatima, and Ally.
In fact, all the girls are Olive’s friends, except Ally, who was teaching swear words to the second-graders.
Could Miles believe that Harper lives in a house in the woods that has its own power, and a giant satellite dish, and she has seven dogs?
Miles could believe this. He also could believe…
Two of them are pregnant, and Olive agreed to take a puppy.
Did Olive learn anything exciting?
Olive learned about whales and about China.
Oh. Who taught Olive about China?
Miss Kayleigh Swan!
And what did Miss Kayleigh Swan teach the children about China?
That they have pandas. And do you know what?
What?
Southern Vermont has a long tradition of resistance and rebellion.
—
Wesley, meanwhile, had also made friends, forged instantly around a role-playing game called Cosmos.
Among the many mysteries of parenthood—of bringing a new being into the world and discovering it to be a creature of its own desires, its own tastes and preferences, strengths and weaknesses—certain mysteries had presented themselves as more mysterious than others: Wesley’s convulsive hatred of mittens during their first trip to the mountains; Olive’s inexplicable hatred of Maribel, a charming little girl with whom they tried to share a nanny; the morning like any other when Wesley had decided, completely out of the blue, that he would learn piano.
The mystery of Cosmos was, however, of a different order altogether.
There were books explaining tantrums, and plenty of theories about childhood friendships; but the inner workings of Cosmos were so inscrutable that Kate had once wondered if there was in fact no logic to it at all, but, rather, that the children were engaged in an absurdist art project, a kind of commentary on an adult world that seemed absurd itself.
Wesley had discovered the game during the pandemic and had taken to playing it with a pair of friends over Zoom.
Unlike many of the digital worlds into which friends’ children had fallen, this was not an online game: Wesley sat at a computer with a stack of cards and a piece of paper and a pencil, as did three other boys elsewhere in that plague-struck land.
The structure of the game had been a topic of great interest to both Miles and Kate, if less for the mysterious identities of their son’s dual avatars, Yvancse and Iostop, than as an insight into the mind of a child who had become relatively silent since being confined at home.
In its most simple form, it was a role-playing adventure, with a deck of cards, one side depicting a menagerie of animal and vegetable and mineral, while the verso hosted a schematic that looked to be a cross between an electrical network and a tree of life.
It had taken them months to work out the basic system, employing Olive as translator, since Wesley, like many a specialist, was in too deep to describe it comprehensibly.
It was no less than an act of galactic creation; nothing was predetermined; everything—physical, chemical, biological—negotiated by its players, built up from atomic scratch: the quality of substance, the rules of shadows, the behavior of the elements.
Iostop was a traveler, a corporeal creature of strength and daring, Yvancse an entity far more mysterious, far more powerful, a kind of winged gravity, a revelry, a spell.
Day after pandemic day, Wesley had labored at Cosmos.
Hieroglyphics filled his notebooks, indexed by a system of note cards of his own creation, vast and ranging, which grew in complexity until the day that Miles, drifting asleep, suddenly lurched awake and understood that somewhere in the cramped and cluttered scheme was no less than a blueprint of his child’s mind.