The Sinners' Garden Read online

  “Okay, tough guy,” Rip said, remembering the last time they upgraded Andy’s mode of transportation. It was when they traded Andy’s bicycle for the minibike. Rip shook his head, thinking that it seemed impossible for that to have been four years ago, particularly with three of those spent behind bars.

  “Wait for us!” It was Judi.

  Milo was in front of her, doing his three-legged race at her side. Whenever he ran, it looked like he was moving sideways, but the little guy was surprisingly quick, and what he lacked in limbs, he made up for in heart.

  “C’mon, Tripod!” Rip yelled, sparking Milo into his highest gear. Judi actually seemed to move a little quicker too, her flip-flops smacking at her heels the whole way.

  “I can’t believe you were going to show it to him without us,” Judi said, catching her breath and sounding miffed.

  “Chill out,” Rip said. “I was gonna have Andy put his new helmet on and pull it out in front of the house for you.”

  “Okay,” Judi said, using that victim tone they’d all become accustomed to.

  “Pull what out?” Andy asked, crossing his arms.

  Rip kneeled down and grabbed the garage door handle, ignoring the pain in his lower back that had been bothering him for a while. He pulled up and the door swung open, leaving them all staring straight at Andy’s birthday present. It was parked in the center of the garage, covered by an old white bedsheet.

  Rip went into the garage and grabbed a handful of the cloth.

  “What is it?” Andy asked, rocking back and forth on his heels.

  Rip got jelly-legged and smiled. He couldn’t wait for Andy to see it.

  Under the sheet was the coolest dirt bike in the history of mankind. Kevin Hart had practically forgotten he’d owned it. Hart had worked about as hard for it as he had for his father’s business, and it had been parked down in the factory’s basement since Moses was a teenager. Rip had taken the motorcycle in lieu of pay for waxing Hart’s boat, the forty-six-foot Cigarette Rough Rider—the fastest thing on Lake Erie. In fact, it was so fast, it could get his boss across the lake into Canada and to his little girlfriend’s house before you could even say affair.

  It had taken Rip close to a week just to get the bike’s motor working. With the help of some spare parts he grabbed at the dump over in Carlson, some orange and black paint, and a few affordable decals he had found on the Internet, he had finished it two nights ago, and now the motorcycle was ready to roll.

  “Put your helmet on,” Rip said. “This is official business.”

  Rip grinned and he saw Andy hurriedly do what he asked.

  “Happy birthday!” Rip shouted, yanking on the sheet. But his eyes were only on his nephew.

  Andy smiled from ear to ear. Something that didn’t happen too often.

  “It’s beautiful!” Judi said.

  “C’mon, bro, get on it!” Rip yelled.

  Andy ran toward the bike. “Can I start it?”

  “Go for it,” Rip said, handing Andy the key.

  Andy got on, started the bike, and then gunned the throttle, revving the engine and filling the garage with a high-pitched zipping sound that reminded Rip of a new chain saw. Andy’s head bobbed up and down in approval and he slowly lowered the visor. Rip put his arm around Andy and then looked back at Judi, who was smiling as well. And then her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying, so he reached over and cut the bike’s engine.

  “What the heck?” Andy said.

  “Your mom is saying something,” Rip answered, nodding at his sister. “What is it, Judi?”

  She smiled again but it didn’t last long. “It’s so loud and so big. Is he going to be safe on that thing?”

  “Mom,” Andy said, lifting the visor.

  “I’m gonna take him right now for a ride out to The Frank and Poet,” Rip said. “I’ll let him get used to it and then let him drive me back. What time is Heather coming?”

  “You’ve got about an hour,” Judi said. She crossed her arms and her eyebrows furrowed, clearly stressed out about the bike. “I still think that motorcycle seems too big. It’s just—”

  “Stay out of it, Mom,” Andy said.

  “Hey!” Rip said, rapping his knuckles on top of Andy’s helmet. “Respect. Remember what we talked about?”

  Andy pulled the visor down and turned his head the other way.

  Rip looked back at Judi, and her shoulders were slumped. She looked as if she was about to cry and Rip closed his eyes, unable to stop the disappointment that stabbed at his heart in the midst of so much joy.

  He knew he wasn’t the only one who had things to work on.

  Rip and Andy had cut across the backyard toward the west side of Ripley’s Field. They were halfway through the thick stretch of woods that ran away from the house and Lake Erie out toward the cornfields and The Frank and Poet Canal. Rip was helmetless with Andy perched behind him. Rip could feel the boy’s impatience, waiting for them to make it beyond first gear as Rip slowly maneuvered around the tree limbs that had fallen and littered the old tractor path over the years.

  “How come you don’t have to wear a helmet and I do?” Andy asked.

  “We ain’t gonna go that fast,” Rip said, knowing everyone had their own definition of fast. “I just want you to get an idea of what she feels like and then you’ll bring us back.”

  “Still doesn’t answer my question,” Andy said.

  “Really, smart aleck? We can always take the bike back to the barn and neither of us can wear a helmet. How’s that sound?”

  “Sorry,” Andy muttered.

  Rip spotted the end of the woods where the path widened between a pair of cornfields. “Hang on, bro. I’m gonna hit it here in a second.”

  Rip didn’t feel Andy hanging on and he glanced behind him. Andy was just gripping the sides of the seat.

  “I mean hang on to me,” Rip said. “This isn’t the minibike.”

  “C’mon, Uncle Rip.”

  Rip gunned the throttle and the bike lurched forward a little, clearly catching Andy off guard.

  “Now you ready?” Rip said as they came out of the woods.

  “Yeah,” Andy said, wrapping his arms tightly around Rip’s waist.

  Rip gunned it, and they both leaned forward. The countless rows of short corn on both sides of them blurred as they headed straight toward The Frank and Poet Canal, one of a dozen canals that ran through Benning. Like a little finger that belonged to Lake Erie, The Frank and Poet curved around both the north and west sides of Ripley’s Field and also served as a border between Benning and the abandoned McLouth Steel property, which was over in the town of Carlson. The water in The Frank and Poet was always cold and had a funny color to it. And despite all the rumors of toxic spills from the factory and the promises of cancer and two-headed offspring to anyone who ever went in it, the canal had always been a great place to swim.

  Rip pulled back a little more on the throttle and the bike responded well. Almost too well. They hummed farther down the path until the deserted old factory came into view. He slowed the bike down as they came to the end of the cornfields and into the knee-high grass that ran about thirty yards downhill to the canal.

  “What do you think?” Rip said, bringing the bike to a stop.

  “Wow!” Andy said in a rare display of enthusiasm. “How fast you think we were going?”

  “Maybe around sixty or seventy.”

  “I thought you said we weren’t going to go fast.”

  “That isn’t fast when I’m driving,” Rip said, glancing over his shoulder and giving his nephew a subtle look of warning. “I know you won’t go that fast, right?”

  Andy didn’t answer. He just lifted his visor and pointed across the canal at the McLouth Steel property.

  Rip turned and couldn’t believe his eyes.

  “Where in the world did those come from?” Rip asked. “Weren’t we just swimming out here a few days ago?”

  “Yeah,” Andy said.

 
Rip blinked and shook his head. It was around ninety feet from one side of the canal to the other. Beyond the far bank, the land had always been covered with the same kind of wavy grass they were standing in right now—grass so high and soft you could sleep in it. The grass ran about a football field back to a rusty old fence that was guarded by poison ivy so thick, you’d itch just looking at it. Beyond the fence were century-old railroad tracks, rusty chunks of abandoned equipment, and acres and acres of cracked concrete that led back to the dark walls of the deserted factory and its thousands of little, broken windows.

  Every time Rip looked at the place, the first thing that came to his mind was the time he and a couple buddies, all around eleven or twelve years old, had pitched a pup tent in the tall grass over there. They were going to camp all weekend with just their BB guns, two bags of canned goods, and the three bottles of Mad Dog 20/20 Tommy Curtis had lifted out from under the passenger’s seat of his older sister’s white Camaro. The weekend didn’t quite turn out as planned. They were all drunk and had passed out, only to be woken up by a pair of hobos who must have jumped off one of the trains that had stopped at the factory. The two men had helped themselves to most of the boys’ food supply and were on their way back toward the fence when Rip came out of the tent. He remembered hurling a can of Franco-American macaroni and cheese, missing one of the men’s heads by less than a foot. And then he remembered swaggering back down to the canal and hurling something else. Nothing like a little recycled Mad Dog adding to the lore of The Frank and Poet’s toxicity.

  But now it was different on the other side.

  Just past the far bank, surrounded by the high grass, were four beds of wildflowers, each about the size of a tennis court. They were individually outlined in jet-black soil and in a neat row, creating an enormous stripe of color. On second glance, it almost looked like a giant garden—deliberately planted and cared for—with yellow, red, blue, white, and pink flowers that all seemed to be the same height.

  “Look at that,” Rip said. “Those four sections are carbon copies of each other. Who could’ve done such a thing?”

  “Have you ever seen flowers there before?” Andy asked, clearly awestruck.

  “No,” Rip said. “I’ve been coming out here my whole life—thirty-two years, not counting my government-sponsored vacation. I’m telling you, I’ve never seen anything like that over there.”

  It was true. And even though Rip had never considered himself to be a nature buff, the garden’s beauty was truly something to behold.

  Andy got off the bike and walked down to the edge of the canal. He took his helmet off and tucked it under his right arm. “It’s so weird, Uncle Rip. Wouldn’t we have noticed it growing when we were out here? All I remember is grass.”

  Of course they would have. Had it been there. But it hadn’t been.

  “It is weird,” Rip said. He wasn’t sure if weird was the right word or not, and a little voice inside of him was begging him to remember this moment. And the longer he looked at the other side of the canal, the more he became convinced that there was a reason that garden was there, because just staring at it gave him a bizarre sense of peace he had never felt before.

  Rip walked down to the water beside Andy. His nephew almost seemed like he’d been hypnotized, his eyes glassy and fixed on the flowers.

  “Something’s over there,” Andy said.

  “Even the early blooming stuff doesn’t grow that fast,” Rip said. “And look how those four sections are so neatly divided. You see it?”

  Andy squinted and then nodded.

  “And how in the world could somebody plant that many flowers, that fast?” Rip added. “Look how straight the edges of those beds are. It’s almost too perfect, for crying out loud.”

  “Something’s over there,” Andy repeated. This time in a whisper. “I can feel it, Uncle Rip.”

  “I think I know what you mean. Feels good just looking at it, doesn’t it?”

  Andy didn’t answer and they both just stared at the flowers in silence.

  Rip finally shook his head, whispered, “Weird,” and poked Andy on the shoulder. The boy seemed to snap out of his little trance. “You ready to give that bike a whirl?”

  “Yeah,” Andy said.

  They walked up the bank, into the tall grass, and Rip turned back around and studied the wildflowers, wondering how he was going to describe them to Judi and Heather. “Looks like a little piece of heaven, doesn’t it?”

  Andy flipped the helmet in his hands and laughed. “If there was a heaven.”

  “Funny guy,” Rip said. “Put your helmet on real quick. I want to test something before we take off.”

  Andy did and Rip smacked the side of the helmet with his open palm. The visor slid down over Andy’s face and he took a couple steps the other way. “What the heck was that for?”

  “Don’t ever let me hear you say that again.”

  “Okay,” Andy said. “Chill out.”

  Andy mounted the bike. Rip got on behind him and tapped Andy on the shoulder. “Who loves ya?”

  Andy didn’t answer and Rip knocked on the top of the helmet.

  “Okay, okay,” Andy said quickly. “I know, Uncle Rip. You love me.”

  Andy fired up the bike, and before they had turned all the way around, Rip took one more glance across The Frank and Poet.

  He couldn’t stop his own words from playing over in his head as he looked at the garden.

  A little piece of heaven.

  FOUR

  Rip was standing in the kitchen with Judi when he noticed Heather’s truck pull in the driveway. Andy flagged her down to show off his birthday present.

  “Look at him,” Rip said, pointing proudly through the window. “He loves that bike.”

  “You sure he’ll be safe on that thing?” Judi asked.

  “He’ll be all right,” Rip answered, reaching over to pat Judi on her arm. “Why don’t you let him give you a ride out to see those flowers? I’m telling you, they’re unbelievable. You gotta see them.”

  “I’ve seen wildflowers before, Rip.”

  “Not like this, you haven’t.”

  Judi walked closer to the window. “It looks way faster than the minibike.”

  “It is,” Rip admitted as Andy zipped around the front yard for Heather. Little plumes of gray smoke puffed from the exhaust pipe and quickly disappeared. “But he’ll be fine. Trust me.”

  Judi sighed. “I just don’t want him to get carried away with the whole helmet and long hair thing either. I thought we were trying to get him away from covering up his scar.”

  “It’s fun to him, Judi,” Rip said. “Playing the whole motorcycle-riding bad-boy thing. Remember what it means to have fun?”

  “Okay, Rip. Leave me be,” Judi said, nodding toward Heather as she came toward the porch. “When are you going to fix up that other bike . . . the old one you got from the dump?”

  “I was gonna bring it over and start working on it in a couple weeks or so.”

  “It would be nice if you and Andy could ride together,” Judi said. “I’d feel better if you were out there with him.”

  “Gotcha,” Rip said.

  Heather came through the kitchen door with Andy and Milo right behind her. Andy peeled off his helmet the second he entered the house and Rip couldn’t believe how tall he looked next to Heather.

  “You are growing like a weed,” Rip said, sitting at the kitchen table. “You sure you’re not eighteen instead of fourteen?”

  Andy slouched. The whole concept of being observed was something the kid got sick of a long time ago.

  “How tall you think he is now?” Judi asked. “He and Heather were the same height just last year.”

  Rip tilted his head. “How tall are you again, Heather?” He knew, but he just wanted to hear her throw in that half inch.

  “Five three and a half,” she said.

  Rip laughed.

  “What?” Heather said.

  “You must have measured
yourself with roller skates on,” he said. “And what is it about anybody under five five, that whenever you ask them their height, they always throw in the bonus half inch?”

  “Shut up, Rip,” Heather said, glancing up at Andy. “You have to be almost six foot, don’t you think?”

  “Who cares?” Andy said.

  The kid was skinny as a rail, but considering it was only his first day at being a fourteen-year-old, Rip figured Andy was a shoo-in for the three to four inches he needed to catch up and then maybe even pass his favorite uncle.

  “I’m glad he’s getting bigger,” Heather said. “He has to be for that bike. It’s the coolest motorcycle I’ve ever seen, but it’s not a toy, and it’s not for little kids.”

  Rip knew each one of those words kicked at Judi’s insides, but it seemed as if Andy liked the way that sounded, giving Rip a thumbs-up.

  “Just make sure you keep it off the roads,” Heather added. “Stick to the paths.”

  “You hear her?” Rip asked, looking at Andy.

  “You think I’m deaf?” Andy said, pulling his hair forward over the sides of his neck. “I’m standing right here.”

  “Pound it,” Rip said, holding out his fist.

  “Pound it,” Andy echoed, making a fist before their knuckles tapped lightly together.

  “And the next time you get smart with me,” Rip added, “the only thing I’m gonna be pounding is you upside your melon. Now go wash up for dinner.”

  Andy delivered one of his patented eye-rolls and left the kitchen.

  “Tough day, Officer Gerisch?” Rip asked. “You seem a little out of sorts.”

  “Been working swing shifts,” Heather said, joining him at the table. “I’m just really tired and was thinking about a strange call I went out on last night. We had a prowler.”

  “That’s what I hear,” Rip said. “Chasing off a prowler must be a nice break from speeding warnings and scattering teenage smokers out from behind the Dairy Queen.”

  “I had to take my gun out, Rip . . .” She gave him a long look.

  Guns and break-ins were practically unheard of in Benning, and Rip knew that was the way Heather liked it. In fact, the only other one that Rip had ever heard of in the town’s history had cost another cop his life. And Heather’s father was that cop.