lucyoncolorado

In which my garden is dying, and I learn about my uncle B's past...

I'm trying to convert my garden into raised beds because the gophers keep destroying all my plants. I'm building the garden beside my deck underneathe one of my pecan trees when I realize that I'll never have enough sun here. I walk over to the sunny spot of the lawn where my gopher-ridden beds actually are, and I find that my mom has converted the space into a giant greenhouse, lush with vegetables. I tell her that I wanted this bit of land for my garden, and besides, she has her own garden up at her own house. She said that she had so many vegetables that she'd thought she'd grow them in my garden too. She suggests that I cut down my pecan trees since the gophers are just destroying their roots anyway. This makes me incredibly depressed, so I just go back inside the house and go to bed.

Later at night, I can hear the front door opening. I'm afraid it is a break-in, and I don't want the burglars to stumble upon me, get scared and panic. So I shout right away, "Who is it?"

A familiar voice shouts back, "Who is it yourself?"

I respond, "This is MY house. Who are you?"

He responds, "You know who I am or else you aren't who you say you are."

I'm pretty sure I do know who it is, but I test him just to be sure. "Is that you Ch?"

"Hey-ell no it ain't Ch!"

I was right. It is my uncle B. "What are you doing here B?" I ask.

"I need a place to sleep and your mom said you'd be out of town so I came here."

"Make yourself at home." I go back to bed.

This whole conversation happened through a closed door because I wasn't dressed and besides, I was really sleepy.

In the morning, I was awakened by uncle B talking to a lawyer or an accountant about how to finance his retirement. It seems he has way less money than we realized. I could overhear the lawyer/accountant saying things about the time my uncle spent in Chitzen Itza with the "natives" in the 70s and also about two prison stints, one of them five years long. This really surprised me because I'd never know that my uncle had done more than just a night in jail once for drinking too much. Five years in prison! I think back to my childhood and remember a long stretch of time that Uncle B was not around. It must've been then. We'd been told that he was a traveling man, enjoying life on the road.

I walk into the living room where they are talking and pretend that I don't hear anything. The lawyer/accountant tells my uncle B that he has had a fascinating life and done a lot of cool things, but because he could never get himself together and keep himself out of trouble, his life has amounted to nothing. Now in the end, he can't even support himself. I take it as a warning to myself.

I look at the kitchen table where I see many old black and white snap shots of this very same lawyer/accountant. I realize that uncle B and I took these photos recently. We just made them look old. Uncle B walks over and looks at them with me and I realize that the lawyer/accountant isn't even real. It was just a story we made up to go along with the photographs.

Ch and my mom show up again. They are driving an SUV, and there are two white corvettes in front of my house. The corvettes belong to uncle B, but he needs help moving them somewhere. Ch and my mom drive the SUV, uncle B follows them in one of the corvettes and I follow in the other. For some reason, I must drive it laying down on my back with my arms up in the air steering. To see the road, I have to use mirrors that are placed to reflect what is going on above and in front of me in a way similar to a periscope. We are cruising down the road and I'm finding this very stressful but everyone else seems to think it will be a real treat for me to drive a corvette so I pretend like I'm having fun. They explain that eventually a Pontiac Grand Am will cross in front of me, and I must follow that car to its location while they carry on with the other corvette somewhere else. I tell them that I don't know what a Grand Am looks like, and they tell me it is the sort of car that A drives. I'm too embarassed to admit that although I've been in A's car millions of times, I have no idea what it looks like.