Chapter One

I awoke in the night, as if from a dream, where everything around me was strange and unfamiliar. It was as if the world had grown stiff and course in my slumber or perhaps refreshed I was only now seeing it for the first time.

Tossing the sheets to one side I rose and walked to the sliding glass door that over looked the garden. Staring into the grey for a brief moment I could recall a part of my dream, a mere sliver of some much larger tale of which I had no recollection. I was lying in a kind of wheelchair. I had no use of limbs or faculties, and my eyes bulged in my sockets like great watery orbs. Without, I was a vegetable, but within I was capable of such great imaginings that light of the world paled in comparison.

I stared into the garden again. The dream had all but faded. I flicked the lock, slid the door open, and walked out onto the brick terrace. The cool stone felt refreshing against my bare feet. Almost at once I stepped on a nettle. Wincing with pain, I bent over and pulled the thorn from my sole. Cursing my luck I threw the barb into a nearby bush and slid my feet comfortably into the gardening shoes I had discarded nearby the night before.

Armed with a newfound sense of confidence, I strode out into the lawn and surveyed the wonder of creation. I took pride in my garden. Each part neatly manicured with confidence and precision. It was important to me that nearly every part of my garden was edible, chives and rosemary, quince and blueberry. The whole layered spaciously to look slightly wild and unkempt but with an order all its own that made the gazing at it so much the richer.

I kept my tools in the shed along with two wheelbarrows. One red for collecting cuttings, weeds and debris, and the other green for fertilizer; an organic mulch made of compost, mulched leaves and cow waste. This was my favorite tool and I would spend my hours endlessly winding along the garden path sprinkling my mulch in the various beds of flowers and shrubbery, turning the soil into an alchemist’s black gold.

As my early morning walk through the yard progressed I found myself nearing the shed when I noticed something was not right. The shed door, which should have been tightly shut and locked was stilling slightly ajar. The right door had come off its track and was sitting wedged between the earth and the frame at a disquieting angle.

Quickly I walked over to inspect the situation. As I drew closer I could smell the sweet earthy scent that emanated from within. Peering into the darkness I could see my tools in disarray. For a moment I imagined some wild animal burrowing its way between the doors and disheveling the contents within, but as my eyes leveled on the vacant spot where my green wheelbarrow should have been I knew that I had been robbed.

My foot moved back, almost in impulse, as I hesitated. Was the thief still here? No, that is nonsense, the wheelbarrow is gone, and the thief has taken it and departed.

I turned and scanned the yard. This time, ignoring the vines and the flowers, looking instead for the telltale signs of intrusion. A wheelbarrow full of dirt is not an easy item to simply scamper over the fence with. There must be some other signs of entry. I hastened to the gate, and found it closed, but by narrowing my eyes I could see a slight scrape in the paint indicating that the thief had passed this way. I opened the door and looked beyond. There was nothing. Only the still of the morning, the slight rushing of the breeze against my face, my wheelbarrow was gone. “Gone” I croaked with utter despair “Gone.”

As I walked back to the house my mind was filled with conflicting images. On the one was the thief, executing with midnight bravado the daring theft. On the other me, patiently explaining to the patrolman the value of my precious mulch.

“Dirt?” he asked questioningly.
“A special blend of organic fertilizer” I replied. “It is the secret of my garden’s success. Everyone knows this. It was highly prized.”
“This” he said, searching for the term “dirt?”
“Yes” I said patiently.
“An when you say ‘Everyone’ whom do you mean exactly?”
“Oh, well, the neighborhood, I suppose, and my church group. Don’t be fooled there is more than one or two grandmothers that would like to have gotten their hands on my mulch.”
“A grandmother” he said, then paused and continued “wheeled a truck load of dirt across the garden, unlatched the gate and then sauntered down the alley with cargo in hand without so much as breaking a sweat?”
“Of course not” I said indignantly “there could have been accomplices. Look isn’t there supposed to be a detective or some such person here to take this information down.”
“Oh I’ll be making a report,” he said “don’t you worry. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up. These things aren’t usually resolved as quickly as you might hope.”

He looked me in the eye and I knew at once what he meant. No one was going to investigate a stolen wheelbarrow. There would be no crime dogs, no team of forensic investigators to document tire tracks and fingerprints. Mine was not a high priority case and would, in all likelihood be brushed aside and forgotten, dismissed as a teenage prank or as a simple case of vandalism.

Weary and broken, by this imagined conversation I turned and trudged back into the yard and stared down at the latch on the gate. How can so small a thing make the difference between serenity and insanity? Why had I not given locking the gate the same precious care that I had given concocting my fertilizer? Leaning against the fence post I rubbed my fingers deep into the corners of my eyes.

I stand there motionless, like some caricature of myself. I want to weep, but feel to tired, too emotionally drained. I want to shout, to rage against the injustice of the smirking police officer, against the thief, against the world, but none of it seems to matter enough to muster even the most inaudible groan. I feel lost. The mechanisms I had grown to trust, friends, neighbors, even civic law enforcement, had let me down. The paths that I had trusted would not be the ones that would lead me away from this place.

From this paralyzed pose I suddenly had a lucid, singularly inspired thought that had not occurred to me before. What if I track down the thief? My hand clenched and unclenched spasmodically. Could I do it? Would there be any danger? What would be the cost? This thought made me pause for a moment before I settled on the cost of getting my wheelbarrow back, I decided. But would it be intact. Would my mulch still be there? It seemed impossible to know. Night was departing and dawn was rushing forward. “I must do this,” I said, standing. “I must.” I launched myself forward towards the gate and the drive beyond. “If only to put an end to the unknowing.”