Section 4’s had a long and storied (yuck yuck yuck) history, folks.
It first appeared as How Jerry and Betty Became the Least Entertaining Couple in the Neighborhood (Part 11) – Section 4 Rewritten from Section 3, reappeared briefly as How Jerry and Betty Became the Least Entertaining Couple in the Neighborhood (Part 12) – Section 5 Rewritten from Section 4, and now here as Section 7.
Busy little section, isn’t it?
How Jerry and Betty Became the Least Entertaining Couple in the Neighborhood (Section 7 was part of Section 4)
They found a small resort in Quebec’s Eastern Townships. The resort boasted two things; astronomy nights and gardening days.
Betty wasn’t sure about the former but always wanted to learn the latter, and their hosts promised a cabin on the far end of the resort where Jerry’s guitar playing wouldn’t bother anyone.
Betty brought two iced glasses, a pitcher of fresh squeezed lemonade, and some just baked frosted oatmeal raisin cookies out to their back patio on a tray and set them down on the glass topped table. Jerry lay on the ground, his only clothing a pair of cargo shorts, its pockets stuffed with seed packets, and dug into the soil with his fingers. When he’d dug down a middle finger’s depth he nestled a tender tomato plant in his palm, whispered to it, placed it in the freshly dug hole, and nestled it in warm earth as if tucking in a child.
“Take a break, Jerry. You’ve been working on that garden all day.”
He stood. “Come look.”
She smiled at the boyish grin on his face. When did his skin get so dark? He always tanned but wasn’t this different? So even, so smooth? As if the tan took root on a baby’s skin? Was this some other effect of travelling in cryosleep at translight speeds years on end?
“Come on come on come on.” He trotted over to her and gently turned her towards the garden. “Look look look.” He trotted her back and she chuckled at the mirth in his voice.
The garden, seen from her towering five-foot-five height, looked different, unreal. Green shoots mixed with red flowers with violet runners with yellow blossoms with…And the scents! She thought she was getting a headache from all the smells but her head cleared as pollinators danced through Jerry’s work.
“This is…” She searched for the right word. “This is beautiful, Jerry.”
He blushed, and the mix of tan and reddening face made his blue eyes flare like novaing suns. “Yeah, I thought so.”
“No, really. This is,” again she struggled. “Beautiful. It’s beyond beautiful. It looks so haphazard, something a child would do to please its parents without knowing garden design, but then something clicks and you see it for what it really is. You learned this here? Was I in that class?”
“Ever heard of the Halafians? About eight thousand years ago they lived in northern Mesopotamia. Eight thousand years ago they merged art and science. We look at their pottery, at their villages, and it’s clear they posessed advanced mathematical concepts. The designs they came up with for the simplest things show they were way ahead of anybody else, possibly ahead of us even now.”
“What happened to them?”
Jerry shook his head and lifted a hand to his cheek. Betty watched him wipe away a tear. “Even then this world did not honor art, Ars Gratia Artis sounded good but if there wasn’t a dollar to be made, nobody cared.
He sniffed and that little boy look returned to his face. He bent over and patted the earth gently, a child burying a pet goldfish. He stood and took a deep breath.
“Jerry, is everything – ”
He turned towards their cabin. “I’m going to get my guitar. I’ll bet they’ll grow better with a song.”
Questions or comments? Bring ’em on. They’ll help me craft a better story.
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