The Plant (11 page)

“No ma’am!” I said—I knew perfectly well by then that it was Zenith she was smelling, just as I know that Zenith the Common Ivy smells like no ivy I ever came in contact with in my life.

“Because if you are,” she said, “I want my share.”

“But Miz Jackson! I done already tole you—”

“I know. But just remember, if you are, I want my share.” And she left.

As things turned out she got four instead of three, and with any luck she’ll be proof for a week or two before popping back to play TruckDriver and Hitchhiker or Virgin and Chauffeur or possibly the Teensy White Editor and the Big Black Janitor, which is what all these games boil down to in the end.

But never mind; we have come to the other thing around here which has not lapsed back into dozy familiarity, and that is the ivy-plant sent by Kenton’s nemesis. It raises a question in my mind which I have never successfully answered for myself—perhaps because for a long time my life and my ambitions have rendered it unimportant. It is, I mean, a question I haven’t thought about as seriously or so constantly or with such a clear interest that I have a personal stake in the answer since I was—oh, eleven 84

or so, I reckon. The question is just this: Is there an invisible world or not? Are supernatural events possible in a world where everything seems either perfectly explained or perfectly explicable? Everything, that is, except for the Shroud of Turin...

...and, perhaps, Zenith, the Common Ivy.

I find myself thinking again and again about the feelings of deep fore-boding that seemed to fall over me when I touched the box it—

No; no, that isn’t right. For whatever it’s worth, that is most definitely not right. The bad feelings I had about that box—dread, revulsion, a well-nigh ungovernable feeling of having stepped over a clearly marked border and onto taboo ground—did not come from outside. The chill I felt did not fall over me or smother me or steal up my spine on cold little cat’s feet. That feeling came from inside, rising up like a spring rises out of the earth, a cold little circle in which you may glimpse your face, or the face of the moon. Or even better, it came the way Faulkner says the dark comes, not falling out of the sky but rising inexorably up out of the ground. Only in this case I believe the ground (Floyd would scoff ) happens to be my own soul.

Never mind, though—pass it. Never mind feelings, vapors, megrims...or “subjective phenomena,” if you want to be polite.

Let us look at some rather more empiric data.

First: After looking at the Ivy entries in both Grolier’s and Collier’s Encyclopedias, plus the photos in Floyd’s college botany book, I am prepared to say that Zenith does not look like any of the ivies pictured there.

I mean, it looks like them in the same way that Fords look like Bugattis—

they are both gasoline-powered vehicles with four rubber tires—but that’s as close as it comes.

Second: Although the little sign poked into the soil of Zenith’s pot identified him as “Common Ivy,” there is apparently no such thing. There is poison ivy, and Virginia Creeper, and Ground Ivy, and Boston Ivy, and Japanese Ivy; there is also English Ivy, and I suppose that might be called 85

Common Ivy by some people, but Zenith looks more like a cross between Japanese Ivy and poison ivy than it does English Ivy. Sending Kenton a poison ivy plant sounds like something that would tickle the bejabbers out of a fellow like Carlos Detweiller, but I have handled it, felt its leaves and vines, and have no rash. Nor am I immune. I had some killer cases of poison ivy when Floyd and I were kids.

Third: As Jackson said, it smells like cannibis sativa. I dropped into a florist’s on my way home tonight and smelled a Boston Ivy and a hybrid called a Marion Ivy. Neither smelled like pot. I asked the proprietor if he knew of any ivies that smelled like marijuana and he said no—he said the only plant he knew of which smelled much like growing cannibis is called dark columbine.

Fourth: It is growing at a speed which I find just a bit frightening. I’ve carefully gone over my few references to the plant in this journal—and believe me when I say that if I had known how much it was going to prey on my mind there would have been more—and have noted the following: on February 23rd, when it arrived, I believed it would most probably die; on the 4th of this month I noted a healthier appearance, an improved smell, four open leaves and two more unfurling, plus a single tendril which reached to the edge of the pot. Now there are almost two dozen leaves, broad and dark green and oily looking. The tendril which had reached the lip of the pot has now attached itself to the wall and runs nearly six inches up toward the ceiling. It would look almost like an FM radio antenna except for the tightened curls of the new leaves along its length.

Other tendrils have begun to crawl along the shelf where I put the plant, and they are attaching themselves in the best ivy tradition. I pulled one of these tendrils loose (had to stand on my overturned mop-bucket to get to Zenith’s level) and it came...but with surprising reluctance. The tendrils have stuck themselves to the wooden shelf with surprising tightness. I could hear the minute ripping sound the tendril I chose made when it parted company from the wood, and I did not much care for the sound.

86

It left little marks in the paint. It has, near the pot, produced a single dark blue flower—not very pretty or remarkable. It is of the sort, I believe, produced by the type of ivy commonly called gill-over-the-ground. But...all of this in three weeks?

I have an unpleasant feeling about this plant. It’s as much in the way I so easily and unconsciously refer to it as “him,” I think, as in its extraor-dinary growth-spurt. I think I want to have a botanist look at it. Floyd will know one. There’s one other thing but I don’t even want to write it down.

I th

(later)

That was my Aunt Olympia, calling from Babylon, Alabama. My mother is dead. It was very sudden, she said through her tears. A heart attack. During her nap. No pain, she said through her tears. How does anyone know. Oh bullshit, my mother. I loved her. Aunt O. said she’s been trying Floyd but no one answers, oh I did love her my sweet fat uncomplaining mother who saw so much more than she said and knew so much more than she let on. Oh I did love her and love her.

Movement now is best. Floyd first then arrangements; family; burial.

Oh mama I love you.

I’ve had whiskey. Two big gulps. Now I’ll write it. That plant. Zenith.

Zenith the Common Ivy. Can’t be an ivy. Fucking thing’s carnivorous. I saw two leaves that were open three days ago rolled up today. So I unrolled them. This is when I was standing on the mop-bucket, looking at it. Dead fly inside of one. What I think was a mostly decomposed baby spider inside the other. No time now. I’ll deal with it another time.

Christ I wish I’d said goodbye to my mamma. Does anyone ever get a chance to say goodbye?

87

From
The New York Post,
page 1, March 27, 1981:
MAD GENERAL DIES IN MORTUARY HORROR!

(Special to the
Post
) The mingled ashes not much doubt about what he did then—

of a man and a woman were recovered from

raked out their ashes, turned on the gas,

the floor outside the crematorium of the Shady

crawled in himself—although the temperature

Rest (L.I.) Mortuary yesterday afternoon, and

must have still be very high—and just flicked

the ashes and bones of a second man, believed

his Bic. Poof! 3,000 degrees of spot heat. The

to be Major General Anthony R. Hecksler

jets were still flaming when the heat alarms

(Ret.), who escaped from Oak Cove Asylum

went off in the house across the street and the in upstate New York twenty-three days ago,

Leekstodders’ daughter-in-law came to see

were discovered inside the crematorium fur—

what was going on.”

nace itself.

It was not a Bic lighter that the mad

The other two dead were Mr. And Mrs.

General actually flicked, but a platinum-plated Hubert D. Leekstodder, owners of the Shady

Zippo with the Army Emblem on it and

Rest.

engraved TO TONY FROM DOUG/AUG.

Sources close to the investigation told

7th, 1945. The “Doug” referred to is believed

the
Post
yesterday that Hecksler had had busi-to be Hecksler’s close friend General Douglas

ness dealings with Mr. And Mrs. Leekstodder

MacArthur.

some years ago, and that they were on his

“It was Iron-Guts, all right,” the
Post’s

“grudge-list.” A police official who asked not

source claimed, adding that in addition to the

to be identified said that the madman left a

lighter, searchers found a number of items

note behind identifying the Leekstodders as

amid the bone-dotted clumps of ashes in the

“foremen of the antichrist” and “real all—

death oven that have been positively identified around losers.”

as belonging to Hecksler. Although he declined

The note was found pinned to the ear—

to name all of these items, our exclusive source lobe of a corpse in the Mortuary’s composing

revealed to the
Post
that two of them were room.

gold teeth implanted following the end of

“Losers or not, they are real crispy now,”

World War II. Hecksler was briefly captured

said Police Lieutenant Rodney Marksland of

by the Germans during an intelligence opera—

the Long Island Police Department.

tion in November of 1944, and two of his teeth

According to the
Post’s
police source, were pulled during his interrogation. It was

details of what is now believed to be a suicide the replacements for those two teeth which

and double murder are extremely grisly. “We

investigators found in the crematorium fur—

think he killed the Leekstodders first and then nace, according to the
Post’s
source.

stuffed the bodies into the crematorium, mostly because it is just too horrible to believe he Related stories: New Yorkers Breathe Sigh

could have stuffed them in there while they

of Relief (4); Colorful career of Iron-Guts Hecksler were still alive,” the source said. “But there’s Recalled (Centerfold).

88

F R O M T H E D I S P A T C H E S O F I R O N - G U T S H E C K S L E R

[Editor’s note:These dispatches were written in a number of blank S & H Green Stamp books which the General apparently carried on his person at all times.]

Mar 29 81

1990 hrs

Location Classified

Operation Hot Foot completed successfully. Two more foremen of the Antichrist successfully dispatched back to the hell they came from. Also one bum. Sorry I had to give up the lighter. Hurt self plenty, but okay. Can take pain. Always could. HA!! Newspapers say I’m dead. Burn uniform.

Behind enemy lines. Shot if caught. Been there before, HA!! Going gets tough. Tough get going. Never punt on 4th down. Must infiltrate city.

Designated Jew undoubtedly lulled by reports of my death. Guard down.

Will commence Operation Bookworm coming weekend. April Fool to the Designated Jew, HA!! Have had a dream. Someone named CARLOS is looking for me. Means me harm? Yes I think so. CARLOS=spic name.

Spics damned good fighters. Crafty. City full of mongoloid-polyglot ruffi-ans. Worse than ever. Air full of brain-killing transmissions. Was there a terrorist named CARLOS? Doesn’t matter. Zenith House my objective.

Infiltrate on weekend. Kill Designated Jew. Kill whole staff if poss. Kill CARLOS if CARLOS does indeed exist. All foremen of the Antichrist. I will be able to think about Antichrist & other things better after I get some suppositories.

89

A memo from H A R L

DAT E : 3/30/81

TO : Roger Wade, Editor in Chief, Zenith House

S U B J E C T: Three Books!! The Principle of Gravity!!

Rog!

Listen, babes, I took a meeting last Fri with Teddy Graustark, the Apex veep in charge of Print Media. Main topic was mags:
Hot Tools, Raw Cycle,
Third World Mercenary, Your Pregnancy,
and
Horny Babes
. We’re dropping all of them except for
Third World Mercenary
and
Your Pregnancy
. Subj of Zenith House also came up. I bought you a little more time, babes, but forget the year I promised you (which would be down to nine months now anyway, want a sub to
Your Pregnancy
?—joke). Graustark will give you until June 30th to come up with three (3) books you
guaren-goddamn-tee
will hit
The New York Times
Bestseller List. If you can do this, I think your job might be safe until summer of 1982. If they actually
become
bestsellers, it’ll be safe until the middle of the decade or even longer. Fail to do this, and the Zenith operation goes the way of
Hot Tools
and
Raw Cycle
by the end of October.

You may be pissed about this, Roger-babes, but Graustark hit me with his version of the Law of Gravity which struck me as TRUE TRUE

TRUE!:
SHIT ROLLS DOWNHILL!
That’s it in a nutshell. And altho sad, it’s true. This particular ball o’ shit started with the Number One Apex Big Chief & Head Honcho, Sherwyn Redbone, then rolled down to me. I am now rolling it down to you, Rog, and I assume you will roll it on down to your editorial staff, who just might be able to stop it before it gets all the way down to the bottom of the hill. If they
can’t
stop it, your cozy little home at bottom of said hill is going to be buried beneath a huge & smelly ball of shit.

To recapitulate (that’s not the one that means surrender, is it?), here is your mission, should you choose to accept it ( joke). Three (3) books which you
guaran-goddamn-tee
to be bestsellers, delivered by June 30th.