...poles stressed to the limit. Dandelions came up, and jagged inches of crab grass. The rusty trowel shoveled pricklies. Milkweed fluffs were plucked off the soil's dark lapel. To combat sharpening light he donned terry cloth visor. Sick plants were drizzled with botanic syrup from a bulbed funnel. After the doctoring, the harvesting of silky fistfuls of lettuce leaves and plump sun-decaled tomatoes. With a rake he pried speckled potatoes from a dirt mound. Gloveless he yanked root-bearded onions, then slowly approached rhubarb stalks arrayed along the house foundation like the rungs of a Martian ladder a spaceship had left behind. His wrinkled eyelids fluttered. He scratched that chin sugared with tiny white hairs. Every garden has a star and rhubarb stole this plot. Each stalk a cunning arc from the ground, green blushing ruby red and culminating in a heart-shaped poison leaf. The charm of rhubarb was deadly, as all charm is--to the vulnerable. And not just Mr. Rush was spell susceptible, but my mother also. She went wild over rhubarb the way wolves went crazy over the full moon. Grabbed the twine-tied bundle from my arms and tossed back her head, bowl cut bangs fraying as she bayed: "Hoooooooooooow nice of Mr. Rush to share!" The dormant kitchen then came fantastically to life--a Fanny Farmer cookbook with cover overbite hit the yellow folding table like a cinder block, and cobwebbed cupboards burst open. Baking pans appeared, antique ingredients, too--dented tins and rumpled sacks stamped with images of Indians, hammers, residents of Sherwood forest. She sighed at the sight of Robin Hood's feather. She sniffed a yeast rock. She greased all pans with the liquified stick of butter that had been sitting out for weeks and the air filled with puffs of flour that at times appeared to be ghosting from her ears like powdered memories. She wasn't one for memories. There was, for instance, not a single photo of her wedding. We children guessed father was there ... but who else? And what flowers had she carried down the aisle as the organ whined? Thinking she needed an album like any other bride--if not Kodak then Crayola--my sister Elizabeth and I had drawn a big church with a ding-dong bell. Happy relatives we had never met, gathered on the steps. Father standing tall in a new blue Sears suit because a man on his wedding day could not have a bad leg. And tearful mother wearing a sack dress with a lacy train, cradling a rhubarb bouquet.... Mr. Rush's response to the grotesque charisma of this vegetable was quieter but no less intense. Like a savvy Hollywood producer at a casting call, he lingered in the wings of the roof's shadow while deciding which high-kicking stalks were ripe to star in a low-budget production called Rhubarb Sauce. Sometimes none had what it takes. But other days he strolled to the garage...

NOTE: All illustrations and photos have been removed from this article.



More articles from The Antioch Review
Crooked Run.(Brief article)(Book review), September 22, 2006
Out of Ohio: the truth about truth.(Short story), September 22, 2006
Self-Portrait in Shortwave.(Poem), September 22, 2006
Psalm 23.(Poem), September 22, 2006
Psalm: Wakefulness.(Poem), September 22, 2006

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