Jules wanted this to be true, and when he visited with Stan each week, the man’s enthusiasm when he spun that tale (Jules knew the story no longer belonged to him, not to Grandpa John either) almost made Jules believe he hadn’t known what he’d been doing when he grabbed the rifle from the glass case in the Castle entry hall, pointed, and fired.
He should have known it would be loaded. What gun on that island wasn’t? He should’ve seen it coming, starting with the Cattleya labiate. The fragile orchid bobbing up and down on that cow’s bosom at the fair. The demented Colonel asking Jules if he was the admiral’s man in the tower as the cold stone floor vibrated with the bell’s tolling. Should’ve, should’ve, should’ve circled Jules’s head like those bluebirds did Tom the cartoon cat’s head after he got bonked by the teeny mouse who looked like he couldn’t hurt a fly.
Jules lived for his talks with Pops, who seemed to enjoy them too. Some led to spats, insults, silent grudges that lasted two or three days—Jules sitting on the cold floor of his cell wishing for his father to return.
Julius. He felt his father shaking his balding head.
“You told me to follow the rules. I did that. And look where it got me.”
His father laughed. You call moving to an island thick with white people playing by the rules? Son, you strutted right into the lion’s den.
It was her, Jules thought. Scheherazade. Leslie had led him. He wouldn’t admit to it in front of his father—give him the pleasure of saying, again, I told you so.
“What good are the rules,” Jules asked, “the laws, moral this and that, when you can’t follow them and protect your family at the same time?”
His father’s voice was slow and dreamy, like he was half asleep. Or was it Jules who was falling asleep? Oh, is that what it was? Self-defense? I told you, he began.
Jules threw a plastic cup against the wall. Someone—a guard, an inmate—shouted Shut the fuck up down the cell block.
Tell me what I said. His father’s voice was stern. Disappointed. Had his father seen Leslie wail when she visited, the social worker dragging her from the visiting room so as not to upset the other families? Did he know about Brooks refusing to talk to Jules even over the phone? And Eva’s tiny voice telling him she loved him just before the pay phone timer cut out so he couldn’t say it back.
What did I tell you?
“Get off the island,” Jules mumbled.
Every night, in the garden, as Jules had picked the caterpillars until his blisters wept. Every night, as he’d scraped the furred egg clusters off his chestnut tree. His pops had whispered the same command.
Get off that island. Grab your son and get gone. Go. Go now.
He should’ve known when he saw that tar-faced lawn jockey the night of the traveling dinner party, tucked among the crimson Spigelia marilandica blooms. When he listened to Veronica make excuses, prattling on about George Washington’s devoted servant who’d given his life for his master. He tried to imagine what Jocko would’ve seen if he hadn’t perished, hadn’t frozen to death with the reins of Washington’s horses in his hands. The praise, the hurrahs. All those white men acting as if, for a moment, he was their equal. How beautiful Jocko’s reflection would’ve seemed staring back at him, mirrored in those white men’s eyes.
Jules sat crosslegged in his cell (crisscross applesauce, he heard little Eva say) and recited the Latin names of plants. Digitalis grandiflora (yellow foxglove), lonicera caprifolium (honeysuckle), myosotis sylvatica (forget-me-not). Named two thousand years ago by Carl Linnaeus, a God-fearing man who believed in a divine plan, and whose rigid classification system—Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order … had always made Jules feel safe. More now than ever.
He closed his eyes and imagined a cell within his cell but one whose walls were living, breathing, growing. Blooming. Vines and tendrils stretched across the scarred cement—pink twining clematis and Heavenly Blue morning glory. His mind was a magic wand. One flick and fiery vitis coignetiae’s heart-shaped leaves striped a wall; another draped with fragrant starry jasmine.
He smelled the boxwood’s oily leaves heating in the sun, heard the rustle of fern fronds. He was in the secret garden, the room at the heart of the maze. The buttery forsythia was in bloom, the peonies bursting and spotted with ladybugs. Plenty of time to replant. Grow from seed. Heal. He dug his naked fingers into the soil, past the blind earthworms and pill bugs and even a scuttling millipede. Deeper, deeper, he hit sand and silt, and, deeper still, cool damp clay. He dug until he himself was buried—his mouth and nose filled with a dark earthy odor. When he opened his eyes, he felt spent, his muscles aching, as if he’d worked his land all day.
Many species of birds have been observed feeding on gypsy moth larvae or adults. Nuthatches, chickadees, towhees, vireos, northern orioles, catbirds, robins, and blue jays are probably more important in sparse gypsy moth populations. Cuckoos and flocking species such as starlings, grackles, red-winged blackbirds, and crows may be attracted to areas where the gypsy moth exists in large numbers.
Some mammalian predators of the gypsy moth include the white-footed mouse, shrews, chipmunks, voles, and squirrels. Shrews, which are often mistaken for mice, are voracious insect feeders that consume their own weight in prey each day.
—“The Homeowner and the Gypsy Moth: Guidelines for Control,” United States Department of Agriculture, Home and Garden Bulletin, No. 227 (1979)
47.
Dom
Today, he was Hermes, right-hand man of Zeus. Winged messenger. A god so cunning he was still in diapers when he stole his big brother Apollo’s prized cattle.
Hermes was Dom’s favorite. He was one of those sticky gods, no saint but not one hundred percent sinner. He stole, cheated, lied, and even killed when his mission demanded, but he did it with style.
Dom had memorized all of Hermes’s roles. He was the deliverer of dreams, the world’s first Sandman—choosing which men slept in peace and which tossed and turned. He was the escort of the newly dead to the Underworld and the protector of youths. He was the patron of sports, especially fighters like Dom’s WWF wrestlers. Worshipped by shepherds and travelers, merchants and gamblers, and even military men like the Colonel. Dom had read about ancient generals, on the night before battle, sacrificing lambs, honey, pigs, incense, and cake at the feet of mighty statues carved in Hermes’s likeness—each topped with his winged hat.