Weeds in Bloom Read online

  Mr. Carliotta

  CONSTANTINE WAS HIS FIRST NAME.

  However, as I was a little boy and he a mature man with white hair, I called him Mr. Carliotta.

  So did everyone. He certainly wasn’t the type of senior gentleman that you would greet with a casual “Hey! Hiya, Constantine. How’s tricks?”

  As a summertime-only resident, he owned a modest white cottage on a pond near our family farm. He arrived around the middle of June, stayed alone all summer, and departed in September, after the Labor Day rush.

  He was my boss.

  For him, I handled little odd jobs, all of which he kindly designed for a willing youngster: weeding, raking leaves, and generally tidying up outside. I never entered his cottage. Not even once. Only two people did such: Mr. Carliotta, and Mrs. Filput, who came to clean house on Wednesdays.

  We locals all knew Mr. Carliotta was wealthy.

  Everybody swore so.

  He drove a long, large automobile, and it wasn’t a Ford like Dr. Turner’s. This was a Cadillac. At the time, during a 1937 rural depression, people who had to travel rode a wagon (usual pulled by a yoke of oxen, mules, or draft horses), a pickup truck, or tractor. Mr. Carliotta’s car was the only Cadillac I saw for the first two decades of my life. His auto was big and black. So were his clothes. Black suit, black hat, black shoes. Inside the baggy suit was a white shirt, buttoned all the way up to his neck. Never a tie.

  “He’s a foreigner,” people said. Yet he was a gentleman, and everyone seemed to agree on that.

  Our local Italians claimed that he wasn’t one of them. No, he wasn’t. Mr. Carliotta was originally a Greek. He’d come to America, he told me, as a boy about my age, without a penny and not speaking a word of English.

  Now he was a citizen.

  Every morning he hoisted our American flag to top a white pole. Often I watched him look upward at the red, white, and blue, removing his hat in reverence. At sunset he hauled the flag down, folded it slowly into a triangle—stars on blue—and toted it inside his cottage.

  “To be an American,” he told me, “is to feel so far richer than any other person on earth.”

  “I don’t feel so rich.”

  He shook his head. “Oh, yes you do, Robert, because I sometimes listen as you work, and I can hear you whistle. Or hum. A songbird might be treasured for the same reason.”

  Sighing, I asked, “How did you get so rich, Mr. Carliotta? I’d like to learn.”

  “Discipline,” he said. As I made a face, he raised his eyebrows. “Robert, do you know what discipline is?”

  “Sure do,” I told him. “It’s when a grown-up makes me do what I don’t hanker to. And if I don’t do it, I sure get sudden corrected.”

  Mr. Carliotta nodded. “Well,” he said, after a pause for thought, “when you’re a child, discipline is directed at you from several sources. Your mother, father, older sisters and brothers, and your teacher. Perhaps even our town lawman, Constable Noe.”

  “That’s right. I catch it from all sides.”

  Mr. Carliotta pointed a finger at me. “Someday,” he said, “you will be a grown man. Then you’ll realize that there’s only one discipline that counts. It is self-discipline. You’ll decide for yourself what you ought to do, because you know it’s right.”

  “But that’s not how I’ll get rich. Is it?”

  After a moment of silence, he said, “Come and let’s walk to the edge of the lake, sit down on that fallen log, and talk.”

  In a hot rush, I ran barefoot. His big black shoes, beneath the thick cuffs of trousers that always appeared too long, scuffed along over the pebbles, and then stopped. We sat, about seven feet apart.

  Selecting a small stone, Mr. Carliotta tossed it into the water. Plop! A ring grew and then melted away, ignoring its cause.

  “Robert,” he asked, “where is the stone?”

  “Gone. It sunk.”

  “All of it, or just a part?”

  “All. The whole thing.”

  “That,” he said, “is what can happen to the money most people earn. It has a way of vanishing. Never to be reclaimed.” Not understanding what Mr. Carliotta was explaining, I told him so. “Well,” he said, “first let me invite you to throw a stone into our little lake.” I picked one up, cocking my arm. “Please do not throw it out into the deep. Instead, drop it very close to the shoreline, into an inch of water. And no more.”

  This I did.

  “In a sense,” he said, “we still have it. Close enough to fetch back to possession, anytime we wish.”

  I agreed.

  “You are a polite boy, and you’re not afraid of work. So I will tell you my secret. Not really a mystery at all; easy to understand, yet difficult to master.” I leaned closer. “A fellow who earns money may often complain that he doesn’t earn enough. Because the money is soon spent, and nothing is left. Were his employer to double his wage, or triple it, nothing would be left to save.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “His problem, Robert, is not the level of his income. It’s the level of his discipline.”

  “You mean he throws it all away.” I pointed at the lake. “Like your stone.”

  Mr. Carliotta nodded. “The secret is three little words.”

  “What are they?”

  “Always … save … half.”

  It was my turn to nod.

  “The poor man who only saves pennies will become far richer than the highly paid man who spends every dollar he earns.”

  “That holds sense.”

  “Learn,” he said, “to deny yourself. People who must have a lot of things end up having very little.”

  I informed Mr. Carliotta that I was saving the loose change he paid me. Already I almost owned a dollar.

  “Do you have a bank?”

  “Sort of. It’s a little tin box that used to have chewing tobacco in it.”

  “I also started with less than a dollar. As soon as you save five dollars, go to the bank in town and save your money there, where it will grow. It’s time you learned the difference between income and capital.”

  I grinned. “A capital is like Montpelier.”

  Slapping his knee, Mr. Carliotta smiled at me. “Income is what I pay you. Capital is having that money in the big bank, where it will earn you interest. The bank pays you money to keep it there. And someday, when you are my age, your capital savings will have grown so large that it will pay you all the wages you’ll ever need.”

  I said nothing.

  “Income is what you earn. Capital is what you save. And if you deny yourself and wait, you will prosper. Discipline plus patience equals wealth.”

  “Is that how you did it?”

  My first Greek philosopher pointed at my stone, nearby, where it still rested in the shallow shoreline water.

  “Robert, it is within your grasp.”

  Aunt Ida

  SHE LIVED UPROAD.

  Aunt Ida had resided in her tiny shack for near about all of her life. No amount of family persuasion could convince her to abandon the place. Or her independence.

  From our farm it was most a mile. Uphill.

  To visit her I had to hike a double-rutter, as Aunt Ida herself described it, two mules wide. It had been years since the last wagon had ventured up a mountain road fit only for hikers or goats. During the winter set, some of the loggers might use the trail to skid a few logs of rough spruce down to a sawyer, or to the pulp-and-paper mill.

  Today I was using it.

  As it was August, a winding furrow of fresh ferns had turned the bumpy strip between the wagon ruts a tall green. Amongst the ferns there were weeds, and blue daisies taller than I was, even though my age was coming up eleven. The year was 1938.

  It was hot.

  Good weather for growing.

  To my right, a stand of goldenrod was reaching for the sunshine, fingers extended, like a classroom of young children raising eager hands.

  Climbing made the day seem hotter. One of the few sum
mer boilers that stretched field corn, maddened dogs, and could rile up the women in the kitchens who were baking—or worse, canning.

  As I hiked, my shirt had become a wash of uphill sweat because of the steep of the pitch. A bug was biting me. Using my free hand, I swatted at it, and possible missed. My other hand toted an unbleached muslin cloth, softer than a Sunday morning due to its countless surrenders to a sudsy brown bar of homemade lye soap in the command of Mama’s red knuckles. Inside the napkin rode a dozen baking-powder biscuits, still oven warm, and a small jar of mustard pickles that had been freckled with our homegrown dill.

  Gifts for my great-great-aunt. Aunt Ida Peck was reputed to be one hundred and ten years old. Some claimed older.

  Alive, but didn’t talk anymore.

  She really didn’t have to. Because near to everyone in the county talked about her, told stories about her adventures, and even whispered about some of her long-gone social activities. Rumor held that a century ago, in 1838, this particular Ida Peck had actual cocked back a musket hammer to full click and, without aiming or sighting along the barrel, shot, wounded, and killed a drunken half-crazed Saint Francis Indian by the name of Three Crows.

  At the time, she was only nine.

  Others said eight.

  All I knew was this: that even now, in spite of Aunt Ida’s being well beyond a hundred, nobody ever considered molesting her with as much as a blink of bother. And that included the lowest types you could mention: tax assessors, revenue men, and judges. In her day, all of our Peck clan boasted, Aunt Ida knew how to still the very best whiskey out of sweet corn, water, and maple sugar. One swig would keep a lumberjack warm all winter, up until the middle of May.

  A few tongues wagged, remembering a time in her life she’d served in a county jail. Not long, but long enough. A friendly sheriff slid open the bars to her cell and returned her to liberty. This was fair. Because Ida had been imprisoned over a very trivial matter. Nothing serious.

  All she’d done was shoot a lawyer.

  By that, she earned respect. Even the local mountain clans, some of which were close to human (others less so)—the Yaws, the Swintons, the Korjacks—allowed that Aunt Ida held her ground. She also was known, and trusted, for holding her tongue whenever she’d been requested to patch up some unlucky buck’s gunshot wound. Or stitch a knife gash.

  If your prize coonhound poked his fooly nose into a porcupine, Aunt Ida could easy the dog down to quiet and coax out every quill with a pair of pliers. Snip and pull.

  She’d shot and skinned the last timber wolf to be spotted in northern Vermont and hung his hide on her front door.

  Her only door.

  Aunt Ida could needlepoint an entire Bible verse—“Jesus wept”—on a penny button, butcher a hog (tame or wild), dig up cure-all root (ginseng), and for people fixing to sink a well she could locate an underground vein of water by using a divining rod of laurel wood.

  Some swore it was willow.

  About half a century before I got spawned, General Ulysses S. Grant came hunting in Vermont. It was told to me that Grant personally visited her unpainted house and sipped her special remedy, sassafras tea, supposedly to ease the distress of short temper and long bottles.

  There was, however, another reason for General Grant’s visit to Vermont: Ida Peck knew horses.

  She could walk up to a strange gelding or mare, hold its head, smell its breath, study its eyes and teeth, and then determine if the particular animal was sound or sorry. Closing her eyes, she’d discover a spavin with a few gentle rubs of a hand. General Grant wanted Aunt Ida to help select mounts for the United States Cavalry.

  She refused the job, stating that the Civil War had been one awesome mistake, Lincoln’s disaster, and little good would ever result from it.

  In her time, Aunt Ida never wed herself a husband. Yet she raised eleven children. Three of those children happened to have been her own, born from her body. Several others were stray Pecks, and the remainder had been hatched by shirky and uncaring neighbors. To my mother’s knowing, there were forty-three people who claimed her as an aunt, eleven as a mother, and at least fivescore who counted her as a friend. She could drip a pure crab-apple jelly as easily as she’d manufacture her own brand of black gunpowder using hearth charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter. From a few bird feathers Ida could tie trout flies (wet or dry), all of which she could cast and hook a keeper.

  Ida Peck knew how to clog-dance, sing over a hundred hymns from memory, recite her own poetry, and quote from almost every chapter in the Scriptures, Old Testament or New.

  She could neither read nor write.

  But she’d fashion a banjo drumhead from the stretched hide of an ordinary house cat. Needless to say, if the cat was already a dead goner.

  So, enough of my bragging.

  On with the story.

  Before I left our house for uproad that August day, Mama had reminded me that my Aunt Ida Peck was the family matriarch, an ancient who warranted my very best company manners. She was also the oldest living Peck in all of Vermont, my mother told me while she added a lick or two of pomade to sweeten my hair and mask my farm-boy fragrance.

  Ready to pay call, I arrived.

  The old woman was barefoot. With her eyes closed and mouth open, she rested in her rocker chair on the almost grassless dirt by her door. Her complexion was paler than a flour sack.

  “Aunt Ida,” I called softly.

  It took repeating.

  Opening her eyes, she stared at a summer sky, then finally looked my way, as though questioning who I was. Foe or friend? A lad of ten winters or General Ulysses S. Grant?

  “It’s me,” I told her. “Robert. My father is Haven Peck, the third son of my grandfather Newton Peck.” I paused for a breath. “You are my great-great-aunt.”

  Slowly her mouth closed, and for one forever-to-be-cherished moment, the flag blue returned to her eyes, studying me, possible wondering whether I’d ever measure up to manhood, to being a Peck and her kin.

  I stayed for over an hour, listening to bluebirds and reading her a poem I’d composed. It was the last time I saw her alive.

  I’m now over seventy. So sixty years later, I am still asking myself if I am worthy enough to call her … my Aunt Ida.

  Mr. Diskin

  BARNEY DISKIN WAS A JEW.

  Everybody in the entire town knew it, so there wasn’t any hope for Mr. Diskin to fib, claiming he wasn’t when he righteous was.

  “Give him credit,” Papa said. “He ain’t ashamed of it.”

  “No,” said Mama. “He walks with his head up high, just as though he was a normal everyday Vermonter.”

  “A mite uppity,” said my Aunt Carrie, “seeing as he’s nothing more than a junk dealer.”

  Even before my weaning (or shortly thereafter), I had been informed that old Barney Diskin was Jewish, though beyond my toddling years I had little or no idea exactly what a Jew really was. Nor did I bother a fig. No sleep lost. Jews, in the northern mountains of Vermont, were about as prevalent as laughter in church, or folding money in a collection plate.

  In our town there was only one.

  Mr. Barney Diskin.

  Nobody seemed to care ample much. Several of the members of the Election Board swore up and down that Mr. Diskin always voted straight Republican, even as far back as Theodore Roosevelt. Such historical authenticity was good enough for an Ivory-soap percentage of the local citizenry. It proved, beyond any doubt, that Barney Diskin was maybe a Jew, but definitely not one of those city types who appeared every summer along with the gnats.

  Besides, he wasn’t a dang renter. Or a tourist. Mr. Diskin owned his land in fee simple absolute.

  In Vermont, land is solid. Therefore, whenever folks possessed it and paid the taxes that fell due, this was prima facie evidence that they were burghers who rightly commanded Green Mountain State turf, resolute as the statue of the granite sentry that collected pigeon drop on our village square.

  We all, somehow, grew to be as p
roud of our only Jew as we were of our only statue.

  Solid was solid.

  Prouder, in fact, of Mr. Diskin. For good reason. Our granite Minute Man never coughed up even a mill of tax loot. Barney Diskin did. So Vermonters, being as they customarily were (tighter than a bull’s butt in fly time), long ago concluded that Mr. Diskin was a Republican, a paid-up citizen in good standing, and a worthy neighbor.

  Even though nobody in New England ever took such a bold step as to throw something away, every town needed a junk depository. And, therefore, a junk dealer.

  If you couldn’t lug (schlep) your junky stuff to Barney’s Junk, his wagon would, eventual, come to you to collect it in person … and help you pile it aboard.

  There was talk.

  Not about Mr. Barney Diskin.

  But concerning his mule.

  Veronica, everybody in town had observed, was skinny. This, for some strange reason, caused tongues to wag. Gossipers insisted that Veronica’s lean condition was due to her lack of proper nourishment—in turn, a result of the indisputable fact that Mr. Barney Diskin was too much of a skinflint to afford her ample hay or oatage.

  Mr. Diskin was criticized even by Miss Maudie Rickford, whose canary had died of malnutrition.

  People who knew nothing of hay, oats, or even sorghum expressed their opinions of what they now considered to be a proper mule’s diet. Had faithful old Veronica been owned by a Yankee (or even an Irisher or a Eye-talian), little or no concern would have seeped through the clapboards and into the ether of local public opinion.

  But dear Veronica, it seemed, was hardly an ordinary mule.

  She became … “that Jew’s mule.”

  Families who had starved, beaten, and neglected their livestock for no less than seven generations were up in arms. A local S.P.C.A. was formed. A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Three people (two of whom were beyond the sprightly age of eighty) attended the first meeting.

  Both of the octogenarians, who presumed that the assembly didn’t revolve around mule treatment but hoped it was about embroidery, fell asleep before the call to order. Nonetheless, their mere presence was computed to mean that all locals were socially aware of the eroding standards of animal husbandry now rampantly raging in our otherwise pro-bees/birds/beasties community.