“How you gonna to do that?”
“You’ll see,” Durkin said, chuckling softly. “A couple of days from now you’ll be whistling a different tune. The whole town will be.”
“You’re just an old fool,” she replied. “That’s the only tune I’ll be whistling.”
“Wouldn’t doubt it with all the hot air in you. But you’ll see soon enough who the old fool is, you old battle-”
“Dad,” Bert interrupted. “If there’s a root system under that field, how about poisoning it?”
Durkin closed his mouth. For a long ten-count he kept his stare fixed on his wife, but the fresh brewed coffee and good food tempered his mood. He looked away from her to his son. “That was tried once,” he told him. “My great grandpa laced the field with arsenic. According to my grandpa, the next two seasons the Aukowies came up stronger than ever.”
Bert scratched his head as he thought about that. “How about digging up their root system?” he offered.
“You wouldn’t want to do that. First off, no telling how deep they go. And pushing up through the ground weakens them when they’re that small. You start digging a hole, you just make it easier for them so when they come up, they’ll be all that much stronger. No, son, you don’t want to mess with something like that. The only way to get rid of them is what we Durkins have been doing for almost three hundred years, which is weed them out when they’re still small and can be handled.”
Lydia started laughing to herself. A tight, cackling-type laugh. “Never mind me,” she said, her small gray eyes sparkling. “When I hear nonsense like that, I can’t help myself.”
Durkin glared hotly at her while he used what was left of his toast to clean off his plate, then pushed himself away from the table. “You can laugh yourself sick for all I care,” he said. “I save the world every day no matter what you think and I’m going to do it again today.” Turning his glare towards Lester, he added, “And wake that boy up. I don’t want to see good food going to waste. Especially given how little of it we get around here.”
After putting on his wool socks and work boots, he stumbled towards the door and muttered a reluctant thanks to his wife for sending him out with some good food in his belly. Once he was out the door, Lydia put Lester’s plate in the oven to keep the food warm, then nudged her son awake and sent him back to bed. Bert, who was a slow eater, finished his breakfast a short time later. He got up from the table, stretched lazily and told his mother he was going to go fishing at Shayes Pond and see if he could catch them lunch. Lydia watched him leave. When the door closed behind him, she went over to a cabinet where she kept a carton of cigarettes hidden, took out a pack and, after pouring herself a fresh cup of coffee, sat back at the table. She lit a cigarette, the smoke curling upward while she sat deep in thought, her face screwed into a deep frown. She had pretty much decided the night before what she was going to do, but the way her husband acted cinched it for her. He was going to prove to the world those things ain’t weeds? Had he gone insane and actually believed what he was saying? It was possible he was simply putting on a show for her and Bert, but she was-n’t so sure anymore. She decided it didn’t matter, she was going to put an end to this nonsense. She stubbed out her cigarette and headed to the basement.
One night the previous winter she had forced an argument with her husband about the Caretaker’s contract which ended up sending that old fool scurrying down to the basement to prove her wrong. What he didn’t know was that earlier she had Bert hide down there. Using a flashlight, she found the two stones along the back wall that Bert had shown her. The stones were harder to pull out than she would’ve thought and for several minutes she doubted whether she had the right ones, but eventually they budged and, using all her muscle, she was able to work them out of the wall. In the hole behind them was the Book of Aukowies and a wooden box. Opening the box she found the Caretaker’s contract. She knew the contract was almost three hundred years old, but the book looked even older. Small pieces of the leather binding flaked off when she picked it up and the gold leaf pages inside were brittle and had aged to a light brown. She wondered briefly how much she could sell it for. While it wasn’t in great condition, something that old still had to be worth real money-especially since it was the only book of its kind. Maybe an antique store would be able to give her a price. She left the stones on the dirt floor and carried the book and the contract back upstairs, dumping both on the kitchen table.
She brought the phone over to the table and called Helen Vernon and spoke quickly to her friend. While she waited for Helen to drive over, she flipped through the pages of the Book of Aukowies. It was the first time she had ever seen it. The language inside was too archaic for her to make sense of, but the book contained illustrations of Aukowies at each stage of their development-from seedlings to full-sized monsters. Several illustrations showed mature Aukowies ravaging villages. Lydia’s eyes dulled as she studied the pictures.
“Nothing but a load of nonsense,” she muttered to herself.
Jack Durkin stopped to wipe his brow. Only a quarter to nine in the morning and his shirt was already damp with perspiration. He stood for a moment gazing at Lorne Field. Half of the field weeded, the other half filled with two-inch Aukowies. A breeze blew momentarily across the field and the Aukowies swayed a beat faster than the wind, trying to squeeze in the extra movement. He knew his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him. He knew they were moving just that much faster than they should’ve been.
“Town thinks you damn things are nothing but weeds,” he muttered under his breath. “They’ll find out soon enough, won’t they?”
The Aukowies didn’t bother to answer back.
He placed his ripped baseball cap back on his head and yanked it down. A couple of safety pins held the torn fabric together enough so the cap still provided protection to his mostly bald scalp. Bending his knees and lifting, he swung the canvas sack over his shoulder and carried it to the stone pit where he dumped the Aukowie remains, then walked back to pick up his weeding where he had left off. That morning he had already come across three other Aukowies masquerading as daisies. As relentless as they were, they weren’t the brightest of critters. It took them three hundred years to come up with that daisy trick, and all he could figure was it would probably take them another three hundred years to come up with their next trick-at least as long as Lester was able to grow into Caretaker material. Jack Durkin worried about that. The boy just didn’t seem to have what was needed. Bert, on the other hand, would be just fine for the job. He had the right temperament for Caretaker: conscientious, resourceful, energetic. Lester wasn’t any of those. But he still had close to four years to prove himself. If at that time he still seemed incapable of taking on the responsibilities of Caretaker, something would have to be done…
Even with the heat and humidity, even with worrying about Lester, Durkin moved with a quicker, lighter step than usual. The breakfast his wife had given him helped with his mood, but it was more the excitement of knowing there was a way to prove to the town-and more importantly to his thick-headed wife and equally ungrateful eldest son-that these weren’t weeds he was pulling out all day. His situation would change after that, setting things back to the way they used to be with townsfolk recognizing the importance of what he did and with them taking care of him and his family like they used to. Like they were meant to. Which would mean Lydia would quit her shrewish nagging, and maybe he’d be able to last four more years as Caretaker without dropping dead of a massive coronary.