At Cleveland’s instruction, Troy wastes no time in getting the seeds into the ground. He starts with the three special tomato seeds so he doesn’t sneeze and blow them into the couch cushions or something. Not much instructions other than take some fukkin’ care of them and talk to them. Keep off them rotten slimy bugs or whatever slugs were. Mollusks? Troy pops out of his house and surveys his yard. It’s about twenty feet from the house to the fence, and thirty feet from the driveway to the fence leading to the back of his house. How much space did he need to plant these? He did a quick and painful calculation. Measuring things and thinking about sizes of things was the worst. Troy paced off a fifteen foot by ten foot patch in the corner where the two fences met at the furthest point from the driveway, away from prying eyes and directly in the sun. Troy hears that’s the best spot for plants.
Since his yard was completely covered in browning grass (Troy was a big proponent of conserving water, also known as ‘not wanting to go the trouble of watering his damn lawn every day’) Troy checked out his garage for something to turn grassy lawn into dirt lawn. He didn’t have a rake (any more) but there were a few yard type things that he figured could break through the grass surface and get that good dirt exposed for the seedin’. He found a crowbar for wackin’, a shovel for scoopin’, and a little stick he intended on using for poking holes in the soil for putting seeds into.
Troy attacked the patch he picked out. Not very well, but he was very excited, and sometimes excitement can carry a project to the end, albeit sometimes not quite as previously envisioned. Troy stood back, admiring his work and wiping sweat from his eyes. The patch he had cleared was certainly not just grass any more and it wasn’t quite as rectangular as he had originally thought. It wasn’t pretty, but Troy figured the plants wouldn’t really care about that, they just wanted to get into some dirt.
He heard somewhere that if you planted several seeds together, they kind of fight underground and the winner would come up victorious, haven beaten the other seeds. That made sense to Troy. Put them in the dirty mixed martial arts cage and see who got knocked out and who won the right to grow. Troy started with the three tomato seeds, carefully poking a hole in the chunky soil with a stick then gently dropping them in before sprinkling some dirt in on top.
He continued to plant the mystery seeds in much the same fashion. Not sure how big the vegetables were going to be when they finally made it out of the ground, Troy gave each little hole of seeds enough space to spread out if they so choose. He went bag by mysterious bag, trying to keep the lines even and trying hard not to mix up the seeds too much. Finally, he was finished. Troy was a true farmer and was going to be eating high on the hog pretty soon. How long did it take for plants to grow? Are they already starting to grow? Do they need water? Troy was getting sweaty. What if he had fucked up the seeds already? He ran to the side of the house and uncoiled his battered and kinky hose and began to spray down the garden. “Not too much” he spoke to himself “don’t want to introduce them to a foreign land then immediately drown them. Nope nope.” Troy loved spraying things down with the hose. There was something satisfying about it.
He stopped watering the garden after a prudent amount of time, then sprayed off a few other things in the area for good measure. Gave the fence a little spritz, sprayed off his front window, attempted to spray some leaves off the roof too but the hose water wouldn’t reach up that far and Troy ended up getting a mouthful of roof water instead. “That’s done.” He said, sputtering and wiping his face while attempting to re-coil the weather beaten hose around the corner of his house. Keep it neat. What a neat guy.
Troy wondered when he was supposed to start talking to the tomato plant. Now? “Now. I don’t see the fuck why not now.” He headed to the patch where he had planted the tomato seeds and began talking. It was awkward at first, but he soon got the hang of it, eventually pretending that he was talking to an old person lying in bed, unable to move. You could pretty much say anything you want to someone in that condition. “Well, sure is a nice little bed you got there. Hopefully you didn’t get too wet. I’m new to this, but like Cleveland says, you’re a number one special plant, and I’m going to take real good care of you. Going to give you anything your heart desires. Maybe if I can find my old Beatles tape, I can hook you up with a few tunes when I don’t have the time to talk to you. Only if you want to though! I can talk if you want. Or you can like, request something else if the Beatles aren’t really your thing. John Cougar Mellencamp or some shit. Well.” Troy shuffles some exposed earth with his foot. "Better be going then. Leave you to it.” Troy made his way back into the house, glancing at the garden from inside with pride. It was his very first garden and it looked exactly like what a garden was supposed to look like. Dirt in a semi-rectangle. Seeds in the ground. That’s it! Nice Job Troy!
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Troy plopped himself down on his favorite spot on the couch and flipped on the tube.
Days went by, and Troy was faithful. Every morning he would check out the garden, pulling out things that didn’t look like they belonged, grassy things and things that didn’t look special, always being careful to talk in the general direction of where the tomatoes were planted. “Nice day for a little growing!” He would say, “any time you want to come up and say hello! I’ll be right here!” Troy was careful not to overwater, at least as much as he could since he wasn’t exactly sure what overwatering looked like. He imagined if the dirt turned to mud, that wold about fit the definition. He was careful about pests too, was Troy. Would glance out of his front window every hour or so to make sure nothing slimy and hungry was making its way to his garden. Kept a little salt shaker next to the door just in case he had to blast one with a little salty surprise.
Things were going well. Then came the day when something changed. There were some new growths that didn’t look like they didn’t belong. They didn’t look like grass. Plants! From his seeds! Fuck yeah! Troy ran outside and got on his hands and knees, bringing his face all the way to the growing plants from Norway. He breathed on them to keep them warm, he told jokes to the little tomato plant that was making its debut into the world. “You’re the number one champ I guess! Beat up all the rest of the seeds in that hole and you came climbing out like a true hero! Nice fukkin' work! You deserve some kind of a reward! Like a big shiny belt that wrestlers get. Simply amazing. What a beautiful little plant you are.”
That kind of shit.
The plants were growing well and had all reached about a foot out of the ground when trouble started. Some of the plants were starting to fall over. “Fuck!” Troy shouted, then quickly said toward the direction of the tomato plant, “not you, just in general. Saying fuck in general. You all are doing exactly what you need to do. Don’t worry about me.” Troy dashed to his garage and gathered a few sticks up, carefully inserting them next to the leaning plants. “Give you a little support, don’t die on me! No man left behind!” Very gentle was Troy.
Cleveland finally stopped by to check on Troy’s progress. “Hmm, looks like you got yourself some plants alright. You fuck up that tomato plant yet?”
"No" Troy said incredulously, “that plant is the light of my life and I’ve been protecting it like a momma bear protecting it’s young. I fukkin’ dare a slug to get even ten feet from it. I’ll have it covered in salt so fast, it’ll make a powdered donut jealous.”
"Nice” Cleveland says, stooping close to one of the mystery plants, “this looks a little like squash. You know what all these plants are yet?”
"No" Troy says, “but they’re growing fast enough. I think I’ll be able to see what they are in a few weeks.”
"Ah" Cleveland says, “that’s good.” They stand there awkwardly, without beer and without much more to say about it. Not much more to talk about after pointing out obvious things, like the weather, the length of plants coming out of the ground. Slugs and such. Cleveland breaks the silence, suddenly and with relief at being able to have something to say. “Got a call from my dude over yonder” Cleveland points in a general Easterly direction. “Yeah?” Troy says, “about what?”
”About those things we talked about before. Rhymes with schmeipers? The thing you were going to help your good buddy Cleveland with? Remember?” Troy says, “yeah. I remember. When do you need help?”
"Oh, I don’t know 100% yet, but things are jumpin’ and hoppin’ over there and a new shipment should be ready post haste. Maybe a few days. Week at the very latest.”
"Oh" Troy says, “that’s good. Look, Cleveland...” Cleveland cuts him off, “a deal is a deal my man. Need a trusty fellow like yourself to help with this. You like? You can keep helping. You don’t like? It’ll only have to be the once. I should tell you though, something seems different about this one.”
"Different like how?” Troy asks. “Different like we’re going to get murdered and our bones will be made into drywall powder?” Cleveland looks shocked. “Jesus. Is that what you think I’m doing? Getting myself into dangerous trouble? My man over there is a family type dude, wears ugly sweaters and gives me weird gifts like samples of homemade shampoo whenever I meet him. He’s not a cowboy, he's just trying to make a buck or two. Same as us.”
”Same as you, you mean.” Troy says. “Whatever, same as us since I’m cutting you in now. Like I was saying though, there’s something different about it this time. When I talked to him earlier, he sounded really excited, like, struck gold or won the lottery excited. I tried to get the deets out of him, but he said he wanted to talk about it in person, you know, phones and all being what they are. Movie type shit.” Cleveland spit. It lands a little too close to Troy’s garden. It surprises Troy when he feels a flash of anger toward Cleveland for doing that. Spitting near his garden. It’s just a garden, but by Jesus. Took him long enough to grow even the little things that were just starting to come out.