Fiction By John Everson

ometimes summer gardening -- fertilizing, pulling weeds, pruning in the 90 degree sun -- leads me to odd thoughts. "Tomatoes" grew out of a morning session in my weedy vegetable garden.

 

"Tomatoes"

Originally published in Crossroads, June 1998

 

hese things are huge!” Matt hefted the meaty tomato from hand to hand like a softball. “How do you grow ’em like this?”

The old man straightened behind his farmstand cart and grinned. “Now I’ve always said, if I went ’n told everyone that, nobody would stop here at my cart. They’d all be home growing themselves a crop of one-pound tomatoes, eh?”

Matt nodded in appreciation. “Yeah, I guess.” He picked up two heavy samples from the cart and held them up to the sun. They practically glowed with health on their own, skins plump and glossy, color a deep, bloody red. He added them to his growing sack and congratulated himself on making this stop. He’d been about to pass the exit when the sign for the farmstand just off the ramp caught his attention. With hardly a thought he’d made a quick turn and wound up just off the highway, staring at a cart full of the beefiest vegetables he’d ever seen.

“Some call ’em a fruit,” nodded the wizened man when he’d said as much. “If the plants get a good root going, they can grow tall as a bush, so I s’pose that’s not too far off. ”

“Do you plant anything else?” Matt asked, thinking it a little strange that the little stand boasted no produce that wasn’t red and round.

“No need.” The man shook his head, bottom lip hanging out just slightly. Matt thought he looked like a Popeye drawing come to life.

“Tomatoes are all you really need. Slice ’em for a sandwich, salt ’em and eat ’em whole, or fry ’em in a pan of bacon grease. Don’t matter. I’ve always said, they’re good for ya and they taste good too. You just taste one of these. Best tomatoes I’ll bet you ever eat. Go ahead, take a bite outta one. On me.”

Matt shook his head, a little embarrassed. “No thanks. I believe you.”

“What’s yer name, son?”

“Matt Tellings.”

“All right, Matt Tellings, my name is Arnie. And now that we’re on a first name basis and all, I want you to take a taste o’ that nice-looking number in your hand right now. Go ahead. It won’t bite.”

He wasn’t getting out of this one, that was obvious. Matt put the tomato to his lips and bit. The skin resisted at first, but then the tension suddenly popped and his teeth were through, sliding through a watery, pulpy flesh of acid and sugar. His tastebuds screamed at the rush, and he could feel his face grinning, out of his control.

“See, you are a tomato lover. I knew it. I can spot ’em in a crowd, I’ve always said.” Matt grinned at the old man, a trickle of tomato juice dripping from his chin.

“You ever grow tomatoes, Matt?”

He nodded. “I’ve tried. Usually I end up with a bunch of spindly plants that fall all over the ground and some tennis ball-size tomatoes that rot before they turn red enough to pick. Now I just stop at farmstands like this and buy them. It’s easier. And they taste better.”

“Do you prefer the Italian or the Californian tomato?”

Matt blinked once at that. Then he shrugged and smiled dumbly. “I just like to eat them.”

The man nodded, and then looked up at the sun, which had started its late afternoon dive into the west.

“We’re all meant for different tasks, I’ve always said. I’m meant to grow tomatoes, maybe you’re meant to eat them.”

Matt brought his bag of 10 softball-size vegetables to the table set up as a checkout station. He pulled out his wallet and handed the old man a $10 bill. Reaching under a tablecloth, the man handed him back a five.

“You’re sure you can’t tell me your secret?” Matt asked. “Do you use a certain kind of manure or something?”

“You really want to know?” Matt nodded quickly. “Please. I won’t tell anyone else, I promise. I just want to have a good garden myself for once.”

The old man looked around, as if nervous that someone else could be standing around the farmstand waiting to hear of his “secret” method. But nobody was visible for miles.

“OK.” The man picked up a tomato, thrust it into Matt’s face. “See this? When you split it open...” He grabbed either end of the tomato and then pulled it apart, a splat of sharp-smelling juice landing on Matt’s shirt.

“Crap,” he thought to himself.

“Look inside.” The man stirred his finger around in the slimy, clingy innards of the tomato and beckoned Matt closer.

“See the largest seed?” Matt nodded, noting that one of the seeds in the egg white-like goop was a bit larger than the others.

“Every tomato has one largest seed. Find it. Slide it out into your hand.” The farmer held out a palm with an almost pea-sized seed. “See that? Just go and plant that out in the ground and you’ll get a regular tomato.”

Matt looked confused, and the old man grinned.

“But if you take that large seed, during the week when the moon is full, and you plant them in an eye, you will see the most amazingly strong plant grow in just a few weeks. If you water some, that is. A garden’s only as good as its watercan, I’ve always said.”

“What do you mean, plant it in an eye?” The old man stared at Matt for at least two minutes without answering. His face cocked into an odd grimace.

“Just what I said, an eye. You take the seed, like so,” he held it between thumb and forefingers, “and push it into a ripe old eye like this.” He reached out and touched a finger to Matt’s eyelid before Matt could step backwards.

“Once you’ve got the seed deep into the squishy stuff, cover it up with a good mulch and wait. That helps the plants to see better when they’re young, and they grow up straight and tall.”

The man laughed then, and Matt joined him, realizing that he’d just been played for a child. “You tell that story to all the kids that come around here?”

“Naw, just the plump ones,” the man said, and Matt laughed for real this time.

“You want to see the patch?”

“How can I resist?” Matt said. “C’mon then, the cart will be alright without me for a few minutes.”

They walked around a beaten-down gray shack and suddenly the surroundings changed quickly. The yard was made up of rows of tomatoes; there must have been dozens of plants. There wasn’t a single one that didn’t stand at least three feet tall. And the lanes in between them were clean and straight as sidewalks.

“I’ve been working this patch since my wife died a few years ago,” the man said. It gives me something to do. And I’m good at it!”

“That’s for damn sure,”Matt acceded, whistling at the size of the plants and their bounteous fruit.

“Would you like a beer?” the old man asked. “I’m ready for a break about now anyway.”

“Um, sure,”Matt said, and watched his new friend disappear into a sagging screen door at the back of the house. He walked into the garden while he waited, marveling at the height and breadth of the tomato bushes. They were set out at least three feet apart, and supported by a single wooden stake near their centers. Wire hoops connected to the stakes, helping to bundle and support the plants, which had to be heavy. Matt knelt down to feel the heft of one branch, which was sagging under the weight of a half dozen huge still-green vegetables. The trunk of the plant was as thick as a sapling. He wrapped his hand around it and whistled again.

No lie, these were the biggest tomato plants he’d ever seen. And the old man had supported the roots with something, he saw. The stalk of the plant disappeared into the ground through a slightly raised ring. In fact, the stalk was so thick, the support ring appeared to be strangling it, like a tree whose trunk has thickened around its training rope.

Matt looked back toward the house to see if the old man was watching. Seeing nothing, he pulled out a pocket knife and scraped the soil away from the base of the plant. The loose, loamy earth fell away easily and Matt smiled, thinking about the amount of manure and compost it must have taken to create such a marvelous garden bed.

His smile soon faded, however when he realized that the hidden support for the tomato plant was white and unyielding. Like rock.

Or bone.

He looked back at the house again, and still seeing no sign of the farmer, he began scooping earth with his hands, brushing it off the hard, yellow-white structure until he had uncovered enough to know for sure. He’d hoped, if it was bone, that it would at least have belonged to an animal, but the smile in the ground said otherwise.

The tomato was growing through the eye of a human skull.

Just like the farmer had said.

And Matt’s feet were planted right about where its collarbone should be, if the rest of the skeleton was resting here quietly as well. That would explain the fine texture of the soil, he nodded, and then, realizing the full import of that thought, wiped his hands quickly on his jeans.

“They really do grow best the second or third year after the body’s in the ground, if you were wondering. My wife was in the dirt three years before I got a really good yield from her plant.”

Matt whirled to see the old man, pitchfork in hand, thrust forward.

* * * * *

It was probably going to make him late for getting home, but James couldn’t resist a farmstand. Pulling off the freeway onto an exit ramp, he wondered how the farmstand owner could stay in business this far off the beaten path. How many people actually left the highway for a bag of vegetables? But when he saw the size of the tomatoes on the cart, he realized that this guy probably could set up shop in a cave 50 miles from anywhere and word-of-mouth would keep him in business.

“What do you put in your soil to grow them this big,” James asked. “These things are meaty!”

The leathery skin of the farmer’s face shivered as he chuckled. “I’ve always said, you only get out of something what you put into it.”

James nodded in appreciation. “You’ve put a lot of sweat and blood into your crops, eh?”

The farmer grinned wider. “And muscle, and bone, and ...”

 

THE END