The Plant

From the journals of Riddley Walker
4/5/81 (continued)

The truck was an old rattletrap, the windshield milky around the edges; the heater didn't work and the springs were shot; the seats were lumpy and the stink of cooking exhaust came up through the floorboards, presumably from a defective exhaust-pipe or manifold. But the toll-taker on the GW never even looked at us twice, so I considered it a beautiful thing. Also, the radio worked. When I turned it on, the first thing I got was John Denver: “Gee it's great to be back home again! Sometimes this old farm seems like a long-lost friend...”

“Please,” Bill said. “Do you have to?”

“I like it,” I said, and began tapping my feet. Between us was a medium-sized paper bag with the Smiler's logo on it. Inside it were those few of the General's effects which Zenith found indigestible. The Mad Florist's briefcase was under the seat, giving off some very nasty vibrations. And no, I do not believe that was just my imagination.

“You like this? Riddley, I don't make reference to your color lightly, but don't Afro-American gentlemen such as yourself usually enjoy folks like Marvin Gaye? The Temptations? The Stylistics? James Brown? Arthur Conley? Otis Redding?”

I thought of telling him that Otis Redding was as dead as the fellow in the back of the rattly old panel truck in which we were currently crossing the Hudson River, then decided to keep my mouth shut on that score.

“I happen to enjoy this particular tune.” In fact, I did. “Look outside, Bill. The moon's coming up on one side and the sun's going down on the other. It's what my Mama used to call double delight.”

“I was very sorry to hear about your Mama, Riddley,” he said, and I blessed him for that. Inside my head, however, where he could no longer hear the blessing. Not once we got away from the building where Zenith the common ivy now holds court.

“Thank you, Bill.”

“Did she... you know, did she suffer?”

“No. I don't believe she did.”

“Good. That's good.”

“Yes,” I said.

The John Denver song ended and was replaced by something infinitely worse: Sammy Davis Jr. singing about the candyman. Who can take a rainbow, dip it in a dream? Shuddering, I turned the radio off again. But the John Denver song lingered in my head: Gee it's good to be back home again.

We alit on the Jersey side, me in the passenger seat and Bill behind the wheel of the old truck with the fading Holsum Bread stickers on the sides. He had borrowed it from a friend, who hopefully has no idea of what we were transporting, rolled up in an old rug-remnant which Herb Porter found in the supply closet.

When, some hours before, Bill finished outlining his plan, Roger asked: “Who's going to go with you, Bill? You can't do it alone.”

“I will,” I said.

“You?” John asked. “But you're—” He stopped there, but we were still on the fifth floor, still in Zenith's presence, and we all heard the continuation of his thought: —only the janitor!

“Not any more, he's not,” Roger said. “I'm hereby hiring you in an executive capacity, Riddley. If you want it, that is.”

I gave him my Number One Nigger Jim smile, the one which features roughly two thousand huge white teeth. “I'se gwine to be an edituh in dis heah fine cump'ny? Why, sho! Sho! Dat'd be purty good!”

“But not if you talk like that,” John said.

“I'se gwine try to do bettah! Try to improve mah dictive qualities, as well!”

“This smells like bribery to me,” Sandra said. She squeezed my hand and looked at Roger with mistrusting eyes.

“You know better,” Roger said, and of course she did. That sense of family was too strong to deny. God only knows what's ahead of us, but we're in it together. Of that there can no longer be any doubt.

“What are you going to pay him with?” Herb wanted to know. “Smiler's Extra Value coupons? Enders will never approve another editor's salary. And if he finds out you're promoting the janitor, he'll shit.”

“For payroll purposes, Riddley will continue in his janitorial capacity for the time being,” Roger said. He sounded perfectly serene, perfectly sure of himself. “Later, we're going to have all the money we need to pay him a full salary. Riddley, how does $35,000 a year sound to you? Retroactive to today, April 4, 1981?”

“Goodness-gracious-me! I be de flashies' nigga in de Cotton Club!”

“It sounds fine to me, too,” John said, “since it's five a year more than I am currently making.”

“Oh, don't worry about that,” Roger said. “You, Herb, Bill, and Sandra are being raised to... let's see... forty-five a year.”

“Forty-five thousand?” Herb whispered. His eyes had a suspicious gleam to them, as if he were about to break down and cry. “Forty-five thousand dollars?”

“Retroactive to April 4th, same as Rid.” He turned to me. “And seriously, Rid—ditch the Rastus.”

“It's gone for good as of now,” I said.

He nodded. “As for me,” he said, “what does the Bible say? 'The laborer is worthy of his hire. ' I'm now making forty. How much should I get for steering the good ship Zenith away from the rocks of the lee shore and into the open sea, where the trade winds blow?”

“How about sixty?” Bill asked.

“Make it sixty-five,” Sandra proposed giddily. After all, it was Sherwyn Redbone's money Roger was spending.

“No,” Roger said, “no need to be vulgar, not the first year, anyway. I think fifty thousand will be fine.”

“Not bad for any of us, considering the plant's doing it all,” Bill said.

“That's not true,” John said, a little sharply. “We've always had the skills to do this job, all of us. The plant is just giving us the opportunity.”

“Besides,” Herb said, “it's getting room and board. What more does it require? An ivy doesn't exactly need a new car, does it?” He looked at Bill. “Are you sure you don't want me to join the disposal crew? I will, if you want me.”

Bill Gelb thought it over, then shook his head. “Two of us should do just fine. But we ought to put the... you know, the remains... in something. I wonder what there is?”

Which was when Herb went into the supply closet, rummaged awhile, then came back out dragging the rug remnant behind him.

It turned out to be just the right size. Bill and I were exempted from the task of gift-wrapping Carlos Detweiller, and I thought Sandra would stay with us out in the hall (exempting herself, as it were, by virtue of her sex), but she pitched in with a will. And all around us Zenith hummed contentedly, putting a floor under us, sending out what the Beach Boys (another whitebread favorite of mine) would probably call “good vibrations.”

“Telepathy seems to improve teamwork,” Bill commented, and I had to admit it was true. Sandra and Herb spread out the rug beside Sandra's desk. Roger and John lifted Detweiller and deposited him face-down at one end of the rug. Then, working together, they simply rolled him up like a Devil Dog pastry, securing the whole with the heaviest twine the supply closet could provide.

“Man, he bled a lot,” Bill said. “That rug's a mess.”

“The plant will suck up most of it today and Sunday,” I said.

“You really think so?”

I really did. I also thought that I could get up most of the residue with a good application of Genie Rug Cleaner. The final result might not fool a police forensics specialist, but if the police wind up in here, our butts are probably going to be baked, anyway. To an ordinary outsider, the remaining stain on Sandra's carpet will look as if someone spilled a pot of coffee there a few months ago. Maybe the only real question is whether or not Sandra can live with that manta-ray shadow in the place where she earns her daily bread. If she can't, I suppose I can replace that particular piece of carpet. Because it's as Roger says: such minimal expenses will soon no longer annoy us.

“You're sure you can get this truck?” Roger called out from Sandra's office. He was sitting back on his heels and wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “What if the guy's gone for the weekend?”

“He's home,” Bill said, “or at least he was an hour and a half ago. I saw him on my way out. And for fifty dollars, he'd rent me his grandmother. He's a nice enough guy, but he's got this little problem.” He mimed sniffing, first closing one nostril and then the other.

“Make sure he's there,” Roger said, then turned to John. “Body disposal bonuses at Christmas for all of us. Make a note.”

“Sure, just don't put it in your monthly report,” John said, and we all laughed. I suppose that must sound gruesome, but it was the cheeriest, most collegial laughter you ever heard. I believe that Sandra, with a tiny smear of Carlos Detweiller's blood on her forearm and another on her right palm, laughed hardest of all.

Bill went in his office and got on the phone. Roger and John moved Carlos, now wrapped in the brown rug remnant, down to the reception area, behind LaShonda's desk.

“I can see his shoes,” Sandra said. “They're sticking out a little.”

“Don't worry, it'll be okay,” Herb said, and just like that I knew that he's been doing the horizontal bop with the lady fair. Well, mo powah to him, is all dis fella kin say. Might be no mo playin truck-drivah and l'il girl hitchhikah, praise de Lawd.

“Nothing's going to be okay until that homicidal idiot's taken care of,” Sandra said. She started to brush her hair back, saw the blood on her hand, and grimaced.

Bill came out of his office, smiling. “One old but serviceable panel truck, at our service,” he said. “Bread company advertising logos on the sides, very faded. Riddley, we take it away this afternoon at four—in less than three hours, in other words—and I bring it back later tonight. No questions asked, although I had to agree to mileage, as well. Two bits per. That okay, boss?”

Roger nodded. “This guy lives downstairs from you, right?”

“Right. He's a stockbroker. Buying vehicles at auction and turning them over is just a sideline. I think he scams the insurance companies when he can, as well. I could have gotten a hearse, actually, but that seemed... I don't know... ostentatious.”

To me, the idea of taking Detweiller to a Jersey landfill in a hurry-up wagon seemed not ostentatious but downright creepy. I kept my mouth shut on the subject, however.

“And this place in Paramus?” John asked. “It's safe? Relatively safe?”

“According to some of the talk I've heard at Ginelli's game, it's as safe as the grave.” Bill saw our faces and grimaced. “To coin a phrase.”

“All right,” Roger said heavily. “Sandra's office looks more or less okay. Let's clean up Herb's and John's and then get the hell out of here.”

We did it, then adjourned to the cafeteria a block over to get something to eat. None of us had much in the way of appetite, and Bill left early to conclude negotiations with the fellow downstairs.

Outside the cafeteria, on the curb, John took my arm. He looked tired but composed. In better shape than before I left for home, actually. “Riddley, are you okay with this?”

“Fine with it,” I said.

“Want me to ride along?”

I thought it over, then shook my head. “Three's a crowd. I'll call you when it's taken care of. But it may be late.”

He nodded, started away, then turned back and grinned. There was something heartbreakingly sweet about it. “Welcome to the Green Thumb Editorial Society,” he said.

I sketched him a little salute. “Good to be here.”

As it was. And when I got to Bill's place shortly thereafter, the old panel truck was already parked at the curb. Bill was standing next to it, smoking a cigarette and looking entirely at peace.

“Let's pick up some cargo and take it to Jersey,” he said.

I clapped him on the shoulder. “I'm your man,” I said.

We arrived back at 490 around quarter to five. At that hour on a Saturday afternoon, the building was as quiet as it ever gets. Absolutely dead, to coin another phrase. John's nemesis lay where we had left him, neatly tied into his bundle of rug.

“Look at the plant, Riddley,” Bill said, but I already had. Runners had worked their way to the end of the corridor. There they clustered, barely held back by the garlic John and Roger had rubbed on the sides of the door. The tips were raised, and I could see them quivering. I thought of hungry diners looking in a restaurant window, and shivered a little. If not for the garlic, those advance feelers would already have worked their way into the carpet and around the corpse's feet. Zenith is on our side, I feel quite sure of that, but neither a stiff dick nor a hungry belly has much in the way of conscience, I'm afraid.

“Let's get him out of here,” I said.

Bill agreed. “And make a note to refresh the garlic on that door. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“I don't think garlic will hold it forever,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

Because we were back under Zenith's telepathic umbrella, I thought my response at him rather than saying it out loud: It's got to grow. If it can't grow, it'll die. But before it dies, it might—

Get mean? Bill finished for me.

I nodded. Yes, it might get mean. I'm sure that Detweiller and General Hecksler would say it had gotten fairly mean already.

We carried the rolled-up length of rug down the hall to the elevator, which opened at the touch of a button. There was no one else in the building to divert it to another location, of that I was positive. We would have heard their thoughts.

“We're not going to have any problems at all, are we?” I asked Bill as we rode down. Mr. Detweiller lay between us, a troublesome fellow soon to take up permanent residence in New Jersey. “No little unexpected Hitchcock touches.”

Bill smiled. “I don't think so, Riddley. We're going to roll all sevens. Because the force is with us.”

And so it has been.

By the time the truck's headlights picked out the sign on the edge of Route 27—PETERBOROUGH DISPOSAL CO. LANDFILL ABSOLUTELY NO TRESPASSING—it was full dark and the moon was riding high in the sky. High and dreamy. It crossed my mind that the same moon was looking down on my Mama's fresh grave in Blackwater.

There was a chain across the dirt road leading to the landfill, but it appeared to be looped over the posts to either side, not locked. I got out, slipped one of the loops free, and then motioned Bill to drive through. Once he was on the other side, I re-fixed the chain and got back in.

“The mob uses this place, I take it?” I asked.

“That's the rumor.” Bill lowered his voice a little. “I heard one of Richie Ginelli's pals say that Jimmy Hoffa is taking an extended vacation out this way.”

“Bill,” I said, “far be it for Zenith House's most junior editor to tell you what to do—”

“Lay on, MacDuff,” he said, smiling.

“—but a poker game where one hears such odd bits of trivia might not be the place for an inoffensive editor of paperback originals.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said, and although he was still smiling, I don't believe that what came next was a joke. “If the bad boys cross me, I'll just sic my plant on them.”

“That's what Carlos Detweiller thought, and he's making his final pilgrimage in the back of a bread truck,” I said.

He looked at me, the smile fading a little. “You might have a point there, partner.”

I did have a point there, but I doubt it will stop Bill from his weekend poker forays. Just as I doubt that successfully having it off with Sandra Jackson will stop Herb Porter from the occasional clandestine seat-sniffing expedition. We say “so-and-so should have known better” when so-and-so comes to grief, but there is a world of difference between knowing better and doing better. To misquote the Bible, we return to our vices like a dog to its vomit, and when one thinks in such terms, I wonder at our apparent determination to co-exist with Zenith the common ivy. To think that he—or it—can make either our situation or ourselves any better.

After considering what I've just written, I must laugh. I'm like a junkie between fixes, temporarily sober and pontificating on the evils of dope. Once I'm back in range of those humming good vibrations, everything will change. I know it as well as I know my own name.

Knowing better... and doing better. Between them is the chasm.

The dirt road ran through scruffy pine woods for a quarter of a mile and then brought us out into a vast dirt circle filled with trash, discarded appliances, and a stacked wall of junked cars. By the light of a full moon, it looked like the death of all civilization. On the far side was a dropoff, its steep sides covered with more trash. At the bottom, the bulldozers and backhoes looked the size of a child's toys.

“They bulldoze the crap down there, then cover it,” Bill said. “We'll take him twenty or thirty feet down the slope, then bury him. I've got shovels. I've also got gloves. I'm told there are rats in there as big as terriers.”

But all that proved to be unnecessary; as Bill had said, the force was with us and we were rolling all sevens. As he drove slowly toward the dropoff and the actual landfill, weaving between those rusty cenotaphs of junk, I saw a cluster of blue objects off to the left. They looked like man-sized plastic capsules standing on end.

“Go over there,” I said, pointing.

“Why?”

“Just a feeling. Please, Bill.”

He shrugged and headed the panel truck that way. As we got closer, a big grin began to dawn on his face. They were the Port-a-Pottys you see at construction sites and in some roadside rest areas, but all these had had the hell beaten out of them: dented roofs, broken doors, gaping holes in some of the sides. They were standing about forty feet from the maw of a silent machine that could only be a crusher.

“Think we hit the jackpot, Rid?” Bill asked, grinning. “I think we hit the jackpot. In fact, I think you're a fucking genius.”

There was a length of yellow tape strung around the cluster of blue capsules, with KEEP OUT KEEP OUT KEEP OUT repeating endlessly in big black letters. Stuck to it with a lick of electrical tape was a note written on a piece of cardboard in big hasty letters. I got out and read it by the glow of the panel truck's weak headlights:

TURK! These are the ones I told

you about, City of Para. Please get that

damn Mintz off my back and CRUSH

THESE SOME-BITCHES MONDAY

1st thing! Thanks Buddy, “I owe you 1.”

FELIX

Bill had joined me and was also reading the note. “What do you think?” he asked.

“I think Carlos Detweiller is going to rejoin the universe as part of a City of Paramus Port-a-Potty reject,” I said. “Early Monday morning. Come on, let's get it done. This place gives me a severe case of the creeps.”

A gust of wind blew through, rattling trash and sending cans rolling with a sound like rusty laughter. Bill looked around nervously. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too. Hang on while I kill the truck headlights.”

He popped the lights off and then we went around to the back of the truck and pulled out the rolled-up rug with our compadre Carlos inside. The moon had dived behind a cloud and as we ducked under the yellow KEEP OUT tape it re-emerged, once more flooding the wasteland. I felt like a pirate in a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. But instead of “Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,” the tune knocking around in my head was that damned John Denver thing about how good it was to be back home again. In this moonlit memorial to the gods of conspicuous consumption, I heard new words, my own words: There's a crusher softly rumblin, rats are in the trash; gee it's good to be back home again.

“Hang on, hang on,” Bill said, reaching behind him with one hand and propping the rug up with a raised knee. He looked like some bizarre species of stork.

At last he got the door of a Port-a-Potty open. We muscled our burden inside and propped it up between the gray plastic urinal and the toilet seat. The place still held the vague smell of urine and the ghost of old farts. In one high corner was a cobweb with the corpse of an ancient fly dangling from it. On the wall, by moonlight, I read two scrawlings. “For X-CELLENT BLOJOB BE HERE 10 PM SHOW HARD I SWALLOW,” read one. The other, infinitely more disturbing, said: “I WILL DO IT AGAIN & AGAIN & AGAIN. UNTIL I AM CAUGHT.”

Suddenly I wanted to be miles from that place.

“Come on,” I said to Bill. “Please, man. Come on.”

“Just one more second.”

He went back to the truck and got the bag with the General's final effects in it—buckle, pacemaker, osteopathic pins. He raised the lid on the toilet, then shook his head.

“Collection bin's gone. It'll just fall on the ground.”

“You don't have the damn briefcase, either,” I said.

“We can't leave that here,” Bill said. “Something in it might identify him.”

“Hell, his fingerprints will identify him, if anyone finds him in there.”

“Maybe. But we don't know what's in the case, do we? Best we drop it in the Hudson on our way back. Safer.”

That made sense. “Give me the bag,” I said, but before he could I snatched the Smiler's bag from him. I jogged to the edge of the drop-off and threw it as far out as I could. I watched it turn over and over in the moonlight. I even imagined I could hear the pins which had held the old warrior's bones together rattling. Then it was gone.

I jogged back to Bill, who had re-latched the Port-a-Potty door. For a wonder, it was one of the less battered ones. It would keep the secret we needed it to keep.

“It's all going to work, isn't it?” Bill asked.

I nodded. Had no doubts then and no doubts now. We are being protected. All we need to do us to take reasonable precautions ourselves. And take care of our new friend, as well.

The moon sank back into the clouds. Bill's eyes glittered in the sudden gloom like the eyes of an animal. Which is, of course, what we were. Two junkyard dogs, one with a white hide and one with a brown hide, skulking in the trash. A couple of junkyard dogs who had successfully buried their bones.

I had a moment of clarity then. A moment of sanity. I'm a Cornell graduate, aspiring novelist, fledgling editor (I can do the job to which Roger Wade has promoted me, of that I have no doubt). Bill Gelb is a graduate of William and Mary, a Red Cross blood-donor, a reader to the blind once a week at The Lighthouse. Yet we had just deposited the body of a murdered man in an acknowledged mafia graveyard. The General stabbed him, but are we not all accessories, in some measure?

Perhaps only John Kenton escapes blame on that score. He did tell me to throw the ivy away, after all. I even have the memo somewhere.

“We're mad,” I whispered to Bill.

His whisper back was soft and deadly. “I don't give a shit.”

We looked at each other for a moment, not speaking. Then the moon came out again, and we both dropped our eyes.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

And so we did. Back to Route 27, then back to the turnpike, then back to the George Washington Bridge. No one was behind us at that hour, and Carlos Detweiller's case with the combination lock on it sailed away into the drink. No problems; smooth sailing. Saturday night and we didn't even see a cop. And all the way, that song went running through my head: Gee it's good to be back home again.