Revved Up

Straw Two - Footprints

Straw Two – Footprints

My mother grows petunias. 

They are all manner of colors. They’re beautiful, and they’ve routinely taken the neighborhood prize given out every year at the block party. My father even calls my mother Petunia sometimes, even though that’s not her given name or even close to it at all. It’s just a sweet and affectionate pet name. 

And she grows them on the swath of land between their house and the home of the – you guessed it, Officer – POJ family. 

The light is good, and the soil is apparently just right. There’s a hill, and the petunias just sort of grow out of it. There was a lawn, my father once told me, before they moved there, but it got obvious rather quickly that the lawn would not be anything that could be reasonably attacked with a mower. And so my mother planted petunias. 

This was even before my birth, which is a while back, but a lady never tells her age. And so all I can tell you, Officer, is that it was a while back. 

In any event, the petunias; let me get back to the petunias. They come in all sorts of colors. My mother mainly likes purples and pinks. But she would also grow some red ones, and some red and white striped ones that are called peppermint. Yes, they’re peppermint petunias. There are any number of varieties and sizes. She likes the mid-sized ones, which are maybe two inches or so in size. They’re just little, trumpet-like flowers. Nothing’s being hurt by them, right? Am I right, Officer? 

Then one morning, I came over and I found that the swath of land was barren. Well, not completely barren – there were a few cigarette ends in it, you see. But the plants were gone, and had been ripped out, as far as I could tell. My mother was in tears and my father was, well, he was stoic, as he often is. We’re pretty unflappable people, but he didn’t like that my mother was suffering like that. But there was no way to tell what was going on. 

And so I drove her over to the local garden supply center in order to get more petunias. But, you see, she was so used to growing her own, and capturing the seeds and all of that, that she was pretty overwhelmed. Which was unfortunate, but what can you do? The nice man at the garden supply center was overworked and so he gave us over to a teenager who had a large amount of facial jewelry. The child told us that it was ‘all good, dog’, an expression that neither my mother nor I understand to this day. 

We left with four palettes of what that child told us were petunias although my mother said she wasn’t absolutely certain. But, you see, it was difficult to remain there. There were tons of announcements on their public address system and they were garbled and annoying. I could feel I was getting a headache, and my poor mother was as well. So we purchased the palettes and got out of that awful place as quickly as we could. Later that day, I saw that one of the palettes said Datura stramonium. I looked that up a lot later, and that’s apparently Jimson weed. 

That afternoon, we planted the contents of the four palettes as my children – I have a boy and a girl, did I tell you that before, Officer? They stayed in and watched television even though they complained a bit that my parents do not have cable and they do not have any video games or the like. The Internet access is also pretty bad there. But it’s better for them to do their homework, I think, rather than surf the web and look for, oh, I don’t know. And I’m not so sure I want to know, as I imagine at least some of it is untoward. I trust my children, of course. It’s the webmasters that I don’t think I trust, you see. 

We planted, as I said, and that took a few hours. It was mighty exhausting. And then my children and I stayed overnight and we sang songs at the piano or at least my parents and I did as the children were, it seemed, a bit bored by all of that. They ended up actually volunteering to do their homework! I’ve got good children, I’ll have you know. 

And so we slept the sleep of the just, and it was early morning, bright and early and sunshiny. Perfect weather for petunias! I went outside in my housedress to admire them but the area where we had planted was, again, bereft of all plant life! This time, though, I found a clue. I do have to say so myself. As you know, I’m no police officer, certainly not like you. 

My evidence? Oh yes, my stars, my evidence! I found in the dust, there was a tread mark. It was reversed, but it seems to have said U-G-G. I can’t really speak any further to it. And no, I didn’t photograph it, no. I didn’t think to do so at the time, you see. It’s a little, well, you want to be trusting of your neighbors, you see. And so I didn’t think of anything such as that. 

Later that day, after three in the afternoon – for it was a rare occasion indeed to see them any earlier than that – I saw the lady of the house. You know, from the POJ family’s home. She was wearing a black tee shirt which was touting some rock band or another. There was a flaming skull on the shirt, and it matched a tattoo I could see on her arm. I didn’t mean to look, naturally, but the tattoo was, you see, right there. She was wearing these short cut-off denim shorts which were so short that the pockets stuck out below the ragged, irregular hem! She was also wearing these dark tan fuzzy boots that were somewhat nondescript, and they were rather dirty, you see. 

I saw my son staring at her a bit, and so I reminded him that that was impolite. I said hello to her but she apparently did not hear me. It’s a most troubling thing, to be ignored. I went over to her, and I introduced myself again as I feared she may have forgotten who I was. 

She was apparently rather busy as she slammed the door when she got inside her home.