(I’m not going to do this often during November, but here are the first few paragraphs, the first 990 words of Marigold Man. I confess I edited them, something I won’t have time to do, can’t take the time to do much this month. It’s just that after starting the novel this morning, and thinking through some things, I realized I wanted to change course a little. I told myself this first bit sets a tone, at least for me and how I write it. So I re-did it some (thought not as much as you’d think), and here it is. Don’t tell me what you think. I may share a snippet later, but only once or twice.)
I never dreamed that gathering seeds four Octobers ago would lead me to this jail cell. They were just marigold seeds. Just a bunch of darned marigold seeds. I was so fascinated, so thrilled, so, so, in love. I was smitten by what I was seeing, by what I was holding in my hand, the life, the beauty, the potential, the sloppy joy that is a garden, that is a plant, that is a seed. I guess I looked at those slender black and white bits of, well, almost straw, what soon became a bag full of the things, and I got a glimmer of a plan, the vaguest hint of how those seeds would be my ticket to freedom, my ticket out of the boxes, the cells, the cubicles that defined my life at that moment. So ironic, those little horticultural tickets to freedom led me to this small, brightly lit six by six room on the wrong side of about eight well-guarded locked doors.
I’ll never forget that first fateful day when it all dawned on me, like a wave on a shore, like a thunderstorm out of the blue, unexpected, unsought, but powerful, strong, winds whipped up to change things in their path. Cappy had just called to me from the house, “Hey sweet gardener mine, think you’ll be able to drag that sorry green thumb of yours up here to supper in about fifteen minutes.” “O.K., Cap, sweet wife of my youth. I’m just finishing up out here. I’ll be there shortly.” I looked up at her and smiled and shook my head. How did I luck into this one- in -a- million woman? How did I fool her into marrying me? I love her, my beautiful Capricia, that not too tall in reality, but in my mind and in the experience of everyone who meets her, that woman who walks tall, smiles wide and sees right through you to the core. She looked especially tasty in this early evening Autumn sun, her still- curvy figure distracting me for a moment from my work. She smiled and blew me a kiss. “I know what your ‘just fifteen minutes’ can be. You’re not kidding anyone here. Don’t get absorbed.” “Don’t worry. I’m almost done for the evening.” I was cleaning up the garden, getting it ready for fall. The day was perfect: blue skies with distant high wisps of clouds, a light almost warm breeze, the kind of weather that makes you think winter is a myth and summer will never go. But I knew better, and so was taking this perfect moment to clean up the garden. After a long season of growing things, sometimes, if everything works right, an almost riotous green, I am grateful for the break, glad for things to slow down. I enjoy pulling up the now dried plants, thinking back to the almost impossibly good eating they gave us. All those red, juicy tomatoes, that corn that grew so well this year, we pretty near ate it for almost a month. And so many cucumbers in so many salads, so many pickles, so many sweet green tubes of joy we gave away to neighbors. I’m a popular fellow in the height of the growing season.
And the marigolds. I had lined the garden paths with marigolds, a variety that grows low and forms a shin- high hedge of orange burnt-red amazement. They had become the low-riding ridge I wanted them to be, a foot high and wide line of almost solid flowers. I was pulling these, now, and I thought why not use some of these seeds next year? The once vibrant flowers were now dried up husks, not completely worthless but scores and scores of bundles filled with seeds, the result of the miracle in my own back yard. So I was plucking the tan, dry seed heads of the finished flowers, putting them in a bag, to save, to plant in flats and set in my new greenhouse in spring. I broke one open as I had when I first learned gardening in my teens and marveled once again at all those seeds. How many are in just one of these dried up seed heads? I carefully emptied the marigold seed pod in my hand and sat down on the garden path and counted. Sixty seeds! Sixty in just one seed head! Did I know this already, had I learned this? I don’t think so. I broke open another and counted. Fifty-eight. Another: sixty-two. One planted seed, just one little seed, which was all it took for one marigold plant, had reproduced itself 60 times. How is this possible? I had seen dried marigold flowers, seen all the seeds inside each one all my life. How many times over the years did I just pluck those dried flowers, break them open and toss the seeds aside, like a child blowing a dandelion head gone to fluff. Even now, sometimes, I let marigold seeds fall from the plant, knowing at least some will grow on their own next season. But now, at this moment, I was seeing all this with different eyes. I felt as though I had stepped into a Holy Place, into the presence of some great Being, some Power, maybe God himself. I was awed, seeing the little black and white seeds in my palm, and looking down the long row of marigolds and wondering, how many of these seeds do I have here, just along this row? My God, indeed! I suspect it seems absurd or at least silly, but at that moment, I was stunned into a silence, into a minute of thinking nothing except I was sitting on a gold mine here, a pile of wealth I had inadvertently grown, a pot of gold I had no idea what to do with.
