“Flowers and grass and bushes. They’ve got this topiary out in front of the church. Gumdrop hedges. No big deal. I trim that.” Frank had reached the top of the stairs. He walked onto the first-floor hall and looked around, no more curious than he had been about Father Stephen. Father Stephen got the impression that Frank Moretti had seen his share of schools and was glad to be quit of them.
“So,” Father Stephen said. “What can I help you with? Maybe I can at least direct you to the proper person to be helped by.”
“Who’ll probably be a nun.” Frank Moretti sighed.
“Probably.” Father Stephen sighed back.
“Well, I suppose it can’t be helped,” Frank Moretti said. “It’s Sunday, which you probably know, being a priest and all.”
“Oh, I know,” Father Stephen said.
“Right,” Frank Moretti said. “So what I do on Sundays, usually, is I work on the grass. Now the nuns don’t like that much, what with Sunday supposed to be a day of rest and whatnot, but the grass is my responsibility and Sunday’s really the only day it makes any sense to do it I mean, it’s the only day there aren’t six million people walking on it, because you know what these college girls are like. They go anywhere. Forget the signs.”
“Mmm,” Father Stephen said.
“So I come in and I do the grass, I fertilize, I mix plant food. I do all of it from the back garden beyond the walled garden behind St. Teresa’s House to over here and then out again up to the lawns behind the Administration Building. Big area. Of course, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get into that space behind St. Teresa’s House today.”
“Of course,” Father Stephen agreed.
“If you ask me, a nuns’ convention is a damn silly idea. Excuse my language. But you know what I mean. Somebody said there were more than five thousand nuns over there.”
“Five thousand two hundred and change.”
“Yeah. And they’re multiplying. It’s a miracle. Forget I said that. The thing is, I knew I was going to have trouble this week, so I packed up my things in a big knapsack last Friday, see, and I put the knapsack on the bench in the gardening shed—”
“Where’s the gardening shed?”
“Well, there are six or seven gardening sheds, Father, but the one we use for this part of the campus is right there next to St. Teresa’s House on the side like where there’s this little alley. So I put all my things in this knapsack and I left the knapsack on the bench and then when I came in today I got the knapsack off the bench and I came over here to work. You follow so far?”
“Perfectly,” Father Stephen said.
“Good,” Frank Moretti said, “because so do I, because what comes next is first-rate stupid, and I tell you it’s because we’ve got all those nuns around. It’s not a good idea. All those nuns. It’s enough to give a man the creeps.”
“Shades of second grade,” Father Stephen said.
“Right,” Frank Moretti said, “except in second grade we didn’t steal plant food, because there’s no damn reason for anyone to steal plant food, I mean if you want plant food all you have to do is go over to the main gardening shed and get some, which is a walk of all of about a quarter of a mile, over to the Physical Sciences Building. Or you could go to the store and get it for practically no money at all. And why would you steal it? Because your plant was dying?”
“Somebody stole your plant food,” Father Stephen said thoughtfully.
“I didn’t discover it until I got over here,” Frank Moretti said. “In fact, I didn’t discover it until about half an hour ago, which was when I came in here looking for someone to help out, although what anybody’s supposed to do about this is beyond me. I mean it. I didn’t look in the knapsack before I brought it over here, you see. And I didn’t notice about the plant food until half an hour ago because I didn’t need the plant food until about half an hour ago. You see what I mean.”
“Are you sure somebody stole it? Maybe you forgot to put it in on Friday.”
“They didn’t steal all of it,” Frank said patiently. “They ripped the bag open and took a bunch out I mean, I figure they took a bunch out I can’t really tell. But you see what I’m saying here. I got a new bag Friday. I remember doing it And I know I didn’t open it myself and none of the other gardeners did either because of the way it was torn. It was ripped right down the side. We’d have used our jack knives and opened it along the top. Where the ‘Open Here’ sign is.”