“So what are you doing?” I asked.
Both paused, still bent over their shovels, and glanced up at me, as if this were a difficult or incriminating question.
“Digging,” Horace said finally.
After this accurate but profoundly uninformative answer, they returned to work. I pondered my next question. I suspected that if I asked, “What are you digging?” they would answer either “holes” or “dirt.” Tempting to resort to sarcasm—“Are you looking for buried treasure?”—but not useful.
Perhaps I should have paid more attention in Philosophy 101 when the professor was expounding on the Socratic method. Or studied Chief Burke’s interrogation methods more carefully.
“Why are you digging?” I asked finally.
“Your father asked us to,” Sammy said, as if this explained everything. It usually did in our family, but I was one of the rebels.
They kept digging. Horace, I noticed, was going in for depth—he’d gone nearly two feet deep—and accuracy. His hole was a tidy, precise square, and he was piling the dirt neatly nearby. But he’d excavated only about two square yards of ground. Sammy, on the other hand, had dug down a mere foot, and his hole didn’t have the clean edges of Horace’s, but he’d covered about six square yards of surface.
I tried again.
“For what purpose did Dad ask you to excavate this precise portion of our yard on this particular day?”
“Gardening,” Horace said. He glanced at his hole with satisfaction and began digging up the next foot-wide strip, making his first spade cuts with surgical precision.
“Gardening,” I repeated.
Sammy nodded. I felt slightly gratified to see that his slipshod work habits were causing him problems. He’d piled up the dirt too high and too close to the edge of his hole and a small landslide had undone his last ten or fifteen minutes’ work.
“That’s nice,” I said. “But this isn’t where Michael and I want the garden. We want it it over there,” I said, pointing to the yard beyond the barn.
They both looked over at where I was pointing, then back at me.
“Nice spot,” Sammy said.
“We can dig that up, too,” Horace said.
Too, not instead. They weren’t getting the point.
“Thanks,” I said. “But we just planned to get one of the Shiffleys in with a Rototiller. Next year. We’re too busy to garden this year.”
“This isn’t for your garden,” Sammy said. I wanted to ask who else had decided to garden in our yard, but I stopped myself. I’d learned that much from Chief Burke’s interrogations.
“It’s for Rose Noire,” Horace said eventually. “Your dad thought this would be the perfect place for her herb garden.”
I should have known Rose Noire would be involved. Dad was quite capable of deciding, unilaterally, that we’d be happy to donate space for a family member’s pet agricultural project, but Sammy and Horace wouldn’t have both volunteered to help for anyone else. The only thing the two had in common was their shared infatuation with Rose Noire.
“Does she know you and Dad are planning her herb garden here?” I asked.
They looked sheepish. Evidently not.
“What if she doesn’t think this spot has the right vibes or feng shui or whatever gardens are supposed to have?” I said. “You could be completely wasting your time! Besides, I think that’s where the Shiffleys were planning on piling the construction materials,” I added, pointing to where Sammy was digging.
Sammy’s face fell, and Horace smirked slightly.
“I know that’s where they’ll have to put the scaffolding,” I went on, pointing to Horace’s excavations, which were much nearer the house. Now Horace looked downcast, too. I had no idea where the Shiffleys planned to put the construction materials, or if they even needed scaffolding, but it sounded good.
“You couldn’t talk them into working someplace else?” Horace asked.
Sammy looked scornful, probably because he knew the Shiffleys well enough to understand how difficult it was to change their plans once they’d made them.
“Maybe,” I said. “Even if I did, no power on earth could prevent people from walking all over this patch of ground and trampling anything Rose Noire planted here. Even if the Shiffleys got the message, we’ll have subcontractors and truck drivers delivering materials and such.”
Actually, I hoped our renovation project wouldn’t be quite that invasive. I was depressing myself just talking about it.
“Why don’t you let me talk to Rose Noire and Dad?” I said. “I’ll explain about the construction, and how enthusiastic you both are about digging the garden when the time is right. I’ll let you know what we come up with.”