Sunburn(90)

She resolved to be more stalwart in her trimming. Still, as if with a mind of their own, her shears kept sliding toward the merest edges of the plants, kept trying to spare a few more leaves. With a secret consternation she looked down at the paltry pile of her cuttings.

Then the air rumbled behind her. Wizened arms came down around her shoulders; spotted ungloved hands wrapped over hers on the handles of the shears, guided the blades down along the helpless stem. Vincente said, "A good gardener can't afford to be so tenderhearted."

She looked over her shoulder at the old man. The sun was behind him, it glared bright yellow at the edge of his unraveling straw hat. He wore his old thick gardening trousers, his rumpled blue work shirt was dampened here and there with sweat, his red bandanna was loosely tied around his neck.

Together, they clipped the branch whose time was over. Then the Godfather whispered, "Debbi, maybe you'd like some iced tea, something. I'd like a little time alone wit' Ahty."

She nodded, shook bits of twig and leaf from her red hair, and headed for the cottage.

Vincente walked slowly to the flower bed, dropped to his knees in the dirt next to his friend. Without a word he started pulling up spent flowers, shaking the rich imported soil off their frizzy roots. "Look the way the sun bleaches 'em out," he said, holding up a yellow stem. "Most things, sun makes 'em darker green. I'll never understand it."

Arty just nodded, gave a little smile, threw another exhausted plant on the pile. Since Gino's death, Vincente had hardly come out of his room at Joey's house, had hardly eaten, hardly spoken. Even now his eyes were distant, glazed, his voice thick and sluggish from disuse; Arty didn't want to push him, wanted to let him return at his own pace to the world of living people.

The Godfather plucked a tortured flower and said, "I'm goin' back ta New Yawk soon, Ahty. That's why I came over, ta tell ya that. I just tol' Bert, now I'm tellin' you."

"How's he doing?" Arty asked.

"Much better," said Vincente. "Gettin' some weight back on." He shook his head. "Pneumonia at his age. Two weeks inna hospital, drivin' everybody crazy sneakin' in the dog. The kinda friend he is, it humbles me, it's the way people oughta be."

Arty churned dirt with long bare fingers. Sunshine burned his neck and sweat trickled down inside his shirt. "New York," he said after a moment. "You really wanna go back?"

The old man took a breath before he answered. "Wit' Messina indicted onna Carbone thing, it's like chaos up there. I feel I got an obligation."

The ghostwriter nodded, wiped a hand on his shorts so he could scratch his neck. He looked sideways at the old man and said, "Vincente, what about our book?"

The Godfather swallowed. His Adam's apple looked painfully large and hard as bone as it rode up and down inside his stringy neck. He started to say something, then just shook his head. He looked away a moment, tried again. "It's no good, Ahty. It's too dangerous."

"Messina's going away," the younger man said. "Who else knows? Who would care?"

Vincente clawed lightly, slowly, at the sunbaked dirt. "Nah," he said, "it isn't really that. It's that . . . Ahty, when we stahted this thing, you and me, I thought I knew somethin', I had somethin' ta say, somethin' worth passin' along. The way it's ended up—" He broke off, absently sculpted a hole in the ground.

Arty kept his hands busy as well, didn't confront the dark tunnels of the Godfather's eyes. "Vincente," he said, "listen. I'm a washout when it comes to writing books, but a couple things I understand. You don't write a book to tell what you know; you write a book to find out what you know."

The old man cocked his head, gazed out hard from under the frayed brim of his straw hat. His lips worked, the hollows of his cheeks pulsed in and out. "I'm gonna miss talkin' wit' you, Ahty. Airin' things out. Gonna miss it." He ran the back of his hand across his forehead. "But now lemme ask you a question."

Arty just lifted an eyebrow.

"Debbi," said the Godfather.

"That isn't a question," the younger man said, a little nervously.

"Yeah, it is," Vincente said. "What's the story wit' the two a you?"

"Whaddya mean, Vincente?"

The Godfather scrabbled in the dirt, gathered up the fuzzy tendrils of a root. "Come on, Ahty. Ya think I don't see? Few weeks ago, Debbi was hardly at the house at all. She was here wit' you. Last weeks or so she's around a lot. Ya have a falling out? Someone havin' second thoughts?"

Arty looked away, shifted the position of his bony knees. "We're very different, Debbi and me."

"Dat's obvious. So what?"