"Are you a gardener, Mr. Boyle?"
He stepped towards the man kneeling, bound and bloodied, before him. No answer came from Mr. Boyle, only a stuttering sob around his gag. The man crouched down to a level with his prisoner.
"Have you ever had to weed?" Nothing but a wet choke in response. "It's a tedious job, but essential. If someone doesn't get his hands dirty pulling up the refuse, then the weeds will spread and spread until the tamer plants are choked out completely and the weeds are all that remain. It requires a diligent person, a devoted person, to do that job."
The man rose from his crouch and, turning away from Boyle, ran his eyes and fingers over the various tools hanging on the walls of the shed. A hoe. A trowel. A length of hose.
"Are you religious, Mr. Boyle?"
A rake. A rope.
"I am. I believe God must be a gardener. Look at the variety of people he's planted, the way he's organized them so aesthetically by color and size."
A shovel. A pair of branch cutters.
"Some people are his plants, some his tools."
A garden fork. A bottle of pesticide.
"Oh yes. There are people put on this world to help God cultivate it. They water and mulch...and they weed. They rip out the poison Ivies and creeping Charlies to make room for the men and women God finds worthy of his soil."
A chainsaw.
"For though God loves all things that grow..."
An ax.
"he does not want them all. Some men are nothing more than weeds..."
The hoe again.
"Like you."
A squeal
"And like me."
A squelch.
No comments:
Post a Comment