The Unexpected at Mr. Li’s

He walked along a thin boardwalk towards a lighthouse. The world around him was a flat unending grey. Thick mists curled around his arms and face, tugging him forward. He looked down at his feet and saw waves rush over the railing and submerge his feet. He could feel the wooden boards of the boardwalk, uneven and slippery under his toes. He held on for dear life, for if he let go, the waters would surely pull him out of his own mind, or maybe too far into it.

A wave emerged from the grey wall and grew higher and higher as he watched. Daniel knew everything would be fine if he could just reach that light of the light house, but he felt despair well up within him. The wave crested over his head.

Daniel sat up choking and gasping for air but he could not find it for there was actually water choking him. Water came down from somewhere, into his nostrils and his mouth.

He gagged, clawed at his throat. He rolled onto his side and spat up water onto his pillow. A pillow that he saw was drenched. His chest heaved in big breaths, only to throw up even more water.

He looked up to see a giant storm cloud hung above his head. It dumped its contents over his bed, which was now sopping wet, his guitar, his clothes, and his computer.

“What the — -,” he sputtered.

He waved at the cloud in the same way that he had made the wave at the dock. Nothing.

“Go away! Go away!” he told it. Still nothing.

“…Daniel?” he heard his mother come up the stairs.

He waved at the cloud faster.

Becca knocked on the door, “Daniel is everything ok? I heard coughing…”

She opened the door. At that moment the cloud snapped out of existence, leaving the rest of its contents on the floor.

“What — — Daniel what is this?”

“Ugh,” he was more embarrassed than when he had been caught in a private moment on his phone without headphones in middle school.

“Spring cleaning…sorry got carried away with the water.” The excuse sounded bad even as he said it.

He saw Avron behind his mother. As if his current predicament could not get any worse. Avron had a goofy smile on his face and a cup of piping hot coffee in his hand.

“Becca,” he touched Daniel’s mother’s wrist. Daniel could see Avron extended his calm yellow aura to include Becca in it. Daniel saw his mother’s shoulders immediately relax and her brows unknit. “It looks like a pipe broke in Daniel’s room. I’m sure I can fix it while you,” he handed her the coffee cup, “go downstairs and enjoy this.”

Becca looked dubious but she grasped the coffee. “You’re sure?”

Avron nodded, “I’m sure.”

When Becca left Avron turned to him with a grin on his face. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say this has something to do with you attuning to the water spirit?”

Daniel nodded. “Amadeus said I was going to be tested by the water spirit.” Daniel looked at the soggy bedspread, his desk that was covered in an inch of water, the curtains that bowed from their sudden water weight. “…think this was it?”

Avron snorted, “From what I’ve heard from the various Gardeners I’ve met, you will definitely know when it is it.” Avron looked around the room, “No chance you have enough grasp of your powers to dry any of this?”

Daniel shook his head.

“Don’t worry. Alright,” Avron assessed the situation, “then we’ll get to work.”

Daniel nodded.

Daniel chucked as many of his t-shirts onto the deck railing to dry as he could. He figured that was the fastest way to dry everything up. But as he did so, his mind wandered back to that place in his head that he had created through his meditation. Its warm wooden walls and big windows that poured in light from a fantastical sun, the nest bed piled high with pillows and what’s more, the pure cleanliness of it.

That place in his mind was so different from the room around him.

Daniel’s hands, filled with sopping wet t-shirts, stilled. Water dribbled down his legs as he looked out over his room. The morning’s weak blue sun cast the place into variegated mounds of shadows that slowly evolved into stacks of papers and old textbooks from a brief stint in community college, a chair piled high with clothes, and another pile of clothes besides that one for items that had fallen off the chair. In yet another corner there was a mound of old consoles, a cheap guitar, a soccer ball, and other miscellaneous items that he had meant to donate or pick up again, and they all got shoved in one place like a forgotten, ever growing to-do list. He was not even sure what was under his bed.

“Actually, I think I might spend some time looking through all this stuff to see if I can get rid of any of it.”

“Of course, let’s do some spring cleaning.” Avron looked over the state of the room, “How about I bring whatever you don’t want down to dry, and I’ll look up where to donate things.”

Daniel nodded. He did not add that he had never really cleaned last spring either. Or the five before that.

The first thing to go in the donation pile was his employee shirt from Frank’s Provisions. He was still mad about the fact that they had made him pay for his own shirt to work there.

Daniel felt embarrassed that Avron had to see his room like this, or that Avron felt like he needed to help since it seemed he was dating his mother. Which was a whole topic he also wanted to avoid.

As if he knew what Daniel felt, which indeed he might, Avron mentioned, “When I was your age, I only owned a backpack and the clothes on my back. I had never really been trained the way you have. I just found myself always being able to see colors around people, ever since I could remember. And slowly I found those colors could tell me things about people’s emotions that was useful. Sometime in my twenties I learned I could even extend my own aura to others. I’ve found no drug more addictive than walking into a town I’ve never been before and everyone feels like your best friend. I could immediately get a bartending gig any night I needed money, and the tips I got were always good.”

Daniel wondered if he would be able to master his powers well enough to be able to do that. As he looked around at his water laden room, he figured the answer was not likely.

“I met Amadeus in London at a pub. He was very convincing about having a country cottage I could stay at for free. I thought I was using my power to getting this quiet, idyllic stay out in some Jane Austen estate. Ha! I didn’t know I was the one being tricked.”

“What happened?” Daniel asked.

Avron smiled, “I met his family. There’s a lot of them. He has five kids, and close to twenty grandkids. By now I’m sure he has several great-grandchildren. Most of them are Gardeners to some degree or another. The house, can be described as chaotic on the best of days. There is always some animal underfoot, and you will not be able to go a day without something unusual happening — flowers sprouting from your floorboards? A new tree that’s sprung up in the garden in the middle of winter because someone was craving pears for breakfast. And the bees!”

Avron laughed, “I hope you get to visit and meet the bees. They….have bees as pets. Wherever one of them goes a handful of bees will follow. And if they want to get in contact with someone else in the house, they won’t use their phones. They’ll talk to a bee and the bee would go and deliver their message. It was absolutely wild to see. I thought it was nuts until I started talking to the bees too. You find yourself unconsciously including them in conversation.

I meant to stay a week, but ended up staying over six months. But while I was there, I actually was learning more how to not use my knack. I had done life on easy mode for so long that I forgot that there was a hard mode. I certainly did not see why anyone would want to choose to live any harder than they had to. It took being around Gardeners, who I found aren’t quite as susceptible to my powers as normal people. When I suddenly couldn’t constantly get what I wanted in the short term, I was forced to think about what I wanted in the long term. And Amadeus and his wife Mina, they had a way of living so beautifully and authentically they trick you into thinking you can do the same.”

“Trick you?”

“Absolutely. Thought I was getting a vacation, ended up getting a new life path. This time Amadeus told me he needed me here for the weekend and somehow I find myself here for a month. But I have learned that though Amadeus might have his schemes, he also has people’s best intentions at heart.” Avron shrugged, “I’ve learned just to go with them.”

Daniel looked down at his hands as he held a shirt from a summer school program two decades ago. He remembered his hands as pasty and a little chubby. But his fingers now were thin, his skin tanned. The inside of his palms were filled with callouses and his fingernails had a thin line of dirt in them under his nail beds he could not get out. Over the last few months he had felt tricked in a way — -he had no idea that throwing the seed Amadeus had given him would catapult him into a completely unknown world that was far different than the one he had lived in the last thirty years of his life. But for the first time since he could remember, he felt hopeful. In one sense he was aware of the fact that there was some kind of dark menace on the horizon that Amadeus was scared of. Yet there was also a path in the garden that he was excited to put gravel down on. That felt like enough for now.

It took all day to clear out the water and sort through his stuff. What he was left with was a half empty closet with a bucket underneath the clothes hanging there. One guitar and a soccer ball, and a desk with his keyboard covered in rice to try to get the water out. The floors were still wet, but like in a just-mopped way.

He and Avron went to a laundromat to dry the stuff he wanted to give away, along with his comforter that could not fit in the house’s dryer. After that was a stop to a donation center, and then a pit stop for beer and groceries.

“After all the cold water today, I’m feeling a nice turkey chili.”

Daniel brought him to the aisle with the canned soup, but Avron was adamant on making it from scratch. Daniel never had a problem with the canned stuff, but the other food Avron had cooked had been good so far, so he just went with it. When they got home Avron immediately tasked him with cutting up tomatoes. He brought a bit of tomato to Scamper, but the squirrel did not seem to like it.

“Sorry bud, I’ll try to grab some nuts soon for you.”

“Good, for I am famished. And it is so cold here,” Scamper nuzzled into his hand.

“Here,” Daniel took off his hoodie and made it into a little bed. “I’ll come back with some chili. Though I know you have a perfectly good home to go back to and probably several dozens of nuts, a lot of them from me, out in the garden.”

Scamper patted the hoodie down to his satisfaction and circled before lying down. He rested his face in his tail and looked up at Daniel with a wide-eyed stare. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

Daniel laughed and closed the door to go back down to the kitchen. That night he and Avron cooked while Becca embroidered with a glass of wine. Avron had brought over a portable speaker and something jazzy was playing. It was the first time they had dinner together without Amadeus also there. Daniel could see his mother knew this too. Even without sensing her aura, he could tell she was overjoyed to see the two of them work together. Daniel felt awkward about the fact that it did not feel awkward at all. It felt natural. He relaxed into the music and enjoyed the smell of the soup that they made.

The chili turned out to be infinitely better than the canned stuff he usually made. Daniel brought some up to Scamper, to pay the “Scamper tax.” He had read that squirrels did not like spices, but this squirrel seemed more than happy.

He texted Amadeus what had happened and got back, “Great news! Tomorrow please buy some more gravel for pathways. Avron will give you a credit card.”

That night Daniel slept on a bare still wet mattress, his one fully dry hoodie used for a bed for Scamper. He could have slept on the dry downstairs couch, but he was scared for another cloud to materialize.

Before he went to bed he looked up at the ceiling. Only white paint stared back.

“I don’t know if magic is something I can like talk to, but please if like the water gods are listening, please do not rain on me tomorrow morning. It’s…well, a goddam headache to clean up.”

Nothing happened. Daniel held his breath, just in case some cloud suddenly started raining down on him.

Slowly his muscles relaxed, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

When he woke up in the morning, his room was thankfully still dry. The mattress beneath him was also almost dry. Scamper throughout the night had moved out of Daniel’s hoodie and now slept in the crook between Daniel’s chest and neck.

“Looks like we gotta get up buddy. We have an exciting day of picking up some gravel.”

“And walnuts.”

“Yes, of course also walnuts.”

Daniel scrolled through his phone for places to buy gravel. “Hey Scamper, this place has a logo of a squirrel on it, and it says they have a Buy Three Get One Free deal on gravel. What do you say? Up for an adventure?”

Daniel put on his sweatshirt, and Scamper curled up in his hood.

“Alright, let’s see if Avron will let me borrow Amadeus’s truck.”

Avron gave him the keys and asked, “Need any help?”

Daniel felt bad that he had already helped him so much the day before.

“Nah, I got this,” he said.

He headed out into the spring air and hopped in the truck. Scamper curled up on dashboard where the sun had warmed the plastic.

The bird and garden store was on the outskirts of Eddington. When he got there he saw a small store, with saplings, bushes, and flower pots all arranged in rows behind it. Down a few rows he could make out bags of what looked like gravel. Scamper hopped back in his hoodie and he headed down. When he got there Daniel saw the bags were in fact gravel. But, it seemed there were far more kinds of gravel than he anticipated. There was Pea gravel, which looked like small pebbles. There was Crushed Stone, which looked a little more interesting but maybe difficult to walk on. There was something called River Rock which looked a little fancy. He looked down at his phone as he wandered through the aisles looking at photos of typical gardens.

As Daniel rounded a corner he smacked into someone.

Scamper, jolted out of his hoodie and jumped to a stack of gravel. As Scamper jumped he cut Daniel with his back claws.

“Aggh! Thanks for that,” Daniel said, holding his hand to his neck.

The woman’s price labeler had dropped to the floor and broke into a handful of different pieces.

“Thanks for what? You just broke my labeler.”

Daniel could not say that he was actually talking with a squirrel. “I’m sorry,” he said as he bent down to pick up the labeler. But as he did so he managed in his haste to knock the plastic side of the labeler into the space where there was space between the pallet and the floor. He could hear it skitter away below the bags of mulch.

Daniel immediately dropped down and stuck his arm in the crack. He could just about touch the piece of the plastic labeler with his middle finger. He pressed down hard and inched it closer to him until he could get his index finger on it too. Finally it came a bit closer. Slowly he dragged it back towards him. The plastic dragged along the ground inch by inch.

When Daniel got the piece out from under the pallet it was covered in dirt and cobwebs. He looked down at himself and saw that he too was covered in dust and dirt. He tried to brush some of it off.

He looked up and saw the woman he had bumped into at the farmer’s market.

“It’s you,” he stammered.

It took her a moment before recognition dawned.

“You’re the guy that puked on my shoe.” She took a step back.

“I’m so sorry about that, I didn’t mean to — -,” he had more words but they could not make it past his lips. Daniel now had time to look at her fully and he was awe struck. She was slender, with a heart shaped face and small, dark almond eyes. Her hair was dark and dripped down her shoulders. She wore high waisted jean shorts and an emerald green t-shirt that had “Li’s Bird and Garden Store” emblazoned on it.

She had one hand on her hip, and her lips were pursed tight together.

Her expression looked as if she was trying to find an excuse to leave. On her chest was a name tag.

“Grace,” he said. Her name was Grace. It was fitting because every movement she took seemed to flow like water.

“Can I….help you?” she asked, with a raised brow.

“Um, yes, gravel…I need gravel.”

“Um, ok,” Grace looked at the bags around her. “Well, this gravel is meant for drainage ditches. Are you trying to make a drainage ditch?”

“No,” he cleared his throat, “A walkway. I’m trying to build a path for a garden.”

“Ok,” Grace moved to a different aisle, “Then you’ll probably want pea gravel. How many feet long and wide is your path?”

“Uh…,” he realized now that would have been a good thing to measure before he was at the store.

Grace could see that he was struggling.

“How about this. Take a dozen bags today, that’s a pretty standard amount. If you need more, we’re still running the Buy Three Get One Free deal until next Sunday, and if it’s too much, we have a thirty day return policy on all unopened products. That sounds good?”

He nodded.

“Ok, I’ll ring you up, then you can move your car around and we can load them straight in.”

Grace took out a phone with a card reader on it. She tapped in a few numbers and handed it to him.

“I’ll try not to break this,” he said, and then cringed at himself.

Grace seemed less than amused, “Please don’t, it’s my personal phone.”

He had no good quip to be able to get his number onto her phone. He handed the phone back to her. As he did so their fingers touched. He felt a jolt run through his whole body.

He watched Grace’s facial expression. She frowned and then looked away. He could just make out a light blush as she pushed her hair behind her ears. He wondered if she felt it too. He had never experienced his entire world narrow to the space between the two of them.

Daniel moved the car around to be closer to the gravel bags. Grace already had a bag in hand and was about to throw it into the back of the truck.

He rushed out of the truck. “I got it! I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Grace laughed. “I have done this multiple times a day since I was ten or twelve. I think I’ll be fine.”

She deftly carried the bag of gravel to the truck.

Grace leaned against the car and watched him as he lifted the next bag. “Now, you’re going to hurt yourself if you do it like that. You’re lifting from your waist. You need to lift with your legs.”

“Oh yeah, of course,” he said, as if he had just forgotten. He reached down he tried to lift up more from his legs. Grace did not say anything so he hoped his form was better. He could feel her eyes on him. He tried to flex his arms to show some kind of definition but he looked down at himself. Nope. Nothing. Never had he wished that he had ever gone to a gym more.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Scamper sitting on top of a pile of gravel bags. He tried to motion for Scamper to quietly go towards the truck. In his head he had imagined he would be able to quickly run this errand without anyone aware that he had a squirrel with him.

Grace followed his gaze. “Oh, it’s a squirrel.”

Her expression was wide eyed and puzzled.

Scamper took this as enough permission to get closer to her.

“Scamper!” Daniel said in warning.

Grace looked over at him. “Huh?”

By this time Scamper was at eye level with Grace. Grace gingerly reached out her hand and Scamper stuck his head under it.

Grace scratched his head and under his neck. “You’re a friendly little guy aren’t you?”

Grace smiled at Scamper, and her expression was the most beautiful he had ever seen. He did not try to use any magic, but he felt wave after wave of happiness roll off of her.

Scamper likely felt it too, for he leaned even deeper into her hand.

Daniel dropped the bag he carried into the truck and rushed over.

“I’m so sorry,” Daniel picked Scamper up. “he’s being nice because he thinks you might have a peanut.”

“Hmm, not on me but we do have a lot of different kinds of nuts here. But how do you know this squirrel?”

“Oh he’s a friend.” Scamper was restless in his arms as soon as he heard that there might be nuts around.

“A friend you’re rehabbing? It’s definitely illegal to have a pet squirrel.”

“Uh, yeah, oh yeah, I’m rehabbing him.” Daniel shoved Scamper down the front of his hoodie.

He looked at his watch, which was not simply an incorrect time, its battery had long worn out so the screen was blank. “Looks like I need to run.”

He shoved Scamper in the car and got in.

“But she was going to give me nuts!” Scamper tried to bolt out the car door.

“I’ll get you nuts at the supermarket.”

Daniel could see Grace still looking at them through the rearview mirror. Great. Now she probably thinks he is insane for talking to a squirrel.

He put the car in drive and drove away. As he exited the parking lot he got one last look at Grace. Her head was bent over the plastic labeller. Her forehead was crinkled in a frown while her form was bathed in sunlight.

It physically hurt him to drive away from her. Every inch of his body told him to turn back.

But he had embarrassed himself so much, from breaking her labeller, to puking on her, to then having a pet squirrel that he knew she never wanted to see him again.

“I liked her.” Scamper said as he curled up on the dashboard.

“Yeah, I do too,” he said as he drove. He tried to repress the last half hour from his brain but the image of her as she smiled at Scamper continued to play in his mind.