All This Belongs to Me by Ad Hudler

Author:Ad Hudler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307414496
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

“Please, please, everyone, come into the shade of this benevolent gumbo-limbo. I want to show you something.”

Ellis’s group of fourteen visitors looked at each other with curiosity but obeyed and followed him off the sidewalk and into the grass— the new signs clearly stated PLEASE REMAIN ON SIDEWALK—whispering and giggling like schoolchildren on a field trip who have just been granted permission to break the rules.

“I promised you a surprise at the very beginning of the tour, and I always deliver on my promises.”

He looked upward and pointed to something high in the canopy of the tree. “Up there, where that large limb on the left runs out over the porch. Do you see those small yellow flowers in the elbow? There are four of them, almost the color of daffodils.”

Several of the tourists brought their hands to their foreheads as visors, squinting as they looked upward, but most of them soon began to frown and shake their heads. Indeed, the small orchids were a good twenty feet up in the tree. If it were not for Ellis’s new pair of field glasses, he would have missed them himself just four days earlier.

From his back pocket Ellis pulled a photograph of the yellow cattleya, taken by Mike Rathbun, the landscape maintenance man. Ellis had coaxed him into taking his camera up in the cherry-picker with the promise of giving him four of his employee passes to the museum. ( Judith Ziegler had cut in half the number of free passes allotted to employees, and Mike’s brother and his family of six were coming from Iowa for vacation.)

“I have a photograph here, which I will pass around, and as you absorb the beauty of this very special specimen, I will share an enlightening piece of history with you.”

Ellis handed the picture to a young woman in the group, then cleared his throat and brought his hands behind his back. “I will quote Mina Edison in her precise words: ‘The orchid is a contrary plant who is not content to be on the ground among the dirt and hubbub of life. I so greatly admire her ability to sit aloft, her roots dangling freely in the air like the legs of carefree children swinging from the edge of the pier. She needs air and air alone. She requires no one. Only something so beautiful and self-sufficient can dare to be so aloof.’ ”

Ellis brought his hands together in a single, gentle clap. “Is that not lovely?” he said.

Yet missing from the journal, unfortunately, was advice on the care and propagation of orchids. Ellis had begun to collect orchids on his own, and he was having trouble.

Larry Livengood, who continued to insist that it was not he who had planted the journal in Ellis’s locker, drove Ellis to Home Depot and helped him pick out a sampling of epiphytes, all of them suspended from the greenhouse ceiling in slatted wooden baskets that reminded Ellis of miniature orange crates.

He bought eight, each laden with surreal, oversized blooms, for a total of $202.

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