Love in the Time of Flowers

By William Penn

YOUR SACRED PLANTS [OR FLOWERS], IF PLANTED [ONLY]
HERE BELOW, ONLY AMONG THE PLANTS [OR FLOWERS
HERE BELOW] WILL GROW.
“THE GARDEN”
-ANDREW MARVELL

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jul 6, 2009
• ISBN: 9781426984228

Book preview

Love in

The Time of Flowers

Flower.jpg

A novel by William Penn

©

Copyright 2009 William Penn.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

This novel is a work of fiction. All characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

isbn: 978-1-4251-6949-7 (sc)

isbn: 978-1-4269-8422-8 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Trafford rev. 11/18/2019

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Contents

Author’s Note

Part I

Blue Daisies, Blue Lilies

Chapter I

Part II

Afternoon Ladies, Evening Primroses

Chapter II

Part III

Lady’s-Eardrops, Lady’s-Mantles

Chapter III

Part IV

Spear Lilies, Painted Roots

Chapter IV

Part V

Painted Daisies, Painted Lilies

Chapter V

Part VI

Lives-Of-Men, Women’s Heart’s-Eases

Chapter VI

Part VII

Evening Glories, Morning Glories

Chapter VII

Part VIII

Blue Hearts, Misty Blues

Chapter VIII

Part IX

Garden Speedwells, Rain Lilies

Chapter IX

Part X

Carnations, Easter Lilies

Chapter X

Part XI

Floral Masquerades, Gardenesque Ladies

Chapter XI

Part XII

Lady’s-Paintbrushes

Chapter XII

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This is a refreshed edition of my novel first published in 2009, but, because unnecessary, without any changes done to the original plot line. Nevertheless, it absolutely supercedes all previous editions. Although I have allowed myself to accept, though only with humility, descriptions of it by discerning readers and book reviewers primarily as quality literature, I could have been satisfied just as well without any personal plaudits as long as it enjoyed the abundance of readership that it has through the past decade. However, now at this time of its tenth anniversary, I have decided to assume literary license to construe it would do no harm to address several instances in key parts that deserved enhancement by further authorial clarification. To that end, I trust that I’ve accomplished increasing reader and reviewer satisfaction even moreso by a tighter coordination of the narrative’s parts into an organic whole, which has been my continuous intention of this one-of-a-kind story that I, an avid, eclectic reader, had always wanted to read but was never written, so I had to write it myself to make it available for perusal.

September, 2019

William Penn

PART I

YOUR SACRED PLANTS, IF PLANTED [SOLELY] HERE BELOW, ONLY AMONG THE PLANTS [SOLELY HERE BELOW] WILL GROW.

THE GARDEN

-ANDREW MARVELL

Flower.jpg

BLUE DAISIES, BLUE LILIES

CHAPTER I

1

Comes now the daisy, primitive and cosmopolitan at every turn, simple, and complex, guiding star and guiding spirit, now and again champion of the flower clocks which worldly affairs depend on inasmuch as they alone can give the precise time. A composite inflorescence, arrayed with parts not only in multiple flowers but also within the human heart.

Among which Compositae the Shasta daisy, giving rise by namesake to Shasta Daisy Garden, or so she was wont to say so herself after learning from Mom and Dad that, by that measure, she was an inextricable link of the vibrant daisy chain and especially when she entertained a reverie, as now, standing barefoot on her bedroom floor’s plush ivy green carpet at the wide, double-sashed dormer window in the rear upstairs bedroom of her parents’ two-story house on a warm and sunny spring morning. Not expecting it, she had received a very important letter (one that for her quite met the epistolary criteria of being from a superior authority addressed to a subordinate and conveying an invitation) which she had instantly known was going to necessitate her introspection concerning her background, with an emphasis on her early adolescence, when she had fled from under the prepubescent safety umbrella her parents had fashioned for her. Reaching her hand by first class mail no less estival than the June-blooming American violets, nearly two weeks before this bright Saturday morning, its import had preoccupied her ever since.

Before she had retired to bed last night, a few minutes after the Variety Hour late show on her bedroom TV had ended at One-AM, she had raised the bottom sash about one-half- foot to let in whatever paltry breeze the warm night bestirred itself to provide, glad the window screen attached to it from the outside could be relied on to hold in check the swarming androphilitic insects, especially the voracious mosquitoes, prevalent and thriving this time of year here in the city of Augusta, Georgia’s, hot climate, an oppressive heat that usually started with May’s soft vernal sunshine soon supplanted by summer’s merciless beams that lasted until the temperate fall and winter arrived, and which Shasta had become acclimated to from the cradle to the present, its regional annual rainfall moderate but just enough to give it the wet and sticky humidity favorable for insects to breed heavily and the alluvium bordering the Savannah River, the region’s premier waterway close to everybody’s heart as much as to their neighborhoods, was an edaphic extreme that gave the insects’ survival an additional booster. She had also paid heed to the Late Show’s weather report segment forecasting the morning was going to be awash with sunshine, taking the precaution to untie the tiebacks of the window’s sunshading curtain so as to restrain an overflow of sunlight into her bedroom certain to greet her eyes with a blinding stream (abetted by its luminescent bounce off the bedroom’s high gloss sunflower yellow walls: she and Dad’s idea to find her awaking sunny side up from any position abed) if, as her bedside prayer irrelevant of variations continued on since early childhood, she did not die before she awoke.

Mom had personally purchased the curtain herself when Shasta had attended jounior high school to emphasize her fretting that Shasta’s uncurtained undressing at the time might augment the sightseers from across the way (Dad grumbled, as well, that he was prepared to cover her bedroom window with a thick coat of fenestral paint should Shasta fail when she was undressing to keep the curtain closed) and she had described it to Shasta as a sheer, double-seamed priscilla inclusive of a foot-wide valence that supplements the tiebacks, altogether daisy yellow and ruffled and yet not so sheer, my dear, as to let any peeping eye see through it from the outside. Shasta stood to either side of the window, gently pulled back an edge of the curtain just a little with her fingertips and then her vision opted to roam the pleasing view outside under its azure expanse of cloudless sky and let Mom’s garden heliotropes, whose faces were never without the goal to sun-gaze, reassure the sun it was still high-up on her list of things to be wary of. All around the clock, the Acacia Place neighborhood in Augusta where the parental house stood (acacia being familiar both as a genus of several woody plants and the succulent acacia plumb, while the self-styled ekistic developers of the parcels were not exactly inspired like Brooklyn was said to be with its ailanthus but with any elegant-sounding appellations for their developments) nearly always lived up to its boosters’ description as a respectable, placid residential community.

Balmy, as now, before summertime’s sultry weather, was Shasta’s favorite climate of Augusta’s four moderate seasons (not just native-born but also staying put locally most of the time, she had learned to acclimate herself easily to each season by its meager shades of differences). But no matter what the weather or season of the year was, she foremostly liked starting the day with a visual capture of the floral theater at the rear of the house spread out directly below her upstairs bedroom window, of which a good part of the choice hortulan site had sprung from Mom’s green thumb, and the fine garden was even able to reciprocate the fond kiss she sometimes took the time to blow to it by floating up to her a farewell-to-spring smile on behalf of the vernal flowers spring had bloomed, its dazzling crocuses, dahlias, tulips, and spring beauties that had invited her to greet them with a good-morning-spring song, now fading away as the estival flowers of summertime, summer’s asters, heliotropes, and hyacinths, were punctual in their season to supplant them.

Whenever she was at home, ever since her early childhood she enjoyed standing awhile at her bedroom window upon awaking in the morning to take in the splendid view. Everything she saw pleased her eye, a generous but disciplined floral and green sweep punctuating the neighboring companionable mid-sized, functional, handsome and architecturally varied (custom made but not unique, however, for they were commensurate with other relatively new developments like itself throughout Georgia and elsewhere that were inexact copies of grander, bona fide architectural trophy houses) individual three-bedroom owner-occupied houses along with Mom and Dad’s. With saplings growing today promising to reach tomorrow’s expectation of shade trees lining its residential blocks, Acacia Place, aside from its pedestrian mall, was zoned for residences only; schools, medical centers, houses of worship, the grand cultural attractions, recreational venues, mercantile concerns, and Broad Street’s glittering nightlife were, without an obvelation anywhere to stall the journey, provided by a short commute by private motor vehicle or local public transportation bus on asphalt roadway surface streets or a leisurely pace by foot or bicycle directly across the residential highway, onto the cobblestoned pathway and, picking-up some honeyballs from the buttonbush so as to not appear uncouthly hurried for these easygoing parts, over the knoll of loblolly pines and brome grass into the embrace of Augusta’s many beautifully preserved historically important and vintaged properties, or into its central parts from where its metropolitan authority and services, an impartial recipient of revenues from all areas of its seat within this the Richmond County jurisdiction, were constantly at the ready to receive periodic advice from its neighborhood councils as to what the neighborhoods needed to function well, what development proposals should proceed or not, or what business or individuals were worthy to receive grants from the city, serving each neighborhood equally regardless of what they did or did not name themselves.

The moderate-sized but big-named neighborhood of Acacia Place, exactly 4.6 miles from the nearest other residential neighborhood and just a little bit more from commercial districts, happened to suit Mom and Dad’s longing for a dream house, first by being mutually agreeable between them that it fit their criteria of being somewhere within the Garden City of the South that allured them. They even felt certain that it was fortuitous that they had happened by it one day while, with very good credit ratings since they had gratefully paid their trade schools’ student loans in full from overtime work wages, driving around house-hunting together in their old panting Army-surplus jeep (having themselves gained licenses as realtors a few years before, they had quite benefited by what was going to be recorded fiscally as a low interest rate era and they had the incentive to have saved the usual U.S. five-to-six percent commission fee at the time by themselves brokering all phases of the transaction: finding the property they wanted to buy, making a thorough inspection of it, negotiating the sale, producing evidence of their necessary five-year saving plan, handling the opening costs, and the escrow account, the closing costs of fees for the recording attorney and whatever finishing trasactions to finality of amortization and recept of the deed).

Then, first on their list of agreements with the federal Fair Housing Act [FHA], the Augusta Ethics Commission [AEC], and the Georgia Human Rights Act [GHRA], they with a proud frown at racial covenants took careful note that the planned community did not exclude anyone on the basis of race, color, or national origin (nor, and not as just an afterthought, either, any antipathy toward creed, or L.G.B.T Q declaration); then, secondly (after being daily witnesses to block upon block within the city of encampments of homeless people, sordid and spewing airborne diseases, they had tried to persuade the Augusta Housing Authority [AHA] to act straightaway to present an appeal to all housing developers to subsidize a fair portion of existing or developing housing throughtout the city affordable for low-income renters and welfare-assisted indigent people), they learned with the fervor often experienced by people like themselves who had known only hardscrabble times during their upbringings, that the Augusta Housing Authority (mindful that many suburban developments claimed autonomy although they were bereft of industries, sanitation facilities, utilities, hospitals, public schools, libraries, police and fire departments, and even houses of worship concretely within their zones, instead availing themselves of and benefiting from those facilities that were established in larger, wholly urban cities adjacent to them several miles away) had enacted a policy, of eight-years duration by the time of Acacia Place’s development, based on its disapproval of areas within the city being devoted to gentrification alone, requiring housing developers to include affordable housing (rents below market rate) of clean, modest but reliably functional sturdiness in or nearby new commercial buildings or within proposed new residential communities or to replace any such older units destroyed by new construction, primarily to house entrenched homeless people, the carrot for builders to stipulate to that being expedited essential building permits with only a modicum of red tape (the only housing developers in the city whom the data compiled by the Bureau of Contract Administration was able to describe as damaged financially by the policy were the disgruntled ones who had retaliated by unnecessarily decreasing their construction projects or from hiring inexperienced casual laborers at illegal pittances who in turn did shoddy work that exposed the developer to costly litigation when the buyer discovered the ramshackle and sued). Thirdly, they had fondness for an advocacy group, the Preservation Alliance for Greater Augusta, whose measures they were always glad to abide by since they had personally developed from being persuaded on sight by reputable building contractors’ preference to renovate instead of tearing down landmarks, cultural sites, and historic structures, and it was a pleasant surprise to learn that the developer of record of Acacia Place was one they had periodically worked for and admirably liked for its record of not arguing when asked by preservationists to spare a worthy edifice or site the wrecking ball. Fourthly, they made it quite essential to be apprised by official certification of competent and honest inspection that no asbestos, herbicides, lead, or other carcinogenic and hazardous materials were among the building stock or landscape, and that the entire area itself, including what it abutted, was free of smothering, wildfire-inviting foliage which was even a rue that choked the progress of emergency vehicles rushing to provide aid and rescue (of course, short of inexpert forest management with its inept defoliation that promoted mudslides and floodwaters during heavy rainfall).

Once they were assured Acacia Place was well within their guideline for nothing less than an effusive approval on their part as a residence, an architectural gem from roof to bedrock yet inexpensive in terms of middle class housing costs and, with a rosy outlook of their continued good health, continued pledge to tow the line together and devote their marketable trade skills to reliable workadays so that the prospects of its mortgage, maintenance, taxes, and insurances had a reasonable chance of being satisfied throughout the amortization, they sealed the bargain by throwing a kiss to the Augusta Housing Authority.

Yes, now embraced by a considerable improvement in housing living conditions (and without it being tagged a gentrifying replacement, their youthful idealism rested easy, of a property of historic value that had been demolished to make way for it), it proposed to receive their wholehearted commitment as opposed to the first house they had bought, newlyweds residing in the unremarkable near-shack it had been for about two years at this time, working hard to earn the getaway price since they had regarded it as merely temporary housing that gave them the incentive all the more to purchase a property they could designate as their dream house.

For at first sight it proposed to be, for them, exactly the correct community they had been looking for: Predominately residential for a diversity of neighbors, idyllic without being stuffy, with the added bonus of the three U.S. classical economic groups -lower (modest, nice house), middle (semi-grand, nicer house), and upper (grand, nicest house)- peacefully integrated as the housing is merely sloped somewhat on a smooth ground that goes from lowest to highest, and vice versa.

Acacia Place, slated for a healthful residential balance of sedateness, vibrancy and allowance of both strollers and walker chairs, was located in one of the ten (electoral) districts officially under Augusta’s purview, a neighborhood easily accessed (or egressed) by the cobblestoned pathway that foot traffic preferred or by vehicularly traversing one of the open segments of the cloverleaf at the southern purlieu that introduced the neighborhood park of green grass, acacia shade trees, with benches, tables and doggie lot, and a pedestrian mall (officially, Beeline Center to keep visitors mindful that it buzzed retail shopping stores, eateries, gathering spots for sociable assemblies, miscellaneous outlets and was domed in part like an umbrella for inclement weather) that had ample underground parking, an open-air concourse to sit, sip, share, saunter and a domed balconied promenade for pedestrians, preceding all of the neighborhood’s blocks primarily of single family homes (on a walking tour or from an aircraft of some kind, the topology of the community was intended by the developers to resemble a four-leaf clover, yet also in the shape of a pinnate leaf with fourteen pinnae to hold the real properties and apparatus that constituted a community, thus accorded an exemplary status by the city’s commissioners for being a highlight of neighborhood planning, hence also a dependable revenue source, and the charter residents", a foursome taking the reins, promises an ongoing cleanliness and low crime rate); still a fairly new subdivision at this time all of twenty-square blocks of two-hundred-twenty primarily unattached residential houses (and the agreed on two ten-story affordable housing apartment buildings), occupying two-thousand-square-foot landscaped lots into a median house size of one-thousand-five-hundred-square-feet residences alone of split-level or two-stories, all with three bedrooms, two baths, two-car garages, lawns and backyards, front porches, and (not negotiable) with muted, earth tone exteriors.

Other than that, each one of the districts’ residents had, by ballot, the option to have or not have a neighborhood council to represent its interests; the councils, overseen by a Augusta City Hall agency (City Commissioner of Neighborhood Councils) that certified them after polling by the residents seated a board and that was usually unobtrusive as long as the councils strived not to be remiss, were strictly an optional feature of residential neighborhoods within cities all across the nation, touted as beneficial to a neighborhood’s appeal, wellbeing and its recognition for government assistance in various ways, at its behest. They primarily receive, however, negligible but intendedly supportive funding from the budgets of each city in which they are located to use for discretionary spending as they alone see fit as, constantly monitoring city services, they provide notice to the cities at little cost to them some vital maintenance needs, such as about potholes, or where street asphalt, sidewalks and sewers need repairs, while advising the city and making helpful recommendations of what they deem is best for their neighborhoods, and satisfying the regularity of building developers that appeared before them in the hope of receiving community support for their projects. The parliamentary rules make no mention of any measures that the neighborhood councils (differentiated from the legislative city councils) are authorized to enact or not to do so, perhaps a grave shortcoming vulnerable to felonious acts opportune to someone of illicit bent. But it does give a tacit notice that it frowns on any person or group of persons usurping authority to themselves alone or acting as though they have the legislative power or the clout, rather than actually being advisory agencies alone, to do as they pleased beyond the limited mandate afforded to them by the (and even that has limitations) sovereignity of the city where the neighborhoods are located.

With their vested interest in the particulars of their neighborhoods (aka communities or vicinities), the neighborhood councils are by city charter supposedly comprised only of the residents themselves of each district, or nonresidents who affirmed to have a stake in the community, were staffed by volunteers from the neighborhood (the more volunteers, the merrier; there is no specifics on the number, as a majority, of officers and general membership of the councils that when duly assembled is legally competent to transact neighborhood business; some neighborhood residents think this is a flaw that unwittingly opens the door to mavericks who will institute a falsehood of a quorum only of their own say-so to promote their own designs alone on the neighborhood), although the board of directors usually had no more than half-a-dozen, or so, members (Acacia Place had four, self-described all for one, one for all residents, the first residents at the neighborhood’s inauguration, who found it opportune to appoint themselves leaders of the neighborhood council they were quite eager to establish, informing each adult resident as soon as others started moving into the completed venue with its own zip code, that they had taken the initiative for Acacia Place to opt for having a neighborhood council and that they had also taken the opportunity to give it a board of directors of yours truly, and though they preferred to preside with their council gavels, they also kept their Second Amendment-sanctioned muskets at the ready in case they felt threatened in any way).

Since those of any residential neighborhood who chose to actively participate in their neighborhood council’s business were usually kept busy by the challenges that faced them daily in their neighborhoods, there was a tacit requirement that they necessarly needed to have the time to spare and personally have no financial encumberance disallowing them to be able to afford to work essentially for free, for the business of being active in a neighborhood council offered no income although everybody involved did what was called by other industries as wage-earning work since they had to apply themselves, sometimes arduously, to the industry of forming and constituting various committees for their neighborhood’s benefit, and with monthly council meetings mandated by the bylaws, legally held at any safe neighborhood place (Acacia Place’s pedestrian mall was unofficially touted the assembling place of choice for its residents).

Neighborhoods that are predominantly residential (commercial structures are present only at a minimum and partitioned together to just one section at their purlieu) are typically comprised of square blocks or tracts, the sum of them, and how they are designated as a community, and how they receive numbered addresses and zip codes is determined by the city’s zoning agency. All adult residents residing within any neighborhood whether it bears or does not bear a specific name are officially considered to be council members of their neighborhood. Usually only the very civic-minded few, however, chose to be active members of the wholly voluntary, nonpaying positions constituting several committees that make neighborhood policy. Active participants, as well as inactive ones, typically learn of the duties and the legalities of the program by reading, studying and memorizing the rules established in The Neighborhood Council Parlimentary Procedure Handbook which is usually available at community centers and the free library. It specifically states that there is never to be any digression from its guidelines (referring to the inactive members, none are to be penalized, disparaged or made to feel guilty with the charge of shirking their duty or responsibility, nor ought they to be viewed as apathetic or impediments except if inappropriately referring to neighborhood councils in general with pejorative remarks, or for failing to raise the same alarm that active members surely tocsin if ever some wrongdoing by any active member or members is observed by them).

Highly differing from and subordinate to city councils which are the legislative body of an entire city and whose members are individually elected to serve -and be subject to term limits, if stipulated- by the city-wide electorate of each councilmanic district, there is an emphatic warning that neighborhood councils, although vitally important, are not to try to take upon themselves matters that belong to the city council alone, nor institute measures contrary to the city council statutes. Further, as nonprofits at all times, no dues or other donations whatsoever are ever supposed to be asked of the residents by their neighborhood councils, for everyone is already taxed for projects and other services they receive by the city in which the neighborhood sits (in contrast to communities governed by a homeowners association, in which case assessment payments -dues- are made at specified times by individual homeowners to the association which in turn operates the projects, such as police and fire department services, utilities, waste pickups, landscaping and road maintenance and playground and swimming pool supervision, in which the homes are located). Neighborhood councils are also not supposed to give citations or any threat of them; citations are given officially and legally only by uniformed police officers of city or state governments for some minor infractions, and any fine levied is the business to collect payment only by those entities alone at wherever they relate it is to be sent or be taken to.

With especial consideration, the City Commissioner of Neighborhood Councils [CCNC] advises all residents to thorougly pay heed at all times to the legal Do’s and Don’ts that its office stipulates by bulletins such as this one, or in mailers and newsletters, whenever a neighborhood petitions it to have a council. So that, it is hoped, no individual (s) should be permitted to appoint himself or herself as the defacto head (s).

2

As Shasta pondered the value of her neighborhood council during her introspection this morning, her status, like her mom and dad’s, was as an inactive member, and she had always been so, concerning herself with other matters, mainly pertaining only to herself, not policies pertinent to the entire neighborhood. She had always felt willing and able to be an active member of some helpful committee on the council but, although they never verbally dissuaded her, she had the feeling that her parents were against anyone enabling its Board (unlike her parents, her mind capitalized the Board to distinguish it from an inert object whenever she referred to it) by giving it a hand, enabling it to persist its highly inappropriate ways, and she was far from enthusiastic about biting the parental hand that housed, schooled, clothed, and fed her (besides, she believed mom and dad’s dissent had merit, although she thought she should not let that incline her not to feel guilty of abrogating her responsibility, for she maintained a sheer ingenuousness, although perhaps good enough to make beneficial progress in one committee or another as long as she was appropriately supervised by someone with better know-how, that she could work wonders on the Board if she were permitted a hand in its operation). Her thoughts that she could be of value to the Board persisted over the years, from the silly fancies of a juvenile to the mature ideas of a young adult. Yet, constantly hesitant not to go near anything her parents considered was acting inappropriately, she never approached any of the Four Musketeers with anything at all she was willing to actually say to them.

Her parents’ lone, strenuous dissent to its actions, calling it dastardly and starting to personally refuse capitalizing the board whenever they wrote (unflattering) letters about it, and seemed to also do the same whenever they mentioned it verbally, was a fixture of acidity in the otherwise bland Garden household. They no less even wailed foul as the neighborhood’s other nonboard residents increased as years passed by a reputation of yielding silent as sheep to the mavericks, of choosing to disregard that they were favoring the air of epaulet and sash at the helm which always ahoyed a ship coming in with only bad news under its skull and crossbones banner. And as for their daughter, Shasta herself was a peer of the board members’ children who happened to be quite oppositely outgoing and resilient, even though they were closed-mouthed about their restricted households and about the beleaguered look of one maverick’s spouse and then another and another and another, as if looking that way said enough, or more than enough, and explained why, like their spouses, they never associated with any of the other neighbors socially.

Shasta and her peers were boon classmates from school and neighborhood hobnobbing. Her peers quite knew about the gadfly couple’s battle with the board, since all of the neighborhood’s households had something, although seldomly, to say about it (lukewarm, ho-hum remarks, nothing offering their active attention to the matter, and not daring to leave their comfort zones of apathy). Meanwhile, Shasta’s peers maintained through the years that she was friendly and likeable and that, other than the screwball curfew that mostly affected them, they were indifferent to and had no interest to discuss things outside their narrow persuasions (the high point of antagonism of a curfew was predominated by teenagers, not that they lacked novel ways of evading compliance whenever they wanted to, always acting ingratiatingly toward the Neighborhood Watch that caught them, seasoned officers who usually just yanked them by their long hair or slapped their butts for having night owl propensities and making them retrace their steps to climb back into the window of their houses they had with refractory compulsion slithered out of while their parents or guardians were fast asleep).

The children of the Board were exposed to them by the frequency of living under the parental roof. Their parents made no concerted effort to prevent them from overhearing their discussions, although the children were kept out of the conversations on the whole, never invited to give an opinion, indeed expressly told by all of their parents that it was adult business alone (the sound of hearing adult tongues wag that way being like an ominous warning, that something wasn’t right). Among their peers, they were mum about it and were relieved that the positions their peers took was mutual, not clashing with their silence on the matter.

Shasta entertained only an inaudible suspicion that the children of the Board felt the same as she did, that the Board was harmless and frivolous (despite her mom and dad accusing it of having brought murderous CRIPS to the neighborhood). And she had discovered she had developed an unconditional acceptance on her own part of the Four leaders individually and collectively, that each one of them was well-meaning. She hesitated to say as much literally to her mom and dad, however, only letting them deduce that their daughter sided with the Board over them the same way that all the rest of the neighborhood residents did (except for…well, perhaps the Board did have someone else at odds with them: their very own families, too?).

3

Potential homeowners of houses and businesses in Acacia Place were instantly met with what was probably an illegal vetting process in and of itself, for U.S. law does not authorize anyone to examine the credentials or subject anyone else to an ethics review who buys or is about to buy or to lease a property for business and/or residency anywhere in the nation, and the builders and banks, presumably incorruptible, concerned with the venue would surely rebuke and beg off having anything at all to do with it if it knew that it was happening, fearing, for starters, to face litigation for any such involvement with it or censure for having knowledge of it without reporting it to the city attorney. Nevertheless, the Board did exactly that; as the builder’s Sold signs started replacing all of the For Sale signs it had erected on the neighborhood lawns, one or more of the Four Musketeers, strolling alongside the moving-in trucks, visited each property that had obtained a mortgagee or out-and-out owner to give the newcomers the exact same personal examination to discern their character and fitness for Acacia Place residency. For the most part, the newcomers felt that they were being greeted to the neighborhood by some very genteel people, part of the amiable housewarming they fancied, not minding at all to hear subtly interpolated within the salute of a neighborhood situation, that certain measures had been enacted by the neighborhood council’s board at the neighborhood’s inception that were now settled law, and any pending or future ones must also be so noted, that they be accordingly stipulated by acclamation to the board by all new residents, and any and all inveterate violators of the measures are subject to receive a notice from the board that they are a destabilizing presence and might well be asked to move away from Acacia Place if they are averse to halting their infractions.

The Board had initially looked favorably upon the Garden couple during its vetting process when it had self-invitedly followed them into their front door on moving-in day; based on findings at this formal pre-residency inquiry, the newcomers’ backgrounds had disclosed that they were at the time usually steadily employed general laborers, and with the callused hands to prove it, on housing construction jobs and, to supplement their middle-level income, novice realtors (callused hands equally ingratiatng with firmer handshakes at the settlements of realtor deals) who specialized in placing gentrifying newlyweds like themselves, and all other interested couples or singles, married or unmarried with children, into nice houses, that they were the kind of people who displayed an earnest regard for a (strict) neighborhood council, coupled with having met the board’s prized criteria of having first purchased a starter house (in a safe if seedy area of Augusta) when they had been newlywed and fledglings in business, working hard to reach a pay scale compatible with the demand of the underwriter at their bank’s loan department, who was ever alert to thwart no documentation or liar loans, that the down payment and closing cost alone meant little, that they also had solid proof of having had sufficient income on their IRS 1099 from freelancing or independent contractor work sustained for at least two-consecutive years and agree that, while not foreseeing a shortage of income-producing work in the years ahead, it was a responsible act to fortify themselves with private mortgage insurance, before their application for a mortgage be approved, learning to expect and accept good habits of themselves that could be supportive of a more expensive mortgage somewhere middle class and nicer with all of the down payment saved and the federal government’s blessing of guaranteeing their home loan (as realtors, they knew full-well that governmental support in the mortgage market for medium-size homes was often an invaluable housing boost). Finally, as independent contractors, they typically had to pay for their disability insurance out of their own pocket, counting on it, and all their several other mandatory life, health, hospitalization, and household insurances, for to lack even one of them was to risk financial and houseld ruin, to come to their aid if they were to suffer incapacitation or death.

Then, just when they had started to dig-in and wanted to concentrate on how much they, with their tight budget, could afford to spend on cozy décor and comfortable furnishings as a start for their dream house, approximately a year before their daughter was born, they were confronted with a totally unexpected and distracting surprise, and it was of such a severity that it had made them feel that a gaintlet had been thrown down to defy them to try to undo it. Not in the least willing to comply to the edicts facing them upon learning that the neighborhood council’s Board of Directors had arbitrarily enacted some incontrovertible measures (specifying them as codes, restrictions, inspections, procedures, and standards expected to be obeyed to the letter by all Acacia Place residents), they asked to see it in writing, on an official document, so as to be able to contest it in a court of law. Instead, they received several phone calls at home -categorized as just reminder notices that all new residents received- from one director of the board or another pertaining to residents’ can-do and cain’t-do accountabilities (including a terse, chilly call censuring them for repeated infractions of some kind (they had had to be reminded of what they allegedly had done wrong, and told they were being cited for handing out business cards, picnicking on their front lawn and washing their jeep in front of their house). Squirming at the cold voice and audacious verbal citations (soon enough they were going to learn that the board’s lone enforcement liberty of its citations was to demand that the violators of any of its measures perform some community clean-up assignment they issued, which it had found, it related as well, was more effective at enforcing compliance than just trying to make the violators feel ashamed), so it dawned on the Garden couple that their comely neighborhood was under the thumb of some self-appointed Acacia Place CRIPS (just a coincidence that the acronym for the measures was the same as the surname used by neighborhood after neighborhood of dangerous gangbangers and gangsters that plagued cities all across the U.S.?) that they were confronted with and were going to have to contend with.

Wow. Having made the extremely serious investment of buying a house to make their home for some time to come, hopefully indeed throughout unimpaired and longevous lives, they berated themselves for having failed to seriously investigate how and why it should be that only four members of the Acacia Place neighborhood council, although all adult residents were automatically by virtue sufficiently of their residency members of it, whether active or inactive by personal choice. Simply put, the Four did not have any authority whatever to determine singlehandedly how the neighborhood should function or to invest to themselves alone the power to enact measures detailing what was acceptable by the residents and what was not. So they, the Garden couple, although they had not been more carefully investigative before moving in, therefore felt they had been snookered into assuming a residency where there might be a looming catastrophe. Had they been lulled some way, not having heard any mention of it in depth before their mortgage’s closing? As realtors, they knew that a great many neighborhoods had some such programs and it usually just amounted to a small counseling or tsk, tsk here and there when simple infractions were committed which residents nearly always handled amicably. Now they had received such a stringent censure that it had roused them to be taken aback.

However, all of their fellow adult residents who had heard their complaint and were asked to join it to make a supportive class action dissidence responded unenthusiastically and instead coolly met them with the interrogation: What makes you believe and allege that the ranking, charter residents that interchangeably call themselves The Four Musketeers or the Board and have enacted measures you describe as AP CRIPS, has arrogated to itself so much more than it should have as to be, as you’re implying, a crime against all other residents? Nodding strenuously, Mom and Dad went on to explain: It definitely violates everybody else’s civil rights, knowingly ignoring, as they are, that it’s a crime to impose measures that are a terroristic threat no less than any other kind on any neighborhood. It’s exactly what induces nightmares. It’s definitely and dangerously beyond the scope of the only legislative authority, the statute books (the whole body of legislation of a given jurisdiction), of both the city of Augusta and the state Georgia, and it’s commonly known that both of them, along with the federal government, can, and often do, file lawsuits against violators of their sole constitutional and statutory authority (and even they do not have unlimited authority, are constrained by the very same U.S. Constitution, social engineering being one of its abhorrences).

Was there the necessity of some rarefied contemplation to react the same way that the gadfly couple (the first usage of that term in the neighborhood being the Board’s intendedly pejorative moniker of Mom and Dad, indeed voicing it with a sneer at the first realization that challengers to its authority had moved in on them) was reacting, indeed budding into dissidents particularly applying themselves to an antipathy of hovering overlords and with the addition of the gadfly couple conveying the promise of relentless disapproval, quite at their first realization of an overreaching agenda (the prerogative of knights of the realm, the word was circulated from their own mouths by the Board) too close to their nest and even an olfactory offense too arrogant to shrug off with its rotten scent of their tyranny right under their noses? No of the other residents openly declared an embattlement by the same situation. So why did it have such a dissident affect on just the gadfly couple, why did they stand alone to protest, distinctively feeling so strongly challenged that they could not resist combating it? How did the neighborhood’s other non-board members react to the gadfly couple’s challenge of the board?

Contrasted with all -every one of them- of the other residents not seeing why they should protest the few residents that want to devote most of their time and energy making neighborhood policy for us, and so freeing us to carry on without a break in our personal business, why act like a fool bothering them? (except for the contrary fact in spite of them looking away from it and trying to give the impression that the arrangement was going fine, there was the unmistakeable reek of something problematic transpiring which, at its worse exposure, appeared to be incompatible with law and societal interest, although to be fair they might guilelessly point out at this the opening stage of a brand new housing development during which they had had to stand in a lengthy line to be accepted for residency, and they would rather not put up a fuss with some controllable, well, pests who, never crossing the thresholds unbidden of anyone else’s house, as if they figured -correctly- that a shotgun would greet them if they did, well maybe, just maybe, can be heard saying its measures, for the time being, that was, were really just suggestions to chew on), the gadfly couple, once alerted to what faced them, for it happened that they were practiced to readily recognize the flaws and improprieties, both intentional and unintentional, of any official agency within their purview, promptly commenced to protest. So, neither ego nor self-indulgence was involved on their part?

No, no, no! They were motivated foremostly because their practiced morality, the depth of their schema, forbade them from being complacent or apathetic about wrongdoing. They shared that, however, with most other Acacia Place residents, so why did they lack accessories to their dissidence? Well, it did not hurt that they might have monopolized a special case of happenstance based on certain particulars of their employment background in the dual capacity of realtors and building contractors (a few other Acacia Place residents at this time pursued similar careers, whether or not husbands and wives in tandem, and as they chose the route of apathy, it is appropriate to stress that the gadfly couple appeared to have been affected differently if it could be deemed as influencing their critical view of overlording since it was neither emulated nor infectious nor considered admirable by any of their fellow neighbors).

For them, unexpectedly, their careers had the particular effect of combining to let them envision, and act as pioneers making the way ready for its implementation, self-sufficient, sustainable neighborhoods of all kinds that required little or no need for anyone to exercise control or authority over others as to their personal property or any public behavior construed by lawful consensus to be inoffensive. Their careers also made it mandatory for them to take oaths of agreement at the very start to abide by all of the requirements (approved by the labor unions of their respective employments and also by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [CFPB], the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission [EOEC], the Occupational Safety and Health Administration [OSHA], the Department of Industrial Relations [DIR]), the Office of the Inspector General [OIG], the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment [DONE], the Office of Wage Standards [OWS], and of real estate research companies and national Acts covering all manner of categories, and they were advised never to resort to apathy or distraction and to be familiar with, whole or in part, and on a daily basis and from job to job, administrative areas, practical matters, and documents applicable to their jobs and work assignments (bonding and insuring employees, a duty as sellers’ agents of real property to disclose all relevant information about any and all properties, accounting reports, arbitration, billings/invoices, contracts, corollary insurances and compensations, crisis management, duties to report violations of criminal law, housing codes to adhere to, inspections, judgments, liability laws, licensing complaints/histories, permit procedures, principles, regulations, safety inspections, statutes, taxations, and zoning matters). Taking their oath seriously to adhere to the lawful licensing, bonding and requirements of both of their career endeavors by bearing it in mind at all times, it also had the effect of making them alert to standards, not necessary the exact same but close enough, that were applicable in other areas of the human experience; faced with the criteria on a daily basis, they had inescapably developed the ability to recognize in short order any organization that was subject to all or most of the same conditions and, if they deemed it was within their province of concerns (for they lacked the necessary leisure to be ubiquitous dissidents), if there happened to be a rogue agency (or council) that flagrantly exercised noncompliance (a bit of sloppy minutiae was of no concern), they were hopelessly indoctrinated not to fail to make a fuss chastening it or be whistle blowers.

Heeding a premonition between themselves, however, that hewing to the course of pragmatic self-defense made better sense than did some undermining inflexible one, was the case when Mom and Dad, as their daughter’s endearments or any plain mention of them were as often antenatal as not (whenever Shasta reviewed her background, as she was doing now, and whether or not her parents’ standards were included, no less even before she was born, Shasta committed herself to filial endearments even when she appeared to be estranged from Mom and Dad, fueled by an unalloyed love she had for them she had not always recognized, if indeed it had been formed by bonding with them from infancy until pubescence with its despot flowers caused selfishness to seek ways to put their benevolence out of mind), Mom and Dad eventually decided not to put Acacia Place in their rearview mirror, not to drive away from it, from the AP CRIPS", forever (and just as clear-thinkingly, hesitant to append to their resumes a sudden move away from their dream home and eroding the good repute, and their realtor business, they had earned as hard-working, not easily deterred real estate agents).

Agreeing that, as an allowance proportional to their determination to resist the fractious approach with their adversaries, they could take a lesser drastic recourse, Mom and Dad whose humble wages with the prospect of their household income significantly elevating anytime soon too bleak without some longshot windfall to afford paying there way out on their way to a true Shangri-la even if it were a life-saving recommendation, rather than a problem that could perhaps be solved amicably in due time, chose to feel obligated to live up to the terms of their mortgage for as long as their financial ability for little more than their modest Acacia Place property allowed them to do so, particularly not to default on the basis alone of a hovering neighborhood council board (as well they knew as licensed realtors who frequently encountered cases of property values that had dramatically dived after the mortgage was signed, they refrained from making a judgment about the default strategies concerned with that contrasting matter which they hoped they would never be faced with themselves), and they knew it would be equally apt for them to be known as scofflaws regardless of what the reason was for their own walking away, inescapably experiencing credit histories too damaging to qualify for most credit cards, unable anymore to acquire traditional financing that legal banking or mortgage establishments offered and being at the mercy of shady, usurious enterprises unless they were to camp out on skid row or squat in an abandoned house with their fingers crossed for adverse possession success; however, what they did grouse for a time was an amicable exchange of houses with some other mortgagee who could be apathetic or agreeable with a hovering council as they themselves could not be, to uproot to where a less finicky neighborhood council leadership reigned (whether adjacent or miles away, all them others that had received the snipe by the board of Acacia Place’s council that it did not give a care that they described its kind of place as snippy, thorny Acacia, that it accepted no such high violent crime rate as was often the case outside its own neighborhood and was constantly prepared to support the police patrols/neighborhood watchers whenever nonresidents traversed through it, regardless if they wore bonnets and were cordial of manners, although Mom and Dad were sure they ensnared, as the cost of crime prevention, goodies along with hoodies, their appellations respectively of civility and uncivility, only so as not to be accused of being biased), without being intimidated at all by the prospect of moving elsewhere so soon after their first relocation and despite being safely under the housing umbrella of most new or fairly new middle class houses nationwide selling for the circa’s average fourty-thousand mortgage loan (they chose the fifteen-year fixed-rate plan at three percent interest with exactly 276.23 monthly installments, an amortization package that suited their actuarial and financial probability of consistent monetary health within that range to remit through gainful employment or some other wherewithal for the package’s period of time -barring a failure of insurance if catastrophic incapacitations occurred or a long and stagnant economy or a global melt-down or a careless turn on their part made themselves in mora or that the bank which held their mortgage was never to implement what constituted the tiny print on the dotted line which only became clear to them after they had affixed their signatures above it, to the effect that it reserved the right to change whatever it wanted in the contract without limitation at its convenience, a typical banking industry proviso the Garden couple had groaned about between each other when they got around to the sensibleness of careful scrutiny of the contract and a sudden recall of a course of study in realtor school that had mentioned it, then they had with tight jaws at their paltry power to balk, and so resigned themselves to the severe creditor stance).

Now while their nightmares of risk-averse bank lenders frowning at them had they actually sought to be trusted with a mortgage on another house just beause they wanted to flee AP CRIPS (by the way, street gangs had coined the acronym CRIPS as a nonce word, or contemporary cant, for dubiously elite identification of each other and to inculcate fear into everyone else that they were the very worse of felonious criminals), seemed the epitome of oneiric downsidedness.

(Notwithstanding the competition from nightmares both of them had featuring just that, necessitating that they address it at times they were flung out of bed by it::

So now, God save us, we’re having nightmares about the board’s ‘measures’.

Yeah, it appears so. Not peculiar, I guess, considering how close we are as a companionable husband and wife both faced with a crime that’s pushed its way into our lives.

I guess the disruption of our peace of mind it’s caused is so bad, we probably couldn’t have avoided what seems like dual nightmares.

Hearing about yours, you hearing about mine…, what a dreadful occurrence. It’s like a chilling horror movie. Nightmares, exactly the same, of a gang of thugs as a metaphor of the board’s criminal ‘measures’.

Maybe there was some tv movie we watched that’s made a connections to it, yeah.

The baddest gang anyone around these parts know of, too, not a vanilla small fry paler by comparison. Hey! Does our subconscious harbor a racial prejudice to have our nightmares with a predominately black gang representing the chill factor?

We will find out somehow, though fairness allows us to maintain in the meantime that there’s really no good reason to make anything racial about it, not by simply referencing a gang that’s the exceptional thuggery of all time with the board being just like it.

Tell me how your nightmare is.

And you tell me how yours is.

"Hey, we make us known as CRIPS -crush, rip, incinerate, pummel, slaughter- ’cause we want non-CRIPS to think we have just one arm and one leg and must be easy to defeat. Ha! They then come on to git us, only to have us destroy ’em.

You live in our ‘hood, so how come you ain’t joined your ‘hood’s CRIPS, not that we cain’t recruit you by tauntin’ you so ruthlessly you’ll beg to join us on your knees."

Us join your bad-assed gang? The only gang we ever join are work gangs or ‘the gang’s all here’ convivial kind at parties. The other ones…they focus on spilling blood and interfering and prying into the personal business of their neighbors.

Blood! Did you mention Blood? You two jive asses livin’ here in AP but sympathetic with outsider gangstas like the Bloods, is you? CRIPS’ main rivals!

Please, dudes, meaning no disrespect, we take the position that AP’s CRIPS aren’t the kind with human shapes but shaped only like the foolscap AP’s neighborhood council board had them printed on.

What the hell’s the difference, and you’s the fools! CRIPS the same everywhere CRIPS is, whether gangbangers or maverick board kind, both demandin’ tinhorns like you do exactly and only what CRIPS tell you to do. Don’t matter if we flesh and bone or, being AP CRIPS, take the form of the board’s measures, like you be signifyin’. Us CRIPS know ’bout your battle with the board. But that can easily be seen. What is a hard puzzle to crack is why you want to be naysayers, not instead making it easy on yourselves by joinin’ our ‘hood’s gangstas? Stupid, you cain’t beat us, ’cause you ain’t strong ’nough to, ain’t nobody else listenin’ to just you two Garden gadflies.

You’re under the delusion that hoodlums are really acceptable to the residents. The fact is, the residents in general aren’t really agreeable to them, they only tolerate them, so far, because the law-abiding residents haven’t awakened to realize how dangerous that kind of criminality is to everybody.

Peculiar, peculiar that you ’pear to be white bread, so how come you got your ofay ways speakin’ Ebonics, or dreamin’ CRIPS only speak Ebonics?

It’s baragouin!

No, please don’t harm her, that’s just her French adding to our beef. And yet there, see, surely you know everybody can dream only in the language or languages they know of or are regularly exposed to, and we’re familiar with the way that you regularly state to prefer, your free choice, explaining you can quite speak standard English, too. And you needn’t think of us as ‘white bread’ or ‘ofay speakers’, either. Acacia Place is acceptable to, and peaceful for, all nonviolent people and tongues.

And surely you know Ebonics the onliest language whose every word can be eaten for survival, that that makes it indispensable?

Of course, of course. So why let the hooligan interlopers demean it? It’s also the language basically of a highly intelligent, very attractive and law-abiding people.

You just bein’ politically correct, ain’t you? Uh-huh, Vanilla Ice actin’ mild-mannered.

That’s not true. Listen -oops, no disrespect intended- our neighborhood could also be called America’s Place, meaning it’s thoroughly integrated, enjoys and respects the diversity of its residents, so if not for your sabotage of its Constitutional rights it could quite enjoy the equal variety-

A variety of CRIPS should be enjoyable enough for you!

-residential values to which everbody is due.

Nobody else say so ’cept you two push-backs. You two, the onliest ones, that’s been remarkin’ CRIPS no good, like so-called territorial fungus. You only gittin’ away with it ’cause nobody else is payin’ any ’tention to you. ’Cause, make no mistake, wherever CRIPS is, CRIPS make sure everybody roundabout ’em belong only to them.

For now, that is. As you learned in your science class at school, if a body is pushed forward out of the way of a pushing body, the pushing body moves backward itself. You cain’t prevail. It’s officially known throughout the whole wide world that positive benefits, from local to national, have been documented unanimously anywhere CRIPS have been removed from.

You lie! Forget your pushback, CRIPS stand beefed-up from prison fodder and barbells to throw their weight ’round when paroled back to the streets! CRIPS, no matter what their ‘hood be like, they git the power and they hang onto it, dead or alive. CRIPS so powerful, they take over whole countries. If the Vatican had CRIPS, CRIPS be dangerous there too, drivin’ ’specially the Virgin housed there bowlegged and tossin’ the Swiss guards there into the Fountain after takin’ all, not just three, coins out of it. CRIPS can even make their victims feel CRIPS invited themselves to invade their house, stalkin’ all over it anytime CRIPS wants to, though invaded peoples like you wearin’ blinkers don’t dare let themselves know that outright lest they go bonkers. Now you two lame asses got somethin’ comin’ for not keepin’ silent ’bout AP CRIPS, not droppin’ the dime on us to git the presses rollin’ reactin’ to your report ’bout the crimes we commit, tryin’ to put us out of business. ‘Sides, since you timid, you shoulda run away from AP CRIPS’ turf when you coulda, and woulda got away, too, before now we gonna kill you and bury your dead ass bodies in the Augusta city dump.

No! Stop! Your terroristic measures make our lives miserable and they’re weapons exactly the same as murderous knives and guns! Hey! Stop!.)

At that, so far they would spring awake, or shake each other awake, the both of them helping hands in their similar, parallel nightmares, at the instants that the board’s illicit measures nightmared as AP CRIPS had started to physically attack them, luckily not flailing about in bed or elsewhere in their bedroom which would be a precarious reaction leading to getting