Jerry has been micro-dosing herbicides again. 2-4,D, Glyphosate, Atrazine, Imazethapyr, Paraquat, Clomazone. When I confront him that maybe he has a problem. Maybe this isn’t safe. He shrugs. “We all got problems.” Then turning away to address the wall stacked in hand built cages, he continues “At least when I die it’ll have been for something.”
Jerry reaches his hand into a cage to pinch out soggy pine shavings from a tiny watering bowl. As he does a small rodent pops its white whisker head up from a shredded nest of newspaper. Shuffling its body to the surface, it crawls towards the hand with a sniff. Jerry opens his palm allowing the rat to climb, using his thick hairy arm as a ladder to reach the large humped mound of flesh that is Jerry’s shoulders. He turns back to me. “Besides, Janine here has responded to the treatments fantastically, and look at her! Healthy as a peach.”
I sigh, extending a finger to stroke Janine gently on the head. It was no use trying to persuade Jerry, he knew the risks.
Jerry's obsession with pesticides began when he was a child. Raised in the rural countryside of Delta, Colorado. His parents where Mexican immigrants working in the onion and beet fields that constituted the cash crop of 1970 rural Colorado. According to Jerry, it was a golden time to be a child, and he reminisces to me often about the fields surrounding his home that were routinely blasted in billowing clouds of DDT. How upon hearing the approaching buzz in the cloudless summer sky, little Jerry and his sister would stop whatever they were doing, run out into the street arms flailing, barefoot and prancing to chase the low flying airplane. They would go as far as their growing little legs would conceal them twirling in the crop-dusted white haze.
According to Jerry, his Father was a good man. A good good man. And although they never had much money, he worked hard to see his children where raised to enjoy all the opportunities rural society had to offer. He’d taught himself to speak english by reading the Bible and had a fastidious obsession with appearances. In Jerry’s memory, his Father only ever wore one outfit, a pleated brown suit with wide lapels and a crisp cream collared shirt. His hair was black and pomade slick with a face that never sprouted stubble beyond a small neatly pointed mustache.
His Father gave as much attention to his lawn as he did his looks. Rising early every Saturday to crosshatch mow their small patch of rented grass. Hand watering it to provide an even sprinkling of moderated moister. Blade trimming the edges with precise strokes and proper angles for a clean cut boundary between concrete and green. “The key to precision is a steady hand.” He repeated to little Jerry in a thick drizzled accent, working the blade gracefully as though it were an extension of his arm.
When a weed emerged in the lawn, Jerry’s Father would shout for “El Jugo!” and little Jerry would sprint into the back shed, emerging with a metal canister attached by rubber hose and nozzle. Heartily, little Jerry would drench the weedy tendrils or toothed leaves, scouring the premises to make sure every invader had been accounted for. Only if completely satisfied, would he stand at his Father’s side, looking out mimicking his posture and gaze.
His Father would then pat little Jerry’s back, nodding in repeated approval at the small plot of God-given Heaven, “See my son, Life thrives under the human touch.” Then he would turn and go inside the house.
Only when he heard the screened door click shut did Little Jerry chance to glance back, assuring himself he was completely alone. As he did, a sneaking smile split open his brown rounded, button-nose face. And like a puppy to a puddle of pee, he dropped onto his hands and knees.
Eyes-wide and wild
little Jerry began licking away the freshly sprayed chemicals from the weeds.
These images you're creating are brilliant.
Brilliant. I’m loving what you’ve been publishing lately. Licking the chemicals.... I love the images my head is creating reading this story. Plus I am currently staying right down the road from Delta so I have a visceral sense of the place as it is right now.