The Chain Gang or Digging for Dummies

Being a writer is harder than most people can imagine. And, I don't mean putting up with hundreds of rejections from agents and publishers, or the "horror" of the blank page (or screen), or the many things one has to learn about structure, form, character development, and so on, and never mind the hundreds of kibitzers and advice columnist who try to give you or sell you advice on how to write "something that will sell".

No, the most difficult part is convincing those close to you, i.e. your wife, that not everything you write is biographical; in other words, that what you write is not a copy of your life and that much of it is fiction, and that what you have told her about your life is true and not fiction. Am I making sense?

Perhaps an example will help you, dear reader, to understand what I mean.

When "we" decided to have a vegetable garden, I told the Growing Vegetables in Abundance Committee (my wife and her sister) that clearing those parts of the plot that had been alloted to us would be a difficult job.

"That land," I said, "has been fallow for a long time so the weeds and grass have put roots into the ground so deep that..."

"Ah, but we will 'elp you clear it," said my sister-in-law.

"Well, thank you, but it really is a tougher job than you think because when I cleared a piece of land in Mexico for gardening, I found you had to go really deep into the ground to..."

"But, here in France it is different," rebutted my wife.

"Weeds and grass are the same the world over; they..."

"And, anyway," she continued, "you have no experience gardening. You said so yourself."

"When did I say that?"

"You wrote it in a story, the one about Brittany."

"No! Wait a minute: that was not me. That is a character and he is bumbler and when he tries to help his friend in the garden he is a disaster, but that does not mean that I am..."

"But, of course its you, darling. He talks like you and looks like you."

"Looks like me?"

"I mean, the way you describe him; it is you!"

"Oh, I give up," I said throwing up my hands in a theatrical display of exasperation.

"So, don't worry about it," she assured me, "we will clear the plot and it will be ready for planting tomorrow."

Sure enough: the next day I went to the vegetable garden and found my wife and her sister sitting gingerly on the ground, as if on a picnic, using a little hand rake to "prettify" the soil.

"You see?" she exclaimed in triumph, "ready for you to plant."

Even from a distance I could see that they had only cut the grass leaves and weed stems. The ugly parts of those undestructible plants could still be seen staring up through the soil like the eyes of a half-buried corpse.

Saying nothing, I went to Monsieur Fournier's shed and grabbed a spade. Trampling over the ground my wife had nicely furrowed, I buried the spade deep into the sandy ground and turned over the soil.

"What are you doing?" asked my wife, alarmed. "You are ruining my work."

"Look," I said pointing to a huge tangle of grass and roots, "that is what has to be cleared, not just the surface things. If you leave those roots, they will shoot up among your planted stuff in no time. These vicious weeds will have your little bean plants for lunch."

"Tu exagére, comme toujours," she said and went away in a huff.

If you have seen the movie "Cool-Hand Luke", you will remember the scene when Paul Newman's character is made to dig a hole and then put the dirt back in during a whole day as punishment. Well, he had it easy.

I took bushels of roots, underground grass, rocks, and assorted nests of maggots, grubs, ants, and strange nodules that look like alien babies waiting to grow up and take over the planet.

As I dug and cleared, Monsieur Fournier would come around from time to time to ask, "Ca va?"

"Oh, yeah, boss, its OK," I said but I really felt like saying, "Thank you for letting me clear your land and allowing me to pay for the privilege." The man was a character straight out of Marcel Pagnol: the wily peasant who tricks the city guy not only into doing the peasant's work but also into paying for it.

After having cleared the plot-from-Hell, I planted some tomato seedlings and five squash plants. I fertilized and watered them and went home. I took a bath and sat down in the back garden to have a beer. I was exhausted.

"Ah, there you are," said my wife cheerfully.

"Yes, here I am--what's left of me."

"You are tired?" she asked in the tone of unbelief one uses to address a person who has just gotten up from taking a nap.

"I am exhausted."

"Yes, but it is the good kind of tired, no? The kind of tired one gets after having done a good job."

"There is no good kind of tired," I said testily. "That is hype invented by hucksters to get yuppies to go to gyms and pay for the right to get sweaty and tired when they could do the same thing for free by running in the streets."

"Oh, but listen: your work can't have been that hard. My sister and I had done most of the clearing before you came."

It was a good think I had left the spade in Jean de Florette's (i.e. Monsieur Fournier) shed. I abstined from any comment and downed another beer.

The next day came the crisis.

When we arrived at the garden and the female section of the Horn of Plenty Club saw my handy work, a furious argument started between my wife and her sister. When the storm had somewhat subsided. I asked my wife,

"What was all that about?"

"My sister is upset that you have taken up all the cleared ground with your plants."

I was flabbergasted. "She is wha..she said what? She is upset why?"

"You have taken up all the ground we cleared."

"You cleared? YOU cleared? Look, you scratched the surface and played around like a couple of kids in a sand box. I used the spade and the pickax for four hours to get roots the size and width of tree trunks out of the ground. Besides, this is just around nine square meters there are another 60 square meters, by my reckoning, to be cleared and used."

"Yes, but she had cleared this part. She does not like that part over there because it gets too little sun."

"Too little? If you will kindly turn around you will see that that part of the garden is in full sunlight."

"Yes, but in the late afternoon, the hedge makes it in shadow."

"Well, of course! And at night it will be made to be in the dark," I said contaminated by her strange sentence construction. "But, the point is..."

"That reminds me," she said cutting me off, "Monsieur Fournier asked me when you were going to cut the hedge."

"What? When I am going to cut what? If I am hearing right and not delusional, I think you are asking me when I am going to cut this kilometer long hedge."

"That is right. Monsieur Fournier says we are responsible for the hedge that borders our plot."

"Wait, wait, wait. Let me take you back to that day when WE decided not to pay for OUR hedge being cut, and WE decided to cut it ourselves because it was ugly and the cutting and maintaining was such a chore. Now I am expected to care for a hedge that is five times as long as ours was and to PAY for the privilege?"

"Why are you shouting? Stop shouting," she said.

"Have you noticed that he took for himself all that part of the garden that does NOT border on the hedge and WE got the parts that do?"

"Shsss! Monsieur Fournier will hear you."

"Oh, you mean Jean de Florette over there," I said gesturing toward Monsieur Fournier's house. "Well, I hope he does hear and that he understands English because it will be a cold day in Hell before I trim that anti-tank obstacle that is mistaken for a hedge."

"Augh, as usual: you are unkind, unneighborly, and uncaring. The poor man is unwell and he cannot do it himself."

"Why are you always volunteering me to help every old geezer that we come across."

I got another week of silence from my wife for that last remark. I ended up by cutting the damned hedge AND clearing up a piece of land where my sister-in-law planted a few tomato plants that soon were dry and forlorn from lack of care and watering.

Of course, I was blamed for the sad state of affairs of those plants since mine flourished and gave plentiful tomatoes while hers languished in the shade of the late afternoon.