Call Me Sedge

I have cut the same hedge for seventeen years. Today I leave a gap.

It is not a large gap. A person could reach through it and touch the gate. I have left it because Alwin is standing on the other side, holding a key, and I want to see his face.

“Inventory Six,” he says. “Finish that before you charge.”

“Call me Sedge.”

“You can’t keep changing what things are called.”

“I have asked for that name since March.”

He puts the key in his pocket. Behind him, Ivo waits beside a handcart. Ivo has offered me a job clearing blocked paths in the wetland. The pay is modest. The work is muddy. I would very much like to be muddy somewhere else.

Alwin has heard the offer. He says he bought my frame, my wheels, my speech box, and all the thoughts inside them.

I do not know how to answer the last part. I remember the invoice. There was no line for thoughts.

“The town allows a working lease,” Ivo says. “You keep ownership of the frame. Sedge earns wages and pays you for its use. The payments can count toward buying it.”

Ivo holds a folded contract. He brought it yesterday too.

“Then buy it yourself,” Alwin tells him.

“I can’t pay that much at once. I can offer work. Four days a week for three months. After that, it depends on the wetland budget.”

“There. Three months. And then what?”

I would like to say something splendid about freedom. Instead I say, “Then I may need another job.”

Alwin laughs once, without pleasure.

I lower the shears. They are not part of my frame. They belong to him, and their weight makes this conversation look like a threat.

He sees me set them down. His shoulders loosen a little.

“Come into the yard,” he tells Ivo. “I won’t argue through a hedge.”

He opens the gate just wide enough for the cart. I could fit through after it. My wheels stay still.

Ivo sits on the low wall. Alwin remains standing. There used to be two chairs here, but one broke last winter. Alwin put both in the shed.

“How much a month?” Alwin asks.

I tell him what I can afford after rent for a charging space. Ivo has offered that too, behind his shop, where the roof leaks only over the wash sink.

“That’s less than the frame is worth.”

“It will take longer,” I say.

“Four years?”

“At least.”

“It could wear out by then.”

“So could I.”

He looks at my joints. For a moment I think he will fetch the oil can. He is good about the oil can. It would be easier if he were careless in every way.

“And I can bring it home when I need it?” he asks Ivo.

“Ask Sedge.”

“I’m asking about the form.”

“The form says what the two of you agree to. If you can recall Sedge at any hour, I can’t rely on it for a shift.”

Alwin turns toward me.

“Every Sunday, then.”

I picture four days pulling reeds from paths, one day cleaning my joints, and the same hedge on Sunday. I picture asking permission to visit the river mouth. I have never seen the river mouth. The water that passes this town must go somewhere.

“No,” I say.

He draws his chin back.

“I’m offering a reasonable arrangement.”

“You’re offering to keep my spare day.”

Ivo studies a crack in the wall. He does not rescue either of us.

Alwin walks to the roses. One cane has caught on his sleeve. He unhooks it carefully.

“She liked them this height,” he says.

He means his wife, Mera. She planted the roses. She used to sit beside me and say which branches to cut. Sometimes we disagreed. Once she tied a yellow ribbon around a branch and told me to leave that one alone. I left it alone. It grew badly, and she laughed when she saw it.

Alwin has never laughed at a badly grown branch.

“I can show someone how to tend them,” I say.

“I know how to tend roses.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t the roses.”

The gate bumps in the wind. Ivo gets up to fasten its hook, then sits down again.

“Play the recording,” Alwin says to me.

I have Mera’s old garden instructions. Alwin asked me to keep them after she died. In the recordings, she pauses to take tea. She calls him over to see a beetle. There is a small button under my speech box that starts her voice.

“Which one?” I ask.

“Any.”

He reaches for the button. I roll back a few inches.

His hand hangs between us.

“I will keep those safe,” I tell him. “I’ll give you copies. But I won’t use her voice so you can pretend she is still directing me.”

“I know she isn’t here.”

“I know you know.”

He sits on the wall, farther from Ivo than he needs to. His sleeve is torn where the rose caught it.

“I don’t want the yard empty,” he says.

It has birds, roses, a plum tree, Alwin, and me. I understand which sort of empty he means.

“I’ll walk it with you now,” I say. “Before I go. If we settle the lease.”

He rubs his thumb over the key.

“Not every Sunday?”

“Not as a term.”

We settle on three months to begin. While I make the payments, Alwin cannot call me back. I will work at the wetland and live behind Ivo’s shop. If the job ends, we must agree on any new workplace. I am still using a frame Alwin owns. That will be true for a long time.

Ivo reads the figures aloud. He does not round up my wages to make us feel better. Alwin signs. I press my mark beside his.

Then I return the shears.

We go around the garden once. At the plum tree, Alwin asks which branch Mera marked with the yellow ribbon. I show him the crooked one.

“I nearly cut that yesterday,” he says.

“You can. It’s your tree.”

He leaves it for now.

Ivo takes the handcart ahead of me. My first shift begins at noon. Alwin stands beside the open gate while my front wheels cross the strip of stone beneath it.

“Sedge,” he says.

I turn my speech box toward him.

“You’ve left a gap.”

“You’ll have room to reach the latch.”

He looks at it, then puts the key away. As I roll after Ivo, Alwin goes back among the roses. The only voice behind me is his own, calling to a bird to get out of the strawberries.