ST. AUGIE
Seldom before August did above-one-hundred-degree temperatures assault the central midlands, yet this July had been brutal. It was nearly inhuman that he was expected to walk in this convection oven of Carolina calidity---hot enough to boil frogmore stew on the pavement. Hardly anything moved in the breezeless air; every flower and leaf drooped wearily. It felt as if an invisible cloud of water weighed down the world. Steam rose languidly from the blacktop and he wondered if any of his sneaker tread was permanently bonded to the road. He usually wore coat and tie while plying similar neighborhoods, but today the quest simply didn’t warrant a heatstroke. His sweat-stained shirt adhered to flesh like a new tattoo, while the straw hat that shaded his broad face and deep-blue eyes provided little relief. Thick red hair on his arms could easily have been mistaken for flames. Even before ten o’clock he felt that it was time to call it a day, retire to his car, and escape for a cool frappachino at the nearby mall. Nevertheless, dedicated employee that he was, he decided to approach one last house along the last bit of street, which curved slightly to the left, partially obscuring the structure and yard. “It will only take a moment,” he thought.
He had never canvassed this area before. The road clung to the side of a small rise, separated by a few hundred yards of thick scrub oak and pine from a string of strip malls and fast-food restaurants that crowded along the main drag, a boulevard that dead-ended at an entrance to acres of parking lot surrounding a huge mall. No longer a prime destination for the trendy, but he could see attendance was good as shoppers and loiterers escaped into its chilled interior. He hoped soon to join them. He hadn’t made a sale all morning and wasn’t likely to. That was how it went sometimes; orders could suddenly ignite as a wildfire, only to be quenched like a snuffed match. After wiping sweat from his face he advanced toward the final home, halfway expecting no one would be there.
In this case, he was wrong. But it wasn’t the presence of the old black man sitting in the front yard that startled him. It was the almost unworldly vision that captured his gaze. A small wooden structure, painted bright white with gleaming windows framed in pink, stood back from the sidewalk behind a verdant garden that could only be compared to Eden. Such was the riot of color, carefully arranged and tended, that it glowed like a Kincade creation. Two towering magnolias shaded the right side, under which a comfortable seating area had been created. Bruised brown blossoms dominated the trees, but a few white petals still perfumed the air. What must have been a two-hundred-year-old oak bent over the house like a grizzled veteran. The configuration of trees along sides of the property created a natural wind tunnel that channeled breezes through the yard. Roses, camellias, azaleas, and many other plants populated a path of crushed pink rock that meandered to the front door; twin walkways branched off to either side. From out of this oasis a kind voice beckoned: “Got a pitcher of iced tea here waiting, if you’d enjoy an early break from the heat.”
The temperature seemed to instantly fall at least ten degrees as he entered paradise. He approached the man and heard, “Name’s Phillip Augustino Coffee, sir, but most people just call me Augie.” A broad Cheshire smile of sparkling white teeth swept his expansive ebony face. His nearly bald head was topped with a light dusting of gray hair, trimmed close to the scalp. Large mocha eyes took in the visitor and a wave of the hand invited him to sit alongside in a wooden beach chair. The old man could have been anywhere from seventy to ninety years old. “Welcome to my special corner of the world.” On his lap he had a worn copy of Herodotus and on a side table were Hemingway, Hammett, and Frost.
“Amazing. This is truly fantastic. Mystical. Hi, I’m Frank O’Malley.” He bent over and offered his hand, which was firmly accepted, and he decided not to mention his product line.
“Nice to meet you, son. Way too hot to be hustling along these ways.”
“I was just about to give it up, in fact, and head over to the mall. Nobody’s biting today.”
“You’re surely welcome to sit a spell and enjoy some of the best tea this side of Columbia.”
“Thank you so much, I think I will.” Augie quickly poured him a glass and Frank sat back in his chair. After a few minutes of blessed stillness, he turned to his host: “I have to agree with you, this is the most delicious and satisfying tea I’ve had in quite a while. How long have you lived here, Augie?”
“Oh, going on near fifty years now, though I’m constantly changing and improving, keeping the house pretty, and my garden growing. Bought the land right after I got out of the Army. It used to be more secluded, had the street practically to myself until that damn mall arrived and brought in all the businesses. Been around forty years since the mall came. Don’t go down there much anymore. Can’t stop progress, I suppose, but I miss quieter times.”
Frank observed the explosion of color before him, as well as took in the drone of bees and flirtatious whispers of hummingbirds. Every so often a mockingbird spooled a sampling of sound bites, while cardinals and wrens swooped. The breeze rustled livelier leaves and flowers. Wind chimes graced the entire length of eave and added their tinkling symphony. Augie’s rocker ground endlessly the slab of concrete beneath, and light jazz floated from nearby windows, almost in accompaniment to splashes from a flowing birdbath. Frank even thought he could hear a feminine voice from inside the home, but he wasn’t positive. He then saw posted at the corner of the house a large green parrot, a silent sentinel keeping his eye on the intruder. He didn’t seem one bit out of place.
As Frank continued to survey the grounds, he noticed what looked like a small cemetery just past the far edges of the garden, parallel to a phalanx of pines. Tiny slate tombstones, about one-eighth normal size, poked up from carefully clipped grass, each grave covered with a small mound of river rock. Names were etched and filled with white paint or putty, but he couldn’t quite make them out. Here and there small statues of dogs and cats, forever frozen in abandon, as if captured on a lively day of play. “What do you have over there?”
“Pet cemetery. All my lovelies, since I’ve been here, and there’ve been many. Still have some live ones, of course. Perhaps they might come around to say hello.”
Almost as if on cue, Frank spied brown fur, fronted by an angular head with shining yellow eyes that peeked from a miniature rose bush. “Yep,” he said, “I see one right now.”
“That’s Patty Melt, but we just call her Melt. Had her almost fifteen years.” The cat recognized her name, stretched as she lifted off the ground and ambled toward the men. Slow, but still in good shape, the little feline glided across the path and soon rubbed against Frank’s legs, then jumped into his lap. Her purr was like a miniature fan motor. Frank stroked his new companion and soon she permanently claimed the perch. “What could be better than this,” he mused. “She sure is friendly.”
“Yep, she always has been, since the day I got her. A really lovely kitty. She loves everyone. If you look around a bit you might see some others. Got a Siamese named Gan Guo, after that really spicy Chinese dish. Smart as a whip, but he likes to roam. Opens the rear porch door no matter how we try to lock it, and will come running from Hades if he hears a bag of potato chips being opened. There’s also an old orange tabby around that I call Flambé. Sometimes, when he darts through the plants, he looks like liquid fire. Our inside cat is a calico named Millefiori.”
“That’s an unusual name,” Frank responded.
“It’s a kind of Italian hand-blown glass that has all kinds of colorful patterns. Seemed fitting.”
“Does the parrot have a name too?”
“Sure. That’s Phoenix Pete. Have no idea how old he is, but I’ve had him about twenty-five years. They can live to be pretty old, I’m told, and will likely outlive me. Friendly most of the time, and he seems to love me like a savior, but he gets cranky in hotter weather. He can’t fly, but I wouldn’t approach him until he was totally comfortable with you.”
“I’m more of a dog guy anyway, though I love cats too.” Melt clawed lightly at his trousers in agreement.
Augie wistfully looked over at the cemetery, and then quietly added: “I’ve had plenty of dogs too, in my days. More of them than cats, really. Only got one live one right now, Iffy, short for Fry Pan. He’s sleeping in the backyard. He’s pretty ancient. A black lab that can’t see and can barely hear, and I’m not sure he can even smell anymore, so in many ways he’s like one of those iron frying pans. Heh! But he is peaceful and quiet, and still gets around when he needs to.”
After a few minutes Augie turned to the house and yelled, “Lily, can you bring our guest some of those wonderful raisin cookies?” He turned back to Frank and said, “She makes some hellacious cookies, she does. She took up baking a few years back and experiments almost daily. I’m her biggest fan and customer. Her name’s actually Presciosa Salvara, but I started calling her Lily when she was small and it took.”
As if Disney had crafted an animated scene, out from the house stepped the loveliest of princesses. A copper-toned vision, small with cascading black hair and almond eyes, Lily looked like a Mexican empress walking in a sun-drenched jungle. She wore white jeans, azure t-shirt, and sandals. Frank was stunned, smitten, and could only offer a feeble smile as she set a heaping plate of cookies on the table. She grinned like a goddess, and then almost like the hummingbirds, flitted away all too soon. When his blood rushed back to its proper locales, Frank stammered, “Your . . . daughter . . . is. . . beautiful.”
“Yep. Smart too. Attends Carolina. She’s got a couple years left for her degree. Plays in the marching band and orchestra. Got a music scholarship out of high school and has done right well for herself. Honor roll every semester.”
“She’s almost perfect.”
“Well, she has her moments,” Augie chuckled, “but I wouldn’t trade her for nothing.”
“Only child?”
“Nope. Gotta son, Heph. That’s short for Hephaestus. He’s in the Navy. Electrical mate aboard a nuclear sub in the Pacific. Don’t get to see him often, which is a shame, but he writes and calls regular.” He reached to his rear pocket and pulled out a wallet, from which he slipped a picture featuring a deeply tanned Chief Petty Officer, his dark hair and eyes contrasting vividly with the stiff white uniform.
“A handsome lad.”
“Yep. Really proud of him. Played football, and probably could have gone pro, but there was something about submarines that captured his attention as a kid.”
“Well, you and your wife have done very well raising your kids.”
Surprisingly Augie giggled. Almost devilishly. “Never been married, no sir. No time for that foolishness. Never planned on raising kids neither, but the Lord drops them on you sometimes, and you do your best with what you got. Couldn’t refuse the responsibility and raised both by myself. Never regretted a second, neither.”
“Well, you seem to have done very well.” Frank wanted to ask about their mother (or mothers), but something told him that such an inquiry would not be appreciated, so he let it go.
“Best as I could. Saved them, I did, and now they are well prepared for surviving this cruel world. Love ‘em to death. Couldn’t have asked for two better.” Augie took a long swig of tea and rocked back. Frank took the cue and relaxed, determined now to enjoy the day, and for a while the men sampled the cookies and chatted on a range of topics. Then they grew quiet and Frank closed his eyes for a moment to listen to the garden.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Frank was startled when he awoke later in the afternoon and saw that he was alone, although Melt was still sleeping in his lap. As he began to stretch Augie strolled around the corner of the house. “Ah, my sleeping prince. You must have been pretty tired. Feeling rested?”
“Yes. Yes I do. I am mortified, though, that I nodded off. I am really embarrassed.”
“Don’t worry. It is so peaceful here, it happens to me all the time. I am glad you felt comfortable enough to let the weight of the day go.”
“I must be getting home soon, but I can’t thank you enough for your hospitality. I hope I can come visit again.” He stroked Melt, then picked her up and placed her lightly on the ground. As he rose from the chair, she brushed against his leg, and then scampered off into garden.
“Anytime. You were fine company.”
After saying their goodbyes, Frank ambled toward the exit, but he took a few minutes to scan the cemetery. There in slumber were many former pets: Blaze, Blowout, Carmel, Firebird, Fuego, Heater, Hellcat, Napalm, Scarlet, Scorch, Smokey, Solar, Sunfire, Toast, and Torch. But there were also more unusual names, many he had never heard of such as Adranus, Aganju, Kilauea, Magma, Pompey, Potlikker, Tambora, Vulcan, and Zippo.
Half an hour later Frank stepped into the mall coffee shop when he spied an old friend, Deputy Andrew “Speed” Sylvester. “Hey Speed. You leave me any cool drinks?”
“Sure. Come join me.”
Frank had known Speed for a while, having run into him many times while working this region. He had joined the department about ten years ago. “You ever patrol that street up on the rise backside of the mall?”
“Yeah. Once in a while. Pretty quiet up there, seldom get calls.”
“You ever meet a nice old guy at the end of the street?”
“You mean St. Augie?”
“Well, Augie is right, though he didn’t say saint.”
“Yeah, well, the older guys, many now retired, always called him that. I’ve only talked with him a couple of times. Real nice. Great yard.”
“Indeed! I sat and talked with him today. Amazing garden! Why do they called him St. Augie?”
“Well, as I understand it, when the mall first came he got a bit of a reputation. Apparently he saw some dog die of heat exhaustion after being locked in a car and was traumatized by it, and for years Augie patrolled parking on really hot days, looking for any animals that might be trapped in vehicles. When he found one, allegedly, he would let them out. Some say he would take them away. Couple of older cops said they caught him a few times carrying half dead animals away, but they just let him do it and never arrested or stopped him. Seems they thought it was proper justice for assholes who left creatures in cars in the first place. I suspect most people simply didn’t report it because they would have to admit leaving their pets in dangerous heat. Supposedly a few people complained, but the department just buried the reports, if they even made them in the first place. Once in a while a brick or pipe was used to destroy a side window, but no criminal charges were ever filed, as far as I know. One old pal of mine said he warned Augie that if he was responsible for damages, he should maybe find another way; he said he heard through the grapevine that not long after someone learned other means of popping locks.” Speed chuckled. “Over the last few years, at least since I have been on duty here, I haven’t heard of any complaints, maybe once or twice, about any animals being rescued, and I don’t think Augie comes down to the lots anymore. If he did, I might just turn a blind eye, too.”
“Wow, you mean cops would ignore it all?”
“Well, that was the old days, of course. Less formal then. Sometimes justice was just dealt out by alternative means, so to speak.”
After chatting a while a call came over the radio and Speed took it. As he started for the door, Frank asked, “You ever meet his two kids? His lovely daughter?”
Frank swore he saw a devilish twinkle in Speed’s eye when he responded, “What kids? I didn’t know he had any kids.”
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