I was out in back again, a few weeks ago, this time taking pictures of my shaga—when I heard yet again Wrench’s left shoe come slamming down atop the tiny aluminum rail fence (remember, that neither of us own) that separates his bit of rented outdoor space from mine. 

“Hey, bud,” he said, “let me ask you this. Aren’t you worried just a little bit about a volcanic apocalypse? I mean, you seem to be one of those types that like to try to figure out  the big picture. You’re one of those, aren’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say so,” I said.

“I wouldn’t say so to which? I asked you two questions.”

“I don’t think I’m particularly interested in what you call the ‘big’ picture. I mean, I’m more interested in these shaga. They’re not so big—just lovely . . . don’t you think?”

It may sound as if I were not terrified by Wrench—but I was, absolutely. If I had said nothing, though, if I had just took his abuse 100 percent, well, I thought that it would have only encouraged him to come roaring over our tiny fence and flatten me. I wasn’t much of an out-on-the-town-late-into-the-night kind of guy, but a great deal of talk here and there had it that Wrench was—and that when he felt he was being ignored, when he couldn’t get total strangers to join him on the dance floor, he was sure to pick a fight—not too infrequently, the rumors had it, leading to a quick and overwhelming show of force—awe and thunder, you might say.

Me, I’m a wimp—as you know. No way I’d ever fight this guy. So I did what I could to comment, hoping not to let show what I was sure all the insects in my garden could easily tell—I was trembling in my plastic clogs. 

“So what about the other question?” he went on. “About the volcanic apocalypse? The guts of this earth we’re tredding on are trembling all the time. Sometimes it gets to doing a pretty rowdy dance. Earthquakes. People buried in rubble. Don’t you think that’s kind of a warning? For the volcanic apocalypse? First you get a big spew. Then salt deposits bake.  Gunk rises up into the ozone layer and wipes it out. Then the lovely, glimmering, shining radiation comes pouring in. It’s a brutal, take-no-prisoners frontal assault. It fries us.”

“No,” I said, “I’m not worried about that.” I’d been down on my haunches trying to get a good picture from below two particular flowers, and now I’d gone all the way down onto the ground, laid out, and found just the angle I’d been searching for.

“Yes,” I said. “This is it.”

That, of course, had two meanings. One was that I knew it was going to get the shot I was after. The other was that I’d seemed to have found the perfect defense—surely, he wouldn’t find much fun in flattening me if I were already down on my back pretty much flattened already.

He huffed a bit—and turned to go inside.

And then he surprised me. He stopped. Walked back over to the fence. This time he kept both of his feet planted in his own rented ground.

“The way those petals are frayed,” he said. “I mean, don’t you think they know? Know that the volcanic apocalypse is coming? Don’t you think that that’s why they’re born frayed? See, they were born to die.  Born to face the apocalypse.”

For a few seconds we looked each other in the eye. Not a show of manliness, but a deep searching. We each peered in, focusing, trying to fathom what made the other tick. Until that moment, I’d had a theory about Wrench. I had imagined that he was terribly near-sighted, but always did everything he could not to let it show. I’d thought the only reason he could not be subject to the bountiful beauty of my rented garden space was that he couldn’t see it. That it was all just a big blur to him. That it angered him that he couldn’t see it.

But he could. He could see those frayed petals. It was something I was going to have to think about.