THE FOUR OF US stood back to admire our handiwork: eight spindly tomato plants tied to stakes pushed into the ground. With the kale and the peas to the left, and the carrots and basil to the right, the little corner of our backyard that we’d marked off for a garden was full. My wife and I hugged; the kids cheered.
We were transplants, just like those tomatoes. We had moved to North Carolina from New York City, where we’d lived in an apartment ten stories above the West Side Highway. Our backyard had been the dingy brown hall that led between the garbage chute and the elevator; that’s where we ran our children on days it was too wet to get to the park.
And here we were now, standing in an earthly paradise, a little bewildered by this kind of happiness. It wasn’t an unusually large backyard, no bigger than our neighbors’, but it seemed vast. The air around us was busy with big fat bees and butterflies of a strange flittery green. An enormous, brawny pecan tree rose behind us, and droopy or bushy flowering things ran along the fence: camellias, azaleas, roses, lilies, lantana, wisteria, jasmine—we were still learning the names. In the center of it all rose a magnificent pine tree, taller than our house.
The next weeks were busy, but now and then I would kneel beside the tomato plants, amazed first by the hard green knobs that had sprouted among the leaves, and then by the way those knobs began to fill out and take on that familiar shape I knew from the supermarket, to grow red and soft. This might actually work, I thought, realizing for the first time that I hadn’t expected it to, that I had assumed the plants would wither and my family and I would get in the car and speed back to New York, where life would resume its familiar, safe shape.
A part of me wanted to get in the car and step on the gas. Living close to the land had a worrisome side. My daughter had found a snake by the azalea bush and I had pulled everyone inside for a week, till I worked up the nerve to put on a pair of hip-waders, grab a baseball bat, and go searching for it.
And then there was the human element. The kindly old neighbor to our left had stopped me at the fence one morning to suggest that I cut down the pine tree. “Don’t you see which way it’s leaning? In a storm it’ll fall down right smack on my garage.” He gave me a sweet smile. “It’s for your own protection, son. I’d be heartbroken if I had to sue you.”
I looked at the tree, which was straight, so thick I couldn’t get my arms around it, and wondered what the local etiquette was in this kind of situation. Not knowing, I fell back on the New York version. “Of course, I’ll countersue.”
“Son, you just lost the best neighbor you ever had.”
Those were the last words he spoke to us. From then on he just glared across the fence, and when he wasn’t there to glare, he left his hounds outside to bark.
I brooded about all this, of course, because all of it seemed to have some mysterious bearing on whether we would survive in this strange new land. Seated on the front porch one night, I was so busy brooding that I almost missed the possum heading into the backyard. It was fat and squat, with an elderly bald head, big shining eyes, and a dirty leer like a men’s room flasher—the wet smile of a creature up to some great, illicit pleasure. He seemed to be panting with the effort of making his short legs go. I watched him disappear into the darkness, horrified.
I slept badly that night. The sound of the bullfrogs was deafening and the sheer darkness through our windows felt awful and wrong. Night in New York was full of light from streetlamps and office buildings, but this darkness was black enough to hide snakes and possums. I waited till dawn, stepped around the spider web, and went out to look at the garden. And that’s when I saw that someone had taken a single juicy bite out of each and every one of our tomatoes. The sense of violation was terrible. They looked like human bites, and I knew instantly that it was our neighbor, exacting his revenge. I also knew what I was going to do about it: kill his dogs.
My wife trooped out with the kids to take a look. “It must be that possum,” she said.
“Hey, look,” said my son, pointing up at the pine tree.
A bird as big as a child was perched in one of the topmost branches. “A blue heron,” I whispered, too awed to raise my voice. “Just like in the bird book.” It had a long neck and hunched shoulders and a fiercely intelligent face reminiscent of my father. We watched as it took flight, heading to the creek beyond our yard. My wife and I hugged; the kids cheered.