Victory in Deceit

Victory in Deceit 

by Graham Swanson

The first memory I have is the sight of a dozen greenhouses behind our lovely cabin home back in the 

 mountains of shattered opal tables. A heavy tarp over each one sneezed the wind. I must’ve been two 

years old when I first asked father and older brother why there were so many masked caretakers 

moving between the tarps. Older Brother looked at Father with fear in his eyes, and Father leaned 

down to take my shoulder. He pointed across the slopes and over the grass at the greenhouses, and

 told me, “We are tomato growers, my son. They are helping me because it's too cold for tomatoes to 

grow by themselves. So I’ve brought many here. Yes or no, do their suits frighten you?”

“Yes, father. I don’t like them.”

The caretakers looked like Beekeepers. Their shadows lurched behind the transparent flaps. Heavy hoods covered their heads and shoulders, and black mesh and breathing tubes disguised their faces. When my father spoke to them, they bowed like the dragon heads on a king’s throne. Silver gripped pistols hung from the same spots on their bodies as I kept my lunchbox.

“They are not human, my son. They are from the world of magic where the awake meet the sleeping. They are to be feared, but they are also my friends and they listen to me, so they won’t hurt us. But my power has its limits, and you must never go to the greenhouses. You must never bother them.”

In all my years searching for this place where the sleeping dreamers meet the awoken disappointment, I never once smelled a tomato or saw one leaving the greenhouse. The caretakers hauled wheel barrels, carried gas tanks, and drove trucks, but not one time did I see their suits stained with the red blood of a tomato seed. I didn’t see a tomato vine until years later while visiting the city of frost and rain. There in the cracked sidewalks along towers lost in the murky clouds, between crumbling buildings covered in plywood, in the spot against the stoop of a brothel where the dogs pissed, I saw a green vine with little leaves and tiny buds. Then a storm brought more rain than ever before and washed it away.

One night a strange truck stopped in front of our home. Its engine tapped the windows as its huge beams flooded our rooms with light. Father stumbled out bleeding from his neck and bicep. He stormed into the house and hurled his clothes to the floor. Glistening crimson pools soaked each garment.

In the bathroom, I heard Father scream as Mother ushered my siblings back. I saw Father through the razor light in the darkness splash rubbing alcohol into his foaming wounds. He swore booming vengeance and filled the house with the chatter of curses. His fist banged the walls and broke mirrors. “Your father has been in an accident and can’t afford a doctor,” she told us as she pushed us back into the dark of our bedrooms. Strange men in black suits stood guard around him, holding heavy machine guns, they kept guard at the windows at door.

Later just as I neared my 12^th birthday a soaring wind swept the house. The blades of a helicopter flew overhead. Police sirens filled the air as a dozen or more cars appeared. In the chaos Mother pulled me away from the window as Father locked himself in the vault. The police tore down the front door.

With armor and flashlights, they searched every hall and room until they found my oldest brother hiding in the bathroom. They dragged him away in the night and took him into the sky on the helicopter, and I haven’t seen him since. Sometimes I wonder what happened or if it just became another secret, but mostly I blamed Father who hid. To this day I have nightmares about my brother leaving the house and entering the forbidden greenhouses never to return.

I asked Mother and Father but they never explained to me what happened. We all loved him, but he must’ve done something to upset the police, yet they remained silent and pretended the entire incident never occurred. As his birthdays came and went, my mother and father, found solace sitting in the bedroom with needles in their arms. They told me that my oldest brother never even existed. So I declared to them that I’d leave to a foreign land and never see them again.

With the moon full and bright, I left the comforts of home and ventured beyond the gate of fences around the greenhouses. I followed the secret ways around he showed me to see if he left any evidence behind. The places he and I spent time together now crumbled and sank into cracks in the mountain. Dead trees, fallen forts, rusted cars. Even the tape around the greenhouses blew in the wind as the tarps ripped and animals scampered out.

Before I lifted the tarp to step inside I heard the heavy breathing of a caretaker. He stood at the threshold waiting for me with a filter in his mouth and a net of vines and webs over his face. He shooed me away but I didn't move, so he removed his helmet and mask. He was the oldest man I’d ever seen, balding, missing teeth, so shy that he only looked at my shoes. Instead of asking me to leave, he asked me if I needed a ride back home.

I stole one of my brother's guns out of his room and shot the caretaker with it. Then I went inside the greenhouse while he bled on the cold ground. Pale lights kept watery pipes warm and pollen gas floated in the air. In glass boxes of purple soil and black liquid huge roots curled into tight rocks. I followed the roots from greenhouse to greenhouse as the caretaker screamed at me to return.

Each Greenhouse nurtured another set of roots thick as a drainage duct. I heard something like crying, so I continued into the darkness, running from ruined to ruined tarp. Strange men rose from the dirt and lurched forward. They all asked if my father had returned. The living material in the glass boxes overgrew and spilled out to the floor, planted sprouts in the rock and squeezed until water pooled from plates of slate.

In the heart of the greenhouses, a wicked tree emerged from a wreath of blue thorns. It held several faces and echoed with the vibrations of a thousand furious ghosts. When I touched it, I lost my hearing and sight in one eye. I never forgot how important this discovery was to me. Never again did I look into the greenhouses, because I cut off water to the entire system, broke every pipe, and shot all the wrinkly caretakers.

Once the tree died, I saw a woman and her little girl crying on the beach. Around them lay wreckage that sprawled out for miles. I went down to meet them, and they told me about the great battle that happened here years ago, around the same time as my brother was taken. They said they searched for the swords of their lost loved ones. I offered help but I never had any intention.

I learned wisdom from the dead caretakers, and from the withering tree of bad dreams that in deceit therein lies victory. In its dying gasp in my blindness, I saw empires greater than the ones my father imagined, and though most people wouldn't like it, I’d be successful in my ambitions. I’d use human meat to flow the nerves of my corporation, as I used the blood they spill to funnel fuel to a rocket. The moon shined bright for me that night, and I knew my ship could reach the stars. Earth receded into the memory banks of the age as mankind migrated as it always has to new worlds beyond the stars, and I was destined to lead them to this glorious fate.

As the woman and her child mourned over the rusted armor and broken swords bobbing in the waves, I turned over sheet metal and crashed drones. Broken factory machines, car parts, cash registers, amid broken masts, salt-soaked doors, and blades of broken glass. As they looked over the waves beating against the hauls of enemy ships flying black flags towards some distant shore, I took every sword for myself and fled without them noticing.