A Year Gone By

I know that a few of you have wondered whatever happened to Mr. Beachy. It's been one of those years that I hesitated telling you because for a while it all seemed so tragic. I hardly knew how to begin telling the story, and I was afraid if I started the words would spill out uncontrollably. It felt better to pretend it hadn't happened.

But Christmas morning I woke up to a glorious turn of events and now I must tell the story beginning at the beginning.

You may remember that Mr. Beachy took his daughter, Peaches, and her daughter, Soon, to China for a visit with relatives and friends. He enjoyed showing off his grandchild. Peaches enjoyed see her ancestors' home. She was so young when they left China that she had only vague memories of her own grandparents' gardens. They were excited to tell me about the trip and how much things had changed in China over the years. I was very happy to have them back. We spent evenings exchanging stories of our time apart, and then began to pour over seed catalogs to plan my summer garden. Mr. Beachy had many new ideas he wanted to try out.

It was one of those early days at the beginning of spring when the ground is soft enough to work and not too saturated with rain. Mr. Beachy started digging. Now I'm not sure what was going through his mind, but the more he dug, the more he wanted to dig. He would take only short breaks for water and he wouldn't let me come outside. He said it would be better if I waited to see the results and he did not want me interfering with his garden ideas. Well, I wasn't quite sure what his plan was and I had a squirmy feeling it wasn't something that was going to match my own garden plan. But I let him be because it was just so nice to have the family back home again.

What started off as a very pleasant activity soon turned into what Fireling would call a full blown manic episode. Mr. Beachy would dash into the house tracking dirt into the kitchen, drink a glass of water, then be off again. The first night he came in, cleaned up, and I think had a good night's sleep. But he was up and at 'em early the next morning. I would call out to the backyard to remind him to take a break and sometimes I had to call out 2 or 3 times to get him to come in. I had a hunch that he was up to something I'd rather not know about. And at one point I started to go out to take him some water. As soon as he heard the back door creak he was at the door with a delirious scowl on his face. "No sir. You no come out yet. Too dangerous for lady. You will be surprised and happy happy."

It occurred to me that he was staying outside digging in the garden later and later each evening and getting up earlier and earlier. At some point I realized that he had dug straight through the night and was so consumed with the garden that he hadn't even changed his clothes. Peaches agreed we had to take some action here. Apparently she had no idea what he was up to either. One night as he came in covered in mud and tracking it all across the kitchen to the sink to fill his water bottle, we both pounced on him and told him he had to take a shower and relinquish his clothes until they were washed. I was afraid all that mud would clog my drains! And I was just glad that Soon was asleep and didn't witness this confrontation.

While Mr. Beachy was in the shower, Peaches and I took the flashlight and headed outdoors to see what he'd been up to. We figured since we had taken his clothes he wouldn't leave the bathroom and be able to catch us spoiling his surprise. Well, we were surprised. No doubt about it. What we found was a hole about 15 feet in diameter and so deep the flashlight couldn't shine on the bottom. All the displaced dirt was heaped in a pile that covered the back driveway and was so huge that I could barely see the tip of the fir tree. I wanted to cry. For Peaches sake I didn't. I remember thinking it was a good thing we were looking at the hole in the ground at night because we really weren't able to see very well.

Quickly Peaches and I devised a plan of action. She would start cooking Mr. Beachy's favorite meal and I would get down the bottle of whiskey. We pushed a table in front of the backdoor and set it with candle light for a nice meal. We heard the shower go off and quickly passed clean pajamas through the door. We knew he wouldn't wear pajamas while working in the garden. There was quite a bit of grumbling coming from the bathroom, but we ignored it. He'd have to put on these clothes to come out. When he did, we grabbed a chair and started serving. The whiskey, then the food, then more whiskey. We feigned excitement and anticipation as we begged him to tell us how the garden was coming along. He finally relaxed and gave in.

And the plan he had! There was now no going back on it. He was determined. He had enjoyed the trip to China so much and had been impressed by their new technology and especially their bullet trains. He felt that Soon should grow up in China among her relatives and absorb the culture of her people. But he knew he would miss Missy Peachy and Soon far too much to be so far away. And he also knew that his heart was here working in my garden. So he had devised a plan to dig to China and once there, have the authorities install a vertical bullet train that could carry him back and forth at a very rapid pace. Why he could garden here in the morning and help Soon with her homework in China, then be back by bedtime. "Much work now delivers great prize in end."

Mr. Beachy had lost his mind.

We were at a loss to know how to handle this situation. He was so happy. The warm meal and 3 glassed of whiskey didn't slow him down. He fell asleep in the chair, but I heard him before the crack of dawn finding his overalls and boots and heading out to the hole. Well, we weren't allowed to call it a hole. We had to speak of it as "The Esteemed Tunnel Passage to Asia" or the ETPA for short.

He wasn't going to stop. He was convinced he could do it. He told me it wasn't something he undertook on an impulse; the dig had been brewing for quite some time and furthermore, he had researched the entire geography and technology of the plan before that first spring morning when he picked up the shovel. Peaches decided to take Soon and travel to China to wait for Mr. Beachy on the other end. I never had the heart to tell her I didn't think this was going to work. I spent days sitting inside and wishing I knew how to stop this craziness. Then I gave up. I started working in the front yard and side yard and only ventured to the back occasionally.

Sometimes Mr. Beachy would pack a lunch and be gone for days. It was a wonder that the shovel never broke. Then one day I went out and the hole had caved in. It took hours, but I finally reached Peaches by phone to tell her about it. We were both sure that Mr. Beachy had died in an avalanche of rocks and soil somewhere near the center of the earth. It was many days before I could quit crying and every time Peaches and I talked by phone she would be sobbing so much she'd forget to speak English.

You can see why I couldn't write about poor Mr. Beachy's demise. After a while I knew he wasn't coming back. And once it started raining, the hole became a huge muddy mess. I thought about it for a long time, then finally called a landscaping crew to come fill the hole in. By this time the dirt was piled so high that I felt like my house was surrounded by mountains. No way could I see my neighbors. And I was afraid the rain would cause a slide that would block the alley. That would involve the City coming out with a complaint and a fine. So I hired this crew and tried my best to think of Mr. Beachy dying a happy death fulfilling his dream.

After a while Peaches fell in love with a man who owns a tea plantation in the higher altitude outside the city. His name is Ahhavee Anplums. That's how I think it's spelled. It sounds like "Harvey" when Peaches talks about him. The wedding was lovely. She sent pictures. She knew her father would be pleased that she and Soon had a place secure in the world surrounded by beautiful gardens and the aroma of tender tea leaves. All the relatives approved. Now instead of Peachy Beachy, her name is Peaches Anplums. And Soon attends a little school nearby with all the children whose parents worked on the plantation.

One day in mid November I received a call from Peaches. The line was so crackly and she was talking so quickly that I could barely make out what she was saying. At first I thought she was calling to say she was pregnant. When I finally got her to slow down, she told the most amazing story. Apparently, unbeknown to either of us, Mr. Beachy had not died in that avalanche. It had been very dangerous, but he had escaped the rain of heavy boulders and been able to continue digging. He wasn't able to eat for ages and became quite weak, but there was enough spring water trickling down in little streams to keep him from dehydration. He pushed on and continued digging. At one point he heard voices and thought he was a goner and almost gave up. But it turned out that people on the other side of the soil heard vibrations from his shovel and started digging from their end to find out what was making the noise. With their help he emerged into the fresh morning air after days and weeks underground. He must have been a sight.

The people who found him were very kind. They showed him the best of hospitality. They took him immediately into their home. Mr. Beachy seldom has trouble with speech, but he realized right away that the dialect being spoken was a little tricky for him to make communication easy. It turns out that his geographical calculations were off by several thousand miles and he had ended up in Mongolia. His new friends provided him with warm clothes. (He said his old ones were so soiled that they wouldn't even burn when they were thrown into the fire. They just melted like a plastic bag and left a hard piece of black goo sitting in the pit.) The sunlight reflecting off the vast terrain of snow covered plains was very hard on his adjusting eyes. A cousin was sent to buy sunglasses at the nearest store. Turns out the store was in a village two weeks travel away. So Mr. Beachy enjoyed a much needed month of rest in the shelter of his finders home.

The cousin was instructed to call Peaches from the village store, but once again the dialect was a barrier and Peaches couldn't understand at all what was being said. So it was mid-November when Mr. Beachy showed up on Peaches' doorstep unannounced. He had traveled on horseback, scooter, rail, and bus to finally reach the ancestors' home place. Quite a parade of relatives and neighbors escorted him from the family home to the tea plantation. The children were just leaving school at the bottom of the hill when the group leading the traveller approached. Soon recognised her grandfather immediately. She was bubbling with excitement and wearing out her grandpa's ears as she led him to meet her new father and reunite with his beloved daughter. Peaches began sobbing again as she told the story.

Later that week Mr. Beachy called me. We had a better connection. He asked if he could come again to live at my house. He sheepishly promised to never dig a big hole like that again and to work together planning the garden. When I said yes, he said he knew that all would work out in the end. And Christmas morning he arrived, a brand new shovel wrapped as a gift for me. You know, he won't be able to take a bullet train to see his family, but I'm sure he'll find a way to visit and he seems so very happy right now asleep in the living room chair with Waylon on his lap.