ArchivedLogs:Thinning

Thinning
Dramatis Personae Jim, Lucien
In Absentia	2014-07-15 '
Location <NYC> Harbor Commons - Garden Plot - Lower East Side
The smell instantly changes here to something greener, herbally sharp and mulchy; paved walkway drifts at angles through raised multi-tiered garden beds, reaching varying elevations of a mere foot above the ground to three feet, each held up by retaining walls of leftover stone from the houses, riddled here and there with spiraling mosaic dragons. While companion flowers of red geranium, fuchsia bee balm, violet petunias, pastel-and-white sweet pea, are sprinkled throughout and alongside each box, it's primarily vegetables; between tall eerie trellis spires of fixed animal bones, clung over with curlicues of lush vine sheets and okra, delicate netting protects lower levels of melon and tomato, kale and tomatoes and a number of other edible foods, with a separate box of sand-loving root vegetables sending up frondy foliage for carrot and onion and garlic. To one side, a compost heap lets of faint shimmers of heat and steam, to the other, a strongly scented bed of myriad herbs, both medicinal and otherwise, flanked on one side by a large healthy swell of coneflower. With a shed nearby housing gardening tools, the whole of it is watered by a network of hidden hosing that gives off faint tickles of mist when in use, ribboned with rainbows, and there are structures in place to suggest the garden can be enclosed in winter months. Under heavy clouds, the city dwells beneath periodic sprinklings of rain and swaths of humidity. Not yet a downpour, the off and on moisture has left the soil soft and giving - for /ripping/ out weeds straight to the taproot. Or well, prying them out carefully with a dandelion digger. Jim's set up /shop/ today out amongst the garden plots, the grass beyond littered with project leavings - a shallow trench dug from the gardens towards the river, lined with a brown tarp, is still waiting to be piled over with rounded stones heaped up in a wheelbarrow. A few stakes still waiting to be pushed into the ground /probably/ awaiting consultation with Jax on actual placement. The man himself is stripped down to undershirt and kilt, crouched down with his shaggy overgrown hair tied back in a messy gray pony tail; arm still in cast and dandelion digger gripped in a sturdy gardening glove, he's patrolling the weeds that have taken advantage of his LOST TERRITORY, and systematically ousting them into a growing pile. Lucien doesn't look exactly dressed for grubbing in the dirt -- then again it's possible he doesn't even look dressed for it when he /is/ tending his own garden. He's in neat pale linen trousers, a crisp green short-sleeved button-down with a grey vest over top, comfortable dock shoes. He drifts into the garden quietly, hands folded neatly behind his back, and there's a faint note of satisfaction to his gaze when he notes Jim working there. Though he doesn't immediately approach, distracted instead by crouching down beside some okra plants. His fingers move kind of on autopilot to the soil to wiggle out a weed by its root but mostly he is eying the plants with consideration. "These seedlings are probably ready to be thinned." "That's not like pulling pork, is it," Jim had glanced up when Lucien initially moved into view, marking the figure he cuts against the river backdrop, but has returned to industry by the time they're within speaking range. "Ah --" Lucien's mouth opens and closes briefly as though not entirely certain how to address this question. Instead he works out a second bit of weed, huffing out a soft breath through his nose. "Very -- similar. In that they both require the use of your hands." Possibly this is where the similarities end. A pair of gardening gloves are tossed underhand, cartwheeling along their empty fingers until they come to rest like broken animals beside Lucien's feet, "Thin away." Shuffling like a crab, Jim moves his territorial war a few feet west to clear out hopeful stragglers that had sprung forth from /yesterday's/ rain. At length: "How's uh," he itches beneath his nose with the back of a wrist, "The kids." "Energetic." Lucien's voice is a little bit dry, but for a moment something uncomfortable tightens at the corners of his eyes before the following mild admission: "Sera is ill. Energetic still, though." He pulls on the gloves, carefully starting to work at the okra seedlings, now, pulling them out to leave one every foot or so. "How is yours?" Eyes tipped to fix Lucien in peripheral, Jim watches the tightness around Lucien's eyes as he roves. Only half the root of his current target comes out, demanding his returned attention, "...Sorry t'hear." Stab-dig-gouge, the hopeful scrap of pig weed is torn loose and tossed to the pile, "Ff. Healthy enough. Taken to the weather." What plants don't like a little humidity. Adding his own dryness with, "Don't think she recognizes me without all my fucking..." He swats the loose leaf of a tomato vine. "But y'know. Baby." He scoots back to collect his hoard of loose plants to cart them off to the compost heap, "They got brains like a bowl of overcooked oatmeal." "It has been a good summer for plants. Greenery is thriving all over New York." Lucien's eyes slip sideways, now, running over Jim briefly with the swatting of the leafe. Scanning his /un/leafy face in brief appraisal. "Like Play-Doh, moreso. Squishy, certainly. But they mold easily." He pulls out another okra stalk, laying the uprooted seedlings in a neat pile on the rock wall. "How have /you/ been?" It doesn't sound entirely like a passing pleasantry, his eyes slipping back again to scrutinize Jim more intently with this question. "Greenery could thrive in an outhouse, too." Jim suggests, default frown remaining fixed as he returns, eyeing Lucien right /back/ with frank-faded blues. Standing, regardless of cast and scars and humid sweat, Jim's human form is considerably hale and grounded on flat feet, free of the ponderous labor flora fibers had knitted him with. One gloved fist sets itself on a hip, and after a moment of narrow-eyed Lucien-study, Jim allows with a short exhale, "Had a hell of a tune-up. Got the lungs of a god damn teenager, now." Or probably... the lungs of a 40-year-old that /hadn't/ smoked his whole life. His voice has certainly regained its New York-sharpness, "Suppose I owe you that. You hadn't cleared up my soup bowl, I wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to /whiffle/ myself on the field." Lucien gives his head a very small shake. "The city is rough on most of its life. Its greenery does /not/ tend to thrive. Save for the heartiest and most ruthless." He continues his work slow and methodical, paring down the plants to space them out neat and even. His eyes have returned to his work, sliding away from Jim and back to the plants. "And how is your head doing /now/?" Remaining standing right where he is, Jim continues to openly watch Lucien. Or maybe just spying on what this /thinning/ process actually entails. His tongue clicks. "Clear as crystal," Then perhaps /demonstrates/ without hesitation in, "What d'you want." He's not even bothering to sound suspicious, his tone is more along the 'how do you take your coffee' direction. Using a toe to nudge a bucket along the ground to swoop up some of Lucien's stray weeds into it. "To hire you," Lucien replies directly, still growing his small pile of uprooted okra a little bit bigger. Jim exhales /hard/. Maybelaugh. He looks over his shoulder, at the river? Towards an upper window of the Workhaus? Then comes back around, tongue prodding into the interior of his cheek and shoots back, "Plants or snooping." Some redistribution of weight in his heels implies an interest his flat tone neglects. In answer to this, Lucien leaves off the okra. He carefully pulls off the gardening gloves to lie them on the wall next to his small collection of okra seedlings, and stands. Slipping his hand into his pocket he pulls out an envelope that has been tucked into a plastic ziploc bag and extends the plastic-sheathed envelope to Jim for his perusal. Plain, hand-addressed to his home, postmarked from Manhattan with a feminine handwritting to the script that addresses it as well as the script in the letter inside. Inside, on a single lined sheet of paper, is written:: Mr. Tessier, I write this at the request of your brother Matthieu. He is alive. Thoughts of you and your siblings sustain him. When I saw him last he was in good health, gaining weight and even getting a little sun. His situation is far from ideal, of course, but he would want you to know that he carries on and thinks of you often. I wish that I could tell you more but for your sake, his sake, and yes, my own, it is better that I end here. But your brother is alive and he loves you, very much. It ends without a signature. Teeth are used, to pinch the material of a work glove so Jim can yank free a cleaner hand, shaking out a residue of palm sweat before pinching the corner of the bag and holding the letter up to view in the light. Little changes from here, save an initial squint that pulls his upper lip back... and then a gradual relaxing of this expression into something less defined. He turns the letter over, looks at the back. Then back at the front. "...hand-written," is what he opts to say, at length. "People still do that?" Lucien spreads his hands in front of him, neatly manicured fingers spreading slightly. He tips one hand out towards the letter. "Someone did." It takes a moment - Jim is rereading the letter, it seems. Or studying the paper, anyway. "Yeah." Seems almost more to... himself. His brows go up, and he takes in a breath, lets it out. "When'd it arrive." "Just today," Lucien answers, sinking back down to pull his gloves back on. He goes back to the last row of okra, eyes fixing once more on his task. "With the rest of the mail." Another long pause, with the thin paper and plastic suspended between them - the older man watching the younger's back as it works. And then, after tapping it into a palm a few thoughtful times, Jim raises the letter higher, pinched between index and middle finger, to hover next to a cheek bone, "I borrow this?" Lucien shakes a stray clod of dirt out of the roots of one of the okra plants, laying it neatly with the rest. "Will you take my case, then?" With paper still hovering alongside his face, Jim looks from Lucien's back, and then down the yard, at the heap of stones that needs to be laid yet in the drainage trench. "...you wanna hang around. Help me lay the rockwork down before it rains." Kind of a question. Kind of an answer. Except after a moment, he answers again, lower. "...then, yeah." Lucien pulls out the last of the overcrowding seedlings, examining the spacing on the plants before dusting his gloves together and standing. His head tips back up, examining the grey sky overhead. He steps away from the bed he has been working on, head tipping in one simple acquiescing nod. "We will beat the rain, I think." Jim turns, bagged paper and all, heading towards his house. Unsticks his tongue from the roof of his mouth in a click, "Let's get you changed into play clothes, then." Jim likely has something better for sweating in. In the mean time, that letter has a safe with its name on it.