On a bright and cloudless Tuesday with the sun shining in the May sky, Conrad H. Moss knelt in his front yard, his fingers brushing the yellow heads of the dandelions the way you touch something you intend to keep. He stayed there longer than was necessary. Then he went inside and found the warning from the town’s city council instructing him to remove the weeds from his lawn or be issued a citation. The ticket would cost him two hundred and fifty dollars, after which the town’s Department of Public Works would eradicate them anyhow. He read the notice calmly, though with frustration and anger working quietly inside him. It was marked WARNING—INITIAL NOTICE at the top, rubber-stamped in red ink. The dandelions growing in his yard were the primary objection; unloved by most but superstars of the weed world, tough, resilient, opportunistic, and very successful.
The following morning Conrad went to Village Hall to appeal the citation. The judge was unyielding.
“I’m sorry Mr. Moss, it’s the law. I cannot bend it for you. The only way to get a different outcome is to get the law changed,” said Judge Mary Thomas.
“We have standards in this community, Connie. We all want to keep our property values up,” said George Filipisi. “I know you understand that.”
Connie had a lump in his throat. He was too upset to make an impassioned plea, and making speeches had never been part of his nature. He left abruptly. He had two weeks to pay the fine.
It was a small town in the heart of the Midwest, situated smack-dab in the flyway where the river flowed into the big lake. It still bore some resemblance to itself a hundred years ago but had not fully escaped the winds of change; cell phones, hip-hop, immigrants, and a cannabis dispensary had all blown in over the years. The shoe factory that had once employed over three hundred and fifty people had closed long ago. The town’s population was about half of what it was in 1965, when school enrollments were at their highest and you could choose between a Ford truck or a shiny new Cadillac on Route 12. The neo-classical movie palace built that same year showed The Sound of Music first, then Bloody Pit of Horror, which caused a three-day demonstration on Main Street before they pulled it. There was talk of burning rock ’n’ roll records, but the whole thing blew over, and a couple of years later there was a rock band at the high school prom.
Conrad had moved to town a few years ago. He had no living family and largely kept to himself. His parents had called him Connie when he was young and had not given him a middle name. Having what some considered a girl’s name and no middle initial seemed like no big deal until people began remarking it was odd, so he adopted the middle initial H in a nod to social conformity. It didn’t stand for anything; it was just to make it look more normal on a business card. His father had often said to him, “Tall trees get cut down, best not to stand out.” Conrad retired now, lived alone in a modest ranch house, used no social media, and spent most nights reading paperback mysteries. He hadn’t voted in a major election for a couple of decades, telling himself his knowledge of politics was too limited to cast a proper vote. He had draped a string of Christmas lights from the roof a few years ago and left them there, lit only from the day after Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day.
Nobody in town knew much about him, or where he came from, or why the dandelions mattered to him the way they did. He would not have known how to explain it, even if asked.Conrad’s neighbor Albert Willis was very attentive to his lawn. He added iron to make the grass as bright green as a fluorescent bulb, applied fish castings and bone meal, and was especially inhospitable to dandelions, which he attacked with poison. He had once had a Japanese-style koi pond until a great blue heron flew over and devoured the fish in a single morning. Al still felt the sting of it, the chaos of wild nature and the wasted expense. He had since dedicated himself entirely to the lawn.
“I don’t get that guy,” Al said to his wife Betty. “Doesn’t that dumb cluck understand the whole neighborhood suffers?”
“Not dumb,” said Betty. “He does the crossword puzzle.”
“He’s still an idiot.”
“He does the New York Times puzzle. Weekend ones.”
“So?”
“The weekend ones are the hardest. Janet told me. He comes to the diner every Sunday, orders a Denver omelet, asks for a pen, and finishes it. By himself.”
“New York Times, that figures. I don’t care about his puzzle. I care about our neighborhood. Dandelions! Next thing you know, vacant lots, squatters, biker bars.”
Conrad’s neighbor to the right was Robert “Bob” James Cobb, Jr. His father Bob Sr. had been the mayor once, a beloved figure and pillar of the community, a tall man with hands the size and tanned surface of a leather baseball catcher’s mitt and a large bushy mustache he would let any child pull. He was the kind of man who ruled his era, rugged and respected, a souvenir replica of Pat Garrett’s Colt revolver displayed proudly on his mantel. It was only discovered after his death that Bob Sr. had kept a collection of women’s dresses, custom-tailored to his measurements, hidden behind a false backing in a closet that opened to a secret chamber with a fireplace and a full-length mirror. They found photographs of him modeling the couture there. His taste was exquisite, it was remarked around town before the whole thing was swept quickly under the carpet and forgotten. There had never been any evidence he had loved anyone other than Mrs. Cobb, with whom he’d produced seven children and by all accounts been happily married for fifty years.
Bob Jr. resembled his mother, small in stature with a nervous disposition. He watched his neighbors closely. Like Al Willis, he worried the dandelions would spread like a runaway pandemic. One evening he went over to Conrad’s house.
“Conrad, I’ll get right to the point. You must exterminate your dandelions.”
“Why?”
“Because. Everyone agrees. They are unsightly, worthless. And they spread,” Bob said, then coughed. He looked flushed and was sweating.
“No.”
“What is your problem?” Bob Jr. shouted, then swooned a bit.
“Do you need to sit down? Water? You don’t look so good,” Conrad said.
“Neither does your lawn. Fix it!” Bob Jr. demanded and left in a huff.
A neighbor named Phil, who kept to himself behind tall hedges, confronted Conrad one afternoon.
“What’s your problem? Just kill the dandelions.”
“I’ll do no such thing.” Connie looked Phil right in the eye.
“You’re ruining the neighborhood.”
“It’s still a free country, isn’t it?”
Phil walked away in disgust, wondering why it had to be free for everyone.
Sunday mornings Conrad always went to the local diner, The Brown Pelican, founded in the 1930s, located by the flats on the eastern shore. The pelican population had once been severely depleted by DDT exposure but had recovered since its ban. During spring migration, brown pelicans could be spotted reliably on the water, flying over the parking lot, or sitting on pilings. Conrad had learned from local fishermen that it was bad to feed them, interfering with their learning to fish for themselves.
Conrad always arrived at eight in the morning with a crossword puzzle and a pencil, sat in the same booth by the register and the first bay window, and ordered a Denver omelet. The Sunday after he received his weed warning he woke up to a plumbing situation. The kitchen sink had been leaking, water pooling in the cabinet below and spilling onto the floor. He spent a couple of hours cleaning up and successfully adjusting the pipes, finally applying some plumber’s putty from the garage. Then he headed to the diner as usual but arrived an hour later than normal.
“Sorry Conrad. I didn’t expect you today when you weren’t here earlier. I figured something must have come up,” said Janet the hostess. “We seated someone in your booth. How about another one?”
Conrad just grunted quietly.
Zora Quintana was the woman in his booth and despite the general hubbub was well within earshot of the hostess and Conrad. She stood up, tall and striking in her summer dress patterned with yellow sunflowers on a black background, her face framed by jet-black hair and bangs with just a touch of gray at the temples. She asked Conrad if he would like to join her. He demurred at first, not wanting to cause any fuss, but finally accepted.
Conrad and Zora hit it off immediately. All of the din in the restaurant seemed to go quiet and visually out of focus except for Zora and her pleasant face and easy laugh. He instantly wanted to spend more time with her, the first time in years he had felt that way about anyone. They agreed to meet again and exchanged contact information.
Janet called Betty that week. She really wanted to go to the cannabis dispensary.
“I didn’t know you smoked weed,” said Betty.
“I don’t. Well, not since high school. And it’s not weed anymore, it’s cannabis and it’s medicinal. It’s good for you, and it’s legal, get with the times Betty!”
They purchased some edibles, opting for a calming but not sleepy effect in little gummi penguins. They felt very pleasant and enjoyed the walk home. Their buzz kicked in as they passed Conrad’s house.
“The colors are so vivid. That blue siding is so pretty. The grass so green,” said Betty.
“His name is Conrad Moss after all,” said Janet.
“Glossy Mossy and his dandelions of doom,” Betty said, giggling.
“Even the dandelions look pretty. They’re so yellow.”
“Why do we hate them again?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Let’s go to my house. I have a jar of marshmallow fluff.”
Conrad visited Zora on Saturday at her home across town, by the cemetery and freight train yard. She was divorced, had never had children, lived alone, and kept an avid garden full of tomatoes, red peppers, string beans, yarrow, butterfly weed, and zinnias, complete with a little sign declaring it a certified butterfly haven.
“You have some dandelions,” Conrad stated accurately.
“I get some, but I don’t worry about it. I replaced most of the lawn with native grasses and wildflowers, so I let it grow. Do they bother you?”
“Oh no. Dandelions have benefits. Most people don’t think so, but they do. Their deep roots help loosen heavy clay or overly compacted soil. They attract pollinators and butterflies.”
“I guess they fit in here,” said Zora.
Conrad was beginning to feel like he fit in there too.
The following week they visited a quaint town an hour away, full of old Victorian homes converted into antique stores. Trying to figure out what some of the old things were was a source of amusement. Zora correctly identified a bee smoker that had stupefied Conrad. He was able to explain to her an antiquated mechanical rotating apple
peeler.
Outside one store a young person was seated at a table full of photos and petitions. Their blonde hair was shaved on one side of their head but grown long on the other, falling across their forehead and eyes. They wore a man’s white dress shirt and tie, and jeans.
“Are you a meat eater?” they asked Conrad.
“Yes.”
“Meat is murder. Our planet is dying from cattle raised for slaughter.” They were suddenly a whirling dervish of statistics, photos, pamphlets, and exhortations.
Conrad listened carefully. “Thank you for the education. I myself no longer pour poison over my property to kill dandelions. I will consider what you have said.”
“I’m not a lady,” they said, when Conrad had addressed them.
“I am sorry, my mistake—”
“Not a man either. They is my pronoun. Take this pamphlet. Eat plants not critters.”
“She’s non-binary, gender fluid,” said Zora quietly.
“They,” Conrad corrected himself, catching on. He thought, as they walked away, of Bob Sr.’s secret chamber, the dresses hanging behind the false wall, the photographs of a man the town had known completely and not at all. He thought about surfaces and what lay beneath them. He had been thinking about that for years.
Zora cooked them arroz con gandules and corn tamales with chicken for dinner. Conrad had not eaten anything so delicious for years. She explained how in her village in Puerto Rico they would go outside, slaughter a chicken, then pluck and cook it.
“I am a killer,” she said. “I have blood on these hands. I often think if meat didn’t come in little plastic containers in America, if you had to kill it yourself, there’d be a lot more vegans.”
“You may be right. I’ve never killed anything more than a fly,” replied Conrad.
“I guess that’s murder too. La verdad es la verdad.”
They spoke for hours.
Later, Zora led Conrad to her bedroom. She pulled off his shirt and saw the tattoo on his stomach: a small dandelion flower and its scientific name, Taraxacum officinale.
“You really do like them. What’s that about?” asked Zora.
“You’ve got to applaud their ability to succeed, to proliferate. A single plant can produce up to two thousand seeds per season. They’re completely edible, all parts. I don’t know why people don’t eat them more.”
“Your neighbors prefer plant contraception,” Zora said.
“And plant abortion.”
“Are they native plants?”
“Your basic dandelion was brought over from Europe.”
“Like religious zealots,” said Zora. “And slavery. Original sin.”
“Why the hatred anyway?” Conrad asked, staring deeply into Zora’s eyes as if they were crystal balls and she an oracle about to issue a solemn prophecy.
They made love for the first time. And the second time.
Sunday morning Conrad and Zora went to the diner together.
“Oh, didn’t you hear?” said their waitress Anita. “Bob Cobb Jr. died. Friday night. Covid. Never got the shots.”
“He hated the vaccine,” said Zora. “He wouldn’t wear a mask and was vehemently against the mandate. He got in a fist fight at the farmer’s market last year. Live free or die and all that.”
Conrad thought it was always sad to hear of someone’s sudden and unexpected passing, even that of a meddling hypocrite. He ordered a cherry pie a la mode and was quiet for a while.
“Zora,” he said at last. “Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. I want to visit a cemetery. It’s a three-hour drive. I’d like you to come with me.”
Conrad picked up Zora the next morning and they drove to Sacred Meadows Cemetery, located just outside the city where Conrad was born and lived until it was too painful for him to remain. He led her to the grave of his mother, Althea Moss, and shared some details about her, and about his father buried adjacent to her.
After a while, he led Zora to the grave of Gloria Moss née Showalter. She and Conrad had been married for twenty-three years before the cancer consumed her. Lymphoma. He lovingly cleaned away some grass and leaves from the headstone.
“My wife. I should have told you. There’s one more.”
They approached a headstone that read: Ginger May Moss. 1987–1999. Beloved daughter.
“It was leukemia. First she lost a lot of weight, then her hair, then all of her blood cells.”
He spoke to Ginger about various small things, then introduced Zora. He told her about the lawn, the ticket, the neighbors, the blanket of vivid yellow blooms she had loved so much.
“Look,” he said, rubbing the dandelions he had brought from Zora’s garden across his palms until they turned yellow. “Like you used to. They want me to poison them, but I won’t. Enough poison. Enough.”
He laid the dandelion and milkweed blooms upon her grave.
“I first stopped using the lawn chemicals when she got sick and just let the dandelions grow. She loved them. Eventually I left. I couldn’t live there anymore. Now they want me to…and I can’t. It feels like losing her again.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Zora as she embraced him.
He stood there a long time. “I don’t think I’m very political. Just emotional. Or rational. I don’t know the difference anymore.”
Zora gently put her finger on his lips.
“You’re grieving still for them. Hurting. And that’s understandable. You’re trying to understand, but maybe it’s not about understanding everything.”
“Ignorance is bliss?”
“Not that, no. I don’t know how a car engine works, but I know how to drive.”
Conrad was silent. He paced up and back and around Ginger’s grave.
“Ok,” he said finally. “Where do we go from here?”
“How about for ice cream?” Zora replied.
“You like Rocky Road?”
“I love it. Bring it on.”
On the drive back, with the windows down and the May air moving through the car, Conrad rested his hand out the window the. way he had as a child, letting the warm current push against his palm. The fields along the highway were dotted yellow. He watched them pass, mile after mile, undeterred and everywhere, and said nothing.
Zora drove.
She knew the way.
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Dean K. Engel writes poetry, short stories, and plays, including one staged by a community theatre in Chicago. His work has appeared in Secant Publishing, Oprelle Publications, Jade & Compass, Wingless Dreamer, and Beyond Words Literary Magazine, among others. An avid birder, gardener, and two-time cancer survivor, he brings to his writing a sustained interest in the natural world and our place within it.