"They seem to like tuna-fish best. Steak and ham they find indigestible."
"Hi, Professor!" came the loud voice of Bill Converse."Hello, Syd. How's your crab-grass this morning?"
"It's beginning to show up as usual," said Devore."How's your bouncing betty?" For Converse, despite his noise about his expert gardening, had never eradicated all the soapwort or bouncing betty with which his flowerbeds had been overrun when he bought his house.
"You needn't kid me," said Converse."After all, bouncing betty does have a flower."
"Yeah," said Devore."That miserable weed. You're just lazy." He lowered his voice."How's the tree of Eden doing?"
Converse rolled his eyes."It's as tall as I am. C'mon over and look at it."
THE tree of Eden, over six feet high, was a plant of curious shape. A stubby trunk, about three feet tall and four or five inches thick, ended abruptly in an organ that hung down in front of the trunk and, spraying up and out behind it, a fan of slender stems of finger-thickness, each bearing a double row of small orange leaves.
Vanderhoff had a fleeting impression of a sort of vegetable peacock with its tail spread. The organ in front had a pitcher-shape, rather like that of a terrestrial pitcher-plant, only larger, complete with lid. This vessel was now as big as a bucket. The lid was grown fast to the top of the vessel so it could not be raised.
"The funniest thing," said Converse in the same low voice, "is not only how fast it grows, but that it has such hard wood. Normally you expect anything that grows that fast to be soft and porous."
He bent down one of the stems for the others to feel. It did seem to be made of strong hard wood.
Vanderhoff said: "Maybe these little berries are going to be that wonderful fruit Oakley told us about."
"Uh-huh," said Converse."At this rate, they ought to be ready to eat by September."
Devore said: "Let me suggest that you fence the tree off, or the kids will have eaten all the fruits before we old dodderers get a chance at them."
"Good idea, pal," agreed Converse."Tell you what—when they're ripe, I'll throw a neighborhood party and we'll all eat them."
WILLIAM Converse did fence off his tree, which continued to grow like Jack's beanstalk. The neighborhood's beds of phlox came out in crimson and white. Vanderhoff's bulldog bushes grew larger and more voracious. Penny Vanderhoff got a gashed finger feeding one and had a row with her husband about getting rid of them.
Curiously, neither the bulldog bushes nor the tree of Eden aroused comment. Vanderhoff's picture window was at right angles to the street, and the bushes, planted beneath this window, could not be seen from the street. Vanderhoff had threatened his children with dire penalties if they told outsiders about his marvelous plants, and apparently they had obeyed him.
The tree of Eden was in plain sight, but, while its strange shape caused many to ask Converse about it, they accepted his casual word that "Oh, that's just a South African stein plant."
Sydney Devore's, however, could not be overlooked. First his singing shrubs twittered in imitation of the birds they heard. One, in fact, took to hooting like a screech owl, except that the plant hooted all day instead of at night like a well-regulated owl.
Then Devore taught them to greet him with "Good morning, Mr. Devore" as he came down his walk. When his neighbors asked him what was happening, he made jocular or enigmatic remarks, such as asserting that he had wired the plants for sound. But the plants' behavior was so egregious that the explanations were not believed. As the plants grew, their tonal range and intelligibility increased.
Devore taught them a more elaborate repertory. He hopped up the morning greeting from a mere "Good morning, Mr. Devore!" to such phrases as "All hail, Your Imperial Highness!"
WHEN their greetings were as magniloquent as the most egotistical paranoid could desire, Devore started teaching the bushes to sing Clementine. He had trouble getting them to sing in unison, but he persevered. Evening after evening, the neighborhood gathered to see Devore striding up and down his walk, tapping a little Indian drum and exhorting his plants.
"Just wait," said Penny Vanderhoff to her husband."Any day now, a swarm of F. B. I, men and newspaper reporters will come down on us. They'll take you three to jail and the reporters will write stories that'll cost you your job."
But that was the summer so much happened—the near-war between India and China over Nepal, the death of President Tringstad in an airplane crash, and the return of the Bergerac from Mars—that the newspapers had their attention elsewhere.
At any rate, the mums and gladioli were out and nothing had yet befallen when Bill Converse, after tasting a fruit of his tree of Eden, pronounced it ripe and invited the neighborhood to a Saturday evening party to eat the whole crop.
This was the weekend after Labor Day. On this weekend, the International Council of Language Teachers' Associations met in New York City. Carl Vanderhoff went to New York as a delegate, intending to return Sunday evening.
It also happened that Bill Converse read in Popular Gardening an article about Venerian plants in general and the tree of Eden in particular. Enough of these plants had now been grown by the Northern Regional Research Laboratory of the Department of Agriculture at Peoria, Illinois, to allow some conclusions about them. But Converse, who glanced more and more through his own windows toward the Vanderhoffs' house, said nothing about this even to his gardening friends, Devore and Vanderhoff.
THE day of the Converse party, Penelope Vanderhoff telephoned Mrs. Converse."Mary? I'm so sorry, but I can't come to your party this afternoon."
"Oh," said Mary Converse, "isn't that too bad?"
"My sitter has stood me up and Carl's away, so I have to stay home," Penny explained.
"Aren't they old enough to be left?"
"Well, Dan is eight and Eleanor six, but if you leave them alone they fight, scream, chase each other, break windows, upset furniture and make a shambles of the place. I can't imagine why—I've always let them do as they pleased, like it says in the book—but that's how it is. So I'll have to pass it up."
When Mary Converse told her husband, he said: "Oh. Too bad. I'll take her some of the fruit."
"It'll be all right if that's all you do over there," said Mary Converse.
"Damn it!" shouted Converse."I don't see why I put up with your groundless suspicions!"
The refreshments at the Converse party consisted of martinis and tree of Eden fruits. The guests picked the fruits directly from the tree, from which Converse had removed the fence. The fruits looked like plums, but proved to be without pits. They gave out a delicious, enticing smell that had the guests drooling by the time they received their portions. The taste caused gasps, cries, closed eyes.
The tree now towered twelve feet tall, while the pitcherlike organ in front was as large as a laundry hamper. The lid of the organ had come loose from the rest, except for a hingelike connection in the back. The edges of the lid curled up a little, so one could look down into the empty body of the pitcher.
The spray of slender stems bore hundreds of fruits. Any lesser number would have been quickly consumed. The guests hardly bothered with their cocktails in their rush to gorge themselves on Venerian fruits. When the lower branches of the fan had been stripped, Bill Converse, his face red from martinis, lugged a stepladder from his garage and climbed it to hand down more fruit.
Converse did not eat any himself. When a lull in the demand allowed him, he took a small paper bag from his pocket, unfolded it and dropped a dozen of the fruits into it. Then he quietly came down from the ladder and walked away from the party toward the Vanderhoff house.
There he rang the doorbell. Penelope came. Converse said: "Here's some fruit, Penny."