Jane Hanna's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

By morning the berry bush had lost more leaves. The alyssum flats sagged. Jane carried a jug of water up three flights and poured it slow along the beds, but one jug was nothing against a whole roof. She would be climbing those stairs every day for the rest of the season, and the plants would still die between her visits. She went down to the custodial office. Joe was at his desk with a mug and a stack of work orders. He looked up when she came in. "There's no water line up there," she said. "I can't hand-carry it forever." Joe scratched his beard. "There's a hose. Long green one. I used to drag it up when the garden was mine." He frowned at the wall. "Haven't seen it in years. Somewhere in the building. Boiler room, maybe. Or the shed off the loading dock. Could be behind the mop closet on two." He shrugged. "It's here. Just find it." Jane checked the boiler room first. Nothing but the empty pot shelves. She checked the loading shed. Rakes, salt, no hose. She checked the mop closet on the second floor and the one on three. By lunch her back hurt and she had opened every door she had a key for. She went up to the roof and sat against the low wall. The pots on their sides still held their small crowds. Ants moved along the rim of the cracked one. A jumper sat on the berry bush. A fat striped bee bumbled over the borage and settled. Jane watched the bee. Then she leaned forward. "I need help," she said. She felt foolish saying it out loud to a bug. She said it anyway. "There's a hose in this building. Green. Coiled. I can't find it. You can go where I can't." The bee lifted off the borage. Two more came up from the alyssum. A third rose from behind a pot. They circled once over her head and dropped over the edge of the roof. Jane stood at the wall and watched them go. They cut around the corner of the building, low and fast, and disappeared. She waited. Ten minutes. Twenty. She was about to give up when one bee came back and hovered in front of her face, then swung toward the stairwell door. She followed. Down three flights. Past her own supply cart. Around behind the dumpster corral at the back of the lot, where a lean-to she had never opened leaned against the fence. The bee bumped the latch. Jane opened the door. A coil of green hose sat on the floor under a mound of trash — old worksheets, a chewed pencil, a paper cup. The brass nozzle poked out at the bottom, bright and clean. She pulled it free. It was long enough. The spigot on the side of the building was six feet away. The garden would drink tonight.