Dead & Buried by Howard Engel Page A

suppress some startling facts about the procreation of trilliums so that the province wouldn’t have to find another official emblem for its logos. So they gave me a gong. I used it to crack nuts with, like Tom Canty in The Prince and the Pauper.
    For a minute or two we chatted away, recalling old friends and trying to reconcile our present faces with the younger versions in our memories. “It’s a nice place you’ve got here, Eric,” I said at last, as an exit ramp from memory lane. Nothing very bright as an observation, but it did deal with the here and now.
    “This, Benny, is not a place, it’s a herbarium. Come in and roll up in an old newspaper.” I followed Eric through rows of cabinets taller than both of us. The dark, institutional green killed much of the light coming into the room from the generous windows along one wall. Between the back-to-back cabinets, a few wooden desks were scattered, all of them stacked high with drying plants between layers of newspaper showing various tints of yellow. “This department should double as a periodical archives, you know, Benny. Look at this.” He picked up a folded copy of a Toronto paper and read the headline: JOHNSON REFUSES TO SEEK ANOTHER TERM . I’m sure I’ve got one with Roosevelt going for a fourth term around here somewhere.” Eric found his desk. Like the others, it was cluttered and dusty. It must be the last desk on earth with a well in it for hiding a typewriter. I was amazed that the university would allow such ancient equipment into the science departments. It didn’t seem so odd that I might find it in the humanities departments.
    “I’m working on a case, Eric,” I began, trying to remember that my time was being paid for. Eric nodded as he took off his tinted glasses and began cleaning them with a tissue from his pocket. His strawlike hair, which made him a wonderful Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night at the Collegiate when we were in grade twelve, was looking pale and thin. It was that sort of blond that goes grey without anybody noticing. I took the envelope with my electric bill and poured out the contents into a small pile on a clear spot on Eric’s desk. I hoped I wasn’tgoing to ruin years of research by bringing the pods and leaves from Jack’s cuffs to the herbarium. For all I knew, this might have been a closed environment. Eric’s mouth frowned slightly as he examined the mess I’d made on his desk. He poked about at the pods with a yellow pencil with a pink Ruby Tip eraser on the end.
    “Hesperis,” he said.
    “What?”
    “Hesperis matronalis to be exact.”
    “And once again in English, Eric. What do you know about it, and where is it found?” Eric smiled over the seed pods, prodded them again and lifted up a silvery membrane with tiny brown seeds caught in the fine fabric of the centre section of the beanlike pods.
    “That’s the septum,” he said, “as in your nose and mine.” He touched the membrane gently. “Hesperis is also known as Dame’s Rocket. It’s a member of the mustard family. The septum’s the give-away; no native Ontario plant has one.”
    “Where does it come from, if it’s not from here?”
    “Oh, it’s been here for a long time. Like starlings, Benny, they arrive here and multiply.”
    “Are you saying it’s a weed, Eric?”
    “Not usually. It’s usually an ornamental plant found in gardens, but it sometimes escapes, and if it finds an agreeable habitat, Dame’s Rocket does very well.” Eric pushed the rubber-tipped end of his pencil into his ear and turned it absent-mindedly. “I’ve seen them at building sites and by streams. Never heard a wild one complain.Now, judging from this other stuff here, the things that aren’t from Hesperis, I’d say that this one was wild and not cultivated.”
    “How can you tell?” With Eric, I could never be sure when he was pulling my leg.
    “Trust me, Benny. Here are wild-grass fragments, a bit of burdock, hummm, goldenrod, ragweed. No,