Ruthie’s Garden

James B. Kerr’s “Ruthie’s Garden” was a runner-up in the 2025 Great American Fiction Contest. Are you a writer with a great short story? You can enter our annual short story contest online!

The two men stood knee-deep in the foaming green surf, tending their rods. They wore hats and polarized glasses, though the sun was behind them and still low in the sky. It was early April and cool and only a few other people were out on the beach searching for conch shells left behind by the tide. One of the men was younger than the other. He had a chair set up on the beach and he would leave his rig occasionally to go sit and look at his phone. The older man, wearing a loose muslin shirt that fluttered in the breeze, stood unmoving, his upper body leaning into the wind like a weathered piling.

The younger man went off for a few minutes and came back, pussyfooting over the wet sand to keep from cutting his feet on the broken shells.

“Any hits?” he called over the wash of the surf.

“Not since the last one I caught. It’s gone dead.”

“It’s been dead for me since I got out here. Just two jack and neither one a keeper. How many do you have?”

“Three pompano and two drum in the cooler.”

The younger man shook his head. “Damn. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

“You got here too late. The fishing’s best at first light when the tide’s in.”

“It doesn’t matter how early I get out here — you always seem to end up with more in the cooler.”

“There are just as many fish in front of you as there are in front of me.”

“So what’s the secret then? We’re both bait fishing. Same rig, same bait.”

The older man pulled down his sunglasses to rub the sand out of his eyes. His face was dark and deeply grooved, like a dry lake bottom scorched by the sun.

“It’s all in the presentation,” he said with a wry grin. “You have to make them want to eat even if they’re not hungry.”

The young man — his name was Greg and he was the man’s nephew — lifted his rod from the holder and reeled in to check his rig. The bait was still on the hook, but he slipped on a fresh shrimp anyway and cast back out beyond the breakers. In the distance, a single white cloud rode the Gulf horizon like a ship.

“Say, Uncle Jack,” he said, “I want to thank you again for getting me in at Rayco. It’s huge for Becky and me with a kid on the way.”

Jack thought of Alice wasting away in the back room of the bayside shanty, Laurie refusing to leave her side. Today he would tell her. He would bring her the pompano, her favorite, and then he would tell her. He couldn’t wait any longer.

“How’s the job going so far?” he asked his nephew.

Greg gave a shrug. “It’s good. Lots to learn. That Larry is a real ball buster, though.”

“He’s got to be a ball buster. If he doesn’t make his numbers, he’s out on his ear and the whole team with him.”

His nephew slipped a blue mouthpiece from his pocket, drew on it, and exhaled a puff of mist into the air. Jack didn’t get this whole vaping thing. But then, he never got smoking cigarettes either. Pay all that money for a product that’s going to kill you one day. What sense does that make?

“What territory did they give you?” he asked.

“They got me working with Gerry Radcliffe to cover the lower Panhandle. I’m on the road a lot.”

“That’s a hot area. Lots of building going on. You make your first sale yet?”

“Nah, it’s been really slow. Gerry says the interest rates being so high are spooking people. Plus, it being an election year and all. He says builders always get nervous in an election year.”

“That’s bullshit,” Jack replied.

Greg turned to his uncle, surprised. “What?”

“It’s just excuses. There’s always a reason for people not to buy. You have to get out there and convince them they’re up shit’s creek without a new Cat loader. It’s about creating your own demand.”

His nephew took this in while puffing on his vape. For a long while he stared out at his line connected taut to the sea like a guidewire. Then he glanced down at his watch.

“Shit, I need to get going. We have our Monday morning sales call in half an hour.”

Jack watched him gather his things. He wanted to tell his nephew that if he wanted to get anywhere in that company, he shouldn’t be out here fishing. He should have been in the office an hour ago — doing research, making calls, setting up visits. There was a time and a place for fishing and it wasn’t when you’re twenty-six years old and just starting out. Maybe on a Sunday when the wife was at church, or when you’re taking out a customer on a guided fishing trip to grease the wheels of a deal you’re working. Otherwise, wait until you’re old and retired and your knees hurt.

But it wasn’t his place to tell him this. The kid would find out the hard way, and after he’d been hit in the head enough times by tough bastards who won’t put up with slackers, he’d realize he wasn’t made out for sales and get a desk job where he could work nine-to-five and have his precious play time.

“You fishing again tomorrow, Uncle Jack?” Greg asked when he’d packed his beach cart.

“If these old knees of mine aren’t hurting too much.”

“All right, I’ll try to get here earlier — if I can get my ass out of bed!” He laughed, loose and breezy like a gull’s cry, then hurried away, the cart bouncing behind him. It was the first time all morning the kid had his ass in gear.

* * *

Jack fished for another forty-five minutes, catching two more pompano. He filleted the fish down at the jetty, drawing a crowd of noisy seagulls squabbling over the fish heads and entrails.

“Damn buzzards,” he muttered. “Why not catch your own breakfast sometime, eh?”

It was a short walk home through the beachfront garden in front of the tower complex where he lived. The garden was the brainchild of Jack’s late wife. She always loved sitting at this spot under the palm trees watching the sunset, and when Jack retired and they moved down here full-time, she organized the condo association to create a public space with benches and flowering succulents and winding rock-lined paths that led to cozy spots where you could sit and watch the birds. Everything in the garden had been funded by the residents, who continued to maintain it. The best part, in Jack’s mind, was how quiet the place was. Because it was tucked into a secluded corner of the beach by the jetty, the garden didn’t get a lot of foot traffic. Sometimes at night he would slip out here to sit in the darkness and listen to the ocean.

Now he paused by the bench and read the placard —

With gratitude to Jack and Ruth Campbell,  whose generosity made this garden possible.

A year after the placard was put up, she was gone, and then a second one went up —

To Ruth Campbell, “Nurse Ruthie,” Who left us all too soon. RIP, our Florence Nightingale. 4/10/49 – 2/3/11 – The nurse team at Palms Hospital

It struck him all at once that today was her birthday. How could he have forgotten? He would get her some flowers later as he did every year on her birthday. Stick them in the ground where her ashes had been scattered according to her wishes.

“Happy birthday, Ruthie,” he spoke to the ground. “I went fishing with my brother’s boy again this morning. I’m doing what I can to help him out, though if he’s as good at selling as he is at fishing, I fear he’s got a long road ahead of him. Me, I caught a few and now I’m going to go sit with poor Alice and give Laurie a break. I’m going to talk with her today like you asked me to. I know it’s taken me a long time, but it’s a hard thing. Hard for me, at least. What can I say, Ruthie? I’m a weak man. You were a saint to stick with me. You should be the one who’s still here, not me. It makes no goddamn …”

He stopped, aware that he was talking to himself. It was something he found himself doing more and more these days. Be careful, Jack, or they’ll put you away somewhere and throw away the key.

Back in his condo on the first floor of the towers, he ran the shower as hot as he could stand and scrubbed away the sand and salt and the smell of fish on his hands. Afterward, he studied his naked body in the full-length mirror: his leathery, age-spotted face; his sagging belly like a woman’s abdomen after giving birth; the sad, shrunken tangle of his genitals that had produced so little over seventy-nine years of living. He’d been careful all his life to take care of himself: exercise four or five days a week, watch what he ate, not drink too much, and never, ever touch a cigarette or a cigar. And where had it gotten him? His younger brother, gone. Ruthie, gone. Most of his old friends and work buddies, gone. Alice soon to go to the grave. What good was it to live to be old and still be able to fish and golf and travel when you had no one to do it with?

He packed the fish filets in ice, got in his BMW, and drove across the causeway bridge into the mainland. The Leffrings lived in a tiny two-bed, one-bath bungalow off Route 19 in Bayview. Phil had bought the bungalow as a second home, but he and Alice loved the area so much, they ended up selling their house in New Jersey and moving down there. After years of vacationing with their friends in St. Pete’s, Jack and Ruth bought into the towers that were being built along Sunset Beach. It had always been Phil’s plan one day to tear down the bungalow and build something bigger, but he never got around to it because of his financial problems. When he was laid off and filed for bankruptcy, Jack and Ruth bought the bungalow and rented it back to them.

As Jack pulled into the weed-choked driveway, he noted the poor condition of the bungalow, the sagging front porch, the roof that needed replacing. Yet for all that, because of its location, even shanties like this were going for big bucks in the current market. It was crazy.

Laurie was in the claustrophobic kitchen stirring a pot of oatmeal on the stove. She looked harried as she always did these days, her hair uncombed and falling about her face, which carried dark circles below her eyes from weeks of sleepless nights. She’d left her job as a receptionist at the veterinary clinic to take care of her mother, who’d protested vigorously but lost the battle. Alice wanted only for her homebody daughter to meet someone and have a family of her own, but Laurie showed no interest. She was now approaching forty and to Jack’s knowledge had never even dated anyone.

“How is she?” he asked.

“She’s sleeping,” Laurie replied. “It’s about all she does these days.”

“Is she in pain?”

“I don’t think so. The hospice nurse has her on a fentanyl patch.”

“Did they give you a sense of how long …?”

Laurie shook her head. “The nurse said it’s hard to say. But now that Mom’s not eating, it won’t be long. I don’t know why I’m making this stupid oatmeal.”

She turned off the stove and pushed the pot away in disgust. Jack watched helplessly as Laurie’s eyes filled up. She looked at him, then her eyes dropped to the package in his hand.

“What’s that?”

“Pompano filets,” he said. “Fresh caught this morning.”

She gave a disinterested nod, then moved toward the closet to get her jacket. “Thank you for sitting with her, Jack. Now I have the pleasant task of having to go meet with the undertaker. But it must be done …”

“Laurie,” he said.

She turned to him at the door. Her blue-green eyes were just like her mother’s: wide, containing oceans.

“Yes?”

He paused, held out the ice-packed fish. “How about I grill this for dinner later? I know you haven’t had time to cook and you need to be eating. You’re wasting away.”

She cocked her head. “That’s sweet of you, Jack, but I don’t have much of an appetite these days. Besides,” she smiled, “I could stand to lose a few pounds.”

Then she was gone. Jack took a deep breath and stepped into the back room. Alice lay propped up on the bed, her mouth ajar and her head bent awkwardly to one side in a way that made him wonder if her neck hurt. He stood watching her frail chest rise and fall beneath her blue hospital gown. She had been an athlete in high school and college — track, basketball, swimming — and had stayed active her whole life until the cancer cut her down. Now, there was hardly anything to her. He hated cancer, hated the way it reduced you to something less than human.

He sat down next to the bed and took her bony hand. At his touch, she stirred and opened her eyes. She stared blankly at him.

“It’s me, Alice. How you doing?”

She was struggling to keep her eyes open. She used to have boundless energy. They would run together since neither of their spouses had an interest in working out. Two and a half miles from the inlet all the way down to The Don CeSar. They always raced the last hundred yards, and he rarely beat her.

“Squeeze my hand if you understand me.”

She gave his finger a gentle squeeze. Her eyes came into focus.

“Listen, Alice. I know you’re worried about Laurie and how she will manage. But I don’t want you to worry about any of that. I’m going to help her. She’ll be all right, okay?”

Alice opened her mouth to speak but only a whimper came out. He leaned toward her.

“What are you saying, Alice?”

Suddenly her eyes went wide with what he thought was terror. But then he realized it was something else — a fierce determination to impart something to him.

“She can’t …”

“She can’t what? What are you trying to tell me, Alice?”

But it was all she had the strength to say. She closed her eyes and went back to sleep, and she was still asleep when Laurie came back from the funeral home two hours later.

* * *

And so he’d missed another opportunity. How many more did he have left? It wasn’t just Alice whose days were numbered; it was his own. If he knew anything by now, it was that everybody and everything had an expiration date. It was stamped on your genes when you came into the world and there was not a damn thing you could do about it. He might be healthy now, but inside, a bomb was ticking. When it would go off, no one knew but the man above. The Big Man, the Grand Master, sitting up there on his throne with his box of grenades, getting his kicks out of dropping them upon the unsuspecting multitudes to rain on their parade. There was no use in planning anything because it was all so random. Only a fool or a coward puts off to tomorrow what he could do today. As much of a financial fool that Phil was, no one could say he didn’t have a good time in the heart-attack-shortened time he did have. Yeah, he loved his toys, loved his kit cars and Beres golf clubs, loved throwing around his money at the craps table like a big shot. The man had an uncanny ability to lose every dollar he made. But he lived life to the fullest.

And he never cheated either. He was incapable of cheating, incapable of hiding anything in that simple head of his that was good at one thing and one thing only: selling. He was consistently a top salesman at Rayco, winning trips to Hawaii that Alice never went on because she was afraid of flying. She was a homebody, like her daughter. The homebody and the partier: a match made in heaven. Just like the nurse and the fisherman.

Jack took the Delgado Memorial Bridge back onto the island, the ten-story flamingo-pink Don CeSar rising before him until it took up his windshield. He parked in the side lot with a view of the southwest turret that looked out to the gulf. It was always the same room where they went to be together. Except for that one night on the beach and it was that night he regretted the most, the one betrayal he could not tell Ruth about when finally he admitted to everything. No, he thought, there was no planning anything but that didn’t mean you couldn’t mess things up big time with the choices you make, and there was no bigger choice than the person you decide to be with. One person likes to travel and the other doesn’t; one person likes to run and the other doesn’t; one person wants kids and another doesn’t; and you choose the wrong one and you end up old and alone. This was why he liked business so much, why he missed it so much. It was so much cleaner than life.

Promise me you’ll tell her, Jack.

I will, when the time is right.

There is no right time. You just have to do it.

I don’t want to mess things up for them.

Mess things up? I think we’re well beyond that point, aren’t we?

Here he was, thirteen years later, and he was still caught between promises, neither one of which meant a goddamn thing. This was something else he needed to tell his nephew: In sales, your word is everything. Fall down on your promises and all you’re left with is an empty bag.

“Oh, Ruthie. If I could sit with you one more time. Just once more in our favorite spot …”

No, not there. He’d spoiled it. Despoiled it.

“Just make it so she’s not in pain, Ruthie. You were always so good at that. Nurse Ruthie …”

His voice trailed off. He was talking to himself again.

* * *

Alice surprised them by passing away that night. Jack was out fishing with Greg when Laurie called him in the morning. He made a point of leaving his phone at home when he fished so it didn’t end up in the water, and when he got back to the condo mid-morning, there were two messages waiting for him from Laurie, the first one frantic, the last composed, letting him know her mother was being taken away in the ambulance and she was going with her, and would he please meet her at the hospital, because she had no one else to call.

Jack spent the next few days helping her work through the arrangements. Between his parents, his wife, and his younger brother, he’d become something of an expert in working with mortuaries and funeral homes. After the viewing and the burial and the luncheon at the country club, which he paid for, Laurie giving no protest because they both knew she could not afford it — after it was all over, they sat at the kitchen table of the tiny bungalow.

“Thank you for everything, Jack,” she said. “I couldn’t have done all this without you.”

“I’m just sorry I wasn’t here that morning to help you. I was so pissed at myself for not taking my phone with me.”

“How were you to know? Even the hospice nurse was surprised. Mom got her wish. She was determined not to let the cancer beat her and, in the end, it was a stroke that dealt the final blow.” Laurie shook her head. “Now they’re both gone. Mom and Dad. It’s so surreal. Although to be honest, Dad was never really here anyway. When he wasn’t on the road, he was at the casino spending whatever money he had in his pocket.”

Laurie looked around the room.

“I think this house signified failure to him.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just that Dad liked to live large and this house was so small, and it wasn’t even his. That’s what Mom used to say, at least.”

“She said that?”

Laurie nodded. “It’s horrible to say, but Mom was happiest in those two years after Dad died, before she got sick. It was like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. He was not an easy man.”

“No.”

She scrutinized him with those lovely blue-green eyes. “I remember you bringing him home when he’d been out drinking. Why’d you do it, Jack?”

“Why? Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”

“Yeah, but why were you even friends with him? I mean, I know you worked together and all, but the two of you were so different. He was a disaster with money — a disaster in general. And you’re the complete opposite. You’re like Mr. Responsible.”

The words stung. “Phil had his good points.”

“Yeah, what were they?”

“He had a good heart. He loved you.”

“If he did, he didn’t show it. To Mom either.”

Now, Jack thought. Tell her now. Alice is gone, you are released from your bonds, at least the earthly ones. But what if she rejected him? He could not deal with that. At least now, he knew what he had. They would remain friends. He would be able to help her too.

Laurie stood up — the moment was lost. She walked to the window and looked out at the warm blue sky. She was so much like her mother, except quieter, more reflective. An old soul. He knew where she got that from.

“Listen, Laurie,” he said, “I was thinking that with your mother gone, you might want to consider selling this place. You could get close to a half-million for it in this market. It’ll give you some flexibility while you get back on your feet.”

She turned from the window. “But I don’t own this house, Jack. You do.”

“I’m giving it to you.”

“To me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I want you to have it. You deserve something good after all you’ve done to take care of your mom.”

She stared at him, slack-jawed. As he watched, her eyes misted over, and there was that helpless feeling again as he sat strapped to his chair like a death-row inmate.

“Oh, Jack,” she said.

* * *

That night, unable to sleep, he rose from bed, pulled on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, and stepped out the back patio doors into the cool night. It was four o’clock in the morning and the waning moon shone behind a thin veil of clouds over the faint-glistening beach. He needed no flashlight to find his way to the garden bench. The flowers he put out for Ruth’s birthday were still there. The year before, someone had taken the bouquet and Jack consoled himself with the thought that whoever took it must have been truly desperate if they needed to steal flowers from someone’s memorial site.

He sat on the bench listening to the distant wash of the sea, remembering. Forty years ago this coming June — he remembered because he and Ruth had just closed on the beachfront condo. She was in Arizona with her sister, and Jack had come down to stay a few nights and visit their friends. That’s what he told her, at least, though in fact, Phil was traveling too. Sometime after midnight, Alice said she wanted to go skinny dipping. The night was warm, the water warm too, and they stripped off their clothes and plunged into the sea. There was a wildness about her that night that Jack had never seen before. Was it from the bottle of wine they’d shared at dinner? Was it because of what he’d told her afterward in the heat of their passion? All he knew was that her wildness lit a flame within him that he thought had died.

When they waded out of the surf, she tried to pull him down onto the deserted beach.

“Not here,” he said, and he drew her to the spot by the jetty where he and Alice would watch the sunset whenever they visited the island.

Alice had not repeated to him the words he told her in the room — that she was the love of his life and always would be — and even as he moved within her to the rhythm of the waves, it was as if he wasn’t there, her eyes fixed on the field of stars overhead.

“Oh my God, it’s so beautiful!”

That’s when she told him she was expecting and that the baby was his. Had to be his.

“She can’t know, Jack. Ever.”

“Why?”

“What would she think of me? Of us? Promise me.”

You’re a fool, Jack. Never promise what you can’t deliver.

His knees hurt from all the walking and standing around over the past few days, but strangely, he was not tired. The doctors said he had the heart of someone half his age. Perhaps he would live to a hundred. He hoped not. He would sit here on the bench until the moon started to fade into the rising light, and then he would go back and get his gear and get set up before his nephew arrived. It ought to be good fishing today with the tide in and the water warming up. Laurie had invited him to dinner. He’d catch a few pompanos and filet them down by the jetty and take them to her house with a bottle of wine, and after they’d eaten, maybe then he would tell her. Yes, today he would tell her.