The Flower Thief

WITH ONLY MONTHS TO LIVE, BRIAN BRETT SURROUNDED HIMSELF WITH STOLEN BEAUTY

- BRIAN BRETT

I am the flower thief of Vancouver. I’ve been a predator of beauty all my life, and beauty has had many faces.

As a child of the ’50s, beauty was a plum tree glistening purple, with dripping sap, cracked plums and ecstatic yellow jackets circling my semi-naked monkey body as I clambered through the branches, somehow unstung, filling my T-shirt with the sweet, sticky crop from the tree.

At first, my predations were mostly gardens, though I did branch out into comic books and chocolate bars until my ruthless, righteous mother caught me. Oh the shame of being marched down to the local convenience store and abjectly apologizing while I paid everything back.

My crooked ways soon returned. I was an incorrigible child. We discovered the old lady’s carrot patch down the street. We would crouch in her garden and yank the tender young carrots out, rub them clean and munch them down like Bugs Bunny before running, shrieking for our lives when the cane-wielding old lady appeared.

This was followed by the discovery of the watermelon farm. How I miss those seedy, ineffably sweet watermelons, along with the cow corn we ate raw, also sweet, only starchy. I miss smashing the stolen melon with my bare fist, scooping out the red flesh. I miss the seed-spitting contests in the shade by the creek. Then, in the summer heat, leaping into the rushing, clean water, clothes and all. Today, both creek and field are potentially toxic, while the new hybrid watermelons have lost their teeth-hurting intensity.