Fernet and Cola

By Scott von Lengerke

When Sam, an aspiring gardener from Connecticut, falls in love with a pretty girl from his hometown, he is convinced the stars are aligned. Anxious to do anything to show his love for her, Sam books a one-way ticket and follows her south to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Upon his arrival on New Years Eve, she hits him with the truth; Sam is shocked at what he discovers. Deciding to cut his losses, Sam wanders the rugged and bucolic regions of South America, eventually reaching Patagonia and Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. With no real plan and no set itinerary, his quest for true love soon becomes a quest for something more. On this memorable and unpredictable adventure through the real South America, Sam is awakened by the curious souls he meets and by the unmatched beauty of the natural world. Scott von Lengerke is proud to release his debut book, Fernet and Cola, a story of travel, of unexpected friendship, and of self-discovery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496972620

Scott von Lengerke

Scott von Lengerke McDermott is a professional gardener, estate manager, and proponent of organic landscaping. He received his BA in environmental studies at Pitzer College, in Claremont, California. As an undergraduate, Scott developed a love for the outdoors and grew fond of surfing, gardening, and traveling. Scott went on to study horticulture and ornamental garden design at the New York Botanical Garden and is a certified arborist through the International Society of Arboriculture. Scott McDermott lives in East Hampton, New York, with his wife, Jess, and their two furry children, Shadow and Ella.

Book preview

CHAPTER I

Isn’t It Grand?

It was the end of August, 2009. I drove the company truck, a black 2001 GMC pick up, rusted and dented all over, and loaded with tools. I was the only one that ever drove the truck, probably because I was the only one who had a license. Juanito and Luis hopped in, and we took off for work. I loved driving that truck. It made me feel like a farmer, like an old American wise farmer man, who could build anything with his hands and lived the day to day, went with the seasons, ate only potatoes and eggs for breakfast – that’s who I wanted to be. I didn’t want a nine-to-five. I didn’t want to wear a tie and sit behind a desk. I hated computers, and the thought of staring at one for a living gave me the willies. No, I wanted to be a gardener, a farmer, anyone that made the dirt their friend. I was happy to be there.

Donde vamos hoy?

My co-workers only spoke Spanish, so I had to dig in my brain, going back to my days of living abroad in a Costa Rican home. I had been in Costa Rica for five months, and learned Spanish by speaking the language every day, but that was years prior. My comfort level had since vanished. What was that word again? I was struggling.

Vamos a New Canaan. Alli estan esperando por nosotros.

We were supposed to meet my boss, JoAnn and the other workers in New Canaan. I made small talk on the way, driving north on the Merritt Parkway, cruising, feeling good. It was summer, and it was the summer of my life.

Where are you guys from? I asked. They looked at each other until one of them answered.

I am from Honduras, said Luis. Luis was the youngest of the workers. He was tall, skinny, and very fit. He was a good-looking guy, but his nose was pointed and almost beak-like. I loved him all the same.

And I’m from Ecuador, said Juanito. Juanito was the oldest of the workers, and by far the most jovial. He was short and porky, had a shaved head, and sported a thick black mustache. Juanito always wore jeans and long-sleeved dress shirts that he bought at Goodwill. Jeans and dress shirts all year long, even in the heat of the summer.

And you? Where are you from? Juanito asked me.

I’m from here. I’m from Connecticut. I grew up in Greenwich, spent my whole life here… except for college, I told him in Spanish.

I didn’t have much to talk about. I felt so limited with my vocabulary. These guys probably thought I was a total crock. Silence. They conversed amongst themselves for the rest of ride. I couldn’t understand most of it. They talked too fast. I didn’t feel so confident anymore.

We pulled up to this great big brick house right outside of town, right in the heart of the suburbs of lower Fairfield County. New Canaan, much like Greenwich, was paradise, and a perfect place to raise your kids if you could afford it. Many successful financiers from New York City lived in this quaint town. There were no busy highways around, no fast food restaurants or strip malls in sight. No bums, no litter, no crime, and almost nothing wrong with it. The streets were lined with linden, ginkgo, and red maple trees, and you could always hear kids running around playing somewhere nearby. It was truly idyllic.

Many houses in New Canaan had what I would call a formal or otherwise well-kept cottage-style garden, but the house we were going to had the finest garden of them all. This one took the cake. It had terrific mixed plantings of annabelle hydrangeas and English boxwoods, settled in amongst paper bark birch trees with their magnificent snow-white bark. Underneath it all was periwinkle vinca and English ivy as ground cover. The big brick mansion was surrounded on all sides by flowers. Petunias, bacopas, alyssum, and ivy poured out of clay pots that were mounted on every bare surface. Climbing hydrangea grew up the house from several locations. It was madness. And yet it all looked so neat and organized. I was blown away by how immaculate everything was. Despite it being the end of the season, there wasn’t a single stray leaf in the garden. Not a single piece of dirt misplaced. And not a single boxwood misshapen. It was too perfect. You could tell something was wrong.

Hey! How you doing? Como estan chicos?

My boss, JoAnn spoke a mixture of English and Spanish so I could understand her. JoAnn had long brown hair that had tinges of blonde in it from the sun. She wore glasses and was very pretty, even though she was old enough to be my mother. Her mannerisms were what you would expect of a South American, and she was genuine when she spoke, almost too genuine. I liked JoAnn a lot. She was my plant guru back then, my source of all garden-related inspiration. And on top of that, I admired the way she treated her workers. She was the most compassionate boss I have ever had. JoAnn turned to me, and carefully explained the job and everything I needed to know.

So this is Kathy’s house.

Wow, it’s really nice. Quite a beautiful garden, I responded.

Yes, this is Kathy’s. We work here two to three days a week. She’s our main client. When Kathy wants us here, we come here. She always comes first… Our other gardens are mostly in New Canaan, but we do some work in Stamford, Greenwich, wherever! JoAnn laughed. My boss had this way about her. She put up this front as though she didn’t give a flying cow about anything and all was la-dee-da. As I spent more time with her, I could tell she wasn’t the stress-free, life-is-a-walk-in-the-park kind of woman she pretended to be.

So do you mostly work on new gardens, or do you do a lot of maintenance too?

I was just talking for the sake of talking. What else could I do? I barely knew the lady. It was my first week working for her. I just did my best to keep the conversation going.

Yeah. We do whatever needs to be done. Both. We do both…

So Emma is going to Argentina soon, she told me. I was dating her daughter, Emma. That’s how I got the job.

Oh yeah. I heard. She mentioned that. Do you guys go back to visit a lot?

I was playing dumb. I knew quite well that she was going to Argentina, and that they went there often.

Yeah. Yes. I’ve always brought Emma there when she was little, and my whole family, my mother, my father are there, so I have to visit. They’re my family. I mean, Argentina is my home, that’s where I’m from.

For some reason, no one wants to be American anymore. Even both her kids said they were Argentine, despite the fact that they were born and raised and live here in the U.S. and English was their first language. And all of the workers, even the ones who had been there for more than a decade, still spoke primarily Spanish and called themselves and their kids Mexicans, Hondurans, or Ecuadorians, not Americans. It was bizarre, and I thought about how I called myself an American, but yet I was really just an Irish-German-Dutch-Cuban mutt. It made me think, what makes an American an American to begin with?

Well I’m going to miss hanging out with Emma, I told JoAnn. Maybe I’ll go down and visit her in Argentina.

The truth was, I was madly in love with Emma. She was my first love, and I was crazy about her. In fact, the previous night, I had stayed up until the wee hours, drinking and talking and admiring Emma, falling deeper for her by the minute, and now I was struggling to keep my eyes open and my mind clear. It was like I was dreaming.

So you know a bit of Spanish. That’s good. Now you can practice with the guys, JoAnn observed.

Yeah. I’m looking forward to brushing up on my Spanish. I want to learn how to garden too though. I love gardening. And I did.

Well good. Here you can have both. And JoAnn laughed again.

Juanito! she yelled. Juanito came running over, and stood proudly in front of us. Take Scott and show him the ropes, she said. Show him how to garden.

I saw Emma later that night. She was living with her father and her father’s billionaire girlfriend in a beautiful mansion on the other side of town. In those days, we always hung out there, or at my parents’ house. But never at JoAnn’s, even though I worked with JoAnn every day. I didn’t quite understand it. But back then, I pushed those details aside, because that’s what you do when you’re in love.

At the time, I was driving an old Volvo station wagon that I bought used from my father’s mechanic. Because my parents believed in hard work and earning your way through life, they were always very adamant about their kids working, and about them earning their own money. As such, I had saved up for this car myself, paying for it mostly through summer jobs. I had been a glorified pool boy at a very prestigious country club in Greenwich for a summer, and before that, I taught at a sailing center based at the town’s public beach. Fresh out of college, I had just left an eight-month stint teaching autistic children at a school in Fairfield, and I was ready for something new. I thirsted for some excitement in my life, and at that time, Emma was it. I pulled my old Volvo into the driveway and knocked on the big glass door.

Hiii. Emma was a short girl, very short, in fact shorter than most girls her age. But I loved that about her. I loved everything about her. Her thick dark hair was always neatly tied up in a bun on her head, her big green eyes always soft and unassuming. She wore makeup every time I saw her, and it made her look perfect. She was very feminine looking, very girly indeed. A little innocent girl, she was painfully shy, and artsy. She dressed like a girl too – small clothes, and nothing too sophisticated, only stuff you would find on a girl, like skirts and cutoff jean shorts that were way too short and revealing. I thought it was sexy.

Hey! How was your day?

I really did want to know. I really cared about this girl.

Come on in, she replied.

I took off my shoes as usual, and we went into the grand modern living room, with the grand rock fireplace. Emma mixed up some drinks in a hurry, vodka tonics with extra vodka, and we sprawled out on the grand couch. Everything in that house was grand.

We drank and talked for hours, as is the usual routine when you first start dating someone. Emma’s dog, Chrissy was sprawled out on the floor at the base of the couch. Chrissy was a little dog, a mix between a Shitzu and another abnormally small, annoying kind of dog. For obvious reasons, I pretended to like Chrissy, but really I wanted to kick the thing and teach it some manners. It wasn’t well trained, and Emma just reinforced the bad behavior. The damn thing would jump up on the grand furniture in her grand mansion and chew on it. In fact, that dog might have been the only thing in that mansion that wasn’t grand. It would chew on anything it could get its paws on. It did its business wherever it wanted to, and it yapped all the time. Whenever it wanted a toy or a treat, it would yap, and Emma would just give in and hand it over like a total sucker.

Truth is, I hated that dog. Couldn’t stand it. One time I caught it looking at me while we were having sex, which totally freaked me out. Couldn’t stand it.

What do you want to do with your life? Emma asked me as I scratched Chrissy’s head.

I want to live on a boat, I declared. I want to travel, climb mountains, grow my own food. I need those things in my life, you know what I mean? I went on, Have you ever been camping?

Uh-huh. She didn’t say much. She didn’t ever say much. She just looked at me with her big green eyes, and smiled gently. But I loved her for it. There was something about the mystery in her that drew me closer.

Have you ever been out there in the woods, or in the mountains, or the desert, or wherever, and gotten the feeling that you’re totally free? I mean, totally, one hundred percent free. No worries, no cares, no job or obligations or parents or preoccupations on your mind whatsoever. Have you ever felt that? To be totally free?

She looked at me for a long while. I want to. I want to feel that way.

You know what I want. I want to take you out on a sailboat and take a big trip, sail far away, to the islands or somewhere far away. We should do that. Just sail away.

I would love that. I took a deep breath and smiled and kissed her. I was so happy.

We would be good together, she said. You could design the gardens outside our house, and I could design the inside. We loved talking about our make-believe, future life. She wanted to be an interior designer. I had recently decided I wanted to pursue a career in gardening.

Ha! You’re right. It’d be perfect… So what kind of stuff are you studying in your class? I asked.

Well, it’s all sorts of things. We do art in ceramic, and some drawing, painting, sculpture. It’s a mixture. I’m working on a fountain sculpture made out of metal right now.

I was fascinated by Emma’s art. It had intrigued me from the moment I first met her, when she was making a ceramic head in her backyard one sunny afternoon. I had gone over to her house with a friend of a friend, and Emma was sitting neatly cross-legged on her back patio. I approached her from behind, and saw that she was sculpting what looked like a miniature replica of a head from Easter Island. I noticed that she was working on the face, on the expression of this bald-headed man’s clay face, and it was neither sad nor happy. It was just staring out, gazing. Emma turned her head and looked up at me, and that’s when I saw her face. It too was neither happy nor sad, but she smiled the most beautiful smile nonetheless.

I’ve got a question. When you paint a painting, do you feel totally into it? Like really passionate about it? I inquired.

Depends on the painting.

Well do you ever go somewhere or see something and get the overwhelming sensation that you absolutely need to paint that picture?

Sometimes, she replied.

Did you feel inspired to paint at the lake? I had recently taken her to my family’s lake house in the New Jersey Highlands.

Actually, I was going to say, I really did want to paint when I was there. That place is just so beautiful, so perfect for art.

Well, we’ll have to go back sometime… Yeah, I want to paint when I go there, and I’m not even a painter, I said. Emma sighed. I could tell she was drunk.

One day. I made two more drinks. She changed the subject.

You know, you should wear work clothes to work. My mom said you were wearing khakis and boat shoes, Emma joked. It was true. I didn’t own any jeans. I didn’t own any boots. She continued, You should wear what the other guys wear, work pants, work boots. I could tell she was amused by me and my wardrobe, but I liked the attention.

Ah man, I know, I said. "I should. I don’t know why I wear that stuff. I get so