Who: Rick Grimes rick & Navi heyheylisten What: Exchanging herb seedlings/sprouts. When: Wednesday, July 8, afternoon Where: The Grimes Family Home Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Rick can be brusque or terse at times, but he's not a bad guy. Possibly mentions of his children. Doubting anything else. Status: Closed/Completed GDoc
~*~
Southern homes had a kind of gentility to them which could never be duplicated outside of the deep South no matter how much a man tried. Rick Grimes had been trying hard with the old farmhouse he'd bought for a reasonable sum in California. The place had several floors, a wraparound porch he'd worked on to make comfortable for any day, and plenty of acres to put up his greenhouses as well as crop land.
He had threw down a 'Home Sweet Home' matt in front of the door along with placing a sign which said 'KNOCK HARD' above the non-functional doorbell.
They didn't lock their door when they were in the house. Rick had a tendency to want to make the place feel the same for his kids as their home in Georgia had felt. That meant he had to get them to believe this place was as safe as their old one. Locked doors were for city folk. People who had to worry about high crime rates, home invasions, dangerous situations the likes of which Rick Grimes did not welcome inside his family's home.
It helped he was far off the beaten path enough for no one to run across him without meaning to do so.
Rick heard a commotion as he was wiping dinner off Judith's face. Sounded as if his company might have arrived with his new herbs. His luck was running strong in that case seeing as they'd finished eating, Carl was upstairs out of the way while Judith was groggy from what he liked to think of as a food-drunk. She'd likely fall asleep while he was talking to the young woman from the network. That'd be good seeing as Rick could lay her on the sofa while he situated his new sprouts. He hoped they were good quality.
They needed all the income they could get to hand considering the cost of living in the OC.
"C'mon in! Door should be open!" he called out as he headed toward the front room, Judith rubbing her freshly washed face into his shirt while he walked. Oh yeah, Rick thought, she'd be out in no time. It was a good day. He had a good feeling about this already.
~*~
Navi had pulled up in her old ‘78 Chevy Fleetside truck. It was a cheerful sky blue, but made quite a racket. Hefting the seedlings and a bag of soil out of the bed, she managed to carry all of it to the front door and knock hard as instructed. She was petite and wiry, but deceptively strong due to lifting heavy stuff all day.
Opening the front door with her arms full would’ve been hard, so she set down the soil and one armed the seedlings, twisting the knob with her newly free hand. “Hi!” She grinned up at Rick (though to be fair she had to grin up at most people) and then waved at Judith. “Hello sweetling!”
~*~ Judith made a sleepy sound at the newcomer. Her face tended to always look cheerful which helped to win people over to her side. Rick would have blamed it on Lori if she'd been there to blame. As it was, he allowed himself a moment to smile back at his baby girl.
"Hello, yourself. I'm Rick. Looks like you've got quite the armful. I'll lay Judith here down and we can head outside. Her brother is upstairs. If she cries, he'll come running."
It was easy to settle Judith into a cocoon of pillows. She was pliant as Rick lay her down on her back, instantly rolling to her side in order to grasp a throw pillow like a teddy bear. Hugging something was her common reaction to sleep. Rick found it endearing while Carl was an older brother with a great deal of tolerance. They'd both learned it was best to set her down before she drifted off clinging to them.
She didn't like letting go once she'd latched on.
Gesturing to the sprouts, he offered, "I can take those if you want to carry the rest? I got a work room off the back. Mudroom I converted really. It works well enough for my needs here. Good weather helps a lot."
~*~
“Oh, you don’t have to put her down!” Navi smiled and couldn’t help cooing a little as the baby hugged a pillow. She’d always liked little ones of any stripe - human, animal, plant, you name it and Navi wanted to help it grow. She handed over the seedlings as Rick had asked before moving to grab the bags of soil. “Oh, you can’t ask for better weather than here, really!” She was normally pretty loud, but hushed herself to make sure Judith stayed sleeping.
~*~
Shaking his head in amusement, Rick led the way back to the workroom he kept in the house, "No, you certainly can't. Figured it'd be hotter really. Dryer too. It's been a drought, but nothing the way I'd imagined. I only wanted something different for my kids. Georgia had too many bad memories for us. Time to make some new ones."
He set the tray of seedlings down on a clean work table and waved at Navi.
"Here, set that down. No reason to cart it all over the place. You've certainly outdone yourself with these. They're beautiful sprouts. You sure I don't owe you? I can let you look through my options, see if you want to bag up some fruit or vegetables? I've gotten to growing more than I can sell out at the Market on the weekends. Thinking about seeing if I can get in with one of the local-owned grocers to sell the excess. I hate seeing it go to waste."
With all the people who were starving in the world, seeing good food spoil was one of Rick's pet peeves.
~*~
“Oh, I’m sure you don’t miss the humidity from back home.” Navi smiled as she set down the soil, bouncing on her toes. “I’ll take some veggies, sure. My cat and I go through cucumber pretty fast - Zora likes to gnaw on ‘em better than kitty treats, the silly billy.” She beamed at Rick, then down at her seedlings.
“My grandpa would throw a hissy fit in Heaven if I didn’t take good care of the seeds and sprouts,” Navi beamed. “The nursery’s his legacy to me. He took care of me after my parents died when I was a baby, you see. Best childhood ever.” Her tone was fond, as she wasn’t being hyperbolic. She truly loved her childhood and missed her grandfather every day.
~*~ Humidity was an understatement where Rick had been in the deep South. He was amused at all the energy the young woman seemed to have. She was constantly in motion as if she couldn't hold herself still, joy or a simple enthusiasm for life keeping her moving because her body wasn't big enough to contain her emotions. She was probably someone who made a lot of people smile, he figured.
"You sure do got a strange cat. Always been a dog man myself. Makes me wonder if I ought not change my mind. See about getting an animal around this place to keep the kids company. I'm not much of it some days."
Rick could be honest enough to admit he had his off-days.
"I grew up in farm country, but didn't get interested in it myself until my wife passed. That's why there's only Judith, Carl, and me here. I wanted to give my kids something simpler. An honest living from the land. A CI I had told me California was the best place for it. Turns out he was right. I take it you've lived here your whole life?"
~*~
“It really depends on the kitty. I’ve seen some cats who like playing fetch just like dogs.” She was gently petting the leaf of a basil plant with two fingers. Navi had never really been good at sitting still, even as a baby inclined to rock and coo herself to sleep. “You could always take your little ones to a shelter and see if they get along with any of the animals there. Cat was a good choice for me because she doesn’t need me around much. She prefers it, but she doesn’t have to have me around to walk her and stuff if I have to work a late night at the shop.”
Grinning at his question, she nodded. “Yup, born and raised. I live in the house my Grampa Deku raised me in and everything. I wouldn’t have the heart to go anywhere else.”
~*~
"That's a good sign. Home should be where your heart is if you ask me. That was how I was raised, at least."
Rick pulled a tiered planter from a shelf above the work table. It would situate up to six sprouts with enough room for them to flourish before he could separate them out. The key with working with herbs was to crowd them at first to get them to spread and then ease them out into their own space so they could mature fully. Some herbs were picked young for a specific taste, but he liked the boldness of a mature plant.
The taste for him was in the age.
Wine wasn't his thing, but herbal oils? Those were the kinds of things Rick Grimes knew. He'd never been much of a cook, but his kids ate well. His Lori had seen to it he knew how to fry green tomatoes and sear a fish properly with the right kind of compound butter for garnish. She taught him the difference between basting something and brining it. They had learned their kitchen together while laughing a lot doing it.
He'd never stop missing her.
"Family is a good start to finding the place your heart belongs. Me? I had to leave because while the weather was tolerable? Being there without my wife wasn't. Here? I know how to start over. Got to. It's about survival. Moving on. It helps this place is an easy one to love. Never been to a shelter for animals. Always thought it'd be depressing. They kill them if they don't get adopted soon enough, right?"
~*~
Navi listened to him talking and her blue eyes widened with sadness. This was a man who really belonged with one woman in particular and couldn’t be with her anymore, and it just wasn’t fair. It reminded her of when her grandfather had passed, how she’d missed hearing him light his cigarettes first thing in the morning before making her breakfast, how she’d missed the sound of him taking off his steel-toed boots at night.
His question took her off guard, and she cleared her throat. “Some do. But there’s some that will keep animals forever, and they usually look for the harder cases on purpose. That’s where I found my Zora.”
~*~
Repotting was easy. It was mostly a mindless task for Rick up at this stage. He'd learned a lot from the old man who'd taught him. How to ease a spade under the roots without harming them, gently lifting each sprout from its tiny plastic home to put in its new planter, and reaching over to stab the spade into the bag of soil Navi had kindly provided to get a dollop of it to fill in the space around the roots with fresh soil---Hershel would have been proud of him. Rick liked to think so at the very least.
"Gotta think about those things with kids. My son? He's old enough to understand death now. The finality of it. My baby girl? She's too young. If I take them somewhere that's a kill shelter? I don't want to be the one to have to explain to my boy or later on my girl why it is they have places of that sort around."
He shook his head to the negative.
Their lives had been filled up with sadness now. Rick liked to think moving them to California had been his way of replanting them in fresh soil to give them room to grow in a world without Lori. He was offering them a fresh start the only way he knew how.
"It's easier to look at plants and think about life, death, the way of things. These guys? They're too young to understand they're going from one nursery to another. All they're going to care about is I feed them the same, treat them the same, give them the same kind of surroundings. If they were older? It'd be harder to move them. Deeper roots. I like watching things thrive. Live. It'd be nice to get a young animal. Kitten or a pup. Raise to up here to be a part of our family. That's a good thought you've given me, Navi. I owe you more'n a few cucumbers I'm sure."
~*~
Impulsively, Navi moved to give Rick a hug. She wrapped her arms loosely around him, her eyes closed tightly. “I was right. You’re a good daddy.” Sniffling, she wiped her eyes against his shirt. “The seedlings will do really good here. But I can give you the address to the no-kill shelter. They screen people really well too, so you’ll be able to rest easy. Any pet they let you have, it’s a good fit.”
~*~
It'd been a long time since anyone had hugged Rick Grimes. He came from a harsh climate where men were men and women were held back by the society they were raised in. His boy was at the stage where he felt too old to hug him and Judith didn't really count seeing as she was too young to understand what kind of comfort simple affection could be to someone else.
Had anyone done more than shake his hand, grip his shoulder, pat him on the back at Lori's funeral?
Rick didn't think so, not that he could recall at least.
Hugging her back awkwardly, he released her to shuffle back, clearing his throat, "Thank you. I do---I do the best I can. It ain't much. I'm not more than a simple man. I do what I can to do right by my family though and I take care of what's mine. It was how I was raised. I appreciate your advice as much as the sprouts. I'm planning on making some herb-seasoned extra virgin olive oil to sell at the Farmer's Market. Don't know if you cook much or at all, but if you'd like to try some, you're welcome to come sit down to eat with us some night or I can send some on home with you. Least I can do under the circumstances."
~*~
“Oh, dinner with you all would be nice! I can bring meatloaf or something!” Navi’s eyes lit up. She loved more friends, and Rick seemed like he needed one. Besides, she’d get to see kids, and she liked kids. Sometimes she worried she’d never be a mom, but then she reminded herself there was plenty of time, and she was a mom to lots of plants and friends.
“And you doing the best you can is more than a lot of kids get, Rick. Don’t sell yourself short, you’re all you’ve got.”
~*~
Rick chuckled at the chiding. He had a feeling Navi spent a lot of time making other people feel better about themselves. She distinctly held an air which was positive around her. That was a good thing to have, to be. Positivity was something the world could use more of for everyone, not only for the Grimes family.
"I appreciate that, Navi. We're definitely fans of meatloaf in this family. No vegetarians here. I hope abusing the ketchup bottle to complement it doesn't bother you though. Kids? Can't eat it without. I've learned that being a father as long as I have. We do eat earlier," he cautioned.
She was a young woman. It was unlikely she kept the same kind of hours he did with his children.
"Think you'd mind taking supper around 5:30 PM some night?"
~*~
Her nose wrinkled. “There’s people who don’t eat meatloaf with ketchup? That’s like saying there’s people who don’t like cheesy mashed potatoes!” Nodding to his suggestion, she bounced on her toes again. “I close the nursery at four on Fridays, so I can be out here and have food by 5:30, that works for me.” Her grandpa was ex-Marine, so she’d been up and down with the sun since she could remember.
~*~
"Sounds good," Rick agreed, holding up a hand to gesture to the door which led off to the porch and out back to his crops, he offered, "Grab you a sack from the hook over there and let's go get you some produce to take home in exchange for my sprouts. You'll have to make sure to get plenty of cucumber. Can't have that cat of yours feeling disappointed."
He laughed before he could stop himself. It was rusty. The sound was one he hadn't used in a long time. Rick couldn't remember how long it'd been since he'd laughed easy, slept easy, did anything easy save planting really. He hoped this place continued to surprise him with good folk to meet.
His family could use some more goodness in their lives.
Then again, so could everyone else's family as far as he was concerned.