Allen Kim Lang

“ Ozoneff's home was at its summit, surrounded by a garden that threatened to pullulate into unproper Bostonian jungle at any moment. As I walked up the brick pathway toward the house, between flowering trees that hinted the presence of tigers, the gardener stepped out to block my way. He was dressed in earth-stained overalls and wore gloves; a desiccated man tall and lean as a mystery figure in a Navaho sand-painting. He held before him, like a twin-handled short-sword, a pair of hedge-shears. ”

“ Seeing them for the first time, I understood why the poet sang his dream of the land where they grow. "Lemon-trees, outdoors, in Massachusetts?" I asked. "They are a new species, no doubt."
"No, sir," the gardener said. "I admit it's not easy to persuade lemons to thrive through New England snow and gale; but thrive these do. Don't step any nearer them, sir, if you please. It is not healthy to be too intimate with these trees." ”

“ I said, a phrase guaranteed to keep a writer talking.
"If you've read many of my master's works, you've read some of mine," the gardener said. "I wrote for him, with him; mysteries and science-fiction and textbooks and essays. He'd poured his brain into mine, you understand. When I put words to paper they were his words, though he might be sleeping when I wrote. The master had so much to say, sir, he couldn't say it all alone. What man, alone, could teach, could lecture, could carry on research in the arcana of rebellious cells ”