A woman was a weekend gardener. After
work she would work in her little field, just a
recreational activity at first. Later, she began
selling her tomatoes and jellies made of peaches.
She set up a wagon on the side of the road. Just a
trailer really, with a hitch so she could pull it with
the old truck that her father had left behind when
he died. This activity seemed to connect her to him
in a distant way. He sat with her when she drove.
He still coached her when she turned too sharply
or didn’t brake fast enough.
She smiled when her right rear tire blew out when
she exited off of the interstate near her and her
husband’s house. He told her to keep all of the lug
nuts in her pocket while she changed the tire or
she’d lose them. Don’t put the jack under the back
bumper, put it under the axle. Put the jack back in
the tool box as neatly as she found it or he
wouldn’t let her use it again.
She sold her fruit a hundred yards or so up the
road from the main filling station in town. Just a
place to fill up coming home from work at the
refineries and a place where the good old boys sat
around and shot the breeze, sipping beers around
the counter to avoid the steeper prices at the local
bars. The guy that inherited the station from his pa
didn’t care much about the laws that said no one
could consume on the premises. Hometown rituals
ran deeper here than state laws.
Her customers were a fairly wide assortment of
people. Some of the older women in town who still
had families around to cook for bought her produce
because hers was fresher than the local
supermarkets offered. Other gardeners, more and
less committed to growing things, would stop in to
peruse her produce. Men in their mid 20s and early
30s would browse just long enough to make
good-natured passes at her. She politely gave
them all a cold shoulder, and it was her politeness
that kept them coming back around. Most of the
same faces showed up each week, and after a
while she came to know them all by name.
People showed up again and again. Not a whole
lot of money ever exchanged hands, but plenty of
stories did. Lots of gossip was exchanged, little
theories and nuggets of local lore with as many
previous owners as any old dollar bill.
But as with all good things, one more had to come
to an end. Someone official took notice of the
placement of her store, and one of the local state
troopers who frequented her shop to share her
company had to ask her to relocate to one of the
designated Farm to Market roads in town. She
didn’t mind much at first. Afterall, her whole stand
was just a trailer. She hitched it to her dad’s old
truck, hauled it off 10 miles or so to the nearest FM
road and parked it in a shady spot.
After a few days, though, she realized that most of
her regulars weren’t coming anymore. She wasn’t
on their way home from work now. A few new
faces showed up, but seldom did an old one. It
reminded her of when she had first opened her
stand. No one here knew her. She didn’t have first
names to match to the faces she talked to
anymore. All of the time she had spent helping the
people who stopped by when she was located off
of the freeway was just a memory.
On the fourth day of her new location, she
began to wonder if she had the energy for this
anymore. Maybe it was time to call it quits. Afterall,
her garden wasn’t really for profit. All she had ever
wanted was a hobby. A way to take the edge off of
work. Something to do while she waited for her
husband to come home from work. She stood on
her perch, behind the baskets full of tomatoes and
cucumbers and jars of peach jelly, and wondered if
she should call it a day early.
Just before she made up her mind to leave,
she saw a familiar old Crown Vic begin easing over
onto the shoulder. As it neared, she saw the state
trooper who always stopped to share her company
and enjoy the afternoon sun. He stepped out and
tipped his hat and leaned on the counter the way
he always did when they would idle away half an
hour with the other regulars.
He asked how business was doing and what
she thought about her new spot. She tried not to
sound upset about it, but she obviously wasn’t
very happy. Business was okay, but she was
dealing with a whole group of new faces that it
might take weeks to start warming up to. They
talked about it for a while, and when it was time
for him to get back on his patrol he bought a jar of
jelly and said he’d stop by whenever he could until
things began picking up for her. She thanked him
and after he left she reconsidered going home
early and decided she wouldn’t. There would just
have to be some more quiet days before things
would start to seem as exciting as they did before. |
Submission Name: Locale
