“You should go to bed early tonight,” he said. “Big day tomorrow.”
I set my alarm for five.
I didn’t need it. I was awake at four-thirty, lying in my old twin bed, staring at the ceiling.
When I came downstairs, Dad was already in the kitchen. He’d made a big pot of coffee. Not his usual little four-cup pot. The big one. The thirty-cup urn that my mother used to bring to church potlucks. It was sitting on the counter, perking and gurgling.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“People,” he said.
He was wearing his old blue work shirt. The faded one with the tear in the pocket.
He picked up his bucket and walked out the back door into the garden.
Saturday morning was foggy.
The kind of thick, soft fog that rolls up out of the river valley in late summer and sits on everything like a blanket. You could barely see the end of the garden. The corn disappeared into it. The fence disappeared into it. The world was gray and white and quiet.
