They were all carrying something.
Empty boxes. Empty buckets. Empty grocery bags. Empty laundry baskets. A little red wagon.
Nobody said much. A few people nodded to each other. Somebody said, “Morning, Earl.” Somebody said, “How’s your hip, Doris?”
And then they walked up the driveway, past the porch, past me and Tyler, and into the garden.
Everybody knew where to go.
The old man in the feed store cap went straight to the potatoes. He knelt down with a little hand fork and started digging. The young mother with the baby went to the strawberries along the edge, the ones my mother planted, and she sat the toddler down in the grass and let him pick, and he ate more than he put in the bag, and she laughed.
The two teenage boys went to the corn. They worked together, one pulling the ears down and the other one twisting them off. They’d clearly done it before.
