The woman in scrubs went to the tomatoes.
The old lady with the cane walked very slowly down to the end of the bean rows, where my father was. She stopped next to him. She put her hand on his arm. He straightened up and said something to her that I couldn’t hear. She laughed. He handed her his bucket. It was already full of beans. He’d been picking them for her.
Everywhere I looked, there were people. Moving through the fog in my father’s garden. Quiet. Careful. Filling their boxes and buckets and bags.
Taking only what they needed. I could see that. Nobody was grabbing. Nobody was greedy. They’d pick a bag of beans and a few tomatoes and some potatoes, and then they’d stop. They’d leave plenty for the next person.
Tyler stood next to me on the porch.
He’d stopped writing. His pen was still in his hand, hovering over the clipboard. But he wasn’t writing anything.
