“Bottom up,” Dad agreed.
And Brent Hollis walked out into my father’s garden in his bare feet and his blue bathrobe and knelt down in the dirt at the end of the first row of green beans.
He started to pick.
June stood at the edge of the garden with her hands pressed over her mouth and watched her son pick beans for the first time in thirty years.
Nobody said anything.
But one by one, the people in the garden went back to work. The old man went back to his potatoes. The teenage boys went back to the corn. The toddler went back to the strawberries.
And the fog lifted all the way, and the sun came out over the valley, and lit up the whole garden gold.
I came down off the porch.
I walked over to my father. He was standing at the edge of the garden, watching Brent pick beans. His hands were in his overall pockets.
