They talk the whole way, Dad says. About gardens, mostly. About the mill. About County Road 9. About Brent’s father, who was angry and sad and never got over hurting his back. About Marta.
“He’s a good boy,” Dad told me once. “Just took him a while to stop running.”
My father turned eighty in May.
He had a little health scare in March. His heart. They put a stent in. He was in the hospital for four days, and he spent all four of them complaining that nobody was planting his peas.
Brent planted his peas.
Brent and June and Tyler and the two teenage brothers, Marcus and Devon, who turned out to be the old man in the feed store cap’s grandsons. And the young mother with the baby, whose name is Ashley, and whose baby is walking now. And Curtis, from his wheelchair, giving instructions from the end of the row.
