ALL OF US AT THE SAME TIME
c Jo Dereske 2014Chapter 26
Drawing In
All that lingered in the vegetable garden were a few still-viable cold-weather plants: brussel sprouts, carrots. We’d suffered our first frost and a single pumpkin vine, its leaves limp and some blackened, still nourished four decent-sized and nearly orange pumpkins. Kipling dug and cleared away the dead and dying plants, piling them beside the garden in a makeshift compost pile. Would there be a garden next spring? If so, it wouldn’t be planted by us.
Two lawn chairs sat side by side at the end of the garden for Mike and Louise to sit and watch. Tending to the garden or caring what happened on the farm had slipped away from Mike. He was most attentive to movement now, it didn’t matter the source, even running water, a flapping towel on a clothes line, a passing car. Except for sudden, unexpected flights into fluency, he rarely initiated or responded to conversation, and then haltingly in simple English or even in Lithuanian. Sometimes Kipling built a bonfire near the garden and Mike stared into it so intently he rarely blinked. On good days, Louise pulled her chair closer to Mike’s and held his hand.
I showed Louise a photo in the newspaper of a local women’s group, knowing she was acquainted with several of the women, and had known them since they were young.
But one of the women in the photo reminded her of a relative who’d visited her in Chicago and whom she suspected of stealing her best black silk slip. Read More