Part 3: Near the Bottom
He took out the notice, folded it, and tucked it into his pocket.
“In my professional judgment,” he said, “this is one of the best-maintained properties I’ve ever inspected. I’m going to review the applicable community garden exemptions and help get this operation properly permitted.”
Dad tried to thank him.
But Tyler shook his head.
“My grandmother depended on food deliveries when I was little. I know what something like this can mean.”
Brent got slowly to his feet.
“I want to withdraw my complaint,” he said. “Immediately.”
Tyler promised to bring the paperwork Monday.
Then Brent turned to my father.
“I’m sorry, Arne. I can’t believe what I’ve done.”
Dad held out his hand.
“Help me stand up, would you? These old knees aren’t what they used to be.”
Brent gently lifted him off the gravel.
Then he asked if there was anything he could do to make things right.
Dad picked up his old metal bucket and passed it to him.
“Beans are on the left. Your mother needs some. Start near the bottom of the plants.”
Brent hesitated.
For thirty years, he’d kept away from bean plants.
Now he stood with the bucket in his hands, his mother quietly watching beside him.
At last, he nodded.
“Near the bottom.”
He stepped into the garden, knelt in the damp soil, and started picking beans.
For the first time in decades, he wasn’t running from his past.
He was putting it to good use.
The next Friday, I went along with Dad on his deliveries.
We set out before sunrise with eleven boxes of fresh vegetables.
We stopped at the home of an elderly widower who could hardly walk, a struggling mother whose husband was in the hospital, several older residents of an apartment building, and a disabled veteran named Curtis.
Everywhere we went, people knew my father.
They remembered my mother, too.
Curtis told me she used to bring him homemade peach pie every August.
“I still miss her,” he said.
I smiled through my tears.
“So do I.”
After the last delivery, and after leaving the leftover produce at St. Luke’s, Dad made an unexpected turn.
He drove to the cemetery.
We stopped beside my mother’s grave.
Dad carried a small paper bag up to her headstone.
Inside was the finest tomato he’d picked all week.
He set it gently on the stone.
“Eleven houses this week, Marta,” he whispered. “And forty-two families on Saturday. That’s our best yet.”
He paused.
“And that neighbor boy is going to be all right. June’s son. He’s learning.”
Dad rested his hand on the headstone.
“I haven’t missed a Friday, sweetheart. Not one.”
