"I know," I tell him. “I hope she comes back, too.”
three
Sloane
Igobackthenext day.
I tell myself it's because I have nothing else to do, which is technically true. I have a hotel room, a bread loaf I've been eating standing over the sink, and a mountain town I've now walked end to end approximately eleven times. Returning to the farm is practical. It is the most interesting available option.
I drive out past the second ridge and park in the gravel and he's already in the garden at seven-thirty in the morning, which I should have expected, and he looks up when I get out of the car with an expression that isn't surprised in the slightest.
"Morning," he says like we’re old friends, not still almost-strangers.
"Hi." I look at the rows of vegetables. The bees are already working. Burl lifting his head from the porch. "I thought I'd check on the rabbit."
"She ate this morning. Both drops."
"Good." I stand there. "Can I help with something?"
He looks at me for a moment. Then he hands me a pair of gloves from the fence post. "East beds need weeding."
That's how it starts.
Weeding, it turns out, is both simpler and harder than it looks. Simpler because the motion is intuitive — grip, pull, get the root. Harder because the root doesn't always come and there are things that look like weeds that aren't, and I pull one of those in the first ten minutes. Everett, passing behind me with a crate, says "That's a carrot," without breaking stride.
"It doesn't look like a carrot."
"Not yet."
I look at the sad little thing in my hand. "Can I put it back?"
"No."
I add it to the pile with more than a little bit of guilt and move on.
He works two beds over, mostly silent, occasionally saying something like "further left" or "that whole patch, not just the top" without it feeling like instruction so much as the farm speaking through him. I'm not good at this. My hands are slow and my knees are unhappy about the crouching and I have dirt under my fingernails before the first hour is done.
It doesn't bother me at all.
I pull a weed that's been anchored since approximately the Jurassic era and fall back onto my heels and sit in the dirt for a second.
"You all right?" Everett says.
"Spectacular." I hold up the weed. It's enormous, taproot and all. "Look at this thing. It was basically a small tree."
He glances at it. Something moves at the corner of his mouth. "Dandelion. Old one."
"Damn, this is nothing like the dandelions in the city.”
He just nods.
Next, we take care of the chickens. The chickens are named: Marge, Patricia, Dot, and the small aggressive one is Gerald.
"Gerald."
"She came that way." He lifts a crate with a shrug. "Seemed right."
Gerald, the female Gerald, eyes me from across the coop like she's already made a decision about me and it wasn't favourable. I give her the feed anyway.
