“I’m fine,” I said, squeezing my hand around the splintery wooden handle of the shovel. Hunger made me dizzy.
He shot me a puzzled look.
“Really,” I said. “Totally fine.”
“Well, I’ll leave it for you, then,” he said, setting down the old plastic plate on top of a boulder.
“You don’t need to—”
“I got about seven hundred pounds of tomatoes right now. I can’t eat them all myself.”
I had this half-clear, half-fuzzy memory of one of the last times Mom and I went to church, when it must have been getting obvious Mom was sick. The various circle groups and outreach ladies had unleashed an unprecedented wave of charity upon us. Tater-tot-covered casseroles, sheet cakes, a dozen kinds of chili, clothes, and blankets knit by hand—it all just rained down on us. So much that we couldn’t carry it all. There were hand squeezes and whispered, tearful promises to Mom that I would be looked after when she was gone.
I’d been relieved, delighted even. My fear of what would happen when Mom died was washed away in that flood of care. I had friends, I had community. I wasn’t totally alone. I didn’t need to lie awake at night scared, listening to Mom shuffle up and down the hallway, restless from the pain, and wonder what would happen to me.
Who would take care of me?
These people would!
Mom smiled at those friends, my potential new families, she nodded, made two trips to the car to get it all home, but once we were home and safe and alone, she went apeshit. Dumping all that free, delicious homemade food in the garbage.
We don’t need their pity, she’d said.
I do, I’d wanted to cry. I need their pity. And their chili!
We never went back to church after that and Mom died a few months later.
“Honestly, you’re doing me a favor,” the old man lied, but he did it without blinking, without smirking.
Oh, for God’s sake. Take the sandwich, I told myself, staring down at the juicy tomatoes resting on the bed of creamy mayonnaise. Wanting something doesn’t make it bad.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll eat it in a bit.”
I’d take the charity; I just wouldn’t eat it in front of him. Seemed reasonable.
He nodded as if accepting my terms. “How old are you, girl? If you don’t mind me asking.”
“Twenty-four.” Twenty-five in two months.
I waited for that “old soul” comment I used to get a lot. Old soul was code for a lot of things, and I figured most of them had nothing to do with my soul and more to do with growing up with my mother.
He nodded, saying nothing about my soul or age one way or another. “If I could offer a little advice, about the work?”
“Sure.”
“Start earlier. Out of the heat. Quit at noon. Ain’t nothing gonna come from working outside in August past noon except heatstroke. And drink more water.”
All of it I knew, but I’d been so flustered starting the day by sleeping in. Still, it would be rude to say “I know” when all he was doing was being polite. And frankly, he’d been kinder to me in two minutes than anyone had in a very long time.
So, I said, “Thank you for the advice. And the sandwiches.”
In reply, he ducked his head and walked away. Beneath the thin fabric of his white shirt I saw the shadow of a black tattoo in a strange shape, like a big square.
“I’m sorry,” I called out, though I was pretty sure I knew the answer to the question I was about to ask. “What’s your name?”
“Ben,” he said. “Yours?”
“Annie.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Annie.”
“Likewise, Ben.”
He walked back over to his trailer, the one two north from mine.
Ben was the man Dylan had watched.
Why?
Once he was out of sight I dropped the shovel and picked up the plate, nearly shoving one of the open-faced sandwiches in my mouth.
“Oh God,” I moaned around the mouthful of food. And then again because really…I’d had tomatoes before, and mayo and toasted cheap white bread. But somehow this combination, on this day—it was transcendent.