The Neighbor Who Took My Harvest

She stared at me. The bright voice was gone. There was nothing behind her face at all.

“My husband bred that tomato,” I said, loud enough now, because now I wanted it loud, “over eight years, from seed he saved himself, in the garden behind my house. The garden that was ripped to the ground eleven days after I buried him. He named it Glenda’s Girl because I am Glenda. That is my name written on your sign. You have been standing here all morning selling my husband to strangers by the pound, and you did not even know that the name you copied off the plant markers was the name of the woman whose fence you climbed over.”

I opened the notebook and I held it up, not because anybody needed to read it, but so they could see it was thick, see it was worn, see it was thirty years of one man’s handwriting.

“He kept notes on every plant,” I said. “Every ribbon at the fair, nineteen years, they are taped in the back. Anyone who wants to see whose tomato this is, come see. Merle here judged it. Half of you have eaten it at my table.”

Nobody moved for a second. Then Loretta, behind me, said, “I bought Gene’s tomatoes off this square for twenty years, and those are Gene’s tomatoes.” And a man from the hardware store said, “I have got a Glenda’s Girl plant in my own backyard that Gene gave me the seed for, three years ago.” And a woman I did not even know well, one of the young mothers, put her three dollars back in her purse and set the tomato down on the table like it had burned her.

Tammy tried. I will give her that. She started in on it, the grief, the poor widow who could not keep her yard, how I was confused, how these really were hers. But it was too late and the whole square could feel it was too late. Because a seven-year-old does not lie about a dump truck. And a daddy does not jump up and hush a boy who is telling the truth.

The market manager came over then, a young woman named Colleen who runs the whole thing off a clipboard, and she had heard enough of it walking up. She told Tammy she needed to pack up and go, that stolen goods do not sell on the courthouse square, that her booth fee was refunded and she was not welcome back. She said it quiet and firm and she did not make a show of it, and somehow that was worse for Tammy than shouting would have been.

I did not watch them pack up. I did not need to. I went back to Loretta’s booth and I sat down in the folding chair and my hands were shaking, and Loretta held my shoulder, and I looked out at the square where Gene and I had walked every Saturday for thirty-nine years, and I let myself cry in a way I had not been able to since the funeral.