The Stand I Set at My Own Lane

The Banner And The Card Reader

Gary had a plan, the way he always has a plan. He would build a real stand up by the road where the traffic was heavier, out by the Dillmans’ fence line. He would run it on the weekends and get the boys to help. He would handle the money so I would not have to worry about the money.

“You can still tie the shocks,” he said, like he was handing me a gift. “You’re good at the shocks. You just stay up at the house and tie, and I’ll run the selling end.”

I tied forty-one shocks that week. My hands knew the work before my head was done being angry about it. You gather the stalks after they have dried standing, eight or ten to a bundle, and you stand them up and marry the tops together and wrap the twine three times low and twice high and tie it off so a wind will not take it. I taught my own hands that in 1979 and they have never forgotten.

Gary loaded all forty-one into his truck on a Friday. He built his stand that same weekend, a good stand, I will give him that, with a slanted roof and a shelf for the gourds. He hung a banner that said Nelson Family Farms in letters a foot tall.

I stood at my kitchen window with a dish towel and watched my shocks drive up the road to be sold under a name that made it sound like I was the help.

The boys, his two teenagers, came down one afternoon to help load the gourds into flats. They were sweet to me. They did not know they were carrying off the only thing I had to do with my days now that their grandfather was gone.

“Grandma, you want us to bring your lawn chair up to the new stand?” the younger one asked me.

I told him no. I told him I would be fine right here. He shrugged and carried a flat of pumpkins to the truck and I watched my October drive away one load at a time.