The Daylilies We Put Back on County C

What He Saw

I do not know what Mitch expected. Maybe he expected her to yell at him. Maybe he expected all of us to.

Frieda did not yell. She never yelled in her life, as far as I know.

She just watched him come. When he got to the edge of the ditch, she said, “Good morning, Mitchell.”

He stood there turning his cap around in his hands. He looked down the row of fresh lilies with the popsicle sticks beside them, all the way down to where we had stopped.

“Aunt Frieda,” he said. His voice was rough. “I didn’t know you’d see it from the porch. I thought they’d come back on their own.”

“They might have,” Frieda said. “Some of them. In a few years.”

“I lost a boom section on that culvert post last summer,” he said. “Four thousand dollars. I couldn’t see the post for the lilies. I couldn’t afford to lose another one. I’ve got the bank calling me every month.”

“I know about the boom,” she said. “Everybody knows about the boom.”

He nodded and looked at the ground.

“You could have asked me,” she said quietly. “I’d have dug the ones around the posts myself. I’d have marked every post in that ditch with a flag. You know I would have.”

“I know,” he said. “I know you would have.”

Nobody else said anything. Thirty people kneeling in the ditch, and you could hear every word.

That was the real consequence, I think. Not a fine from the county. Not a phone call. It was Mitch Ruegsegger standing in the road in front of his aunt and everybody he did business with, and knowing every one of them knew exactly what he had done, and why.

He did not try to argue. I will give him that. He stood there and took it.