The Sunflowers Along Highway 34

We sold eleven more that morning. A man in a feed cap bought three for his wife. A couple of girls in a pickup bought one each. A woman from church saw us and turned around a mile down the road and came back.

By noon the coffee can had forty-one dollars in it.

That afternoon, the phone rang. It was Opal, who has run the cafe on Main for as long as I can remember. Nora had stopped in for coffee after her shift with that sunflower in her hand, and the whole counter had asked about it.

“Fern,” Opal said, “I want a bunch every Monday for the counter. Big ones. Through as long as they last. What do you charge for a bunch?”

I told her to ask Wyatt. I put him on the phone. He was so nervous he said “twelve dollars” and then “I mean ten,” and then “I mean, whatever you want,” and Opal laughed and said, “Twelve it is, honey.”

Every Monday after that, Wyatt and I drove into town with a bucket of sunflowers in the back seat and set them on the counter at the cafe in a big glass pitcher. The old farmers at the long table started calling them Wyatt’s flowers.

“Wyatt’s flowers are looking good this week,” one of them would say, and Wyatt would just about float out the door.

The next week a semi pulled off on the wide part of the shoulder, past our drive, and the driver walked back. He was a big man in a ball cap, maybe fifty, with a gray beard.

“You the flower man?” he asked Wyatt.

Wyatt said he was.

“My name’s Thad,” he said. “I run this road twice a week, hauling into Nebraska and back. I’ve been looking at these for a month. It’s my wife’s birthday tomorrow and she loves sunflowers more than anything, and I’m going to be home tonight for the first time in nine days.”

He bought ten. He wanted the biggest ones. Wyatt went out and picked them himself, carefully, the way I’d shown him, and wrapped the ends in a wet paper towel and a bread bag so they’d keep.

The trucker paid him and then stood there a second.

“My wife’s been sick,” he said. Just that. Then he said, “These are going to make her day, son.”

He walked back to his rig with the flowers held against his chest like a baby. Wyatt watched him go. He didn’t say anything for a long time.

That was the day Wyatt counted the coffee can and found he had enough for the bike. He’d had enough for a week, actually. He just hadn’t counted.

We went to the thrift store that Saturday. The red bike with the bent fender was still there. He paid for it himself, forty dollars, counted out in fives and ones on the counter.

That night on the phone, he told his dad about the bike, and then about Nora, and then about the trucker. My son put me on after.

“Mom,” he said, and his voice was rough. “I’m coming home Labor Day. I’ll be there a week.”

“He’ll like that,” I said.

“I want to see those flowers.”

“They’ll be here.”

Through all of it, Merle’s white pickup went by every morning at eight and came back every morning at eleven.