At Lynn’s 2021

• October 2021

We are wrapped up in a pandemic and we are safe but having to find ways to get laid and to give food to people.

The driveway up to Lynn’s ranch is lined with cordwood after crossing Sardine Creek on an aging but firm bridge with no railings.

Lynn is socially distanced most days. She can’t go eat up time with the professional women’s group in town. Her phone never works well out here and the internet is slow. She does not know much about such things, though.

Her husband’s friends have been playing a game online together but what is called latency means Dan misses his turn and gets kicked out of the game.

We visit them. It is getting cold again here in October. We stay outside and sleep in our rig, not in their guest room. Sarah can’t help Lynn in the kitchen like they used to.

After a cold breakfast the sun is striking the frost-shocked garden space. Tomatoes and tomatillos and peppers were interrupted by the cold last week and hang on the failing plants.

Sarah and I offer to help Lynn clear out the beds. She says it will be too cold but when we get to the gentle slope of her garden, out in the open, the sun is warm and bright.

We tear the tomato plant’s crisp limbs from their cages and stack them in the wheelbarrow. We find some good tomatoes among the horde abbreviated by frost. I put some in my mouth, dirt and all.

I get to dive the shovel under the skeletal brown memories of sunflowers. Sarah kicks the root bundle to shiver out dirt for next year. The stalks and bowed blooms go on top of the tomatoes in the discard pile.

My dog spies a ball that is a cantaloupe and we play an exploding game of fetch.

Lynn says weather is coming in the afternoon. She is right, but we are warm now.