The air conditioner hummed steadily even though the sun was
only an hour high.  Heather Shelby
slipped on a pair of tattered sneakers, stood up and gazed out the front door
window. The basket of petunias on the porch hung thin and scraggly. The
gladiolas by the front steps bent nearly to the ground. Those bright colored
beds of annuals, the perennial borders, and the trellises of roses she had
spent all winter planning were still in her sketchbook. What had happened to
the time, she wondered. She took a last swallow of cold coffee from her mug and
carried it to the sink, then stepped out into the laundry room and picked up a
pair of soiled leather gloves and a five-gallon bucket. A butcher knife with a
worn wooden handle rattled inside.

Heather’s back stiffened as she lifted her ware; she leaned
back hard, stretched and pulled at her sore shoulder. As she straightened her
eyes ran up the metal rack beside the freezer. From bottom to top it was
stacked with mason jars. There were at least three dozen quart jars full of
rich red stewed tomatoes and two dozen more of vegetable soup with chunks of
bell peppers and bright yellow bits of corn suspended inside. There were pint
jars of thick-cut bread and butter pickles seasoned with cloves, there were
dill spears lined inside their jars like green soldiers. Two thirds of a shelf
was filled with jars of green beans and beside those jars of chow-chow swirling
with red, green and pale yellow beans and bright orange ripple cut carrots.
There was a row of quarts of apricots, each with its own cinnamon stick and
another of half pints of strawberry jam.

As Heather dropped her gloves into the bucket, a small blond
head poked around the door. “Morning, Mama.” A little boy of four slid into the
laundry room dressed only in cartoon-character underpants and a pair of cowboy
boots. He wrapped his arms tight around her legs.

“Good morning, sweet boy.”

Heather patted his bare back. Then she reached to the top
shelf of the rack and aligned several jars of pickled okra, counting as she
went. As her fingers ran across the lids he turned and tucked himself
underneath her.

“You got lots of pretty jars of stuff, Mama.” He poked his
finger at a kernel of corn floating inside a jar of vegetable soup.  “What you doing?”

“I’m going to cut
okra”, she sighed.  “Your daddy could eat
a jar a day if I’d let him.”

“Are you going to the garden, Mama? I want to go.”  She paused and looked down at him. “It’s so
hot, son. Why don’t you stay in where it’s cool?”

“I want to go with you, Mama.” He put his hand gently
against her knee and bit his lower lip.

She looked down at his wishful face. “Alright. Go tell your
sisters.”

The heels of his boots clacked against the floor as he ran
back through the house. Heather pulled her hair back into a pony tail and
grabbed a baseball cap from a peg by the door. When she stepped outside the
humidity filled her lungs. As she reached to close the door, the boy ducked
under her arm, his own arms loaded with little trucks and cars. He stomped to
the bottom of the steps forcing as much sound out of his boots as he could,
turned and waited for her to follow.

“You have to stay out of the okra. It’ll sting you.”

Heather could feel the Bermuda grass crunch under her feet as
they walked down the side yard.  They
crossed the dirt driveway to the garden that ran beside it for a hundred feet,
at least half as deep as it was long. Much of the garden was already harvested
and what was left was struggling. Blooms were falling off the tomatoes before
they could set. A few winter squash vines wound through the dry corn stalks. A
regiment of bees drifted over the tops of the purple hull peas that were
putting on a second bloom; it would be a month before they would be picked
again.

When they reached the edge of the garden the little boy
plopped down amongst the spent corn stalks and tumbled his toys onto the ground.
The surface dirt was as soft as flour, and it puffed and swirled as he scooted
his little vehicles in loops and circles. “Stay out of the okra,” she reminded.

It was already warm and the stillness pressed her clothes
against her skin as she stepped over the plowed rows toward the far side of the
garden. At the line of okra plants, she set her bucket down and pulled on her
leather gloves. She propped her hands on her hips and looked down the row as
she stretched her back one last time. It was a formidable crop of okra to be
sure. The plants looked like small trees with stalks a thick as hoe handles. They
had grown like something from a fairy tale, like she had found a bag of Jack’s
magic seeds.

She picked up the bucket and took out her knife. With the
same hand that held the bucket handle, she pulled a pod of okra over, slipped
the butcher knife through its stem and deftly caught it in the bucket as it
fell. Swiftly she worked through each plant, catching the small tender pods in
her bucket and letting the hard, overgrown ones fall to the ground. Despite her
care, the plants were thick with leaves and tall enough now that she couldn’t
help her arms brushing against them as she reached in for the clusters of pods.
Her forearms began to sting and perspiration tickled her back.

The pods pattering in her bucket accumulated quickly. The
plants grew taller as she worked down the row so that she had to reach head
high to clip the new growth of pods. She pushed back a large, wide leaf and
reached for a cluster of tender pods. When she lifted her bucket, the prickly
leaf slipped from her hand and lashed broadside against her face. She dropped
her knife, slipped off her glove and pressed her hand against her cheek. She
knew it would be stinging soon, and felt a tear trickle from the corner of her
eye.

A small oak at the edge of the garden offered a bit of shade,
Heather set her bucket down, walked over and eased herself beneath it. She
slung off her other glove and laid her arms on the ground.  With her head leaning back against the tree,
she glanced at her son playing contentedly underneath the cornstalks then let
her eyes close. A breeze shook the leaves above her letting bits of light
through and her closed eyes tingled with reds and pinks. She listened to her
son making the noises little boys make with trucks and cars. Her cheek burned
where the okra leaf had brushed against it and she clinched her mind against
rubbing where it stung.

Focus on something else, she thought.  A cicada rattled in the tree over her head,
and she listened to that for a moment. She listened to the air conditioner at
the house humming off then on again. A dog barked in the distance then above
her she heard the wooing of a grey dove that roosted on the utility wire. In
her mind, she was counting mason jars, how many she had done and how many more
she needed to fill. She was wondering whether the tomatoes would make again,
how many more peas she would shell. Her head felt heavy. She was thinking about
the winter squash, and how she might cook it, how it would blaze orange when
she split it open. She wondered how many of them she could harvest and she was
thinking about her squash vines and the little curlicue shaped tendrils that
hooked onto everything they touched.  Like
her okra had grown, like Jack’s magic beans, she imagined them winding all
through the garden. They wound across the road and up to the house. They
climbed over the doors and windows and up the roof. They wound up to her and
all around the ground beside her. Then they began to bloom. They bloomed with
pinks and reds, blooms burst from the vines with the rhythm of the clacking of
the cicada above her head. They swirled with color, with pinks and reds and
yellows. She felt warm and heavy. She felt them pulling her away, but she
couldn’t go. She felt uneasy. She missed something. She took a slow even breath
as she puzzled over what it was.

Heather shivered, sat up straight and scanned the garden.
Her head started to buzz and she felt cold electricity in her chest.

“Mama!”

Giggling, the little boy jumped from behind the tree.

Heather pressed her hand to her chest and pushed the air
from her lungs. The little boy leaned over, looked close in her face, first a
bit uncertain, then smiling he stepped back.

“I’ve got something
for you, Mama.” He straightened his back and tightened his elbows against his
sides. From behind him he thrust a large yellow okra blossom. Heather’s eye
still burned and watered from the lashing and she was about to scold him for
disobeying when another pleasant breeze shook the little oak tree. The leaves
shivered and bits of sunlight broke the shade.
One droplet fell inside the bloom as he held it out to her. She felt her
breath catch with the light that illuminated the lemon-colored petals and for a
moment the blossom seemed to float in his cupped hands.

“Isn’t it pretty?” He held the flower up close to his face
and she could see down into its velvety, dark heart.

“Yet, it is.” she gently lifted the blossom from his small
hands.

“Put it in your hair, Mama,” he whispered. Being careful not
to crush the petals, she lifted the blossom by its stem and pushed it over her
ear. As he watched, she daintily crossed her legs and placed her fingertips on
her knees. She smiled, then coyly raised her shoulders and tipped her head to
show off her flower.

Her son put his hands to his cheeks, opened his eyes wide
and sucked in a breath as he formed a little circle with his mouth. “You look beautiful,
Mama.” She studied his face, not quite sure if he was telling the truth or playing
along with the little game she had started. But before she could decide, he bobbed
toward her, kissed her, then turned and ran to his toys in the corn stalks.

She took the blossom from her ear and twirled it slowly as
she held it in front of her then tucked it back behind her ear. She leaned her
head back as far as she could and rolled it from shoulder to shoulder. She
looked up at the sky. How very blue and clear and empty it was, she thought. She
turned and watched the little boy at the other side of the garden playing in
the dirt with his cars and trucks. With her fingers she felt for the blossom in
her hair. “It is a pretty flower,” she said again. She drew in a deep breath, pushed
herself up, slipped on her gloves and headed back toward her bucket beside the okra
row, and to no one in particular said again, “Your daddy could eat a jar a day
if I’d let him.”