Chapter 4 #2
He returns the sentiment, and I start perusing the shelves.
Pretty quickly I know my afternoon will be spent on a trip to the Hazard Walmart.
This is the place to pick up your bread and milk, but as a woman who likes to buy her salad in a resealable bag and her chicken boneless and frozen, there’s not much here for me that I don’t already have at Mabel’s.
Even so, I place a few cans of soup into the little plastic basket I picked up upon coming inside, then add some chips and a jar of peanut butter, happy to support the nice man.
As I step up to the counter, he points to a tidy row of tomatoes lining a wooden windowsill. “Grew these myself and they’re just about ripe,” he says. They’re shiny and pretty and red, and I like the image in my head of Mr. Freeman tending his tomato plants.
“They look yummy,” I reply. “I’ll take two.”
As I’m paying, the hanging flowers again catch my eye out the window, and I think of the few still left for sale.
I’m not a big flower person, but maybe it’s because I don’t need to be—Nancy takes care of that for me.
When I moved in, she offered to plant and care for the beds on my side of the yard as well as hers and has done so ever since.
She even puts a few potted flowers on my side of the divided terrace in back each summer, too, and keeps them watered. No muss, no fuss.
Mr. Freeman sees me looking and says, “Give ya everything out there—five pots, I think is what’s left—for fifteen bucks.”
Even though I don’t buy a lot of flowers, I know that’s dirt-cheap. “That seems like a good deal.”
“They don’t start gettin’ some love soon, they won’t make it. Already on their last legs. Or stems, I should maybe say,” he adds with a chuckle, and I smile, liking him all the more.
I step over to the store’s open door and peek out at the petunias. Two pots of hot pink, two lavender, and one white. Five seems like a lot. Like five more than I was considering two seconds ago.
“If you don’t have a place to hang ’em, you can just unclip the hangers from the pot,” he volunteers.
“What would I need to do to give them their best shot at survival?” I hear myself ask. I’m not sure why I’m going down this path except that Mabel’s place looks pretty bland, and it’s not like I have anything better to do this summer than tend flowers.
“Mostly just water ’em,” he says. “Ever’ day, unless it rains. Mornin’ or evenin’ is best, just to avoid the heat of the day. They need at least six hours of sunlight, but if you got a spot where they won’t get much more than that, might help ’em bounce back.”
Okay—for fifteen dollars, what the heck? And if they make it, I can always pack them up and take them home with me next month. I can only imagine the surprise on Nancy’s face when I have baskets of petunias to offer her.
Late that afternoon, I return to Mabel’s with enough food to last awhile, all the frozen stuff piled on the passenger seat floor with an AC vent blasting down on them, given the length of the drive and the fact that it’s a hot day.
While I was in Hazard, I took advantage of the internet there to check my social media again, but I resisted posting anything new since I’d just said I was off the grid.
It was heartening, however, to see all the likes and comments already on my earlier post, nice to feel cared about.
Even if it’s by people who don’t really know me.
I like to think on some level they do, that those connections count, because some days they really matter—days like this one, when I don’t feel too terribly valued by anyone else.
People also raved about the beauty of the mountain picture I posted, but I think they’re just being nice—it was just a bunch of green.
Now that I’m back in what feels like no-man’s-land, I put away my groceries, then change from my fedora to my sun hat before going back outside, remembering I need to be careful about sun protection.
A glance in the mirror above the pegboard tells me the sun hat looks .
.. ridiculous. I’m a tiny face holding up a big disk of straw—I look like a human mushroom.
But as through this whole cancer journey, you do a lot of things just looking forward to the time when you won’t have to do them anymore, and this silly floppy hat is the least of them.
Toting my flowerpots from the back of my SUV, I decide the two lavender ones will sit on the front porch, one on each side of the concrete steps leading up to it.
As I detach the plastic hanger parts, my eyes are drawn once again to the weed-filled flower bed, but hopefully the petunias will divert my attention from that.
Next, I carry the other pots around to the back, where I finally see the fabled lake.
I stop, take it in. It’s down the hill of Mabel’s expansive backyard and feels kind of far away, but it’s nice, about the length of a city block, the border rimmed with cattails and the occasional tree.
A breeze ripples the surface. On the other side, I spot the promised winery—a rustic old barn to which someone has added an arched stone facade.
Rows of grapevines stripe the hillsides around it.
All in all, it’s a pretty view. Kevin was right that the back porch will be a nice place to sit.
And I should probably be more enthralled by the lake—it’s definitely the best part of Mabel’s place—yet something in me that’s grown stiff and wooden refuses to be wowed.
I guess I’m just a bit depressed. I was doing okay with that, with not being depressed, until I was banished.
It’s like I’ve become a human game of Jenga—I was holding up okay until someone pulled out the wrong little block of wood, and then everything came tumbling down.
Turning back to the matter at hand—my petunias—I inspect the covered porch. Same cracked concrete as out front, sporting two white wooden rockers at one end, a small round table with two chairs at the other.
I’m unduly excited to find a little metal plant hanger jutting down from the porch ceiling at the rocking chair end.
(Life’s gotten strange if I’m bored with a pretty view but excited about a plant hanger.) After hanging one of the bright-pink petunia pots, I situate the other on the table, even though it takes up most of the surface, and place the white one on the concrete next to a green-painted porch post, then remove the hangers.
“Well, look at you, sprucin’ things up.”
I jump at the sound of Matthew Cordray’s voice—damn, the man’s good at sneaking up on me. I probably seem like a nervous wreck to him. I say nothing in reply, too busy catching my breath.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare ya there.” Again with that lazy grin that leaves me not quite knowing if the country mouse finds me an amusing city mouse.
I notice dark stubble on his jaw, and dark hair beneath that same silly cowboy hat.
And today there’s a Yorkie standing next to him, ankle-high.
It’s adorable, but I refuse to acknowledge it.
“No worries,” I say. “But shouldn’t you be off protecting the people of Lost and Found?”
“Already did that today.” He’s still flashing that little smile as he taps the watch at his wrist. “Workday’s done.”
Oh, I guess my excursion did take all afternoon.
This guy still doesn’t look like a cop to me. Today he’s in gray shorts and a Kenny Chesney concert tee, suggesting that even the country bumpkin occasionally ventures beyond the surrounding mountains. And the Yorkie is ... well, it’s not the dog I would have expected him to own.
He motions to the hanging pot of flowers. “Does this mean you’re feelin’ more at home than you were yesterday?”
“Can’t say that I am,” I reply, not returning the smile.
“I can get you a garden hose from Mabel’s shed for waterin’.” He motions to a small building painted in the same fading color scheme as the house, situated halfway down the hill and near the woods that meet that side of the yard.
“Thanks, but I can do it,” I tell him.
“You sure?”
Just what I need—some guy who thinks women are incapable of performing simple tasks. And given the fatigue I’ve successfully fought off, I feel particularly eager to not need anyone’s help.
“I’m sure.”
“Okay,” he says, starting back toward his own yard. “Just watch out for the snakes.”
Oh crap. “Snakes?”
He stops, looks over his shoulder, nods. “Sometimes. Generally the good kind, though.”
I raise my eyebrows doubtfully. “There are good kinds of snakes?”
He chuckles, and this time I’m pretty sure I’m being laughed at . “They keep down the rodents.”
I blink. “ Rodents? ”
He tilts his head. “You really are a city girl, aren’t ya?”
“I wasn’t always,” I confess. “But guess I’ve become one.”
When I sense him considering asking for more information on that, I head him off at the pass. “If, uh, that offer still stands, I’ll take it.” Just please don’t ask for anything in return, even a conversation.
He gives a short nod. “I’ll get it hooked up for ya right now.”
“Thanks,” I say. Then quickly add, “I’m gonna head inside, get out of the sun.”
Of course, mostly I’m getting away from him . I don’t mean to be rude exactly—I’m just not looking to make a buddy here, and my impression is that he’d be perfectly happy to hang out. I would have maybe even liked to pet his dog, but again, I don’t want to encourage interaction.
Back inside, I rummage in my newly packed fridge to decide what’s for dinner—but from the corner of my eye, I’m glancing out the window to see my neighbor carrying a dark-green coil of hose toward where I noticed the spigot a little while ago, his trusty sidekick Yorkie trotting along behind.
Snakes. Great. Now I can never go near that shed. Hopefully I won’t have a reason to now that the hose is out.