By Nicholas Trandahl

The old man had lived a long life, and he had done and seen much in it. He had written about what he’d seen, and his books were read by many people, though they had become less popular in the last couple decades. He no longer wrote, however.

In the summer, the old man looked forward to growing a variety of tomatoes. In the autumn, he looked forward to the leaves changing and raking the little bit of fallen leaves in his yard into piles. In the winter, he looked forward to reading the Russians and smoking pipe tobacco in front of his fireplace, his big feet enveloped in thick wool socks. In the spring, he looked forward to the rain, and he used to look forward to the dandelions he let grow thick and golden in his grass.

The little yellow blossoms were beautiful to the bees and to the old man. He did not consider them weeds. In fact, he was biased against anyone he knew that considered dandelions weeds.

Oh, how he hated to pay the neighborhood boy to cut all the dandelions down. He didn’t hate to pay the boy. The boy was kind and respectful, and the old man had enough money. No, he hated to see all the beautiful dandelions cut down in their prime, like a brigade of young men losing their innocence in some foreign jungle the way he had all those decades ago. The dandelions seemed to grow back slower then, after being cut that first time in late spring. They still sprouted from the lawn, but it seemed as though they did so with trepidation or wariness.

He wouldn’t ever cut the dandelions from his front lawn or pay the neighborhood boy to cut them if it hadn’t been for the town’s damn weed ordinance. When the police officer had come to give the old man a verbal warning about his front lawn, the old man had tried to explain how the dandelions weren’t actually weeds but were very beneficial to the environment. The police officer hadn’t cared, and the old man relented and began to pay the neighborhood boy to cut the grass of his front lawn throughout the late spring and the summer.

The old man had a small backyard with a tall wooden fence around it. The yard was filled with rows of tomato plants. The old man loved his tomatoes very much, and he tended and cared for them as though they were his children. He never had any children of his own, but he imagined children would be much more work than his tomatoes were each summer. The old man had been married twice, but there had never been children. He didn’t think about his ex-wives often anymore, no more than he thought of anyone else that was a part of his past. The life he inhabited was a new life — a quiet life with few cares anymore.

The old man grew misshapen heirloom tomatoes in different shades of red, green, and violet, and he grew juicy Roma tomatoes as well as bright red cherry tomatoes on the vine. He also grew golden yellow pear tomatoes, and those were his favorite. When he ate pear tomatoes one at a time with his supper, they were rich and full of garden flavor, like a robust pasta sauce.

The old man liked to eat his garden tomatoes for lunch, on a salad of baby greens with cucumber slices, ground pepper, sea salt, and ranch dressing. He also liked them sliced and drizzled with aged balsamic. For dinner, the old man liked to cut the yellow pear tomatoes and the red cherry tomatoes in half and sauté them in butter for a few moments before stirring them into a steaming pot of strained angel hair pasta. In addition, he would stir pressed garlic and freshly squeezed lemon juice into the angel hair. Over the years, that pasta dish had become his favorite thing to eat for supper, especially since it was easy to eat with the old man’s unfortunate lack of teeth.

In his late seventies, the old man no longer had quite the appetite he’d had when he was younger. However, his tomato garden was more plentiful than it had ever been, and the old man had more tomatoes than he knew what to do with. He thought it would be better to give them away than to have them go bad.

It was an afternoon in late August. It had been a mild summer. The air was hot, but not uncomfortably so, as the old man toiled in his garden. On his bald head was a straw hat with a brim to protect his delicate skin from the sun, and a stubby corn cob pipe protruded from the depths of his enormous white beard. A sinuous rope of nutty pipe smoke drifted from the pipe as the old man worked.

With quick trained strokes of his trusty big pocketknife that he always carried on him, the old man cut the diverse types of tomatoes from their vines. He piled the fruit in a dented tin pail as he cut them loose. The rusted handle of the pail creaked as audibly as the old man’s knees when he stood and lifted the pail and moved on to a different part of his tomato garden.

When the pail was full, the old man walked toward the back door of his house. The glossy tomatoes gleamed in the afternoon sunshine, but then they darkened as he went into the stale shadows of his old quiet home. A haze of pipe smoke followed the old man into the kitchen, where feeble golden-yellow light shone through a small unwashed window. The old man removed a couple handfuls of tomatoes from the pail, most of which were the flavorful yellow pear tomatoes, though he was sure to keep a few of each variety.

The old man was tall and gaunt, and his hands were large and knobby with arthritis and a little shaky as he took out the small amount of tomatoes he wanted to keep for himself. He was still strong, but certainly not as strong as he had been. However, aging didn’t bother the old man. He bore the burdens of time with nobility and quietude. He had earned those late peaceful years, and the old man enjoyed his calm waning life.

With a trail of pipe smoke behind him, the old man carried the pail of tomatoes out to the sidewalk in front of his house. The pail was still nearly full of fruit, despite the small amount he’d kept for himself. In the still summer afternoon air, the full branches of the large cottonwoods along the sidewalk were motionless, and they left ample shadows on the ground. The old man was thankful for the shade He tilted his straw hat back on his head, puffed on his pipe, and ambled down the quiet sidewalk of the quiet residential neighborhood. Many of the homes in the neighborhood were empty, after residents were forced to move elsewhere when the mill went out of business. The town, like the old man was also in its twilight years.

He walked toward to home of the neighborhood boy that cut his front lawn. The boy lived in the home with his mother. The pair had moved into the neighborhood and rented the house after the mother had went through a nasty divorce in a different town, leaving behind the boy’s abusive father. The old man didn’t take up with gossip, but he’d heard others speak about the woman and her boy when he was shopping for groceries at the neighborhood market. He figured the boy and his mother could use the tomatoes. It appeared to the old man that they could use a little generosity.

The old man had lived in the neighborhood for many decades, and he had seen many families come and go, especially after the mill’s closure. He’d didn’t really know anyone in the neighborhood very well anymore. It was as though his neighbors were all ghosts. The boy that cut his front lawn was the only familiar person to the old man.

The boy and his mother lived at the end of the block, in a small pale pink house. It was a worn-out and tired house. However, the small flowerbed beneath the front window was full of marigolds and zinnias. The flowerbed shone in yellow, gold, orange, rust, and scarlet hues, and the fragrance of the hardy blossoms was detectable by the long beak-like nose of the old man, even over the nutty aroma of his American burley pipe tobacco.

The boy answered the door and smiled up at the old man. He was a good boy, responsible and healthy. “Hi,” the boy said.

“Hello,” returned the old man in a quiet voice, gravelly with age and smoke. “Is your mother home?”

“Yep,” answered the boy, and he turned and yelled into the house, “Mom, Mister Raleigh wants to talk to you!”

The old man was amused at the boy’s loudness and he smirked in the depths of his beard. Pipe smoke drifted from the flared nostrils of his long crooked nose. He shifted the painful metal handle of the pail of tomatoes in his gaunt hand.

The boy’s mother seemed to manifest from the shadows of the home like a ghost or an angel as she approached the front door. She was young and fresh in her short-sleeved floral sundress. However, the young woman already looked weary from life’s burdens and troubles, weary beyond her years.

The boy, a head shorter than his mother, maneuvered behind the woman. She smiled nervously at the intrusion, and her face was inquisitive as she studied the tall mysterious old man at her front door with a smoking pipe, a straw hat, and a pail of tomatoes. The old man would’ve felt embarrassed if he’d been a young man. He admitted to himself that he’d most likely be smitten with the young single mother, but the time had long since passed in the old man’s life when such things mattered.

“What could I help you with?” she asked in her sweet honey voice.

“Oh, I was just curious if you could make use of these tomatoes?” the old man asked as he lifted the pail towards her. “I grow far too many in my garden these days, and it’s just me over there.”

“Are you sure, Mister Raleigh? Can I pay you for them?” the boy’s mother asked as the old man handed the pail of tomatoes to her.

“No, dear. Of course not. They would just go to waste if I kept them, and then they’d be no good to anyone, would they?”

The boy’s mother smiled brightly, truly thankful for the gift of fresh produce. “No,” she answered. “I suppose they wouldn’t. Well, thank you very much, Mister Raleigh. We really do appreciate it. We’ll enjoy them. They look delicious.”

“Good,” he replied, and he tipped the brim of his straw hat to the young woman with a smile.

As he turned to leave, she said, “Don’t forget your pail, Mister Raleigh. If you give me moment, I’ll put the tomatoes in a bowl in the kitchen, and you can take your pail back home with you.”

The old man half turned towards the boy’s mother as he waved away her concern. “Oh, it’s no trouble, dear. Just have your boy run it on down the block when it’s empty. It’s no rush at all.”

“That sounds just fine, Mister Raleigh. You’re too kind. Thanks again!”

He continued on his way, back down the sidewalk towards his own house at the other end of the block. A faint ribbon of pipe smoke followed the old man as he shuffled away from the pink home of the young woman and her son. They watched him for a moment from their doorway, and then they went inside, closing the door behind them.

Two weeks later, on a Friday, the old man returned with more tomatoes to the pink house that the young woman and her son rented. They were not alone. An old black Ford was parked in the salt-eaten concrete of the driveway. The belligerent shouts of an angry man sounded from within the little old house.

The old man stopped on the sidewalk in front of the house, corn cob pipe protruding from his white beard and the pail of tomatoes heavy in his hand. He assumed it was the woman’s ex-husband raising some hell. The old man listened to the shouting and fighting and thought about turning around and heading back to his own home — back to his own business and his own quiet life.

“It’s none of my business,” the old man grumbled to himself. He blew pipe smoke from his nostrils and stared at the little pink house. “I should just go right back home,” he said, and he was trying to talk himself into following his own advice.

The boy’s mother raised her voice against her ex-husband’s verbal assault, and the old man could hear the fear and desperation in her tone. The old man could clearly hear the man’s words as he roared back at her, “Woman, you know I’m not afraid to beat the hell out of you! I don’t give a shit about that worthless restraining order you got against me! I’m here, ain’t I?”

The old man squeezed his eyes shut, drew deeply from his pipe, and let out one long smoky sigh. He knew he couldn’t ignore the situation and go home. He’d never forgive himself if he left.

The old man walked to the door.

When he knocked, the voices in the house grew silent. The old man set the pail of tomatoes on the step at his feet. He knocked again. “Young lady, it’s Mister Raleigh,” he said loudly.

“No, Kyle! Don’t!” whimpered the boy’s mother form within just before the door swung open. The man that stood there was skinny and unkempt with a shaggy head of black hair and a narrow face dark with whiskers. His bloodshot eyes blazed with fury, and he reeked of cheap beer and cigarettes.

“What the hell do you want, old timer?” the man asked, accusation in his voice and his dark features.

Pipe still in his mouth, the old man replied, “Who are you?”

“It’s none of your damn business who I am, you old coot!” shouted the man. “I asked you what the hell you want. Why are you on my wife’s doorstep?”

“Ex-wife, Kyle,” corrected the boy’s mother from the shadows behind her ex-husband.

The man half turned towards her and barked, “You want to get smacked again, bitch? You seem to forget who’s in charge.”

The old man had heard quite enough. He said sternly, “It’s time for you to get out of here.”

The ex-husband turned slowly back to the old man. His disheveled whiskered face wavered between unbridled rage and disbelief.

The boy’s mother pleaded, “We’re fine, Mister Raleigh. Please don’t get involved.”

The old man knew she was afraid for him.

“What the hell did you say to me?” the ex-husband growled at the old man.

“I said you need to leave,” he reiterated, his hard eyes never leaving those of the younger belligerent man. The old man felt angry now, and he felt protective of the boy and his mother that had fled to his neighborhood to escape the violent intruder before him. “Go on, boy. Get out of here, or I’ll call the police.”

The ex-husband stared dumbly at the old man for a moment or two. He wasn’t used to folks that stood up to him. Then, too suddenly for the old man to try to dodge or protect himself, the young man gritted his yellow teeth and smacked the old man across the face as hard as he could. It was the hardest the old man had been hit since he was a young man.

There was a white-hot explosion of pain at the smack, and the old man was rattled senseless as his corn cob pipe flew from his mouth and he staggered backward. The old man’s large boot stepped on the edge of the pail of tomatoes, and he tripped and fell.

The tomatoes bounced and rolled down the steps and sidewalk as they spilled from the pail, but the old man couldn’t see them through the temporary white blindness the slap had given him. However, as he fell, the old man could smell the fragrant zinnias and marigolds that were planted in front of the pink house. He could smell the blossoms in the sweet summer air.

The old man’s head hit the concrete, and everything went black.

Moments later, the old man groggily awoke on his back with the various tomatoes that were in the pail scattered around him. The pail, bent and misshapen, was near him on its side. The man that had struck him was gone, and the black Ford wasn’t in the driveway.

The boy and his mother crouched next to the prone old man. The boy’s bottom lip was split, and tears streamed down his ruddy face. The boy’s mother had a bruise and some swelling coming up under her right eye, but she wasn’t crying. The old man figured she had no tears left after the hell her ex-husband had put her through for so long.

The old man’s face throbbed, and his head ached unbearably. The pains in his body hadn’t made themselves known yet, but he knew they’d be there soon. The terrified boy and his mother helped the old man to his feet, and he felt wobbly and unsteady in his big boots. As they helped him up, the boy’s mother said, “I’m so sorry, Mister Raleigh. I’m so sorry. He’s terrible. That’s why I left him. He’s nothing but a beast.”

As he stood there, the old man’s ribs and hip throbbed with sharp pains. The boy and his mother held him, and the old man tried to breathe through the pain. A big heirloom tomato was squished under one of his boots, and its juice slowly spread on the concrete at his feet.

When the old man still hadn’t said anything, the woman continued in a quick nervous voice, “I would get the police involved, Mister Raleigh, but I’m afraid of what he’d do to us. He’s already promised worse when I threatened to call the cops before. That’s what set him off, you see — when you threatened to call the police. Kyle hates the cops. I’m so sorry. I just don’t know what to do. I thought we’d escaped him.”

“It’s just fine, dear,” the old man finally said weakly. “I won’t call law enforcement if you don’t want me to.”

The boy’s mother breathed a sigh of relief, and despite his own pain, the old man felt more pain for the boy and his mother because of the fear they lived under. He felt pain for them because of the violent rage of the young woman’s ex-husband. The old man’s eyes, pale grey and bright, looked into the eyes of the boy’s mother, and he said solemnly, “It will be alright, dear.”

At those words, maybe because she actually heard the truth in them, the glitter of tears rushed unbidden into her eyes, and she put a hand over her face. Her chin quivered as she silently sobbed. The old man put a large gaunt hand on the woman’s slender shoulder, and he repeated, “It will be alright.”

The boy helped the old man down the block to his house. The man limped along and breathed heavily. The boy’s mother had stayed behind to gather all the spilled garden tomatoes, and she’d had her son make sure the old man made it home safely and had whatever he needed.

“It will be alright,” he told the boy as they made their way slowly down the sidewalk, echoing what he’d told the boy’s mother.

The boy didn’t respond at first. They just kept walking toward the old man’s house. The injured old man was surprised to find the boy such a solid support. The shoulder that the old man held was strong and round. Finally, the boy answered, “It’ll be alright only when that son of bitch is dead.”

Though the words came from a child’s mouth, the cold seriousness of them startled the old man. The boy meant what he’d said, and the old man knew that the boy would kill his own father if he could.

“Do you know where he lives?” asked the old man.

“Yeah, he still lives in our old trailer in Edwardsburg.”

“Do you remember the address?”

The boy nodded and answered, “Yep.”

The old man stopped limping down the sidewalk. He pulled the boy to a stop with him, and he looked down at the child. The boy looked up into the stern bearded face of his elder. “Tell me, boy,” spoke the old man. “Tell me the address.”

It was early Saturday morning. The summer dawn was lit with rose and peach. In his old nondescript pickup, the old man sat silently and comfortably.

The truck was turned off, and the grey shadows of the trailer court were dim and sleepy. The old man had stayed up all night thinking, and then he’d driven from his town to Edwardsburg in the early pre-dawn dark. The boy had told the old man that his abusive father liked to fish at Fox Creek on Saturday mornings.

The cab of the truck was thick with a haze of pipe smoke, blue-grey in the growing dawn. The old man drew deeply from his corn cob pipe and exhaled the smoke from the nutty smoldering burley leaf through his nostrils. A murder of crows chattered in the splayed limbs of the cottonwood overhead, its leaves dark and grim in the weak light.

At the end of the dim street, the boy’s father left his singlewide trailer. He slammed the door behind him, and his black-whiskered face was already mean. He carried a spin rod and heavy tacklebox, and when he made his way to his old black Ford parked next the trailer, he tossed the rod and tacklebox in on the seat. Then he slid in and slammed the heavy truck door behind him before he started the loud vehicle.

The black truck made its way down the street, towards where the old man was parked beneath the tall cottonwood. The old man looked down as the truck passed, his bruised and bearded face lost in shadows and a wreath of pipe smoke. The truck made its way to the end of the street and turned to leave the trailer court.

The old man started his own truck. He turned it around in the quiet street and followed the boy’s father out of the trailer court and down the paved county road. He kept at a far enough distance to avoid drawing any suspicion from the other driver.

The sun finally rose in the east, in a swell of yellow and orange. The cloudless sky brightened to pale blue. It would be a lovely day. If the old man were younger, it would’ve been a wonderful day to fish all day himself and to write about it that evening at his writing desk. Ever since he’d stopped writing, the surface of his writing desk had become just another dusty surface to collect piles of things, which in turn collected more dust. Parts of the old man had long been passing away.

In the black truck, the boy’s father slowed down and turned from the county road and onto a narrow dirt road edged in tall green grass. The dirt road ran down into a grove of oaks, willows, and cottonwoods. The trees were green and full. Fox Creek, the old man knew, swept through those trees, and the water would be cool and deep and full of fish.

The old man didn’t follow the boy’s father down the dirt road into the trees, but instead he pulled over slowly onto the shoulder of the paved county road. He looked in the mirror and saw no vehicles coming down the road behind him. There were none coming from ahead either. He set his corn cob pipe on the seat of the truck and opened the door.

The old man groaned from stiffness and the pain the riddled his tall skinny frame as he stepped from his truck and stood on the rocks and sand of the road shoulder. His hip and ribs throbbed with what he assumed were bruised bones, if not fractures. His head pounded from the concussion he’d gotten when he fell and hit it on the sidewalk. The swollen bruise on the side of his face was the least of his injuries, though it outwardly looked the worst.

He pushed the door of his truck closed quietly, and he began to limp through the tall green grass between the road and the woods. The meadow was low and muddy between the road and the trees, and his boots squelched in the shallow standing water and soft earth as he walked. Mosquitoes and fat grasshoppers were scattered from the blades of grass with each step, and the old man thought again how fine of a morning it would be to fish.

Fox Creek was between the old man’s nearby town and Edwardsburg, and he’d fished it many times. He knew every bend of the stream, and he remembered the best spots to find big trout from the days when it used to be easy for him to go fishing. Those days had passed, along with his writing days. Nonetheless, if the boy’s father was any sort of fisherman, the old man knew the closest spot he would go to.

At the edge of the trees, the old man took off his muddy boots, and he limped silently through the detritus and loam of the forest floor. The new light of the sunrise had yet to penetrate the darkness of the woods. He reached out and balanced himself on the rough bark of the trees as he staggered past them. The old man’s white beard shone ghostly and almost luminous in the dim shadows of the trees, and his bruised face was grey and solemn. His eyes were bright and hard like the blade of a knife.

The old man could hear the creek. Barefoot, he continued his painful and silent walk until eventually he could see the water through the woods. There was a break in the trees over the creek, and the citrusy morning light shone over the water and the grassy banks. The boy’s father fished on the near bank. At his feet was the tacklebox, and the old man could see that it was primarily full of cheap cans of beer. An open can of beer stood in the grass next to the tacklebox.

Seeing the boy’s father fishing in the good morning light, the sounds of the water and the summer leaves the only noise to be heard, the old man hesitated. Then he remembered the bruised and frightened faces of the neighborhood boy and the boys’ mother. He remembered the man’s fury and violence the prior afternoon. The old man’s shaggy white brows lowered over his pale grey eyes in focus and anger.

From his pocket, the old man gently pulled out his trusty pocketknife that he used to cut the tomatoes from the vines in his garden. He unfolded its large sharp blade and took silent steps forward, toward the fisherman.

“Did you see him when he came in?” a young police officer asked an older one.

The older officer, with his thick salt and pepper mustache, shaved head, and big belly, sat at his desk, and he drafted a report. The younger officer that had walked up and spoken leaned against the older officer’s desk and sipped a Styrofoam cup of coffee with nonchalance. “Did I see who?” inquired the older officer, his small eyes not looking up from his report.

“What do you mean ‘who’? The old man!”

The older officer sighed. “His name’s Raleigh. I know him. He’s in the hospital now. He had a lot of injuries on him. He’s a Vietnam vet, and he was a famous writer once.”

“He was?”

“You bet. But these days he’s just a quiet old-timer. He’s never caused anyone around here any grief.”

The young officer snorted in derision and sipped his coffee. Then he said, “Well, he sure as hell did now, didn’t he? He caused a lot of grief for that fella in Edwardsburg.”

“Allegedly,” corrected the older officer.

“Allegedly? Shit, I heard that when he turned himself in this morning, he was covered in that fella’s blood. I heard that when he opened that poor bastard’s throat with his pocketknife, he just pushed his corpse into the creek, walked back to his truck, and cruised back to town. Like he didn’t have a care in the world. They still haven’t found the body.”

“Oh, he cared what he did. He drove right back to town to turn himself in here. And they’ll find that fella’s body. Fox Creek ain’t that big,” explained the older officer. He finally looked up from his report and into the freckled face of the younger officer.

“Did he say why he did it?” asked the younger officer before he took another sip of coffee.

The older officer sighed and smoothed his mustache. The new generation of police officers sure got under his skin. He thought they were less professional, nosy, and craved action and confrontation too much. He answered, “That guy from Edwardsburg that Raleigh allegedly attacked supposedly is the one that gave old Raleigh all those injuries. He says he was trying to protect the ex-wife and son of that fella. The mother and son live on Raleigh’s block. He says that fella from Edwardsburg was in town yesterday causing some hell at his ex-wife’s house, laying hands on her and their boy. Raleigh was there, and he tried to protect them. That fella gave old Raleigh one hell of a beating.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. That fella had a history of domestic violence — a lot of charges. Most of them were dropped by his ex-wife.”

The younger officer sipped his coffee and was quiet, lost in thought. The other officer returned to his report. Then the younger officer asked, “What kind of criminal history does that old-timer have? Any history of violence?”

Without looking up from his report, the older officer answered, “Not at all. The only encounter we’ve had with Raleigh before today was a warning about letting his grass grow too tall. That’s it in thirty years or so. That’s all.”

“Just a warning for the damn weed ordinance?”

“That’s it,” returned the older officer. “But he’d been keeping it cut good this summer, keeping it trimmed.”

The younger officer nodded and sipped his coffee.