15. The End

I saw Mr. Fletcher the other day. We figured it had been over a year since we talked.

After I sold the farm a few years ago and moved to a neighboring village, Mr. Fletcher's usefulness evaporated. There was no acreage to maintain, no animals to tend. And it was inconceivable that Mr. Fletcher would come over, and we'd all go out to lunch at the new farm-to-table place everyone’s talking about.

He'd say twelve dollars for a bowl of lettuce with a hard-boiled egg, and some chicken was some kind of bullshit, and for christ's sake, you don't have to add anything to good hamburger meat to make it taste better. It’s fine just the way it is if you raise the animal right.

Of course, Mr. Fletcher would be right, but everyone would feel uncomfortable, particularly the wait staff. He does not have an inside voice.

Still, we miss him very much.

Stubborn jars usually elicit some mumbled, "Well, Mr. Fletcher could open this."

Or a lawnmower that won’t start, "Mr. Fletcher would just yell at it. Then it would start, right, Mom?"

My boys and I got downright giddy when my son’s college girlfriend innocently asked, "So who's Mr. Fletcher?" Because it meant we could each tell our favorite Mr. Fletcher story, complete with pantomime and exaggerated voice impressions.

The day we did get to catch up with one another, looking over the meadow of my ex-husband's property, he told me he'd had a massive stroke a few months ago. He didn't remember most of the ordeal and had no lingering frailties.

“I think I was just dehydrated,” he says.

“Dude, that is so not how that works,” I laugh, “Is everything okay now?”

"I lost about fifty pounds, but I put it back on again and then some," he says, patting his substantial middle.

He wears suspenders now. "Belts,” he says, "don't work anymore to keep my pants from falling over my fat ass."

The wide blue suspenders make him look older. I do not like it.

I ask what else has been going on with him, aside from the stroke and the suspenders. He grumbles, "Same old thing, just going around in circles, cutting grass when it's hot, and plowing snow when it's fuckin freezing. You should know by now, I don't go anywhere, and nothing changes."

One of his clients, a single woman in her eighties, really wanted a vegetable garden again this year but is now unable to tend it. Mr. Fletcher says, "So I rototilled the bed the other day and put in a few tomatoes and cucumbers. She likes to eat them right off the vine with a little salt."

"You're a good man, Mr. Fletcher, you know that, right?" I say, patting his shoulder as we watch my stupid dog go after a dear.

"Well, no one knew that until I met you," he says, staring straight ahead. "You went and ruined my reputation."

"It was my pleasure, Mr. Fletcher, my pleasure," I say to his profile.

I used to think that there was no arc to his story. That he was and will forever be a man going around in circles, expecting nothing, living a predictable life based on the seasons and the chores that go with each.

I was wrong.

Yes, his truck will never leave the county and will still log 200,000 miles in five years. He will never take a vacation, get on a plane, or sit in a cafe surrounded by chatter he cannot understand.

But everyone around here used to think he was scary, because he was. And now he spends a Tuesday making it possible for an old woman to taste a warm salty tomato, letting the juice run down her arm without dreaming of wiping it away.