In Summertime Saga

"Bro," Kevin said. "You're making gains fast."

I racked the bar and sat up on the bench and my arms were burning and my shirt was soaked through and Kevin was standing over me with his arms crossed looking like a proud dad at a little league game. Kevin Cockburn was built like a vending machine and had the enthusiasm of a golden retriever and he took my gym progress personally, like every pound I added to the bar was a point on his coaching resume.

"Another ten pounds since last week," he said. "That's not normal."

"Good genetics," I said.

"Bro, genetics don't explain this. You were scrawny two weeks ago."

"I was lean."

"You were scrawny." He slapped my shoulder. "Now you're getting there. Keep it up. You want to do arms? I've got a superset that'll destroy you."

We did the superset. Curls into overhead press into lateral raises and my arms were on fire by the third round and Kevin was counting reps like a drill sergeant and two other guys at the weight rack were watching and one of them said "nice form" and Kevin pointed at me and said "that's my boy" like he'd sculpted me personally.

I went to the wall mirror between the dumbbell rack and the water fountain and looked. Kevin wasn't wrong. My arms had definition now, actual shape in the biceps, the tricep line showing when I turned. My shoulders sat different. I wasn't jacked, but I looked like a person who worked out instead of a person who thought about it.

Kevin came up behind me in the mirror and flexed. He was massive and tanned and his flex made mine look like a before photo. He grinned. "Race you to two plates."

"You're already at two plates."

"I know. That's the joke." He slapped my back. "Same time Tuesday?"

"Tuesday."

I showered at the gym. The locker room smelled like chlorine from the pool one wall over and someone had left a towel on the bench by the door that had been there since my first visit. I changed and rode the bike south toward Diane's farm.

The afternoon was warm and the road out of town was mostly flat with a long uphill near the residential blocks and then the houses thinned out and the fields started and the smell changed from asphalt to dirt and grass and cow shit. I passed a guy walking two dogs that were tangled around each other's leashes and he was standing in the middle of the sidewalk trying to sort them out and I rode around him and he didn't look up. Diane's farm was at the end of a gravel road that crunched under my tires and the house was visible from the turn, white siding and a porch that wrapped one side and the garden out front.

Diane was in the garden.

She was in overalls this time, denim, with a white tank top underneath and her short brown hair pinned up with two clips. Work boots. Dirt on her knees and her forearms and a smear on her cheek where she'd wiped her face with a gloved hand. She was pulling weeds from between the tomato rows and she looked up when she heard the gravel and pushed herself to standing and put her hands on her hips.

"Well, look who it is," she said. "My favorite farmhand."

"Your only farmhand."

"That too." She pulled off her gardening gloves. "I've got the back rows that need clearing and the wheelbarrow's full of rocks from the south fence. Can you dump it?"

The wheelbarrow was by the shed. I'd tried to lift it my first time here and it had been heavy and awkward. I grabbed the handles and this time it came up smooth. The weight was there but my arms handled it and I walked it to the dump pile behind the barn and tipped it and walked it back and Diane was watching me from the garden row.

"My my," she said. "Someone's been exercising."

"A little."

She came over and squeezed my upper arm. Her hand was warm and rough from the garden and her fingers pressed into my bicep and I flexed without thinking about it.

She laughed. "Show-off."

"You squeezed first."

"I was checking your qualifications for farm labor." She let go. Her hand left a faint dirty print on my shirt sleeve. "You pass. Get to work."

We worked for two hours. I cleared the back rows while she replanted seedlings in the front. The sun moved and the shadows got longer and we talked about nothing. Diane talked casual and unhurried, with gaps between sentences where she'd look at what she was doing and then pick up where she left off. She asked about school. I said it was fine. She asked about Debbie. I said she was good. She asked if I was eating enough and I said Debbie made me eggs every morning and Diane said "good, she's a better cook than I am, don't tell her I said that" and I said I wouldn't.

She asked if I'd ever had a garden and I said no and she said "you should. There's something about putting your hands in the dirt that fixes things in your head. I've been doing this since I was your age and I still don't know what it fixes but it works." She pushed a seedling into the earth and packed the soil around it with her thumbs. "There. That one's yours. If it dies it's your fault."

"What is it?"

"Tomato. Roma. Come back in August and I'll make you sauce."

Toward the end I helped her carry bags of fertilizer from the shed to the garden beds. Fifty pounds each and I carried two at a time because I could and Diane was walking behind me with one bag and I heard her say "well I'll be" quietly and I pretended I didn't hear it.

A crow landed on the fence post near the shed and sat there watching us work and it stayed for a long time and then left for no reason.

When the sun was getting low she went inside and came back with two glasses of lemonade and we sat on the porch bench. The wood was warm from the afternoon and the lemonade was cold and too sweet because Diane made it with too much sugar and I'd noticed the first time and never said anything.

Her knee bumped mine as she sat down. She didn't shift away. Neither did I. The contact was warm through her overalls and my jeans.

The farm was quiet except for something rustling in the barn. Diane sat with her glass on her knee and looked at the sunset and the profile of her face was Debbie's face with a different frame around it. She always looked like Debbie. I was sitting on a porch with her best friend's near-twin and my knee was against hers and I'd been inside Debbie's daughter twelve hours ago.

"This is my favorite time," Diane said. "When the sun goes down and everything stops being loud. The bugs quiet down, the birds go home, and it's just the house and the fields." She drank her lemonade. "Frank used to come over sometimes. Sit right where you're sitting. He'd drink and I'd talk and he'd listen and neither of us had to be anywhere else."

She said it without sadness. Just a fact about a man who used to sit on her porch and didn't anymore.

"He sounds like good company," I said.

"He was. You remind me of him sometimes. The way you just show up and do the work without being asked." She caught herself. "That's not weird, is it? To tell you that?"

"It's fine."

"Good." She looked at her lemonade. "Sometimes I tell people things and afterward I think I shouldn't have. Debbie says I overshare. Debbie's probably right."

"You're getting stronger," she said after a beat, looking at the garden. "I can tell. The wheelbarrow used to give you trouble."

"I've been going to the gym."

"It shows." She sipped her lemonade. "Debbie says you've been busy. Working at the pizzeria, helping Jenny with her... internet stuff." The pause before "internet stuff" was small and careful.

"Yeah. Keeping busy."

"That's good. Young man should be busy." She looked at me and her grey eyes were warm and the sunset was on her face and her bare arms and the dirt smear on her cheek had dried. "You're good company, you know that? It gets quiet out here."

My hand dropped to the bench between us. Close to her thigh. My pinky was almost touching the denim. She glanced down at my hand and then back at the sunset and she didn't move away. We sat there. The lemonade was too sweet and her knee was against mine and my hand was close to her leg and neither of us said anything about it.

I left when the sky was going dark. She stood on the porch and waved and I rode home through the cooling air.

Debbie was in the living room when I got back. She was folding laundry on the couch with the TV on low, a basket of clean clothes between her feet and a stack of folded towels beside her.

"How was your afternoon, sweetie?"

"Good. Went to the gym, then helped Diane with the garden."

"Oh, I know." She folded a shirt, pressed the creases flat. "She texted me about you."

I stopped in the doorway. "She texted you?"

"Mmhm. She says you're very helpful. Very strong for your age. She used an exclamation point." Debbie's voice was light, conversational, but she was looking at the shirt she was folding and her hands were busy.

"I just moved some rocks."

"She was very impressed by the rock-moving." She picked up another shirt. One of mine. She held it up for a second, then folded it. "Diane's been doing that farm by herself for years. It's too much for one person. She won't admit it but it's wearing her down."

"She seems alright to me."

"She seems alright to everyone. She's Diane." Debbie folded a towel. "She wants you to come back next weekend. I told her you would."

"You told her I would."

"Was I wrong?"

She looked up and her grey eyes were steady and there was a small smile on her mouth that could have meant anything and I said "no, you weren't wrong" and she said "good" and went back to the laundry. The TV played a home renovation show that nobody was watching. A couple was arguing about whether to knock down a wall and the wife wanted an open floor plan and the husband wanted to keep the den and they were going to knock down the wall because the wife always wins on those shows.

I went upstairs. My room smelled faintly like coconut shampoo from last night and Jenny's t-shirt was still on my floor and the dresser drawer was still open from where she'd taken my shirt this morning. My phone had a text from Jenny: "you missed the 2pm shoot. you owe me. tomorrow."

I texted back "tomorrow" and lay on my bed and my arms were sore from the gym and my hands smelled like garden dirt and the ceiling fan was turning and I closed my eyes.