Doors opened.
Men and women climbed out carrying empty cardboard boxes, grocery bags, and plastic buckets.
Nobody needed directions.
Nobody asked where to go.
They simply walked toward Dad’s garden.
The inspector lowered his clipboard.
He stopped writing.
Another truck arrived.
Then another.
Some people headed toward the beans.
Others toward the tomatoes.
Dad nodded to each person as they passed.
Like he had been expecting every one of them.
Then the final vehicle came through the fog.
A silver minivan.
It parked at the end of the line.
The side door slid open.
Three children climbed out first.
The youngest was a girl of perhaps six, wearing yellow rubber boots and a red coat two sizes too large. Behind them came a woman with dark hair pulled into a hurried knot. She carried two laundry baskets and looked exhausted in the way some people do when sleep is not enough to repair whatever life has been doing to them.
