Page 44 of Autumn on My Mind

I take one of their spots and nod my greeting to Farmer Joe.

“I was telling them about Mackerel,” Joe says with a heavy voice, tilting the brim of his straw hat up to see me better. “Have I told you about him?”

Indeed he has. Mackerel was Joe’s dog, an old Spaniel that met its demise by eating an entire scented candle.

“Just a bit,” I say, settling in. The cut of the wind is softening now that the sun is up, muddling the air into something more comfortable.

“Well,” Joe says, heaving a sigh that deflates his belly by a noticeable amount, “it devastated me. Ate a candle, you know—the dog did. Didn’t make it, of course. It was a huge candle, three wicks and all, metal at the bottom of each one. Perforated intestines.” He shakes his head and grimaces, and his grip tightens around the handle of the pitchfork he’s leaning on. “Mango Melon Mamba,” he says solemnly, staring off into the distance.

I nod, keeping my expression appropriately somber as well. That’s the unspoken rule: When Joe wants to tell the story of Mackerel the Candle Eater, we listen.

After a second of straw-rustled silence, Joe shakes his head. “Needed a change after that. Came back to my father’s place; right here, if you can believe it”—he points to the ground he’s standing on—“and started working the land with him.”

“And look what you’ve turned it into,” I say, gesturing around us at the patch, the little barn, the slides. “I think Mackerel would love this place.”

“That he would,” Joe says with a grave nod. “I really think he would.” This thought seems to cheer him a bit—it usually does—and he straightens. “We could probably send one of them home,” he says now, looking at the part-timers.

“We have a field trip from the elementary school coming at eleven,” I remind him, and Joe grunts, tossing the pitchfork aside.

“I forgot about that. Kindergarteners?”

“Yep. And then second-graders tomorrow, and fourth-graders Friday.”

“Are we doing the pumpkin launch?” Joe says. He lumbers past me, heading toward the shed where we keep the truck parked.

“I believe so. Just the hayride around the field, over to the catapult and back.”

Joe grunts his understanding and continues on his way.

The kindergarteners arrive and then leave without incident, a gaggle of shrieks and laughter and harried chaperones. They love the pumpkin launch and slides, of course, and by the time we wave goodbye, we’re all tired.

Tired, but happy. My mind can escape from my worries when my body is exhausted and my brain is caught up in other things.

When I arrive home at the end of the day, however, and find a package addressed to me, some of my heaviness returns—accompanied by no small amount of embarrassment.

I am twenty-seven, about to attempt the same trick six-year-old Matilda Wormwood pulled on her father in what is arguably Danny DeVito’s best role to date.

But up the stairs I go anyway, clutching the box close and sneaking like I’ve stolen one of Alvina’s best bottles of Chardonnay. She’s not home, but I don’t trust this process not to leave a chemical smell, so I lock myself in the room with the exercise equipment, lay down an old tarp from the closet, and open the window as wide as possible.

Several perusals of the instructions are required; when those prove insufficient, I look up a video online instead. Then I call Dominic.

And it’s so easy, pressing that Call button. There should be a secondary button—one that says Are you sure?

I’m not sure. I’m not sure at all. But we do need to talk. So I press the button and wait.

Dom answers after three rings, and his voice is out of breath. “Yeah,” he says instead of offering any sort of greeting.

“Are you exercising?” I say, momentarily diverted.

There’s no gym in Autumn Ridge, but that’s where my mind casts him anyway—wearing a muscle tank he would never wear and sitting on a black bench, pulling on an overhead bar that lifts weights.

“No,” he says, and the gym image disappears with a little poof. “I’m working on some stall doors over at the stables, and I kind of need both hands. What is it?”

Right. Down to business. “I was about to mix the bleach solution stuff,” I say, glancing down at the Tupperware I’m holding. “But the internet says it shouldn’t sit out for a long time or it will oxidize. So I should probably wait until right before we put it in the shampoo.”

There’s a second of silence, and then Dominic speaks.

“All right. Our parents”—I can hear the grimace in his voice—“are going out to dinner this evening at six.”