In a mountain autumn after a hard frost, a son moves through a quiet day of small observations: a thermometer at thirty-one, carrots and potatoes gone underground, tomato leaves curled like arthritic hands. By late afternoon he watches his father in the dying garden, oak boughs yellowing and tossing in northerly gusts. The father is patient, stooping to pull a carrot, his cotton shirt taut across his back. The speaker tries to steady himself by counting the last green tomatoes on the windowsill, but the counting only sharpens his fear. In a sudden turn, he feels his father’s vulnerability as if it were his own, and the impulse becomes urgent: Get inside, come inside. The mood is tender and elegiac, rooted in seasonal change but shadowed by mortality.
Sierra City—September — Summary
Two hours before dawn your eyes open and you tiptoe across cold linoleum to check the thermometer outside: the thin, red capillary’s clipped down to thirty-one.
After breakfast you glance at your father’s garden: it’s going underground: carrots and a few potatoes duck the frost. After last night’s freezing, leaves of tomato vines curl and harden like arthritic hands.
From the kitchen in late afternoon, you watch your father in his dying garden, oak boughs already yellowing. They toss all around him in northerly gusts. He patiently surveys the damage.
When you see his cotton shirt pulled taut across his back as he stoops to pull a carrot, you try to steel yourself against a quickened fear—perhaps by counting the last tomatoes lined up to ripen on the window sill: an even dozen, and most of them still apple-green. But as you count the twelfth, a pang of fear chills you into glancing back at him: for a moment your mind staggers in a solstice where you the son think a father’s thoughts to your father: Get inside Quick come inside.