On the maps, this area was referred to as a hollow—County Road 12, a collection of homes and farms where the land appeared older than the people living there. My house is located close to the road’s shoulder; it has cedar shingles that have turned silver at the edges, a porch that leans to one side like an elderly man, and a noisy screen door that greets me in the morning when the fields are deserted. My name is Caleb. I am twenty-six years old. I get up early, make coffee in a cracked pot, and then go mend whatever has fallen apart that morning—roofs, fences, pumps, the kind of job that keeps you sleeping through the bad times.
The
“I’m sorry, but could you assist me with my gate?”
Leaning against a drooping cedar fence, she stood with a hand covering her eyes. She might have been older, perhaps in her early forties. Upon closer inspection, the lavender in her hair ribbon blended with dirt and the weariness that results from caring for a living thing. She was dressed in a white button-down shirt with rolled sleeves and a dirty hem. She had steady, hazel eyes, and her name, “Leah Monroe,” sounded as though it belonged in that great, silent space.
“Caleb,” I said, using the habit my father instilled in me. “Give me an hour.”
Nothing remarkable—the post was rotten at the base, and one hinge had completely rusted through. From a job last week, I had an extra piece of cedar in the truck. She observed the clouds while I worked, occasionally looking at me as if she was scared to show too much interest. I pried, hammered, and shoveled until the new post was in place. The gate swung smoothly.
After
I half laughed crookedly. “It’s difficult to refuse Pie.”
She mostly kept an eye on my back after that. When she did speak, it seemed as though she had been holding back her remarks for the ideal opportunity. She was thoughtful and did not talk for the sake of talking. She knocked on my fence a week later, claiming that a pump in her shed had failed. I told her it would take ten minutes, and without any fanfare, she delivered me a sandwich and a thermos of coffee. The aroma of fresh bread and basil filled her kitchen. In a walled area behind her house, she had begun working with things like tomatoes, small jars of honey, and improvised beehives. One afternoon, as I adjusted a belt and the pump coughed back to life, she told me that she had managed clinics in Seattle. Then, as if the words were someone else’s, she shrugged. Simply, she said, burnout. She drove till the mountains appeared to be in order after selling what she owned.
The woman who used to stand on my porch at midnight, soaking to the bone, holding a wicker basket to her bosom and a piece of pie she would worry over in a blackout, didn’t fit that picture at all. When I opened the door to a storm that sounded like the sky was falling, she informed me, “Power’s out.” “I don’t have any light to check if my apple pie is done, but I baked it.”
She entered quietly, abruptly, and with warmth and fragrance, like a storm itself. I gave a towel to her. The raccoon streaks of mascara made her laugh once, a bit frightened. We stood at my counter and ate warm pie. The house was dark, with just a kerosene lamp I took from the closet and the orange light from the woodstove. The filling burnt the roof of my mouth, the crust cracked between my fingers, and I thought of my mother, who used to prepare coffee so strong it could withstand a spoon. It was small, yet it felt enormous.
As if it were a confession, she later remarked, “We ate like two people who were saving something up.”
“Do you always bake like this?” I asked myself, my mouth full.
“Only when I’m trying to avoid something,” she replied. “Or when I want to express my gratitude without using words.”
We are grateful for a gate that held, a pump that operated, and a nighttime light. Perhaps for company. I joked about the weather and tried to lighten the awkward situation by bringing up necessary duties because I didn’t know how to appreciate the gratitude.
I initially saw that some sections of Leah didn’t fit her garden shoes at the harvest fair. She arrived before sunrise with coffee and a soft smile, and she assisted me in making tidy pyramids out of potatoes and squash. Charming without being ostentatious, she slipped an extra apple into a child’s bag and navigated the crowd as if she had done it all her life. She was gorgeous and somewhat out of reach, and I watched her from the corner like someone watching a comet.
At that point, Richard discovered her.
With his silver temples, boardroom-scented coat, and effortless smile that seemed polished and purchased, he was the type of man who didn’t belong at country fairs. When he saw Leah, he immediately thought of the past—investors eating out of her hand, conference stages, and gala outfits. He called out, “Leah Monroe,” loud enough for the pumpkins to hear. “From Seattle.” I thought that was you, my god.
She stopped. She stopped laughing. She replied, “Richard,” as if he had broken the flow of a lengthy tale. “A long time has passed.”
He talked about eight-figure exits and invited her to dine at the lodge as he followed her through the air. The air tilted when he was gone. At first, it wasn’t jealousy. It was distance, the knowledge that the woman who left jars of honey on my table and burned apple pie had been in rooms with other stakes. Perhaps it was important to her that I be small. Perhaps I was just the guy who fixed gates and didn’t know how to be anything else.
She tried to catch up with me when I vanished that afternoon, taking the long route home to keep my hands occupied while I helped an elderly woman with her squash. On the path the following morning, she said, “Caleb.” “I needed to turn the truck around.”
I said, avoiding eye contact, “Roads will be a mess later.”
Then, bluntly, she said, “You left.” “When I needed someone, you left.”
I struck a log with an axe until my shoulders were on fire. I said, “I needed air.” Like a sharpened knife, I could feel the edge in my voice.
She took a step forward. “You’re upset.”
I answered, “Not at you,” but I didn’t think it was true. As I observed her face—red-rimmed eyes, brushed-back hair, filth beneath her fingernails—I experienced an inexplicable sensation in my chest. “I have no idea who you are. One day you arrived with a gate that needed to be fixed, and then—
“You are aware of who I am,” she said quietly. “You are aware that when I am preoccupied, I make a mess. I treat my tomatoes like patients, you know. As you are aware, thunderstorms frighten me. Her voice faltered. You are aware that when I believe you have had a long day, I leave coffee on your doorstep. You had the opportunity to inform me about the clinics in Seattle.
She said, “I didn’t want you to think I was the woman in the red dress.” “As the person who was unable to get the gate to latch, I wanted you to see me.”
Those statements seemed more like an apology than an allegation. She wanted to be seen not as the version of herself she had been, but as the untidy, filthy, storm-afraid woman she had become. As obstinate as a fence post, I demanded proof after hearing her. In the half-light of a living room with thunder rattling the windows, however, the evidence was already there—a pie on the counter, a lantern passed over, and a hand that had rested on mine.
For three weeks, we didn’t speak. There was an early frost and a period of dryness. I put in more labor than I should have, fixing a broken pump and repairing a leaning barn for a farmer who was constantly complaining. Like two pieces of a plow that must be stored separately, Leah kept to herself, her garden, her bees, and her honey jars while her truck came and went.
She delivered a wicker basket filled with carrots to my gate on the twenty-second day. “First crop,” she murmured. The knobby, twisted carrots were still warm from the earth. My throat constricted. Our fingertips touched as she gave me the basket. We didn’t both pull away.
“Coffee?” Since it was my only bridge, I inquired.
We sipped hot black coffee from a thermos while perched on the upper step of my porch. The hens gave a cluck. The wood was warmed by the sun. We didn’t say anything serious for a while. Leah’s voice was soft and quiet when she eventually spoke. “Would you let me through if I said I wanted that gate open from now on?” she said.
I gave her a look. glanced closely. The dirt beneath her fingernails, the little creases around her eyes, and the way her mouth relaxed when she felt anxious. Sitting next to me with a basket of misshapen carrots was the woman who had stood in my kitchen in a blackout, trusting me enough to use a towel to dry her hair. She was the woman who talked about tomatoes and the one who wore red dresses. As though selecting a means of breathing, she had selected the land, the beehives, and the pie.
I extended my arm to grasp her hand. Her skin was first chilly before warming up like late-summer dirt in the sun. She remained still. She didn’t back off. The day itself seemed sufficient, so we didn’t kiss or make any vows. The gate remained unlatched for the most part after that.
We gradually got to know one another. She brought me honey jars with looping script labels. She made me sandwiches that tasted like something you remembered after I left my toolbox at her shed. On several evenings, we watched the stars court the night while sitting on her porch swing with a blanket covering both of our knees. On other evenings, we worked together in the garden, hands in the dirt, and had the kind of casual talk that blossoms like plants.
Then Richard returned to town, but this time he had more than the air of a man attempting to win people over at a fair. Once, when I was there, he paid her a visit, and even though I was standing there with my hands in a bag of potting soil, I could see how easily he anticipated being accepted. With invites and dinners that smelled of old money, he attempted to entice Leah back into the circle of his former life. She closed the door.
When he refused to accept the hint, she told him, “This is my life now.” ” Compared to what I had, it is not smaller. It’s…different. I have ancestry.
He said, “You could go back,” as if it were a door she had only momentarily shut.
For the first time, she spoke sharply, “Maybe.” “Or perhaps I could at last stop requiring praise from others.”
He continued his convincing speech as he departed. When the dust settled, Leah returned to the gate, the porch swing, and the little existence that suited her like a well-worn flannel. He left because she had refused to fall for the ruse.
She never made extravagant gestures for me. No proclamations were yelled across fields. When I had a long day, there were pies that came without fanfare, lanterns shared during storms, and plates left on porches. More significantly, there were mornings when her pickup was parked next to my fence, and she would come out with a smile and a thermos to sit with me as the sun poured over the hills.
The gate became an occasional ritual. Sometimes she would prop it open when she knew I detested searching for a latch in the dark, and other times I would fix it when it required repair. Whenever we wished to let the other in without a word, we left it unlatched.
She had a jar of honey and a bandaged thumb when I discovered her sitting on my porch steps one fall evening. She grinned like someone confessing to a minor mishap after being stung twice that week. She added, “I thought you might like some for that coffee you live on.”
It was true, so I answered, “I live on it so I can keep up with you.”
We chuckled because we both understood that it was the selfishness that keeps people close to one another—keeping one another warm to prevent the cold from setting in. When winter arrived, the sky grew gloomy. We learned how to properly bank a burner to retain heat throughout the night and stacked wood together. Leah cooked bread and left it on my step at daybreak so I would have one less thing to do before the drive as my mom’s hearing deteriorated and the calls increased.
She once pressed a tiny tin into my hands and reminded me, “You deserve a little extra reward.” A piece of apple pie, wrapped in wax paper, was within. “For repairing the gate.”
I hugged the tin despite saying, “I don’t fix for reward.”
“Perhaps not,” she replied. “But it’s nice to get rewards.”
We never gave our possessions labels. Painting a sign and hanging it from the porch eaves would have been a neat way to indicate “boyfriend” or “partner.” However, labels weren’t always associated with love in the hollow. It arrived with unlatched gates, pies prepared during blackouts, and coffee given over without words. The sound was that of a man and a woman who had been different things, who had sheltered themselves, and who gradually discovered how to open the doors.
The gate still creaks like it did when I initially fixed it, years after that first hinge and rotten post, but now it swings with the effortless familiarity of a narrative you tell your hands. We intentionally leave it unlatched for one another, much like a punctuated promise. At times, my thoughts turn to Richard and the cities he will continue to visit while wearing his polished shoes and suit. I’m thankful that I ended up being something that includes the quiet, steady guy my father intended me to be, as well as a basket of crooked carrots, a woman who understands how to make honey taste like home, pie burned at midnight, and lantern light on a stormy night.
“Because that’s what you do when you live in a place like this,” I would respond if someone asked me why I fixed a gate for a neighbor. However, if they asked me what I took away from it, I would pause and give them the steady, silent expression Leah used to have. “You deserve a little extra reward,” I would say, passing them the pie tin. I would then instruct them to keep the gate open, sit down, and eat.
