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The Crop Thief

Hannah Orr

 

The back porch steps let out a symphony of creaks as he greeted the morning. Mr. Danes noticed they sounded just a bit more distressed than usual beneath his boots. He must have been gaining weight. The sun was just beginning to peek through the pine trees in the distance and calling birds sang for its arrival. It was without a doubt a beautiful yet extremely plain day. He thought about how lucky someone who lived in a city would feel to wake up to these sounds every morning, but all that did was discourage him further. It was just another lonely day. Mr. Danes was by all means a simple man, and he used to take pride in that. His fingernails were never empty of dirt and, overall, he was a fairly unhygienic individual, especially since the passing of Mrs. Danes. However, he was mostly known around town as the man with the most beautiful garden, and his neighbors loved him for giving them something to “ooh” and “ahh” at while they were living their own boring lives.

Opening up the shed, he breathed in the aroma of the old wooden walls and tools. It reminded him of when he was a younger man, building the small with his own two hands. His nostalgia did not last long. He grabbed the hoe and his gloves and headed back into his yard. Mr. Danes was getting ready to spar with the weeds around his zucchini plants when he noticed he had squashed something beneath his boot. He lifted it up to find a tomato,  a bit flattened with what looked to be a large bite taken out of it. Now, Mr. Danes was no stranger to the vermin that wreaked havoc on his crops and flowers. The amount of times he had sat inside his shed with his hunting rifle sticking out the window waiting for groundhogs and squirrels to show themselves and meet their demise was too many to count. He knew, however, this bite did not belong to a forest creature but rather, a person. He lifted his straw hat and scratched his wrinkly forehead a bit, examined the teeth marks, and then looked around for more clues. Mr. Danes had actually been having this problem every day for weeks now. It seemed to start right when Mrs. Danes passed, but he already entertained and dismissed the thought of her ghost stealing his produce. Every day he got to work in the garden and noticed more and more discarded vegetables, bitten up or missing completely. It was driving him crazy that one of his neighbors could possibly be stealing from him, and he just could not catch them! Mr. Danes muttered irritably to himself and got back to work, the tomato cast aside in his mind for now.

The sun had just met the top of the sky when he had gotten around to the carrots–or what used to be the carrots. Mr. Danes gasped as he realized they had all been torn from the ground and only the bitten-up ends of each plant remained. Someone had eaten every single one! Making things worse, he noticed two more bitten up tomatoes on the ground not too far from the crime scene and shoeprints dragging away in the dirt. He huffed and became red in the face, taking his hat off and slamming it down into the soil. Well this had just gone too far. He was planning to harvest his carrots today. It’s as if they knew! Mr. Danes marched himself up to his shed and readied the troops. The troops being himself and his hunting rifle. He sat inside the shed, eyes locked on his garden, and began scanning back and forth. He thought to himself humorously that, while he was upset, at least there was something exciting to do today.

***

Mr. Danes spied up at the sky to see the sun was now hitting the other side of the pine trees. His stomach grumbled and he felt light headed. He had sat here all through lunch, waiting to catch the thief and, even worse, he had skipped breakfast this morning too. Mr. Danes took a mental note that he should eat breakfast even if he doesn’t feel hungry, grumbled to himself and got up to head inside and make himself some dinner. He was disappointed not to catch his crop thief, but secretly, he was more upset that, once again, he had nothing interesting to do.

***

Mr. Danes gasped as he opened his eyes, frantically looking around. He was having a nightmare about his wife again. It was the same every night. He would be sitting at his kitchen table, chatting with her as she cooked them dinner. Mr. Danes would remark about how nice the harvest was this year and ask her if she needed him to pick anything else from out back for dinner, and before she could answer him, she would suddenly be gone. It would hit him all at once while he sat there. He would never see her again. They would never laugh together again. He would never get to taste her home cooked meals and have dinner together again. Then he would wake up in his bed, covers thrown to the floor, sweating profusely.

Only this time, he woke up outside. His bed and covers were nowhere to be found, and he looked down to find his boots on his feet, unlaced. He was standing in the middle of his own garden, holding a handful of cherry tomatoes. It took him longer than he would like to admit to put the pieces together, but when they clicked into place, he heard a heart-wrenching sob. Shocked, Mr. Danes touched his tearing eyes and realized it was him making that awful noise. He collapsed into the dirt, feeling like there was a hole inside his chest as he let out sob after sob. He didn’t notice the crickets that normally screamed all night had quieted, presumably watching his display. He thought about his wife, remembering that feeling he would get during his nightmares. What had become of him? Is this what the rest of his life would be like? Every day he had ached and lived the same boring routine since she had passed. There was no joy that he felt anymore. Mr. Danes realized bittersweetly that this was the first time he had actually cried for her or let himself feel anything at all. He decided she deserved someone to cry for her, and that made him feel a little better.

He quieted down after a few more minutes and slowly picked himself up. He numbly walked back towards his house, picking a seed out of his molar. He creaked up the stairs again, feeling sluggish and full. It felt like it took an hour just to walk through his house and climb the stairs to his second floor. Mr. Danes stopped when he reached his bedroom door and sighed. He turned to his left instead and headed into the bathroom, stripping himself of his clothes and turning on the water in the tub. It sputtered and slowly started back up, reminding him of how ashamed he should feel for its lack of use. He closed his eyes, stepping under the hot water, feeling it burn at his skin. Mr. Danes let his mind wander, something he had been refusing to let himself do for weeks. He thought fondly about his wife, imagining her standing outside the shower at the sink and lotioning her face. He remembered her talking with him through the toothbrush in her mouth, asking him what they should have for breakfast tomorrow. He smelled her perfume, the lotion she used, the mint of the toothpaste and smiled to himself. For just a moment, he could feel her presence, truly believing she was on the other side of the curtain. Mr. Danes dressed himself in clean pajamas, a pair that had not seen the outside of his dresser in weeks. He climbed back into bed and slipped off into his first dreamless sleep in weeks.

The next morning was crisp and bright. Before walking towards the porch steps, Mr. Danes paused and stared out at the pine trees, watching the birds speed to and from their branches. He let himself listen to their songs and took their tunes as a greeting towards him. He waved up at them before walking down his steps and towards his shed. He grabbed his watering can and hoe this time and walked into his garden, silently picking up the pile of discarded cherry tomatoes and throwing them over his fence for the groundhogs to enjoy. Mr. Danes sighed to himself and got to work, relieved to have caught the thief after all.

Hannah Orr is currently a music education major at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University. She will be graduating in the Spring of 2021 and is excited to jump right into teaching. Hannah hopes to teach school choir and firmly believes in promoting the importance of music and arts in education. Her hometown is Branchville, NJ.