It was late afternoon, with no real wind to stir the hot African air. He saw she wore an old baseball cap over a solid red bandana, the tails made by the knot lying on the collar of her dark blue shirt. The ball cap was also dark blue with a very large red C on the front. Where did that come from, he wondered. Her jeans were dirty at the knees, where she had knelt to pull at the more stubborn of her opponents. She hummed something, he did not recognize it. Without looking up, she said, “Did you bring a hoe?”
“No, I never thought about it, actually. Too many years behind a desk, I suppose. Mentally conditioned to avoid manual labor. A subliminal thing, I guess. What do you think?” he asked.
“I think you can go to hell for lying, not just for stealing or cheating.” Looking up, she merely shrugged, held out the hoe and said, “Here, try it.”
Hanley stepped into the garden, the soil soft and shifting, his boots sliding beneath him as he searched for balance, like walking on a beach.
“You should be wearing gloves,” she noted.
There were but a few weeds entrenched between the rows, making him wonder if she was busying herself to keep her mind from the matters that pressed her that day or maybe to think those same matters through. Holding the hoe up to inspect it, he saw the wood handle was completely unprotected by varnish, the wood dulled and grey with chinks in its surface, making gloves necessary if the hoer was to get through the day without taking on splinters. The old metal blade looked off somehow, more than bent, it was altered, was encrusted with dirt and rust, the edge showing a gleam from someone’s attempt at sharpening, the edge visibly grooved, the file used to hone it rough, the wrong tool, probably the only file available. The hoe was heavy, another sign of age, made in a time when durability was part of the equation. It looked like every hoe he had seen in Indiana when he was young. “This hoe and I are the same age, I think,” Hanley said. “We appear to be in the same shape.” Looking for a safe spot for griping, he began digging out the few weeds he saw, careful not to damage the stalks, picking up the freed weeds and placing them where they could be retrieved when he finished.
Hanley felt the nun watching him as he worked, and she cautioned him to be careful around the maize. Following behind to pick up the weeds as he worked his way between the rows, picking up speed as he grew accustom to his new job. His right hand slid up the handle, the pressure pushing a splinter through the webbed skin between his thumb and the first finger. A low cursing and a shake of his right hand brought the nun’s head up.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s nothing.”
She said, “The hoeing is not difficult. I have seen it done worse than you are doing it. You have gardened before, monsieur?” she asked
Stopping, Hanley straightened up slowly, pressing his lower back with a hand as he did. Using his wrist, he mopped sweat from his brow. “Yes, when I was a boy, I worked on the farm of a relative. I helped my aunt with her garden,” he said. He felt dampness forming on his shirt, from between his shoulders to just above his belt. There were also ovals of wetness behind the knees of his tan khaki cargo pants.
“Is this too much work for you? A man of your age must be careful. Perhaps you should hoe more slowly,” she suggested.
He ignored her.
“Mr Martin, I believe I owe you an apology. You must know, I do not apologize often. During our earlier conversations, I had been rude. I believe you Americans call it abrupt.”
“We have other names for it,” he said.
Pausing for a second to examine an ear of corn, she then said, “I know you are here to help us, I do realize that. I did not mean to be mean or, uh, uncaring, if that’s the right word, to you as you look for answers to the questions you have, that you seek. It may be that I do not understand the question itself. Is that possible?”
“Anything’s possible, I suppose. I appreciate you saying this. I didn’t intend for this to be a problem. I can assure you this will not interfere with my work. It’s just that I needed to know something. It’s because I was so successful in my life. Am I somehow required to do something to justify my luck, to show fate that it had not made a mistake when it picked me to succeed? I was taught I must do something to, you know, pay back my good fortune. I just need to know what I must do. I couldn’t find the answer before, at least not until fate appeared to step in. Two chance meetings, one was your friend, Sister Mary Kathleen. She was actually the second. The first was in France. Both seemed to point to this mission and then to you. I swear to God.”
“Please, don’t say that,” she responded.
“I’m not making this up. I mean, I leave France, and on my way back to Indiana, I meet a nun that knows of the priest I met by chance at a dinner party in a place, by the way, I had never been before. The priest heads the organization that runs this mission, that put the uncle of my friend’s wife here, put you here, a friend of the nun I met on the way home. Your friend, Sister Mary Kathleen, even lives in the same state I live in. Forgive me, but it all seemed oddly meant to be,” he said. He leaned on the hoe, a hand covering the
