The binder had six tabs. Green for driving, yellow for eating, blue for what the pamphlets called "enrichment stops," which I had highlighted in two colors depending on whether they were optional or load-bearing. I set it on the passenger seat at 4:58 a. m. and the dome light caught the lamination and threw a small rectangle of light onto the ceiling of the garage. The rabbit's name was Gerald, and she held him up to the window with both hands so he could see the silos too.
The Binder on the Dashboard
The sign was a piece of plywood and the word PEACHES in letters that started big and ran out of room - the H and the E and the S shrinking down to almost nothing at the edge. The old man didn't look up from the crate he was sorting. She was already on the truck bed, both hands in the pile, and he still didn't look up. I watched her pull one free and hold it to her cheek the way I used to check a bath, and the juice ran to her elbow before she even bit down. She came back with nine peaches and orange to the wrist and a look on her face like she'd discovered fire.
The thermometer was the kind with the little window, and I held it toward the dome light three times because I kept hoping I'd read it wrong. She was asleep in the sleeping bag with Gerald tucked under her chin and her breath was fast and shallow - the way a dog pants in a car. I sat there with the engine running and the defroster going and nine peaches in a bag on the back seat. The tent was wet and I rolled it anyway, just rolled it into itself like a newspaper, and shoved it into the trunk on top of the binder. By the time I found the highway the sky was starting to do that thing at the edge, that dark blue loosening, and she slept the whole way home with her cheek against the window and her fog-circle appearing and disappearing - appearing and disappearing, all the way back.
The binder had gone the way paper goes in a recycling bin, soft at the corners, the green tab starting to lift. I noticed it on a Tuesday when I went out to get the mail. On the fridge, between a soccer schedule and a photograph of nothing in particular - she had taped two pieces of Scotch tape around something orange and collapsed, and underneath it, in the red crayon she used for important things, the words *the peach man* in letters that ran slightly uphill. The tape had already started to yellow at the edges. I left it there.
She asked about him the following June, the way kids ask about things they've been saving - sideways - while buckling her seatbelt, not looking at me. "Does the peach man come back every summer or just the once. " I said I didn't know. We were already past the on-ramp before I realized I'd taken the long way without deciding to, the two-lane road that goes by the silos, and she had Gerald pressed to the window again. Neither of us mentioned it.
The Wet Tent in the Trunk
She found the binder under the passenger seat the following October, when she was looking for a hair tie - and she held it up with two fingers the way you hold something you found under the couch, which is to say at a distance, which is to say not without some tenderness. The green tab had given up entirely. I said we could use it for the drive to the mountains in November, and she looked at me for a moment and then set it on the back seat without a word, next to Gerald - who was losing stuffing from his left ear. We took the two-lane road again. She didn't ask where we were going and I didn't tell her, and somewhere past the leaning silo she fell asleep with her cheek on the window and the binder slid off the seat and landed face-down on the floor mat and stayed there, and I left it.
The following March she brought the binder to the kitchen table and opened it to the blue tab and drew a peach, badly, in the margin next to an enrichment stop I'd rated load-bearing. It was a circle with a line down the middle. She labeled it *the real one* in red crayon and closed the binder and put it in her backpack - and I didn't ask why, and she didn't explain, and the next morning it was gone and Gerald was on the counter wearing a rubber band around his left ear where the stuffing had come out, which I think was meant to help.
She packed her own bag for the November drive, the first time - and set it by the door the night before: one stuffed rabbit with a rubber band ear, a sleeve of the soft crackers, and a peach from the bowl on the counter that had gone a little past ripe, the skin just starting to give. I didn't say anything about the peach. In the car she held it in her lap for two hours without eating it, just held it the way you hold something you're not ready to use yet - and when we passed the field where the plywood sign wasn't - just a bare post, the wood gone, the letters gone, the old man gone for winter or good, no way to know - she looked at it for a long time and then looked back down at the peach in her hands. She ate it somewhere past the leaning silo - both hands, no napkin, and when the juice hit her wrist she held her arm out toward me without looking up, the way you show someone a wound, the way you show someone proof.
Disclaimer
This article is for general informational purposes only and doesn't constitute professional - financial, medical, or legal advice. Consult a qualified professional about your specific situation.
