Truck Garden

by Charles Goodrich

My first wife and I rented a little bungalow in the center of
town. We were young. Our furniture was nothing but apple crates.
The backyard butted up to a Ford dealer. There was a wall of
new pickup trucks at the end of our garden. We planted everything
we could dream of, even rutabagas. She had sweet peas climbing the
downspouts; I grew peanuts in buckets on the back porch. She
brought home two kittens, Basil and Sage, but they both died and we
buried them under the juniper.
Before anything was ripe, the Ford guy bought the place,
evicted us, bulldozed the house, and paved the yard. Thirty years
later, I still think of those cats buried under the asphalt. And who
knows what else.