He Married the Farmer Who Taught Him to Live Again novel · Chapter 6 of 24
Chapter 6: Everything Couples Do
On Wednesday morning, Johnny set a sack of black soil on the terrace table and a bigger clay pot beside it.
Daniel looked at the sack.
"What is in that?"
"Dirt."
"Whose dirt?"
"Ours. From the farm. My grandmother sent a truck."
"A truck of dirt came into my house?"
"A small truck." Johnny picked the tomato up out of the old pot, roots and all. "Hold her."
Daniel held her.
The roots hung white and tangled between his fingers, and a small crumb of earth fell onto his cuff.
He counted three.
He counted ten.
Johnny filled the new pot and pressed a hollow in the middle of it.
By then Daniel's hands were brown to the wrist, and he had not counted anything for a while.
"Now put her in," Johnny said.
Daniel lowered the roots into the soil with both hands.
Johnny's hands came over his and packed the earth around the stem, warm and rough and wet.
They stayed there, one on top of the other, longer than the job needed.
"Water," Johnny said at last, softly.
"I know. I've done it."
"You did it once. Do it with feeling."
Daniel poured, and the dark soil drank.
A cough came from the balcony above.
His whole family was leaning on the rail, and not one of them was pretending to do anything else.
"Don't look at me," Daniel said, to nobody and everyone.
"We're looking at the tomato," his father said.
"Her name's Beatrice," said his grandmother, who had never been told it.
Johnny put a hand over his mouth.
An hour later, in the shower room, Daniel sat on the bench with the water at thirty-seven degrees and Johnny's wet fingers on the buttons of his shirt.
"Everything off," Johnny said. "You're covered."
"I know I'm covered."
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