Nathan Leslie

  Three Crooked Lopes

People believe what they want to believe. You present them with a certain, specific image and they see it, accept it, register it. They can’t blame you. They bought it.

I’m at Melbourne Avenue and Wheat Street. It’s a leafy little intersection and in the afternoon it presents the potential buyer with a wide expanse of shade from about half a mile away leading North-South. The other way is not bad either.

I have my rusted out old 90’s red Ford truck clunker piece of shit parked askew with my corntomatoespeaches sign on the roof, double-sided. I even painted an off kilter asymmetrical tomato on each side--a little splash of color. I’m wearing my same-old-same-old straw hat with a little chunk missing from the right brim--perfect. The produce is arrayed in the bed in baskets and crates--neon boxes. Prices in crayon on a piece of old cardboard box. Everything calculated rustic.

The super skinny blonde lady in her Lexus pulls up, inspecting the peaches, sniffing at the tomatoes.

“Where are you from?”

“Chicago, Illinois,” I say, not taking the bait.

“No, not you you. I mean, where is your farm located?”

“Oh, my bad,” I say. Everybody likes ‘my bad.’ “Jefferson County, West Virginia.”

She’s probably forty years old--horse face, large teeth that she most likely views as one of her lesser attributes. I bet she put her hand up to partially cover her face when she smiled middle through high school. She’s wearing those skin-tight yoga pants and tank top and little flip flops with leather thongs. Her toes are painted purple and blue, in a little umbrella pattern which must’ve been an expensive-assed pedicure.

“I’ve been through Jefferson County,” she says. “Which part are we talking about?”

“Do you know where the old courthouse is?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

Now I’m burying her with the very fake-specifics.

“We’re back that way, down the road about twelve miles as the crow flies.” People like that expression also. Confirms their stereotyped notion of what a bucolic guy selling green beans from the back of his truck should and would sound like if he was talking to a suburban sophisticate like them. Takes them back to a simpler time. Even if I really live in their neighborhood.

This woman is the type who has to know exactly which fucking plot of land each ear of corn originates, what its species is, who its parents are and the scientific name of the exact hybrid she’s about to purchase for fifty cents a pop.

I can’t wait to be rid of her. She haggles a bit and I accept just so I don’t have to look at her again--I hope.

The rest of the afternoon is easy-peasy. Families, couples, nannies, men in suit and tie heading home for dinner. They just want fresh food and aren’t overly picky. They don’t ask questions or give me a pain in the ass.

I pack everything up under the tarp, tight, and drive ten minutes towards the city, park the truck in back, take the second tarp and throw that over, tie it down and go inside. I never eat from the truck.

The truck is my safety box, as long as it runs--which is not always a certainty. I do a special knock, finger cross and point to the sky every time I start it up. I’ve had to learn some basic mechanical skills since about once a week it clunks out for one reason or another.

I have my little Mazda for regular things, but I wouldn’t sell a single cantaloupe from that.

You don’t always have control over everything; I’ve learned that. When your parents decide to do an around-the-world trip and leave you with your two younger brothers, Ted and Billy, ten and twelve, until they return four months down the line, what are you supposed to do? It’s not right but since I’m twenty-three they appointed me with temporary legal guardianship. So they can scratch this thing off their bucket list. I haven’t heard from them in two weeks. Last peep they were in some remote Pacific island. I just hope they haven’t been digested by a shark. 

I return home from selling fruit and I make mac and cheese and hot dogs. I even toss a little salad, which Billy frowns at but eats anyway. Ted pushes it away. I clean up and then they play Halo Three until two in the morning. They sleep on the couches downstairs, with the television on mute.

In the morning it’s pop tarts and chocolate milk and then back to the video games. Something has to occupy them while I’m at Whitlow and Burden Street, my Tuesday spot.

I worry about Billy the most. His skin doesn’t look right. I doubt he ever goes outside unless he has to attend school. He needs to eat fruit and get sunshine. I tell him about the sailors with scurvy. Ted at least helps out with yard work though that’s only on Sundays when I kick his butt.

They left us with a list of phone numbers.

“Do little get-togethers,” Mom said. Little winking emoticon. “Life doesn’t have to always be so lonely.”

Both feet on the ground, I think. Concentrate on your surroundings. Watch the wind. I tell myself things. Little mantras.

They paid the mortgage but told me I have to cover the rest. That’s my rent. Their house is five bedrooms. Theirs, not ours.

But before I can drive to Whitlow and Burden I need to swing by Safeway. In back I have a guy. Before, I had to text him ahead of time, but now he knows--every morning at eight thirty. Cash payment and I load them up. Today its watermelons, tomatoes, corn, peppers, plums, green beans and broccoli. 

His name is Pat--floppy hair, classic Jerry Garcia look.

“No peaches today?”

“No, sorry, we’re low.”

“Isn’t broccoli out of season now?”

“Maybe. Just, you know, make some shit up--you’re good at that.”

It’s all seconds. The whole lot for twenty five bucks--everything was going into the Dumpster if it wasn’t for me.

Then it’s tomatoes for a dollar per, plums fifty cents, green beans--one clump for two bucks (I use rubber bands), corn fifty cents per, watermelon five bucks, peppers a buck per and a broccoli a buck a head (daily special). New cardboard, blue crayon. Perfect.

I’m about to drive off when Pat lumbers out with a box of cantaloupes. Perfect.

On the house, he says.

“Really ripe.”

Three bucks per.

This little arrangement is so easy and so simple--it’s a work of art, really. The buyers see me and my truck and think fresh produce, home grown with tenderness. All I have to do is drive to the Safeway.

It’s all California.

As if they can really taste the difference. They only think they can.

As if they would know.

Whitlow and Burden is mostly sun baked nannies and housewives from the pool--usually after and the usual array of business men and women between four and six thirty. By seven the action is dead and I drive home.

Mostly, today with an empty truck bed. I pull in two hundred and fifteen bucks--not too shabby. And I have a chance to read Crime and Punishment during the down times.

                                                                        --

My ex thinks I lack a conscience. She used to berate me saying that I had the ethical parameters of a five year old.

“No, most five year olds are innocent,” I’d say.

She says we didn’t work mostly because she decided she liked girls better. I say, no, it’s because she wasn’t creative enough, brave enough to handle me. She says I’m cocky and deluded. I say she is depressed and lacking in self-confidence. She texts me asking how I like ripping off old ladies.

“They pay for produce and that’s what they get,” I say.

“Produce that was about to go in the Dumpster.”

“It tastes good,” I say. “I don’t see a wrong.”

The cantaloupes are perfect. If I can frame the produce away with three crooked lopes it’s perfect. The more lopsided and ugly the lopes are the better. It smacks of authenticity.

I’m at Main and Third downtown today. It’s a location which leads itself to a lot of walk-by traffic—guys at lunch who want some fruit or something to surprise the wife (corn, a pretty watermelon). 

For hours it’s near perfect. The shade is slight so I have my major brelly out but overall sales are perky and the homeless guys are leaving me alone.

But then who shows up but blonde yoga pants. Except she’s wearing a sundress thing and carries a casual brief-case.

“Oh, hello,” she says. “I thought you were at Wheat Street.”

Here we go with the questions again.

“I’m here on Wednesdays. I go to five different locations each week,” I say.

I feel as if my voice is polite but no-nonsense, which is exactly the vibe I want to give off.

I don’t feel like another inquisition.

“Kinda far for us from Jefferson County,” she says.

“Yes, it is,” I say. “I go where my customers are.” This, I realize, I shouldn’t have said.

“You mean where you can make more money.”

I bring my straw hat down over my eyes slightly in hopes that if I don’t see her perhaps she will vanish.

“Maybe I should buy something,” she says, shuffling closer. She asks if I accept PayPal or Square. I point around to the invisible computer that she is clearly missing.

“Cash only,” I say. “Sorry.”

“That’s the Jefferson County way, is it?”

I don’t respond. She sniffs the tomatoes, squeezes the peppers, knocks on the watermelons and cantaloupes.

“The produce seems a bit, um, old,” she says. “I do a lot of cooking--I know.”

“Well, nobody is forcing you to buy anything.”

“That’s very true,” she says, narrowing her vision. “The tomatoes look like hot house crap. You are too nice of a guy--I’m sure you wouldn't be selling grocery store produce and calling it home grown, would you?”

I tell her I have no idea what she is talking about. My legs are firm on the ground.

“I’ve never seen a mealy home grown tomato. Ever.”

“Why don’t you go on your way then,” I say, but she’s eyeballing the cab of my truck, looking for evidence to support her theory. 

“We’ll see,” she says. “I’m going to take another look.”

I have no idea what this means, but I wave her off.

When I get home my brothers are zombified in front of the television, reclined on separate couches.

I hit the breaker in the utility room.

Dinner time.

Everything is fine, and when everything is fine I’m worried. Soon it won’t be fine. Reversion to the mean.

It’s Monday again and I know this means Blonde Yoga Pants. I’m almost looking forward to the slow down.

All day it is sweltering, sweat dribbling down my back as I fan myself with an old newspaper. Sales are slow--everyone is inside the A/C blasting on their cool, pampered faces.

Five o’clock, no Blonde Yoga Pants.

Five thirty, no Blonde Yoga Pants.

Six thirty, no Blonde Yoga Pants.

But just as I’m packing up and about to drive away, there she is in her Lexus. And this time she has someone else in the passenger seat. It’s a girl but I can tell right away she’s a bit, um, mentally deficient. Her eyes fish in different directions and she barks to herself.

“Can I still get some corn and a cantaloupe?”

I say nothing. I nod. I bag up six ears of corn for her and the best cantaloupe I have left. She hands me a ten dollar bill and tells me to keep the change. She’s in a hurry.

I have nothing. No real worries.

I drive home a void. I fix Billy and Ted a real pasta dish and we eat it together. I even let them watch television while we eat. On the television pirates are chasing a smaller boat and they are firing a cannon at the smaller boat. This seems like overkill, but I suppose they don’t trust their ships' speed or want to end it right away.

But the small boat gets away and the pirates curse each other.

In the morning our parents text. They are in Japan, Kyoto specifically. They send a virtual post card. We huddle around Ted’s laptop to see it.

Nathan Leslie won the 2019 Washington Writers' Publishing House prize for fiction for his collection of short stories, Hurry Up and Relax. He is also the series editor for Best Small Fictions. Two of Nathan’s new short story collections will be published this fall and in the spring of 2023. Nathan’s nine previous books of fiction include Three Men, Root and Shoot, Sibs, and The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice. He is also the author of a collection of poems, Night Sweat. Nathan is currently the founder and organizer of the Reston Reading Series in Reston, Virginia, and the publisher and editor of the new online journal Maryland Literary Review. Previously he was series editor for Best of the Web and fiction editor for Pedestal Magazine. His fiction has been published in hundreds of literary magazines such as Shenandoah, North American Review, Boulevard, Hotel Amerika, and Cimarron Review. Nathan’s nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, Kansas City Star, and Orlando Sentinel. Nathan lives in Northern Virginia.