The Returned. Jason Mott

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      “Just like it sounds, it’s all about strawberries. Most people don’t think about it, but there was a time back when a person could have a farm and grow crops and make a living off it. Doesn’t happen much nowadays—almost all the farms I knew of as a child been gone for years. Only one or two still around. I think that Skidmore farm up near Lumberton is still running...but I can’t say to a certainty.”

      She came from the door and stood behind her chair and looked down at Agent Bellamy as she spoke. He’d gotten up from his position when she hadn’t been looking and that seemed to throw her off. He had looked almost like a child at the desk before, the way he had been sitting. Now he was a grown man again. A grown man from a big, faraway city. A grown man that had not been a child for a great many years.

      “It goes on all weekend,” she continued. “And it’s gotten bigger and bigger over the years, but even back then it was a big event. Jacob was as excited as any child ought to have the right to be. You’d think we’d never taken him anywhere! And Harold, well, even he was excited to be there. He tried to hide it—he hadn’t really learned how to be an obstinate old fool just yet, you understand. You could just see how happy he was! And why wouldn’t he be? He was a father at the Columbus County Strawberry Festival with his one and only son.

      “It was something! Both of them behaving like children. There was a dog show. And there wasn’t anything Jacob and Harold liked more than dogs. Now, this wasn’t any dog show like you see on the TV these days. This was a good old country dog show. Nothing but working dogs. Blue ticks, walkers, beagles. But Lord, were they beautiful! And Harold and Jacob just ran from one pen to the other. Saying this and saying that about what dog was better than the other and why. This one looked like he might be good for hunting in such and such place in such and such weather on such and such kind of animal.”

      Lucille was beaming again. She was onstage, proud and wonderfully rooted in 1966.

      “Sunlight everywhere,” she said. “A sky so bright and blue you could hardly believe it or imagine it these days.” She shook her head. “Too much pollution now, I suppose. Can’t think of a single thing that’s the way it used to be.”

      Then, quite suddenly, she stopped.

      She turned and looked through the window in the door. Her son was still there. Jacob was still alive. Still eight years old. Still beautiful. “Things change,” she said after a moment. “But you should have been there, Martin Bellamy. They were so happy—Jacob and his daddy. Harold carried that boy on his back for half the day. I thought he was gonna pass out. All that walking we did that day. Walking and walking and more walking. And there was Harold carrying that boy slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes for most of it.

      “The two of them made a game of it. They’d get to some booth or other, take it all in, say whatever they wanted to say about things. Then Jacob would cut off at a run and there was Harold right after him. Running through folks, almost knocking people over. And there I was yelling after them, ‘Cut it out, you two! Stop acting like animals!’”

      She gazed at Jacob. Her face seemed unsure what stance to take, so it became neutral and waiting. “It really is a blessing from God, Agent Martin Bellamy,” she said slowly. “And just because a person don’t quite understand the purpose and meaning of a blessing, that doesn’t make it any less of a blessing...does it?”