Glen and Becky discovered the man and his tomatoes in the spring and summer after they had purchased their cozy bungalow at Cracker Box Hill. The two had become empty nesters and, after 30 years, had broken dramatically with their grand house on Hamilton Park, the home where they had raised their children. Their big jump toward retirement, a move of 40 blocks, kept them in the City of Port De Lys – the “old smokestack city” – except now in a quiet working-class enclave. It felt right, right from the beginning. They were eager to explore the neighborhood, and they established a routine of walking every evening, after supper, in all weather, without fail, their dog, Rufus, a quiet, observant, well mannered, mid-sized mutt of speculative pedigree, leading the way through parks and city streets. 

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Their route during those early days included a stretch of March Street, a thoroughfare that connected Cracker Box Hill to adjacent neighborhoods and led them to local pizza, as well as to a tavern, storefront grocery, candy store, hobby shop, beauty salon and other diverting destinations. The man with the tomato plants’ house was on March, from the alley up to Reading Street. His yard had an attractive patio with wrought iron furniture and a fancy brick barbeque. It was bounded by flower beds separating it from an expanse of dark green turf. At the back of the yard, by the detached garage at the alley, was a vegetable garden. 

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All this stood in plain view, behind a waist high post and rail fence – no privacy barrier.  Glen, Becky and Rufus strolled past the house from the sidewalk across the street. They especially admired the vegetable garden, above all the tomato plants. 

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The tomatoes were planted on a compact section of the plot. The ground was covered by black landscape fabric, which created a weed barrier that neatly defined the bed. The tomato vines were carefully staked. They had grown tall, taller than six feet by early July and already carried copious amounts of fruit without the slightest evidence of the muscular vines sagging or in any manner struggling with this awesome yield.

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The plants were in continuous bloom with a paisley pattern of tiny yellow flowers set against the ripening fruit whose own pigmentation was color-wheel true “tomato green” and “tomato red.” Each piece was artfully sculpted, and unblemished, interspersed and displayed among the vines with random, hyper realistic perfection. 

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Only occasionally would Glen and Becky see the man. He would be stepping carefully in the garden, inspecting more than tending. He might just have been admiring. There was much to admire. 

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Glen thought of the man as an older but not yet “old” man. At age 57, himself, Glen felt qualified to assess the ages of men and look ahead to the elusive demarcation past middle age but not yet to old age.  The man with the tomato plants didn’t look, say, to be as old as in his mid-70s or older, and if Glen had to guess he would say the man, though he looked steady and able in his affect and ease of movement, might be a youthful early 70s. 

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The man wore dark shorts and T-shirt, and white socks that slumped down along the tops of low tan leather work boots. He had gotten a lot of sun over many years. Glen thought of him as “Old World,” in part because of the man’s complexion, which seemed Mediterranean, but also because the man’s build and facial features looked like those of a figure of Rome. This included unblinking eyes, unsmiling expression (pensive but not severe), wavy gray hair combed forward over a high forehead, and stocky build, in short a picture of that which seemed to prevail, at least in Glen’s idea of sculptural representation, with elder citizens of ancient times.

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Glen was sure that, one day, he would have a chance to introduce himself to the man and compliment him on his tomato plants. He would do so as a matter of neighborly appreciation. Glen believed in the power of well-chosen praise of avocation, such as congratulations to, say, the occasional writer who has read aloud a poem, the maestro of an amateur musical ensemble which has just completed a performance in a city park, or to the after-school reading coach who, when courting other potential volunteers, has offered a matter-of-fact account of the miracle of childhood literacy. Anyone who’s ever been present at an opera house to hear a stranger’s simple expression of “Bravo!” understands how it adds luster to achievement. 

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But this never came to pass. Glen, Becky, and Rufus never saw the man in the garden after the middle of that summer. For a long time, longer than was reasonable, Glen chalked this up to coincidence. The man just happened not to be out of doors when Glen, Becky and Rufus happened to be walking by. Glen ultimately lost faith in this theory. He came to believe just the opposite, that persistent absence is seldom coincidence and indeed, when it involves people of a certain age, it is more likely explained by sudden change, including death or illness. Still, Glen resisted concluding that something bad had happened to the man. 

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Glen thought that if he ever saw near neighbors to the man’s house, he would ask if they knew what had happened to the man. Summer turned to autumn and then winter, and the vines gray and brittle remained in place. Here, again, the opportunity never presented itself in which Glen could inquire after the man. Glen felt that, by now, too much time had passed and he should let it go. Instead, Glen started to doubt his memory. Not that his memory was failing. Rather, perhaps his perception of the man and his tomato plants had been faulty from the start. Perhaps the man did not live in the house. Maybe he was an uncle or a cousin or an old friend simply visiting the family that lived in the house. Perhaps the man’s appearance and disappearance were in fact coincidence, but in a different sense than the way in which Glen might have imagined it.

 

Maybe the man actually was from Italy, and even from the Campania region along the Amalfi Coast, an area legendary for its tomatoes. Maybe such travel all the way from Europe would account for his stay as a houseguest being longer than we might otherwise expect. Maybe the man was a visiting scholar at Eliot University, staying with a colleague for the semester, which coincided with the early growing season. Maybe he had put in the tomato plants as a gift to the family in appreciation for its hospitality. Or maybe keeping a garden was a deeply ingrained part of the man’s routine, like old world habits of going to daily Catholic Mass or taking care to make sure before one heads out of the house each day one has a shine on his shoes. Maybe, in other words, it was no effort at all for the man to start a garden in his host's back yard because that was his routine at home and without a garden to tend he would be nervous and homesick. 

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On the other hand, Glen felt that maybe he had gotten carried away and the plants, models of perfection as they seemed to be, weren’t as big a deal as Glen had felt. What did Glen know about growing or keeping tomatoes? Nothing, really. Weren’t tomatoes generally thought of as pretty easy to grow? Wasn’t it common for unremarkable people to have bumper crops, to arrive at their workplaces bearing and unable to even give away the contents of brown paper grocery bags full and overflowing with tomatoes?

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Time passed and Glen and Becky continued with their walks, albeit with March Street becoming a less prominent part of their route. And by and by Glen felt a vague melancholy surrounding the man’s absence. 

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Becky, on the other hand, never felt the mystery. She observed how she and Glen only had seen the man standing in the garden on a total of four occasions that spring and summer. She thought of him at most as a spectral figure. Maybe it was on five occasions. 

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On the last of these occasions, the last Glen could specifically remember, the man had been leaning on a tall wooden garden tool with a claw at the end. He appeared to be visiting over the fence with two younger couples also on evening walks. Each pushed a stroller and held dogs on leads. The couples’ pointed to the tomato plants, and the man responded with cheerful sounding conversation and animated hand gestures. The dogs appeared impatient to proceed with their walks.

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As time passed, Glen thought less about the man and his tomato plants. Harbingers of spring though would bring Glen back to that which he couldn’t get over and Becky never could explain: 

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Why had no one harvested the magnificent crop of tomatoes that first spring and summer? Why were the tomatoes left to proliferate well into the autumn but never collected? Why were they allowed to slowly rot on the vine? 

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The garden had been cleared the following spring by unknown people. The old vines were removed. The patch had been left unplanted over the two growing seasons since. Glen, Becky and Rufus explored new routes in their after-supper travels, and Glen listened for the rumble, creak, and sonorous horn of trains pulling freight along the tracks and through the yard of the Angeleno line, a mile away. Becky enjoyed the long evening light, and Glen's mind wandered as he imagined the places the trains may have originated, the cargo they carried and, when, through the impending darkness and dawn of a new day, they would reach their destinations.

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("The man and his tomato plants" first appeared in the 2022 issue of the River Bluff Review.)