Fishing

The dark soil rose up in a long rectangle crowning the deep grass and stretching away towards the old boundary fence.

He had been walking slowly in his heavy boots, coming up the wide race salt and peppered with weeds and the cow pats of the herd that had preceded him. The race rose imperceptibly all the way from the paddock below.

He had been humming a quiet tune in time to his footfalls, and looking up towards the small crest that would take him over and in to the home paddock he would see Gran’s head appear, stop there, and disappear. He quickened his pace without ever taking his eyes from the crest as she popped up again, stood, and went.

When he made the top of the rise he stopped. She looked up to him and raised a hand, and then dug the spade into the deep soil again, stood up atop the blade to push it in far enough, and then climbed down, pulling the spade sideways so that the potatoes rose and flopped down on the dark soil, as if she raised a fish from the sea.