Part 5 — The Chair in the Current
A hand on his shoulder pulled Jacob out of the shallow, aching sleep of shelter nights.
“Mr. Miles?” The volunteer’s voice was low, careful. “We got a call from the guys still patrolling the south end. Thought you’d want to know.”
He rubbed his eyes. “What is it?”
“They spotted your wife’s chair,” she said. “The old rocker—someone said it’s yours?”
For a second, the words didn’t land. Then his chest tightened.
“Where?” he asked.
“Caught up in the fence by Miller’s barn,” she said. “Water’s still running strong there, but they can try to pull it in if you want it saved.”
Jacob stood before he realized he’d moved. The shelter felt smaller suddenly, the air heavier. Claire stirred in her chair, blinking awake. “What’s going on?”
He told her, and she was on her feet in an instant. “Then we need to go get it.”
The deputy from the night before drove them in the high-water truck, engine growling low as they pushed through water that reached the wheel wells. The rain had eased to a steady drizzle, but the sky was still the color of wet ash.
When they turned onto Miller’s lane, Jacob saw the barn first—half its roof sagging, the red paint peeling in long curls. And there, caught in the wire fence along the drive, was Ruth’s rocker.
It bobbed gently in the current, wedged between two posts, the worn oak darkened almost black from the soaking. The curve of the runners, the slope of the arms—he could see her in it, knitting on summer evenings, tapping her heel to keep the rhythm when the cicadas sang.
Jacob climbed down from the truck without waiting for help. The water was cold, pushing hard against his knees as he waded toward it. The fence wire shuddered under the strain of both the chair and the current.
“Careful!” the deputy called.
Jacob didn’t answer. He gripped the top of the rocker and lifted. It was heavier now, full of water, the joints swollen. He pulled until the current lost its grip and then cradled it in both arms, walking it slowly back toward the truck.
When he set it in the bed, Claire reached out to touch the armrest. “It’s beautiful,” she said softly.
“It was hers,” Jacob said. “Every night, after the dishes, she’d sit out on the porch in this chair. Even in October, with a blanket.”
The deputy drove them back slow, careful not to jolt the rocker around. Jacob kept his eyes on it, the way the rain ran down the back slats.
At the shelter, he found a dry corner by the wall and set it down. The wood would need sanding, maybe some new glue at the joints. But it was still whole.
Claire crouched beside it. “You gonna keep it like this? Or fix it?”
“I’ll fix it,” Jacob said. “Not to make it new. Just so it can keep being what it is.”
They sat there for a while, just looking at it. The chair was more than wood and glue—it was the sound of Ruth’s knitting needles, the way she’d hum low when she was thinking, the quiet they’d shared without needing to fill it.
“Funny,” Jacob said, “the river took everything it could reach. But it let this go.”
Claire tilted her head. “Maybe it knew you’d come for it.”
He almost smiled. “Rivers don’t think like that. But people do.”
By afternoon, the water had begun to recede. The volunteers talked about going back to check damage, maybe start clearing debris. Jacob stayed by the chair, his hand resting on the arm like he might steady it.
When the deputy came by with an update, he said, “Your kitchen’s still a mess, but the house is standing. We can probably get you back there tomorrow, if the roads hold.”
Jacob nodded. “I’ll be there.”
That night, the shelter felt different. The worst of the storm was over, but the exhaustion had set in—people talking less, sitting heavier in their chairs. The sound of the rain was softer now, more like a reminder than a threat.
Claire sat beside the rocker, the box from the river in her lap. “You ever think,” she said, “that maybe all this—” she gestured at the shelter, the flood, the chair— “isn’t just bad luck?”
Jacob looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean… what if it’s the kind of thing that happens to put people back where they belong? Or back with who they belong with?”
He considered that, thinking of Brandon’s letter, the tickets, the jar of money, the map. “If that’s true,” he said, “it’s got a mean way of doing it.”
She smiled faintly. “Maybe. But it works.”
The lights dimmed for a moment before settling. Somewhere down the hall, a baby cried. The smell of strong coffee drifted from the corner.
Jacob leaned back in his chair, eyes on Ruth’s rocker. He thought of the first time he saw it—at an estate sale in 1973. Ruth had run her hand along the armrest, smiled at him, and said, If we get this, you’ll never be able to sneak past me on the porch. They’d carried it home in the back of his truck, the same way it had come here now—though the ride had been drier then.
He could almost hear her voice now: If you can grow a garden, you can survive anything. Maybe she’d been right. But maybe she’d left out that sometimes you had to rescue a few things from the flood, too.
As the shelter quieted for the night, Jacob made himself a promise: when he got home, he’d put that chair back on the porch. And this time, he wouldn’t leave it empty.
The next morning, as they prepared to leave the shelter, Claire reached into her coat pocket. “I didn’t show you this last night,” she said, handing him a smaller envelope from the same box—inside was a single Polaroid of Brandon, standing in Jacob’s garden, holding a tomato like it was gold.
Part 6 — The Tomato in His Hand
The morning light in the shelter was pale and thin, the kind that doesn’t promise much.
People were gathering their bags, folding blankets, shuffling toward the exit in small clusters.
Jacob was lacing his boots when Claire stepped over, a folded piece of paper pinched between her fingers.
“I didn’t show you this last night,” she said. “Found it tucked into the bottom of the box, under the wax paper.”
It wasn’t paper at all—it was a Polaroid, edges curled, the gloss dulled by time.
In it, Brandon stood in Jacob’s garden, sunlight turning the dust in the air to gold.
He was holding a tomato in both hands like it was something rare, something worth presenting to the world.
His grin was wide, unguarded—the kind Jacob hadn’t seen since before they stopped speaking.
Jacob ran his thumb over the photo. The faint smell of damp cardboard still clung to it, as if it had only just been pulled from hiding.
“That was… ’74, I think,” he said quietly. “The summer the river gave us back more than it took.”
Claire tilted her head. “You remember the day?”
Jacob nodded and let the photo draw him back—
It had been July, the heat lying heavy over Cedarburg. The storm that spring had swollen the river past its banks, chewing the bottomland raw. But when the water pulled back, it left behind soil black as coffee grounds. Jacob planted late, figuring he’d take what he could get.
By midsummer, the tomatoes had come on strong—thick vines, fruit the size of both fists. Brandon showed up unannounced one morning, a paper sack of nails in one hand.
“You’ve got a lean on that second row,” he’d said, squinting against the sun. “Figured I’d help you stake ’em before they fall over.”
Jacob hadn’t asked how he knew. Friends like they’d been didn’t need to.
They worked side by side for hours, tying twine, driving stakes, talking about nothing that mattered—how the Brewers might actually win a pennant, how the Miller boy down the road had wrecked his father’s truck, how Ruth’s spaghetti sauce could win ribbons if she ever entered it at the county fair.
When they stopped for water, Brandon spotted the biggest tomato in the patch. He cupped it in both hands, turned toward Jacob with a grin, and said, “Man ought to be proud of what he grows.”
Ruth had snapped the picture from the porch steps. She’d waved the Polaroid in the air until the image came in, then handed it to Brandon. “For when you forget how to smile,” she’d told him.
Jacob blinked, pulling himself back into the shelter. The noise of people packing seemed louder now, closer.
“Why would he keep this all those years?” Claire asked.
“Maybe he liked the reminder,” Jacob said. “Or maybe he meant to give it back.”
Claire took the photo from him, studied it. “He looks… lighter. Like he didn’t have to think about anything for a while.”
Jacob almost told her about the real reason that summer stuck in his memory. How they’d been talking that day about splitting the backlot to plant more corn. How they’d almost gone in on a used tractor together. How it had all unraveled a month later over something so small he couldn’t even name it anymore without feeling foolish.
Instead, he said, “The garden was good that year. Best I ever had.”
She tucked the Polaroid back into the envelope and slipped it into his duffel. “Then maybe it’s a sign you should plant it again.”
He didn’t answer. The truth was, he didn’t know if the land would forgive him for letting the flood take it.
The deputy came by, clapping his hands together. “Alright folks, roads are opening. We can start getting you back home.”
The drive out to Jacob’s place was slow, the truck jolting over ruts where the water had scoured the road. The air smelled of silt and uprooted things.
When they reached the farm, Jacob stepped out into silence. No birdsong yet—just the soft drip of water from the eaves. The grass lay flat, plastered to the ground. The tomato rows were gone, the stakes leaning or washed away.
He walked to the porch. The boards were still slick, but they held his weight. Ruth’s rocker sat where he’d left it in the shelter, dry now, waiting. He set it in its old spot by the door and rested a hand on the armrest.
Claire stood beside him, looking out over the wreckage. “You could start again,” she said.
“Could,” Jacob said. “Question is—should.”
She turned to face him. “If my granddad were here, I think he’d tell you that you don’t quit on good ground just because it floods.”
Jacob looked out at the field again. The river had pulled back, but its path was marked in the matted grass and driftwood. He thought about the jar of bills, the tickets, the map, the Polaroid. All these things that had survived the water to get to him.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said.
They went inside. The kitchen smelled of damp wood and mud. Cabinets hung open, their contents scattered. Jacob set the cigar box on the table and opened it. Inside, the tickets lay where he’d left them, dry and untouched.
Claire pulled up a chair. “What happens now?”
Jacob traced the edge of the smudged ticket with his fingertip. “Now? I think I clean up. See what’s worth keeping.”
She looked at him like she knew he meant more than just the house.
Outside, a breeze moved through the orchard. The first bird of the morning called, tentative but sure.
Jacob picked up the Polaroid again. Brandon’s smile looked different now—not just lighter, but like a man who knew something good could still grow back after a flood.
He slipped the photo into the pocket of his shirt. “Come on,” he said to Claire. “We’ve got work to do.”
As they began clearing the yard, Claire uncovered something half-buried in the mud—a rusted tin lunchbox. Inside was a letter Jacob had written decades ago… but never sent.
Part 7 — The Letter He Never Sent
The sun had climbed high enough to turn the wet fields silver when they started clearing the yard.
Jacob worked with a flat shovel, scraping away silt where the water had piled it against the fence. Claire picked through the driftwood and branches, tossing what she could to the burn pile.
“Something’s here,” she called, crouched by a patch of mud near the old well.
Jacob leaned on the shovel, watching as she dug with her hands until a small metal box came free—a rusted tin lunchbox, the kind schoolkids carried in the ’50s, painted with a cowboy scene worn almost to nothing.
She handed it to him. “Yours?”
He turned it over. The hinges were swollen with rust, but he recognized the dents—one near the corner from when he’d dropped it off the hayloft as a boy, another from sliding under the seat of his truck for years. “Haven’t seen this in decades,” he said.
The latch gave after a few tries, the metal flaking away. Inside were scraps of his past: a broken penknife, two wheat pennies, and a folded envelope gone soft with age.
The paper was yellowed, the edges curling. On the front, in his own blocky handwriting: Brandon Blackstock.
Claire looked at him. “You wrote to him?”
Jacob sat down on the porch step, the lunchbox beside him. “Once. I never mailed it.”
The flap tore a little as he opened it. His own words stared back, faded but still sharp.
Brandon,
I don’t know how to say this in person without us ending up shouting, so I’m writing it down. Maybe paper can hold it better than we can.
When you took the Johnson job without telling me, it wasn’t just a job. You knew I’d been lining up that contract for months. You knew Ruth and I were counting on it. And you went ahead like we hadn’t stood in that barn last winter talking about building something together.
You always were quicker than me—quicker to see an opening, quicker to grab it. I respected that. But this time, you didn’t just take the work. You took the ground out from under me.
I’ll get by. I always do. But we both know some things don’t grow back once you’ve cut them.
—Jake
He let the page fall into his lap. The years between then and now pressed down hard.
Claire’s brow furrowed. “So… it was business?”
Jacob shook his head slowly. “That’s what I told myself back then. Truth is, it was pride. We were both trying to prove we could stand on our own. He got there first. I never forgave him—not really.”
“And you never sent it?”
“I put it in that box, told myself I’d mail it once I cooled down. By the time I looked at it again, too much time had passed. And the longer you leave something like that, the heavier it gets. Pretty soon it feels easier to just carry it than to drop it.”
He folded the letter, slid it back into the envelope, and then into the lunchbox. The metal was cold in his hands. “Guess the river decided it was time to dig it up.”
Claire was quiet for a while. Then she said, “He didn’t keep your letter—but he kept that Polaroid. Maybe that means he didn’t carry it the same way you did.”
Jacob looked out at the fields. The air smelled faintly of silt and wet leaves. “Or maybe he carried it differently. Some folks plant their grudges deep. Others just let them grow wild.”
They worked in silence after that, stacking driftwood, pulling the last of the debris from the porch steps. Every now and then Jacob’s eyes went to the rocker, and he imagined Ruth sitting there, hearing all this, shaking her head in that quiet way she had when men were being stubborn.
By late afternoon, the sky had cleared enough for a thin sun. Claire set a small pot of water to boil on the propane burner they’d salvaged from the shed.
“You think you’ll plant again?” she asked.
Jacob leaned on the porch rail, looking out at the churned-up soil. “I think I’ll have to. Not for me. For her.”
“Your wife?”
He nodded. “Ruth always said the garden wasn’t just food. It was proof. That if you could coax something to grow, you could believe in what might come next.”
Claire smiled faintly. “Sounds like she and my granddad would’ve gotten along.”
Jacob thought about that for a long moment. “Maybe they already did. In some way we just didn’t see.”
The kettle whistled. Claire poured the water over two mugs of instant coffee, the smell mixing with the damp air.
Jacob took his cup, sat in the rocker, and let it creak under his weight. The wood was dry now, warm in the sun. He looked at the lunchbox on the porch rail—the rusted shell, the folded letter inside.
Some part of him wanted to burn it. Another part wanted to keep it as a reminder of what not to let happen again.
“You know,” he said, “when the river rose in ’69, I didn’t think we’d make it out. Then I saw his hand on that rope, and I knew. Just knew. All this other nonsense came later. The important part was always that he showed up.”
Claire’s eyes softened. “And maybe this—” she gestured at the flood, the tickets, the box “—is him showing up again.”
Jacob looked past her, toward the bend in the river. “Maybe so.”
He took another sip of coffee. The bitterness was grounding.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll see if those seeds in the shed are still dry. Could be the ground’s ready for something new.”
Claire nodded, and for a while they just sat—two people tied together by a man neither could talk to anymore, but who somehow still had a hand in both their lives.
In the distance, the river whispered against its banks, softer now, but still moving.
That night, Jacob opened the cigar box one last time before bed—and found a slip of paper he didn’t remember seeing before. In Brandon’s handwriting, it read: Check the north fence post.
Part 8 — The North Fence Post
The note was no bigger than a grocery receipt, creased down the middle like it had been folded for years.
Jacob read it twice under the yellow glow of the kitchen lamp, the words steady in Brandon’s blocky hand:
Check the north fence post.
Claire leaned on the doorway. “That wasn’t there before, was it?”
Jacob shook his head. “I’ve been through this box a hundred times in the last few days. I’d have seen it.”
“Then how—” she started, but stopped. “Maybe it came loose from somewhere. The flood shook everything.”
Jacob slipped the note into his shirt pocket. The north fence line was the farthest from the house, where the pasture sloped toward the river. He hadn’t walked it yet since the water receded; too much else had needed doing.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “In daylight.”
They left before the sun had burned the mist off the fields. The ground still sucked at their boots, and each step left a wet print that filled slowly with seepage. Jacob carried a small crowbar in case the post was stuck, and Claire brought the old Army flashlight, though the sky was brightening fast.
The north fence line came into view after the orchard—a stretch of weathered posts strung with rust-patched wire. At the far end, the river curved like a bent arm, the banks scarred from where the flood had bitten into them.
“That one,” Jacob said, pointing. The third post from the corner leaned slightly toward the water, the top scarred with old axe marks.
Up close, he saw it wasn’t just weather damage. The post had a horizontal seam about knee-high, almost invisible under the layer of moss and mud.
He worked the crowbar in and pried gently. The seam gave with a soft crack, revealing a hollow core. Inside, wrapped in a waxed canvas pouch, was a metal tin the size of a loaf of bread.
Claire knelt beside him. “You think it’s—?”
“Only one way to know,” Jacob said.
The tin was sealed tight, but the crowbar made quick work of it. Inside, there were two things: a folded sheaf of papers tied with twine, and a small, cloth-bound notebook.
Jacob untied the twine first. The papers were deeds—land records for a narrow strip along the riverbank, the very stretch where they were standing now. The owner listed on each: Jacob Miles and Brandon Blackstock, joint tenancy. The dates were from the late ’70s, a year after the letter he’d never sent.
Claire whistled softly. “He never sold his half?”
Jacob shook his head. “I thought he had. We stopped talking, and I figured he’d walked away from it like he walked away from me.”
Claire picked up the notebook. The cover was cracked, the pages inside filled with Brandon’s handwriting—entries dated years apart, some no more than a sentence.
Jacob read over her shoulder:
1983 — River ran high this spring. Checked the fence. Thought about Jake.
1991 — Saw Ruth at the market. She said the tomatoes were good this year. I miss them.
2002 — Flood took the east field. Fixed the post anyway.
2018 — Might be time to send him the ticket. We both win, that’s the deal.
Jacob closed the book and stared out at the water. The river moved slow this morning, like it had nothing left to prove.
“He kept coming back,” Claire said.
Jacob nodded slowly. “All this time, I thought the fence was mine alone. Turns out, he was still on his side, keeping it up.”
They sat on the damp grass with the tin between them. The smell of mud and cedar hung in the air. Jacob ran a hand over the canvas pouch, feeling the grit under his palm.
“He didn’t owe me this,” Jacob said. “Not after the way I left things.”
“Maybe he thought he did,” Claire said. “Or maybe it was never about owing.”
Jacob looked at her, then back at the tin. “The thing about fences… they’re not just to keep things out. Sometimes they’re to mark that you’re still here.”
Back at the house, Jacob set the tin on the kitchen table next to the cigar box. The two felt like bookends—one holding the pieces of their friendship, the other holding proof it had never completely ended.
Claire traced the deed with her fingertip. “You know, this land… you could plant here. Start fresh.”
He almost smiled. “The ground’s good. River’s generous when it wants to be.”
She looked up at him. “And you’ve got a partner on paper. Even if he’s not here.”
Jacob glanced at the rocker on the porch. Ruth would have told him the same thing. Start again. Let the ground tell you what it can still do.
He picked up the notebook, flipped to a blank page, and wrote in his own hand:
2025 — Found the tin. Found the truth. The fence still stands.
He closed it and set it back in the tin, alongside the deeds.
That evening, they sat on the porch, the river just visible through the thinning trees. The air was cool, the sky streaked with the last light of day.
Jacob thought about all the years he’d let silence do the talking for him. He thought about Brandon walking this same fence line, maybe in the rain, maybe in the dark, fixing wire no one thanked him for.
Claire broke the quiet. “You gonna keep the fence?”
Jacob chuckled softly. “I’ll keep it. And I’ll plant along it, so anyone walking by knows it’s still cared for.”
The river murmured in agreement, or maybe that was just the wind in the grass.
As they watched the last light fade, Claire asked, “What about the winning ticket?” Jacob reached into his pocket, turned it over in his hand, and said, “Tomorrow, we see what it’s worth—then decide if money can grow the same way a garden does.”
