“Now!” he said, wiping his knob against his pant leg. “Now! First thing tomorrow morning, get those ag tires from Axelrod’s, hook up the spark plug—she’s got gas, she’s got fire, she’s got air, she’s got to run!”

He put up his tools, spread a tarpaulin over the whole thing, and came up on the porch. The telephone was ringing.

“Arthur, come up here and let me fix you a cup of coffee,” said Helen. She called, “Essie, get the phone! Arthur, come over to the sink, I’ll wash your hand with some of this orange cleaner.”

The telephone rang again, but Essie didn’t answer it. She sat down in a chair in the middle of the room with both her feet on the floor and her elbows on her knees, leaning toward the telephone.

“I’m in a real dark place,” the voice said. “Baby, please call me.” Then there was the click and the dial tone.

For a while they just stood there not saying anything, Helen holding the tub of orange cleaner at the sink, and Arthur wiping his knob with the greasy rag over and over. Then Arthur said, “No thank you, Helen, I’ll just go on home.”

The next day was the perfect fall day, bright and cool, with a high blue sky and the welcome smell of a change of season—the tea-olive trees in their first full bloom, scuppernong grapes and pine straw heated up by the sun, and soon with all that, the smell of mown grass.

From the house Essie and Helen could hear the Gravely mower, running just as smooth, and from the porch they could see through the crape-myrtle shade out into the sunny place Arthur perched up on the sulky behind the Gravely mower, looping around and around, mowing just the shape Essie had drawn in the air, first his back on the loop going out, then his face on the loop coming back, every now and then turning to look over his shoulder at the mowed stripe unfurling behind the mower like a green grosgrain ribbon.

On the porch Helen finished her lemon picture and propped it up on the railing to look at it. The hardest part had turned out to be the best: a place where the knife had peeled too deep and it seemed you could look down through the clear layers of yellow and into the deep heart of the lemon.

Essie finished filling out her order form: three abutilons from Plant Delights nursery, and still they heard the mower, near and far and near again, then farther and farther away.

“Seems like he’s been mowing a mighty long time for that little bit of field,” said Helen. “We need to go out there and admire it for Arthur.”

“We need to go out there and be sure he hasn’t mowed everything down,” said Essie. “You know how he is.”