Olive and I are out riding our bikes on the weekend when I recognize a tall man carrying a box to the curb. It’s Mitchell Harlan, the minister from Richard’s funeral. “Hi!” I call. “Remember me?”
Mitchell tilts his head one way, then another. He squints, and then his face relaxes. “Of course! The memorial! Funny. I was just thinking of Richard. I always do when I put out a box.”
We look down at a cardboard carton filled with red apples. “This is the fourth I’ve lugged across the yard this fall. My apple tree is going bananas. Or it’s going apples. A bumper crop.”
Mitchell invites us in for tea and apple cake. I explain that Olive knew Richard too.
“I always felt comfortable with Richard,” Mitchell says, slicing the cake. “With some people who live on the street, I’m on my guard. They’ve had difficult lives and are often angry for good reason. But even though they have good reason to be angry, that doesn’t mean they won’t bite. You have to be careful. Richard wasn’t at all like that.”
“He was sweet,” Olive says.
Mitchell looks at us carefully. He bites his lip. “I’m going to tell you something,” he finally says. “It’s a sad story, but it teaches. All Richard ever asked me for was fresh fruit and vegetables. I liked how he said vegetables. He said every syllable—ve-ge-ta-bles. When you’re eating from food banks, you get a lot of donuts and bread and canned food. Nothing fresh.
“One afternoon I got a call from the police. Richard had gone into someone’s yard and taken a few apples. The people who lived there were not happy. To them, he was just some dirty intruder.” Mitchell shakes his head. “Poor Richard.”
“What happened?” Olive and I chorus. We’re horrified.
“If you were the police, what would you do? The officers led Richard out of the yard, but there was no way they were going to arrest him. They could have charged him with trespass and theft. The homeowners wanted them to. The police asked me to talk to them. I sat at their kitchen table, and I told them Richard was harmless. I told them he had gotten confused. I said he would never trespass again. That’s what they wanted to hear.
“It was weeks before Richard stopped trembling. I did my best to comfort him, but he didn’t sleep well for many nights.”
Mitchell reached for the teapot and topped up our cups. “The saddest thing was that Richard didn’t even pick those apples,” he said. “He just gathered windfall.”
“Windfall?” I asked.
“Apples that fall to the ground because of wind or the simple pull of gravity.”
Mitchell looked at us sadly. “When I was a boy, my mom would ask me, ‘If a hungry man steals a loaf of bread, is it really stealing?’ I believe food can’t be stolen. Hunger is different from greed.”
Olive nods. “My mom says that if someone asks for water, we should always say yes. And if we’re sharing a cup of water with someone, it’s wrong to drink more than our share. Water belongs equally to everyone.”
“I hate those companies that put it in bottles and sell it,” I say sourly.
“Some say that water, air and land belong to everyone equally. They say that property is theft—just by owning something, you’ve taken it. I agree,” Mitchell says. “I certainly believe that my apples are common property. Especially after what happened to Richard. That’s why I put them out for neighbors.”
Olive and I pedal home with plastic bags of Mitchell’s apples hanging from our handlebars. At one point I tease Olive about having an emotion to report. At Olive’s house before supper, everyone holds hands and talks about how they felt that day.
“That story sure was sad,” Olive says. “Imagine calling the police for something like that.”
I’m not feeling sad though. I’m actually feeling kind of happy. I’m happy Richard did something. He tried to get what he needed.
It’s funny how I keep being reminded of Richard. Mitchell’s story and the bag of apples bumping against my knee as I pedal keep Richard close. Even the startling emptiness of Richard’s bench is an echo of his life. But echoes eventually die too, don’t they?