Ursula Vernon: The Tomato Thief

Grandma Harken lived on the edge of town, in a house with its back to the desert.

Some people said that she lived out there because she liked her privacy, and some said that it was because she did black magic in secret. Some said that she just didn’t care for other people, and they were probably the closest to the truth.

When her daughter Eva asked her to move into town, to be a little closer, Grandma Harken refused. It got to be a regular ritual with them—“Mother, won’t you move in a little closer? I worry about you out there alone.”

“What’s going to bother me out here?”

“You could step on a rattlesnake,” said Eva.

“I’d rather get bit by a rattlesnake than the neighbors,” said Grandma Harken. “I get enough people coming whining to me as it is. As it is, some of ‘em get tired and turn around. A twenty minute walk has its advantages.” She held up a needle and threaded it on the first try. “Besides, I can still see what I’m doing. Talk to me when I’ve gone blind.”

Eva sighed, the way she always did, and said, “If you won’t come in closer, you could have someone come out and live with you. Hire a girl, maybe.”

“Garden only feeds one,” said Grandma, which was at least three-quarters of a lie. Eva knew this, but didn’t possess the sort of steel that would allow her to call her mother out on it.

“You could at least get a dog.”

“Can’t get a dog. It’ll offend Spook-cat.”

(Spook-cat was a tiny ginger tomcat who lived in perpetual terror of loud noises, sudden movements, and unexpected shadows. He lived under Grandma Harken’s bed and would occasionally consent to sleep on her pillow, despite her snoring. He was deeply intimidated by the jackrabbits that lived in the desert, so trips outside to do his business lasted less than two minutes, followed by immediate retreat back under the bed.

He had seen a mouse once and it had frightened him so badly that he had not come out from behind the stove for a week.)

Eva sighed again.

It was debatable whether she knew the real reason that Grandma Harken lived so far out of town. Her mother kept a lot of secrets.

In fact, it was because of the tomatoes.

Tomatoes are thirsty plants and they don’t always want to grow in a desert. You have to give them criminal amounts of water and they’ll only set fruit in spring and autumn. Summer heat is too much for them and if they don’t die outright, you’re pouring gallons of water a day into the sand just to keep them alive.

Grandma Harken had spent the better part of fifty years growing tomatoes and she had a spot in her garden that held water just a fraction longer than anywhere else. It got shade in the worst of the afternoon and sun in the earliest part of the morning.

Her tomatoes were the biggest and the juiciest in town. She started them on the windowsill on New Year’s Day and she planted them out in February. They ripened in spring and she pulled the plants up as soon as the last one had been picked.

The same people in town who muttered about black magic swore that she was using unholy powers on her tomatoes. This was a little more plausible than general black magic, because obviously if you had unholy powers, you’d want to use them on your tomatoes. But Grandma Harken was extremely useful to have around and knew more about dangerous desert spirits than anyone else, so people shushed their whispering neighbors and smiled politely when Grandma passed.

Also, if you were very polite, you might be able to beg a few tomato seeds from her. The resulting plant wouldn’t be up to her standards, but it would still bear a damn fine tomato.

Grandma Harken had been watching her tomatoes very closely for the last few days, and not just to catch the hornworm caterpillars.

One of the smaller ones was starting to come ripe, and she was looking forward to it more than a little.

She’d been feeling worn out and overly responsible lately. It had been a long, long year, and there’d been that business with her grandson and the jackalope wife. It had all worked out as well as could be expected, but it had been a worrisome mess while it lasted. Her grandson had gone back east on the train, and good riddance to him. Boy had no business in the desert. But she worried anyway, partly for him and partly for his mother and partly because a foolish young man with brooding eyes can cause no end of heartbreak in the world.

Worrying didn’t do any good, but somehow that never stops anybody. Mostly it made her tired.

She didn’t look any older, so far as she could tell from the mirror, but her heart felt like somebody had been scraping the last bits out with a spoon.

If she could just sit down at the table with a knife and salt and some good white bread, maybe a little mayonnaise … well, it seemed like that’d put the world back into the right sort of shape around her. Sometimes the best cure for life was a ripe tomato.

She got up the morning after Eva visited and went out to the garden. The air was still cool and the porch steps creaked as she walked down them.

The tomato was gone.

Grandma Harken knew right away that it was missing, but she looked around the plants anyway. There were three of them, planted in a triangle, covered in heavy green balls. A few were turning red, but the tomato she’d kept her eye on, the one that had been right there …

Gone.

It had been there last night. She’d looked at it in sunset and thought that it’d be ripe this morning.

“I ain’t losing my mind,” she said firmly. “That tomato was here.”

The tomato continued to be absent. There were no seeds on the ground or tracks in the dirt to indicate where it had gone.

The rest of the garden was large and dusty, like desert gardens often are. Jackrabbits liked to come lie in the shade under the beans. Jackrabbits aren’t known for eating tomatoes off the vine.

Strange things happen in the desert. Grandma Harken looked around suspiciously and went back inside to make tea.

Two days later, there were two fine tomatoes almost ready to split. Grandma Harken stroked their scarlet skins. “Tomorrow,” she said, with satisfaction. She had almost succeeded in putting the previous tomato out of her mind.

But tomorrow came and Grandma Harken beheld a distinct absence of ripe tomatoes.

This time she went over the garden practically on her hands and knees, but she could not figure out where the tomatoes might have gone. Jackrabbits didn’t steal tomatoes, and javelinas, which might, would have made a fine mess of the garden. It was too high up for a box turtle, unless somebody was outfitting box turtles with stepladders these days.

“It ain’t a kid from in town,” she muttered. “They know better than to try, and anyway there’s no footprints.” The only marks on the dusty ground were from Grandma Harken’s own sandals.

She prowled around the edge of the garden and found nothing. The fence was undisturbed.

She was crouched in front of the plants, staring at them, when she saw it.

She breathed in sharply. It was easy to miss, but if she looked in exactly the right place, she could see what looked like a single human footprint in the dirt between the three tomato plants.

She was so still for so long that Spook-cat came up and twined around her, making small mrrrrp? noises. She rubbed him under the chin automatically, barely noticing.

A thrasher called from the palo verde at the end of the garden. The noise sent Spook-cat skittering inside, and woke Grandma from her reverie.

The footprint had five clear toes. The owner had been barefoot.

“ Thief,” hissed Grandma Harken, and stomped back indoors in a bitter state of mind.