The Thinker

Eventually one of the resident blue jays, of its own accord, perched on my father's palm. The man forever in his garden, watering and weeding, and I guess the bird came to think of him as just another tree. Its point of orientation, a reverse scarecrow. Never there to see it, I take everyone's word.

One time, in the middle of the night, they had to abandon the works--house, garden, circular drive--for a fire coming down from the hills. The air was brown, they said, and the ash drifted in for days.

I think now of pepper vines burning up his hands; his scallions and his acid, candy tomatoes. I think of the plum tree he fussed a path around, the eucalyptus limbs he tried to clear away. And the basketfuls of everything he hauled to the house, every summer, driving my mother crazy.

Out in the middle of his garden, on an old wooden prop, stood a small plaster copy of The Thinker. My father bought it years ago, and dismissed every hint to give it up. It sat there no matter what, braining away the January rains, cold April dawns. Hardly an ornament either, always more and more patchy, porous, the cheap white plaster coming off in curls. But it never moved. Never budged from whatever single thought it was thinking, and now I'll never know.