Smith

Carol Dunk

Description

Smith is a story about a week in the life of an itinerant yardman and a retired teacher. The yardman brings Buddhist quotes to Kate. The quotes help Kate with her transition from teacher to something else. Together they complete tasks in Kate’s garden and explore the possible meanings of quotes from the Tao Te Ching—the writings of Lao Tzu.
Almost by accident, Kate becomes caught up in a school in the making in South America. She is revitalized with the prospect of playing a part in the establishment of a tiny school in Ecuador.
At the end of the week, Smith is on his way again, and Kate is able to say goodbye with a smile. Life goes on.

Sujets

• Science Fiction
• Smith
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669863298
• Langue: English

Extrait

Smith
 

 
Second Edition
 
 
 
 
Carol Dunk
 
Copyright © 2023 by Carol Dunk.
       
Softcover
978-1-6698-6330-4

eBook
978-1-6698-6329-8

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
Rev. date: 01/24/2023
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
850008
CONTENTS
Smith — In the Beginning
MONDAY THE TEACHER APPEARS
Chapter 1In which We Meet Kate’s Dilemma
Chapter 2In which Smith Arrives to Work on the Picket Fence
Chapter 3Stopping for a Coffee Break
Chapter 4Lunch, during which Smith Explains His Business
Chapter 5In which Smith Completes the Pickets and Kate and Smith Talk of More Tasks
Chapter 6In which Kate Reflects on a Buddhist Phrase
TUESDAY WHO IS THERE WHO CAN MAKE MUDDY WATER CLEAR?
Chapter 7In which Kate and Smith Lay Out a Shrubbler Watering System
Chapter 8Coffee Break
Chapter 9In which Kate and Smith Finish Installing the Drip System for the Back Garden
Chapter 10In which Kate Discusses More of Her Feelings about Being Retired
Chapter 11In which They Install the Emitters in the Front Garden
Chapter 12Being Patient and Letting the Water Settle
WEDNESDAY A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES
Chapter 13In which Smith Prepares for the Flagstones
Chapter 14Coffee Break and a Journey of a Thousand Miles
Chapter 15In which Smith Lays the First Stones
Chapter 16Where Did All This Wisdom Come From?
Chapter 17In which Kate Speaks to Karen
THURSDAY GREAT ACTS ARE MADE UP OF SMALL DEEDS
Chapter 18In which Kate and Smith Consider Hostas
Chapter 19In which Kate and Smith Discuss Hosta Dividing
Chapter 20In which Smith Continues to Work on the Dividing of the Hostas and Kate Begins Her Journey into the Bureaucracy of the Ecuadorian Embassy
Chapter 21In which Kate Tells Smith about Her Progress
Chapter 22In which Kate Speaks with Señora Stacey
Chapter 23In which the Hosta Dividing Ends
Chapter 24The Wish List
FRIDAY WHEN I LET GO OF WHO I AM, I BECOME WHO I MIGHT BE
Chapter 25The Last Task
Chapter 26In which Kate and Smith Sort Tools
Chapter 27A Good-bye Lunch
SATURDAY
Chapter 28In which Matthew Comes Home
THE NEXT WEDNESDAY
Chapter 29In which Kate Involves her Coffee Mates
Chapter 30Epilogue
WHEN THE STUDENT IS READY, TH E TEACHER A PPEARS
SMITH In the Beginning
“ D rat!” Kate exclaimed as the sound of the doorbell broke her concentration. “Who could that be?” Ordinarily Kate disliked any interruption when she was in task mode, but on this Friday morning in late June the intrusion was particularly bothersome. Matthew was away, and Kate liked to cocoon when she was alone. The house was all the companion she ne eded.
Kate had only been in the present house for four years. As empty nesters, Kate and Matthew had thought of moving to a smaller space, thought about it often. Their daughter was married and living across the city; their son had joined the army and was posted every three years to dear-knows-where. They no longer needed four bedrooms and three baths. Both of them had felt that it was time to reduce their living space.
So, four years ago, she and Matthew had sold the family home and moved to this small house chosen as much for the quiet, semi-rural setting on a quiet cul-de-sac as for the attractive aspects of the house. The one-and-one-half-story Cape Cod was close to the road on good-sized lot. The house was designed with a central hall and stairs—the living room, the dining room on the left and Kate’s study, a half-bath, and the eat-in kitchen on the right. The master en suite took the entire upper half story. All the rooms were spacious but cozy at the same time.
The house, with a garage and a driveway on the west side, was on a quiet cul-de-sac at the far west end of town backing onto a green space—almost rural. The houses in the area were built with ample space between one another. Trees shaded the sidewalks, and shrubs and gardens and more trees divided the lots. Although their house was just a block and a bit from a major road, sounds of traffic and urban life were muted by those surrounding trees and shrubs. In the semi-seclusion of this middle-class, suburban small street, a stranger at the door was most unusual.
Kate tiptoed to the window at the side of the door and peeked out to get a glimpse of the intruder. Standing at the entry was a man, tall and lanky, neither young nor old, neither handsome nor ugly, carrying no clipboard or brochures. He was dressed in clean work clothes and seemed as comfortable in his well-worn jean jacket as he would have been in a silk suit. Kate was interested by his easy manner and his Sam Elliott looks—not a false-friendly salesman, not an overly zealous Jehovah’s Witness, definitely not a canvasser. She decided to see what he wanted.
As Kate opened the door, she heard “G’day, Ma’am. My name’s Smith, and I do yard work. I finish the jobs that husbands begin and begin the jobs they’ve forgotten about. My rates are reasonable—fifteen dollars an hour plus lunch five hours a day usual and six hours a day max. Is there something you’d like done?” he inquired in a lovely tumbleweed baritone.
Intrigued by his offer, Kate mentally scanned the property: a white picket fence with several teeth missing, back and front gardens in need of watering, several hostas ready to be divided, a bit of a path from the back door of the garage to nowhere, a garden shed full of this and that, so full that it took half a day to find the tool you wanted.
Kate maintained the hostas under the lilacs on the east side of the property but let the cedars on the west side go their own way. They gave a feeling of privacy to the property and greatly increased the bird count. Along with the lilacs, hostas, and cedars on the sides of the property were the two border gardens: one on the north side inside the picket fence and one on the south side abutting a link fence and a municipal green space.
Managing the grounds fell to Kate, although Matthew did the heavy wheelbarrow-and-shovel work and odd bits of construction. He had a list as long as his arm, but with his busy schedule, getting around to yard work was difficult. At fifteen dollars an hour, a few hours work might lead to a nice surprise for Matthew when he returned. It would certainly ease her work. With some of the chores done, she and Matthew might even take a few days away.
Kate surprised herself by saying, “Sounds like a deal. When and where will you start?”
Both Kate’s and Smith’s eyes turned to the picket fence, built years earlier by a former owner. It had once added romance to the Cape Cod house; but now, with pickets missing, it made the whole property look unloved. Matthew had started to fix the fence earlier this spring. He’d bought all the materials he would need. The wooden pickets and the white paint were in the garage. Matthew had started to paint the new pickets—six weeks ago. Since then, there had been no progress. The unpainted pickets would probably still be there as summer crept towards fall.
As if he was reading her mind, Smith said, “How about the fence on
Monday, ma’am?”
And thus the week began.
MONDAY The Teacher Appears
CHAPTER 1 In which We Meet Kate’s Dilemma
K ate Anderson had retired from teaching at the end of the last semester, taking advantage of a good offer from the board to retire five years early. She thought that she was prepared to enjoy retirement. Then summer arrived. This was her first summer of retirement, the first summer without the need to work on material for fall classes. The urge to plan for next semester washed over her in waves. After all, course outlines and preparation had been part of her late summer routine for thirty summers. A feeling of general unrest hung over her, a sensation of having forgotten something. She had talked about this sensation with her three Wednesday Coffee Mates earlier this month.
Kate and the other three M ates (Lois, Anne, and D’Arcy) had met years ago at a course they had taken at Ottawa University and had hit it off immediately. They had kept their relationship fresh with Wednesday lunches while they worked. Through the years, they remained friends and sounding boards whenever one of them was going through a rough patch. Now that all four were retired, Wednesday lunch had morphed into a Wednesday midmorning coffee talk, followed sometimes by a shopping trip, sometimes by a late lunch, and sometimes by both.
Kate was the last of the four to retire. Her Mates had nodded when she explained her funny feeling of being and not being, of not being able to get started on anything, of feeling there was something she had forgotten, something she should be doing. They told her from their experiences she just needed a little time to adjust and warned her not to take on anything big until s