Page 10

"In a magazine. Print and digital."

"So the internet."

"Partially."

"I don't want people showing up here thinking this is some destination. I get enough foot traffic in October."

"You have three cars here, Deck. That's not foot traffic."

"It's enough."

I lower the camera. "What if I don't tag the location? No GPS pin, no address. Just the photos, the farm name, the story. People who are already in Grizzly Ridge can find you. Nobody's driving from Bozeman because of a magazine spread."

He chews on that. Literally, his jaw works side to side while he considers it.

"Fine," he says. "Don't get in the way."

"You won't even know I'm here."

"I already know you're here."

The way he says it. Low, flat, like a fact he's resigned to. But underneath there's a current. Something he'd deny if I called attention to it. So I don't. I just raise the camera and start shooting.

For the next two hours, I move through the farm. The pumpkin rows first, because that's the obvious stuff. Orange on brown, the deep greens of the squash, kids running between rows with their parents trailing behind. Then the barn. Weathered wood, green metal roof, tools hung on pegs inside the open door. The apple trees along the far fence, heavy with fruit going red-gold. A goat standing on a water trough staring at me with the dead-eyed confidence of an animal that knows it's not supposed to be there.

Deck works through all of it. Fixing the crates, restacking pumpkins, hauling a wheelbarrow of squash to a table near the barn where he sells by the pound. He talks to the customers when they approach, short and direct. Answers questions about varieties, cooking times, storage. Not friendly. Not unfriendly. Just a man doing his job without wasting a word.

He's good at this, though. You can see it in the way people leave. They came for pumpkins. They leave with squash, apples, a jar of honey from Frank Morrison's bees. Every recommendation is specific. This one's better for pie. That one holds up in soup. The little warted ones are decorative, don't bother eating them.

Every few minutes, I catch him watching me. Quick glances. Never long enough for me to call out. When I turn my camera toward him, he turns away.

After the last family leaves around noon, the farm goes quiet. Just wind through the cottonwoods. Distant cattle lowing from the north pasture. Deck sits on the tailgate of his truck near the barn, legs hanging, drinking water from a bottle that's seen better months.

I walk over.

"Got some good stuff," I say, scrolling through the camera's display. "Want to see?"

"No."

"You don't want to see photos of your own farm?"

"I see my farm every day. Don't need pictures of it."

I sit on the tailgate beside him. Not too close. Close enough that our elbows could touch if either of us moved wrong. He doesn't scoot away, which is the most encouraging thing he's done since I met him.

"Tell me about the agritourism," I say. "How'd you start it?"

"Farm needed revenue. Pumpkins bring people. People bring money."

"You hate it."

"I tolerate it."

"You tolerate it for one month a year."

"Four Saturdays. Then it's over." He caps the water bottle. "November first, the gate closes. December through September, it's just me, the cattle, and whatever needs planting."

"That's a lot of alone time."