I drove to a cafe near my house that opens at eight.
The morning air was fresh, and the breeze had turned cool.
It was Saturday, so the middle school right in front of my apartment was quiet. On weekdays, this was the time when the street was usually crowded with students on their way to school.
I ordered a hot Americano at the kiosk.
It’s 8:15, and no one else has come in yet.
There were usually quite a few people who stopped by for takeout coffee right after the cafe opened.
I had never seen it this empty.
I went up to the third floor and headed for my usual seat by the window.
The Man in the Field
Then I noticed an old man working in the field outside.
What is he doing?
I didn’t know him.
I had first noticed him sometime in early spring.
The field had been bare through the winter. Then one day, I saw him walking back and forth with some kind of container on his back, spraying something.
What is that? Pesticide? Maybe not?
I had never farmed anything in my life.
I watched for a little while, then went back to my writing.
Later, I saw him doing what looked like planting seeds.
He sat on a small, round stool and moved sideways little by little as he worked.
I liked the rhythm of it.
Oh. This is just how he works.
As the weather grew warmer, I kept seeing him there.
By summer, I would sit inside the air-conditioned cafe and write while he worked outside in the field.
The field itself was interesting to me.
There were tall apartment buildings, busy roads, cars, stores—and right there among them was this field.
And somehow, the way the man worked looked peaceful.
He never seemed to be working particularly hard or rushing to get something done.
He just moved a little at a time, at his own pace.
I even thought I might write about him someday.
Whenever I happened to see him working outside, I would stop writing for a moment and watch.
Sometimes I noticed other people sitting by the windows doing the same thing.
I began to wonder what he had planted.
I imagined that by fall, the field might be filled with something abundant and beautiful, ready to be harvested.
They Were Green Onions
Then one day, I was sitting by the window with my daughter.
An old memory had come back to me, and I was close to tears. I turned toward the window.
“Oh, those are all green onions.”
My daughter looked outside too.
“Oh, they really are.”
We both stared at the field.
“I don’t think he planted all of those just to eat them himself. Maybe he sells them.”
I ordered organic green onions online myself.
When we lived in Seoul, one of my husband’s friends from the military grew green onions, lettuce, and other vegetables organically. He loved growing them and giving them away.
His vegetables were so fresh and good that I started ordering organic vegetables myself. Sometimes when I visited his garden, I even pulled up lettuce and green onions to bring home.
Maybe I shouldn’t just buy any green onions.
My father-in-law grew vegetables too, and he had told me that it was almost impossible to farm without using pesticides.
Another day, the cafe parking lot was packed.
My daughter and I finally found a space right beside the field.
We could see the green onions up close.
“Oh, look. Some have been pulled out here.”
There was an empty patch near the edge.
We laughed and went inside.
The Empty Patch
And this morning, the man was working right around that same empty patch.
I stopped writing and watched him through the window.
He was putting something into the empty spaces.
Those are green onions. Haha.
They weren’t little seedlings.
They were fully grown green onions.
He pushed one into the ground and stood it upright.
Then another.
After a while, he got up, walked a short distance away, and came back carrying a whole bunch of them.
He sat down again and began planting them in the empty spaces.
I looked toward the place where he had gotten them.
There were piles of green onions lying on the ground.
Enough, it seemed, to fill the whole empty area again.
Does he just not like leaving an empty space empty?
I went back to my writing.
A little later, I looked up again.
The man was gone.
Some of the empty ground had been filled with green onions.
Some was still bare.
And a little farther away, several bunches of fully grown green onions were still lying on the ground.
