The way the Petersen kids raced the truck up their driveway.

Emmitt’s tomatoes, which he grew too many of on purpose so he’d have some to press on me, red and warm off the vine, every August for six years.

The Christmas cards the whole route gave me, more than I could count, because I was the one person every house on the road remembered at Christmas.

The dogs who knew my truck and the dogs who never made peace with it in thirty-one years.

The particular quality of the light at four o’clock in October on the long stretch past the Coleman place, which I have watched ten thousand times and will never watch again from that seat, and which I did not know, until I knew I was losing it, that I loved.

This is what a job is, if you’re lucky, if you do it long enough and pay attention: it is ten thousand small things that add up, without your noticing, to a life.