The calendar in the township of Meadowton may have only read mid-June, but the heat belonged to a late afternoon in August. As Kyle secured his fishing gear to his bicycle’s rear carrier, he sensed the sun burning the back of his neck. The gnats and flies were out in innumerable numbers, too, swirling in their aimless hoards in search of anything that resembled life. He knew it was going to be a hot summer—the kind that kept older folks hibernating in front of their air-conditioners until dusk. Some local meteorologists had already forecasted record temperatures and drought-like conditions by early next week.
Such predictions didn’t offer any encouragement to Meadowton’s fruit farmers, and despite the growing suburban population, there were still many families in the area that relied heavily upon their fruit harvests for income. As Kyle rode his bike down Cherokee Avenue in route to Robby’s house, he noticed the neighborhood’s parched lawns and withered flower gardens. By this date it hadn’t rained in nearly seven days, and as temperatures continued to rise, the sprinklers offered little aid to the vegetation.
Robby Taylor lived in the biggest colonial house on the north side of Meadowton, spitefully know as the rich section by the locals. Kyle wasn’t the only one who admired the white picket fence encompassing the neatly manicured property. Today, even on perhaps the hottest morning of the year so far, the shrubbery surrounding the Taylor’s property seemed impervious to the heat.
Though Robby came from an apparently wealthy family, Kyle considered him to be the most unpretentious kid in the neighborhood. The boys had befriended each other in the first grade, and were almost inseparable in their antics ever since. Over the years, Robby earned the reputation of a prankster both in and out of school. Truthfully, he was an intelligent boy with a vivid imagination, but he rarely chose to apply his talents to any single task. Because of his desire to undermine authority, the carrot-colored hair boy with dime-sized freckles speckling his nose and cheeks became somewhat of an outcast outside his small circle of friends.
Upon reaching Robby’s house, Kyle parked his bike near the curb at the bottom of the driveway. As he started toward the house, he saw Robby shooting a basketball into a hoop mounted over the garage door. When Robby noticed his friend’s approach, he turned with the basketball in hand and hurled it down the driveway.
“Catch this,” Robby called to Kyle mischievously.
Kyle’s eyes ignited with excitement when he saw the orange globe bouncing toward him. He had no intention of catching it, but a swift kick seemed like a good alternative. As the ball came within his range, he waited for the right moment to put his foot under the ball.
“It’s comin’ back at you now,” Kyle hollered. Robby winced as the basketball sailed over his outstretched arms and smashed against the garage door’s windows. Miraculously, the glass didn’t shatter, but the noise triggered an unwanted investigation from Robby’s overzealous father.
Mr. Taylor was unlike his son in more ways than he cared to count. An attorney and connoisseur of politics, he was of the mind that little else mattered in life outside of work and structure. Trying to convince his son of this notion became the bane of his existence. On more than one occasion, he had threatened to send Robby off to a private academy. Lately, Robby actually started to take his father’s admonitions seriously. He secretly hoped that his father would change, but judging by the scowl cemented on Mr. Taylor’s face, he had no intention of doing so on this morning.
After pacing outside the house with his briefcase in hand, Mr. Taylor noticed the basketball resting on top of his rosebush beside the garage. He rolled his eyes in agitation as he watched Robby slink down the driveway. Kyle slowly joined his friend in the middle of the blacktop.
Kyle shuffled his feet on the driveway momentarily before offering a whispered apology. “Sorry about that, Robby.”
“Forget about it,” Robby replied, trying to appear relaxed, but he sensed his father’s eyes burning two notches in the back of his head.
“You better turn around,” Kyle suggested. “I think he’s angry.”
Robby smirked knowingly and pivoted toward his father. He then waved his hand in an exaggerated gesture and asked, “Hey, Dad, off to work early again this morning?”
Mr. Taylor grunted and started down the concrete walkway toward the driveway. He stopped in front of the rosebush and plucked the basketball out, pricking his thumb on a thorn in the process. “Robby,” he grumbled, “how many times have I told you to be more responsible with your toys?”
A million, it must have been at least that many, Robby thought. Kyle then answered in his friend’s defense. “It wasn’t Robby’s fault, Mr. Taylor. I was the one who did it.”
Mr. Taylor ignored Kyle’s confession as he lifted the garage door. A gray BMW, shining like a new piece of silver, awaited him. He opened the car’s door and set his briefcase gently on the black leather upholstery. After fetching for his keys, he turned back toward the boys and said, “I don’t care which one of you did it. It isn’t my business to reprimand every boy in the neighborhood. Robby knows how I feel about this sort of carelessness.”
Robby offered Kyle a sly grin and nudged him with his elbow. Mr. Taylor then backed his car slowly out of the garage, stopping again when he neared his son. Robby hoped that his father would simply leave without badgering him with another long-winded lecture on the importance of responsibility, but fortune was not on his side.
Mr. Taylor slid down the car’s window and cast a perturbed stare at Robby. “I don’t suppose you’re going to make good use of your summer vacation this year, are you, boys?”
“Of course, Dad,” Robby said, sprightly. “I got a lot of cool things planned.”
Mr. Taylor reluctantly noticed the fishing pole and tackle box hitched to Kyle’s bicycle. “Fishing may be your idea of a fulfilling task, young man,” he said to Robby, “but I’m willing to wager that you have a summer reading list to tend to that might make better use of your time.”
“Oh, we’ll get to that stuff, too. We got the whole summer to kill.”
“The summer passes more quickly than you might realize,” Mr. Taylor cautioned. “And so does the rest of your life, so I would suggest that you stop wasting it on frivolous activities.”
“Yeah, Dad, you’re right as usual,” Robby huffed.
Mr. Taylor glanced at his watch before saying, “I want to talk more about this when I get home tonight.” He then closed the car’s window and continued to back the vehicle down the driveway. Robby and Kyle remained respectfully silent until he drove away.
Kyle immediately patted his friend on the back and apologized again. “I didn’t mean to get you into any trouble— ”
“I told you to forget about it, okay?” Robby kicked a pebble near his foot before continuing. “I’m not gonna let that grouch ruin my summer. He’s as miserable as hell, and that’s all there is to it.”
“He isn’t always like that, is he?”
Robby chuckled assertively and replied, “Are you kidding? Most of the time he’s a bigger pain in the butt. You know, I don’t think he’s had a nice thing to say to me since my mother ran off with her insurance agent two years ago. I don’t blame her, either.”
“Maybe he’s just going through a bad time, like all fathers seem to do nowadays.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Robby sneered, moving back toward the garage to gather his fishing gear. “Let’s just put it this way, my father has all these big, brilliant plans for me—you know, scholarships, college, a partnership at his firm—the whole crummy bit.”
“He’s just looking out for your future.”
“No way, Kyle. He wants me to be just like him—a big-time lawyer. If he ever bothered to talk to me, he might’ve figured out that I hate everything about lawyers.”
Kyle didn’t know what words to use to cure Robby’s anger, but he was wise enough to understand that his friend’s opinions would no doubt change in time. In order to soften Robby’s mood, Kyle decided to talk about something more
immediate to their plans.
“Do you think you can catch another catfish out of Shade Tree Pond today?” Kyle asked, hoping to trigger a smile from his friend.
Robby grinned and bolted out of the garage with his fishing pole and coffee can stuffed full of earthworms. “I’m not making any promises,” he tittered with confidence, “but I gotta hunch that our catfish didn’t live alone.”
Now the boys laughed freely again, and Kyle gathered they had put any further reference to Mr. Taylor behind them for the rest of this day. Robby, however, wasn’t quite finished with his regret.
“You know, Kyle,” Robby started. “I don’t think I’ve ever told you this before, but you’re really lucky.”
“Me? Why do you say that?”
Robby proceeded in a small voice. “You’re parents are pretty cool, especially your dad. He doesn’t mind you going out and having a good time now and then. I wish my father was more like him.”
Kyle became speechless again, partly because he never really noticed how lenient his father was in comparison to Mr. Taylor. Still, it was wrong for Robby to assume that Kyle had free reign over his household. Rules had been set in his home as well, and Kyle employed a fair share of trickery of his own in order to squeeze between the lines of punishment.
“Let’s just go fishing,” Kyle suggested. “Our vacation is way too short to be sitting around worrying about this kind of stuff.”
Robby smirked, grabbed his five-speed bicycle and hopped aboard the seat. “I guess you’re right,” he huffed, pedaling his bike toward the street. Within seconds, Kyle joined him on his bicycle and the two boys raced up Cherokee Avenue toward Adler Lane.
Meanwhile, Kyle’s father, Andrew McCann, prepared himself for another protracted day at his construction firm. Lately, as senior project manager for Appen Designs, Andrew was at the helm of an ongoing debate with township officials on whether or not to expand Meadowton’s floundering business district. Part of this plan included the construction of a mall and several office buildings. Such a contract would have secured his company’s future, but there were enough protestors, particularly in the agricultural community, who viewed the proposed development as an unnecessary intrusion into their already beleaguered farmlands.
Being a lifelong resident of Meadowton, Andrew initially had his reservations about encroaching on the sod farms and fruit groves, but the project promised to rescue the town’s ailing economy and introduce hundreds of new jobs. As it stood now, Andrew’s professional existence depended on his ability to secure this deal by the upcoming fall.
On this morning he was scheduled to negotiate with zoning officials and then it was off to a luncheon with the mayor and his cronies. Andrew dreaded these brown-nosing tactics. He felt cheap and somehow disingenuous every time he sat down with those slick-handed bureaucrats. They’d waste hours prattling about nothing significant, while Andrew offered contrived bits of laughter at their tasteless jokes and half-witted politics.
Still, Andrew was prepared to endure whatever was expected of him in order to preserve his family’s welfare. If that level of security required him to sit in late evenings four evenings a week, then so be it. Of course being committed to such a schedule had its drawbacks; one of those was the inevitable disconnection from his family.
When Andrew entered the kitchen attired in his blue suit and scarlet tie, his wife only managed to project a halfhearted smile. She knew he was working diligently to meet his firm’s deadline, but the price of his obligations had cost them their intimacy in recent months. It had been nearly three weeks since they had a sustained conversation not related to his work. Linda secretly began to wonder if Andrew’s late-night meetings didn’t involve the company of another woman.
As Andrew leaned across the table to kiss his wife on her cheek, she smelled a heavy layer of aftershave on his collar. Now in his early forties, Andrew was an exceptionally handsome man, with ash-blonde hair and azure-colored eyes. His physique was finely tuned, too, and he stood well over six feet tall. It was perfectly reasonable to assume that many women would entertain his affections if given the opportunity.
Andrew immediately sensed his wife’s iciness when she turned her head away from him. He didn’t feel as if an apology was warranted, but he knew that he had been inattentive of late.
“I made waffles,” Linda said, coolly motioning to the plate on the table. “I think Kyle may have left you some.”
Andrew gazed sheepishly at his wife and said, “I’m sorry I got in so late last night, honey. We’re having some major zoning problems with the new mall. They want to hold up everything for another six months.”
“You don’t need to explain yourself to me,” Linda replied, pouring a cup of coffee for her husband. “Same old red tape, right?”
Andrew picked up his mug and placed the hot coffee to his lips. “You’re not kidding,” he groaned, before taking a sip. “You wouldn’t believe all the crap they’re putting us through. All I’m trying to do is make this town a better place for everyone. But people want to make it a point to stand in your way.”
“Some of those people may like the way things are, Andy. Let’s face it, we’re all afraid of changes, at least most of us.”
Andrew finished his coffee in two gulps while pondering his wife’s words. He then set the cup on the countertop and glanced at his wristwatch. Judging by his body language, Linda guessed that he was running behind schedule again.
Linda folded the newspaper in her lap and asked, “Should I expect you for dinner?”
“Barring any last minute meetings, I should be home early—by six.” Andrew paced over to the sink and snatched his keys from the hanger on the wall. When glancing into the sink, he noticed an empty plate and glass. “Speaking of early, Linda, it looks like Kyle was up with the sun this morning.”
“First day of summer vacation, you know.”
Andrew drew a sigh and moaned, “It’s that time of year again already?”
Linda stood up from the table and positioned herself in front of her husband. Being mindful not to wrinkle his suit jacket, she gently wrapped her arms around his waist and nestled her head against his chest.
“I know you have your hands full at work, sweetheart,” she cooed, “but I want you to try and make some time for Kyle this summer, at least on the weekends.”
“It’s been so damn crazy lately,” Andrew confessed, rubbing his wife’s back. “I’m going to make up all of this lost time with you and him both, Linda. I just need a few more weeks to iron out this contract.”
Linda pouted and released her husband. When he reached for her, she turned toward the kitchen sink to avoid his touch. She looked pensively out the window into the backyard. A soft breeze stirred through the maple trees bordering her property.
“I’m beginning to wonder if this big contract is taking too much of a toll on you, Andy.”
“Come on, honey,” Andrew said, reaching for her hand. “Don’t make me feel guilty for having to work. I told you right from the start that we’d have to make some sacrifices if we wanted to make this thing fly.”
“I’m prepared to give up our time together,” Linda countered, “but what about your son? He doesn’t understand your business meetings. All he knows is that you’re not there for him. Have you even had a single conversation with him in the last week?”
Andrew stalled in a shamefaced stupor before admitting, “I really don’t remember.”
“And that’s part of the problem, Andy. Kyle needs to have you around the house a little more often. You might even take an interest in some of his activities. Do you even know where he went today?”
Andrew appeared disgruntled as he lowered his hand to his front pocket. He glanced at the clock on the wall before answering, “If I know Kyle, I’d say he’s probably out having a good time with his buddies.”
“He went fishing,” Linda said matter-of-factly. “He’s over near that old swamp off of Adler Lane—Shade Tree Pond.”
Andre
w paused for a moment before he recalled that his son had been begging him for weeks to take him fishing at the Jersey shore. As usual, business had taken precedence over his obligatory promises. After contemplating his neglectfulness for another second, Andrew conceded to his error.
“All of this hasn’t exactly been easy on me either, Linda,” he mentioned. “I wish I had the time to take care of things that I should be doing at home, particularly with you and Kyle.”
“Maybe you better explain that to him,” Linda advised. “He needs to hear it from you.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to him tonight, no excuses.” Andrew then offered his wife a smile, which reminded her of the carefree man she married fifteen years ago. Rather than let him leave the house suffering from pangs of guilt, Linda pivoted back to him and kissed his lips. Despite the passage of time, she had not surrendered the ardency of her touch.
“I’m not trying to be an old nag,” she whispered between the kisses. “I just like your company, Andy. I miss you.”
“It’s all going to work out in the end,” he promised. “You’ll see.”
They embraced for another moment. Andrew soon realized that he had no more time to spare this morning. Linda walked her husband outside and watched him enter his red pickup truck and drive away. Now, with the smell of his aftershave lingering on her robe, she wondered if she had said too much. By tonight, she would have her answer.
Chapter 3
Songs of a Peach Tree Page 3