Fetching Sweetness

by Dana Mentink

  “Leave it until morning,” Karen said. “Let’s sleep in the trailer. I’m tired, and you shouldn’t go traipsing around in the dark.”

  “I—”

  But she was already making her way back to the truck.

  “She’s right, Rhett,” Stephanie said. “No sense walking in the dark and risking falling into a pit or encountering an angry bear or something.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Too many adventure novels.”

  “Probably, but Karen’s tired, and she’s not going to rest if you’re out there making like Grizzly Adams.”

  He didn’t answer, leaning his elbows against the gate and peering out into the darkness.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  He wasn’t sure. “Do you smell smoke?”

  She sniffed. “Not smoke, exactly. More like the lingering smell of the kitchen after you burn a bag of microwave popcorn. You know how the odor sticks around for a long time?” She raised an eyebrow. “Let me guess. You’ve never had microwave popcorn.”

  “I’m a movie theater guy. If I can’t see it tumble out of the popper, it isn’t worth eating.”

  “With a side of truffle oil, I’m sure.”

  He laughed, and it lightened his unaccounted-for anxiety. “I guess you’ll have to add popcorn snob to my list of sins.”

  “Duly noted.”

  Her nearness drew the words out of him. “It’s funny. This is the moment I’ve waited and planned for, and now that it’s here I can’t shake the feeling that something is about to go completely wrong.”

  Her face was thoughtful in the moonlight, perfect arcs and planes, a masterpiece. He swallowed.

  “You know, Rhett, one thing I’m learning on this trip is that just because things don’t go according to plan, that doesn’t mean they’re turning out wrong.”

  There was something tender in her glance. Was she actually happy that Sweetness had made the mad dash in Big Thumb? That she’d wound up with a mixed-up mogul in his busted-down trailer? He couldn’t be sure. He wouldn’t dare think it. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked again at the darkened landscape.

  “Let’s deal with this in the morning,” she said. “Come on, Sweetness.”

  But the dog would not come, not until Rhett made his way along also. When Rhett flopped down onto the worn sofa, Sweetness offered a slurping good night kiss and trotted off to find Panny, who Rhett figured had snuggled up next to Karen. The floor creaked as Karen and Stephanie settled themselves for the night, and then the trailer subsided into stillness. Outside, the crickets practiced their symphony, and he almost forgot about the faint scent of something long burned that still hung heavy in his senses.

  Nineteen

  Stephanie woke when she heard the rumble of an approaching vehicle. She pulled on some clothes and scrambled to the tiny window as a dusty blue pickup parked next to Rhett’s. The sun was working its way into an upright position, though it was not yet six a.m.

  Karen emerged with Panny, excitement on her face. “I can’t wait for you to see Dappled Acres, Stephanie.”

  She found that her own stomach was tingling with excitement as she followed Karen downstairs. Rhett was already up and out, so the women exited the trailer quickly. The air was cool, thick with the scent of morning dew on grass and that lingering aroma of something scorched.

  Rhett and a skinny bearded man in jeans and a worn denim jacket stood together. Sweetness broke off his examination of the man to greet Stephanie, Karen, and Panny.

  “Morning,” the man said, extending a hand. “Jack Wershing from over the hill. Brought this gate key over. Mr. Phipps gave it to me after he sold you the place. Figured you’d be along soon enough to collect it. Norm in town told me he’d seen you head up here with your trailer last night.”

  Rhett frowned. “I don’t understand why Mr. Phipps didn’t hand the key over to me directly.”

  Jack rubbed his face. “Dunno. I don’t go into town much. He has a shop in Fallsbury if you want to go ask him. It’s about fifty miles from here.” He eyed Rhett. “You gonna put up a bed-and-breakfast or something? Build a vacation home?”

  “No,” Karen beamed a brilliant smile on him. “This used to be our family orchard. We’re going to take it over and run it.”

  Confusion flickered across his weathered face. “Yeah? Well, that’s fine then. I’ve got to go, but here’s my cell number. Call if you need anything.” He handed over a scrap of paper that Stephanie took because Rhett was already unlocking the gate.

  Jack drove quickly away, puffs of dust rising up from under his tires.

  “He looked surprised about something,” Stephanie mused, but Rhett wasn’t listening. He’d swung wide the gate and hastened to the truck. Stephanie put Sweetness back inside the trailer, and then she joined Karen and Panny in the pickup. Rhett drove toward a farmhouse visible in the distance.

  The property was backed on one side by a series of high hills. Set into a bowl of a valley were acres and acres of trees.

  It’s so dark, she thought. Like the scary Wizard of Oz trees. She’d had something much lighter and brighter in mind. The closer they came, the more confused she got. When they jerked to a stop near a grimy, ranch-style house, Rhett exploded from the truck like a launched missile. Stephanie got out on her side a little more slowly and then went to open the trailer door for Sweetness.

  What she saw was right out of an apocalyptic novel. Behind the farmhouse, the trees were dead and scorched, twisted branches like claws against the rising sun. Rows and rows of incinerated apple trees stood in tidy rank and file. It was what she imagined a nuclear winter would look like.

  Karen stared.

  Rhett approached the house. Finding the front door locked, he hastened to the rear. Stephanie followed, stopping short as Rhett let loose with a stream of ire. The back of the structure was just as blackened as the trees, where the flames must have licked up against the walls before they’d been extinguished. The wood was blistered and peeled back, and missing pieces of glass jigsawed the ruined windows.

  Karen shuffled around to join them, leaning on her cane. Her expression was shocked, grief stricken. Stephanie moved closer and took possession of Panny because Karen seemed to have lost the strength to hold the dog properly.

  “I’m so sorry,” Stephanie said.

  Karen shook her head. “From the front, you’d never guess.”

  “No.” She groped for something to say but came up with nothing.

  Rhett approached the broken sliding door that hung crooked on its track. A white ball of fluff streaked by, followed by another. The two chickens squawked and fussed as they trotted past a startled Sweetness.

  He barked and lunged, retreated and lunged again, and then he turned around in a circle, quivering all over in comic indecision.

  “Good restraint, dog. Remember the cat incident,” Stephanie advised.

  Sweetness decided to stalk the birds from a safe distance, hanging back several feet as the fowl set about pecking for bugs in a patch of unscorched grass next to the porch steps.

  Rhett emerged from the house. “It’s ruined. Unlivable. The electrical and water are still working, but the place reeks of smoke, and the wild animals have been making themselves at home inside.”

  He moved quickly past them and headed to the trees, his feet crunching on the grass. Stephanie followed uncertainly. Here and there blades of green poked through the black, indicating some time had passed since the fire. She felt a spark of hope. Did apple trees come back to life as quickly as the grass? She hadn’t the foggiest notion. It was all she could do to keep her ficus alive.

  Rhett made his way to the nearest tree branch and put out a hand to test the wood. To Stephanie’s horror, a ten-inch section broke off with all the finality of a limb being amputated. The sound of the hollow snap lingered. Her stomach twisted.

  He stood there, holding the ruined branch, his fingers stained black with soot, staring at the dead thing in his fist.

  “H
e sold me a ruined orchard.”

  “Is it really ruined?” she asked, stepping closer. “Could there be—”

  He cut her off. “Mr. Phipps sent me pictures, very carefully staged pictures, and because I wanted the property, I didn’t look too hard. He cheated me, and I let him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  His voice was flat, emotionless, and terrifying as he hurled the ruined branch away. “Would you stay here with Karen for a couple hours? I need to go to Fallsbury. You can stay in the trailer.”

  “Uh, do you want me to come with you?”

  He didn’t answer as he turned and walked rapidly toward the truck.

  “Rhett…”

  He didn’t slow.

  “Remember, you’re a better man,” she wanted to say.

  Not a corporate thug, but a man who saves old dogs.

  And gives rides to desperate literary agent assistants.

  A guy who’s following God.

  “You’re a good man, Rhett Hastings,” she said instead.

  But he’d already unhooked the trailer, gunned the engine, and was hurtling down the road.

  Rhett drove to Fallsbury, waves of alternating rage and disbelief coursing through him. He was not even aware of the roads he’d taken or the turns he’d managed as he arrived at the Fallsbury Real Estate Office.

  He parked illegally, marched up to the door, and tried to shove it open.

  Locked.

  He rattled the door handle several times, and then he checked his watch. It was only seven thirty. Of course they wouldn’t be open. Then he noticed the pile of newspapers littering the entryway. An “Out of Business” sign was written in marker and taped to the window.

  Out of Business. Sweat broke out on his forehead.

  A woman walking an overweight Labrador stopped. “Phipps closed up his shop two weeks ago.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  She laughed. “Always talked about living on a boat in the Florida Keys. Business has been real slow, so he probably figured it would be just the time to get out while the getting is good.”

  Yeah, after he’d made a killing off some naive chump, namely R. Hastings. Rhett feared his heart was about to jump out of his chest.

  She peered at him. “Aren’t you that guy…”

  He restrained a groan. Why did his picture have to be plastered on every news forum and gossip rag? The great Rhett Hastings, a Fortune 500 whiz kid, standing in front of a closed business that fooled him so completely. He wished he could disappear.

  She was still eyeing him. “Yeah. I didn’t recognize you without the trailer. You’re the guy who bought Dappled Acres. Norm and I were having pie at the cafe in Sparrowsville last night and saw you cruise through town.”

  Oh. That was his new persona. No longer the corporate mogul. He was that dope who’d bought a piece of incinerated ground. He managed a nod. “Name’s Rhett.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Betty.” She adjusted the leash for her dog. “That took some guts, buying the place. A lightning strike burned the whole thing to cinders two years ago.”

  Guts? It was a colossal error, a move that required stupidity, a lack of diligence, and a supreme level of idiocy. It was the kind of decision he would have laughed at other people for making. She looked at him as if he should start explaining himself. What could he possibly say?

  I was following God. At least, I thought I was.

  While he struggled over the words, his phone rang. Saved by the bell. He excused himself and answered.

  “Rhett, don’t hang up on me.” Don’s voice was filled with a new conviction. “I’ve brokered the first phase of the deal and stalled them as long as I could. I need you here by Thursday. No excuses.”

  Rhett sighed.

  “I know you’re all giddy up there at the apple farm or whatever, but I’ve done some research, and it turns out there are plenty of places to grow things around here. Watsonville, Sebastopol, Marin County—and I have a Realtor on retainer who can make that happen in a heartbeat.”

  “I—”

  “You can get your sister a piece of land and hire all the helping hands you need. Fly back and forth, for goodness’ sake. You’re a pilot, after all. She farms to her heart’s content, and you get back to business where you belong.”

  Where you belong.

  Uncertainty filled him, so strong he could taste it. He detested the feeling. It took him back to age fourteen when he’d watched helplessly as his mother drove away in their beat-up blue sedan and his father watched, motionless. Now a full-fledged grown-up, Rhett had been running around in trailers, arranging reunions that didn’t work, buying ruined property, and making a mess of everything. All his plans ending in failure, defeat at every turn. He thought God had called him to do this. Called him to defeat and failure? Would God do that?

  Maybe he’d been mistaken. Hugely, colossally, gigantically mistaken. He stared at his reflection in the glass on the front door. His hair was unruly, his shirt disheveled. Were those gaunt shadows under his cheekbones or a trick of the light? Who was the man staring back at him? Who was Rhett Hastings?

  “I need to have a decision by Thursday,” Don said. “Tell me you’ll come back. Put me out of my misery. I can’t take this anymore. I’m eating Tums by the fistful, and my wife says I’m as much fun as the crypt keeper.”

  “Don?”

  “Yes?”

  A beat of silence. “I’ll call you by Thursday.”

  He glanced once more in the glass as he pocketed his phone. The woman and her dog had moved on, and he was alone with his reflection. He looked long and hard at the man staring back at him. Who are you, Rhett Hastings?

  He was not sure how long he stood there, contemplating that stranger in the glass until he finally turned away.

  Time to go back to his desolate apple orchard.

  Time to admit to Karen and Stephanie what a fool he’d been about everything.

  Twenty

  Stephanie followed Karen as she wandered the orchard. After the chickens took themselves off to some secret location, Sweetness trailed along next to the women, sniffing and marking at will. Stephanie toted Panny, who was energized by new sights and smells, her button nose quivering.

  “These were amazing trees. Red Delicious on the far end. They make good pollinating partners for the McIntosh apples, which were Grandad’s pride and joy. Do you like McIntosh apples?”

  “Um, I don’t know. To be honest, I only pay attention to red and green or if it’s in a pie or something. And strudel. One of the gals in my book club back in New York makes apple strudel. I don’t know what apples she uses, but no one ever misses a meeting when it’s strudel time. I’ve been known to bring my big purse just in case there’s any left over.”

  Karen smiled. “You would know if you ate a McIntosh. Tart and sweet. Crisp white flesh.” She stopped to finger a single green leaf sprouting from a blackened trunk. “Grandad would say his apples were just like life, sweet and sour at the same time. He was a bit of a poet. He loved old movies too. That’s how Rhett got hooked on the cinema. They used to watch Bogart movies together until they had the lines memorized.”

  It made her happy to think of Rhett here at the farm, watching movies with his grandfather, living among these miraculous trees.

  “I used to help with everything,” Karen mused. “The picking and then making apple butter and pies. Granny always claimed she didn’t really make a very good piecrust, so she’d ask her sister over, my Auntie Rhoda, and the two of them would talk and bake and laugh and drink coffee by the gallon.” Karen smiled. “Oh, how they would laugh. I think Granny’s piecrusts were just fine, but it was an excuse to see her sister, who would never think of dropping by without an invitation. It’s funny how I can remember all those things when I can’t recall people I met last week.”

  They followed the platoons of trees fanning out like shadow soldiers. Row after row of dead trunks appeared before them, a few bearing a hint of ne
w growth here and there, spots of green amid the black. The grass underneath their feet had made a comeback, completely overtaking the sooty crust.

  “Is it possible for the trees to recover?”

  Karen took a penknife from her pocket and pried away a piece of the bark. Underneath, the wood was dry and parched. “This is the cambium layer where the growth happens.” She shook her head and sighed. “Completely dried out and dead. Nothing can be done with these trees but to cut them down.” Karen’s mouth quivered as if she might cry.

  “Is that what you’re going to do?”

  She cocked her head, staring into the dark forest. “I’m not sure yet. I don’t make decisions as quickly as my brother, especially since I fell off that ladder and messed up my brain.”

  Stephanie figured she could use some of Karen’s restraint. Her decisions were usually made in a snap and regretted for a much longer period of time. Ian used to save her from these off-the-cuff whims, like the time she’d agreed to run a day camp for four-year-olds and her brief desire to learn the trapeze.

  Sweetness disappeared up the row of trees, following the swell of land as it dipped further down.

  “Sweetness,” Stephanie called. “Don’t wander.” She hastened forward to keep him in her line of vision. Cresting the highest point, she strained to see the dog but found something entirely different that froze her midstride.

  “Karen, come here,” she called.

  Karen joined her, and they looked down onto a small pocket of trees, green and laden with baseball-sized apples. The overgrown canopy of branches intertwined above them, filtering the sunlight into a golden kaleidoscope. For a moment, all Stephanie could do was gaze in silence. The flames had decimated the trees all around, but somehow, this little oasis of fifty or so trees had survived.

  Karen plucked off one of the fruits. “They’re McIntoshes! Can you believe it?” She laughed, sniffing the fruit. “My word. Dappled Acres still has some life in her after all.” Karen tossed the apple high into the blue sky. Sweetness barked with glee and chased after it, making a neat catch and gobbling down the fruit.