I found a few words I had written about apple sizes and not letting them grow too densely. I examined how our apples were growing. Three or four always seemed to be next to each other on adjoining stems. Was this too dense? I thought of trying to get Brother Brown to stop by and take a look. I decided that would be very unlikely, so I did the next best thing.
That Sunday I carried a brown paper grocery bag into our Sunday school class and stuffed it under my chair. Brother Brown eyed the sack suspiciously but didn't ask any questions. After class he waited for me, knowing I wanted to show him something.
"So what have you got?" he asked before I could open the bag.
I pulled out an apple branch I had bent to fit inside. Leaves scattered all over the floor. Brother Brown's eyes flashed with curiosity.
"Can you take a look at this and tell me what you think of the little apples?" I asked.
He grabbed the branch and handled the leaves and little shoots carefully. He held each part up close to his eyes. I held my breath during the examination. Finally he turned to me and spoke.
"Leaves look good. No disease. Lots of apples on here."
I grabbed the branch back eagerly. "So is that good?"
"Good if you like little apples."
"So they're too dense?"
"That's a good word for it. Better pull off two out of every three. Like right here you should just leave one." He pulled off two little apples from a group of three to show me.
"What if I don't pull them off?"
"Then they'll all be small. No one wants to buy a small apple, believe me."
I did believe him, but it seemed like a waste of a lot of good potential apples.
"Brother Brown, is there anything else I need to do? You know, until they're ready to pick?"
"You're sprayin' and waterin'? Keep it up and get 'em thinned out." He paused and added, "Summer's the easy part. Better rest up for what's comin'." His voice didn't sound as harsh as usual.
***
It was hard to convince my sisters and cousins about apple density. I took them out to a tree and repeated what Brother Brown had said.
"It just doesn't sound right," said Lisa. "Don't we want more apples, not less?"
"How do we know he's not tricking you into wasting all our apples?" asked Michael, acting like he had uncovered a conspiracy.
"He is kind of like our competition," said Amy.
"No, no, he wouldn't do something like that. Remember how he showed us how to water," I said, defending Brother Brown.
"And how do we know we're doing that right?" asked Michael.
"Well, it seems to be working so far. Look, I think the reason we have to do it is the same reason we did the pruning. We want the tree to concentrate its energy on growing fewer apples a lot bigger. Do you like eating small apples?"
"How small?" asked Michael.
At that point, I turned to Amy for help.
"I guess it makes sense," she finally said, and the others eventually went along.
Thinning reminded me a lot of pruning and, I imagined, what picking must be like. We had to use the ladders to reach every group of apples. Sam climbed all through the inside of each tree pulling off two little apples for each one he left. We sent Michael in there with him and assigned Lisa and Jennifer to the lowest-hanging branches.
I wasn't exactly sure what kept them coming back day after day. Michael always talked about the money he was going to make and the cans of pop. Sam just seemed happy to be outside and doing what everyone else was. My sisters had a competitiveness that wouldn't let them sit around while we were working. Besides all those things, though, I think they all had become a little attached to the trees. They would look at the tiny apples they were pulling off and say, "Do you really think these are going to be the size of regular apples someday?" Watching air and water turn into something they could hold and eat was like learning an ancient magic they wanted to be a part of.
My favorite times were when Amy and I were working by ourselves on a tree. I would mostly just listen to her ramble. She loved to tell me about all the people at school and who liked whom. I knew most of them only through Amy's stories, but I still liked the way she took all of their lives so seriously. She seemed to have no interest in the future beyond her next three years of high school. I tried to get her to tell me what she was going to do after that, but she would always change the subject. Even when we played our favorite game, "would you rather," she limited her opinions to things in the short term. When I asked, "Would you rather live in a trailer but drive a Ferrari or live in a mansion but drive a VW Bug?" she didn't seem to care. But when I asked about Homecoming queen versus Prom queen, her opinions were very strong about Homecoming queen. I didn't understand it much and decided it must have something to do with being a girl.
It was amazing to see what we could accomplish working full-time. The thinning was done in only three weeks, and by the time July hit, there wasn't much for six people to do, really. The weeds in the orchard had completely surrendered and been wiped out. Sam even became obsessed with pulling the discing machine behind the tractor to churn and chop up weeds we'd missed.
Every other week I would take the tractor to General Supply and buy more Diazinon and cans of pop for full workdays. I probably could have bought enough for the whole summer in one trip, but I kind of liked driving to the store. In the furniture section, there was a huge air conditioner. It felt great on a hot day to sit on the couches and chairs and be drenched by the cool air and then wander around the store examining all the strange things for sale. When Michael figured out their charge system, he begged me to buy him all kinds of things, especially a BB gun and a baby chick.
Eventually, the girls only joined us on watering days. The hotter it got, the more we all looked forward to irrigating and would do it without shoes on and in rolled up pants. Sitting underneath the shade of the trees with the water rolling over our feet was the coolest place we had.
The one activity we never seemed to finish was digging out the ditches by hand. With the hot July sun beating down, we didn't work very hard at that, though. Ditch digging was usually relegated to Sam, Michael, and me. If we did nothing else on a particular day, I always made sure we moved our shovels around a little. When my dad would ask me at night what I'd done during the day, I could always at least answer, "Dug a ditch." He would reply that was better than nothing but that I would be better off down at the scrap yard.
***
The deeper we got into the summer, the less I talked with or even saw Mrs. Nelson. Right after school let out, when we were thinning or weeding, she would occasionally watch from her window and walk out to talk sometimes as I passed by her house. As the temperatures rose, she stopped coming out as much. Finally, she stayed inside altogether. I took her branches and samples of the apples every few weeks so she could see how well they were growing. The bigger the apples got, the less interested she seemed. Sometimes she would even pretend not to be home, but I would leave my samples by the front door, anyway. The way she acted worried me more and more.
I had reread our contract enough times to memorize it during the first weeks of pruning. Since then I had mostly left it in its hiding place, almost afraid to think about it. I had pushed it into some future place in my head. Maybe Mrs. Nelson had too. But after five months of work, I couldn't just walk away empty-handed; not with my sisters and cousins involved. I had to get some money and in the best case scenario the orchard too. I had slowly come to realize the orchard was worth something. I didn't know how much for sure, but when my dad talked about owning land, it was always a big deal. From what I gathered, people saved their whole lives for a plot as big as the orchard. But maybe Mrs. Nelson had forgotten or changed her mind about giving it up. One particular conversation we had made me bite-my-lip nervous. She had let me in one hot July day, a day after Sam and I had sprayed. The Diazinon smell was still in my nose, and my head ached a little. As I was showing her how the apples were beginning to look fa
tter on the top than on the bottom, she looked at me and asked, "Are you having fun, then?"
I didn't know what to say. I could think of a lot of words to describe what I was having, but "fun" wouldn't really pop out. I thought of our freezing fingers, stinking shoes, sleepless nights, and poison showers. Then I smiled and simply said, "Yes."
"Good!" she said. "I'm glad. Even if you don't make any money, at least you're having fun. And learning something too. Like the time you dug up my hydrangeas. I'll bet you'll never do something like that again after the lesson I gave you. Sometimes things don't turn out like we hope, but we have to look on the bright side and appreciate the experience."
The hydrangeas. I had tried to forget them, but the whole scene recrystallized. She refused to pay me and kept yelling, "Stupid! Stupid!" If I didn't count my dad, it was the first time an adult had ever said anything like that to me. The next time I saw her, she acted like nothing had even happened and I was supposed to work on her yard again. Hydrangeas. Stupid. I looked at Mrs. Nelson and put my hands up to my face with the palms facing her. I wanted to show her the calluses and blisters I had earned as part of the latest experience. I don't think she got it.
It was strange, but the less contact I had with Mrs. Nelson, the friendlier her son, Tommy, became. When he drove out to see his mom, he would often walk over and talk to me or Amy if he saw us in the orchard. At first, it seemed as if he was inspecting us, but eventually he acted sincerely impressed by what we had done. He had even bothered to learn the names of my sisters and younger cousins. He stopped by right after Sam had done his discing and found us repairing some of the little ditches Sam had destroyed.
"My old man would have really gotten a kick out of this. It's never looked this clean!" Tommy called to us as he came walking up.
"Thanks," I replied, and I had to agree with him. The tops of the trees themselves were a bright green. The ground around them was a rich wet brown with manure peppered over it. Against the bare earth, the trunks looked strong and wide. If you bent low, you could see from one end of the orchard to the other through the weedless space.
"Didn't it look like this when your dad was working on it?" I asked Tommy seriously.
"Nah. I don't think so. It was always more of a hobby to him than anything else. Sometimes he'd just quit doing anything out here in the middle of the year."
"Really?" I replied, and scanned his face to make sure he was telling the truth. He wasn't even smiling, just turning his head around and looking at the trees. "Tommy, would you like to help us water or something one of these times?" I asked him hopefully.
He laughed a little. "Me? Oh, I don't think I'd be very good at it. I'm sure my mom has told you that a hundred times."
"But you helped your dad sometimes, right? So you've seen how everything is done."
He laughed again. "I helped a little but not very willingly. I don't think I'm much of a farmer."
"That's what my dad says about himself."
"Maybe it skips a generation."
He walked back to his car and zoomed off. For no particular reason, Michael pulled a small apple off a tree and threw it at the cloud of dust Tommy left.
Chapter 12
Dump Boxes and They're All Mine
August apples are dangerous. They're smaller than a baseball and just the right weight for throwing. Sam and Michael had been working on their arms all summer, and I was constantly avoiding shots to my head. An August apple can hurt you in other ways too. Earlier in the summer, they're sour enough to make your lips pucker. But by August, a hint of sweetness emerges that reminds you of that apple's potential. You can forget about the sourness and get way ahead of yourself.
One day Sam and Michael had a contest to see how many August apples they could eat at one time. In our orchard, half of the trees produced green apples and half a green-red combination. They chose the all-green ones. Sam won by eating twelve. Even before he was finished, he was complaining that his stomach hurt. He and Michael spent the next two days moaning and running back and forth to the bathroom.
After the green apple experience, Lisa became very upset about what she called "wasting apples." "All the apple throwing and eating till you're sick is like throwing money away," she lectured. "Think about how much each apple is worth. Jackson, how much is each apple worth?"
I looked back at her like she had asked me to build a TV. I had no idea how much an apple was worth. All I knew was we needed enough of them to add up to the $8,000 that the contract said I owed Mrs. Nelson.
"And I've been thinking, who are we going to sell these apples to, anyway?" she continued.
I had been wondering the same thing and couldn't put the topic off much longer.
"Maybe to the supermarkets or something," I suggested, watching how the others would react to the idea.
"I think supermarkets get their food from places like California," said Amy.
"We could sell them to an apple juice company," offered Sam.
"Or sauce," said Michael.
"Yeah, maybe," I said, trying to sound very thoughtful.
"Why don't you ask Brother Brown where he sells his?" asked Lisa.
"Why would he want to tell us that?" Amy asked quickly. "If we did the same thing, that would be competition and he'd lose money."
I figured she must be right. It was hard for me to think of Brother Brown as competition, but maybe it would be wrong to ask him about selling apples.
"I think we should start with the supermarket, then. Some of us could go with my mom and check things out," I said. By some of us, I really meant Amy and me, but when I asked my mom about it, Lisa and Jennifer insisted on coming too. We went on my mom's regular shopping day, and Amy got to sit in the front seat of the car.
There were a few different supermarkets in Farmington, but my mom always went to Safeway. While she started to load up her grocery cart, the girls and I went to find the produce department.
"I've never noticed before how many different kinds of apples there are," said Lisa as she examined the stacks of fruit in different colors. "What kind do you think ours are?"
"Half are green, so maybe Granny Smith or Golden Delicious. The red ones, I don't know, maybe McIntoshes," said Amy as she ran her fingers over them.
"Look for someone we can talk to," I whispered to Amy.
"How about that guy," she said loudly, and pointed to someone stacking up potatoes about fifty feet away.
We walked closer to him and noticed that he was young, maybe just out of high school. He wore a neat apron and sort of hummed or whistled to himself as he stacked.
"We want to talk to you about your apples," Amy said boldly from behind him. He swung around, and Amy, Lisa, Jennifer, and I were standing in a line staring at him.
"Uh ... what?" he asked, looking confused.
"Can you tell us where you get your apples?" Amy asked loudly.
"I don't know, maybe Washington. They grow lots of apples there."
"Do they just arrive in a big truck or something? Do you have a big pile of them in the back?" Amy continued.
The potato guy laughed. "No, they come in boxes like this," he said, kicking a box of pears with his foot. "That's a bushel."
"So how much would you pay for a bushel of apples?" Lisa broke in.
"Don't ask me, I just put 'em out."
"How many apples in a box?"
"Mmmm. Maybe a hundred."
"Do you ever sell any apples grown around here?" I asked.
"I wouldn't be able to tell. If you guys really want to know, I could get my manager. He does more of the ordering and that kind of stuff."
"Okay," said Amy quickly.
He walked toward the back of the store and in a few minutes came back with another man who must have been the manager. He was middle-aged, with pale skin and very dark hair combed to one side.
"I hear you want to buy a truckload of apples," the manager said as he walked up. He was trying his best to be funny, but he sounded more like a bad
actor in a school play.
Amy looked at him and frowned. "Actually, we thought we'd sell you a truckload of them," she said.
The manager stared at her, wearing a creepy grin. He moved his eyes up and down her until she looked away.
I decided I should speak up. "Do you ever buy locally grown fruit and vegetables to sell here?"
"Nope!" he said, still looking at Amy. "All of it comes from our central distributor. Can't be sure that anything else would be safe or high quality."
"We've got a lot of apples that are really high quality, and we've been spraying for worms and bugs regularly."
The manager finally turned and looked at me. "Look, this isn't some kind of flea market. We can't just go buying any old thing off the street. And where are your parents? Shouldn't they be worrying about selling the family crops?" He giggled to himself.
"Then can we talk to the distributor or something? Maybe call him?" I asked hopefully.
"Go ahead if you can find the number. Now, I've got to get back to some real work," he said. He took one last long look at Amy and turned and slumped off slowly, as if he were hoping we would beg him to come back.
When he left, the young potato guy turned to us. "Sorry about that. He wasn't much help."
"Not really," I agreed. "You don't happen to have that distributor's number, do you?"
"No, but maybe you could look in the phone book or something or call the main line to the store and ask."
"We'll try it," I said. "Do you think we can have a couple of those extra boxes?" I asked, pointing to some boxes he had finished unloading.
"Sure, go ahead," said the potato guy.
We collected as many empty boxes as we could, including a few apple boxes. We also wrote down what Safeway was charging per pound for apples: fifty cents. The side of the apple box said there were forty pounds per bushel, so we had a pretty good idea of what a bushel of apples would cost at Safeway. It was close to the $25 Mrs. Nelson had mentioned when she was talking me into the orchard idea.
The Year Money Grew on Trees Page 12