Beyond the Spring Breeze: The Orchard Summer novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Hose
A garden hose across the property line brings Abram and Dessa to her gate every morning, and one hand on one spigot ends with the story of two springs.
He came at six-thirty the next morning with a loaf of bread under one arm.
I was in the barn, doing the feed, and I heard the truck before I saw it.
Dessa came through the door first, in her yellow raincoat, although the sky was clear.
"Dad made it," she said. "It's bad."
"It's not that bad," Abram said.
"It sank in the middle."
"It's a valley."
He held it out to me.
The loaf was dense, pale and slightly lopsided.
I broke off the heel and ate it standing there.
It tasted of salt, and a bit of burnt crust, and honest effort.
"It's bad," I said.
"Thank you."
"It's the right kind of bad. My mother will talk about it for a week."
His shoulders dropped, and he grinned.
The spigot behind the barn was an old brass one my father had put in forty years ago.
It stuck in the mornings.
Abram crouched to turn it, and it didn't move.
"Let me," I said.
I reached down and took the handle.
His hand was already on it.
We stood there with our fingers over each other's, both pulling a handle that wouldn't turn.
His knuckles were scarred with the small white lines of a kitchen worker.
I felt the warmth of his palm all the way up my arm.
I let go.
So did he.
"It needs a bump," I said, and I hit the side of it with the heel of my hand.
Water came out in a rush.
Dessa cheered.
"You cook for a living?" I said, nodding at his scarred hand.
"I did. Eleven years in a hospital kitchen."
"You gave that up for a ruined orchard?"
"I gave it up for a place with a door that Dessa could run out of."
He said it lightly.
It was not light.
I filled his barrels and he carried them to the truck, two at a time.
On his third trip my mother came out on the porch in her apron with her coffee.
She watched him the way she watched weather.
"Who's the man with the bread?" she called.
"The neighbor, Ma. The Hendry place."
"He's carrying a lot of water for a man with no pump."
"That's what the hose is for."
"Is it?" she said, and went back inside.
She came out again two minutes later with a plate.
She had put out eggs, toast and the last of the strawberry jam.
She set it on the porch table with one chair too many.
"Sit," she told Abram. "The girl too."
He looked at me.
"Don't look at me," I said. "I've never won against her."
We ate on the porch.
Dessa fed the goose a piece of toast, and the goose let her pet its head.
"Traitor," I said.
"She likes me," Dessa said.
"She likes toast."
My mother tasted the bread and chewed it for a long time.
"This is a terrible loaf," she said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Bring another tomorrow."
Abram stared at her.
Then he smiled, a real one this time, lopsided as the bread.
I looked at the window behind him.
It was my kitchen window, and it was shut.
So were all the others on that side of the house, and the day was already hot.
Abram saw me look.
"Can I ask something?" he said.
My mother sat very still.
"Ask," I said.
"Your windows are all closed, and it's going to be eighty today."
"They stay closed in May."
"Why?"
"Abram," my mother said gently.
"No, it's fine." I put my fork down.
"My husband died in blossom week last year."
"He was at the end of the third row, pruning a Cortland, and then he wasn't."
I said it the way I say it, plainly and quick.
"The air in this house smells like the bloom for three weeks every year, and I can't stand it."
Nobody moved.
Even the goose stopped chewing.
"I'm sorry," Abram started.
"Don't say you're sorry."
"I wasn't going to."
He looked straight at me, and I saw that it was true.
"My wife died in March," he said. "It was snowing so hard that the hearse got stuck at the end of our road."
"Fourteen months ago."
"Fourteen months."
My mother took Dessa's plate and said, in her loudest voice, "Come see the chickens."
She led the girl off toward the coop.
They were gone a long time.
Abram and I sat across a table that was too big for two people and said nothing.
It wasn't a bad silence.
It was the first one in a year that didn't need filling.
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