Chapter 7: Empty Ladders

I hung up and stood in the empty yard with three dozen egg sandwiches.

The sweet cherries in the road block were dark red and heavy.

Another week on the trees and they'd start to split.

Gran came out on the porch in her work shirt with a mug.

"Well?"

"Shane hired the crew."

She looked at the empty yard.

Then she set down her coffee and said a word I'd only heard her say about frost.

"Get the ladders," she said.

"Gran, there's four of us."

"There's three of you and one of me, and I'm worth two."

Megan came out the screen door in scrubs and sneakers, hair in a knot, still half asleep.

"Is it a crisis?"

"It's a crisis."

"Okay." She took an egg sandwich. "What do I do?"

Luke came up the path at six twenty-five.

He was wearing pressed khakis, a navy polo and the same leather loafers.

He had a travel mug and a pair of brand new work gloves with the tag still on.

"You're late," Megan said.

"I was told to come at five for breakfast. I was told nothing about labor."

"Shane took the crew," I said.

He looked at the trees, all eighty acres of them running down to the water.

Then at the four of us.

"How many people does this usually take?"

"Forty."

"I see."

He pulled the tag off his gloves with his teeth.

We started in the road block.

Sweet cherries get picked by hand, stem on, into buckets that hang on your chest from a strap.

You go up the ladder, you strip the branch gently, you don't bruise them, you don't pull the spur, you don't fall.

Gran picked two buckets before I'd done one.

She hummed hymns and swore at the birds.

Luke's first ladder slid sideways in the grass because he set it on the slope.

His second ladder held, but his loafers didn't.

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