Chapter 17: The Third Cherry Tree

The orchard at dawn was white with frost, and the cherry trees stood in their rows with their bare branches hung with ice.

Seven men from seven families stood in a half-circle around the third tree from the cider-house wall.

An old priest in a black overcoat had come, and so had Fio, and the actress, who stood a little apart with her hands in her sleeves.

Allegra's mother stood at the foot of the tree in her good coat.

She had not brought the knife.

Dario sat on a folding chair at the edge of the circle with the white pastry box on his knee.

His men waited out on the road, as the families had ordered.

"You'll catch cold, Dario," said the oldest Pozzi uncle.

"I'd rather catch cold than miss it," Dario said.

Vincenzo took off his coat and handed it to me.

I held it against my chest while he picked up the shovel.

I had told him on a porch that he could hold it, and he had not forgotten.

"Wait," Allegra's mother said.

She went down on her knees in the frost, in her good coat, and laid both palms flat on the ground.

She said something to the earth that I could not hear.

Then she looked up at Vincenzo and nodded.

He drove the shovel in.

Nobody spoke.

The ground was hard on top and soft beneath.

Two of his men took turns with him, and the frozen crust broke and rolled away, and the dark soil underneath came up in wet shovelfuls.

The priest began to pray under his breath.

Dario ate a cannoli.

He chewed slowly and watched the hole get deeper.

At knee height, the shovel struck cloth.

Vincenzo stopped.

He put the shovel down and knelt at the edge, and he began to clear the dirt away with his hands.

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