Beyond the Spring Breeze: The Orchard Summer novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Honeycrisp Night
Honeycrisps bruise if you look at them wrong, and they fall off the tree the week they're ready.
So we picked them at night, after Ned strung work lamps down the rows on orange cords.
The block ran four acres, and the trees were loaded so heavily that the branches rested on the ladders.
By seven the whole crew had come.
Ned had two cousins and a college kid from the feed store.
My mother ran the thermos station at the end of the row, with a folding table and four kinds of soup.
The grandmother had gone home to Minneapolis, but she had called twice to ask about gloves.
Abram came at dusk, in a hat I had never seen, with Dessa riding on his shoulders.
"She's asleep in the truck in an hour," he said. "She insisted on seeing it first."
"She can have the cot in the shed."
"She wants to pick."
"Dessa gets one bucket," I said.
"I want two," Dessa said, from above.
"One and a half."
"Deal."
We worked.
The lamps made a long, yellow tunnel of each row, and beyond them the night was black and clear and ringing with cold.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Beyond the Spring Breeze: The Orchard Summer are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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