Beyond the Spring Breeze: The Orchard Summer novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Rule

On Lenka's porch they shake on the no-spring rule: summer until the first hard frost, no talk of the spring they lost, and the day the first tree blooms as the finish line.

By the second Saturday, I knew the sound of his truck from half a mile away.

It was seven in the evening, and the light lay long and gold across the rows.

My mother had gone to church bingo with a casserole and a look she thought I couldn't read.

Abram sat on my porch steps with a glass of lemonade, and I sat on the swing.

Dessa lay on her stomach in the grass, teaching the goose to take crackers from her hand.

The petals were long gone.

The trees had set tiny green apples the size of marbles.

"You can smell it still," Abram said, "if you stand in the right place."

"Smell what?"

"Blossom. Down by the fence, where the late ones were."

I felt my shoulders go up.

"I know," I said. "I walk the long way around."

"I do that with the snow."

"There isn't any snow."

"There's a place on my road where the plow always left a bank. I take the other turn."

He turned his glass in his hand.

"I took it last Tuesday and added fifteen minutes."

I laughed, and then I stopped, because it wasn't really funny.

We sat in the quiet.

A mower started up somewhere on the road.

"Can I say something that sounds stupid?" I asked.

"Please."

"I want a summer."

He looked at me.

"I don't mean a vacation," I said. "I mean months where nobody says that word."

"Spring. I don't want to talk about the one that took him or the one that took her."

"And I don't want to look at the next one."

"A summer," he said slowly.

"A real one. Picking, cider, porch lemonade, a goose that bites people."

"With me in it?"

My face went hot, and I kept my eyes on the grass.

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to."

His voice was careful.

"Because I'd take it," he said. "If you meant it. A whole summer, no spring."

I looked at him.

"Then we need terms," I said. "I'm a farmer. I don't shake on a thing without terms."

"Go on."

"It starts when the petals are down. That was last week."

"Fine."

"It ends at the first hard frost. That's when the orchard stops, so that's when summer stops. Nobody argues with a frost."

"Fine. And what happens at frost?"

I looked out at the trees.

Frost was five months away.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't want to know. I don't want either of us promising a thing past it."

"Then I'll ask the real question." He set his glass down. "What happens in spring?"

My heart began to knock against my ribs.

I had thought it through already, I realized, even before he asked.

"There's a finish line," I said. "The day the first tree opens next spring, you and I stand in the row and decide."

"Decide what?"

"Whether we're something. Or whether we're two people who had a good summer."

"That's a long time to hold a handshake."

"It's a short time to hold a promise. That's why I want it long."

He studied me for a while, with the lines around his eyes gone soft.

"No spring," he said, "until the finish line."

"No spring. No promises. No one says sorry for the dead on my porch."

"And in between?"

"Between, we just see."

"See what?"

I swallowed.

"If I like how you laugh," I said.

His eyes warmed.

"I'd like that."

He held out his hand.

I took it.

It was the second time I had touched him, and the first time on purpose.

His hand closed around mine, warm and calloused, and neither of us pulled away when the shake was over.

We held on for a long moment.

Then Abram cleared his throat and let go.

"That's the deal," he said. "Summer to frost. Finish line in the row."

"That's the deal."

"I'll bring a worse loaf tomorrow."

"My mother will be thrilled."

The goose honked.

I turned my head.

Dessa was sitting up in the grass with a cracker in her hand and her whole face tilted toward us.

She had been listening, of course.

Children always are.

"What happens at the finish line?" she asked.

Abram opened his mouth, and for a moment he didn't have an answer.

I didn't either.

"We find out," he said.

Dessa nodded as if that were a sensible reply.

Then she gave the goose the cracker and said, to no one, "I think it's going to be a long summer."

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