Part 5
Eleanor did not touch the bud.
She followed the branch back to the trunk, checking the bark and the old cable, then looked along the row. Pink tips showed on three more trees, small enough to disappear whenever the light shifted.
Kate exhaled through her nose. “Dana said not to count bloom until it opens.”
“She did.”
“You’re counting anyway.”
“Four isn’t a difficult number.”
Over the next ten days, the buds unfolded. Some trees produced only leaves. Others opened scattered clusters along their strongest limbs.
Twenty-three trees bloomed.
The white was not uniform. Empty spaces remained where the dead trees had stood, and the damaged lower cell showed thin grass beneath its straw. Yet from Mill Creek Road, the surviving canopies joined across the rows until the south slope seemed to hold a pale cloud above it.
Cal stopped at the fence one morning. He removed his cap and scratched the flattened hair above his forehead.
“Looks like you got your orchard back.”
Eleanor stood beside a wheelbarrow of fence posts. “Looks like twenty-three trees bloomed.”
“That what I said.”
“No. It’s what we have.”
Cal looked toward the six hogs in the north pasture. “I was wrong about what you were buying.”
“So was I.”
He nodded once. They left it there.
Kate arrived after work and walked beneath the trees without speaking. Petals had begun collecting in the turned cuffs of her jeans. At the split tree, she rested two fingers against the branch they had pruned and looked up through the blossoms.
Eleanor waited beside her.
“I had Cal’s offer saved in three places,” Kate said.
“I put the bank letters in the flour drawer.”
“That was a terrible hiding place.”
“You found them.”
“Exactly.”
Eleanor brushed a fallen petal from her daughter’s shoulder.
Kate glanced at her. “You still owe me three feed receipts.”
“They’re clipped to the refrigerator.”
“Good.”
Not every blossom set fruit. A cold night took part of the eastern row, rain interfered with pollination for several days, and two trees dropped nearly everything they formed. Dana had warned them that neglected apple trees were repaired over years, not seasons.
By September, twelve trees carried enough apples to harvest. The fruit was uneven—some scarred, some small, some so high that Kate declared the birds had earned them.
They sold several crates to a local cider maker and set the rest beneath a canopy by the road. The income did not transform the farm. It paid for new fencing, the next soil test, and part of the winter feed for the six hogs.
Kate did not move back. She kept her job and her house in town. Twice a month, she came with work gloves in her car and the office key on her ring.
After the final picking, Eleanor divided the orchard into small post-harvest cells. The hogs entered only after the saleable fruit was gone, clearing drops and weeds for a day or two before moving on.
Notch had grown into a broad-backed barrow with the same torn ear and white eyebrow. He still refused each gate until Kate touched the blue bucket to his nose.
One October afternoon, clouds gathered while the hogs worked beneath the split tree. The forecast called for rain overnight, but their forty-eight hours would not end until morning. Eleanor pushed her boot through the grass and found the clay cool and damp below the surface.
“They could finish this row,” Kate said.
“They could.”
Eleanor disconnected the fence and lifted the gate handle. Kate carried the blue bucket toward the lane, and the six hogs followed.
Behind them, five fallen apples remained in the wet grass.
For once, Eleanor let them.