"We'll pick you up around eleven," cop brother Kev leaves the message. It's Columbus Day; one of the ickiest holidays on the calendar. I need a pick-up...
Around eleven-thirty, I am in the Taurus, showing my dysfunctional Ipod to niece, Mer.
"You screwed it up," she rolls her eyes in sixteen- year- old- disgust.
"I did everything the software told me to do--in the right order--then I did everything YOU told me to do--also in the correct order--" I tug at the earphones.
"You screwed it up--" Mer sighs at me, the computer dyslexic.
"I even synched the pod with the music!" I feel like crying.
"Maybe it's the Ipod..." my kind sister-in-law offers from the front seat.
"No way, Mom, K.K. screwed something up--I'll come over and see if I can fix it--when I have a chance," Mer flips the Ipod back to me.
"What a great day for apple picking!" Kev jumps into the front seat and waves to my Dad as we pull out of the driveway.
Dad looks like he wants to say something, but, we don't wait.
"This is where we've been taking your nieces for over ten years!" Laurene cranes her neck, assuring me.
Mer is silent. "Dad, can you crank up the music," she interrupts her mother.
I am like the family dog, cracking the back seat window, feeling the rushing autumn air, happy to be going apple picking. (I should be a little guilty, I suppose, after years of protesting Columbus Day as a gateway genocide to Native American culture...but my protests are more interior these days.)
The road to Quabbin Resevoir is lined with brilliant colors. Trees up here have already turned y and are showering us with fiery reds at every gust.
"They have a petting zoo, swings in the trees, raspberry patches, pumpkins, home-made doughnut machines, a gift shop--" Laurene begins reciting.
"Yeah, Auntie K.K., they also have apple everything--pies, cider, cobbler, turn-overs, caramel and candy apples--and the most perfect pumpkins for carving--" Mer is warming up to the field trip.
"Your brother carves pumpkins like a pro--" Laurene gently taps her husband's arm.
I see him grin under his moustache, in the rear view mirror.
"Yeah, but not as good as me!" Mer crosses her arms across her thin chest.
"I think you should carve one that looks like your class photo--" I offer.
'Auntie K.K.--that's mean!" Mer slugs me in the side, ungently.
Finally, we arrive.
There are about sixty cars crowding the gravel lot, outside the barn.
I see a stall with almost-perfect pumpkins lined up on risers; some raggedy squash that have stems resembling dreadlocks; signs, everywhere, explaining that we need to "take a bag" and then go into the adjoining orchard, "fill the bag", bring it back and "pay for it". The bags are huge...over a bushel...and cost ten bucks.
I hand Kev three bucks, explaining that I've promised to bring apples back to 88 Maple Street, for Dad. Kev snatches an empty and heads for the trees.
By now, we are trailing four or five other groups, all headed down the same worn path through the meadow.
The day is bright. Cool winds punctuating the sunny morning. The spicy scent of fallen apples surrounds us in surprising puffs. Off in the distance, small mountains sport the flaming trees. The sky couldn't be more blue, nor the clouds more incandescent. I am almost skippingly giddy, as I follow my family through the orchard.
Then, turning past the first bend in the path, we come to a pile-up: all the families in front of us have stopped moving forward.
I think, perhaps, there is a downed tree--or someone fainted. Then, the murmuring begins.
At first, it is the guarded talk of adults, above the heads of the five and six year olds. Then, it spreads to the ground, where younger kids are beginning to notice something's amiss. Finally, a tot ,about four, points to the outlying orchard in front of us: "Daddy, where are the apple trees?"
Good question.
What we are faced with are rows upon rows of empty, stunted trees, still clothed in green leaves and barren "sticks". Not a single red orb is evident. (And, there are hundreds of trees! ) But we can smell the fruit! It's thick as freshly pressed cider on the air!
There have to be apples here!
The adult silence is broken by a single, loud CRUNCH.
A six- year- old girl has sat on the ground, waiting for the adults to figure out the next move. Reaching a foot off the path, she's discovered: all the apples.
Biting into a particularly juicy piece of fallen fruit, there is another "crunch" and we all stare.
It's a kind of cartoon Garden of Eating scene...It's the God's truth. The kid discovered the secret.
Suddenly, most of the other groups march back down the meadow path and head for the barn, empty sacks at their sides, angry murmurs on their breath. My family moves farther into the orchard, as usual. My clan is sure that somewhere, hidden, if only at the most remote edge, there is ONE TREE still sporting apples.
There is no tree.
"Here!" A man in a wife-beater tee-shirt (sorry, that's what they are still called in L.A. where I've lived for most of my life), lots of bling, and mirror- shades, hollars to all of us.
"Here, up at the top--I see them!"
Whomever is still in the orchard rushes to the One Tree.
Kev gets there first. He reaches up and up. He snaps off what, at first, looks like a primo specimen.
"Thanks!" I tell the undershirt guy.
"No sweat!" he smiles, puffing out his chest a bit more.
"Gross!" Kev flips the apple to me.
I catch it, thinking there's a bit of bird mess on it that can be rubbed off...
Oh no...this is something that makes the baby, in the movie "ERASERHEAD", look like a beauty...(Maybe a nuclear accident would leave fruit like this behind...maybe not...) This apple has a stem thick as my pinky finger--but--worse--the stem is covered in what looks like skin--apple skin--a conjoined twin, not fully formed! (Maybe, in fruitworld, this is not such a freakish abnormality.) However, in our world,it is weird enough to both revolt and delight. I stick the apple-thing into the pocket of my hoodie. (If times get rougher, I can always build a stand on Maple Street and charge the neighborhood kids a quarter- a- peek...)
"We could make pie out of the windfalls, just cut off the blemishes..." Laurene says, sighing beneath the squatty trees.
The problem is, many little- mouthed animals--mostly human--have already been foraging under the trees. For every apple that looks intact, a quick scan reveals one or two "bites" on the bottom side. (No one was making pie out of these left-overs.)
"This sucks," Mer scowls as we leave the orchard.
"Maybe on the other side of the street--near the petting barn--" the ever- hopeful Laurene coaxes.
We cross the dirt road. We head to the sounds of braying donkeys and clucking chickens.
Kev whistles to us to stop.
"The guy in the pumpkin stand says we can't go up there--that orchard's closed to customers."
"I told you this sucks!" Mer kicks at some yellowed grass stalks.
"Mer! You used to love coming here! " Laurene admonishes.
"Yeah, well, that's when I was little--"
"That was last year!" Kev tells her.
"That was when there were apples in the trees!"
Mer has a point.
"I heard the crop was early this year--" I offer, remembering the local news; remembering Dad's weird look as he waved to us, this morning.
"We come up here every Columbus Day Weekend," Laurene says sadly.
"Well, we came this year, too. At least we can pick up some pumpkins," Kev herds us back to the barn.
Everybody that isn't peeling out of the dirt parking lot is heading to the barn.
Inside, the scents of cider and warm, doughnuts swirls around. There is a brisk trade in carmel apples, turn-overs, pies and maple syrup. I suspect the economy has forced this. It's now an apple-themed bakery operation and not a pick-your-own business. Oh well. More power to the people.
Kev points to a stand holding about fifty bushels of various pre-bagged apples.
"That's what happened to the trees," he sighs.
"Well, grab a bushel. We can still make pies," Laurene scouts the MacIntoshes.
"You'll take some to school, right?" Kevin asks Mer.
"I'll eat them AFTER I get home from school--I don't want to have to pop out my retainer at lunch--it's embarrassing," she informs him.
"Grab a bag--we drove all morning to get here," Laurene nudges Kevin.
I look at the prices.
SIXTEEN BUCKS A BUSHEL! (Like the over-blown used- car prices in this part of NE, the "slightly bruised windfalls" are expensive shockers!)
"We came all this way..." Mer pouts.
Kev pulls out his wallet.
I pull out mine. Apple turn-overs for Dad and Mom. It's the least I can do...besides, they are only ten bucks. ( I really want a taffy apple, but it will torture Mer with her retainer on...so I push back my guilty desires.)
"Crank the music up, Dad," Mer scarfs half a cider-donut and ties her hoodie tight around her face.
The music cranks up, effectively canceling conversation in the back seat.
I crack my window, letting the autumn blow between us.
Still happy; realizing, even amid the rotting windfalls and scraggly arms of the emptied trees, there are worse ways to spend Columbus Day.
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