The Orchard (2 page)

It must have been great.

It’s more than dismal now.

Most of the original trees are long gone, and of those that remain, only a handful have been untouched by an unexplained fire that raged here nearly ten years ago. Trunks and branches are charred; the grass in most places has never returned; rain has pounded the ash into a crust on the ground. If any fruit still matures on the plants that can still bear them, they probably drop unnoticed to the dead ground, and probably rot.

“Ugly little place, isn’t it,” he said, taking the handkerchief out again to wipe his face and neck dry.’

I nodded; but it isn’t, not really, though it is without question unpleasant—the images that had stalked me across the field darkened here and grew shadows, shifted contrary to the wind and played darkly around the boles, and I wished we could have stayed back at his house while he told me what he had to. At least there I would be out of the damp cold and in a comfortable chair, with a drink in my left hand and his old bloodhound snoring in volleys at my right; at least there I could turn a lamp on after sunset, listen to the radio, watch a little TV, read his newspaper while he fussed with dinner in the kitchen.

At least there I wouldn’t have to see the shadows of the dead.

A spasm of coughing and choking bent him over, and I could do nothing but pat his shoulder helplessly until it was done, angry that he was going to leave me at last, angry that I couldn’t do anything to make the leaving easy, angry that no doctor could tell him what the hell was wrong.

“Yep,” he said, his breath back and his grin. “First chief in town was old Lucas. They had the police before, of course, but he was the first one dumb enough to take the job.”

“He wasn’t exactly dumb,” I said, shivering. “He did all right, from what you’ve told me.”

“Did all right with what he had, I suppose.” He squinted at the light, shook out the handkerchief, and blew his nose. “His son became chief too, y’know. Ned, it was. They never called him anything else. Some say I tend to favor him more than my own father.” He wiped his mouth; his hand was trembling.

“Abe, look,” I said, “why don’t we go back, okay? There’s—”

“I never planned on living this long, y’know,” he said, ignoring me as always and staring at the trees as if they were about to uproot themselves and come at him. “Never planned it, never wanted it, if you want to know the truth. I was gonna die peacefully at eighty in my bed, an ornery old coot who didn’t give a damn about much of anything but making his peace with the Lord.” He gripped his knees and lowered his head, but not his eyes. “But things just got outta hand, son. I never had a say, and they just got outta hand.” He sniffed, and spat. “Too much to take care of, pups to train to be cops in the Station, city folks to watch out for in case they broke a leg crossing the street. Every goddamn time I took a vacation they put that idiot Windsor in, took me weeks to clean up after him. Shame he’s dead, I guess, but he was a jackass.” His gaze lowered, to the ground. “It ain’t been easy, y’know. Jesus God, it ain’t been easy.”

I didn’t have to answer; I knew what he meant.

It wasn’t the small amount of crime we have here in Oxrun, or the people he had to teach, or the sicknesses he endured all alone in his home.

It was the other things.

The far side of the shadow things that no one ever believes until they wake up past midnight, cold and unsettled, and see the landscape of the night-world that exists beyond the far boundaries of legend, beyond the frail cage of reason; the dark children of their childhoods who have gleefully persisted through education, through marriages, through living in the modern world, and wait under the stairs to laugh quietly and harsh; the shade of black seen only when eyes are open and dawn hasn’t arrived and a wind shakes the doorknob like the paw of a wolf learning to come in; the light that dances without fire and glows without a bulb and casts no shadow in the corner of the room where something small and large crouches behind the chair.

The other things.

He reached into his coat then and pulled out a manila folder creased in half and filled with papers.

“It’s not a will,” he said, his smile one-sided. “These are for you. From my office. I don’t think anybody else would bother to check them.”

“Abe, don’t you think—”

He waved me silent and stood, one hand back to the boulder to balance himself. “Back in a minute. Have a look, in the meantime, and let me know what you think.”

Then he did the oddest thing—he reached out and shook my hand.

The sun was shining.

It was early November.

There was no reason in the world why I should have felt the way I did, but when I looked at the first page, read the names, saw the places, it was winter already, deep in a January whose air was ancient parchment and whose moon gave no light.

It was always winter when Abe showed me these things, and I glanced up at him, wondering how he had managed to carry it all without going mad, without climbing to the attic and locking himself in and waiting … waiting for the dark landscape to come and take him home.

So he walked, and I read, and when I looked up again I could see the first stars and the first arc of the new moon.

I could see the orchard the way it was, and the way it was now.

And I buttoned my jacket, folded the papers and held them, and thought about the good dreams I never had as a child.

Part One

My Mary’s Asleep

I
don’t care for the dark when there isn’t any light, when there’s not even a hint of something else out there, when I feel that a single step will drop me over the edge, when my ears hear nothing but the blood (god, the blood) and my hands feel nothing but the cold (oh god, the cold) and my eyes see nothing but the fire and the sparks and the whorls of a scream that crouches deep in my throat; I don’t care for the dark when there isn’t any glow, not in the sky, not in the village, not under the trees where I’m waiting, a glow that’s a sign there are people out there who aren’t much different than I, who would understand what I know, who would hold me while I tell them, who would protect me from the others and tell them they’re wrong;

And I don’t care for the dark when my Mary’s not here.

Twilight, that last night we were all together, was a flawless study in lovers’ pastels—a deep and soothing rose around the edges of snowlike dark clouds, bright pink flaring from the rim of the sun resting below the horizon, robin’s-egg blue and gentle turquoise splashing over and blending with a faint and fading gold floating ahead of a faint and fading black. It softened the serrations on the oak leaves overhead, smoothed out the bark until the shadows were gone, and nestled in cotton a mockingbird’s song.

A twilight so perfect it seemed sacrilege to take even a single breath, or even let my heart beat on the last night, that night, when I started to die.

Yet it was, to my mind, incredibly like a number of paintings good and bad I had seen, and as I stared at the sky I wondered why artists bothered to put any of it to music, or to canvas, or on a printed page. Didn’t they know, couldn’t they see, that their work would suffer when compared with the real thing?

Unless this was what they felt just before they cast their slim and ruined bodies over the cliff, into the sea.

“Oh, Jesus, Herb, come on,” i muttered in disgust, and my nose wrinkled with embarrassment at the lurid image of the grieving poet, giving all for love—that was the fool’s way out. Only a fool pines, only a fool sighs. Only a fool gives his life for someone who doesn’t care.

So fool, I thought, what do you do now?

My cheeks were cupped in my hands, my elbows braced on the soft ground, the toes of my sneakers idly digging trenches behind me. The air was spring sweet, and I closed my eyes to smell it, taste it, moisten my lips as if I had just finished a succulent meal; the late afternoon was lightly chilled, but I didn’t reach for my jacket lying on the grass at my side. Instead, I rolled onto my back and stared at the branches, wishing on their curves that Mary was here.

Alone. With me.

“Fat chance, jerk,” I muttered, and winced at the choice of words.

I had resolved only moments before that nothing resembling the word or the fact of fat would pass my lips again until I had lost fifty pounds from the over two hundred I already weighed. And once fifty was gone, maybe twenty more in the bargain. In the meantime, I would work to reconstruct my self-image, build up my confidence, and see myself differently when I looked in the mirror. Fat was out, then, and overweight was in.Hell, lots of people were overweight without looking like a washtub with spokes for arms and legs; lots of people went on diets just to maintain their health, for crying out loud. So it would have to be with me. Not fat. Certainly not obese. Just looking after myself so I would live past forty.

“Fat chance,” I said again, this time with a grin. I knew myself too well, though I was hoping this time I would wake up to a surprise.

I sat up with a grunt, then, fished for my jacket, and slipped it on before standing. I supposed I should be doing something constructive before the others arrived, like spreading the blankets I’d brought, or checking the woods and open fields to be sure we wouldn’t be attacked by tigers or lost lions. Or maybe, I thought, I should just forget the whole thing and go home—not later, but right now, before I could think of some new way to stall. There was still work to be done on my final project, and I wasn’t exactly sure how I would present it.

Then someone called my name, and I surrendered to fate.

I don’t remember whose idea it first was, but after enduring nearly a full month of final-exam threats from cackling professors and sadistic young instructors who knew all the right words to set terror on our heels, it didn’t matter. We had to get away. It was Friday, and we had to try to pretend we really didn’t give a damn, that it was all going to be a snap and graduation with honors was only a matter of killing the next year without getting arrested.

We decided to have our picnic on the deserted Armstrong farm, in the shade of the orchard that didn’t grow anything anymore.

What the hell—we were in college and didn’t know any better.

So Stick Reese brought the wine, Mike Buller the sandwiches, and the others—there were about a dozen—brought the odds and ends, including a case of cold beer. The plans as we had so cleverly figured it would be to enjoy ourselves while studying for the legalized torture that would begin bright and early Monday morning. The collected condemneds’ last meal, and who gave a shit.

But the not unexpected result was the packing away of the books as soon as they were brought out, and a prolonged bitch session about our classes, the college, and the world that conspired to prevent us from getting rich. There was also a baseball game with acorns, and a scientific experiment to see how far one could shove an arm down a burrow before the gopher got pissed and chewed the thing off.

Mary had come with Rich Verner, and she spent most of her time sitting under a tree and whispering in his ear.

I, the stoic and unheralded lover, sat against my own apple tree on the orchard’s rim and dispensed facile wisdom while keeping an eye on the round of her shoulder, the curve of her breast, the way her legs in their jeans seemed never to stop.

Only Reese knew I was lovesick and thankfully kept his cracks to a minimum; we had known each other since high school, and he had seen me moping and glooming around like this before, and for some damn reason had decided some time ago it was his duty to keep me from slashing my wrists or hanging myself or doing something really stupid, like proposing to the girl.