Beneath a Thousand Apple Trees (5 page)

L
eonard Lomax had just celebrated twenty-five years as owner of the apple orchard when he passed away. And it was all on account of ginseng picking. It wasn't the picking of the plant that actually caused his demise, but the coiled and concealed copperhead that did him in. Mr. Lomax was a huge, jolly man who played Santa Claus in Howling Cut's Christmas parade each year. There was a lot to like about the man, but not his frugality. One had to be careful when buying apples in bulk from him for he always stuck a few wormy ones down in the middle of the bag or bushel so they couldn't be seen. A lot of applesauce and apple butter came from those apples, and I was always afraid to look too closely at either for fear of what some of those lumps might actually be.

Maybree, his wife, was a dried-up-looking, pious little thing, and it was always curious to me that a man as big and jolly as Mr. Lomax had seen something worth making a wife out of in her. Perhaps she had hidden talents, and perhaps they were what made Mr. Lomax so jolly. But, from all appearances, she was quiet and somber and had no time for pleasantries or foolishness of any kind. She worked the counter in the apple orchard's fruit and gift shop, and she always tucked a handwritten Bible verse in the bag of a customer's purchase. They sold peppermint sticks—the thick, soft kind—and whenever I had a penny, I walked to the orchard store for that treat most dear to my heart. On my birthday, which landed on October twenty-sixth, I always took any pennies I might have received and made a beeline to the store. I knew it was my last chance to get one or two of the coveted treats before they closed for the season. Taft's Mercantile carried peppermints, too, but they were in town which was much further from our house than the orchard. Taft's brand was more expensive, too.

The last day of Mr. Lomax's life was the last day of September. It was picture perfect for ginseng picking, with brilliant Carolina blue skies and just a hint of coolness to the air. Mr. Lomax was eagerly pulling a thick area of the patch when he reached down and
bam!
A copperhead, startled out of a perfectly pleasant nap beside a sun-warmed rock, bit Mr. Lomax on his left index finger. The thing slithered away, but Mr. Lomax, never one to miss an opportunity to make a dollar, sucked the poison from his finger, spat good several times, wrapped it in his monogrammed handkerchief (dutifully embroidered by Maybree), and continued the hunt for the green gold. He comforted himself by saying that he'd never heard of anyone dying from the bite of a copperhead. But what he didn't say to himself was that those who had been bitten were wise enough or afraid enough to go see Dr. Pardie immediately, and if not the doctor, than at least one of the midwives in town who would concoct a poultice of snakeweed to draw the hot poison out of the wound.

By the time Mr. Lomax returned home some hours later, his hand was almost the size of a melon and red streaks were shooting up his arm. Mrs. Lomax put him to bed immediately and started to go call the doctor from the phone at Walcott's Dairy, a mile away, but Mr. Lomax's breathing became so shallow she was afraid to leave him. Finally, once Mr. Lomax had fallen asleep (or unconscious) and his breathing seemed a little better, Maybree jumped into the wagon and hurried off to use the phone. But, while she sat with the phone pressed tightly to her ear, praying that Doc Pardie wasn't too inebriated to answer, the hand of divine intervention stopped Mr. Lomax's hand from throbbing when it stopped his beating heart, too.

Folks gathered around Maybree Lomax with all of the compassion and attention one would expect from a small mountain town. It was the right time for death, given the fact that the weather was cooler, the holidays were just around the corner, and everyone was ready for some excitement. Everyone wanted to be involved, so plenty of cakes and casseroles were baked and delivered to the Lomax house for shared suffering, as well as a sharing of all of the grisly details they could squeeze out of anyone who knew anything, or who was clever enough to make things up as they went along. Just as long as it was believable sounding and gory enough, no one really cared what the truth was or wasn't. Statements issued forth from timid church ladies like, “Don't tell me! I can't bear to hear any more!” However, each one sat glued to her chair, leaning ever closer to the teller of the version being offered at the moment. And she stayed through to the story's end, only leaving when she was sure that no other juicy details could be tweezed out. Then she would dab her eyes and nose in proper grieving style, and say something to the effect that it was just too hard to hear, and would everyone please excuse her as she needed to see about things in the kitchen.

Maybree, and one of her fellow parishioners, Linda Fox, prepared the diminished body for the viewing and laid it out in the Lomaxes' parlor. Finally, a “lovely, lovely!” funeral was held at the Glorious Salvation Baptist Church.

The preacher, Pastor Jasper Dukes, was a firm believer in scaring the sin out of every one of his parishioners. For over an hour he promised that “. . . the flamin' fars of Hell-lah will be a'waitin' those who don't bow down before the Lord God Almighty”—
and him,
I thought to myself—“and profess each and every sin-ah and beg for Jeeezus' sweet salvation!” I glanced down the pew to see ninety-seven-year-old Joyce Baynard's head bowed and her chin resting on her chest. I figured she was either deaf or had a conscience that was clear enough to allow for a little nap during his fire-breathing sermon. But she did wake up in time to holler a loud and sure “Amen!” at just the right time nearing the end of the pastor's performance. I muttered an obligatory but unenthusiastic “Amen” too, as I was busy wondering who'd take me to town for my birthday peppermints next month since Mrs. Lomax was closing the store. Over the next few weeks, the orchard would harvest and sell all its apples, and once that was done, the place would be put up for sale.

E
veryone wondered what would become of the apple orchard, and it took a year to find out. A distant cousin of Maybree's, Mr. Gilbert Harris, had been doing odd jobs down in Macon, Georgia, since returning from his tour of duty in WWI, late in September of 1918. He'd been blinded in his left eye after an unfortunate accident involving the lid of a pressure cooker that blew off, striking him on the left side of his face during the cooking of a pot roast on board a naval battleship patrolling the waters off of France. Very few people were told the true version, though, and were instead given a well-spun, highly detailed story of unselfish bravery and disregard for his own life in order to save the badly injured captain of their ship during a particularly heavy artillery bombardment. According to Gilbert's story, the captain “was hit fair in the head” during “that epic battle of the sea.” Glorious but grisly scenes were described of how he'd attempted to drag his wounded leader inside the mess hall as a scene of carnage raged on around them. Then, just as he had his captain halfway through the doorway, the brave Gilbert Harris took one for his country.

After the war, Mr. Gilbert Harris found that war heroes were plentiful, and though they were graciously welcomed back to their motherland with confetti-strewn parades and colorful speeches, all too soon their heroic deeds were filed away in scrapbooks in attics, and it was back to business as usual. If Mr. Harris had dreams of grandeur about being given the world on a silver platter for his sacrifices, he was quickly and painfully set straight. Time and time again, he was turned down for jobs. The excuse was repeated over and over that the “position had just been filled.” But the truth of the matter—and Gilbert began to get the picture—was that business owners were concerned about frightening off their customers with the new heroic clerk who closely resembled Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, with the large, vertical scar running down his face, along with a drooping, sightless, milk-blue left eye accompanying it. So Mr. Harris did odd jobs around town for the next two years—jobs which offered meager pay and even less respect. Finally, after a long day of tobacco picking, Mr. Harris took the much-disliked graveyard shift running a printing press in the back room of a new-to-town printing company. The printing, he soon found out, was of a felonious nature, and fearing that he'd wind up in the state pen, or worse, he literally walked away three weeks later. He didn't give notice. He just left one morning at the end of his overnight shift without saying a word. He knew that they knew what he knew, and he worried that the shop owners would see to it that he was headed back to sea, but this time with an anchor tied to
him
and not to a United States battleship. So, he packed up his family before noon that day, and moved his thirteen-year-old son Jackson, nine-year-old daughter Harriet, wife Lydia, their mutt Tootie, the cat Peepers, and some of their household belongings in their wagon and headed north to his brother Lyle's home in Akins, South Carolina. Over a second helping of banana pudding two nights later, Lyle informed him of the odd death several weeks before of their uncle-by-marriage, poor old snake bitten Leonard Lomax, and the apple orchard that their grieving Aunt Maybree had no interest in keeping now that her beloved Lenny was gone.

Gilbert found it hard to sleep that night and by the next morning he had a newfound direction in life; that of being the future apple orchard owner and shop proprietor. The next morning the Harris family piled into their overly stuffed wagon and Gilbert slapped the reins and let out an enthusiastic “Yah!” to spur on their tired old horse. Off they set for Howling Cut, North Carolina, as the reddish gray dust from the South Carolina dirt road kicked up and out behind them, nicely covering their past.

T
he note taped to the jar on the candy counter in Taft's Mercantile said the peppermints were two cents apiece, and since I only had three cents I could only get a stick and a half. And they weren't selling halves.

“I'll take one, please,” I said in a downtrodden voice.

Mrs. Taft tucked one in a small brown paper bag (minus the Bible verse), and rang up the sale. I thanked her, walked off with the bag, and waited for Papa to come out of the feed store. I'd thought about going over there to see if he could make up the difference by giving me the extra penny, but knowing that times were so very hard and that the peppermints at Taft's just weren't like the orchard's most delectable soft ones, I resigned myself to the single stick. Then I settled down on the sidewalk to savor it next to our wagon, which was lined up between two others on Pickney Street, the dusty main thoroughfare in our town.

As I sat there licking and waiting for Papa, I rolled my newly acquired age of eleven around in my head, and it felt good. I liked it. I also reviewed the birthday gifts I'd received that morning. First, Grandma had given me a hair comb; one that she said had been her grandmother's and that I was now old enough, and responsible enough, to wear. The comb had little blue and green crystals in the frame, and they twinkled like jewels in the mid-morning sun. Mama and Daddy had given me the expected pair of new black shoes—to be worn on Sundays, and special occasions only, one of which, they agreed, was today. Prescott offered up his gift next, which was a well-worn comic book with the next to the last page missing, but he volunteered to fill me in once I reached that part. I didn't want to diminish the generosity of his gift by telling him that I'd read all of his comic books at least twice, so I'd be able to fill in the blanks myself. Instead, I told him how nice it was that he should give one to me. Finally, a piece of candy was pulled from Merry Beth's pocket; one she had saved from a little birthday party she'd been to at her friend's house the week before. After pulling the lint off the sour lemon ball, I quickly devoured it. All in all, it hadn't been a bad birthday, and I felt real appreciation and tenderness toward them all for their gifts, knowing that little sacrifices had been made in order to give them. Yet, at the same time, there was a touch of resentment toward Mama as I knew things would have been different—that I, too, might have had a small party—if she'd felt strong enough to have arranged one. Though Mama had been back for a year, she still seemed weak and tired. Rarely did we see a flash of her old self; the one that balanced strength and independence with a beautiful, vibrant femininity. And when she did give us a glimpse of that person I so deeply missed, I learned not to get my hopes up and expect that version of her to remain. It always slipped away, returning to that place of separateness and quiet in which she chose to live most of the time. I had heard Grandma saying quietly to her in the kitchen two days before, as they stood at the sink washing the supper dishes, that they still had time to bake a cake and some cookies and have a few of my friends over if Mama felt up to it. But Mama had muttered an even softer “let's not,” and the subject had not been brought up again.

While mulling this over, and trying (but with great difficulty) to convince myself that Mama was doing the best she could at the moment and that I really didn't want a party anyway, a slow moving, overly loaded wagon grabbed my attention as it rambled into town from the south end of Pickney Street. A wiry black dog in the back was heatedly barking back at a golden retriever that ran along the wagon's side. Finally, the barbershop owner, Fred Stiles, called to his retriever, Moe, and the dog ran back into Fred's shop.

A badly scarred, tired-looking man was driving the wagon, and an even more tired-looking woman sat next to him. As they moved past me, I saw a dark-haired boy, perhaps a little older than me, and a dark-haired younger girl, with her arm slung around the now quietly panting dog, sitting on a faded, blue-flowered beige couch in the bed of the wagon. The boy looked over at me as I was busy studying them—him, mostly—and we looked hard at each other for a brief second before my peppermint stick was roughly yanked out of my hand.

“Looky here! It's Laggin' Leg!” said a familiar, taunting voice from behind me.

Ray Coons sneered down at me. I hated Ray. I hated him with every fiber of my being for creating my torturous nickname. I jumped up to grab my candy and when I did, Ray laughed and pushed me, causing me to fall off of the sidewalk and into a pile of horse dung that Natty, our very own horse, had dropped as she stood hooked to our wagon waiting patiently for Papa to return. At the moment, however, she stomped and stepped nervously about after the commotion of the barking dogs and my fall. More concerned about being stomped on by her shoed hooves than anything else at the moment, I scrambled out from underneath her and limped away as quickly as I could. I looked around for further assault from Ray, but he had hurriedly run down the street before anyone else could point him out as the culprit. As I leaned against the front of Taft's, trying to stop shaking and trying even harder to make myself small and invisible, I realized that my hair smelled awful, and felt heavy, too. It was pushed back in a strange way from the right side of my face and when I reached up to untangle it I felt a large glob of horse dung caked all through it. Snarled in the mess was Grandma's comb. I pulled it from my hair, then began to cry as I realized that one of its teeth had been broken off. Walking over to the horses' watering trough, I worked the old handle of the rusted pump and held the ancient comb beneath the lukewarm water, trying to wash away the stinking, nauseating remnants of Natty's deposit. The final blow came, though, when I realized that one of the comb's green crystals was missing, too, which turned my soft crying into hard, breath-sucking sobbing. Regardless of the fact that it was nearly impossible to breathe, I bent over and held my matted, filthy hair beneath the flowing water. Finally, when I'd done all I could, I hoisted my dirty and damaged self up and over into our wagon's bed, lying down so that no one could see me or further torture me on this, my most special day.

Suddenly, Natty snorted and my eyes snapped open. Realizing that I must have fallen asleep and was now staring up into a blinding noonday sun, I quickly shut them and rolled over onto my left side. I was busy watching the orbs of light dance behind my eyelids when suddenly I heard a soft, scraping, papery sound come from above and to my right. Turning my head toward the sound, I saw a hand pulling back from the wagon's seat. Fearing it was Ray Coons again, I lay quietly, not breathing, and prayed to God that Ray would not see me tucked in the back. After a minute of stillness, I cautiously sat up and looked on the seat.

There, lying on the passenger's side of the wagon's bench lay a small, brown paper bag. I reached out and poked at it, afraid something alive, slithery, and poisonous might be lying in wait inside. But when nothing poked pack, I gingerly picked it up with two fingers and placed it down by me in the wagon's bed. Inside, glistening and wonderful and delivered from some heavenly birthday angel above, were two brand new, beautiful peppermints sticks. My mouth formed into a perfect surprised
O
, then quickly but timidly I peeked out over the side of the wagon. Settling back onto the faded blue-flowered couch in the bed of the strangers' wagon was the dark-haired boy. In his hand was another brown paper bag. He looked up at me as though he knew I must be watching, and seeing that I was, he opened his bag, pulled out a peppermint stick, smiled the most beautiful smile I'd ever received and promptly stuck it in his mouth.

I laughed out loud in response, and then, while never taking my eyes off of him, I reached into my own bag and promptly stuck a peppermint into my own waiting mouth. I saw his shoulders rise and fall in a slight chuckle. He seemed pleased by my surprise and delight. I couldn't know if it seemed like a little thing to him, this kindness he'd shown me, but it was a large and indescribable moment for me. With his one small act of compassion and sympathy, this boy had created his own place in my heart. He was my ally and friend, and I instantly loved him. Now all I needed to know was his name.