Empire Harvest

The apples are late to ripen this September. The brisk wind of late summer carries a crisp fragrance through the rows and rows of trees, their boughs growing heavy with sweetening orbs, each in transition from green to red.

The smell brings Richard back to his teenage years, when his father would have him join the farmhands in the harvest. They would climb up stout, wobbly ladders and pluck ripe fruit from the branches, collecting the apples in wooden crates. The farmhands were burly, tanned, had families and leathery skin. They worked hard and for cheap. Richard was skinny, pale, fourteen and acne-ridden. He worked for free and he hated it.

“Builds character,” his father would say as he sat on the veranda, from which the entire orchard could be surveyed. He oversaw the harvest from a creaky rocking chair, where he puffed away at a pipe stuffed with tobacco which he had grown and cured himself. Richard’s complaints had become routine, and so had his father’s reply, which he uttered with marked stoicism. “If you don’t put in the work now, how do you s’pose you’ll run this place when you’re older? Now get back out there, we’re losing daylight.”

Flustered, defeated, and having no other option, Richard would begrudgingly trudge back to the trees full of working men. He would curse his father under his breath and vow to himself that he would never take on the family business as was expected of him. Keeping his word, he moved away to the nearest town as soon as he could. He washed dishes at a diner and rented a dingy studio apartment that allowed him to live in peace — far from the orchard, and free of his father’s domineering rule.

Last night he was awoken with a jolt by the harsh, metallic ring of the telephone. He knew at once something awful had happened.

He can’t get the scene of the accident out of his mind — the mangled iron of the overturned pickup reflecting the flashing lights of the ambulance; the low chatter of the emergency responders talking in jargon with nonchalance; his short interview with the constable, the scrape of the pen on the pages of his little, black book; the pale blue sheet draped over his father’s body, boots sticking out the end.

Richard stood at the edge of the road for hours that night, staring into the darkness well after the ambulance had left to carry his father’s corpse to the morgue. Richard was grieving. Not his father, but his short bout of freedom. Crashing his car and dying seemed to have been the final twist of his father’s domineering knife. There was no doubt that Richard was the sole beneficiary of the will. He would be the one to inherit savings amounting to over $20, 000, along with the farmhouse, the equipment, and every single tree in the orchard.

And now Richard is back on the veranda, looking at the same apple trees he spent so many years of his life despising. He hasn’t been here in years. The sky above the trees is cloudless and vast. The soft rustle of the leaves ceases as the breeze abates. The empty rocking chair continues to move back and forth, creaking as it always has, cutting through the momentary silence.

Richard steps down from the veranda and makes his way toward the orchard. He’s walked this same path countless times, accompanied by feelings of wrath and contempt. This time there’s a levity in his gait, his ire and disdain replaced with contentment. He notices a ladder leaning up against one of the trees — unusual for so early in the season. Richard soon finds himself several rungs up, his head in the canopy among the ripening fruit. At the end of a high branch hangs a singular, crimson apple. He steps off on the ladder and shifts his weight onto one of the lower branches. Gripping the rough, grey bark of the tree’s trunk, he stretches to reach the ripe fruit above. He pulls it toward him, plucking it from the branch which swings back up into the air, unburdened. The feeling of the waxy skin against his palm feels familiar, intimate even.

Raising the apple to his mouth, he bites into the sweet flesh.