Chapter 5
FIVE
Will cuts the engine, grimacing when he hears it whine slightly as it settles down. He climbs out of the car and stretches, even though it hasn’t been more than a fifteen-minute drive. He pats his pockets, checking that he has his wallet, phone, and keys. He straightens his shirt.
He stares at the bright yellow door of the market, which yesterday had looked inviting and today reminds him that yellow is a color that often indicates poison in nature, for so long that he begins to feel a little awkward about it.
Then he turns on his heel, and instead walks sharply towards the first apple orchard.
He’d barely gotten a chance to glance at it yesterday with Catherine; she’d walked so quickly in spite of those terrifyingly high spike heels.
But the first orchard, so called because it was the one Original Bill had planted back in the early days of the farm, deserves more from Will than a passing glance.
He’s missed many years of its life, but it was there for nearly the first twenty years of his, a large, familiar grove of old, silent friends.
When he gets to the gate, however, a dark-haired teenager in a yellow T-shirt the same color as the market door is standing there.
There’s a tree-shaped nametag affixed to the shirt, similar to Casey’s, but this one says Noel , and then, in smaller but somehow more pointed handwriting, they/them .
They smile both brightly and somewhat falsely at Will and say, “Hi there! Welcome to Robertson Family Farms. Are you here to pick your own apples? To get a bag you can visit the market, just back?—”
“No!” Will says sharply, and then, when the teenager’s customer service mask flickers in badly concealed alarm, wants to bite his own tongue off.
He recognizes that expression from people dealing with his father; he’s not interested in carrying on that particular family legacy.
More softly, he says, “Sorry, uh. I’m sorry.
I’m not looking to pick the apples. I’m—” He pauses, considering his choice of words.
He could say he’s the owner, of course. That’s…
true. He knows, logically, that it’s true.
It just doesn’t feel true, and he doesn’t want to be a jerk about it, and, anyway, it’s not like it’s going to be true for long.
In another day or two, he’s going to sign the paperwork and never set foot here again, exactly according to plan.
No point putting on airs, or assuming his father’s stupid mantle, for what will amount to less than forty-eight hours.
His hesitation must come off wrong, however, because Noel abandons all traces of customer-service voice and settles into what must be their more natural disaffected teen personality.
Crossing their arms over their chest, they demand: “Look, man, are you some kind of creep or something? Trying to pick up women? Because we’re not going to be having any of that at all, I’ll get Casey out here so fast?—”
“God,” Will says, a horrified laugh spilling out on the word, “no, no, nothing like that. I wouldn’t be picking up women, anyway, but I’m not—uh, I’m not here for that. I…grew up here? My dad just died? Bill?—”
“Oh my God you’re Will Robertson ,” Noel gasps, putting a hand to their mouth. Then, dropping it abruptly, they say, “Oh my God , does Casey know you’re here? Oh my God, he’s going to flip out , he’s?—”
“Whoaaa there,” Will says, holding up a hand.
He tries, frantically, to think back to what motivates teenagers; all his brain offers up to him is “information” and “currency,” but hey, any port in a storm, right?
Lowering his voice and pulling out his wallet, Will says, “Look, here’s the truth—Casey knows I’m here, in town, but I’d rather he didn’t know I was here right now.
So I will give you…” Will riffles through his wallet, wincing.
“…uh, well, twenty…six dollars, it looks like, if you’ll keep this between us. Okay?”
“Gee, thanks, mister!” Noel says, with an oddly wholesome enthusiasm, accepting the money. They let Will pass without another word, waving him off cheerfully as he goes.
Knowing from years of experience that the first several stands of apple trees will be packed with guests but the rest will go largely ignored, as visitors don’t typically want to walk that far, Will hurries along the heavily trafficked dirt paths until he’s bypassed the tourists, then starts cutting between rows and trees.
He walks slowly and carefully between them, noticing each brush of a finely toothed leaf or ripe, swollen fruit, stepping easily away from lazy, sugar-drunk wasps.
By this time of the year, the ground is littered with apples—there are signs now, Will notices, encouraging guests to toss any bruised or half-eaten apples to the ground, to help support the soil and ecosystem.
They hadn’t needed those back in Will’s day; guests hadn’t needed to be told twice to chuck a moldy, mealy, or worm-filled apple.
God , the apples look good. It had been remarkable in the market, but the improved health of the trees, at least compared to what Will remembers, is incredibly stark.
Whatever he might feel about Casey, it’s good to see the old grove looking so lush, like it’s growing for the joy of it instead battling against adverse conditions.
He stops, surprised and a little annoyed to find himself blinking back tears, in front of his favorite apple tree.
It’s a Melrose tree, although of course Will hadn’t known that when it had become his favorite; it had been the one with the lowest bottom branch, and thus the easiest one for him to climb as a short, scrawny six-year-old.
And there had been, in the heart of the tree, a perfectly forked little wooden seat, which, in a happy accident of branch growth, always seemed to fit him perfectly, even as he got older.
Will could sit there amidst apple blossoms in spring, hidden through the summer by the dark, saw-edged green of the leaves, and always, from August through nearly to Thanksgiving, in reach of an easy snack.
It wasn’t always a ripe snack, of course—the Melrose, like Will, was really a child of October—but even the tiny, half-finished apples were sweet and tart, quietly satisfying.
They’re ripe now, swollen nearly to the point of dropping everywhere he looks; someone on staff will probably be out in the next few days to clear them, he realizes, a little startled by it.
It washes over him that while he knows exactly what will happen to these apples, who exactly will be doing it is a strange, yawning mystery.
Every Melrose before him will be picked, then sorted and separated, the best sent to the market, the bakery, or into cold storage for later sale, and the rest divided by quality for cider production or to supplement the animal feed—but by whom?
Once it would have been Clive and Denise, or Tara and Jed, or Samson and Kyle, or…
Well. Will doesn’t remember them all, the rotating cast of farm staff who’d been hired and fired on Bill’s capricious whims. Still, he’d always known , while he was actually here , who they were at any given moment.
It’s oddly unmooring to realize he doesn’t; more than the changes to the farm, the town, the yellow market door, Mere’s children , it drops on Will the weight of how long he’s been gone, on how much has carried on, come and gone, without him.
He can’t bring himself to climb it—it will hurt too much if the seat no longer fits—but, eyes stinging, Will pulls an apple off the tree and takes a bite.
He remembers, as he chews and swallows, that it’s the state apple of Ohio, chosen sometime in the ’40s.
As a young man, Old Bill had ripped out fifteen Baldwin trees to put these in against his own father’s advice, which Will only knows because the ensuing fight had entered family lore.
Will thinks now that the Melrose is an appropriate representative choice: so sweet at the front of the bite that you can almost forget the note of sharp, puckering sour at the back.
It’s a good apple, though, and Will chomps quite happily through it as he makes his way out of the first orchard.
To avoid the indignity of being caught having picked an apple after all by Noel the Easily Bribed Teen, Will decides to avoid going back through to the main gate.
He cuts, instead, through the back of the first orchard, and into the little collection of sheds, silos, and other storage outbuildings that various Bills have had constructed here out of lack of interest in considering anywhere better to put them.
Many times over the years, as Will grimly drove one of roughly seventeen loads of feed grain per season clear across the farm on their wheezing, ancient tractor, he’d wondered why no one had, for example, considered building the feed silo next to the barn .
But critical thinking was not encouraged, at least not from Will—it was the sort of idea that, if voiced, would, at best, result in his being told to watch his mouth.
He’s grimly pleased to see these are roughly as he saw them last. That they haven’t collapsed is honestly impressive; not a one of them was in solid condition even when Will was a kid.
Some of them look like they’re one good storm or heavy snow away from becoming the Ruins Formerly Known as Bill’s “To Repair” Shed, and Will considers peeking inside a few of them and decides better of it. Some doors are better left unopened.