The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [21]
Every week we got a little faster, or maybe just more careless. The march out to the orchard after school and on Saturdays became a ritual. Sometimes I would even forget what we were doing and why we were doing it. Moving the pruning handles became as automatic as pedaling a bike. We went over the same conversation topics too—the TV show Diff'rent Strokes, cars, the new Farmington Mall, and Shasta flavors. By the middle of March, we were up to finishing fifty trees a week. The last week in March we did sixty. It helped that the days had gotten longer and the temperature had warmed up. Sam had also learned to hang on better in the trees.
Mrs. Nelson caught me several times on the way out to or coming back from the orchard, and she loved to talk about my "little gang of workers," as she called them. She kept telling me how beautiful the spring blossoming would be.
***
One afternoon in late March, Tommy showed up in the orchard. He wandered out to where we were pruning, clumsily dodging the branches lying on the ground. I reluctantly climbed off my ladder to greet him. I wasn't sure what to say or if I should call him Tommy or Mr. Nelson. I studied his face for signs of anger or resentment. He mostly looked uncomfortable and was dressed in slacks and brown leather shoes. His body was soft and bulging in all the wrong places. He stopped about ten feet from me and pretended to be interested in one of the pruned trees.
"Hi," I called out in the friendliest voice I could muster.
"Hey. Thought I'd come check out the big reclamation project. My mom says you're going to be the new apple baron around here," Tommy replied dryly.
I couldn't tell if he was taunting me. "Yeah, she really wants to see some apples out here," I said a little defensively.
"I've been hearing that for years."
"I'm sorry to hear your mom has cancer," I said, trying to sound sincere and thoughtful.
"Shoot. She's had cancer so many times I've lost count. Any little pain she gets, she's always blaming it on cancer. I wish she'd at least think up some new disease to blame."
Tommy stared at one of the piles of branches in the middle of a row. He gave an admiring whistle. "So how many trees go into each pile?" he asked.
"Oh, about three or four," I answered proudly.
He said it reminded him of the pile of wood he had seen at a bonfire. "Be pretty amazing if you lit all of 'em up at once."
I agreed with a little laugh, and then he waved good-bye and strolled off. All and all, it was a strange conversation. Instead of being mad about what was going on in the orchard, he didn't even seem to care.
***
We finished the last tree on March's final Saturday as the sky changed from blue into a pale pink sunset. I told everyone to wait while I ran back to my room to get my map of the orchard. We crossed off the few remaining trees and gave a little cheer.
"We're right on schedule. Can you believe it?" I asked giddily.
"So do we get paid now?" asked Michael.
Sometimes I couldn't tell whether he was serious.
"No, but I'm pretty sure the hardest part is over." Five pairs of eyes looked at me hopefully.
Chapter 6
Learning to Drive
The relief of finishing the pruning was short-lived. After church on Sunday, all six of us went outside to the orchard to think about how to get rid of all the branches piled next to the trees. We had to assure my mom that we wouldn't be working, only thinking.
The orchard formed most of the view from the front door of my house. Out the back door was what my dad called "desolate land." It had some tumbleweeds, sagebrush, and wild grasses, but mostly it was rocks and dirt. If I went walking out there, my socks would always come back full of stickers and my mom would make me sit outside and pull them out before I was allowed into the house. The desolate land must have been owned by Mr. Nelson, because when he was alive he would pile branches in random places on it. I had never realized where he was getting the branches until we started