The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [26]
I wasn't exactly sure whether he was joking or not, but I took the hose, anyway. I gave it a quick suck and then pushed it to the ground.
"You're going to have to do it a little longer than that," he said with an encouraging voice.
On the second try, my hands felt the cool gas filling the hose, but I lost my nerve and stopped sucking too soon again. On the third try, the gas poured freely. I spit and coughed as I moved the hose to the gas can.
"Get any in your mouth?" my uncle asked.
"A little. Not as much as with the tractor."
We both giggled as the can filled up, and then we pulled the hose out of the car's gas pipe. He even carried the can out to the tractor for me and helped pour it into the fuel tank.
We finished with the branches and parked the tractor back in its spot between our two houses. "So what was it my dad showed you?" asked Amy when we were alone.
"I'll teach you the next time the tractor runs out of gas," I told her. And I did. For the next six months, my dad and uncle unknowingly provided gas for the tractor. We would alternate taking it from both of their cars. We tried not to take more than two gallons at a time so they wouldn't be suspicious. I'm not sure they didn't know, however. On more than one occasion, my uncle asked my dad, in a voice that he was sure I could hear, "How's the gas gauge in your car? Mine seems to be broken since the weather's been getting hotter."
I figured we could make it up to them in free apples.
Chapter 7
World's Stinkiest Shoes
Before going to sleep on the night we finished hauling branches out of the orchard, I checked the things I had copied out of the apple book. I couldn't help feeling proud of myself for getting the pruning done. To be honest, I never thought we would get this far.
The apple book had not given dates for when things should be done, but I had made a list of what should follow what. After pruning came "preparing the soil," which included fertilizing. The book had talked about a few different fertilizers. Some of them had chemical names that sounded like they came from a secret government lab. The other kind of fertilizer was manure. I had never thought about it before, but the book said different kinds of animals made different kinds of manure. Cow manure seemed like the popular choice for apple trees.
Choosing the right fertilizer, and then getting my hands on it, was probably going to be difficult. It was something I would like to have skipped altogether, especially if manure was involved. But those trees had been ignored for five years and probably needed all the help they could get. Maybe I could use some of that clean, man-made chemical stuff if it worked. And after all that pruning work, it would be a shame if apples didn't grow.
My dad had said that there were plenty of apple farmers around, but it didn't occur to me until we started pruning that I actually knew one of them. My Sunday school teacher, Brother Brown, had a place with at least three thousand trees. I didn't think of him right away because I had never actually talked to him. He wasn't one of those teachers who bought into ideas like class discussions or nurturing learning environments. Our class was full of a dozen seventh- and eighth-graders, but after two years together I'd bet he didn't know any of our names. He was short and wrinkled with only bits of hair left on his head, and we were terrified of him. For some unspoken reason, we were sure that if we made any noise, he wouldn't be afraid to cane us, even if we were in a church class.
I watched Brother Brown carefully during our next Sunday school class, wondering if I could ask him something without getting beaten. All the other kids were looking