The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [50]
My favorite times were when Amy and I were working by ourselves on a tree. I would mostly just listen to her ramble. She loved to tell me about all the people at school and who liked whom. I knew most of them only through Amy's stories, but I still liked the way she took all of their lives so seriously. She seemed to have no interest in the future beyond her next three years of high school. I tried to get her to tell me what she was going to do after that, but she would always change the subject. Even when we played our favorite game, "would you rather," she limited her opinions to things in the short term. When I asked, "Would you rather live in a trailer but drive a Ferrari or live in a mansion but drive a VW Bug?" she didn't seem to care. But when I asked about Homecoming queen versus Prom queen, her opinions were very strong about Homecoming queen. I didn't understand it much and decided it must have something to do with being a girl.
It was amazing to see what we could accomplish working full-time. The thinning was done in only three weeks, and by the time July hit, there wasn't much for six people to do, really. The weeds in the orchard had completely surrendered and been wiped out. Sam even became obsessed with pulling the discing machine behind the tractor to churn and chop up weeds we'd missed.
Every other week I would take the tractor to General Supply and buy more Diazinon and cans of pop for full workdays. I probably could have bought enough for the whole summer in one trip, but I kind of liked driving to the store. In the furniture section, there was a huge air conditioner. It felt great on a hot day to sit on the couches and chairs and be drenched by the cool air and then wander around the store examining all the strange things for sale. When Michael figured out their charge system, he begged me to buy him all kinds of things, especially a BB gun and a baby chick.
Eventually, the girls only joined us on watering days. The hotter it got, the more we all looked forward to irrigating and would do it without shoes on and in rolled up pants. Sitting underneath the shade of the trees with the water rolling over our feet was the coolest place we had.
The one activity we never seemed to finish was digging out the ditches by hand. With the hot July sun beating down, we didn't work very hard at that, though. Ditch digging was usually relegated to Sam, Michael, and me. If we did nothing else on a particular day, I always made sure we moved our shovels around a little. When my dad would ask me at night what I'd done during the day, I could always at least answer, "Dug a ditch." He would reply that was better than nothing but that I would be better off down at the scrap yard.
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The deeper we got into the summer, the less I talked with or even saw Mrs. Nelson. Right after school let out, when we were thinning or weeding, she would occasionally watch from her window and walk out to talk sometimes as I passed by her house. As the temperatures rose, she stopped coming out as much. Finally, she stayed inside altogether. I took her branches and samples of the apples every few weeks so she could see how well they were growing. The bigger the apples got, the less interested she seemed. Sometimes she would even pretend not to be home, but I would leave my samples by the front door, anyway. The way she acted worried me more and more.
I had reread our contract enough times to memorize it during the first weeks of pruning. Since then I had mostly left it in its hiding place, almost afraid to think about it. I had pushed it into some future place in my head. Maybe Mrs. Nelson had too. But after five months of work, I couldn't just walk away empty-handed; not with my sisters and cousins involved. I had to get some money and in the best case scenario the orchard too. I had slowly come to realize the orchard was worth something. I didn't know how much for sure, but when my dad talked about owning land, it was always a big deal.