The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [68]
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On Thursday afternoon of the sixth week, Amy and I were already picking when Lisa stopped to talk to us on her way out to the road. She had a jelly jar full of green bills in her hands. This was just one jar of an assortment she kept under her bed with different amounts of money inside and labels taped to their outsides.
"I just want you to know that we've now cleared the $5,000 mark," she said excitedly.
"No way! That's amazing," said Amy.
"Yeah, good news," I added. I tried to sound as enthusiastic as possible, even though it was actually terrible news. We had so little time left and were still thousands of dollars away from where we had to be.
"I never really thought we could sell this much," Lisa continued.
I bit my lip and climbed up my ladder. We had moved into the red apple portion of the orchard. Brother Brown called them Roman Beauties, but, according to Lisa, the Navajo customers just called them the "red ones." They didn't like them as much as the Golden Delicious, or "white ones," but were still buying them.
The leaves on the trees had begun to turn from the bright green of summer into the yellow green of fall. They felt leathery instead of soft like when they were new. While we picked, I listened to Amy humming along to the radio and chattering about her homeroom teacher. Everyone else was up at the road. Then I heard a sound I had never heard before. From behind me, there was a low thump. I looked around. Again in the distance, I heard the thump. I strained my ears to listen and heard another one.
My heart raced as I realized what the sound was: apples falling off the trees and hitting the ground.
We had reached the end.
It was probably only a matter of days before the rest of them were bad. I tried quickening my pace and even stopped worrying about the stems. I threw apples into the picking bag and practically jumped off the ladder to dump them in boxes.
My fingers began to shake from a combination of fear and fatigue. All I could hear were the thump of falling apples and the pop as I pulled others off their stems. The tree became blurry, and I could hardly keep my balance. As I tried to move off the ladder, I slipped and fell to the ground. Apples spilled out of my bag.
I lay with my face in the dirt, breathing it in. I pounded it with my fists over and over and then raised my head up and spit mud from my mouth. I rolled over and looked straight up into the branches of the nearest trees. Then there was Amy standing over me.
I sat up and put my head on my knees, and she sat down on the ground in front of me. She didn't ask what was wrong or if I was hurt. She didn't say anything.
It was warm for October, one of those days that trick you into thinking it's still summer. I felt the sweat from my head making the knees of my pants wet. The sky was changing from dark to light blue, and the first streaks of pink were forming above us. A golden light streamed through the leafy shadows and onto Amy's face. Even the beams of light seemed as if they were moving in slow motion.
"Do you remember when we were first learning to ride bikes?" she asked.
I didn't say anything.
"You could never balance very well," she continued. "But you kept trying over and over again. I remember your legs and arms were like one big bruise and scrape before you figured it out."
I looked at her silently.
"And then when I went to kindergarten, you would ride your bike out to the bus every day to meet me. I always liked that. I still remember it really clearly." Her voice trailed off as she tried to picture it in her mind.
"Sometimes I wish we would have been in the same grade, though," she said. "You could have probably helped me with most of my classes. Maybe people would think I was smart too." She smiled.
Suddenly, I wanted to tell her everything—to make her understand and to make her forgive me. It wasn't going to be enough! No one was going to get any money. And I had done everything for the wrong reasons and had led them on the whole