The Year Money Grew on Trees - Aaron Hawkins [78]
"Thought I'd pick a few of the leftovers for my family before they drop."
"Well, might as well go ahead and give you this," he said, and pulled a manila envelope out of his coat pocket.
At first I thought it was the envelope I had left on Mrs. Nelson's doorstep, but then I saw it had different writing on it. I took it from his gloved hands.
"Go ahead and open it," he said.
"What is it?" I asked as I turned over the flap on top of the envelope. I pulled out the papers inside. They looked like legal documents or something, and I could see numbers written on them.
"It's the deed to the orchard."
"It is? What does that mean?" I asked while thumbing through the papers.
He pointed to the last page and said, "That's my mom's signature down there at the bottom. It means all you have to do is sign next to it and the orchard's yours. Everything else has been filed with the county already."
I looked up at him in disbelief. "Really? Aren't you mad about this or something?" I blurted out.
"Me? Why should I be mad?"
"Wasn't it supposed to go to you?"
"Maybe when my mom dies, but she'll probably outlive me just to prove a point. Actually, I'm kind of glad it's going to be yours. Then she can't keep nagging me about it."
I stared back down at the documents. "Well, is she mad?" I asked him.
"I don't know about mad. Maybe a little embarrassed and feeling silly. I'm sure she'll get over it next spring when the trees are blooming." He said this last part trying to imitate her voice.
"You know when she told me about your little agreement," Tommy continued, "I mostly felt sorry for you. My mom has no idea what it takes to make any money doing something like this. That $8,000 sounded impossible to me. I didn't want to tell you that because you looked so eager that I hated to discourage you."
"What did you think was going to happen?"
"I thought you would just kind of give up. When I saw the $8,000, I was floored. At first my mom wanted to think of a way not to turn over the orchard, but I kept telling her she'd be the laughingstock of the whole state if people found out she cheated some kid. I figured she owed it to you, no matter how cuckoo the agree ment was. Of course, the only thing that really worked on her was threatening to stop coming out to see her."
"Thanks," I said, although it didn't sound like enough.
"And by the way, I made her sign over the water rights too. This place isn't much good without them."
I didn't really know what water rights were, but I figured they must have something to do with the canal.
"Thanks again, Tommy. How about the other stuff, like the ladders?"
"Go ahead and keep them. She's not gonna need them for anything."
He looked down at my hands that were still holding the envelope and then looked around the orchard. "So how'd you do it?" he asked. "I mean, that's a lot of apples."
I thought hard about his question and about everything that had fallen into place over the past eight months—the library book, my cousins and sisters, the old Ford tractor, the apples not freezing, Brother Brown, Jimmy, the free boxes at the dump. Take away one of those things, and we probably would have failed.
"I guess I was pretty lucky."
"Whatever it was, I'll always be impressed," replied Tommy, nodding his head.
I looked down at the envelope, and it suddenly felt heavy. Tommy deserved some of the credit too. "If you didn't stand up for me, well, I don't know what..." I trailed off.
Tommy shuffled his feet and looked at the ground. "Ahhh, I figured I owed it to my dad. I never did help him like I probably should have. I dunno, I guess I regret what he probably thought of me, how we never seemed to have anything in common. If I plowed up these trees, he'd probably haunt me forever. It's better having you worry about them."
Tommy held his hands up to his ears like he was trying to keep them warm. "I gotta run, before I freeze." He turned and started walking away. "Hey, Jackson," he called, "just don't turn it