The Orchard
or
On the Edge of the Dark
“This saying good-by on the edge of the dark
And the cold to an orchard so young in the bark
Reminds me of all that can happen to harm
An orchard away at the end of the farm.”
—Robert Frost
He wasn’t exactly surprised when it happened, no not exactly, not at that deeper, primal level where dark things grow. After all, she told him once that sure as he was born, she’d poison him if he was ever unfaithful to her. She said she wouldn’t even tell him if she found out, she’d just bring him his nightly scotch and the Holy Ghost would take care of the rest.
“Oh, yessir,” his wife said. “The Holy Ghost most surely helps with matters like that, rest assured.”
Nathan smiled and took a long drink of the scotch she’d just set down in front of him.
“Good thing we’ll never have to worry about that,” he said. “I’ll be loving you into the grave, darling.”
Nathan Slaughter had long been suspicious of people and especially those who said they loved him, a trait that was inherited in both blood and word from his father. Never give your soul away when it’s the only thing you have left, his father told him. Whoever takes it won’t be around when God asks for it back. Nathan knew that people would take all you had if you weren’t careful; and when all you had left was a little happiness and love, that’s when they came prowling like wolves.
Nathan Slaughter vowed he’d never marry or give his own heart’s blood for someone who didn’t give something back, but somehow, he knew it was providence the day he saw Susan Moore stealing apples from the orchard.
As he watched her climb up into the trees and search for the ripest ones, dropping them into a sack on her shoulder, he swore then and there that he felt his heart leap in his chest. He swore again that when she took a bite of one of the apples and the juice dripped down her smooth, round chin, that was the exact moment he fell in love with her. He walked out to the tree and stood on the ground below. He smiled and told her that he could hand her over to the Sheriff for robbery, or she could let him take her out sometime.
They were married a month after the harvest, and Nathan spent near every dime on preparing their home: a new comfortable bed, a new stove, sofa, and all the dresses and hats his young bride could ever want. He gave her all he had to offer and in return she loved him and the orchard.
Of course there were some who thought it was a thing of great misfortune that she was forced to take the surname of Slaughter. But neither Nathan nor Susan ever paid it much mind. The Slaughter Orchard became something of a tourist trap as families passed through town and saw the signs for the orchard on their way to the beach: SLAUGHTER ORCHARD BEST APPLES IN THE STATE. The sign was a curiosity that couldn’t simply be driven past. Pictures of the signs filled tourists’ cameras and such free advertising gave Nathan and Susan a yearly boon of customers that made the difference between keeping the farm or going on the county. But more so than the name or yearly tourists, Nate Slaughter’s apples were second to none anywhere in the country. Crisp, sweet, with the perfect amount of tart, the juice seemed to pour out on the first bite like some ambrosia Nathan had been gifted from God, his reward for living a good, simple life.
Part of why Nathan Slaughter believed his apples tasted so good were their proximity to the old highway and its ever-increasing volume of traffic. Every other day, Nathan would go out at night and walk up and down the road, gathering the carcasses and carrion of creatures that died under the wheels of progress. Opossums, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, Nathan would get to them in the earliest breaths of morning, before the vultures and scavengers, and add their broken bodies to the compost for the trees.
The way Nathan saw it, he figured trees would be the one thing he’d miss most from this earth. He had grown up under their arboreal presence, had touched their bark and eaten their fruit ten thousand times before. They had carried him in their branches and heard his most private confessions and dreams, though they never spoke a single reply. He now cared for the orchard as he would have the child that was taken from him and Susan. Even before the infant could take a breath, such breath had already been taken from it. Nathan buried the boy under a tree in the center of the orchard, the oldest tree that had been planted long before any of the others.
As he walked the rows he whispered good-mornings and dragged his fingers across their skeletal branches. He would pluck an apple every few trees to test the fruit, and then leave the core on the ground for the worms to finish off.
Of course an orchard doesn’t make a man rich, but it gave just enough for many years. Nathan and his wife never had much extra, but they rarely were left to worry about things.
Nathan Slaughter loved his wife and took care of her throughout their forty-seven years of marriage. He planted and pruned and took care of his orchard every spring and summer, and by autumn the harvest was always bountiful. Nathan plowed his own plot, he chopped wood and carried water, and he considered himself a bird of the air, another lily of the field, and what little they had always seemed like more than what they deserved.
As the years passed on and the old mountain roads gave way to highways fifty lanes wide, as new cities were built where small towns once thrived, the highway and all the roads around the orchard were bought. Nathan prepared the orchard in the spring of that year, but by the time harvest came, the trees were heavy and full under the impossible weight of apples with no customers come to pick them. Nathan drove a meager several dozen bushels to the farmer’s market in his truck each week, but it would never be enough.
It was a Wednesday when the letter arrived in the mail and neither Susan nor Nathan gave it much thought. It just sat in a basket with all the other bills they wished to forget for another week. They forgot about the letter entirely until that following Wednesday when Susan opened the envelope. She read it twice just to be sure her eyes weren’t playing any games. She had been correct on her second read, and put a slender hand to her mouth to keep an elated scream from escaping. She folded up the letter and ran out to the orchard. Her husband was walking the rows, murmuring things to himself and to the trees like an open wound. Never had Susan interrupted Nathan when he walked the rows, but she felt the letter seemed cause enough today.
“This came for you,” she said, hurrying down the row to catch up with her husband. “We might have solved our troubles!” He took the letter, read it, and folded it back up neatly. He slid it into his back pocket and smiled at his wife.
“It’s one fine morning isn’t it,” he said.
She nodded, waiting for him to say something about the letter.
“How about some lunch, darling?” he said.
Susan was unsure what to make of this and his rather dull expression. But she nodded and went back to the house to prepare lunch all the same.
When Nathan came in a half-hour or so later, he washed up at the sink and sat down across from his wife and said the blessing.
Susan waited for as long as she possibly could for Nathan to say something, but as she watched his jaw bounce and gnaw on his lunch, she saw no words were going to come.
“What do you think about the letter from the county?” she said.
“Not a whole lot,” Nathan said.
“Two-hundred thousand dollars sure is something to think about, Nathan.”
He stared at her, feeling his heart sink. He wasn’t exactly surprised about this, not exactly, not on the deeper, primal level where dark things grow. He knew what was happening, what was coming. No, he wasn’t surprised, but sad. Yes, that was the word. That’s what was making his heart bleed in hopeless murmurs like a wailing animal. He wasn’t surprised. He’d been waiting for it after all.
“Don’t you think it’s time to let this place go?” she said. “Don’t you want to live in a city for once, to have neighbors? Don’t you ever think about seeing the world?”
“No, I don’t,” he said.
“Goddamnit, Nathan, it’s dead, the orchard is gone. I want to be around people, I want to go to parties and cookouts. I want to go to the ocean in the summer. I want to be in the world, like how people are. Not stranded on an orchard in the mountains. I’ve done this for you for almost all my life. I can’t anymore. I can’t! I can’t!”
He helped himself to an apple from the bowl on the table and took a large bite. He chewed and thought, holding his sharp blue eyes steadily on his wife.
“Sign the papers, Nathan. For me. Or at least, call that office and talk it through. You can do that, can’t you?”
“I’ll think about it,” he said. “Thank you for lunch, darling.” He stood, cleared his dishes, and walked back out to the orchard.
As he spread fresh compost dirt around the understory of the orchard, Nathan did think about the letter. He knew what it meant. He knew that a group of men somewhere wanted to take what little he had, so they could destroy it. They destroyed the things they didn’t understand and the things that frightened them and the things they could never have. And Nathan knew the orchard was all of these things to those men. They bought up land to burn it down and create a new earth on top of it, an earth they could own and ruin. Progress they called it, industry and innovation. But Nathan knew it wasn’t anything more than rot and decay. If Nathan signed those papers he would just be another coward bending the knee to greed. Thesemen felt that the price of Nathan Slaughter’s soul was worth two-hundred thousand dollars, and he laughed at the thought just then. Who would be left if he sold? If all the land goes to the fire, what will be left for the people? Surely Susan saw this, dear God she must see this as clearly as he did.
He had been born on the orchard; he had eaten and found sustenance from the land. This plot of earth had heard his cries, dreams, and sorrows. He had bled on this earth, wept on this earth, slept, ate, thought, pissed, walked, dreamed, loved on this very earth he stood. He had given the orchard his own heart’s blood and it had given all of itself back to him.
He stuck his shovel in the dirt and lay down under the shade of the apple trees. Below him, he could almost swear he heard his son’s voice whispering, he could hear the entire line of his people back to the beginning, all buried in this earth, calling out to him. Above him, the sky murmured in a soft August song as sunlight dripped like honey past the cloudbreak and rested evenly on his old, tired skin.
“To whom would I go,” he said to the trees. “You have all a man could need.”
Susan stared at the letter. She read each word carefully, wondering if there was something she was missing that Nathan saw. There wasn’t. She saw it all, saw it clearly. They had lived every single day of their forty-seven years of marriage in this house together, on this orchard, and that was more than enough in her mind. The way she saw it, it was simply time for something more, something just . . . different. That was all. She’d given all she was to be with Nathan on this land, had stopped her own ambitions and killed her dreams, so he could fulfill his own. Now, all she wanted was to feel the ocean. She wanted to lay down on the warm sand and feel the tide wash over her as the noise of the world fell away.
She looked out the kitchen window and could see Nathan lying down in the orchard. She felt her heart sink. She had warned him of this. If ever he was unfaithful to her, she told him what she’d do, and in that moment, she finally saw it. He loved the orchard more than he loved her, more than he ever would love her. She wondered if perhaps she wasn’t also partly to blame in the matter. She let him go off like he did, let him grow more and more quiet and spend all his time among the trees. She never spoke up about her feelings, and while that may have been a splinter in her wounded heart, Nathan was to blame for the beam stabbed beside it.
She picked up the house phone from the wall by the refrigerator and dialed the main office number provided on the letter. She lit a cigarette, smoking it in quick, anxious puffs, and waited, watching Nathan lying in the grass through the window.
“Mr. Blackburn, please,” she said. “This is Susan Slaughter . . . Slaughter . . . yes . . . It is about the eminent domain letter we received . . . yes, yes, I’ll hold . . .”
With the telephone cradled between her ear and shoulder, a handful of warm gray ash in her palm, she stared out at the endless rows of perfect apple trees. The taste of apples seemed stained on her tongue and apples was all she could smell anymore. Just then, the timer on the oven sounded a dissonant bell, the sweet brown sugar smell of caramelized apples in the pie drifted from the stove and blended with the ribbons of Pall Mall smoke. She felt sick at the smell of apple pie.
“Good-bye,” she whispered towards the trees. “Good-bye and rot in the cold.”
When Nathan Slaughter saw the car coming up the long driveway he wondered if his prayers didn’t change God’s mind after all. The late October air was warm and balmy. Nathan wiped the sweat from his forehead as he leaned on the fence post, watching the car he hoped were customers pull up. It didn’t look like any of the normal cars that tourists drove to pick apples though. But he wasn’t about to turn away customers on account of his own judgments.
The car stopped in the driveway near the house. As the man stepped out, Nathan immediately saw he wasn’t there for any apples. The man wore gray suit pants, a black tie, and a clean white shirt, rolled up to the elbows and watery stains of sweat soaking the underarms. The man’s dark brown hair was smoothly combed back and shimmered in the warm autumn sunlight. The man looked around a moment, at the humble little farm house, at the orchard, at the mountains resting in a blue haze and cutting like a dragon’s back across the horizon surrounding him. His eyes settled on the old man’s.
“Afternoon, sir,” the man said.
“Howdy,” Nathan said.
“Mr. Slaughter, I presume?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m Daniel Blackburn, of the firm MacIntosh and Otis. We’re representing the county of New Oxford.”
Nathan stared at the man, chewing on the filter of his cigarette.
“I’m here to discuss our offer,” Blackburn said. “Or, well, your acceptance of it. There are just a few things to sign and look over.”
“Acceptance?”
“Yessir. You received our letter?”
Nathan wiped his brow again, holding his eyes on the man.
“I believe I spoke with your wife, Susan is it?” he said. “Is she around by chance? Perhaps we can all speak together.”
“She’s inside there.”
“Oh, great,” Blackburn said, shifting his briefcase from right hand to left in a wave of unease.
“But there’s nothing to discuss. You must have the wrong place.”
“No, sir, I don’t believe so.” Blackburn reached inside his briefcase and pulled out a few papers. “Is this your information?” he said, and walked over to hand the papers to the old man. Nathan read it and nodded. “And your wife’s signature there, just above yours?” Nathan recognized his wife’s tidy print, and saw a strange, monstrous version of his own name.
“Well, it appears so,” Slaughter said. He looked past Blackburn and past the house and through time. He didn’t feel the poison, not at all, not until right then. How bitter it was. He felt his heart bleed and let out a long sigh as he lit a fresh cigarette. “So you’re taking the orchard, that it?” he said.
“Well, not me, sir. The county. They’re breaking ground on new plans to build a highway that’ll connect 52 Southbound and 40 West. Gonna change the whole state, and for the better, too.”
“How’s that?”
“Everything will be connected, see. People really hate having to change highways at the connector, so we’re making it a straight shot. They’ll be able to go from Ohio to South Carolina in three hours less now. No bypass, no changeovers. And it’ll be safer roads, too. Means business, housing, the whole kit-and-caboodle.”
Nathan Slaughter nodded and smoked. “Say, you ever been on an orchard before, Blackburn?”
“Geez, not since I was a kid,” Blackburn said.
“Follow me over yonder. We’ll get to the papers, but you have to taste a real piece of fruit.”
Blackburn smiled, left his case, and followed Slaughter through the long grass and they disappeared down the orderly rows of apple trees.
It was late in the afternoon by the time Nathan got home from walking the orchard. He’d walked almost twenty acres all told, but somehow he didn’t feel a bit tired. He leaned the shovel against the doorframe and walked inside. He took his boots off, poured himself a generous pour of Cutty Sark and sat in his favorite chair.
“My Lord, old man, how many times do I have to tell you to take your boots off outside,” Susan said.
Nathan nodded absently as he took a sip and stared out at the evening sun falling behind the orchard. She saw the black briefcase beside the boots.
“Where’d you get that briefcase?” she said.
“At the getting place,” he said.
Susan picked up the boots with a sigh of disgust, as she had done a thousand times before. She stopped suddenly as she dropped them on the stone steps by the door. She picked up one boot and, there on the gray stone, was the worn pattern of her husband’s left foot print in bright red blood. She stepped out onto the porch to get a better look and saw the car in the driveway. She paused in the doorway and looked at her husband sitting in his chair. The evening light illuminated his scruffy white beard and balding head.
“Nathan,” she said in a soft tone. “Why is there blood on your boots?”
“There was a fox caught in the fence down by the holler, trying to get into the orchard,” he said. “He was past any help so I had to send him on.”
She swallowed at the sudden dryness in her throat. “Oh, all right then,” she said. She looked at the boot print glowing in the waning light, then at the car again. A clean, black Ford Crown Vic. She felt her jaw hanging loose like a dead man’s and closed it.
“Nathan, honey,” she said. “Why is there a car out in the driveway?”
He took a drink and stared at the orchard. “I was hoping you might tell me, darling.” His pale blue eyes rested on hers. They seemed watery, brimming with tears.
“Customers?” she said.
“No. No, I don’t think so.” He finished his drink and stood. “It’s all right, darling. Just go ahead and tell me.”
She was weeping even before she realized. Forty-seven years of a sheltered life came bursting out. Forty-seven years of unbridled devotion and love. Forty-seven years of cleaning, dishes, laundry, pouring drinks, cooking meals. Forty-seven years of eating apples: apple pie, apple turnovers, apple streusel, apple sauce, apple cider. Forty-seven years of staring out at the orchard, of dreaming about a life that would never be hers.
“I called that office, Nathan,” she said.
He stood there quiet, patient and chillingly calm as he let her speak.
“And I signed those papers. I had to. You aren’t thinking clearly about this. You’re so goddamned obsessed with those trees that you’ve forgotten about our lives, you’ve forgotten about me, Nathan. You’re in love with a damned orchard, not me. I warned you. I told you I couldn’t let that happen. This is a way out. We can finally be happy for once. God knows I deserve it. I do. And whether you come with me or not, I’m going. I’m going to see the ocean.”
Nathan bent his head and looked out at the trees again.
“Where is the man? Mr. Blackburn,” she said. “He’s come to talk it all through. He’ll tell you. There’s nothing we can do anyway. We have no say in it. We have to sell. You’ll see, when you talk to him.”
“I talked with him,” Nathan said.
“Where is he, Nathan? Where’d he go?”
The old man continued looking out the window at the trees bending in the wind. The crooked branches bounced in the breeze, heavy with the weight of the fall harvest waiting to be picked.
“Where is he, Nathan.”
“He’s out in the orchard, darling.”
“My God, Nathan, oh God, what did you do?”
Susan ran out the door and out into rows of trees. Nathan walked calmly towards the door, stepped into his boots, and picked up the shovel. He held it across one shoulder as he came through the rows, walking among the trees as he did each evening, as the October breeze brushed against his skin with familiar coolness.
“Darling, come on out now,” he said, coming through the grass.
He saw her kneeling under the old tree in the center of the orchard, crying and gasping for breath.
“We can’t leave here, Susan,” he said, standing behind her. “This is our home. We have lived here all our lives and we will die here. They can’t just take what they want. They can’t just take our home from us. We can’t let them.”
“No, no, Nathan, I sold it. We have to leave. We have to! Please just do this for me. I’m going to call that office and we’ll get our money and we can be happy. I promise that we . . .”
Nathan brought the shovel down across the back of his wife’s head before she could finish. She froze for a moment where she knelt, then fell over into the soft green grass.
“Hush now, darling,” he said. “We can’t go anywhere. The trees need us. This is our home.”
He buried her beside their son under the tree in the middle of the orchard. He smiled as he gazed at the night sky being cut open by the mountains just above the tree tops. We’re not going anywhere, he whispered to the trees. He packed the dirt tight under his feet and spread a healthy layer of fresh compost on top of where Susan lay. “Just wait till next year,” he said. “They’ll be the sweetest apples yet.”
It was spring when the sheriff’s Bronco came bouncing up the long driveway. Nathan watched, smiling, as the car slowed and parked near the house. Sheriff Moss stepped out, putting on his tan cowman’s hat. His face was stern and tired and held steady on Nathan’s as he walked over to the old man.
“Morning Sheriff,” Nathan said. “One fine morning today, isn’t it. Bright shiny morning.”
“Nathan, can we step inside, please,” Sheriff Moss said.
“What’s the trouble, Larry? We can talk out here.”
“Look, Nathan. I’m not sure what you think is happening or if you know all the details here, but the county has the right to take the land. Your wife has signed the papers, last fall even, so I’m not sure why you’re putting up a fuss now.”
“No, that was a mistake, Sheriff. You know, she had thought those papers were for her catalogues or something. Honest mistake. I believe we even cleared that up with the office.”
“Yes, but, it doesn’t change the facts of what’s happening here.” Sheriff Moss looked back to the house. “Is Susan around?”
Nathan shook out a cigarette and lit it.“
She’s out in the orchard, Larry. With a fella from that office. Out there now.”
“Well maybe we can all talk and settle this once and for all, how about.”
“Oh, no, no, I don’t think so . . .”
“Nate, I really need to speak with her.” Sheriff Moss stared at him dead on.
Nathan looked at the sheriff and broke into a wide, toothy smile.
“Sure, sure, where are my manners. Of course, Larry, you can speak with her. Let’s go and get this cleared up, eh?”
The men walked out into the orchard and down the long neat rows.
“Beautiful spot, Nate. Truly beautiful.”
“Thank you, Larry. There’s plenty that can harm an orchard, but I keep her safe.”
“Damn shame though. Damn shame you have to sell.”
The old man was quiet, switching the shovel he carried from one shoulder to the other.
“Know where they might be?” Sheriff Moss said.
“Just up yonder,” Nathan said. “But first, you have to try these apples. Bloomed early this year. Damnedest thing. Apples in May.”
They paused at the tree in the dead center of the orchard. The tree was littered with large, beautiful apples.
“They’re unlike anything,” Nathan said. “Here, you have to try one.”
He handed an apple to the sheriff and Moss took a bite. The juice dripped down his chin like honey.
“My God, that’s delicious,” Sheriff Moss said between bites.
Nathan smiled.
“Damn shame you have to sell,” the Sheriff said, and took another bite.
The Sheriff turned to look down the rows and Nathan raised the shovel and swung. As Sheriff Moss fell, the apple rolled from his hand and into the grass. Nathan bent and picked it up. He took a good bite and bits of apple and a spray of juice flew from his mouth.
“Told you, this is the best crop yet, and in spring! Who would have thought.”
Nathan Slaughter walked on down the row eating apples, dragging the sheriff behind him. A roar of trucks and machines quaked through the earth, coming up the old highway, but Nathan didn’t hear it.
“What a morning,” he said, pausing in the rows. “What a fine morning.”
He smiled and helped himself to another fresh apple from the tree and let the juice drip down his chin like honey.
“My Lord, what a fine piece of fruit,” he said.
Spencer K. M. Brown lives in North Carolina with his wife and son. As a father and teacher, he writes in the brief moments his life currently allows: at stop lights, while his baby sleeps, while his students are taking tests, in line at the store. His debut novel Move Over Mountain will be published in November, 2019 by J. New Books.