The Cider I Pressed by Hand

The Empty Shed

The padlock was gone, and so was the press.

I stood in the doorway of my father’s cider shed on a cold Tuesday morning with a thermos in my hand. I could not make the room match my memory.

The big press had stood against the back wall for thirty years. Now there was a clean rectangle in the dust where the feet had been, and nothing else.

I set the thermos on the workbench because my hand had started to shake. I did not want to drop it. I think I said my father’s name out loud, which was foolish. He had been dead four months, and the dead do not answer.

The press was a rack and cloth machine he bought used in 1994 from a closing orchard up near Chillicothe. It weighed close to four hundred pounds.

A man did not carry it off alone. A man did not carry it off without my knowing either, unless that man had a key and a reason to be quiet.

My brother Lyle had both.

I walked the length of the shed with my arms crossed, looking at the floor like the press might be hiding under the sawdust. The grinder was gone too, the little electric one that chewed the apples into pomace before they went under the screw.

He had taken the whole works.

Outside, the orchard was doing what it does in the middle of October, which is drop fruit faster than two hands can gather it. I could smell it through the open door.

That sweet rot and wet grass smell means the Jonathans are ready and the Staymans are close behind. Pressing season was a week off.

I had a standing order for sixty gallons from the church and the diner and half the road.

And I had no press.