The Cider I Pressed by Hand

The Regulars Who Knew My Father

Old Pastor Bream was fourth in line, in his good coat, and he did not want cider. He wanted to put his hand on my shoulder.

“Your father brought me a jug every October for thirty-one years,” he said. “I would take one more, if your hands are not too tired.”

“They are not too tired, Pastor.”

I filled his half gallon. When he went to pay I waved it off, but he would not have it. He pressed a ten dollar bill into the jar and said the extra was for the trees.

Behind him a man I did not know was already asking Carl what a gallon cost.

Carl said eight dollars a half, fourteen a gallon, same as every year. The man bought two gallons and did not blink.

They came all morning.

Some of them I had known my whole life. Some of them I had only ever known across this tailgate, one Saturday a year, for thirty years running.

A woman I did not place at first took my hand and said she had married in our church and my father gave the cider at her wedding. She was gray now. She bought three gallons and would not say for what.

The Reems, who have bought a bushel of Staymans off us every fall since their kids were small. The 4-H leader who buys cider for the fair booth.

The woman from the diner who had sixty gallons ordered took the first ten right there, and said she would send her nephew for the rest.

Kurt from the VFW does the pancake breakfast. He bought twelve gallons on the spot for the Veterans Day feed.

He told me my dad would have skinned Lyle alive. I had to ask him please not to say so in front of the children in line.

By ten o’clock I had cranked that press until my shoulders were on fire. My hands had gone past hurting into a kind of numb I knew would cost me for a week.

Carl took over the screw when my arms gave out. I ground and packed.

We fell into it like a team that had done it for years, which we had, just never like this. Never with the whole town watching and a line that did not end.

I sold ninety dollars of cider in the first two hours. Then a hundred and eighty.

The jar filled up with soft bills, and I stopped counting. Counting felt like the wrong thing to be doing with a morning like that one.

And then, a little before eleven, a man in a canvas coat came down the row and stood at the back of the line.

He did not look like a man who had come to buy cider. He looked like a man who had come because he had heard something, and had to see it for himself.