The Cider I Pressed by Hand

The Man Who Bought the Press

He waited his turn. I will say that for him.

He stood in that line twenty minutes behind mothers with strollers and old men with cloth sacks. When he got to the tailgate, he took off his cap.

“Are you Walt’s daughter,” he said. “Maribeth.”

“I am.”

“My name is Dell. I run the orchard supply up in Ross County.” He turned the cap in his hands. “I bought a press off a fella Monday. Rack and cloth, four hundred pounds, grinder with it.”

“Six hundred dollars,” I said.

“Six hundred, which I knew was half what it was worth. I took it because that is business, and he was eager to sell.”

He stopped.

“He told me the old man who owned it had no family that cared for it. That it was going to rot in a shed.”

The line behind him had gone quiet. People step back a little when they feel a thing turning.

“That was a lie,” I said. “It was my father’s. I have pressed on it since I was nine years old.”

Dell did not look away.

“My brother sold it out from under me the week before pressing season,” I said. “He told me a woman had no business running the orchard.”

Dell looked at the little iron hand press on the bench. He looked at my raw hands, and the line of people, and the jug of amber cider catching the light.

He is a businessman. He had a legal machine he bought fair, and nobody on God’s earth could have made him give it back.

“I have got it on my flatbed,” he said. “I was taking it to a sale in Jackson this afternoon.”

“You do not owe me anything, Dell.”

“I did not come here to sell it back to you. I came here because I could not sleep on it.” He put his cap back on. “You can have it for what I paid. Six hundred. Not a dollar more.”