The Apple Row Along My Uncle’s Lane

What Abe Said

We sat down on the tote trailer after that, because Abe’s knees were bad and because what he had to say was not something to say kneeling in the grass.

“Do you know how many times Dad asked me to graft with him?” he said. “Not once. Not one time in sixty-three years.”

I did not say anything. I could tell he was not finished.

“I was on the sprayer at fifteen,” he said. “I was running the place at twenty-five when his back went out. I put in every block of trees on this farm except those six. And every fall, everybody who came up the lane, he walked them out to those Spys.”

He looked down the dark row toward where the old trees had been.

“‘Best thing I ever grew,’ he would say. Every time. Right in front of me. And then you came along, and he planted six more of them the week you were born, and he would sit out there under them with you every Sunday.”

“Abe.”

“I am not saying you did anything wrong. You were a little girl.” He rubbed his face. “I am saying I am sixty-three years old and still jealous of a row of apple trees. That is what I am saying. I am not proud of it.”

“Is that why you cut them?”

He was quiet a long time. “The sprayer was real,” he said. “The Honeycrisp is real. But I could have planted around them. Alvin told me so. I cut them because every morning I drove past them, and every morning I heard him saying it.”

I want to tell you I said something wise. I did not.

I sat there on that trailer with my uncle in the dark, and I was angry, and I was sad, and I felt a pull of something for him that I had never felt before.

Then I remembered something, and I knew I had to tell him, even though it was not mine to keep.

“Abe,” I said. “The last fall Grandpa was alive, we sat under the big Spy. The one by the lane. He was tired, and he was talking about the farm.”

Abe did not look at me.

“He said, ‘I just grew apples, Celeste. Abe grew the farm. Without Abe, there would not be any of this left for anybody.’ Those were his words. I have never forgotten them, because he said them so plain.”

Abe put his hand over his eyes. He did not make any sound.

He just sat there with his hand over his eyes and his shoulders very still, and the hose lay running in the grass by the trailer wheel.

“He never said that to me,” he said finally.

“I know,” I said. “He should have. He said it to me because I was the one sitting there. I should have told you two years ago. I am sorry I did not.”

We sat there until the tote ran dry. Then he got up, shut off the valve, coiled the hose, and climbed back over the fence onto his own lane.

“I will be back Thursday,” he said. “Do not carry buckets anymore. You will wreck your back.”