The Apple Row Along My Uncle’s Lane

The Rest of the Summer

He came back Thursday. And Sunday. And every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday after that until the rain came back in the last days of August.

He never made a show of it. He came at dusk, after his own work was done, watered all thirty, and went home.

Some nights I was there, and some nights I was not. Maren started leaving him notes tied to the fence post at number one.

The first one said, “Thank you for the water Uncle Abe.” The second one had a drawing of a tractor that looked mostly like a potato with wheels.

He never mentioned the notes. They were always gone the next day.

Number fourteen leafed out again in the second week of August. Little bright green leaves along a stick I had been sure was finished.

I scratched the bark first, the way Abe said, and it was green underneath.

Number twenty-two did not make it. I dug it out in September. That left twenty-nine in the row, and one in the pot at my mother’s back door.

I did not count the summer in gallons. But Curt did, because Curt counts things.

He figured Abe hauled something close to four thousand gallons of water down that lane between July and August. Two hundred seventy-five at a time.

The Last Stump

In the middle of October, almost a year to the day after the saw, Abe called me. He had never once called my cell phone in my life.

“Bring the one in the pot,” he said. “Saturday morning. Come to the west block, not the lane.”

I did not ask him why. I loaded the potted tree into the car and drove up on Saturday with Maren, and Curt followed us in his truck.

When I walked out to the end of the west block, the six old stumps were gone. Not pulled out. Cut.

Abe had left them standing knee-high last fall, and that morning he had cut them all down low, about a foot off the ground. There was fresh sawdust scattered in the grass around every one.

He was standing by the last one, the stump of the big Spy closest to the lane, with a spade and a stake and a coil of tree tie.

“The Honeycrisp goes in next spring,” he said. “Rows will run right up to here. I measured it. There is room for one tree at the end of the row if I turn the sprayer at the headland instead.”

“Abe, you said that costs you on every pass.”

“It does,” he said. “About forty seconds a pass. I figure I can afford forty seconds.” He handed me the spade. “Plant it right next to his.”

He had already dug most of the hole. He had done it right, too, wide and shallow, the sides roughed up so the roots could get through the clay.

Then he said he was going to get the water and walked back toward his truck.

I think he did not want to be standing there watching me. I think some things a person needs to do alone, and he knew it.