The Cider Press We Carried Home

So I left it be. I am not proud of how long I left it be, but I want to be honest about it. Two Octobers I left it be.

The second fall, I tried once on my own. I stopped at the bar on a Tuesday afternoon when it was slow and Darwin was restocking the cooler. He knew why I was there before I opened my mouth.

“Rosie,” he said, “I know. I know. Look, it’s the only thing people stop for anymore. They pull off the road to take pictures of it. They come in, they get a beer and a basket of fries. I’ve got the bank breathing on me.”

“It’s Dad’s,” I said.

“I know it’s Dad’s. I’m going to give it back. Just let me get through this season.” He wiped his hands on a bar towel and would not quite look at me. “Next fall. I promise you. Next fall.”

That was the third time I heard the word next from him, and the first time I understood that he believed it every time he said it. That was the worst part. He was not lying, exactly. He just never got to the end of needing it.

I drove home with the radio off. My husband was hauling grain for the elevator that whole month, sixteen-hour days, and when I told him that night he only shook his head. “That’s Augie’s,” he said. “That’s not right.” But he left it to me, the way he always does with my family.

Which brings me back to that third October, and Dad standing on the bare grass under the Northern Spys.

I dried my hands and went out to him. The air was cold and clear, and the leaves were just starting to turn, yellow on the Spys and red on the old Jonathans along the fence.

“Your mother would have had the jugs washed by now,” he said, without turning around.

He did not say it sad. He said it the way you say what day it is. But he had his hands in his back pockets, the way he stands at a graveside, and I noticed he had on the red flannel shirt Mom always called his cider shirt.

“Dad,” I said, “do you still want it back?”

He was quiet for a long time. A blue jay was going on in the Jonathans.

“I’m 86, Rosella,” he said finally. “I don’t know how many more Octobers the Lord is going to give me. I would like to press one more time on my father’s press. That’s all. But I won’t fight my own family for it.”

“You won’t have to,” I said.

He looked at me then. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said, which was true right then. But I was already thinking about lag bolts.

I called Ewald Pohl that same afternoon.

Ewald is 84 and lives a half mile up our road. He and Dad have been neighbors for over fifty years. He still keeps a dozen apple trees and a team of opinions about every one of them, and he has brought apples to Dad’s press every October since before I was born.

“About time somebody asked,” Ewald said, before I had even finished. “I’ll make some calls. You want men or you want old men?”

“I want men who can lift a press,” I said.

“Then you want old men,” he said. “Young ones all have bad backs.”