The Cider Press We Carried Home

By supper Ewald had called five more. There was Thad, who drove milk truck for forty years and still has forearms like fence posts. There were two brothers from up by the township hall who used to run the packing line at the old fruit exchange. There was a retired lineman, and a man who had pruned orchards from here to Paw Paw.

Six of them, counting Ewald. The youngest was 71. Every one of them had stood in Dad’s yard with a basket.

Then I did the hard thing. I called my sister.

Marla answered on the fourth ring. I could hear the dishwasher going behind her at the bar.

“I’m going to get Dad’s press back on Saturday morning,” I said. “I’ve got six men and Ewald’s pickup. I wanted you to hear it from me first, not from somebody at the bar.”

She did not say anything. The dishwasher ran. Somebody laughed in the background.

“I’m not going to make a scene,” I said. “I’m not going to say a word to Darwin. We’ll come early while the bar is closed, take it out, and go. If you want to tell him, that’s your right.”

Still nothing. I thought she had hung up.

“Rosie,” she said, and her voice was low. “Do you know what he did with the crank handle?”

“No.”

“He took it off so customers would quit spinning the wheel and pinching their fingers. It’s in the drawer behind the bar.” She stopped. “He looks at it sometimes.”

I did not know what to say to that.

“The patio gate key is on my ring,” Marla said. “Darwin closes at two and sleeps till noon on Saturdays. I’ll be there at nine.”

“You don’t have to,” I said.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “It’s Dad’s. I should have done it two years ago.” And then she did hang up.

That week was the longest week I have had in a while.

Thursday night I loaded my truck with everything I thought we might need. A half-inch breaker bar, a full deep socket set, a can of penetrating oil, a pry bar, two ratchet straps, a moving dolly, and a five-pound hammer.

Friday after work I went to Dad’s shop and made a new crank handle for the flywheel.

The old handle was a cast-iron grip on a short arm that bolted to the flywheel hub. I did not have that. What I had was a length of inch-and-a-quarter black pipe, a bolt, and Dad’s old drill press.

I cut the pipe to length, drilled it through, and fit it with a bolt and two washers so the grip would turn on the pin. It was ugly. It would work.

Dad came out while I was finishing it. He stood in the doorway with his cane.

“That’s not the handle,” he said.

“No,” I said. “It’s a handle.”

He looked at it for a long while. Then he came over and turned the pipe grip on its bolt with two fingers, testing it the way he tests everything.

“It’ll do,” he said. Then, after a minute, “Your grandpa would’ve liked that you made it.”

Saturday morning I was up at six, which is late for me. It was still dark, and I would not go out in the dark for this. I wanted everybody to see us do it in plain daylight, so nobody could ever say we snuck it.

I made coffee and filled two big thermoses. Dad was already up and dressed in the red flannel, sitting at the kitchen table with his Bible open and his reading glasses on his nose.