The Cider Press We Carried Home

When I turned back, Dad had his hand on Wilda’s head, the way Grandpa used to put his hand on mine. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the spout. But his hand stayed there.

Now, here is a thing I noticed, and I did not understand it until later.

All afternoon, people kept pouring Dad a cup. Ewald poured him one at noon. The lineman poured him one. Thad’s wife came by with a fresh cup and a slice of pie. Every time, Dad thanked them, and every time he set the cup down on the press frame and did not drink it.

“Augie, drink your cider,” Ewald finally said. “You’re making me nervous.”

“I’m waiting,” Dad said.

“Waiting for what?”

Dad did not answer. He just kept his eyes on the bucket, and then, every so often, on the road.

By three o’clock we had 80 gallons on Ewald’s tailgate and more on the porch. Everybody on the road had their jugs filled, and the ones who had not come yet had theirs set aside with their names on masking tape.

The sun had gone gold on the leaves. The men were tired in the good way, sitting on overturned baskets with their cups. Wilda was helping Ewald write names on tape. Dad had not sat down once all day. He was still standing at the spout with Mom’s bucket.

I was cleaning the racks when I heard the truck.

It was a little before four. I knew the sound of it before I saw it, a gray half-ton with a bad lifter that I had told Darwin about twice. It came up the road slow and turned into Dad’s drive and stopped at the end of it, by the mailbox.

The crank stopped. I had not even realized the lineman was still turning it.

Ewald set down his basket on the grass. The brothers stood up. Thad wiped his hands on his jeans and did not move.

Nobody said anything. The only sound in the whole yard was the last of the cider dripping into Mom’s bucket.

Darwin sat in the truck a long time. I could see him through the windshield. Then he got out and stood there by the door with something in his hands, wrapped in a white bar towel.

He looked at the press on its plywood under the Spys. He looked at the jugs on the tailgate. He looked at the six old men, every one of whom had drunk a beer at his bar at one time or another, every one of whom had known his father.

Then he looked at Dad.

Dad looked right back at him over the bucket. He did not frown. He did not smile. He just looked at him, the way he looks at a tree he is deciding whether to prune.

Darwin started across the grass toward us.

I stood by the racks with a wet cloth in my hand and kept my mouth shut, because it was not my yard and it was not my press. It was Dad’s.

Darwin stopped about ten feet from the spout. His face was red, and not from the cold. He looked like he had not slept much, which I guess he had not. He held the bundle in the bar towel against his chest with both hands.

“Augie,” he said.

“Darwin,” Dad said.

“Marla told me.” He swallowed. “This morning. She woke me up and told me. She filled the bolt holes in the patio herself before I even got down there.”

Dad nodded. He did not say anything.