The Day the Water Came Home to Grandma’s Orchard

Grandma’s Porch

He did ask her. He came that same afternoon at about two, in the heat of the day, and he walked down the ditch bank instead of driving around by the road.

I was on the porch with Grandma shelling peas. Ward was out in the orchard checking the water rows for the third time. Cash had gone to town for a part for my truck.

Trace came up to the bottom of the porch steps and stopped. He had changed his shirt. He had his hat in his hand. “Mrs. Pope,” he said.

“Mr. Holloway,” Grandma said. She did not get up. She kept shelling peas.

“I took your water,” he said. “I didn’t know it was yours. That’s not an excuse. I should’ve known. I should have asked somebody. I’m sorry about your trees.”

Grandma split a pod with her thumb and ran the peas into the bowl.

“My trees will be all right,” she said. “They’re tougher than they look. So am I.”

“I’d like to pay for anything you lost,” he said.

“I didn’t lose anything that won’t grow back,” Grandma said. “Sit down, Mr. Holloway. You look like you’re going to fall over.”

He sat on the bottom step. Grandma handed him a handful of pea pods and a bowl. He looked at them like he didn’t know what they were. “You split it with your thumb,” Grandma said. “Right along the seam.”

He did it wrong the first time and the peas went everywhere. Grandma did not laugh. She showed him again.

They sat there for an hour shelling peas, and Grandma told him everything about that ditch. Who dug it, in 1891. Who fixed the headgate after the flood in 1957. How you burn the weeds out in March and clean it with the neighbors in April. How the ditch company meeting is the second Tuesday in January at the grange hall and every shareholder ought to go.

“You’ll want to go,” she said. “Amos will introduce you. They’ll be hard on you at first. You let them. Then come back next year and the year after.”

“Why would they be hard on me?” Trace asked.

“Because everybody in this valley is going to know about the board by Sunday,” Grandma said. “You can’t help that. What you can help is what they say about you next year.”

Trace looked down at the peas in his hands. “My wife died two years ago,” he said. “We always talked about a place like this. I didn’t want to wait anymore. I guess I didn’t think it through.”

Grandma stopped shelling.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, and she meant it. “My husband’s been gone twelve years. It doesn’t get easier. It gets different.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Your alfalfa,” Grandma said, “is too thick on the south end. You planted it too heavy for this ground. It’ll fight itself for water. The cattleman on the bench can tell you how to fix it. He won’t offer. You’ll have to ask.”

“The cattleman,” Trace said. “The guy with the arms crossed.”

“That’s him. He likes you better than he lets on. He wouldn’t have cut your weeds if he didn’t.”

The Sunday After

That Sunday at church, I saw what Grandma meant. Nobody said anything to Trace directly, because he wasn’t there. But in the fellowship hall after, I heard the board come up at three different tables. By the third table, it had grown to two boards and a padlock.

I set the record straight where I heard it. I said Amos took it out at 6:12 in the morning and wrote it down, and the man said he was sorry and he meant it, and he shelled peas on Grandma’s porch for an hour.

That was the consequence, I suppose, if you want to call it one. Not a court. Not a fine. Just a whole valley knowing what he did, and watching to see what he’d do next. In a small place that’s heavier than any fine.

And Trace Holloway, for whatever else you want to say about him, stood in front of it.

He went to the ditch cleaning the next April with his own shovel. He went to the meeting at the grange hall in January and sat in the back row and let old men tell him what he’d done wrong. He asked the cattleman on the bench about his alfalfa.

He never took one inch more than his share again. Amos told me. Amos would know.