The Crew We Paid at the Bin Trailer

What the Men Did

Lester came up the steps first and held out his envelope. “This one’s yours, Callie,” he said.

“We said we’d pick it to pay you back. Now we got paid twice. That’s not right.”

“Lester, no,” I said. “You picked those 40 bins for nothing. That was your work.”

“That was a gift,” he said. “This is a debt. My mother taught me the difference.” He set it on the porch rail and stepped back.

I could not make them take it back. I tried with every one of them. Abe stood beside me and did not help.

Later he said, “You don’t get to refuse a man paying a debt, Cal. That’s his pride, not yours.”

So I took it. I put it in the coffee can over the stove.

Jory got his braces in January, and the property taxes got paid, and I do not think any of those men has ever once mentioned it since.

The Fuji

You might want to know about Spencer’s Fuji. I will tell you, because it says something about the men Abe ran.

When Spencer had paid the last man, Lester stood a while on our porch steps looking across the fence at those 18 acres and the frost coming. Then he went and talked to Ione.

Ione let them go for the weekend. Saturday and Sunday, Abe’s crew picked Spencer’s Fuji at $40 a bin, paid in cash at the end of each day, before the freeze came Sunday night. They did not do it for Spencer. Lester told me so.

“Those are Wenzel trees,” he said. “Abe’s granddad planted them. You don’t let fruit freeze on the tree because of what the man who owns them did. The trees didn’t do anything.”

They got most of it off. Not all. The last two rows froze on Sunday night, and I saw Spencer walk them Monday morning, squeezing apples and dropping them in the grass.

March

Abe ran Spencer’s crew one more week that fall, through the cleanup and the bin count. He did it right.

Then he went into Spencer’s shop and set his keys on the desk and thanked his cousin for 16 years of work.

He did not say anything ugly. I asked him later if he wanted to. He said no. He said the only thing worth saying had been said at the trailer.

All winter he drove my bus route on the days I was sick, fixed our ladders, and pruned our six acres by himself in the cold.

Ione came over twice a week with coffee, and they sat in the shop and talked about rootstock.

Jory turned 13 in February. For his birthday he asked for his own picking bag.

I cried in the feed store when I bought it, and the girl at the register did not know why.

Spencer and Abe are cousins again, mostly. They nod at the post office. Spencer sends Christmas cards.

I do not think they will ever be what they were, but Abe says that is all right. Some fences you keep mended and some you just keep.

Lester still picks. He is 70 now and moves a little slower on the ladder, but he still hums when he works, and he still calls my husband boss.

Abe went to work for Ione in March, and he took every man with him.