The Crew We Paid at the Bin Trailer

Sunday

We went to church Sunday like always. Lester and his wife sat three pews behind us.

Ione sat where she always sits, on the aisle near the back, so she can get out ahead of the potluck line.

After the service, Ione caught Abe in the parking lot. She had a hand on his arm and was talking low.

I saw Abe look at her for a long time, then look over at Lester.

On the drive home he told me. Ione had 22 acres of Granny Smith and Pink Lady still on the trees, and her crew had gone to Yakima two weeks early. She had been picking with three men and her grandson.

“She asked if my men would come pick for her Monday,” Abe said.

“At $34 a bin, paid every Friday. And she asked if they’d sign on with her for next year. Pruning in March, thinning in June, harvest after.”

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“I told her I’d ask them,” he said. “They’re not my men to give.”

Monday

Abe went to the trailer at the end of our row at seven on Monday morning.

Every man on the crew was already there, sitting on the empty bins with their bags folded in their laps.

He told them about Ione’s offer. He did not tell them what to do.

He told them her rate, her acres, and that she paid on Friday and had for 40 years. Then he stopped talking.

Lester stood up first. “Is she a fair woman?” he asked. “She is,” Abe said.

“Then I’m going to Ione’s,” Lester said. And he picked up his ladder and started walking across our place toward her fence.

One by one the others stood up and followed him. Every one.

They walked in a line across our six acres, ladders on their shoulders, and through the gap in the fence onto Ione’s ground. By nine they were in her Granny Smith.

Abe watched them go. He did not go with them that day.

He was still Spencer’s foreman, and he had a job, and he had not decided anything yet. But I saw his face, and I knew.

Spencer’s Fuji

That Monday, Spencer’s Fuji hung on the trees with nobody under them. Eighteen acres. I could see the empty ladders lying in the grass from my kitchen window.

He called every crew boss in the valley. Abe heard it all from other foremen. Most crews had gone south already, or were finishing their own growers.

A couple of men told Spencer they had heard what happened and did not want the work.

Tuesday he was out there himself with two men from town who had never picked a day in their lives. By noon one had quit.

The other dropped a full bag off the top of a ladder. That bin was cull before it left the row.

There was frost in the forecast. The radio said the first hard freeze, around 25 degrees, could come within ten days.

Fuji can take a light frost, but a hard freeze on hanging fruit turns it to mush inside. Every grower in the valley was watching that forecast.

On Wednesday afternoon, I drove my bus route past his place. Spencer was standing in his own rows by himself with his hands on his hips, looking up at fruit he could not get off. He did not see me.

I did not feel good about it. I want to be honest about that.

I had thought I would, and I did not. He was family. Abe’s grandfather planted those trees.