important, only in the way.
He studied her covertly, noting more clearly the bulk of her belly, outlined by the baby’s leg. Donald Wade had said she gets tired. Recalling the boy’s words, Will considered offering to carry the baby, but he felt out of his depth around Thomas. He’d be no good at getting his nose tickled or making chitchat. Besides, she might not cotton to a stranger like him handling Glendon Dinsmore’s boys.
They went around to the back of the house where the dishtowel flapped on a line strung between teetering clothespoles that had been shimmed up by crude wood braces. Beyond these were more junkpiles before the woods began-pines, oaks, hickories and more. Sparrows flitted from tree to tree ahead, and Eleanor followed with her finger, telling the boys, 'See? Chipping sparrows.' A brown thrasher swept past and perched on a dead limb. Again she pointed it out and named it. The sun glinted off the boys’ blond heads and painted their mother’s dress an even brighter hue. They walked along a faint double path worn by wheels some time ago. Sometimes Donald Wade skipped, swinging his arms widely. The younger one tipped his head back and looked at the sky, his hand resting on his mother’s shoulder. They were so happy! Will hadn’t come up against many happy people in his day. It was arresting.
A short distance from the house they came upon an east-facing hill covered by regular rows of squat fruit trees.
'This here’s the orchard,' Eleanor announced, gazing over its length and breadth.
'Big,' Will observed.
'And you ain’t seen half of it. These here are peach. Down yonder is a whole string of apples and pears… and oranges, too. Glendon had this idea to try orange trees, but they never did much.' She smiled wistfully. 'Too far north for them.'
Will stepped off the path and inspected a cluster of fruit. 'Could have used a little spraying.'
'I know.' Unconsciously she stroked the baby’s back. 'Glendon planned to do that, but he died in April and never got the chance.'
'How old are these trees?'
'I don’t know exactly. Glendon’s daddy planted most of them when he was still alive. All except the oranges, like I said. There’s apples, too, just about every kind imaginable, but I never learned their names. Glendon’s daddy, he knew a lot about them, but he died before I married Glendon. He was a junker, too, just like Glendon. Went to auction sales and traded stuff with anybody that came along. No reason to any of it, it seemed.' Abruptly, she inquired, 'You ever tasted quince? Those there are quince.'
'Sour as rhubarb.'
'Make a luscious pie, though.'
'I wouldn’t know about that, ma’am.'
'Bet you’d like to try one, wouldn’t you?'
He gave her a sideward glance. 'Reckon I would.'
'Could use a little fat on them bones, Mr. Parker.'
He leveled his eyes on the quince trees and tugged his hat brim so low it cut off his view of the horizon. Thankfully, she changed the subject.
'So where’d you eat ’em, then?'
'California.'
'California?' She peered up at him with her head cocked. 'You been there?'
'Picked fruit there one summer when I was a kid.'
'You see any movie stars?'
'Movie stars?' He wouldn’t have guessed she’d know much about movie stars. 'No.' He glanced at her. 'You ever seen any?'
She laughed. 'Now where would I see movie stars when I never even seen a movie?'
'Never?'
She shook her head. 'Heard about ’em from the kids in school, though.'
He wished he could promise to take her sometime, but where would he get the money for movies? And even if he had it, there was no theater in Whitney. Besides, she avoided the town.
'In California, the movie stars are only in Hollywood, and it gets cold in parts where there are mountains. And the ocean’s dirty. It stinks.'
She could see she had her work cut out for her if she was to get that pessimism out of him. 'You always so jolly?'
He would have tugged his hat brim lower, but if he did he’d be unable to see where he was walking. 'Well, California isn’t like what you think.'
'You know, I can’t say I’d mind if you’d smile a little more often.'
He tossed her a sullen glance. 'About what?'
'Maybe, Mr. Parker, you got to find that out for yourself.' She let the baby slip from her hip. 'Lord, Thomas, if you ain’t gettin’ heavier than a guilty conscience, I don’t know. Come on, take Mommy’s hand and I’ll show you somethin’.'
She showed him things Will would have missed: a branch shaped like a dog’s paw-'A man could whittle forever and not make anything prettier,' she declared. A place where something tiny had nested in the grass and left a collection of empty seed pods-'If I was a mouse, I’d love livin’ right here in this pretty-smellin’ orchard, wouldn’t you?' A green katydid camouflaged upon a greener blade of grass-'Y’ got to look close to see he’s makin’ the sound with his wings.' And in the adjacent woods a magnolia tree with a deep bowl, head-high, where its branches met, and within that bowl, a second tree taken root: a sturdy little oak growing straight and healthy.
'How’d it get there?' Donald Wade asked.
'How d’ you think?'
'I dunno.'
She squatted beside the boys, gazing up at piggyback trees. 'Well, there was this wise old owl lived in these woods, and one evenin’ at dusk he came by and I ast him the same thing. I says to him, how’d that li’l old oak tree get t’ growin’ in that magnolia?' She grinned at Donald Wade. 'Know what he told me?'
'Uh-uh.' Donald Wade stared at his mother, mystified. She dropped to her rump and sat like an Indian, stripping bark from a stick with her thumbnail as she went on.
'Well, he said there was two squirrels lived here, years ago. One of ’em was a hard worker, spent every day totin’ acorns into that little pocket in the tree up there.' She pointed with the stick. 'The other squirrel, well, he was lazy. Laid on his back on that limb over there'-she pointed again, to a nearby pine-'and made a pillow out of his tail and crossed his legs and watched the busy squirrel gettin’ ready for winter. He waited until there was so many nuts they was about to start spillin’ over the edge. Then when the hardworking squirrel went off to look for one last nut, the lazy one scrambled up there and ate and ate and ate, until he’d ate every last one of ’em. He was so full he sat on the limb and let out a burp so almighty powerful it knocked him off backwards.' She drew a deep breath, braced her hands on her knees and burped loudly, then flopped back, arms outflung. Will smiled. Donald Wade giggled. Baby Thomas squealed.
'But it wasn’t so funny, after all,' she continued, gazing at the sky.
Donald Wade sobered and leaned over her to look straight down into her face. 'Why not?'
'Because on his way down, he cracked his head on a limb and killed himself deader’n a mackerel.'
Donald Wade smacked himself in the head and fell backward, sprawled on the grass beside Eleanor, his eyelids closed but twitching. She rolled up and took Thomas into her lap. 'Now when the busy little squirrel come back with that one last nut between his teeth, he climbed up and saw that all his acorns were gone. He opened his mouth to cry and the last acorn he brung up, why, it fell into the nest beneath the nutshells the greedy squirrel had left.' Donald Wade, too, sat up, his interest in the story aroused once again. 'He knew he couldn’t stay here for the winter, ’cause he’d already gathered up all the nuts for miles around. So he left his cozy nest and didn’t come back till he was old. So old it was hard for him to climb up and down the oak trees like he used to. But he remembered the little nest in the magnolia where it had been warm and dry and safe, and he climbed up there to see it again, just for old times’ sake. And what do you think he found?'
'The oak tree growin’ there?' the older boy ventured.
