They were married in March; and as though upon a signal, winter drew
back from the land, taking with it the snow; and in due time the grass
burst up through the sod, and the buds swelled more swiftly, it seemed
to these two, than they had ever swelled before. Yet it was not too
warm; the blossoms in the orchards came in their season, and not before.
And the air was full of the hum of the bees as they went to and fro upon
their mysterious mating of the trees. The color of the blossoms, faintly
glowing, was in Lucy’s cheeks; the wonder of the springtime in her eyes
while she walked here and there with Johnny about his tasks. When the
petals fluttered down, it became at once apparent that the apples had
set in great profusion; and through the summer they watched the fruit
swell and take form and color, and now and then they pared the skin away
from an apple to see the white, sweet meat inside.
Johnny began to pick Wolf Rivers early, choosing the largest and reddest
fruit; yet it seemed he had no sooner picked one apple than another
swelled to take the place of two. Toward the summer’s end, they knew
that the crop would be enormous. And this was one of those years when
elsewhere the orchards had failed, so that prices were enhanced and
buyers were eager.
One day in early October, one Sunday afternoon, when Johnny and Lucy had
gone up the hill to have dinner with the older folk, Johnny and Walter
Moore walked into the orchard and surveyed the trees.
“A big year,” Johnny said. “The biggest I ever saw. Your apples will
bring you close to seven hundred dollars.”
Moore nodded. “It makes me--kind of humble,” he said. “It doesn’t seem
possible. And--it’s so different from what my life has been. So great a
change, these last two years....”
Johnny looked up at him. “You’ve told me,” he assented. And he smiled a
little. “You know, I’ve said to Lucy some times, you can learn a lot
from an apple tree. If it’s got grass and weeds around its roots, they
starve it for water; and the scale and the aphis and the borer hurt it;
and the suckers waste its strength. You were kind of like that, when you
came up here. You’d been crowded in with a lot of other folks--grass and
weeds around you, cutting off the air and the good things you needed.
And the way you lived, there were all sorts of things hurting you; no
exercise, and no time to yourself, and Lucy’s dancing all night, and
smoking, and your inside work and all, the way the bugs hurt a tree.” He
smiled apologetically. “And things like that automobile stock of yours,
sucking your money the way suckers drain a tree....”
“That’s right,” Moore agreed. “I couldn’t see it then; but I felt it,
even then. And I couldn’t believe these trees would come back, any more
than I expected to be so different, myself, up here. I feel new, and
strong, now. Like the trees. The suckers and the bugs and all the
wasteful things trimmed out of our lives. Mrs. Moore was never so well.
And Lucy ... I have to thank you for Lucy, Dree. She used to worry me.
She doesn’t, now.”
Johnny, looking off across the orchard, saw his wife and her mother
coming toward them. Mrs. Moore erect where she had drooped, laughing
where she had been sad; and Lucy, full with the promise of the greatest
fruition of all. “Aye,” he said, with the reverent honesty of a man who
sees beauty in all the growth of life. “Aye, Lucy’s like the trees.
She’s come to bearing now.”