Orchard Read Online Free PDF Page A

it, Henry had his doubts. She had to work too hard to pull it free, and the ripest apples always seemed to jump into your hand.
    After a small, tentative bite, she meekly declared, “It’s very good.”
    Henry took it from her. Her teeth had not sunk far beneath the skin. He turned the apple around, opened his mouth as wide as his jaws would allow, and snapped off an oval of apple flesh. It made a sound like cracking wood. The texture was just what it should have been, crisp and distinct, but the taste was so sour it seemed to bite back. He let the apple fall.
    “Here. I’m going to find you one, goddammit.”
    He led her farther down the row to a tree so thick with apples that every branch sagged under the weight. He pulled off one that was as large as a softball and thrust it close to her face. She bent down to bite it while it was still in his hand. Droplets of apple juice sprayed onto Henry’s fingers.
    “Well?”
    “The best,” she said, but Henry suspected she was only being polite.
    He tossed it aside and picked another. “Is this one better still?”
    She opened her mouth, but Henry pulled the apple back. “Make sure the taste of the other is gone.”
    She exaggerated both her chewing and swallowing motions before closing her eyes, leaning forward, and opening her mouth wide. She trusted him to put an apple in her mouth, even if she was behaving as though she had to take a dose of bitter medicine.
    Once again the bite she took was so small he wondered if something might be wrong with her teeth. Henry had an uncle who, because of his bridgework, always bit into an apple from the side.
    “Also very good,” she said.
    “You’re not just saying that?”
    “Your family grows very good apples.”
    “Come on. We’ll try some more.” Henry had, for the moment, set aside his notions of romance. The reputation of his family’s apples was more important.
    They walked down the darkening corridor of trees, sampling apple after apple as they went and then casting the bitten fruit aside. Sonja continued to compliment each apple’s excellence, and although Henry did not mistrust her exactly, he wished he could see in her expression a sign that the fruit gave her the pleasure she said it did. But since they were nearing the end of the orchard, Henry supposed he had no choice but to believe her.
    The trees gave out, and Henry and Sonja stood by a dirt road across which the lights of the Singstad farm shone. Since her husband had died a few years earlier, Dagny Singstad rented rooms to young women who came to Door County to work but had difficulty finding a place to live, much less one they could afford. As it was, Sonja shared a room with a woman who clerked at Mast’s Pharmacy.
    As they stepped onto the road, the smell of wood smoke replaced the aroma of apples. From Mrs. Singstad’s chimney smoke rose as straight as a plumb line in the windless evening air.
    Henry nodded in the direction of the house. “A little warm for a fire, isn’t it?”
    “Probably she has the furnace on too. She says she is cold in her bones. She keeps it so hot it is suffocating in that house. We must have our window open always just to have air to breathe.”
    “Where’s your room?”
    “You can’t see it from here. It’s in the back above the kitchen. Do you see that tree? Its branches are right outside our window.”
    “Maybe I’ll climb up that tree some night. Sneak in through your window and surprise you while you’re sleeping.”
    Sonja laughed. “You might have a very bad surprise if you do. Dottie keeps a hammer by her bed.”
    “Dottie expecting trouble, is she?”
    “Dagny’s boys. When they come to the house, they look at you like . . . like I don’t know what.”
    “You tell Dottie she doesn’t have to worry about Nils. But she better keep her hammer handy when Bjorn’s around.”
    In the distance, a car’s headlights appeared. Henry and Sonja both turned to watch, wondering if they would have to move from