The Orchard Read Online Free PDF

barely keep my head from falling off my shoulders, so I lay down again and promptly fell asleep.
    There were no dreams, or none that I could remember.
    But when I awakened for the second time that day, the sun was down and there was the smell of food cooking deliciously in the kitchen. My stomach made like a geyser ready to blow, and I jumped off the bed, ran down the stairs, and only barely restrained myself from charging into the dining room.
    No one was there.
    I walked around the table and into the kitchen.
    It was empty.
    The oven was off, there were no pots or pans on the stove, nothing waiting on the table. I was a little confused and scratched the sleep from my eyes, squinted, and saw a note on the counter from my aunt, telling me she and Uncle Gil had gone to the movies in the new theater in town, and that I’d had a couple of phone calls while I was napping. She said she didn’t want to wake me up because she knew what I was going through.
    Stick had been in touch, and Mike, and Mary (she underlined the name) three times.
    Rubbing a nervous hand over my stomach to calm it down, I hurried into the living room and sat in my uncle’s chair, pulled the telephone into my lap, and dialed Stick’s number first—he and Mike would be the quickest to get through, and by then I would have worked up enough nerve to concentrate on Mary.
    It took a while to get to talk to Reese, though. First I got his father, who was, by the sound of it, halfway through his ninth case of beer. He wasn’t all that bad a guy, not really, but he’d been out of work for over two years, laid off by the railroad and unable to get anything else but the occasional odd job. I let him jabber, made the right sounds Uncle Gil had taught me, then asked again for Stick.
    I heard some muffled yelling, and what could have been a slap. Then: “Hey, man, how you doing?”
    Good old Stick.
    I told him I wasn’t too bad, all things considered, and asked if the cops had found the hit-and-run driver yet.
    “No way. That guy was a hundred years gone before we even got there, remember?”
    “Damn. I thought Mike saw him, the car anyway. Did anyone else see it?”
    I heard someone popping bubble gum like a machine gun then, heard Stick yell at his kid sister to get the hell out of the room, right now, goddamnit, and preferably not stopping until she reached Alaska.
    “Nothing,” he said when he came back. “I don’t know. It’s like … Shit, I don’t know.”
    I straightened a little; he didn’t sound quite right. “Hey, you okay?”
    “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’ve just been thinking, y’know? Rich was my age. My age, you know what I mean?”
    “Right. I … right.” I wish he hadn’t reminded me. His age was my age, and I sure didn’t want to talk about mortality just now.
    We yakked a bit more, about the exams, about how rotten things were, then he asked me about the stupid game we had played.
    I looked at my watch. “What about it?”
    “You went through the orchard, right?”
    “Well, sure! Only a zillion yards ahead of you, that’s all.”
    His laugh was short and dry. “When you went through, Herb, or when we were sitting there, did you … this is dumb, but did you kind of feel something?”
    “What?” Jesus, I thought; Rich’s dying really got to him, bad. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”
    “The cold, Herb. Didn’t you feel the cold?”
    I thought, and I remembered. “Yeah, sure. What about it?”
    “Weird, huh?”
    “No, it wasn’t weird, for god’s sake. It was almost dark. And it ain’t the middle of July, in case you hadn’t noticed. What did you want, ninety degrees or something?”
    “Oh, absolutely,” he said, too loud and too fast. “I am a Sunbelt baby, remember? Born and practically bred in the wilds of Miami, and I don’t intend to spend the rest of my stupid life in this stupid icebox.” He yelled at his sister again and apologized, saying he was stuck at home, babysitting,