by Maren Smith
All that first day, Kylie scrubbed and scrubbed, but she cleared every speck of dust out of the entire main floor of that house. She washed down every surface, swept and mopped every floor, hauled outside every scrap of cloth from clothes to rugs to drapes, hung them on the clothesline and beat clouds of dust out of the musty fibers. She washed the cherries in the kitchen sink, filling a ceramic bowl with them and carried it out to the fruit stand with Robert’s apples. And she didn’t talk to him. Not even later that night when he brought in a small handful of change and set it on the counter next to the stove where she was cooking.
“Folks seem to like the cherries,” he said, making an effort to be sociable when he set the empty ceramic bowl down next to the money.
Kylie continued cutting up the potatoes she’d found in the pantry and added them to the soup, and ignored him until he left again.
The next day, she scoured the garden on her hands and knees, feeling through the choking weeds in an effort to salvage anything that looked ripe enough to eat and which the bugs hadn’t already beaten them to. She found two gourds of butternut squash, making one into a savory soup for lunch and storing the other in the cool pantry for later. She found a canning pot and boxes upon boxes upon boxes of empty jars with lids and sealing wax, with which to store some of the cherries and apples for the winter. She also baked two pies, one of each, with latticed upper crusts in an effort to conserve on dough ingredients, and put them out on the fruit stand along with the fruit. A few minutes later, Robert put a note next to them asking fifty cents apiece, and he got it.
They had potato soup for supper and cherry pie for dessert. Robert ate his at the dining table while she ate hers in the kitchen, propped against the sink although she was very tired by then and her feet were hurting. And she still didn’t talk to him, not even when he came in to lay his dishes in the sink and said, “That was good.”
She simply took another bite, chewing sullenly and casting her baleful scowls at the floor until he left again.
The next day, she washed every window and scrubbed the second floor as vigorously as she had the lower one. She fluffed every mattress and gathered the dirty clothes, taking them out onto the rear porch where she then spent a full forty minutes fidgeting with, beating on, kicking and cursing at the manually-powered washing and wringing machine until she finally gave up. Throwing her hands into the air, she stomped off the porch.
She found Robert at the fruit stand, talking to a man standing beside his car-full of kids. As Kylie came toward them, the lady in the front seat shifted the baby in her lap and briefly met Kylie’s eyes. The woman looked away first, but not before Kylie recognized the leanness and thinness of her face. Stark and quiet, it was a desperation that couldn’t be solved with apples, but by the time the man shook hands with Robert, he left with a pillowcase full of them, plus the cherry pie that Kylie had baked fresh just that morning. Robert stood for a long time after the car moved on, two extra dimes in his hand, watching the car until it disappeared.
He was a good man.
That realization came to Kylie completely unbidden and completely out of nowhere. She didn’t particularly even want to believe it, but he could have charged more for what he let the man take with him and he hadn’t. He was infinitely more familiar with this hungry, squeezing desperation that Kylie was only just coming to know. Robert wasn’t just doing what he could to survive; he was doing what he could and surviving in spite of it.
He was a good man.
Robert turned around, but spying her stopped him all over again. They stared at one another, neither one smiling or speaking until Kylie felt that familiar cross-ness starting to creep in around her again. A good man, maybe, but he also had a lot of deep-seated jerkish tendencies. If she didn’t need his help so much, she probably would have obeyed her nagging urge to just walk away. Instead, she swallowed her wounded pride and asked, “Did he buy the last pie?”
“I told you they were good.”
“I need to do the rest with sugar crumbled tops, or we’re going to run out of flour before next month.” She fell silent and stared at him again, feeling herself standing right at the gap all her carefully-constructed silence had created between them, but with no clear idea of how to bridge it.
Robert eyed her thoughtfully, then stepped up to the fruit stand to empty the few coins from the money bowl into his palm. “Maybe I can help with that.” He stretched out his hand, waiting until she came close enough to accept the change he poured into her palm. “The government contracted the Grangers’ wheat field for the war effort, but I know they glean it after every harvest. Maybe we can barter with them for a little something extra.”
“Thank you. I’d appreciate that.” It was the first willing conversation she’d had with the man in three days, and despite still feeling angry with him, it felt nice to have it. But it wasn’t getting the laundry any closer to being done and, this being her third day in the same borrowed polkadot dress while her comfortable jeans remained draped over the porch, chock full of wasp stingers, she was out of time and clean clothes. “I don’t suppose you’d mind showing me how that machine out back works? I’ve been trying to figure it out, but I think it’s smarter than I am.”
“I don’t know about that, but…” Robert started walking toward the house and she backed up to let him pass. He stopped in front of her instead, a slight twist of a smile pulling one corner of his mouth upwards. “Have you decided you’re done being angry now?”
It was that half smile that undid her. The last tendrils of stubborn outrage began to slip away even as Kylie folded her arms across her chest and struggled to hang onto it. “I’m thinking about it.”
His look turned knowing. “I’m sure you’ll let me know when you make up your mind.”
Three days was the longest she’d ever held a grudge. Obviously, she wasn’t very good at it because that gentle teasing was the last nail her grudge coffin required. Before she knew it, her mouth was tugging into a smile to match his. “Yeah, okay. I’m done. Please just…show me what I’m doing.”
It took him all of five seconds to unlock both wheels and hook the hose to the back faucet. After that, it was a matter of figuring out the right combination of laundry soap and liquid lye, and letting the clothes soak for a while before putting her back into cranking the metal wheel that turned the paddles, churning their laundry clean. A second heavy metal wheel ran the hand-fed wringers, and it took a lot of fumbling before she got the hang of it. The machine was only big enough to wash a handful of items at a time, and with the clothesline and Mother Nature being her only dryer option, this was one chore that literally took all day to complete.
In between letting loads soak in the liquid lye, Kylie put two more pies in the oven and then started coring and peeling apples for applesauce. She put more cherries out on the stand and made a simple potato hash lunch for Robert when he brought three heavy crates of apples up from the orchard to take to Maybelle’s. For the first time, she joined him at the table, and although sitting down was infinitely more comfortable than leaning propped against the sink, the conversation was just as stilted as it had been earlier.
Ever since her Nana Parker died, Kylie had been living on her own. It was striking how accustomed she’d become to eating by herself. Obviously, Robert wasn’t any more social than she was, and for the longest time, only the clink of silverware scraping old china plates could be heard.
“This house hasn’t looked this good since Mom died,” Robert finally offered.
Kylie looked up from her plate, a little surprised by the compliment. A little tickled, too, if the truth be told. “Thank you.”
Again, the room fell to silence, although it didn’t feel quite so oppressive now. Her morale bolstered by the compliment, Kylie made the second stabbing attempt at conversation.
“I don’t think my back can take hand cranking that washing machine all day. I’ll probably do another load and then I figure I might go down to the barn and take a closer
look at the cider press, if you don’t mind.”
“Just don’t feel like you have to fix it. You won’t be the first to try.” As he finished, he wiped his mouth on his napkin before dropping it next to his plate and standing. “I plan to stop at the Granger’s on the way home and I’ll see about that flour. Is there anything else you need while I’m in town?”
“Brown sugar?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He put his hand on her shoulder as he passed her chair, and even that minor contact made Kylie’s stomach tighten. After the front door closed behind him, she sat at the table, drinking coffee and stealing glimpses of Robert’s retreating back as he passed first one window and then another before rounding the corner of the house and disappearing from sight. A few minutes later, the Woody wagon jostled up the driveway and turned onto the road, heading for town.
Kylie finished the rest of her lunch by herself, looking around the dining room and trying to imagine a future with Robert in this house. It was a whole lot easier to see herself settling down with the man when he wasn’t spanking her.
When he wasn’t spanking her, he actually seemed kind of nice.
She took her time finishing her coffee, took the pies out of the oven and put a huge pot of apples on the stove to cook with a little bit of cinnamon and the last of the brown sugar that she’d found in the cave-like pantry, which was little more than a deep hole, dug down into the dirt under the house. Regardless of the temperatures above ground, it was always cool in the pantry. Of course, it was also always full of salamanders, which was the only reason she hadn’t moved her bed down into the pantry three muggy summer nights ago.
With the apples cooking on low, back out onto the rear porch Kylie went for another back-breaking and arm-tiring round of cranking the paddle wheel on that dinosaur of a washing machine. She had sweat streaming down her face and the starts of a couple painful blisters before she decided she was done for the day. Wringing each item one at a time, she hung them on the clothesline to dry and ventured out across the yard toward the barn.
She paused briefly for one last search of anything edible in the weed-choked garden, but the tall grass yielded only garter snakes and she was a long way from ever being that hungry. As she was leaving, however, she tripped over a partially-rotted zucchini, which she carried down to the vocally grateful chickens. Rounding to the front of the barn, she saw the broken wasps’ nest on the ground where Robert had knocked it down. Some unseen predator had already torn the fragile paper sides into sections, exposing the tasty larva within, and now no signs of life remained anywhere around it.
Watching the top of the door closely, ready to run if she heard the slightest hint of an angry insect buzz, Kylie opened the barn, letting the bright light of day spill across the old dirt floor and splash full across the cider press. Something heavy fell over in the direction of the three, seemingly empty horse stalls and she turned in time to see a huge barn owl jump silently into flight and out the open hatch in the hayloft high above. Unlike Maybelle’s barn, which had become a catch-all for all her father’s things, there was virtually nothing in Robert’s. A short stack of apple crates, a thick row of old wooden barrels that lined the back wall at least four layers deep and stacked three barrels high, a few old farm tools that looked as if they ought to belonged to Freddy Krueger. But by and large, the cider press was the largest piece of equipment and took up the majority of the ground space.
Time and neglect had definitely taken its toll. The elevator still looked sound, as did the actual press. Hydraulic, even. Who’d have thought? But when she tried to manually turn the grinder—a bulky machine fed by assembly lines before and aft, and which was at least three times larger than she was—the wheel refused to budge. Instead, she could hear a broken, metallic clanking—misaligned teeth, maybe?—from somewhere deep inside the machine. Kylie bent, looking underneath long enough to identify an access panel that fed into the lower guts of the grinder. At least that would make it easier to get to.
But that wasn’t going to be her only problem. At least twenty years into retirement, the old wood and wire racks would need to be repaired or rebuilt before they could handle the weight of a full production’s half ton of apple pomace, much less the pressure applied by the old turn-screw-style press. She was just starting to test the hydraulics, turning the wheel which was in desperate need of lubrication, when she heard a sound behind her. She turned, half expecting to see Robert, back from town already, and nearly jumped half out of her skin to find a completely different man standing not three feet behind her.
A good fourteen inches taller than she was, he literally towered over her. His close-cut hair was as dark as his eyes and there was something strange about the look of his face, although she couldn’t put a finger on what looked…wrong. Maybe it was just the overwhelming size of him. The dusty jean coveralls he wore added to the sheer blockiness of his frame. Even his hands, hanging loose down at his sides, were huge, rough and square.
“Oh shit!” she blurted, bumping backwards into the unyielding press. “You scared the hell out of me!”
The huge man blinked at her once. “I’m Braden,” he said, and shuffled half a step closer. His dark eyes fixed intently and unsmilingly on her as he reached with one thick, blunt finger and poked at her shoulder. “You swore.”
It was a mild and darn-near expressionless accusation, and it raised every alarm-prickling hair on the back of Kylie’s nape. She rubbed her shoulder where he’d poked her, hardly daring to take her eyes from him long enough to glance beyond him to the wide-open barn door. “Sorry.”
As if by rote, and mumbling as if through a mouthful of oatmeal, Braden added, “You shouldn’t swear. Ladies don’t like to hear such talk. It’s not polite in mixed comp’ny.” Admonishment finished, he then stood there, solidly in between her and the only door out, blinking.
“You’re right.” Kylie tried to sidestep around him, at the very least to put enough distance between them to keep from being poked again, but she couldn’t get around the stack of broken racks on the one side or the hydraulic winch on the other. Backing up bumped her against the huge press, and then there was Braden. “Excuse me,” she said faintly, raising one hand to point behind him. “I need to go now.”
“Okay,” Braden said, but he didn’t move and Kylie wasn’t about to rub herself against him while trying to slid out between him and the equipment.
“Can you move please?”
He shuffled a single step closer and said, “You have pretty lips.”
“Excuse me,” she hedged, the twang of Deliverance banjo music starting up in the back of her head. “I need to go home now.”
She scraped her back against the press trying to sidestep around him, but Braden followed her, keeping himself between her and the door. And instead of finding an avenue of escape, Kylie found herself trapped anew, only now with the equally unyielding grinder and the assembly lines that fed it blocking her from any further retreat. She had to get past Braden, and the big man showed absolutely no intention of allowing that to happen. He took another step, shortening the distance between them back into that eerie arm’s reach again.
He swung his massive head first one way and then the other, looking around the cider press rather than at it, before rotating back around to fix his eyes on her again. “Robert?”
“Up at the house,” she lied. “He’s coming right back—” She caught herself when he shuffled another step, stopping less than two feet from her now. He reached for her, poking one finger at the back of her hand, all but caressing her. Kylie tucked her hands behind her to remove them from his reach. She didn’t realize she was also backing away until she bumped into the solid body of the grinder. Something shifted, sliding into her leg, and without glancing down she caught it. “You…you could go up to the house too. I’m sure he’d…h-he’d love to…to talk to you.”
But Braden didn’t budge. Instead, his big hands drifted up to each shoulder in turn, unbuckling the straps and letting
the front flap of his coveralls fall down to his legs. Kylie stared in mute horror as he pushed the denim of the pants portion down over his hips. “You have a little one, but mine’s bigger. Want to see?”
“Oh shit!” A fissuring sizzle of pure panic shot straight through the core of her. Kylie didn’t pause to think about it, she just acted. She came out of her corner swinging, clocking Braden upside the head with the empty end of the broken axe handle that had fallen into her hand only a moment before. It made a surprisingly light ‘tokking’ sound as it bounced off his skull, but down Braden went, dropping into a heap which she then leapt over in her haste to get out the door. She ran for the house as fast as her legs would go, screaming profanities with damn near every flying step.
She’d barely reached the back porch when Robert’s Woody slowed on the road in front of the house and turned into the driveway. Kylie instantly changed her trajectory.
Whether it was the look on her face, the frantically waving axe handle she used to flag him down, or the ‘shit!’ she kept screaming, over and over again, until her voice began to crack with the desperation of it, that Woody came to a sudden jerk of a stop.
Robert threw open the door and jumped out running to meet her. “What? What happened?”
“The barn! The barn!” Kylie launched herself into his arms, seizing him in a panicked, grateful hug that almost got him whacked in the back of the head with the wild end of the axe handle. Releasing him, she ducked behind his back and seized his shirt with both hands, clutching him and the axe handle both, her shield and sword, tight before her. “Down there! He’s in the barn!”
“Who?”
“The biggest man I’ve ever seen in my life! He tried to rape me!”
His manner changed instantly. “Get in the house.”
“Trust me,” she said, her panic only just now beginning to fade into anger. “It’s going to take both of us to bring that S.O.B. down!”
They went down to the barn together, Robert stoically leading the way while Kylie brought up the rear, holding her weapon like a bat and chewing at her bottom lip as she unconsciously alternated between adjusting her grip and wringing it between her hands.
