by Sarah Gai
Autumn couldn’t believe it. His father must be a big man if he managed to knock this tall, broad guy out. The thought sent shivers down Autumn’s spine.
“Hours later, I woke up, with the worst headache I’ve ever had, slumped over in his truck on my way here.” His face was grim. “So, what about you? What’s your story?”
As he turned the question to her, Autumn felt deflated. Her story was bland in contrast to what Eric just told her. She figured if he was being honest, then so should she.
Shrugging her shoulders, Autumn began, “Not much to tell. Dad and I are a little nomadic. Well, not a little—really nomadic. We drive from place to place in his truck and we camp out.”
“Even in winter?”
“That’s when we head for the warmer areas like Nevada, California, Florida…” Autumn trailed off in silence. Eric nodded, as if he understood. After his confession, Autumn felt she owed Eric a bit more candor than she was used to sharing, but not too much. She never said too much. “He’s a bit of a drunk, my dad.” She looked at the ground. She shared something that wasn’t entirely hers to share.
After a brief silence, Eric did them both a favor by changing the subject. “Do you have any plans for today?”
“I’ve got to head to the orchards,” she said, wishing it wasn’t true. What she really wanted was to get to know this mysterious boy better. Autumn also didn’t want him around the campsite in case her father stumbled out from the trees and saw them together. It wouldn’t be good for either of them.
“Why do you have to head to the orchards?”
“I have to get a job.”
“Oh, okay.”
“But I will be around tomorrow,” she offered.
“Okay, then. See you tomorrow, Autumn.” Eric stood up, reluctantly, lingering a few seconds as if wanting to say more. He finally turned and began walking away.
“Oh, I won’t be able to see you until about four if the job hunt goes well,” Autumn called out at his retreating figure.
“Four it is!” he smiled, looking behind him one last time before disappearing into the trees.
She felt a rush in her blood—deep and heady. She could hardly wait until tomorrow. She walked over to the stream near the clearing and washed her face in the piercingly cold water, needing to dampen down the blush that crept up her neck and covered her face after her encounter with Eric.
Autumn
Autumn finished getting dressed. The weather was perfect so she had on a clean pair of denim cut-offs and a blue and white striped t-shirt, paired with her running shoes. She didn’t need a mirror to know it was time for her to pocket some of her earnings once she got another job to go shopping at the local charity store for some new clothes. Securing an old watch she found a couple of months back around her wrist, she prepared to go get her father.
The sound of cracking twigs caught Autumn’s attention and she looked up to see her father rambling through the woods like a grizzly, cursing the air with every step. His eyes had a bleary look to them, as though he was still half asleep.
“We have any food?” he grumbled.
No hello or good morning—typical. “No,” Autumn lied.
“Not any of those God-awful Power bars I know you keep hidden?”
“Nope,” Autumn looked at him. “Do we have any grocery money?” she dared to ask in return.
“No,” her father replied shortly.
Autumn looked down at the ground, tears welling in her eyes. How could her father keep doing this? Didn’t he care about her at all?
“You ready to head to the orchards?”
There was no point in arguing with him. Liam was always right, even when he was dead wrong.
Raising her head high, she nodded. “Yes, daddy,” she responded.
“Good. Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready,” he growled at her as he crawled inside the tent.
It was the seasonal picking work that kept them afloat. Autumn had been working the picking jobs since she was twelve. Before that, she wandered alone through the streets and fields wherever her father decided to hunker down for the season. Autumn never attended school; with their nomadic ways, somehow her father had gotten away with not enrolling her. He repeatedly told her she “didn’t need no schooling, working the fields is all you’ll ever be good for.”
One summer after she turned five, Autumn was looking through the window of the Baskin Robbins ice cream store in Ligonier, just to see the types of treats other people were buying. That was when she saw two kids, about her age, with hair as bright orange as a full-burning fire. If the two were not wearing different clothes or had dissimilar haircuts, she wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart. They were sitting at a table across from their mother, a tall, slender woman with equally orange hair, all sharing a huge sundae with all of the toppings. Autumn couldn’t remember ever having a dessert that hadn’t come from a gas station shelf.
She watched the family eat their sundae—every last, glorious bite. Awhile later, they exited the store, the children’s mouths trimmed in ice cream smiles. The girl was the first to notice her.
“Hello,” she said brightly, standing so close Autumn swore she could count every last freckle on the girl’s nose.
“Hi,” Autumn replied shyly trying to hide behind her long, blonde, unwashed hair.
“Where’s your mommy?” the girl asked.
“Gone,” Autumn replied.
“Are you lost?” the mother inquired, growing concerned while crouching down before Autumn.
“No.” Autumn was confused. She was on Main Street, a few blocks from the campsite.
“Then where are your parents?”
“My dad’s working,” Autumn replied. “My mom left.”
“Where did your mother go?” the woman asked her.
Autumn shrugged. “She went away a long time ago.”
“So who watches you while your father is working?”
“No one,” Autumn replied. “Well, sometimes Miss Ava from the bed and breakfast looks after me when Daddy isn’t around.”
“Can she play with us?” the little girl asked, pulling on her mother’s arm. The mother smiled, though it looked dispirited, and replied, “First we have to ask her father’s permission.”
Autumn felt apprehensive—what if her father said no? But, once they tracked him down at the orchard, he grunted and shrugged his shoulders saying, “Don’t see why not.”
It was funny because when Miss Ava suggested it to him, he went wild with rage.
It was the beginning of Autumn’s only friendships as a child. Aiden and Meg O’Connor always wanted to play school with her. Over the years, as Autumn continued to return and seek them out, they taught her the alphabet and how to string letters together in order to read. At the end of every summer, they sent her off with a few of their new favorite paperbacks they discovered during her absence—it kept them close, even when Autumn was far away from Ligonier.
Those silent reminders of her friends were what kept Autumn going, even when she was re-reading lines of a dog-eared, much loved novel, tears streaming down her face from another black-eye occasioned from a drunken rage of her father. She had never told the twins, but they were her lifelines.
Autumn
Eric was supposed to show up. Autumn and her father hadn’t gone to the orchards yesterday; Liam spent all of the daylight hours sleeping off the previous night’s drinking binge. Autumn knew the moment he went into the tent to get changed, he wasn’t coming out. Instead, she went about her day, washing their dirty clothes in the bubbling stream just beyond their campsite, hanging the wet washings over branches, and thinking about the boy she met. By the time Autumn finished her duties and returned to the campsite, her father was gone. There was no need to guess where he went, not to mention how he was going to afford to buy another drink or bet in another card game considering he had spent every last measly dime they drove into town with.
This morning though, Liam was up early and ready to g
o. Once Autumn dressed, they walked back to their truck in town and headed out to a local farm her father discovered was hiring a few more pickers for the season. Securing two new jobs, Autumn and her father churned out a decent day’s work and finally knocked off at three.
Her father always parked his truck in the same spot just outside of Pesky’s. He ran inside and, instead of it annoying her today, Autumn was excited her father would not be at the campsite. If Liam saw Eric then Autumn knew it would be the last time they could ever hang out together. The thought frightened her; she never wanted to know someone as much as she wanted to know that young man. He was a stranger, yet Autumn felt a pull towards him. It also helped that he was positively the most gorgeous creature Autumn ever laid eyes upon.
While she waited for Eric to arrive, she sat, pretending to read a beat-up copy of her new favorite book: To Kill a Mockingbird. Meg read it in school and although Autumn never had the experience of a classroom, reading a book Meg assured her was on the curriculum made Autumn feel as though she was in some part of the school atmosphere. It was a sad truth.
Autumn stared at the same page for almost half an hour, anxious about spending the afternoon with Eric, her focus wandering from the actual text.
“Hey,” Eric said, walking out of the brush, “whatcha readin’?” He nodded towards her, his hands tucked into his pockets as he casually leaned back on his heels.
Autumn never saw someone so comfortable; she was shaking like a leaf, regardless of the warm weather. This boy made her insides squirm and her heart skip beats, which in turn caused her to catch her breath. Eric was most definitely not good for her well-being.
Remembering Eric asked her a question, Autumn held out the book. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Autumn replied as she lowered the cover and tucked the book into her duffle bag. She got up, brushing some leaves off of her legs, and feeling quite apprehensive.
“How literary,” Eric remarked, sounding impressed.
Autumn smiled and held her hands behind her back to hide the fact they were still shaking from her nerves. “What do you want to do today?” She pushed a wave of hair behind her ear and waited with a shy smile on her face.
“You are cordially invited,” Eric began with a flourish, “to tea.”
Autumn laughed. “What?”
“You have been invited to the house of my grandfather, Pastor Graham,” Eric stated. “He wishes to take you, the wayward child of an alcoholic, beneath his wing.”
This wasn’t quite what Autumn was expecting. “Oh, okay.” She didn’t know how to respond, but she knew she felt ashamed.
“Hey, I was just kidding. He didn’t say that at all. It’s part of the deal,” Eric stage-whispered to her.
“What deal?” Autumn raised her head to look at him, feeling confused.
“The one my grandfather made with my dad. He’s supposed to meet everyone I choose to associate with this summer, since I am technically, grounded. I mean, I’m nineteen, but seriously, if you met my dad, you wouldn’t argue with him.”
Autumn really wondered just how immense his father was. Eric was by no means small; he was prodigious, standing at least a foot taller than Autumn. She felt positively pint-sized next to him.
“Oh,” Autumn replied.
“Are you prepared to run the gauntlet?”
“If that’s what it takes,” she jested.
Eric laughed. “You’re funny.”
“You might be the first person to call me that,” she stated as she began to follow him through the trees towards their destination.
Autumn had never been inside of Pastor Graham’s enormous house. To get there, they had to pass through a large paddock filled with several Holstein cows. It looked much like Autumn imagined it did when it was first built—minus the large TV dish on the roof and the silver Camry in the driveway.
She followed Eric as he stepped confidently through the front door. It was her first time inside a house so captivating—the scent of lemon floor polish and clean laundry permeated her nose. There was a large grandfather clock in the main entryway and cushioned rugs atop the shiny, walnut hardwood flooring. It was unlike anything she had ever seen, with the exception of the magazines she would flip through in line at the grocery store.
Pastor Graham came out of a room off to the side. “So, this must be Autumn,” he greeted warmly as he walked towards them. He held out his hand, which she shook tentatively. He wasn’t wearing anything special to denote his vocation, instead opting for a pair of khakis, a plaid shirt under a maroon sweater, and a pair of Keds.
With Pastor Graham smiling, laugh lines at the edges of his sky blue eyes and his thick, gray hair combed neatly, Autumn could not help but smile back up at him. She felt at ease and struggled to understand how a complete stranger could feel like an old friend.
“Nice to meet you,” Autumn replied.
“Come in,” Pastor Graham ushered her into the room he exited from.
It was a sitting room—a real proper parlor, one that Autumn only ever read about in one of the twins’ novels. There was no television, as it was clearly set up to receive guests.
Autumn’s heart raced in her chest. She felt a little inadequate standing in it, taking the whole room in, even though she was wearing her nicest dress—a canary yellow cotton jumper.
“Have a seat,” the Pastor insisted, gesturing toward the ornate cream-colored couch. He sat down in a matching chair across from it, clearly comfortable within his surroundings.
Autumn perched on the edge of the cushion, trying not to dirty it. Eric sat next to her, throwing an arm over the back of the couch, clearly relaxed in his grandfather’s home. Autumn found herself distracted by his closeness—the smell of his aftershave a momentary distraction arousing her senses.
“I haven’t seen you around, Autumn,” Pastor Graham stated, capturing her attention once more. “Is your family staying at the resort?”
“Ah, no,” Autumn replied. She struggled for a moment, trying to figure out the best way to say I live in the woods behind your house every summer, when the door to the parlor opened, admitting a plump, older woman. She carried a dark, mahogany wooden tray with a delicate bone-china tea set on it.
“Mrs. Brooks,” Pastor Graham greeted, “Meet Autumn, Eric’s new friend.”
“A pleasure to meet you,” Mrs. Brooks smiled. “I’m the pastor’s housekeeper.”
“Nice to meet you, too,” Autumn grinned.
“How do you like your tea, dear?” Mrs. Brooks asked.
“I don’t know,” Autumn replied truthfully. “I’ve never had tea before.”
“Two scoops of sugar, then,” Mrs. Brooks said, her gentle round face showing sympathy.
Autumn smiled at the older woman gratefully, as she handed her a cup on a saucer with a cookie next to it. Autumn placed the saucer on her lap, holding the fragile cup with both hands.
“You have a lovely house,” Autumn remarked, hoping to steer the topic of conversation away from her.
“Thank you,” the pastor replied. “It’s been in the family for over a century. If I have my way, young Eric will one day raise his own family within its walls.”
She turned her face to look at Eric who lazily rolled his eyes, obviously hearing his grandfather say it before. To Autumn’s relief, the conversation never returned back to where she was staying, although she was forced to answer some questions about herself.
“So, do you still live with your parents?” the pastor asked her.
“My father. My mother…is gone.” Almost too late, she recalled Eric’s misperception of the whole mother thing.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The pastor looked tired as he expressed his condolences. “You seem like a good girl, Autumn. I’m trusting you to keep Eric out of trouble, now.”
“I promise.” Autumn looked the pastor in the eye. “He’ll be on his best behavior,” she swore with a serious nod.
The pastor laughed. “Very good. Well, you two kids go out and do something
,” he encouraged. “I’m sure you don’t want to hang around with an old man for the afternoon.”
Autumn thanked him and she and Eric literally ran for the door and headed for town on foot.
“He likes you,” Eric said, placing his hands in his pants pockets as they strolled towards Main Street.
“Good. I was so nervous,” Autumn admitted timidly.
“You shouldn’t be.”
“I mean, what if he didn’t like me?”
“What’s not to like about you?”
Autumn smirked, but did not answer. A lot of things, she thought. Hopefully, Eric would see something worthwhile in her and not the boring, uneducated girl she appeared to be.
They just turned onto Main Street when she heard her name being called. She searched for the hollering voices only to find two familiar faces riding towards them.
Autumn
“Hey there stranger!” Meg hollered as she brought her bike to a stop.
“Just when were you planning on coming to see us?” Aiden asked, dismayed.
“I only got here the night before last,” Autumn explained, not liking the scowls aimed at her.
“All of yesterday!” Aiden yelled; the twins always yelled in order to be heard over the other. It was one of the best things about them.
“But—”
“No buts young lady,” Meg shouted, pointing a finger at her. “We’ve been waiting for you since last August!”
Autumn shook her head; there was no arguing with them. Trying to change the subject, she pushed her new friend in front of her and into the direct line of the twins.
“Hey guys, this is Eric,” she informed them.
“You’re Pastor Graham’s grandson,” Meg said, eyeing him with suspicion.
