Autumn Blue

by Karen Harter

  The winesap apple tree strained under the weight of its dappled-red fruit. Hah! He had been right about pruning it back to only a small umbrella two seasons ago. Molly had wrung her hands and whined the whole time, warning that he was butchering the poor thing. Gave it a good military haircut, he did, and it was better off for it. What he would do with all those apples was a worry to him, though. His pantry shelves were still lined with jars of cinnamon applesauce and apple butter, his freezer stuffed with zip-closed bags labeled Pie-Fixings in Molly’s flowing cursive hand.

  A door slammed across the street. That lady from the trailer-house had emerged, arms full, bending at the knees while trying to lock the house up as her two girls headed down the steps and got into the car. He had met her at the mailbox not long after the family moved in and the For Rent sign was yanked out of the yard. She was a nice enough young lady, he guessed. No husband. Not much meat on her bones, but she dressed neatly and wore her dark blond hair like she put some effort into it. Not at all like her yard, which was a downright eyesore to the neighborhood with patches of grass and weeds growing down the middle of the gravel driveway, a couple of scraggly half-dead azalea bushes clinging to the cementlike dirt, and a bent downspout hanging off one corner of the double-wide house.

  She had a boy, too, a boy old enough to be out there mowing those patches of grass and getting up on a ladder to secure that downspout. But on rare sightings the kid had clattered down the blacktop road on a skateboard, baggy pants at half-mast, his tufted hair, even from a distance, looking as mangy as their lawn. Millard blew out a disgusted sigh, remembering how he had hoped the kid’s pants would slip down and hog-tie him. Why, when he was that age, every boy he knew had chores after school, and there was no fishing or pasture baseball games until the chicken coops were clean, eggs gathered, firewood cut, fences mended, and anything else that needed doing done. He shook his head, turning to go inside. Punk kids nowadays. Wouldn’t know how to do an honest day’s work if their life hinged on it.

  He shook the paper open, pulled his reading glasses from his shirt pocket, and sank into the worn blue recliner by the picture window. First he perused the obituaries (seemed like the only contact he had with old peers anymore, their entire lives summed up in a few neat paragraphs). He then worked the crossword until his daughter’s pale blue Chevy pulled into the drive. She pushed through the front door with a grocery sack in each arm. “Hi, Dad. How are you feeling?” She bent to kiss the top of his forehead. “You should be wearing a sweater. It’s not summer anymore. Where’s your gray cardigan?” She proceeded to the kitchen to begin her weekly ritual. He heard cupboards opening and closing. “Nicole has her first cheerleader gig Friday night—first football game of the season. I hope this weather holds. You know those girls are going to freeze their little tushies when it gets colder. And they just hate to bundle up and cover their cute little outfits.”

  “I need a six-letter word for ‘jump.’ Starts with a p.”

  He heard the suction-release sound of the fridge opening. “Prance?”

  “Pounce.” That’s right. Why hadn’t he thought of it? He penned the letters into the appropriate boxes.

  “You haven’t even touched this squash, have you, Dad?” She sounded hurt that he had not appreciated her boiling and mashing the disgusting gourd’s flesh into a stringy pulp. “You know you need the vitamin A, Dad. It’s good for your eyesight. What are you going to do when you can’t see anymore? No crossword puzzles, no Wheel of Fortune. That won’t be any fun, will it?”

  Nine across had him stumped. He gazed out the window. Seven letters with a d in the middle, meaning “inner substance.” “I just saw a starling drop a bomb on that shiny blue car out there,” he said. The splat on Rita’s windshield was purple. It was a good year for blackberries. They hung like grapes from tangled vines on the far side of the field next door. He might go out and pick another coffee can full if he felt like it that afternoon.

  Rita came around the corner and peered out the front-room window as if she didn’t believe him. She clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Nasty birds.

  “Well, don’t take anything for granted,” she continued. “Not your eyesight or anything else. At your age every day of good health is a gift.”

  “Oh,” he said, “and everyone else’s is under specific warranty?”

  “You need to take care of yourself, Dad. That’s all I’m saying.” Once Rita was on a certain track, she was not easily derailed. She headed back to the kitchen and he heard her loading this week’s supply of frozen dinners—leftovers from her family’s meals divided into sections in plastic containers—onto the freezer shelves. “Which reminds me, Dad. It’s time to get your prostate checked again. What was your PSA count last time?”

  He slapped his pen to the newspaper in his lap. So, his life had come to this. “I don’t remember.” Of course, he knew the moment the words escaped that they were grounds for suspicion of the onset of Alzheimer’s. “I peed twice today so far. It was as yellow as lemonade and I flushed both times. My bowels are regular, blood pressure maintaining at 125 over 80. Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

  Rita came out and stood over him, her arms crossed, her face pinched. His pretty little girl was beginning to look middle-aged. Her throat had become minutely wrinkled like the pink crepe paper hung for her birthdays back when she was a child and he was clearly an adult. Had it been so long since the feet she stomped wore little Mary Jane shoes? She tilted her head defiantly, clamping her hands on her full hips. “I’m sorry, Dad.” She certainly was not. “But these things need to be discussed, whether you’re comfortable with it or not. If Mom were here, she’d be the one asking, not me. But she’s not here and I’m all you’ve got. This isn’t easy for me either, you know. I lost my mother, but I’m not sitting around moping and giving up on life. And it’s not like I don’t have anything better to do. I’m in charge of the Girl Scouts craft projects this fall. I’ve got play costumes to make, soccer practices, piano lessons, you name it.” She sighed, looking down at him like he was a hopeless cause. It was the resigned, dutiful sigh of a martyr bravely accepting her fate.

  Giving up on life. What was there to give up? “Then don’t worry about me,” he scowled. “I told you before that you don’t have to dote on me. I can make my own suppers, for Pete’s sake.”

  “But you won’t. You’d live on bologna sandwiches and corn dogs if I let you.” She sat on the edge of the sofa, leaning toward him. “As long as you live here in this big old house all by yourself, I’m just going to worry about you, Dad. I wish you’d reconsider about going to Haywood House. It’s a nice place. You get your own little apartment, so you’d have your treasured privacy, but there are other people just like you there. You can get to know them in the dining room at mealtimes, maybe meet some friends that like to play chess or put together jigsaw puzzles. And wouldn’t it be nice to know that there are doctors and nurses right there on staff?”

  It would take the self-imposed pressure off her, anyway. He wished she would go now. Leave him before the last hull of manhood was shucked away, exposing only a withered pea, a nothing, with no higher purpose than to put together cardboard jigsaw puzzles until he returned to the dust from which he came. He already knew this about himself, of course. But it was a truth better left untouched, unexplored. It was best to keep to the rhythm of his daily routine, biding away the hours with pleasant distractions and the self-imposed orders of the day. His battles were no longer fought against Soviet MiGs, but airborne dandelion seeds that dared invade the airspace inside the perimeter of his picket fence. Gone were the glory days of coaching the wrestling team at Silver Falls High School over in Dunbar—state champions six years out of ten. Not bad for a hick-town farm-boy team. But now his greatest mission was to solve the before-and-after puzzle on Wheel of Fortune before anyone bought the last vowel.

  He glanced at his watch and pushed up from his chair. “The mail should be here now.” He paused when he passe
d her to touch Rita’s soft red hair. “I’ll be good,” he promised, “as long as you don’t make me eat any more of that baby-puke squash.”

  3

  SIDNEY AND HER FRIEND Micki steered their children through the crowded fairgrounds toward the livestock exhibits. Attending the Winger County Harvest Fair was an annual tradition, one Sidney couldn’t deny her daughters, though her heart was not in it, to say the least.

  Today her girls wore matching pink denim jackets that their grandmother had sent from Desert Hot Springs last Christmas. Sissy’s had a gray streak across the front from rubbing it against the corral fence where they had watched a friend from school run her pony through the barrel race. Andy, Micki’s nine-year-old son, led the way down a row of wooden stalls to the Goliath of the hogs, a huge mottled gray blimp with legs. It tried to push itself up from the straw where it was sprawled, then seemed to think better of it, falling back with a breathy grunt. The children began to clap and chant as cheerily as Richard Simmons’s disciples: “Get up! Come on; you can do it. Get up!”

  The sow pushed up on her haunches, holding that immodest pose while she contemplated her next move.

  Everyone laughed, including Sidney. “That’s why I don’t eat bacon,” she said. “Fat, fat, fat.”

  “Oh, like you’ve ever had an adipose cell in your entire body.” Micki held out her bag of popcorn but Sidney shook her head. Her perky blond friend looked great despite the garbage she continually consumed. The receptionist for Leon Schuman Insurance, she was known for keeping a stash of chocolate in her desk drawer at all times. They sat on hay bales in the middle of the barn, where they could see their children as they scrambled from stall to stall. “Now aren’t you glad you came? I told you it would do you good.”

  Sidney pulled a bottle of water out of her straw bag and took a swig, her eyes roving the crowd on the slight chance that Ty might be among them. A handsome dad with one child straddling his neck and another held by the hand leaned over a gate and began making hog sounds. People around them laughed and joined in, though the pig seemed unimpressed. Sidney sighed. “That’s what I want.”

  “What? A man who can grunt? They’re everywhere; trust me.”

  “A man who spends Saturday with the kids. Look at that little boy looking up at him. His dad is his hero—and all it takes is a little snorting. He doesn’t have to be in a rock band or send elaborate gifts to make up for all the visits that got postponed to some mysterious date in the future.” Sidney saw a vision of Tyson watching expectantly for his father from the living room window, fidgeting, flopping from sofa to chair to floor, same scenario but different face as the boy grew from an excited six-year-old to a preteen whose eyes had grown dull from atrophied hope. At some point he had wised up, forsaking his post at the window and aloofly pretending he didn’t care whether his father showed up or not. Sidney’s soul tore open every time it happened, while Ty’s heart had seemingly formed such thick scars from the repeated wounds that it had hardened into a clenched fist. The girls had never bonded with their father enough to care much.

  Sidney’s eyes began to flood again. She inhaled, filling her aching chest with the sweet scents of hay and cotton candy, forcing her eyes to focus on her daughters: Rebecca, a joyful and dramatic ten-year-old, thin and long-armed like her mother, and Sissy, still endowed with some cuddly baby fat, pushing eight.

  “Dodge is going to be shocked someday to see that the girls aren’t babies anymore,” Sidney said. “He still sends them baby dolls for Christmas, if he remembers at all. Do you know what he sent Tyson when he was twelve? A truck. A big Tonka dump truck for a kid that was playing Internet chess with guys from France. I swear he must have sent one of his groupies to get Christmas presents for the kids.”

  Micki shook her head. “Time flies while he’s having fun. How’s he doing on child support?”

  Sidney laughed. That was the least of her worries. “The band apparently has a new gig in a different town. Support Enforcement can’t find him again. I wish he’d just get famous so he’d be easier to track down. Plus he’d be rich and that couldn’t hurt.”

  They got up, brushing hay from the backs of their jeans, and followed their kids out of the barn toward game booths full of cheap toys and stuffed animals.

  “Remember Jack Mellon?” Sidney asked. “The butcher I dated a couple of years ago?”

  “Sure. That was the Vegetarian-Meets-Beef-Every-Night-Guy chapter of your life,” Micki said through a mouthful of popcorn. “You found him intellectually unstimulating, as I recall.”

  “Did I say that? Well, anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I’ve gone wrong with Tyson. What I could have done differently, you know? I try to remember when he became so moody and dark—and you know what I keep coming up with? It was right after that time. The Beef-Every-Night-Guy chapter. Jack was good with Ty. He took him to do all kinds of guy things, played with the kids in the yard. Maybe I was just being too picky. I mean, what’s more important than finding a man who loves your kids?”

  “Well, mutual attraction is always nice.”

  Sidney sighed. “That would be good. What you and Dennis have. Your family is my unwritten standard, you know. You’re still in love after all these years, and Dennis is the perfect dad. Oh, don’t roll your eyes! You know what I mean. So he brings Andy home dirty and late and full of junk food. Stand back and look at it from my perspective. I’ve pumped every known vitamin and mineral into Ty since he was a little squirt, but it’s not enough. It’s not what he needs most. He needs a dad. One who actually loves him, I mean. So far my girls seem perfectly happy, but they never really knew Dodge so it didn’t mess them up when he left. But Ty has been through it twice. He was six when his father left and it devastated him. Then he finally connects with a man again and I pull the plug.”

  “Jack still works at the Dunbar Traders Market,” Micki offered. “At least last time I stopped in there. He was looking pretty good for a guy with bloodstains all over the front of him.”

  Sidney made a face. “What? You think I’m going to drive twenty miles away for groceries and show up at his department for a slab of corned beef? I’ll bet you anything he’s married by now anyway. He definitely had marriage on his mind. That’s what sort of scared me.”

  “Did the girls like him?”

  Sidney shrugged. “Sure. But they didn’t connect with him like Ty did. It was a guy thing, you know?”

  Sissy came running, stumbling at Sidney’s feet. She stood, giggling, wiping her dusty hands on her pink sleeves. “Mom, can we have some money for the rides?” Her youngest, though a beautiful child, had been compared more than once to the Peanuts character Pigpen. Dirt was attracted to her like metal shavings to a magnet. If Sidney didn’t insist on it, a comb would never slide its way through Sissy’s long, dark hair, which today was braided into a thick rope, loose strands already hanging across her puppy-dog eyes.

  Rebecca danced up to her mother, her jacket tied around her waist, and bowed. “Oh, queen mother, bestow upon us thy riches, we pray.” Her long, slender arms were still tan (she had her father’s skin coloring, but dark blond hair like her mother), and her hands were clenched pleadingly at her chest.

  Sidney reached into her pocket and pulled out a $20 bill, enough to buy lunch supplies for a week the way she shopped. She hesitated only a moment before lifting her chin and smiling her most queenly smile. “Your wish,” she said as she offered the bill with a flourish, “is granted.”

  “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

  Andrew had simultaneously made his own withdrawal from his mother. The three children ran toward an obnoxious-looking ride, grotesque arms raised spiderlike in the air while encapsulated victims screamed and spun in terror. Micki grabbed Sidney’s arm. “Come on, Sid. Let’s go on the rides!”

  “Are you nuts?” Sidney pulled her arm away. “People like me don’t go looking for panic. I’ve got enough stress in my life without buying tickets for it.” Micki looked disappointed. “You go
. Get rid of some adrenaline. You know what I want to do? I want to see the quilts and the art exhibits, all those things that bore you to tears. Why don’t we meet up over there at the picnic tables by the taco stand after a while?”

  Micki agreed and ran to catch up with their kids at the ticket booth.

  Sidney wandered through a crowd of familiar faces. She nodded and smiled from time to time, feeling like a bottom-dwelling flounder in a school of happily darting perch. She didn’t fit in there. Not today. She stopped and stared at the whitewashed building that housed quilts, rows of brightly colored canned pickles and peaches, paintings made by students and old women, photos of long shadows made by fences, and other attempts at black-and-white genius. It would be the same as last year and the year before and the year before that. She had won a blue ribbon at Harvest Fair once. It was for an old jam cupboard that she had painted with a toile fruit basket design on the front, and that was before she was even good at it. Of course, hers had been the only entry in the category of painted furniture, so it wasn’t like she could take second place or anything.

  Mary Hadley emerged from the exhibition building, making eye contact before Sidney had a chance to turn away. Mary had lived next door to Sidney back at the apartments, and her son had adoringly followed Ty from puddle to pond in the brushy lot behind the building, searching for creatures to put in washed-out mayonnaise jars. “Hey, Sid. How are you? Gosh, I haven’t seen you since you moved!”

  Sometimes it was the things that people didn’t say that hurt the most. Mary asked about the girls. Was Rebecca playing soccer this year? What teacher did Sissy get? They chatted all around their overlapping lives, somehow never mentioning Tyson, the boy who had eaten macaroni and cheese at Mary’s table as many times as her boy, Ricky, had dined at Sidney’s. No, she didn’t need to ask about Ty because Ty Walker was the kid everyone in Ham Bone, Washington, already knew about.