CHAPTER SIX
Sanna and Bass had finished their work, and she’d sent him off with a snack and permission to run wild in the trees—as long as he could still see the house. She didn’t want to be responsible for losing him on the first day.
She opened the driver’s-side door of her truck and pulled hard on a lever until she heard the hood pop, then twisted the key, the engine sputtering a few times before catching. Before closing the door, she straightened the red wool blanket, which covered the torn vinyl seats held together with duct tape and positive thoughts. This beloved, frequently broken-down pickup was the truck her dad had used around the farm all her life—a dark forest green on the top and bottom thirds with a creamy white in the middle. Years of driving around the orchard meant scratches, which she regularly coated with rust preventer to keep chemistry from dissolving her beloved Elliot, named after the dragon in Pete’s Dragon she had loved so much as a kid.
When her father bought his fancy new John Deere ATV to zoom around the orchard, he planned to sell the “old heap,” given that more often than not it wouldn’t start. Sanna staged a sit-in on the bed the day he wanted to bring it to the junkyard. Perhaps her tactic was a bit juvenile, but she had gotten what she wanted—the truck. Too many memories lived in it to let it go to scrap. She remembered picking apples while standing in the bed, cruising down the rows, bouncing as it hit exposed tree roots, and laying down mounds of blankets to watch the Fourth of July fireworks with her brother, seeing who could slurp from their gas station cherry slushie longest before the brain freeze hit—Sanna always won, still a point of pride.
She hoisted the heavy green hood, watching the engine chug and rumble. After all this time, he never let her down. Years of grease and dirt clung in the corners, but Sanna did her best to keep Elliot’s engine presentable. She did most of the repairs herself, since he was from a time when cars were a series of gears and belts, and not the confusing jumble of electronics like in newer vehicles. She shuddered at the idea of a car without an engine, without something she could take apart and understand. Sure, they might have safety features or good gas mileage, but she preferred working with hardware.
“Okay, Elliot, what’s making you cough?” she said.
“Does it ever answer back?” a deep voice said from behind her. There went her quiet time. Sanna turned to face Isaac.
“He’s not an it.” She walked around and turned off the engine, wary of this newcomer.
“He?” Isaac asked. “I assume he has a name as well, then?”
“Elliot.”
“He looks like an Elliot.”
They both stared at each other. Sanna didn’t like to make small talk. It’s why she avoided people as a general rule. She didn’t feel the need to fill the silence with inane chatter about weather and annoying tourists, so she didn’t. Maybe if she didn’t speak, he’d go away. She turned back to the engine and began checking fluid levels—meaningless, but it gave her something to do while she waited him out.
“Need some help?” Isaac stepped beside her.
“Know anything about trucks?”
“Not really, but I learn fast. In IT, you have to troubleshoot a lot.” He shrugged. “And I follow orders really well.”
Sanna sighed. He wasn’t going to go away. She could do the repairs tomorrow. She gently let the hood drop, letting gravity and the heavy metal do the work for her. A computer guy wouldn’t be much help with Elliot.
“I’m done for today. I need to order parts so there isn’t anything else I can do. What did you do in IT?”
“I’ve done everything from coding to design to management. Lately, I’m in the social media end of things—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, websites—that sort of thing. Companies hire me to help them streamline their online brands.”
He gave a little shrug at the end, as if to say “No biggie.” She nodded, yet Sanna couldn’t imagine working with things she couldn’t see or touch, something so removed from real life. Isaac came from a different world. She gave the muted green hood a pat and opened the door to climb in.
“I’ve got to check the Looms.” She meant it as a means of dismissing him.
“Really? Your dad mentioned them, but we didn’t get out there. Mind if I come with you?” So much for her dismissal.
Sanna looked at Isaac, standing on the other side of the door like a puppy, smiling like he was eager to jump in the passenger seat. She turned the ignition, and Elliot purred to life, smoother than he had done in months. She opened her mouth to say no, but the truck gave a little chug at exactly that moment, interrupting her.
Inwardly grumbling, but unable to take her eyes off his smile, she muttered, “Hop in.”
Isaac’s grin sparkled at her. Did his cheeks perpetually hurt from all his smiling? He jogged around the front of Elliot and slid into the passenger’s seat like he was meant to be there. When he firmly shut the door, the radio kicked on. It hadn’t worked in years and now it was playing Jewel’s “You Were Meant for Me,” of all things. He may have never let her down, but right now Elliot seemed to have a mind of his own.
Without a word, she smashed her foot on the clutch and shifted into first, rumbling down the nearest row of trees toward her favorite place in the orchard . . . maybe in the world. Elliot bounced over the bumpy ground to the northeast corner. As they went deeper, the tree bark grew more wrinkles, the branches stretched wider and thicker, and the trees were spaced farther apart to make room for their larger footprints. A thick carpet of grass and wildflowers blanketed the orchard floor, and the air tingled Sanna’s skin and sang in her ears like it always did.
“So, what exactly are the Looms?” Isaac asked, holding on to the roof handle over his window as they bounced over roots.
Sanna couldn’t help but smile a little, thinking about her special trees.
“They’re the heirloom trees, but we’ve always called them the Looms. You can tell you’re in them because the leaves aren’t as full as the younger, newer trees. They produce fewer, smaller, and weirder-shaped apples than the rest of our trees.”
They were why Sanna would never leave the orchard.
As a child, she had always been drawn to the oldest trees, the ones from her great-great-great-grandpa. The craggy branches whispered stories of the past as she had scrambled up the limbs, her bare legs scraping against the aging bark. She’d learned quickly that the bitter apples from the old trees didn’t make for good snacking, falling and rotting on the ground as the autumn turned colder. The lost harvest disappeared to hungry animals and time. Back then, she didn’t understand why they would even keep these trees. Why plant apples you can’t eat? But once she’d grown up and realized these bitter apples were meant for cider, she was determined to put them to use. She never wanted to give her father a reason to cut them down and plant new, fancy hybrid varieties that tourists would pay ridiculous amounts of money for.
Sanna stopped the truck and hopped out without waiting for Isaac, her face tilted to the sun, her hat slung around her neck. Insects buzzed around, a fat bumblebee hopped from flower to flower, and the grass already stretched up to her calves. They would need to mow soon, letting the clippings act as natural fertilizer. Even her unexpected company couldn’t disrupt the peace that thrummed to her bones.
“So, these are the Looms.” Though she wasn’t about to shush him, Isaac’s voice seemed louder than necessary. Whispered voices always felt more appropriate out here, as though it were an outdoor cathedral. “I thought there’d be more bees in the orchard.”
“We’re way past bee season. The ones that are here are sipping from the flowers.” Sanna brushed the nearest branch. “The L1s brought these trees when they came from Sweden.” She noticed the confused look on Isaac’s face. “Oh, it’s a biology thing I picked up in college, a way to track generations. L1s are first-generation Lunds. Dad’s an L4. I’m an L5. Anyway, most of the original trees have been replaced. But this little nook is still all original. We don’t know why they’re still alive, let alone still producing. Most apple trees are productive for forty to fifty years. These are almost a hundred and fifty years old and still giving us apples every year.”
Sanna ducked into the tree’s canopy and rubbed the trunk. The bark practically buzzed with life under her hand, reassuring her of its vitality. This was one of the trees she and her dad had taken a branch from to graft new stock a few days ago. Above her head, tiny apples the size of marbles loaded the branches that remained, still green, a few clinging to petals that hadn’t found their way to the ground.
She looked back over her shoulder at Isaac, who wasn’t studying the tree as she was, but instead had his eyes on her. The buzzing she’d felt in the tree moved under her own skin, up through her hand to her arm, and vibrated through her to the ends of her hair and the tips of her toes. She became aware of her dry, almost chapped lips, and her hair tangling in the branches above her head. But, quickly distracted from thoughts of herself, she noticed the flecks of silver in his dark hair, both in his curls and his beard, complementing the smile wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was the kind of man who would get more attractive with each passing year.
Sanna licked her lips, shocked at the thought that had just popped into her mind.
“I should check some trees we just grafted.” She skirted around Isaac back to Elliot, where she had a few moments to pull herself together before he joined her. By the time they’d reached the newly grafted trees, on the east side of the barn, she’d gotten control of her irrational thoughts.
The afternoon shade from the barn on the tiny trees made it hard to tell what was off about them—but something was definitely wrong. The trees were as she had left them, tiny sticks in black pots, coated in wax until the scion fused to the root stock and new growth started. She closed her eyes to let them adjust and moved so she would be in the shade, too, to help her see. But her pulse skipped as she bent down to touch them, disbelieving her eyes. Her heart stopped when she easily snapped one in two. What should have been still green and supple was already dry and brittle. A quick walk down the line revealed they had lost all twenty.
“No,” she whispered. Isaac picked up on the change in her.
“What?”
She held up the broken twig, but Isaac only looked more confused.
“They’re dead. All of them.”
Sanna sat down, leaning against the barn and letting the defeat sink in.
“I’m sorry. Is there anything we can do?”
Isaac plopped down next to her. The genuine concern clear on his face touched her more than she wanted to admit. She shook her head and tried to explain.
“These were yet another failed attempt to expand the Looms. Each time I try to graft them, it fails. With the trees so old, it’s only a matter of time before they start dying and we’re already well beyond it—I need to know I can make more.”
“What about the seeds from the apples? Can’t you plant those?”
It was a fair question from someone unfamiliar with apple husbandry, so Sanna did her best to not sound testy.
“Not if I want to get the same apples. Apple seeds are a product of two trees: the tree where the apple grows, and the tree that supplied the pollen. When an apple blossom is fertilized, there is no guarantee that the pollen came from the same species of tree, so the seeds will most likely not be what you want. The only way to guarantee the same kind of tree is to graft, to take some of the tree itself and marry it to other stock—but I, apparently, can’t do that with the Looms.”
Isaac awkwardly patted her arm, evaporating her need to mourn the lost saplings. Alone by the shady side of the barn, those gentle touches pushed at her carefully constructed barriers. She fought the urge to lean into his shoulder.
This wouldn’t do. They’d only met yesterday.
She stood and briskly wiped dirt from her backside. “Come on. I’ll show you how to trim the trees.” Sanna left him to follow in her dust.