The Year Money Grew on Trees (21 page)

"Hey, Jackson! How's business?" he called to me.

I twisted around to find him staring up at me with a big grin. I hadn't seen him for a while either, so I couldn't hide my surprise. "Pretty good, I guess. Can't pick fast enough though." I eased my way down the ladder and dumped the load of apples from my bag into the nearest box.

"Oh yeah? How many boxes you planning on selling?"

I knew Tommy had seen the contract I signed with Mrs. Nelson, although he had never mentioned it to me. I looked over at Amy, who was one tree away and listening to the radio. I lowered my voice so she wouldn't hear anything if the conversation slipped into details about money and payoffs. "We've got to clear $8,000, so that's gotta mean over a thousand boxes," I said to Tommy with a resigned shrug.

Tommy gave me a knowing smile. "I don't know where she got that $8,000 number."

"She said your dad could make that easily in a year."

Tommy let out a little chuckle. "I doubt he ever made even half that much. My mom doesn't know the difference between $800 and $8,000. She's terrible with money."

My shoulders sagged. "Really? She made it sound, you know, so doable."

"Well, what do you think now? Is it doable?"

I put my head down and looked at my feet. "I guess it has to be. We'll just have to work harder." I looked over at Amy. "I can't just walk away with nothing. I've got to give the other kids something."

Tommy's mouth curved up into a sympathetic grin. "It's kind of a crazy situation."

He said goodbye and lumbered out of the orchard
while I quickly climbed back up my ladder and a new dread hit me. What if Mrs. Nelson had known the $8,000 target was impossible? What if she wanted me to fail all along so she could keep the orchard and the money while playing mind games with her son? I flushed from my neck up, but kept hidden among tree branches so Amy wouldn't notice.

***

After school the next day, Mrs. Nelson was waiting for me outside her house as I ran home from the bus stop.

"Jackson? Can you come talk to me for a minute?" she called sweetly.

I skidded to a stop and reluctantly followed her up to her porch. My sisters and cousins stood watching from the dirt lane, but I waved for them to keep walking before trudging through Mrs. Nelson's door.

"Come in, come in," she called, and pointed me into one of her chairs. "Can I get you anything to drink?"

Her sudden friendliness was very transparent. "No thanks."

Mrs. Nelson sat across from me and put on a big smile while she smoothed down her hair and checked that her earrings were in place. "Tommy said he stopped by and watched you pick apples last night."

"Uh-huh," I grunted, nodding my head.

"He said you've got your own little fruit stand up on the road. Said you were determined to make that $8,000.
Now, is that what we agreed on? It seems so long ago. I didn't realize you were taking things so seriously."

"I thought that's what you wanted. I was supposed to prove I was the true heir."

"What I wanted? Oh, I don't think so. I just wanted to see that orchard alive again. You kept pressing me for money. Looking back, it kind of seems like you were taking advantage of me when I was vulnerable." Her broad smile faded and then drooped into a self-pitying frown.

My skin began to get hot. A shock wave of anger almost pushed me out of my chair, but I stayed quiet and looked away from Mrs. Nelson's face.

"Now Tommy thinks we should make a different agreement," she continued. "He thinks we should just split the money no matter how much there is. And I would keep the orchard, of course. I mean it's ludicrous to think of just giving it away to a child. That land's probably worth more than your parents will ever have in their lifetimes."

Her voice had the same sugary sweet tone she had started with, but the words were bitter and resentful. All of a sudden it was like I was trying to steal something from her—something I wasn't good enough to have. She really had hoped I would just give up and go away when she started ignoring me.

"I wanted that in the first place. Just to split the
money," I said in a shaky voice. I spoke slowly, forcing out every word.

"Good. Then let's say you can have twenty percent of it. That should be more than enough to make you happy. You're only thirteen."

I sat in the same chair I had in February when she had practically begged me to become the orchard's "true heir." Now she was staring me down through a fake smile and telling me I should be happy with whatever crumbs she threw me. I had done more than she had ever imagined and now she was insulting me. She should be getting 20 percent. No! She shouldn't get anything! She hadn't lifted a finger in that orchard. I couldn't hold the anger back anymore.

"What if I just keep all the money?" I growled, narrowing my eyes menacingly.

Mrs. Nelson jerked back in shock and stared back at me with horrified eyes. "You wouldn't dare! I'd sue you for it! I'd ... I'd have you arrested for trespassing."

I wanted to reply with something clever about child labor laws and slavery, but my brain was too agitated to get any of that out. "I'd like to see you try!" I grunted, and jumped to my feet.

"You disrespectful brat! You stupid, stupid child!" she stammered.

I rushed to her door and then called back, "We've got a contract! You signed it!"

Once I got out the door, I realized my whole body was shaking. I stumbled around the corner of her house and bent over trying to control my breathing. After five minutes, I ran into the orchard and grabbed my picking bag.

"What did she want?" called Amy from atop a ladder ten feet from me.

"Just wanted to see how the picking was coming," I answered, trying to sound natural.

Amy looked at me suspiciously but didn't ask more questions.

It all came down to the apples. It was as simple as pulling them off the trees and putting them in the boxes. I convinced myself that if we could just do that fast enough, everything would work out. I would simply stick to the contract. Somehow the money and Mrs. Nelson would all work out. It was easiest to only think about the apples.

Amy and Michael picked at a steady pace, although Michael had slowed down trying to be careful with the stems. I borrowed a watch and figured out that between the three of us we could fill about four boxes per hour.
There were about four hours between getting home from school and when it got dark. At sunset everyone automatically headed home for dinner comparing who deserved to be the most tired. During that second week of picking, I decided filling sixteen boxes a day wasn't going to be enough and I had better keep working after dinner. I was afraid to ask anyone else to help, so I grabbed the cheapest lamp I could find in the house and headed back out to the orchard alone. Michael's long line of extension cords was stretched between his house and the trees so we could listen to the radio. I unplugged the radio and plugged in the lamp.

Picking in the near darkness was hard. I had to constantly reposition the lamp to give myself some idea of where apples were on the trees. I lost track of time but could tell it was late by how much my neck and shoulder hurt from holding the picking bag. I filled up five boxes, then grabbed the lamp and dragged myself home. The clock said 11:30 when I walked in the door.

I felt that to have any chance of making the necessary money, we were going to have to pick twenty-five boxes a day. I made it my goal to produce an extra nine boxes every night. After dinner I would grab the light and head out. It took me until two in the morning to get nine boxes picked, and by the third week I had decided I would be better off splitting the extra work between morning and night. I would finish picking at around
midnight and then wake up at 5:00 a.m. so I could get a couple of hours of work in before school.

I had never tried to survive on less than five hours of sleep a night before, and it began to suck the life out of me. I had always been smart enough in school that I could finish any homework assignments during class and very rarely had to take anything home to finish. With my new schedule, though, I found myself falling asleep during almost every period. The undone homework piled up, but I figured I would catch up with it when we had finished selling.

In general, I avoided looking at myself much in the mirror, but when I did get a glimpse during those days, I could see my eyes had deep black circles around them. The rest of my face had a sickly color with my nose and the whites of my eyes looking a bloodshot red. My mom complained every night that I was working myself sick and looked awful. "Dan, tell him he has to stop spending so much time out in that orchard," she said to my dad one night. "He's going to kill himself."

"Oh, leave him alone. It's good he has a career he's so interested in," he replied. "He's got to learn what hard work is like. I'm not going to be the one to tell him to stop."

My mom gave him a dirty look and continued to nag me.

During those late nights alone, my mind would wan
der away from the trees. I began to think that maybe it would be okay to just get 20 percent of the money. At least that was something and I could get some sleep. But I'd have to go beg Mrs. Nelson to reconsider after I'd yelled at her. Even if she didn't slam the door in my face, she'd probably make me take 10 percent or less. It would be humiliating. Tommy might be able to help. He seemed sympathetic enough but hadn't come around again since our last talk. No. My only hope was that contract. If I could just live up to my end of it, someone could enforce it—a judge maybe.

I even thought about getting my parents involved. I knew I couldn't ask them to actually help with the picking without explaining the $8,000 deal. And if that came out, things were bound to get even uglier with Mrs. Nelson. The last thing I wanted was my mom going over to her house screaming wildly about how she was killing her baby and she should give me all the money. My dad would probably just call me an idiot for not taking the job at the scrap yard. My brain hadn't had enough sleep to think about any of it very clearly. It seemed the only thing I could really do was to keep my mouth shut, hope for the best, and pick—pick even harder.

Lisa would make regular announcements about how much money we had made. She giggled in delight as the numbers climbed into the thousands. I tried not to listen, knowing we were falling further and further behind
where we needed to be. By the end of week four, I was trying to push out even more boxes and only getting three or four hours of sleep a night. I instantly dozed off in Sunday school when I hit my chair. When class was over, I woke up to Brother Brown shaking me.

"You all right?" he said gruffly.

"What, uh, yeah, just a little tired."

"You look like you fell off a truck."

I forced a smile and walked out with him watching me.

***

On Wednesday of the fifth week, I began to get a little hysterical. During dinner I kept giggling at everything my sisters said and rocking back and forth in my chair. No one would make eye contact with me, and eventually we all sat in silence looking down at our plates.

After dinner I grabbed the lamp and started for the door. Jennifer followed me, putting on a coat and hat.

"I thought you might want some help," she said, looking at me with a worried face.

"Are you sure?" I asked her as I opened the door.

"Yeah, I'm not very good at picking, though."

"That's okay. I've got a better job for you," I said, feeling a little less tired. When we had reached the spot in the orchard where Amy and I had left the ladders, I said, "Here, can you hold up the lamp for me so I can see?"

"Sure," she said, and took the lamp from my hand.

"It's nice to have someone else out here in the dark."

"Do you ever get scared out here alone?"

"I think I feel too tired anymore to feel scared. It takes too much energy."

"So why are you coming out here every night, anyway? We've already made a ton of money. Me and Lisa don't know why you're so obsessed with making more."

I paused before I answered so that I wouldn't say anything dumb, although part of me wanted to confess the $8,000 deal. "I hate to see these apples go to waste or those boxes. I just want to see them all sold."

"I guess I do too," she said.

Picking went a lot faster with her out there holding the light since I didn't have to keep climbing down the ladder to reposition it. I also felt safe somehow listening to her voice telling me about classes at school and what she wanted for Christmas.

After a few hours, she began to fade. Everything went dark all at once. I looked down, and she had dropped to the ground asleep, letting the lamp fall next to her. I didn't know whether to try and wake her up and take her home or not. In the end, I just turned the lamp back over and kept picking, leaving her on the ground. I would take her home after finishing up just a couple more boxes.

A little later I heard footsteps coming through the
darkness. I turned and saw my dad walking up. He looked down at Jennifer and frowned.

"You just going to leave your sister lying here on the ground?" he asked angrily.

"I was about to finish up and bring her in."

"Maybe your mother's right. Why don't you come back home before you make yourself really sick."

"Let me just finish this up."

"Come on, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here. You're going to hurt yourself and your sisters."

A feeling of resentment swept over me. If he was so worried, why didn't he try and help me finish? He hardly seemed to care if I succeeded. "I'm not trying to prove anything, Dad!" I yelled. "You're the one who's always talking about working so hard! I only started out here because I didn't want to work at that stupid scrap yard! But I can't stop now or you'll call me a quitter! I just wish for once you'd say I was doing something right!" What I said didn't make much sense, but I was so full of anger and frustration that I wanted to scream anything at someone.

My dad just looked at me. I thought he would shout something back, but he didn't. Something close to sympathy came over his face. "Do what you want, then. It's your health," he said. He picked up my sister and carried her home.