The Year Money Grew on Trees (5 page)

***

The next afternoon I saw Mrs. Nelson waving at me from her house. A feeling of humiliation oozed through me. Was she just making fun of me too? She must know all this was impossible. I decided to go talk to her and find out exactly what she was thinking.

"Come in, come in, Jackson," she said happily as she opened the door.

"Hi," I said as I walked in, not bothering to wipe my feet very carefully. I sat in the nearest chair and launched into my first question. "Mrs. Nelson, when your husband was running the orchard, did he have another job too?"

"Oh, of course."

"So how many hours a week would he spend working out there?"

"Well, that was always different for different times of the year. At the busiest, he would be out there every night after work and on the weekends."

"And he did all the work by himself?" I asked with a hint of sarcasm.

"He always wanted Tommy to be out there with him, but"—she paused for a moment—"that didn't always work out. Some days I think he would go hire people to help him."

"Hire people? What people?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just people looking for some temporary work."

I imagined Mr. Nelson bringing home twenty people to boss around in the orchard. If he wasn't doing the work, no wonder he thought it was so wonderful.

"So how am I supposed to run the whole thing by myself when he had help? I'm just a kid!" I blurted out with some resentment in my voice. I watched her face. I was waiting for it to break into laughter, proving that this was all just a little joke. Her expression didn't change, however. She just sat there looking concerned but hopeful.

"I guess I never really considered all of that. There's nothing to stop you from getting some help too."

"How am I supposed to hire anyone? I don't have any money to pay them. I wouldn't even know where to find anyone."

She just smiled at me and said, "I'm sure you'll find a way." Then she patted my shoulder. I had heard expressions like that from adults many times before. When my mom or dad said them, it made me think that in the end they would always be there to fix the problem if
they had to. With Mrs. Nelson, the words seemed empty, just sounds coming from a mouth. I wondered again whether she had ever been in that orchard before.

"Oh, I almost forgot," she continued. "I showed our contract to Tommy today. You should have seen his face. It was priceless. Didn't think I'd do it, huh?" She chuckled to herself smugly.

"I hope he doesn't get mad at me," I said, wondering if she'd explained it was her idea.

"Don't you worry about Tommy. I told him how happy I am to have you out in that orchard. You just need to concentrate on apples."

I was tempted at that point to forget the whole thing. It was pretty easy to see she was using me to make some kind of point with her son and expecting me to do the work of a whole team of people. The only thing that kept me going was the thought of explaining the situation to my dad. He'd probably sign me to a lifetime contract with Slim.

If things had any hope of working out, I needed to find some cheap labor fast. Specifically, I needed employees who didn't require me to pay them, at least not immediately, and were available whenever I needed them. They would also need to be understanding, or at least not vengeful, if the operation fell apart in the end. Oh, and used to being in the cold. I decided this was the type of employee I had to be related to.

Between my immediate family and my uncle's family, there were plenty of relatives to choose from. My dad and uncle were brothers and had built houses next to each other before I was even old enough to remember. I had mentally crossed off my dad and uncle from the list of potential employees. They both were always complaining about how tired they were and how much they had to do around the house already. I was never sure why they were so tired or what they did all day. My dad worked at some place that sold bolts. He almost never talked about his job at home, but when he did it was about missing bolt orders, "worthless salesmen," and "Old Man Scott," who I think was his boss. Uncle David worked at the power plant like a lot of other men where we lived. It was hard to say exactly what he did there, but the place used a lot of coal and produced electricity, so it had to be something to do with one of those things.

My mom didn't have a job, but she made it clear that she was always worn out by the time she put her kids to bed. To tell the truth, I never really knew what she did during the day either. Mom did like working outside, however, and would plant flowers every spring that wouldn't survive the summer. I considered her a faint possibility for the orchard. My aunt Sandy was kind of like a second mom, only funnier. Of the four adults, I would probably have confided in her first about Mrs.
Nelson's contract. I knew she would have thought it was funny and not just the kind of funny where she was laughing at me. I couldn't see asking her for help with the work, though.

My only real hope rested with my two younger sisters and three cousins. Common sense said to find someone with a little farming experience, but I actually liked the fact that they would know even less about raising apples than I did. If I was going to be making a lot of mistakes and bad decisions, at least they wouldn't know any better. Besides, if this was going to be my orchard, I didn't want anyone else acting like they ran the place.

Talking them into helping wasn't going to be easy. My sisters had stopped listening to me years before, and my cousins were usually devoted to watching whatever was on TV It was critical for me to first convince my cousin Amy, who was the oldest of the group. My sisters wanted to be like her and her two younger brothers respected her. She was much more persuasive than I was. All in all, I'd feel more confident with her around.

Amy was only four months older than me but a grade ahead. Growing up, we mostly had each other to play with since anyone else our age lived too far away. Most games involved her telling me what to do while I tried to control our little brothers and sisters. At school Amy constantly watched out for me, which meant something because she was way more popular than I could ever
hope to be. With every passing year, the age gap between us seemed to grow. Unfortunately, she had stopped wanting to be outside much and almost seemed embarrassed sometimes that she lived down a dirt road. I knew I couldn't call what we had to do in the orchard "farming" because she would immediately refuse. I would try explaining how much money we would make—she was always complaining about not having any. Maybe I'd even beg. I was willing to try anything, really.

***

The day after my latest visit with Mrs. Nelson, I followed Amy home from school and told her I had to ask her something in private. She smiled, looked around, and said, "Okay, let's go to my room," as if we were about to swap secret passwords. I knew she thought it was either about a girl I liked or, better yet, about a boy she liked.

Her room was newly decorated with Michael Jackson posters. Once inside, she stopped in front of her mirror to comb and admire her hair. She used to wear it in ponytails but had cut it short at the beginning of the school year, right about the time she started watching MTV. We didn't get it where we lived, but Amy had some friends in Farmington and she would stay over at their houses for all-night MTV marathons.

"Okay, so what did you want to tell me?" she asked excitedly once she was satisfied with her hair.

I didn't want to seem like I didn't have any interesting information and I wanted to make sure she was in a positive state of mind, so I said, "Someone asked me about you and wants to know if you're going with anyone or not."

"Really? Who was it?"

"I promised I wouldn't tell you that he told me."

"Bobby? Jason? Umm ... Troy?" she asked, starting to giggle.

"I can't say, but I think you might already like him."

I was amazed at how readily she believed me. I guess it was because she wanted to. A blush came across her cheeks. She explained to me exactly what I was supposed to say back to the person and what I was supposed to look for in his facial expressions when I told him.

After thirty minutes she was still giggling and had moved to sitting on her bed while I sat cross-legged on the floor. I decided it was time. I'd start by talking about money.

"So do you remember that one summer when we saw that show about shipwrecks and then dug up our yards looking for gold?"

"Yeah, sure. Why?" she asked with a suspicious look coming over her face.

"I don't know. I just thought it was funny because it would be nice to have money like that for clothes or even a car someday."

"Paige Manning's dad says he's going to buy her a car when she turns sixteen. Probably a new one. I bet I have to get rides to school when I'm sixteen."

"So would you rather be rich and have the nicest car in the world, or be the cutest girl in school?"

"Definitely the cutest, because you can always get a job for things like a car."

"So where would you work, then?"

"I don't know. It's like you need a car first to drive anywhere."

"I know, I know," I said, acting like I was deep in thought. I looked up at her and stared into her eyes.

"What are you staring at?" she asked nervously.

"That summer we were doing all the digging was when you broke your mom's music box. Remember how I took the blame because you said she wouldn't be able to punish me as much."

"Yeah, yeah. So what does that have to do with anything?"

"You promised that you'd owe me some huge favor in the future if I kept quiet and let her be mad at me."

"I did? Are you sure?" She laughed nervously, afraid of the answer.

"Definitely sure. And I need that favor now. But it's also a way to earn money without a car."

"I'm not sure a promise like that counts when you're only nine or however old we were."

"Oh, it counts. It definitely counts."

She looked at me anxiously.

"It's not like I'm going to ask you to do something illegal—I just need your help. And you'd get paid," I said, trying hard to reassure her.

"So what is it?" she asked after a few awkward seconds.

"Mrs. Nelson wants me to get her apple orchard growing again and sell the apples. But I can't do it all myself. I need you to help me and then you can have part of the money we earn."

"What? Why would you want to do that? You don't know anything about growing apples. It sounds crazy!"

"I know. I know. But I'm figuring it out. We really just have to get the apples to grow, pick 'em, and sell 'em."

"But why would you want to do it in the first place?"

"It's either that or work at the scrap yard with Skeeter Nickles."

"Oh." A slight look of sympathy crossed over her face. "So when are you planning for all this to happen? In the summer or something?"

"In the summer, yeah, and there are also things we need to start doing now."

"It doesn't sound very fun. Why are you asking me, anyway?"

"Because I like you. And you're the toughest, hardest-working person I know."

"Yeah right. You couldn't think of anyone else, could you?" she said with a smirk.

I looked into her face again. I wanted to tell her everything about Mrs. Nelson's agreement and about the fact that I had no idea what I was doing. I wanted to confess that I was scared I was going to fail and waste everyone's time, but that if she would do this with me, I had a tiny bit of hope it was possible. I looked at the floor and was only able to manage, "Amy, this is something I really want to do, and I know I can't do it without you. If you help me, I will never forget it and always owe you."

She didn't reply at first but lay back on her bed, looking at the ceiling and playing with her hair. The seconds ticked by. "Oh, all right!" she said in a voice of surrender. "But we're going to make lots of money, right?"

"It'll be like growing money on trees," I replied excitedly, repeating Mrs. Nelson's line. "But we'll have to work hard."

"I'm only working as hard as you do."

"Will you really?"

"No, not really, but I could promise you if you like," she said sarcastically. "And this doesn't seem like a very fair trade of favors. All you had to do was act like you broke that stupid music box."