Chapter 8 - The Clearing of the Trees
The sound of two-stroke engines had filled the ridge since seven in the morning.
It was mid-November now, and the mountain air was sharp enough to turn the nostrils white with every breath. Three professional arborists—hired with the first six thousand dollars released from the impounded accounts of Shenandoah Heritage—were working their way through the north ten acres of the orchard.
The dead wood was coming down.
Whine-roar-crack.
A massive, blight-killed stayman winesap trunk, six feet around at the base, shuddered under the bite of a thirty-six-inch Stihl saw, groaned once, and fell into the dry grass with a dull, concussive thud that shook the porch steps where I sat.
My father was standing by the bed of his old Ford, wearing his heavy flannel coat and his canvas work mittens, splitting the fallen rounds with an eight-pound maul.
Thunk. Crack.
He didn't miss. His shoulder came down with that smooth, rhythmic arch that had lived in his muscles since he was nineteen years old. The white oak rounds split clean along the grain, dropping into the frost-bitten clover in sweet-smelling halves that showed the pale, wet heartwood inside.
Commander Hale walked up from the gate, carrying two cardboard coffee trays from the bakery in town.
He had received his transfer orders three days ago; he was scheduled to report to the Bureau of Naval Personnel in Millington on Monday morning to take over the aviation distribution branch. He wore an old civilian shearling jacket, jeans that had seen real grease, and work boots that were dark with mountain mud.
He set one tray on the tailgate beside my father’s oil can.
"County council held an emergency meeting last night, Thomas," Hale said, handing him a paper cup of black coffee.
My father leaned his maul against the tire, took off his work mitten with his teeth, and took the cup. His hands were red from the wind, but the tremor was gone—settled by three weeks of steady work and the new medication that the specialist in Charlottesville had prescribed after our first real appointment on Thursday.
"Did they now?" my father asked.
"Pierce resigned," Hale said. "Effective immediately. Cited 'health reasons' and a desire to spend more time with his grandchildren. The state attorney is reviewing the zoning files for the entire bypass corridor. The commercial variance has been revoked. That land is locked into the agricultural land trust for the next thirty years."
My father looked out across the rows of freshly pruned trees.
The dead, gray suckers that had choked the lower limbs for six years had been cut away and burned in three massive brush piles down by the creek. The remaining branches were bare, dark, and clean, pruned back to the fruiting wood, standing in straight, parallel lines against the blue mountain wall.
"My wife," my father said softly, his eyes tracking the smoke rising from the brush piles, "used to make apple butter in a copper kettle out here every October. Used to take forty pounds of staymans and twenty pounds of sugar. She’d stir it with a three-foot paddle made out of cherry wood until her arms were shaking."
He took a slow sip of his coffee.
"Evelyn threw that paddle into the burn barrel two weeks after she moved in," he added, his voice completely level. "Told me it was a fire hazard. Said modern people bought their butter at the store in jars with labels."
He set his cup down on the truck bed, picked up his maul, and looked at me where I sat on the porch steps.
"Clare," he called out.
I stood up, pulling my gloves on. "Yeah, Dad?"
"Get the tow chain out of the shed," he said. "We got two stumps down by the well that need to come out before the ground freezes solid. The Commander looks like he needs some exercise before he goes back to sitting behind a mahogany desk in Tennessee."
Hale laughed—a low, quiet sound that was swallowed by the roar of the chainsaws down in the hollow.
"I’m ready when you are, Engineman," Hale said, unbuttoning his shearling coat and tossing it onto the truck seat. "Just show me which way you want the iron to pull."
We worked until the sun dropped behind the North Mountain, turning the sky the color of a bruised plum—the same color my cheek had been three weeks ago.
The stumps came out with long, tearing groans of ancient roots letting go of the shale, leaving deep, clean holes of red earth that smelled of wild garlic and damp pine needles. We dragged the brush, we stacked four cords of split locust against the north wall of the barn for the winter stove, and we swept the sawdust from the breezeway until the gray boards looked like clean wood again.
When we finally walked into the kitchen at six o'clock, the house didn't smell of peppermint or tuberose anymore.
It smelled of woodsmoke, coffee, wet wool, and the hot chicken stew that Mrs. Gable had dropped off on the porch that morning in an enamel pot wrapped in a blue dishtowel.
On the kitchen counter sat an official envelope from the Department of the Navy.
I picked it up. My orders to the Pentagon.
REPORTING DATE: JANUARY 15TH.
DUTY ASSIGNMENT: DEPUTY DIRECTOR, FLEET ELECTRICAL SYSTEMS REVIEW BOARD.
AUTHORIZED RESIDENCE: NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION.
"Forty-five days," I whispered to the empty room.
My father walked in from the washroom, his hair slicked down with water, his face scrubbed clean, wearing an old red flannel shirt that had belonged to his brother.
He looked at the envelope in my hand.
"You're going," he said.
It wasn't a question. It was the simple, proud statement of a father who knew what his daughter was built for.
"I can take a shore billet in Norfolk, Dad," I said, looking at him over the paper. "I can commute on weekends. It’s only three hours up eighty-one."
"You'll take the post they gave you, Clare," my father said firmly, setting the bread board on the table. "You'll take that office across the river from Washington, and you'll sit at that desk with those gold leaves on your collar, and you'll make sure the ships those boys are riding don't catch fire in the night."
May you like
He walked over to me, reached out, and tapped the brass buttons on my cuffs.
"I kept the orchard," he said, his eyes shining in the yellow light of the kitchen fixture. "And you keep the fleet. That’s the deal. That was always the deal."
