UNHEEDED: Undone Realms Book 2

Ch. 2 - The Orchard through the Trees

Oliver wipes sweat from his brow and presses his free hand to his lower back, straining against the pain pulsing outward from his spine in a steady rhythm.  This must be how old people feel, he thinks to himself, all of fourteen last April.  I will die of old age right here in this orchard before the harvest is even over!

 The trees stretch in endless rows up a curving hill toward the horizon. Oliver sighs at the enormity of the task ahead.  Not for the first time, he thinks of home, of the clapboard cabin with its faded gingham curtains and the dusty loft above the kitchen where he and his brother had slept, of the orchard-free horizon and the fields of corn and wheat.  Of course there were no fields of any kind when his family left their home.  The land was dry and mean and untenable. That's not how he chooses to remember it, though.  In his mind, home is more fertile than this sopping green valley.  He resents his parent's decision to abandon it.

"Ollie, quit yer day dreaming and c'mon!" Raymond holds up a bushel basket and gives Oliver a sharp look from his perch atop a ladder.  He commands with all of the authority of his sixteen year-old self.  Oliver straightens his shoulder and approaches the ladder, exchanging his empty basket for Raymond's full one.  He groans under its weight.

"Why do they have to be so heavy?"  His back begins to throb again.

"Cuz they are."  Raymond pulls an apple off the tree.  "You better hurry on up to Griffin... and make sure you watch his count.  He shorted us last time, I swear to God."

Of course he had.  Griffin is just like every other field manager Oliver has come across—crooked, no good, and meaner than a skillet full of rattlesnakes.  He doesn't say any of this, though.  Raymond knows as well as Oliver that there's no use expecting to be treated fairly.  The difference is that Raymond thinks it's worth fighting over, whereas Oliver just wants this day to be over no matter what.  Just like every other day. 

"Fine, Ray.  I'm going."

Oliver heads down a row towards the stand where Griffin counts off and weighs the pickers' apples.  It seems impossibly far—over the ridge and beyond it a ways.  The bushel basket becomes a bigger burden with every step.  He stares at the shiny red rounds resting at the top of the basket, his breath laboring along with his tired arms and aching back.  Just a little rest.  That's all I need, he thinks.  He shifts around to see if any of the other pickers are watching him, but they're all too busy trying to meet their quotas to concern themselves with one lazy boy.  Oliver turns to the right, shuffling along a line of trees that have already been picked.  He'll go a little ways down and then sit for a moment—just a moment, mind you.  And maybe if one of those apples finds a way into his belly—who's to tell?

Oliver doesn't even notice the girl standing in his path until he's almost collided with her.

"Oh my God, there are people here!"

If only that statement was the strangest thing about her, Oliver may not have been so shocked.  Her light brown hair defies gravity, with stiff spiky tips dyed the deep blue of a pair of denim jeans.  Stranger yet is her clothing—tight floral pants tucked into black boots that look far too manly for a young lady, and a shimmery jacket that gleams like the fender of Griffin's brand new Ford.

Oliver sets the apple-laden basket on the ground.  "Of course there are people here.  Ain't you one?"

The girl laughs and grabs an apple from the basket, turning it over in her hand.  "We have these."  She takes a bite and talks as she chews. "They taste the same, too.  That's funny, I thought everything would be different here."

Oliver can't quite place the girl's accent.  He's never heard anyone pronounce the word "funny" like that—more like foo than fuh.  "Are you from Canada?"