Ice Cherries

I saw someone slip under the fence line and between the rows of cherry trees just as the rain started to sprinkle. Not clearly, not so I could see the shape, but I saw someone, bright and orange. And I frowned. No one should be outside with that storm coming in, and absolutely no one should be in my small cherry orchard, period. 

The storm’s coming was awful enough. The cherries would be ripening in a few short days, and the last thing they needed in this moment was too much water. But I couldn’t do anything about it. It would pass and leave whatever wreckage it chose to leave and I’d clean up as best I could. 

But a trespasser to my little grove was another thing. They’d made problems before.

Moving fast, I yanked my boots on with a grunt and reached for the gray slicker rather than the yellow, keeping my eye out one of the porch windows the whole time, just in case the stranger re-emerged. Then I grabbed Granddad’s baseball bat — it lay conveniently at hand — and headed outside.

The wind caught me the second I put a boot outdoors. It blew with sharp, biting gusts, and it smelled thick and dangerous. I shivered and pulled my slicker close under my chin. Then I walked the hundred feet or so to the edge of my orchard, ducked the fence as my trespasser had, and peered through the low branches down the first grassy lane.

Not a soul to be seen. The rain started to fall in huge, isolated splatters, polka-dotting the branches and sides of the tree trunks with great dark blotches. The branches heaved about in the wind, heavy with their blushing, unripe fruit. Some of my would-be harvest had already dropped to the ground. I felt my jaw clench. Nothing I could do. 

I began walking along the outer line of trees, keeping my eyes scanning and the baseball bat at the ready. The orchard wasn’t much in terms of scale — a few dozen trees Granddad planted on a lark some decades back just to see what would happen. And they’d flourished. 

That little orchard still kept us rolling in homemade cherry jelly, cherry preserves, cherry juice, and cherry pies. It also brought in a small chunk of change for what we couldn’t use. Fortunately for Granddad, those of us who were left still liked cherries, which meant we revered his memory and kept that lark of his thriving.

I paused, my eyes jolted back to the present. Something had moved behind the fourth tree down this lane.

“I saw you come in here,” I hollered. I hoped the wind didn’t snatch all my words away. “So you’d best come back out now. This grove’s no place to be in a storm, and my land’s no place for you anytime.” I kept the baseball bat hidden behind the tree I stood by. “Come on!” I shouted again. “I don’t want trouble, but I can dish when I have to!”

Now I saw a small, bare foot as it slipped outward for an instant, and the flip of a bright orange skirt. My grip on the bat loosened a little. Some girl had wandered in here? From where? The nearest road was little better than a highway. Then I felt my grip tighten back up. No shoes. She’d probably been climbing my trees like she owned them.

The wind seemed to sense my temperament as it rose and grew colder, and I shivered in that thin slicker. It felt like hail might be on its way.

“Last chance before I come in after you!” I said.

And then the smallest, grubbiest, most tear-streaked face I’d ever seen curled itself around the trunk of that tree. Her mouth formed words that I couldn’t hear, but her face said enough. The world seemed to shrink. I swallowed, leaned the bat against the tree I’d been standing by, and moved into the center of the lane. Then I squatted and held out my arms to her.

“Come on out,” I said. I still had to shout over the wind, but I hoped she’d see my beckoning as less threatening now. How had I not realized how small she was? 

Still barefoot, hands sheltering her head, the little girl slowly slid the rest of herself around the trunk to stare at me. Her dark brown hair and orange floral jumper clung soaked to her face and tiny body. 

A flash crackled across the sky along the edge of the storm, and she wailed and ducked. She clapped hands to her ears as the thunder bucked around us a second later. The rain moved in like a sheet, and in the sudden grey deluge I lost sight of everything but the shadow of that orange dress.

“Come on!” I shouted, and darted into the lane toward her. “We can’t be out here!”

And finally she ran to me, arms covering her head, mouth open in an ongoing, wordless scream.

Lightning crashed overhead just as she reached me. I scooped her up — lighter than a bag of fertilizer, little backpack and all — grabbed Granddad’s bat from where it leaned on that last tree, ducked the fence in one impossibly swift movement that amazed me when I considered it later, and raced back to the house only steps ahead of the roaring sweep of hail. 

I slammed against the door twice before I got the doorknob to turn, then shoved it shut against the fierce wind as I whirled inside. The child sobbed in my arms. She tried to speak, but the hail on my porch’s metal roof and wide windows, and her own extreme terror overwhelmed every word.

“Okay,” I said, though the clamor probably covered my words too. “Okay, it’s okay. We can figure this out, alright? You and me.” She was writhing in my arms, so I set her down. Then I sank abruptly into a porch chair. “We’ll figure this out,” I said again. My heart pounded so hard I couldn’t feel my feet, and my head spun.

She didn’t hear me. Her eyes stared outside at the thunderous white downpour as it destroyed my year’s cherry crop, and her voice somehow surmounted that clamor as she wailed.

She seemed determined to outlast that hail. Her voice carried on and on, and I finally moved into the kitchen where the roof at least had a foot or so of insulation between me and it, and the open doorway funneled and stifled some of her noise. 

That was when inspiration struck. I grabbed out a jar of cherry jam, a loaf of fresh sourdough, a knife, and a plate. In short order three slices, slathered thick with jam, lay spread on that plate. I carried it back to the porch. The hail had slackened. The child’s cries had not.

“Here,” I said, and set the plate on a chair by her. Her eyes widened, and the next sob wasn’t quite so guttural. She reached for a slice and, still half-crying, shoved it toward her grimy face.

In another moment both the hail and her cries had vanished, replaced by the hard but steady downpour of rain and the contented smacking of childish lips. I glanced outside at the thick, knobbled white ground coating and knew I’d be taking a full loss this year. Several of my nearest trees stood brown and stripped, and the others behind them didn’t look much better. 

A burning chunk of chaotic matter roiled in my stomach. All those months of labor, reduced to practically nothing in mere moments.

Then the sound of chewing behind me ceased, and I heard a sniffle. I turned to look at my little trespasser again. Her plate was empty.

I forced a small smile. “More?” I asked.

Her wide brown eyes never left mine as she nodded and sniffled again. I went back into the kitchen, prepped another plateful, and delivered it to her with as much of a flourish as I could muster. The rain was already slacking off, and the sky lightening.

“Stay right here,” I said. “I’m gonna make a phone call, okay?”

I’d expected all the lines to be full in the storm’s aftermath, but the operator came on immediately. “Please state the nature of the emergency.”

My eyes strayed to the ruined grove. Branches — some of them fairly large — lay strewn on what had been clean grassy lanes only moments ago. A shudder rippled through my spine. What if I hadn’t seen that tiny flick of movement ducking my fence?

“Hello?” the operator said, and I jumped. 

“Yes, hi,” I said. “Look, I’ve got a kid here, a little girl who’s not mine…” 

The operator patched me through to the police station, and I gave my location and a description. As I finished, my trespasser came to the kitchen door with the plate emptied again. Cherry jam decorated her cheeks in inch-long streaks on either side of her mouth. She held the plate toward me and seemed to stare right into my soul.

“No,” I said into the phone as I took the plate. The child’s eyes followed me as I moved to the counter with it. “She hasn’t said a word, but it’s clear she loves cherry jam.” I started making her a third serving. My sourdough was almost gone, and the spoon scraped the jar’s bottom.

“Please hold,” the officer on the line said, and immediately the hold music began playing. I bit my lip and slathered the jam over three more slices as the melodic line, interspersed with the calming sound of ocean waves, pulsed against my eardrum.

“Why don’t you eat here at the table?” I said as I put the plate down there. The girl climbed onto a chair and solemnly shoved the next piece of bread into her insatiable mouth.

“Sir?” the officer cut back in. “I’ve got a woman here needing to talk to you.”

“Okay…” I began, but a frantically high voice cut me off.

“You have her!? Mira-Jo, you’ve got her right there? Oh, please say she’s there!”

“Mira-Jo?” I said, and looked at my trespasser. Her head jerked up from its contemplation of the second slice of bread.

“Mama!” she yelled. She reached for the phone, and I put it to her ear. Not too close though. The hysterical sobs on the other end could deafen a body. And for her part, Mira-Jo wasn’t all that quiet either. She shrieked, “Mama! I cherreez Mama! Lots cherreez, lots, lots, yum!” Jam-covered fingers squirrelled up toward the phone and I pulled it away.

“Bread and jam,” I said. “She’s had three helpings so far, and I’ve plenty more to keep her occupied, one way or another, I suppose.”

The officer apparently had succeeded in pulling Mira-Jo’s mom from the phone. “Mrs. Walsh is much obliged to you, sir,” he said. “I’m checking road conditions, but barring anything major, we’re sending her and an officer out your way as soon as possible. It sounds like the kid’s okay, not hurt and all?”

My mind raced over the potential road hazards or blockades that the storm might have created, and I pitied whoever would be with this Mrs. Walsh. But into the phone I simply said, “Just shook from the storm, I think. Her appetite’s come back fine.”

As I hung up the phone, I glanced at Mira-Jo. The plate once again lay bare before her, but her hungry gaze had cleared. “Mama?” she said, staring at me.

“On her way, kiddo,” I said. I glanced through the kitchen window and saw blue sky trailing through the storm’s afterthoughts. “Want to come outside with me to wait for her? Maybe we could find your shoes.”

I held out my hand. She looked at it, popped her thumb in her mouth, then took my hand with her free one. 

We got as far as the front steps before Mira-Jo pulled up short and wouldn’t go further. 

“Why cherreez?” she said.

I looked at her. “What do you mean why?”

She pointed. “Why! Why cherreez!” Her chubby finger swept across my ice-bubbled yard, and I laughed before I could help it. White cherries, she meant!

“Not cherries, Mira-Jo,” I said. “Ice. Here.” I picked up a couple of the brutal ice pellets, each nearly the size of the fruit they’d done in, and handed them to her. “It’s cold and hard, see? Ice. Not cherries.” 

Mira-Jo stared in full solemnity at the icy stones in her hands. “Ice cherreez cold,” she said. She turned them over and over in her palms as they began to melt. And as I watched her, I found myself melting too.

I should have been angry at that ice. Angry at the storm, the circumstances. It wouldn’t destroy my livelihood like it might others’, but some of my trees would take years to fully come back. And yet, as I looked across the yard at all those cold, hard little chunks, I found that all I could do was laugh. I had a bumper crop of ice cherries this year! An idea occurred to me.

When the police cruiser, followed by a muddy gray sedan, pulled into my long drive some half an hour later, their occupants found me and Mira-Jo sitting on my front steps eating cherry slushies made from the hail and some cherry syrup I’d stored away last year. I raised my cup to them as Mira-Jo dropped hers all over the grass.

“Mama!” she shrieked. 

The sedan stopped short of my grass with a jerk, and a short, frazzled-looking woman leapt out. Without a word she raced across the lawn and scooped my little trespasser up into a fierce embrace.

“Don’t you ever, ever, ever do that again, Mira-Jo! Never again, you hear me? Never!” She sobbed, clutching Mira-Jo so hard I wondered how the kid could still breathe. And it seemed Mira-Jo was trying to repay that favor on her mother’s neck. No room existed even for air in that embrace, and I found myself smiling widely.

I set my cup down on a step and stood, hands in pockets, as a police officer stepped out of his cruiser and walked toward me. Mrs. Walsh turned toward me.

“Thank you,” she said, the gasp of the words escaping like a pent-up explosion.

“Really appreciate your help today, sir,” the officer said. He extended his hand.

“Just glad I saw her,” I said. I thought back to that first, fleeting moment and shivered despite myself. I shook the proffered hand.

“I had a flat,” Mrs. Walsh said. “A mile or more down the road. I unfastened her so she wouldn’t get antsy while I saw to the tire, and the next thing I knew the door was open and she was gone. I can’t believe she walked so far!”

“Ice cherreez, Mama! Yum!” Mira-Jo said.

“She does love her cherries, doesn’t she?” I said. “I’ve got more crushed ice and syrup if anyone else wants a slushy.”

The cop shook his head. “I’m just here to make sure it’s all resolved. That storm’s made plenty of bad business today. Everything okay here, Ma’am?”

Mrs. Walsh squeezed her eyes shut and nodded as she pressed her cheek down on Mira-Jo’s head. “Thank you.” Then she turned to me, “I’d love a slushy. I need something to settle these nerves.”

By the time she and Mira-Jo had finished their second helpings, loaded into their car, and driven away, an agreement had been sprung. They’d be welcome in my orchard anytime, so long — this given with a wink — as they gave some advance notice.

I watched them pull out, then strolled over to my beleaguered group of trees. Unripe fruit dotted the ground like a Seurat painting, but the trees still boasted some tenacious hold-outs. I’d have something to harvest after all.

And now, I had someone else to enjoy it all with. It looked like Granddad’s lark had found yet another faithful adherent.

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