Apple Pickers

“Pay five dollars a bushel.” Orin Conner said to the two sad sacks standing at his door. It was early October and the weather in Nedrow had on the chilly side for the past two weeks dipping down close to 32 degrees on two occasions turning the green apples into a happy red and ready for picking.  He had nearly forty acres with half of it apple trees that were some of the best apples in upstate New York, or the northeast for that matter, hell the entire country including Washington State and their mushy MacIntosh stock.  Both men nodded and Orin continued. “We start at sunrise which is seven sharp.  If you’re not here, you won’t be picking.” 

“Yessir.” Said the tall lanky one name Eugene. “We’s the bes’ pic-ars there is.” 

Kluth stood there in silence with a spooked expression on his face making Orin think that Kluth appeared as if he had spent the night in the alley up around Burnet Ave. in Syracuse where there were sizable homeless camps.  Neither one of them impressed Orin who usually had a bunch of high school native kids who were in top physical shape and could really pick some apples in a short time.  Both of these men looked like they had passed their prime and would wind up being more of a liability than a good hand in the orchard.  

Sutter Creighton Farms once owned by two families on Tully Valley Road, the Creighton's and the Sutter's, became a single farm when Orin’s father bought out Creighton’s share in 1946 after the war and made Sutter Farms one of the best places to get apples and fresh pressed cider. Out of towners were clued in by the locals and would come from as far away as New Hampshire and Ohio, plus they were shipped often to destinations out west near Washington State.  

As he saw the brothers Eugene and Kluth Stahan saunter away in their well-worn overalls, Orin wondered if he should take down his sign that advertised for pickers out next to the road.  It would be a good harvest and he needed experienced pickers out there, not these two brothers who appeared as charity cases.  Orin did not have anything against those types of people, he knew that the overall preconceived notion was that they did not really work hard enough for their pay.  Of course some of the farmers said that about the Indians from the reservation, but it turned out they turned out to be quite productive in the field even if they did not always seem to have a healthy respect for showing up on time.  

“Gotta watchum, Orin.  Them two will rob ya blind if ya let them.” Mitch Roark commented while they sat on Orin’s porch gazing out at the sunset in between the rows of apple trees that would about two dozen pickers in the morning pulling down the ripe apples.  

“They don’t strike me as that way.” Orin scratched the stubble on his chin.

“Them folks are all like that.” Mitch let the air press through his teeth sounding like a tire with a leak in it. 

“We’ll see.” He nudged his old neighbor. 

“Cider is top of the line.” Mitch complimented the beverage as he took another swallow.

“I’m tellin’ ya, that stuff if my big seller, ya know.” Orin nodded proudly.

Apple picking is hard work since you spend most of the time getting up and down ladders and pulling the apple from its happy home to plop into a wooden bushel basket below.  Once filled, then you had to carry the filled bushel basket to the flatbed truck. It would take about three to four hours to fill the flatbed with baskets and then the driver would drive to the processing barn and return empty to be filled again.  All of this took a lot of work and a bushel basket was heavy by anyone’s standards.  

Kluth and Eugene were waiting at the gate when Orin and his younger brother and foremanTheodore, better known as Peck by the picking crews, went to open the gate to the orchard.  It surprised Orin that Kluth had a ladder resting on his shoulder while his brother Eugene had a nice well oiled and sharp pair of shears. After over twenty years in the business, Orin had never seen anyone bring tools to pick apples, because everyone expected him, the boss to have all of that.  

“You didn’t need all that.” Orin smiled as the padlock opened with a twist of the key.  

“It’sall right, I brung it anyway on account we work bettah with our own tools.” Eugene pointed out.

“I got plenty of tools.” Orin pointed to the side of the barn where there were all kinds of ladders and pruning tools.

“But me and Kluth likes using what we know.” Eugene waved his hand and shook his head.

By midday, the sorts declared that the Stahan brothers were in the lead by a substantial margin as Kluth worked the ladder and Eugene managed the basket quickly discarding the worm-eaten rotten fruit which was not as much as he was expecting.  The crews were supposed to put that fruit into a barrel that would be mashed and spread out on the ground as a natural fertilizer.

When the brothers ended the day, the paymaster handed over a good payoff to the brothers while other workers looked on in envy.  

“Kluth and Eugene, sign here.” Danny O’Flannery the paymaster put the document in front of them.  While Eugene signed his name, Kluth just marked an X.

“He don’t know how to sign his name?” Danny was a bit surprised.

“Massah, my brother don’t hear nothing.” He looked Danny in the eye, something he would dare not do in his home town in Mississippi. “When he was a youngun, ain’t nobody had time to teach a Colored boy how to read and write. It ain’t that he ain’t smart, it’s just he’s never been to school.” 

“What about his name, Kluth.  I ain’t never heard of such a first name.” Danny tilted his head.

“Named af’er his Uncle Kluth.  When he was a young man, he sassed some old store owner for not servin’ no colored.” Eugene scratched his neck that was covered with mosquito bites from his day in the orchards. “Them hooded riders come one night and lynched him and then burned his place down.  He was mama’s oldest brother who served in the war and those men killed him like he was some criminal.  Mama named him Kluth so we would never forget what them men do to us. 

The story he didn’t tell the paymaster was the one that made them leave their home in Mississippi when the brothers were working in the fields when one of them bosses hit him with an iron rod on account he would not answer his question.  Dumb cracker never even knew that Kluth was deaf, but Eugene who had sworn to protect his younger brother ran to the boss man who was getting ready for a second blow, when Eugene grabbed the weapon and turned it on its owner.  By  the time Eugene got done, the man would never be able to utter a comprehensive sentence again.  

Running was the only option and Eugene had enough to pay for two train tickets north before the hooded men came looking for them.  Mama had to go to Montgomery to stay with her sister for a spell until things cooled down a bit.  For Kluth and his brother, they could never return to Mississippi.  They had done a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but found that even above the Mason Dixon Line where Jim Crow did not exist, there was still plenty of harshness to go around.  With the money they had made, Eugene could pay for a month’s rent on their room at the Y.M.C.A. in Syracuse.  In the morning they would get up before sunrise and pay for two bus tickets back to the orchard.

“What was your take on that quiet one?” Mitch said as he bit into a freshly picked apple.

“I dunno.” Orin slid his legs in between the slats on his porch that ran completely around the two story ranch.  

“Quiet ones are usually the ones who done some bad stuff.  Never seen it otherwise with their kind.” Mitch took another bite, “Good crop this year, old man.” 

“Thanks.” He pushed his straw hat over his eyes as the final streaks of sunlight exploded in the sky.

“Keep an eye on them boys.” Mitch waved his finger as a warning.

“They doubled the production of all the crews, even the Bently’s.” Orin looked at Mitch.

“The hellya say.” He chuckled. “They probably cheating.”

“Mitch have you ever had a good thing to say about any Negro?” Orin blew air through his lips.

“Some of them is good.” Mitch shook his head.

“Yeah, like who?”  He smiled.

“That Reverend King seems like a good sort.” Mitch nodded, “But some of them uppity Negroes he has surrounding him are trouble.  Feel like they are gonna start trouble.” 

“They already have.  Had riots last summer.” Orin pointed out. “But I got this feeling that whatever their gripe is, they may be right.”

“Ain’t given them no right to destroy other folk’s places.” Mitch snarled.

“Maybe they’re just looking for an even shake.” Orin chuckled, “Now some of them boys from the reservation, they’re trouble from the get-go.” 

“Sure, sure.” Mitched waved him off.

Next morning Eugene and Kluth were standing at the locked gate when Orin came out to unlock it.  He greeted them as he opened the gate, Eugene still had the ladder hoisted on his shoulder and Kluth offered a cordial smile, but again remained silent. At a table in front of the barn, Orin had hot coffee in a couple of urns to which he turned his head and said, “You boys go ahead and help yourself.” 

“Much obliged.” Eugene tipped his dirty straw hat as Orin walked to the barn to make sure everything was ready for another day of apple picking.

“Trouble.” Mitch was there in the shadows looking out at the Stahan brothers helping themselves to coffee.

“Second day they were waiting at the gate for me to open it and they have their own tools and ladder.” Orin explained. 

“Last night the grange got broken into, ya know.  How do you know they ain’t the ones who done it?” Mitch looked surly to Orin since he knew Mitch was partial to whiskey. 

“If you are looking to be poking a hive of bees with a stick, maybe you should go on home and call it a day.” Orin watched a bus pull in from the reservation as a dozen boys from the reservation got off shouting and taunting each other.  To Orin, these were the ones he needed to keep an eye on.  He had caught more than one of them with sacks hidden in their clothing to stuff apples into as they went along the orchard.  He also did not hold it against them since most of their parents were finding it hard to get by on what they were getting from the B.I.A. 

“Hard being a Negro these days.” Zack said aloud as Eugene was on the ladder today.  Zack worked with his twin brother Dirk and they were part of the Wolf Clan of the Onodaugas who were in senior year at high school and both of them were stars on the Nedrow football team and the undefeated lacrosse team to which their ancestors had invented the sport.  

“S’alright.” Eugene nodded knowing that it could take a lot less to start something if he wasn’t careful.

“Why don’t he ever say anything?” Dirk pointed at Kluth.

“He can’t hear a word you say.” Eugene glanced at Dirk to size him up. 

“Honest!” Dirk was amazed and delighted. “Whhhhhaaaaaaaaahhhhhoooo!” He yelled his Indian war cry, but Kluth just kept picking through the bushel basket. “You ain’t lying.” 

“Why would I lie about a thing like that.” He glanced at Dirk again feeling that the boy wanted to do something else, something cruel to Kluth.

“My uncle is deaf, but he’s old.” Dirk declared.

“Yeah, ma don’t expect him to last another winter.” Zack shook his head.

“We injuns got a lot in common with you Negroes.” Dirk observed.

“How do ya figure?” Eugene saw that Dirk had meant no harm in his observation and there was a lot of truth in what he said.

“We get treated like crap by the white man.” Zack growled. 

“We work like dogs and get paid next to nothing.” Dirk tossed a rotten apple into the woods near the orchard.

“How many times have I tolja punk, don’t throw the fruit into the woods?” It was the foreman Mr. Wright who was older than the owner and twice as mean.  Kluth saw Mr. Wright running toward Dirk and unable to hear saw the man with the iron bar who had hit him in the head making him deaf.  The doctor told him that Kluth would have some hearing loss due to a degenerate nerve in one of his ears, but the blow with the iron bar completely destroyed the nerves resulting in his deafness. As Mr. Wright neared, Kluth threw a nearly full bushel basket at the old man who screamed out before falling with the heavy basket on his chest.  The shock of such a thing happening, put Mr. Wright into  cardiac arrest.  The ambulance would arrive twenty minutes too late to save the old apple picker.

The police were also called and they charged Kluth Stahan with assault and manslaughter.  In tears, Eugene begged the officers to let him go with them on account of his brother’s deafness, but they said he could not and he stood there helplessly as he watched his brother loaded into the back of a police car and driven away.  It would be several hours before Eugene could get to the county courthouse where he was told his brother had confessed to the criminal charges.

“How could he do that?” Eugene was in a rage, “He can’t hear a word you’d be saying to him.” 

“Mr. Stahan, you need to calm down.” Warned the desk sergeant.

“Can I see him?” Eugene asked.

“Visiting hours are not until Monday.” The beleaguered sergeant informed Eugene.

“I tol’ him.  I tol mama I’d be with him and never leave him.” He put his hand over his eyes to cover his tears.

“He’ll be fine.” The sergeant assured him, “We will take good care of him.” 

“You don’t understand-”

“You don’t understand, he killed a man this afternoon.” The sergeant told him as he sat next to him on the bench where Eugene was sitting wiping the tears from his eyes.

“He didn’t mean to.” Eugene explained.

“Sorry, rules are rules.” The sergeant got up and resumed his place behind the counter. With nothing more to be done, Eugene walked to the Y.M.C.A. 

In the morning before sunrise, there was a knock at the door and Eugene got up to see would be knocking on his door at this hour.  When he opened the door two policemen were standing there with very solemn expressions on their faces. 

“Mr. Stahan?” One of them asked.

“Yes, what is it?” 

They sat him down on his bed and told him that his brother Kluth had hanged himself in his cell with his bedsheet that he had shredded.  As tears flowed from his eyes, they drove him down to the morgue where his brother lay under a sheet as if he had forgotten to get up to go pick apples.  He really didn’t hear much of what they told him, because he had let his mama down.  She told him to keep an eye on Kluth and he had failed.

“Sure you don’t want to stay on.  I got some room in the barn.  We could fix it up as a room for you.” Orin suggested when Eugene showed up an hour late.  The crews were already out in the orchard. “I can always use a good man like you.” 

“I ‘preciate you askin,’ but I think I’m goin’ to head back south, maybe Georgia this time, suh.” His smile was just a bandage over the deep wound he was still suffering from.  “Maybe I’ll stop by ‘Gomery and say hello to my aunt and my mama.  I had ‘em send Kluth’s remains down there to the cemetery where our folks have been laid to rest.”

“Do you really want to go back to the south with all that separate but equal Jim Crow stuff?” Orin asked.

“At least down there, I know where I stand as a man. Up here I gotta guess.  Mr. Cpnnor, you was alright to my brother and me, but my apply picking days are over.” He grinned at Orin who bowed his head.

“I’m sorry things didn’t work out, Eugene, you was a good apple picker.  You and your brother.” Orin watched Eugene walk toward the cab waiting in front of the house.  He took one look back, waved, got into the back of the cab and was gone.

A few months later, on April 4, Orin got the news that Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. had been shot in Memphis, Tennessee and for a moment all he could see Old Eugene Stahan’s smiling face picking apples with his brother in his orchard and he did not even bother to wipe the tears from his eyes.