Trestle Bridge Orchard

Jesse DuPont sat upright in his cell cot. His vision was still hazy after waking up so suddenly. He could hear his cellmate Frank arguing with one of the prison guards. Officer Shumpert, he had a deep, resonating voice, and at well over six feet tall he was equally intimidating in stature. Shumpert grabbed Frank by the collar and dragged him out of the cell. Thwack, thwack, thwack, the sickening sound of a club against flesh. Each successive blow sounding more hideous than the last. Jesse could only sit there helplessly quivering. Shumpert shoved Frank back into the cell. For a moment his cellmate stood there motionless as if on the brink of a singular precipice, before lurching backward and tumbling like a sack of flour. A column of light from the lone window in the back of the cell shone upon his face. Jesse froze in terror, his eyes fixed upon his dead cellmate’s unspeakably mangled visage. His ears were ringing. 

He banged his head against the side of the car and awoke with a jolt. His cousin Jules, was driving. He had reexperienced the trauma of witnessing his cellmate’s execution countless times. The only difference now was that he awoke to the singular sensation that he was a free man. Auburn Correctional, one of the Empire State’s oldest hell holes had held him captive for nearly twelve years. It had been just two days since he was released. A quick glance in the side mirror. No one was behind them. Jesse watched the green pastures roll by. The morning sun was just peeking out now, reflecting light off of the dawn’s dew. The car radio chimed in, “Latest Gallup poll has Roosevelt ahead by a landslide…” It was October 10th, 1936 just a few weeks before the 38th Presidential election. They were riding in a 1932 black Ford V-8. 

Ahead of them was a truck pulled over on the side of the road. It was a Shell Oil delivery truck, with a flat by the looks of it. The driver looked none too pleased as they sped on by. An overcast dawn gave way to a clear blue afternoon sky providing an idyllic contrast to the red leaves of autumn. “Where are we at now?” 

“About a couple hours north of the city” replied Jules. 

Jules had picked him up from Auburn two days ago and was driving him back to his home to live with him for a while.

An hour or so passed by uneventfully. Jesse dozed off into an afternoon reverie. One of those daydreams that catch the mind unaware, upon its conclusion leaving the dreamer to believe that hours must have passed instead upon their awakening there is a subtle surprise realizing that only minutes had, in fact, gone by. One of those few times where the mind’s wired clock loses course. 

Jesse’s mind wandered back to his prison booking some twelve years ago. He was a kid barely nineteen years old. The crime itself he had long forgotten. But what he did recall and with astonishing acuity was the feeling he had felt when he first arrived in jail. A pang of nervous tension flooding forth, an emotional eruption on par with an unleashed volcano or a gushing geyser. His mouth was dry as a tumbleweed and his legs could just barely fight gravity. He looked around helplessly but to no avail just faceless people all around; no one he recognized. No friendly face to find solace in; there was no comfort to latch onto or to find refuge in. Helpless and alone like the condemned man standing atop the gallows. It was here that he discovered that the mind has a startling ability to, in times of great trauma, almost detach itself from its corporeal plane of existence, seemingly in an act of self-preservation. He recalled seeing that long, beige corridor watching himself escorted down it as if he were actually a fly on the wall or a scintilla of dust, an observer of what was happening. Yes, his body was walking but he couldn’t feel anything, his mind failed to register any physical sensation. He remembered looking at the clock on the wall, it was seemingly stuck on four past six. Hours seemed to have passed in the interim between four and five past. Finally, the trance was broken. He recalled being led past the corridor into an atrium when his senses kicked back in. There was a mass of people gathered there, prisoners and guards alike. But the focus of his attention was something far more innocuous. It was as if the room fell silent and with clear distinction, all he could hear was the rattling of the ceiling fan and it grew in intensity the longer he stared at it. And so he stood there in Auburn Correctional mesmerized by a ceiling fan on a hot evening in late July twelve years ago...

Jules shook him awake. “Your leg was shaking, what’s wrong with you, man?” Jules asked earnestly. 

“I don’t know. I-- get these ticks. Bad memories.” 

“Well, here, have a drink. It’ll help.” 

He handed him a flask of Bourbon. 

Jesse held up his hand, “No, not now.” 

Up ahead, a sign pointing to an old, dirt road. 

White washed-ply board. And scrawled across the middle in red paint read “Apple Picking, Five Miles.” It had been written by a fifth-grader by the looks of it. 

“Eh, why not? Let’s take a detour.” Jules insisted and he pulled off to the right. 

It was an old, dirt road with plenty of bumps and jolts. Dense wood crowded the initial stretch of road before clearing up ahead and just like that they could see the blue autumn afternoon sky in its glory once more. Just off the road, to the right, the rubble of a dilapidated barn. And beyond that was another sign. “Apple Picking two miles.” 

“Hope you’re hungry,” Jules said with a wry smile. 

They pulled up to a modest, old brick house. A sign by the front door read “Trestle Bridge Orchard”. Jules pulled the car into the gravel lot across from the house. He exited the car and took out a cigar from his front pocket. Jesse’s cousin had found himself amidst a mid-life crisis of sorts, having spent the first half of his life as a stockbroker of modest repute before, he like countless others, had the proverbial rug ripped out from underneath him following the Crash of October ‘29. He had since relocated to upstate New York where he had spent the past few years working on a dairy farm owned by his wife’s family. His formerly suited personage gave way to less formal attire, today he was wearing tan overalls, a red flannel shirt, and sturdy but equally shoddy looking boots. Indeed he was just a straw hat short of being the ideal crow perch. 

Jesse got out and the two of them headed to the front of the house where there was an old man with a scraggly, white beard. He looked at them with the crooked gaze of a crusty, old parrot and croaked out “Five cents a bucket.” Jules flipped a dime at him and the old man gave him two buckets. They proceeded behind the house where several columns of apple trees extended out into the horizon. 

Jesse walked down one of those apple corridors and plucked a fruit. He sat down for a moment and stared at the thing and its mottled dark red complexion. Then he looked up at the sky, something that not too long ago he’d thought he’d never see again. He bit into it observing its texture. It had a mealy, spongy type of consistency. He took the fruit and heaved it some fifty yards down the way. Jules, puffing his cigar, asked him “No good I guess?”. 

“Fairly decent actually. I just wanted to remember what it was like to throw something. Try one?” He plucked an apple from the nearest tree and tossed it underhand to Jules. He obliged and bit into it. A look of dissatisfaction soon etched across his face, he took the apple and tossed it onto the ground. “Hmm, maybe they keep the better ones in the back.” 

They walked around a bit before Jules asked, “What was it like?” 

“Imagine being buried in a hole and thinking you’d never see the light again. For twelve years.”

Jules could only nod and they turned back toward the house where they ran into a squat, fat woman wearing a grey smock. She said, “Gentlemen, pleased to meet your acquaintance, I’m Mrs. Berta Richardson, my husband owns the orchard. Did you enjoy the apples?” 

“No, I’m afraid not,” replied Jules. “Quite a few were rotten and those that weren’t, well they had a most unpleasant texture.” 

“I beg your pardon sir these here apples have won best in the county for four straight years.” 

“Well, the competition must be sorely lacking” replied Jules. 

She was none too pleased by this rebuke, grunted, spat on the ground, and stared at the both of them. “You two castaway barnacles, what would you know about quality apples? Yeah, I reckon you wouldn’t know a good apple if it hit you square in the forehead, sprouted legs, and whistled dixie to you.”

Jules was none too pleased. Jesse could tell he was about to hit boiling temperature. And sure enough his cousin, index finger aloft was on the verge of a pontification. 

“Now you listen here, madam. First I’ve eaten several apples in my day and let me tell you these are nothing special at best and at worst aren’t fit to feed horses on their way to the glue factory. And secondly, I don’t appreciate your tone. It seems to me little wonder why we appear to be your sole visitors on this fine October afternoon. Perhaps you should work on your manners.”

“Obstreperous wench” Jules muttered. The lady simply stood there dumbfounded, spellbound with her mouth agape. As the two headed back to the car, Jesse could only smile taking in the scene of the orchard and that blue autumn sky one last time.