The Orchard Boy

I wasn’t entirely surprised when the letter arrived in my mailbox, the paper stale and stained and the corners creased like someone’s dog had decided it was a good chew toy. My grandfather, Albert, had lived to a whopping one hundred and twelve before passing away peacefully on his farm. As I was his only living relative, I knew I’d inherit his property and assets.

I’d spent my childhood summers on Albert’s farm. He had an apple orchard that blossomed with tiny red apples that I’d scale the tree to reach, sinking my crooked teeth into tart apples that looked like they were miniature versions of the supermarket apples. Every summer we visited, until I was twelve, when my dad got a job in the city, and we moved too far to visit anymore.

The farm looked almost exactly as it did when I was young. The house stood regally on top of a small hill, surrounded by a ring of trees that never seemed to bare fruit, despite flowering into beautiful blossoms that were inevitably trampled by my sandal-clad ten-year-old feet as I stomped towards the house. It wasn’t as sturdy as it looked –years of living-in meant the walls had cracks, the floorboards creaked as you stepped on them and doors refused to shut properly. Still, my grandfather took good care of it, all the way up until his vision gave out and he was left bed-ridden until he passed. It’d be worth quite some money if I could refurbish it to sell.

There were two sections of apple trees in the orchard: tall, broad trees that grew tiny, tart apples among vast bunches of leaves, and shorter, stouter trees that produced fuller, juicer apples. Those ones were for selling. I was free to eat the others. The two parts of the farm were divided by a large, metal fence, spiked at the top with chain. To stop possums, my grandfather had said, but I secretly thought it was to stop me. I’d spend hours staring at the barbed top of the fence, wondering how I could get over without it nicking my dirt-encrusted skin. I’d spend hours in the orchard, laying on the branches of a tree, surrounded by lush green leaves.

One time, when I was nine, I met a boy on the brink of the orchard. He was small, skinny, with a pale face and cold hands that he kept plunged deep in the pockets of his oversized jacket. He also had a long, jagged scar that reached from the upper corner of his face down to his chin, passing through his eye, partially concealed under fluffy blond hair.

‘Who are you?’ I had sneered, peering at him down the bridge of my nose. ‘This is my grandfather’s property.’

‘I know,’ the boy said. ‘I’m Leo. I come here all the time. It’s peaceful; a nice break from the city, and the heat. Anyway, what’s your name?’

‘Nicole. And I’ve never seen you here before. Do you live around here?’

‘I’ve never seen you around here,’ Leo countered. ‘And yes, I do. I didn’t know you’d be here.’

‘Well, I am.’ I folded my arms tightly across my chest, tracing the line of his scar with my eyes.

Leo seemed to notice. His cheeks flushed pink, and he pulled the red hood of his jacket over his head.

‘Well, sorry to bother,’ he muttered, stumbling away from the orchard.

I felt my heart sink. The boy seemed sweet, and clearly meant no harm. ‘Wait!’ I called.

Leo turned; his eyes downcast but somehow sparkling under the shade of the trees.

‘Do you um, want to climb the trees with me?’ I asked hesitantly. ‘My grandfather lets us climb the ones inside the fence. The apples are good, just a little small.’

Leo paused, then grinned. ‘I’d love to,’ he said.

I walked along the fence, my fingers dragging against the cold metal. I’d forgotten about the orchard. My dad died when I was sixteen, and we never visited again, until I went alone when I was twenty-two. There was something I was looking for, something I’d done to the fence, a betrayal of my grandfather’s rules. Where was it? I stumbled along the path, until something caught my eye.

There.

I helped Leo up into one of the trees that sat beside the metal fence. He was surprisingly light, and even though I wasn’t very strong, he leapt up into the branches almost instantly.

‘Now you,’ he demanded. I hoisted myself up using one of the lower branches, bark grazing the palms of my hands. I considered myself an expert at tree-climbing, but surprisingly struggled compared to Leo.

‘Grab that apple,’ I grunted, pulling myself upright on the branch. ‘The one on your left.’

Leo obliged, gently creeping down the branch, arms outstretched. He reached a tiny, greenish-yellow apple, with a smudge of red on one side, and plucked it free from the branch.

‘Here,’ Leo said, tossing the apple at me. ‘Catch.’

I nodded in thanks, cupping my hands to catch the fruit, and then sank my teeth into its moist flesh. Juice dribbled down my chin, but it wasn’t sweet and succulent like the apples on the other side of the fence were. It was tart, sour, acidic. I felt my face crumple at the taste.

‘No good,’ I declared. ‘Just like the rest of them.’

Leo’s face fell. ‘None of them have been good. We need one from the other side of the fence.’

‘I’ve told you; I’m not allowed.’ I responded indignantly. I refused to admit that I did really want to venture on the other side of the fence, but that was me. Leo was different. He wasn’t part of the family.

‘Why not?’

‘I’m just not allowed.’

‘But why? What’s so special about those apples?’ Leo pressed.

I hesitated. ‘Those ones are for selling.’

‘I bet your grandfather wouldn’t mind if two went missing, would he?’ Leo replied thoughtfully. ‘I mean, he probably wouldn’t even notice.’

‘I suppose,’ I caved. ‘How would we get over the fence, though?’

Leo grinned. The scar on his face curved, warping over his full, stretched cheeks.

It was a gap underneath the fence, loose soil piled in mounds beside it, concealing the fissure Leo and I squeezed out child-sized bodies through, onto the forbidden side of the land. Now, the gap barely looked big enough to fit my head through. But back then, I could squeeze my gangly limbs through the hole and onto the other side.

The apples were perfect on the other side of the fence: saccharine, ripe, succulent. Forbidden. I ate as many as I could, so many that my stomach was stretched painfully full, and I had to go inside to vomit them all back up afterwards. Even my vomit was sweet, in a sickly sort of way, and reminded me of applesauce in the toilet.

I never met Leo after that summer, I realised. He was my best friend for two months but then seemed to fade into the background noise that consumed my tiny nine-year-old brain. Neither of us had phones or any means of communication besides physical meet-ups. Every summer I searched the orchard for him, looking for a trace of the boy I’d befriended in an instant. I’d hear muffled footsteps, see someone in a red hoodie dart away into the trees, but I never caught him. Eventually, I stopped looking.

We simply forgot each other.

I walked around to the front of the house. Blue paint was chipping from the door and was scattered across the front porch like sprinkles on a donut. I had the key –I’d picked it up at the reading of the will. But for some reason, the front door was unlocked.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled as I stepped inside. The feeling of eyes on me, even though I knew no one was home. I shuddered, folding my arms tightly across my chest.

‘Hello?’ I called tentatively. My voice echoed throughout the house. Part of me was expecting my grandfather’s cheery, ‘in here, Nic!’ to ring out, but nothing but silence prevailed. Even if he were still alive, his voice had shrivelled like his body, and he could barely raise it above a husky whisper. I was still remembering him from when I was younger.

I crept through the house towards my grandfather’s bedroom. It was the one room in the house I’d never been allowed in as a child, and although that rule faded as I grew older, there was some sort of nagging, a voice in my head, an intangible threshold that when I crossed it felt like I was about to be scolded. I had to remind myself I was fifty-two and the boss of many people beneath me for it to fall silent.

The bed was still creased with an indent as if a body was laying there, the blanket strewn to one side, tucked in at the corners. A small stack of books lay on the bedside table, a bookmark still marking where eyes would never continue, never lift off from the page that was last read. Two small, framed pictures sat beside the books, one bright and colourful, me, my parents and grandparents, smiling under the shade of the apple orchard. I had bare feet, a smear of dirt on my left cheek and was wearing a blue dress that had been restitched at the hem from the myriad times I’d tripped on it while running. It had been taken on Christmas morning, and I almost had to be pinned down to be stopped from running wild and rummaging through the presents.

Behind it, a grainy, black-and-white photo. I recognised my grandfather, grinning crookedly with knee-length cargo shorts and a green hat he still had hung on his door. Next to him, a girl, probably his sister. I’d never seen her before. And another boy next to her, maybe his brother. there was something uncannily familiar about his face –maybe it was his high cheekbones and gaunt figure, or maybe it was the fluffy blond hair that sat in ringlets across his forehead.

I flipped the photo over in my hand. Tiny, cursive handwriting read: Albert Moore, (left) Josie Moore, (middle) Leo Moore, (right) summer 1925

I felt my blood run cold. I knew I’d seen that boy’s face before. Forty-three years ago, the boy in the orchard who became my friend for the summer. But that wasn’t possible. Leo looked ten in the photo. He should have been my grandfather’s age when I met him. It couldn’t have been the same boy.

I felt that hair-prickling sensation again, that eyes-on-you heat rising to my cheeks. I spun around, expecting to find myself alone again. Then I screamed.

‘Shh,’ the boy pressed a finger to his lips. ‘You’ve grown, Nicole,’ he said. ‘Do you remember me?’

I stumbled backwards, my feet somehow managing to entangle between each other.

‘L –L –Leo?’ I stammered incredulously. He was a picture-perfect representation of my memory, as if he had somehow stepped right out of the past and into the house in front of me. He hadn’t aged a day.

‘Yeah. It’s been a while, huh. I’m glad you didn’t forget me.’ Leo said. He grinned, the same smile that stretched his lean face as I remembered, worming the scar across his features.

The scar. It was missing from the photo. The scar.

He wasn’t the boy from the photo.

‘How –what –I don’t –’ I stammered. ‘How are you here?’

‘I’m always here, Nicole. I told you. The orchard keeps me cool in the summer, a good break from the city.’

‘No, I –not how are you here, but how are you here?’

‘It’s my farm too, really. You see this scar?’ He pointed to the jagged pink line that was carved across his face. I nodded. ‘Yeah, I got it here. Terrible accident in the orchard. Josie –my sister –died, I got this scar, but Albert’, he glanced at the photo in my hand, ‘and I were lucky enough to escape. And I’ve stuck around ever since.’

I felt my heart throbbing against my ribcage. The gears in my mind turning. Ideas dancing behind my eyelids.

‘No, Leo,’ I began, my voice softening. Suddenly, everything clicked into place. Suddenly, the scar, the pale face and cold hands made sense. ‘You didn’t escape. Only Albert did. My grandfather.’

Leo’s brow furrowed. ‘What? What are you saying? I’m still here, aren’t I?’

I gently shook my head. ‘You’ve been the same age for a hundred years. I met you when I was nine, I’m meeting you again when I’m fifty-two. But you haven’t aged a day. You can’t leave here, can you? Are you stuck in the orchard?’

Leo’s eyes grew misty, distant. As if he was looking somewhere else, sifting through memories he’d banished from his mind. ‘I never left,’ he quietly admitted. ‘Never in a hundred years. They never saw me. No one saw me. Only you.’

‘And all this time, you’ve been here? At the orchard?’

‘Yeah. It just felt right. It’d always been a part of the family. I didn’t want to part with it.’

I placed a hand on Leo’s cold shoulder. I used to look up at him, standing taller, bigger, broader. And he was bigger than me back then. Not anymore.

‘It’s time to let go, Leo.’ I said quietly. ‘They’re all gone. It’s time for you to go, too.’

Leo sniffed, then nodded. ‘I’ll try,’ he promised.

Two months later, and I decided not to sell the orchard. It was supposed to stay in the family, wasn’t it? That’s what the boy I met under the apple trees had told me. The boy I’d befriended forty-three years ago for an unforgettable summer of climbing trees and pressing our bodies against the mud to squeeze under the fence. The boy who never vomited, no matter how many apples he ate and laughed when I couldn’t eat anymore.

He was the orchard boy.