The Apple Orchard

Rubbing his eyes and desperately trying to adjust from the sudden burst of light, Joe felt a panic rise within him. He didn’t belong there and everything within him screamed out to turn and flee. But that smell—where did it come from? It seemed to cry out to him—to be discovered. And Joe lingered there for a few moments more, surveying the landscape. His eyes, once fully adjusted to the sunshine, confirmed what his nose had already told him. It was rot and decay—in the form of countless dead coyotes. All were strung up by wire hooks—hanging from posts in the fence-line that ran on the eastern side of the dirt road. Each post possessed its own carcass—each one in varying degrees of decomposition, and each one frozen in perpetual scream. Joe looked toward both the north and south, and followed the procession of the ghastly-decorated posts as far as the horizon allowed. Interspersed between the multitudes was the occasional warning sign: No Trespassing, property of Morning Star Farms. Joe stayed away for days. He was haunted by dreams—reoccurring dreams of tormented coyotes hanging and squealing on fence posts as vultures with human faces circled above. Joe too hung from a fence post and watched in horror as one by one the vultures swooped down to pick at the flesh of the coyotes before finally turning toward him. He would wake terrified, and began sleeping with the light on. When questioned by his uncle on his recent sleep habits, Joe blamed it on late night reading and felt shame in having to create such a story. This shame soon festered into anger, and he knew he had to go back to the fence-line of Morning Star Farms. The next day Joe crept out of the shadows of the walnut orchard. As the bright light of the afternoon sun bore down upon him, he again looked over the landscape that had been so much a part of his dreams over the past week. Other than slight wisps of dust stirring across the road, the air was quiet and still as he tiptoed toward the fence. As Joe approached the nearest post, an alarm then sounded—a thunderclap breaking the stillness. Taking a startled step backward, he quickly located the cause of the offending clatter. The screeching of a crow and the cackling of a magpie rung out as both tangled in desperate battle over a newly adorned post—its resident recently hung that day. Joe’s heart pounded so that he placed his hand on his chest so he might stop it from leaping out. As the cackling of the birds continued, he turned, thinking of going back to the safety of the cool shade and soft gentle swaying of the orchards of his uncle’s farm. The heat, his heart, and now his head were pounding at him all at once and a rage began to boil within him. He then turned back, and charged the two belligerents, screaming and waving the shovel he had earlier commandeered that morning—forcing them to either take flight or perish among the carrion they fought over. They fluttered off, continuing their dispute in flight. He watched them until they disappeared over the cornfield and then took a long look around his surroundings. Only the coyotes remained as an audience and he quickly retrieved the wire-cutters from his pocket and began cutting down one of the wretched beasts. Joe found a proper burial spot and began to dig. He dug quickly, looking up occasionally to make sure the remaining guards were not watching. Once this task completed, he ran—through the walnut orchard, past the apple orchard, through the yard, and almost breaking down the door to the shed as he banged through to return the shovel and wire-cutters. He would sleep well that night, and would continue this routine tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that. Thus beginning a self-imposed daily chore—a bedtime ritual that had to be completed hours before, and in the light of day. It wasn’t long after the first few successful missions, that an organized and now confident Joe had his daily chore accomplished by rote and completed in record times. He would take note of his next target and locate the burial plot as he was finishing his current mission. He was careful not to choose the coyotes in successive order—to ease out of the walnut orchard without shovel in hand to scout any movement of enemy activity, then retrieving the shovel behind a tree and racing across the road to said target. He thought it best to dig first, before cutting down the coyote—in case he should be caught, and be prepared with a story of how he was told to weed the fence-line by his uncle and must have been confused with the location. Once the hole was dug—the dimensions of which he quickly learned to hold constant—it would take only a few moments to cut down the carcass, cover up, tamp down with his feet with a few stomps, and race back to safety amongst the cover of the orchard canopy. He knew not why he did it, knew not why his pulse quickened and his thoughts whirled around unseen and inaccessible in a haze of distraction if his hands had not yet been dirtied by the dry soil near the fence-line. All he knew was that each burial brought peace, and at night it brought sleep. Perhaps it was these previous successes that also brought on a false sense of security to young Joe as he snipped the wire that brought down his latest objective—for with every victory, memory of defeat becomes more distant. Perhaps caution also becomes a casualty of success, and perhaps that is why Joe didn’t feel the breath of the dog that stood rigid besides him, or notice the two riders until their shadows fell upon him.