Emma Field Book I - coming of age in the changing times of the mid-19th century

Chapter XXVI - Apples

The sociability of the Christmas season gave way to the quiet solitude of January and February. Jane returned to school. Mr. Brown continued to patrol and drill his students. Emma put aside John's advice to sew or to write and continued with her studies, just as she continued making bread and stew. The days were bright and cold and uneventful. The nights were longer and colder. Except for the deep, worn green of the cedars, pines, and spruce, the world outside the cabin was white and grey.

Then came March, when the dogwood stems blazed scarlet, the remaining patches of snow flared in the sunshine, and a tired brown bathed everything else.

"What are you doing, Smoking John?" Emma's shout barely penetrated the wind.

John was crouching in the slushy snow to the south of the road. He looked up. "Oh hello, Emma! I'd long forgotten about my lack of fire-starting skills. Come and see what I've found!"

"What is it?"

"Something good and something bad...see here." John parted the tired, bleached grass to show two tiny, brilliantly green blades of grass. "That's the first grass I've seen here in the field! Isn't it grand?"

"It is!" exclaimed Emma, crouching down beside him. "It really is! You forget, don't you? You forget that all of this will be a patchwork of green in another month or two. So what is bad?"

"It's not that bad, just a little set-back; to be expected, I suppose – here, see how the mice have killed these apple saplings?"

"They chewed them?"

"Yes, all the way around. I'll have to pull these trees out and plant new ones," John replied, fingering the bare patches.

"They won't ever re-grow? Can't you just leave them in, in case they do?"

"There is no value in that."

"Don't you find that discouraging? Don't you just want to give up?"

"Why would I do that? Half of them survived the winter. I just want to find a way to protect them for another winter."

"Ask Gershom!"

"Gershom who?"

"Gershom Butt. You didn't meet him at the boarding school. He's a Friend from New York. I overheard Elizabeth talking with him this afternoon. He is an apple grower. His face is as brown as an Indian's. Elizabeth had asked him if he was Iroquois. He said he was "Pourquoi".

"Pourquoi I prune these trees in February?" he'd asked himself.

John laughed. He thought for a moment. "When was Pourquoi the Iroquois there?"

"He's not Iroquois."

"Alright. When was he at the boarding school? I didn't see him."

"He arrived last night. It must have been after you left."

"Father says that no one grows apples like the people in Dutchess County. That's where he's from, right?" John asked.

"I don't know. Would you like me to inquire? I am fetching some buttons from your mother - then I'm running back to the Boarding School."

"No, I'll go with you. Just call out when you finish with Mother."

•

"It feels like spring, doesn't it?" Emma pronounced as she and John walked along the rutted track to the Danforth Road. She turned to let the wind blow the hair from her face.

"It does. I love this time of year. The air feels different. The sun shines so much longer. It's so full of possibility!"

"You can say that, even after finding so many trees killed?"