Apple Picking

The ladder was still there. Leaning, as if worn and ready to retire now, after those decades of school and work, and being just another robot like all the others. I had abandoned it, that oaken ladder, the work was done by grandpa and his eager little helper. Impatiently I had suggested we nail the rungs with sturdy galvanised and made in Germany ten penny nails but to my great chagrin the saw was needed to cut an individual spot for each damn piece whose only task in life would be to keep the likes of me and other climbers safe. We'd picked the apples, and the pears, the plums, escaped from bees and wasps and hornets we learned reluctantly about a feeling at day's end that would not come for many months to little minds. We looked at woven baskets made from the willow tree down by the river's bend and smiled a shallow smile at those that were on top with their red cheeks and sturdy little stems and it did seem as if, there was a deeper purpose in this life, it smacked, and reeked of work, an effort only some of us were destined to perform. Grandma would then decide which had been dropped, she had an eagle eye, they went for cider, 'Mosht' and what the press could not in early evening hours squeeze would make the most delicious, all- consuming, cream apple pie. There soon developed skill, and good logistics, among us boys, we learned that just a bit of wit could make a sheer determination about the cider bottles needed and how gigantic that great pie would be, perhaps the size of the great big table of the harvest kitchen. I felt a whisp of melancholy mist, it must have drifted in from near the river, just looking at the lonely ladder, still standing by the tree, the one with apples, the day did flash just like a life past those old gooseberries right near the rusted gate, and I could clearly see those years, condensed as if the cider press had done its sweaty deed, there was a time, and it was now for just a touch of vertigo, and pallor, I found the birchwood garden chair from nineteen-forty-nine, still there and gladly sank my aching limbs into the chair. It was like visiting a friend. But it had been too long, those years of poppycock and useless bark that fell without assistance before the harvest, this was the road I saw but did not take, and here I was, all smiles, expecting what? The chair rejected me, fell into a pathetic heap the frosty grass found naked flesh and burned its own identity into my knee, I saw the sun at once, and then the wind, it came with a ferocity, from the big range and winter had arrived, with its first blizzard the moon a witness to the howling of the only wolfe I ever recognised. There was the ladder, still erect, it seemed to point toward the moon past two or maybe three forgotten apples, there had been little thought about them and now there was no time to do what I had learned so long ago, but life had taken from me, with permission, an honest, hard and satisfying day of apple picking, there at grandpa's. But now my night was here, reflecting with its own stars, and my long day had truly ended. It was cold out there Before I closed them I briefly wondered about the apples in the tree, and how they felt.