Captain Lee had gotten the apples he had given to his men because on their way back into town, he, Mrs. Selene Slocum-Lofton his grandmother, Mr. John Worley her fiance, and Mrs. Maggie Thornton his fiancee had stopped by Mrs. Slocum-Lofton's home. In the back, there was a venerable old winter apple tree, its fruit at last ripe in mid-December.
“That's amazing,” Mr. Worley said. “My late wife showed me several of the native trees – well, heirloom trees – of this region and what happened because the Lofton Brothers and their heirs bred for long-season availability of fruit because they knew the poor before and after the war needed food through the winter. So, after they had sold all that they would, they still had trees loaded with fruit into winter.”
“Long apples and lemons,” Mrs. Slocum-Lofton said.
“And good-looking women, even into winter!”
Mrs. Slocum-Lofton showed off her still-good reflexes by pitching an apple immediately at Mr. Worley's head, and he showed off his still-good reflexes by catching it with a laugh.
But, Mrs. Slocum-Lofton had other things to do with all those apples – she and Mrs. York and their housekeepers could not possibly eat them all, so they gave them away.
Captain Lee had shed a tear, quietly, when his maternal grandmother, who had hated him, and whom he had hated, had said: “Let's go pick some apples before you go to work, Henry … you and you men should have some.”
Mrs. Slocum-Lofton kept burlap sacks around in December, and the two people who were engaged to grandmother and grandson subtly fell back so they could have this tender moment … culminating when the grandson had two full sacks of apples he and his grandmother had picked, and the two wrapped their arms around each other at the end.
“An old apple tree and God at work at dawn; what a beautiful way to start the day,” Mr. Worley said.
“So true,” Mrs. Thornton said as she dabbed at her eyes.
Image by Mircea Ploscar from Pixabay