Chapter 1: A Bad Choice and a Worse One My dad always said that his feet were the only stupid parts of his body. They had walked him into every bad decision he had ever made, so he had to watch them carefully. He repeated that little pearl of wisdom so often that I began to take it literally and stare at my feet when they were moving. I had my eyes on them the afternoon they walked me into my career in agriculture. I blame my feet because I was only thirteen at the time and not exactly in the job market.
On that particular day, I was mostly thinking about what I could eat when I got home from school. I was trudging along the dirt lane from the bus stop while my sisters and cousins rushed past me, trying to escape the biting New Mexico wind. The lane’s rutted tracks had filled with water from a snowstorm and then frozen into narrow strips of dirty ice. It felt powerful and satisfying to crush the fragile surfaces and watch the underlying brown water ooze around my shoes. I was careful to find and eliminate each of the thin ice plates that had survived the weak February sun. I imagined it sounded a little like breaking glass.
Crunch, crack, crunch, SLAM! My head shot up at the familiar sound of a screen door banging against a door frame. I had made it far enough down the lane so that I was next to the house of my neighbor Mrs. Nelson. I looked up with a guilty face, expecting to be accused of some crime involving ice breaking. Instead of Mrs. Nelson coming toward me down her walk, however, it was her grown son, Tommy. I could tell right away he was mad. His face was puckered and red, and his fists were clenched, ready to hit something. As he got closer, I dropped my eyes and concentrated on my feet, even though they had stopped moving. I heard a car door opening and then slamming shut, followed by the gunning of an engine as Tommy turned his car onto the dirt road. I jumped toward Mrs. Nelson’s to avoid Tommy’s front grille, and little pieces of gravel flew up against my leg as the car roared by. Tommy didn’t even turn his head to acknowledge me.
As I stood watching the car disappear, Mrs. Nelson’s head popped out of the screen door. "Is he gone?" she yelled.
"Yeah!" I yelled back a little too loudly, given that we were only fifty feet apart.
"Did he say anything to you, Jackson?" she asked a little quieter as she stepped off her porch toward me.
"No. But he almost ran me over," I answered dramatically.
She stared at me, her eyes moving from my wet shoes to my ears, which were turning red from being stared at and because of the subfreezing temperature. "Why don’t you come in for a minute?" she finally said, motioning toward her door.
I’d talked with Mrs. Nelson hundreds of times on her porch and outside her house, but she’d never invited me in before. A small tingle of fear ran down my back for some reason.
"Okay. I probably can for a minute." On the way toward the porch, I remembered my muddy shoes. I tried to slide along the dead grass next to Mrs. Nelson’s walkway to scrape off some of the mud. I spent several moments dragging my shoes across the welcome, friends mat she had in front of her door. She finally said, "That’s enough. Now come in before we heat up the whole outdoors."
I hesitated inside the doorway, unsure whether to take off my shoes, but she motioned to a chair in her front room as if I was supposed to sit down. I slinked over, glad that the carpet was off-brown. The room itself was very neat, but with lots of little shelves and cabinets full of things my dad would call worthless clutter—snow globes from all fifty states, statues of fat little angels, and shiny bowls and glasses in pale pinks and greens.
Before I knew it, Mrs. Nelson was handing me a cup of cocoa. It was just cool enough that I could tell it had been made way before my arrival. "How’s your family doing? How’s your mother?" she asked, sitting across from me.
She had never asked about my family before, and I took my first good look at her. The way she was dressed reminded me a little bit of her house—neat but with too many fancy accessories for someone who lived down a dirt road. She had probably spent an hour arranging her graying hair but it had unraveled, and I could see by her eyes she had been crying. "My mom’s okay," I managed to squeak out.
"You need to always remember your mother and how much she does for you, even when you get older."
"Uh-huh," I mumbled, as I pretended to be interested in the cocoa.
"Because what really matters in this life is your family, and you always have to treat them right." Mrs. Nelson paused a few seconds and looked around the room. "You know, it’s all been so different since my husband died. You’d think being alone like I am, Tommy would be happy to spend time with me."
The way Mrs. Nelson was talking reminded me of something, and when she reached her last sentence, I knew what it was. She sounded just like my mom after she and my dad had been arguing. I knew right then that I was supposed to nod my head a lot and agree with her. Tell her things like "He just doesn’t appreciate you" and "You deserve better." I started the head nodding and was about to say something sympathetic when she continued.
"And now my doctor says I might have cancer, and my own son acts like he doesn’t even care. Tells me I’m being overdramatic." Mrs. Nelson reached for a tissue and dabbed at her eyes.
Awkwardness filled up the room and pushed my shoulders to the floor. I could tell Mrs. Nelson was waiting for some kind of response, but I had no idea what to say. I looked down at my cocoa and then managed, "I’m sorry."
"Wouldn’t you want to spend more time with your mother if she only had a year to live?" asked Mrs. Nelson in a voice dripping in self-pity.
I squirmed nervously in my chair. "Yeah, I would," I replied weakly, and nodded my head.
"I’ve even asked him to help with my will, but he doesn’t care about that either. Says I should just sell this house and all the land around it. Acts like he hates it out here."
There was a long pause that signaled my turn to say something. "Maybe he just likes living in town. My mom always wishes she did." It was the most profound thing I could think of.
"Tommy’s father would roll over in his grave if he heard that. He moved us out here to get away from the city. Planted that orchard in front because he wanted to act like a farmer. It almost kills me to look at it now in a shambles."
Between Mrs. Nelson’s house and the road was an apple orchard that had been abandoned since Mr. Nelson had died. Since as far back as I could remember, it had been a part of my landscape, but mostly off-limits according to my mom.
Mrs. Nelson sat up straighter in her chair, and her voice got a little higher. "Oh, he loved being in that orchard. He always said there was something about being close to the earth that was spiritual and primal. I always loved those blossoms breaking out in the spring. I’m always begging Tommy to get it going again, put some water on the trees at least."
I kept nodding my head and trying to seem interested.
"You know, when Tommy was about your age, his father tried to get him to help out with those trees, but he was always happier doing something else, anything else." She shook her head. "How old are you now, Jackson? Fourteen, fifteen?"
"I’ll be fourteen in a few weeks," I mumbled.
"In a lot of ways, you remind me more of my husband than Tommy does. The way you always like to be outsid...