The House in the Apple Orchard

  Part 3 

 I brought in my belongings, Lucy last. I set her cage down in the living room, and she squeezed herself deeply into one corner, gazing around cautiously. I told her the house would be our new home for some months, but she hissed.
     “Oh, right,” I said. “Where did the dog go?” 
     The family hadn’t taken the dog with them. The retriever must be a stray.
     “Can you smell the dog, Lucy?”
     She simply glared at me.
                                                  ~~~
     For the next few days, I spent my time cleaning the house, walking around the orchard, and filling the baskets at the stand. Cooper had said on the phone that he wouldn’t mind me earning a few extra bucks picking apples. He wasn’t going to harvest the fruit that year anyway.
     “The soil could use fertilizer. Let the apples fall,” he said.
     I picked good ones on the branches and made about five to eight dollars a day on the honor system.
     One morning I was driving down to the stand to refill the baskets when I saw a truck taking off at the bottom. I managed to catch sight of the stubbled fellow behind the driver-side window. 
     Oh, man.
     As I feared, all the apples at the stand were gone, and not even a penny rattled in the bottom of the jar.
     “They must be moonshiners,” I grumped.
     That might be why they were staying at the house. They could get an endless supply of apples for free. If so, their distillery must be somewhere nearby. I examined the vast orchard as far as my eyes could see. Different kinds of trees made different patches of colors on the hillside where red, green, and yellow fruits shone under the sun. Cooper had planted a variety so they could harvest fruit for a longer season. But there was no sign of a distillery; instead, over the horizon, I saw gray clouds stretching flat and straight. A cold front was approaching, and it would probably arrive tonight. I should collect apples before the weather knocked them off the branches.
     Walking from patch to patch with a large bag in my hand, I noticed an area near the edge of the orchard with a steep descent covered in waist-high grass. A faint path split the grassy hillside, almost like an animal trail and easy to miss. Down at the bottom, I could just barely make out more apple trees sparsely dotted with pink fruit. More apples! Pushing the grass aside, I took the path to see how extensive Cooper’s property really was.
     Squirrels startled and grasshoppers leaped away at every step while birds flew into the trees to hide from the sudden intruder. At the bottom of the trail, the scene was desolate. The apple trees were old, the fruit was puny, and weeds grew almost to my thighs. As I turned on my heels, a mass of green plants behind the apple trees caught my eye. I squinted and the details became clearer. The leaves were pointy, like bony fingers with long nails, and they had proliferated to form multiple layers.
     Pot!
     I looked around and wondered why there was a weed farm in Cooper’s orchard. Then what I’d seen though the gap in the door came back to mind—the old puny man puffing out smoke to the ceiling.
     Those guys!
     That must be why the family stayed in the house. They grew marijuana on somebody else’s land so if the police found out, they could claim the marijuana belonged to the owner. Meanwhile they could enjoy free apples to sell or eat! My blood boiled but then chilled. Cooper’s words came back to my mind. Kick them out and charge me whatever your trouble is worth. Cooper was overly generous—from the beginning. Good pay, cash, free stay, and he did not mind me making extra money from his apples.
     Did Cooper know the family grew pot near his old orchard? He might be using me to get rid of them so he could stay out of it if something dreadful happened. Maybe the family was tied to some syndicate. I took a deep breath to calm myself.
     If somebody saw me now, standing by the massive plants, things wouldn’t look favorable for me. And there might be a good chance that the family, out of vengeance, would drop a line to the police saying a young guy from Florida was the owner of the property and illegal plants were growing on his hill. And if Cooper was the kind to hide his involvement, he could easily say he didn’t know anything about it. Then I’d be on the police record as a trespasser. I had no legal ownership of the land.
     I stomped up the hill, went back to my wagon, and took a hook knife from my toolbox. Going back to the hidden plot of land, I cut all the weed to the ground. Then I gathered the plants and threw them into a pile.
     I hauled a spare fuel tank up the hill in my wagon’s trunk, drizzled gasoline over the freshly cut plants, and burned them. A streak of smoke rose to the gray sky, and the smell roiled my stomach. When the heap turned into ashes, I went back to the house to pack up.
                                                  ~~~
     The wind picked up, and I closed the windows upstairs and downstairs. Outside it was getting darker every minute. I’d leave tomorrow. It would no doubt rain that night. I sat down in the living room on a couch that hardly supported my back. All of the furniture and appliances were crappy, but at least now the house looked more pleasant. I’d scrubbed every corner except for the front bedroom on the second floor. With a new roof and fresh paint, the house would be wonderful. I put my notepad on my lap. For the sake of this vintage house, I’d give Cooper a to-do list. After all, he might be completely innocent.
     Rain started tapping the roof, and a soggy dusk fell outside. Bang—I heard a slamming noise from upstairs. Bang, bang, bang!
     “Lucy, stop playing with the doors,” I yelled.
     My smart cat had learned how to open doors years ago. She would jump up to grab the knob between her paws, turn it, kick the wall with one leg, and the door would open. But that evening she answered “meow” at my feet, sticking her head from under the couch where she often hid since moving in.
     I knew all the windows were closed. Maybe the family had snuck in somehow. I crept up the stairs only to see that all the bedroom doors were closed. I checked every room, including the front bedroom, but no one was there. All the windows were locked, all closet doors shut tight.
     Coming back to the living room window, something furry and light yellow in the front yard caught my eye—something bounding in the pouring rain toward this house.
     The retriever!
     Lucy hissed and crawled back under the couch. I didn’t believe she could have seen the dog from where she sat. When I turned my eyes back to the yard, the dog was gone.