In the east, the black hills hold the sun in their lap like the head of a dying comrade. The clouds fill out, fanning against the sky. There is a childish blush on the slump of the sky. The first birds sing. Quiet, humble. There is a cold scrubbing of branch and twig, a sleight-of-hand, hiding away the pears with new leaves. The tractor pulls away. The workers stand around for a few moments in the half-light, lighting up cigarettes and stalling and talking. Their hands rest on the edges of their picking baskets. He rolls up his sleeves a little more, wet with dew, and heads over to the long bin where the picking ladders are. The others follow him after a while. They carry the ladders down to the twenty-second row – boots mucking and slurping – and set up, the spindly legs of the ladders wide and silver, like the legs of feeding insects. He climbs his ladder. His picking basket thumps against his knees. His hands are cold against the aluminum and he is already sweating a little. The sun rises more and skims against his cheeks and he closes his eyes once he reaches the top rung. Here, among the pears and the branches, touching like the fingers of a mother, he breathes deep for the first time that day. The light distills on the tops of the trees he overlooks and the wind brings the smell of the city up from the valley. He sways. The others are working around him. He hears the music from the transistor radio slipping through the branches. He exhales and reaches for the nearest pear.
It is cold and hard to the touch.
**
His son will learn the word hope today. He will shape it on his mouth, taste it, feel it on the rough parts of his tongue. He will imagine that he knows it. He will imagine that he sees it in the tomb of the dark when he lies in bed at night or on the lips of new friends. He will imagine that he has found it in the dollar bills his father brings home and places on the kitchen table, crinkled and balled like the fists of newborn babies. He thinks he feels hope now. Still, he can taste the dust in his mouth. The badland salt and the dry skeins of sweat on his face and on his back. The delicate veil of flies around his head. There is still a feeling of want, despite the fact that the soles of his shoes are no longer lined with cardboard. Despite the facts that he does not have to work all day in the fruitless fields until his fingers shrivel up. He knows that back home, there are still people with their troubled backs and their degraded faces and their children with dirty, pruney faces. All their eyes watching the sky, all their feet rooted in the dust. They have calloused hands. He remembers them. But he also remembers that in their poverty, the people were drawn together. A collection of stories and misery and mutual tears, somehow woven into something real and tolerable. He remembers the dancing and the hands and the prayers and the churches pink with dust and holiness. He remembers the girls. Their eyes and the creep of their fingers and the lace of their skirts. The way their cupped breasts swelled over time, like the throats of bullfrogs in the underbrush. He remembers the nights, the hot air, tireless and companionable. It is not the same here. It has never been the same here. He will forget the old times soon. He will find his hope. It is not so bad.
There is still something, though...
**
The day ripens. It is hot. He takes of his shirt. The straps of the picking basket chaff his skin and turn it red. He picks his pears until the basket is full and then steps of his ladder and walks to a crate where they pile the fruit. He leans in with care, lowering his basket to floor of the crate, and undoes the buckles. The fruit tumbles out: thumpthumpthump. He makes sure not to bruise it. He carries them as carefully as a mother might carry a sleeping baby. After he has re-strapped his basket, he walks back to ladder, shifts it around the tree where the fruit hangs down like shamed faces. He repeats the process. His fingers move under the leaves, wrap around the hard body of a pear, and he pulls up, and then towards himself so that he doesn't damage the stem. He looks at it, examines it. He dusts it against his shirt. His mouth is dry and cottony, and the pear looks appetizing, but he knows that it is unripe. The fruit is tough and unforgiving and it will give him the runs and a sick stomach if he eats it. He places it in his basket. The sky is cloudless. It is pale and blue, like the face of a stillborn. And the sun toils and bloats, exciting movement in the lazy spread of the city: a rippling of heat and exhaust, like the squirm of bodies in a bed. He thinks of his son. He thinks of his schooling. He thinks about the choices he made and he thinks about the pears sitting in his basket. This new place, it all smells the same. Fry oil and ozone. Unless he is picking pears, and then it smells like chemicals and wet dirt. He wonders. He wonders about unripeness. He wonders when the fruit will be good enough to eat. For both of them. He picks another pear and regards it. He almost bites into it, but the orchard keeper comes behind him and rattles his ladder and tells him to get his lazy ass working.
He puts the pear back and waits.
**
His son will learn the word patience today. He will teach it to his son. His son will come to the orchard as the sun is falling, with two cokes in a paper bag. They will sneak away for a little bit, among the tired uplifting of the orchard limbs, and pop open the sodas. They will drink. They will swill the soda around in their mouths, tasting and savoring until the pain from the carbonation is too much. The bottles are glass, cold and perspiring. In the dying light, the trees are black and humble and bent, like plantation slaves. They are all motionless, and they stare up into the sky. There is gospel in the stars. There is hope in their arrangement. Because it is a long way out of Canaan. It is a long way out of bondage. That's what they're told, anyway. There is the hum of a generator starting up somewhere. Down the rows, they can hear the workers laughing and swearing and rustling among the leaves. His hands are cramped and tired. He feels that the body of a pear is all his fingers know. So he puts his hand on his son's head. He pushes his fingers through his bristly hair. They talk. They talk for a long time. Until it is dark and he can hear the tractor coming down the rows. It is cold. They walk back together, their lips sticky with soda and secret laughter. The bottles in the paper bag clink and brush. They reach the fortieth row where all the men are waiting. His son says that he will see him at home and walks away. The boy's hands are in his pockets and his eyes are on the stars as he walks. He will whistle something catchy and American. He will walk home in the dark. He will not look back and wave and this makes his father a little sad. Still, there is the taste of soda. There is the feel of his son's hair under his hands. There is the music from the radio.
The tractor comes.
