excerpt
GLANCING UP FROM his reading, Thorp told his
wife he didn’t think Poodie was going to be
much help when picking started. He was too
short, he said, and his legs didn’t work quite
right. He wasn’t going to be any good on a ladder.
He wasn’t big enough to swamp out, couldn’t lift boxes of
apples onto the flatbed. Besides, when the pickers showed up, they
would need both cabins.
“Maybe he can find a real job in town,” Thorp said.
His wife walked over and looked at him across the top of The
Daily Dispatch.
“You tell the kids,” she said.
The next day Thorp took took Poodie along when he toured the
orchard, checking the fruit for size and color. The September air
cooled a little more each night. Days, the sweat rolled off Poodie as
he worked, and the dogs lay panting in the shade.
“You’re going to have company soon,” Thorp told him. “Pickers
coming to get these apples off the trees. Two of them are going to
stay in your cabin. They come up from Arkansas every fall, following
the harvest. I know these men. They’re all right. New family’s
going to be in the other cabin.”
The floppiness of their bib overalls emphasized the leanness and
height of the pickers who moved in with Poodie. They did not sit
on their cots or get up from them, he thought; they folded and
unfolded. He wondered at the length and narrowness of their
heads atop sunburned necks and shoulders roped with muscle.
Manolis Aligizakis 