The Simplicity of Cider
Amy E. Reichert
To my Sam, for being my real-life inspiration.
To John, thank you.
The art of making a good cider is of great simplicity.
—L. DE BOUTTEVILLE AND A. HAUCHECORNE, LE CIDRE, 1875
CHAPTER ONE
Sanna Lund’s thoughts of apple blossoms and new cider blends stuttered to an end with the grunt of her dad’s snore. Einars rumbled from the squashy armchair in front of the huge fieldstone fireplace framed by large picture windows, afternoon sun blanketing him. The stones had come from their orchard, unearthed when the first generation of Lunds began planting the orchard four generations ago. The stones varied in color and shape, from light gray limestone to rusty red granite, each highlighted by the golden light. Above the inset wooden mantel hung a huge collage of watercolor paintings, comprised of six-inch squares, each showcasing a different variety of apple grown in the orchard set against a distinguishing hue.
Sanna closed the refrigerator and set on the kitchen counter the baggie of sticks she’d been retrieving and walked across the huge great room to where her dad slept. His long legs stretched out in front of him, like roots expanding their reach. Everything about him was stretched, like taffy pulled slightly too far. His head tilted back enough for his gaping mouth to emit another snort. An open shoe box full of weathered photos and yellowing paper sat on his lap, while he clutched a single photo to his chest.
An afternoon nap was a common enough scene in other homes, but Sanna couldn’t remember ever watching her father sleep. Einars was a man of action, always in the middle of three different chores at once, making it all seem effortless. Age spots dotted his face from too many years in the sun before sunscreen was as recommended as the proverbial apple, wrinkles traced exactly where his smile would be if he were awake, and fluttering eyelids hid his sparkling blue eyes. Dark smudges pooled under his pale eyelashes, evidence of the late-night pacing that had become a habit during the last year. Sanna shoved away her guilt that she might be partially to blame for that, deep into the mental cave normally reserved for what people thought of her, dawdling tourists, and small talk.
When he’d come in from the trees, he had told her he would start their dinner. That was forty-five minutes ago. Sanna had been so immersed in grafting old branches to new trees, she hadn’t noticed how long he’d been gone. If she hadn’t come in to retrieve the scions—the twigs from older trees she was hoping to graft—from the house fridge, she wouldn’t have found him dozing.
Thinking she should wake him, Sanna smiled down at the man who was her world. He’d taken care of her through colds, puberty, growing pains that would have knocked an elephant to its knees. He taught her how to climb a tree, determine the exact right day to pick an apple, drive a stick-shift truck through the bumpy aisles of an orchard, and dip crispy french fries into her chocolate shakes from Wilson’s. She pulled the picture he was gripping out of his long fingers and glanced at the faded image, then dropped it as soon as she saw what it was, not wanting to hold it even a second longer. The four smiling faces beaming at her fluttered into the battered box. Her father, her brother, Anders, herself, and the Egg Donor. Sanna wouldn’t even shorten it to the friendlier acronym, TED.
She’d often seen the box tucked under her dad’s bed, but she’d never been curious about the contents. Her dad had always respected her privacy and given her space, so she had always offered him the same courtesy. At that moment, though, destructive urges boiled inside her—shoving all else to the side. Merely throwing away the box of photos wasn’t permanent enough. It deserved a more dramatic demise. She wanted to drive it to Gills Rock and toss it into the Death’s Door waters, where it could live with all the other shipwrecks. That’s where that box belonged.
Rational thought prevailed—she didn’t snatch the box and run away to destroy it—but it did little to calm her roiling emotions. She gently lifted the box, but her careful movements caused her dad to twitch awake, his hands pulling the box back to his lap.
“I’ve got it,” he said, the words still mushy with sleep.
Sanna straightened and watched as her dad fumbled to cover the box and pull it close to his plaid-coated chest.
“Why are you wasting time with that, Dad? There’s nothing worth remembering in there.”
He blinked away the sleep still muffling his senses and covered the box protectively with his arms. Einars smiled that annoying grin of elders who know better.
“Happiness is always worth remembering, even when it was temporary.”
? ? ? ? ?
Back in her happy place, the barn, Sanna snapped one of the sticks she’d grabbed from the fridge and searched for any sign of green inside. Nothing—only dry, dead wood. She tossed the branch onto her cluttered stainless steel workbench already strewn with beakers, plastic tubing, her journal—tools of her woefully unsuccessful cider-making business. And now, she failed again to graft her beloved heirloom apple trees onto newer stock.
After waking her dad, she’d returned to the safety of her barn, but the pain welling inside her wouldn’t go back down. The barn, complete with the fresh sawdust scent of new construction, was built into a small hill across a gravel-covered parking area from their house. The bottom level was used as the farm stand during the fall and a garage during the winter, while her workspace and cidery comprised the second level. She could get to the bottom story two ways: by taking the spiral stairs in the corner or by exiting the garage door on the opposite wall and walking around the building and down the hill. She’d bounded up the spiral steps two at a time just now, her long legs and resentment carrying her even more briskly than usual. She hadn’t been prepared to see the Donor’s smiling face, though she knew enough to know preparation wouldn’t have helped. Her day had been perfectly scheduled and productive, everything as expected. Awake at six, breakfast by six thirty, in the trees by seven with a thermos of black tea and a packed lunch, then to the cidery after lunch for an afternoon of quiet, peaceful work. That’s where she’d been before she found her dad, in the content corner of her mind full of trees and flavors—when she was ripped out of it like a fish flopping on a hook.