JUNE’S FLOWERS
Bear Kirkpatrick
June tell me about how the land bear down upon us. How an awful shifting happen after Increase Darrow cut the ground and set his hands inside it and deliver a way our bodies not all the way ready for. A swelling and weeping after he turn the fields out and shift the streambeds by a new course. Nevermind what long buried lyssa might rise from below the skunk cabbage and squaw. Nevermind what burning ocean smell ought to tell you somewhat aint right. Because the young apple trees grow hale in their long rows set so and so to the sun and the planets. Stakes and trellises keep such awful spines upright. Without weight or anchor their scaffold limbs grow at near right angles. Buds form and open years before they should. Increase Darrow call an end to the old trees what only bear every other year in favor of the new trees what bear every harvest and so speed up their cycle and come so fast they might just one day fruit and bloom all to once. The sun touch them first. The rain always. And color them a green so rude your stomach turn to witness. They know more than trees should to sacrifice a wholeness for a strength they gain by growing rifts in their bark on purpose. Form their limbs in ways to harbor the ladybirds and pirate bugs and lacewings what eat red mites and green and woolly aphids. Surrender leaves for midges and spiders to nest in. Afew apples for wasps to lay their eggs. All the good bugs. And all the great storms what mend up the coast lose their grip upon the land overnight or drift out to sea. Or fush out to naught before they even get here. Or dont even come til after harvest when all the apples already picked and gathered safe inside the dug out cellars. The first snows come lighter than blankets. Deer lay down beneath the canopies. Bears sleep in the grass.
The older women speak of the whites but after months to stand aside each other on the packout line for twelve hour shifts they bend their own cycles around closer to June’s. All winter the cold run up and down her legs and so many apples upon her hands you have to wonder. Increase Darrow himself say trees of any kind put together make a place no nature would fair. Any strength they gather to group so would also give more strength to what ail them. But what come put together first his goddam trees or women? Fire blight and bitter pit the world never know til man put apple trees together? Tarnished plant bug and leafhoppers dont stand a chance so far and few between? But lay anywhat the same together and the world will find a manner to put it asunder. The cold air leak up from the cooler below the packout line and rise through the floorboards and draft her own horrible smell up to her and the others in the room. But nobody speak about it for politeness. They pass her hands when she pour tea in the smoke room or leave over the marker or stamps. The smell from the barren days before the apple trees come and bloom but who would want to remember them? The lye and vinegar and ash Tuthill speak about like she some kind of idiot? The dead seed drip back out and turn cold inside her drawers she burn later in the stove at home. And o lord the smell. You stand to work through the long days and can almost watch it from your hands pass on to millions of apples and upon the air by the steady clack clack clack clack of the belts and wheels and motors.
By mud season all the women on the packout line come around to June’s flowers and speak about it over smokes and tea in the break room. Glory at such good news they figure. Gretchen and Macy and Frith and Mimi and Hawyse. A new idea of family Increase Darrow might think up and tell you about and give it sense all the way through. But the trees fit to bloom the night he take her hand and lay her back upon the ground and set the fire lamps circlewise about her to show the heavens the dark folds. Hold the light for him to work and ease the ducksbill and run tubes for samples and scopes and a herbal wash he simple on his own that same day. Make her body become the ground you see. The sun its own touch he would tell you. Tell you the rain its own hand and move himself in behind. How it leave a bitterness and seawater ooze from its days in the ocean where all rain start. A killing place for seed. A burn you can feel around your fingernail. A shift of drainage any watercourse might solve. A place for lime and urea in the powder he mix. A juice to drink. A lotion to rub. Anywhat to get her to bear.
Then one morning Frith grab the rail in a sweat and throw her child where she stand. Nobody even know she have one or who she get it from. She gawp her mouth same as she want to throw up but call June’s name and run sweat out her face and hands and hold onto the rail. The other women take her home but aunt Gretchen charge June with the clean up. Out in the light she work a stick to find the dark fish among the clots she just fold the whole thing up inside the cardboard and put in the dumpster and cry some for her sister. Nobody put anywhat together. Nobody ever say anywhat about how June and Frith live together then or how she and Mimi stand aside each other on the packout line all day and drink off the same bottle. Nobody but aunt Gretchen look at her to read her better. Or catch eyes down the line after who can say how long she been looking before June glance up. Everybody just figure on the trees.
And then Mimi lose her child. Tuthill already gauge her at seven months but soon after christmas she quit growing. Boonta already build for them a settle and hamper in his off hours but after a couple weeks her belly fit to sink. No more kicks or trouble at night. No more shifts what turn her water and make her have to pee. No. Smaller and smaller she grow through the winter days til mud season she come around to look same as she done the summer before. Tuthill check her under the blanket but he wont find naught. He want to run some tests but June could tell him not to waste his time. Some doctor in Bangor tell Mimi she have plenty of time and the days ahead but who could listen to that clap? Not a single person ever figure she stand right next to June on the pack out line. Increase Darrow listen but still he act same as he never hear of such a thing.
Then Hawyse’s niece die from a fever she boil and a hard skin grown cross the back of her throat. Tuthill call for the stove to be mounted and bellowed til the sides glow red and the heat just awful. He set June’s hands on the baby girl’s forehead to show how to hold her down while he slip the hose into a lung and siphon the bilge up into the pan to look at. Tell her she best care not to get any in her mouth because likely its catching. How funny was that? Tuthill draft his arms about the room and set down to mix camphor and pepsin wine into Hep’s own milk and lime water for a suck the baby drink from til it back up into her throat. Tuthill tilt her head over a pan and squeeze and get June to swab her throat with silver nitrate but a change happen. Not a sweat but her skin redden and she fit to breathe faster and faster. Tuthill holler for ice and towels but can only stand aside the bed and watch her small chest heave and heave for air and then quit. Just like that. We hand her small body over to Chub and he dress her nice in yellow for the spring. He dance a number and throw feathers and coins down the hole. Increase Darrow pay for the whole thing.
The new trees open their leaves and swell their flower buds and Lamb Eddie’s grandson stiffen in his bed. His muscles grip so hard he make an arch where only his heels and shoulders touch. A smell come off him Tuthill walk in and right off say liver of sulfer the devil’s rheum. He order the windows shut against the sun and tapers lit and nobody talk but in whispers and go about the floor in stocking feet. The other children feel along along the kickboards for drafts they stuff by socks and rags but the shuffle and dust and burned wax dont take well on the boy. He choke upon the spoon Tuthill dose with thornapple and the ducksbill June need to pry his mouth apart. But the medicine soon take and draw his body out flat and then curl him forway slow toward a hoop same as he learn to warp his own bones. His face press so close to his chest the neck bones raise up in back. Tuthill cut his tucker away and charge his palms with mercury and press an ember to his skin there and here but without effect.
Numb a place in his gums and blow raw eggs in by a porcupine quill and somehow the boy fit to uncurl. Tuthill speak calm and rub salt and witch hazel on his belly while the boy straighten out and flat his arms over his head but they fit to arch the other way again. The boy shake his head at us and clench his jaw so tight his teeth break and on the next breath out he draw his lips back and spray blood and chips and mark about at everybody with such eyes. Tuthill call for camphor boiled and somebody to run out for red chickweed but the boy’s wrists pass his ankles and his elbows pass his knees til at last somewhat inside his chest rip. Chub dance about the coffin built round and sing about the hole and toss feathers and coins and bones from small animals down to him as play for what travels to come. Increase Darrow stand near his horse in black.
That spring all the young trees come to bloom at once. Not a few here and there but all to once same as a call from the heavens or the new ground trigger them. The world turn white and catch the sun. All the women on the pack out line come to their flowers by her but only Gretchen ever ask how come she go out on calls with Tuthill? How can you want to learn about all that horrible business? And what about you and Emmett? Dont he mind that smell you bring home? Increase Darrow make a raft of petals in Spring for them to lie in but why do he need flowers? A few weeks later Hawyse and Penial’s son die. Gagnon’s daughter come out wrong and only live through the night. Emmett’s nephew they dont find the spider bite on him til afterward. The first cover sprays the men use leave a sulfer smell at night. Lamb Eddie’s daughter kneel in the barn and put an old nail into her palm and wake from a dream of bugs trying to crawl into the wound. They fetch Tuthill and June but the smoke from the fires and headlights from the tractors in the orchards throw them off. Halfway into a pestle of hoofwane and butter the girl flush red all over and quit breathing. Tuthill cry into his hands and the dead girl’s body heave an orange soup out her mouth onto her posy nightie. A new plow Increase Darrow fashion by an outrigger manner put the new fields into rows by midsummer. More men he take on from boats the groundfish limits put out of work. Morris and Beckwith steer tractors and drag chains instead of nets. Chebeague come on board and put a sprayer together from an old mower him and Increase Darrow tip up on its side and fit out with a reservoir and hoses and nozzles.
The trees bear heavy after all the glorious full days of sun. Rain come for an hour or two at night. Squirrel’s baby girl lose her insides to a water come out grassy and full of dead crabs. Tuthill run outside with the child and feed her gumwater and rhubarb and leptandrin and holler for June to grind up charcoal but the girl’s eyes turn bloodshot. Increase Darrow can teach the men how to walk the rows at night and set fires in the aisles to catch the codling moth. Grease pans for the curculio and leafrollers. Carl’s daughter show bumps under her jaw and Tuthill stare at her fixed eyes and mark how she flush a rosy hectic cross her cheeks and sprout pimples under her hair. June do what he tell her. Cut the gland under the girl’s chin to drain the foul custard what smell dont leave her hands for weeks. Scrape out the roots she can see in the bad light but it hardly matter. Open the windows? Sponge her with saltwater and iodine and gentian? Flush out her hind end with belladonna and oil? Rub salt onto her feet? Tuthill just making it up now. Twenty acres of apple trees give maybe a half dozen bins of apples so far. Maybe a bushel’s worth of dessert grade but what a start for such young trees. He can walk among them and prune them with a pair of shears. Tamp the dirt with his hands and talk to nobody. A long winter ahead to set in the basement and cut grafts upon new rootstocks by lamplight and close their wounds by wax and gauze. Write out the combinations in a little book. Study maps.
The last child to die come just before the snow. By then Hepsiba already taken her kids to Bangor. Chebeague’s girl leave and dont even tell anybody where she gone. Emmett’s cousin Mirriam take off in the night with her two boys. They close down the school Amos’ father run. He stand on the steps that day and hold the good book and tell everybody either we grown free of it or it take what it want but please let’s get back to our lives. But the next night Amos come awake to a light inside his room and come to find his brother’s skin glowing. Tuthill can barely stand it. He draw at the mouth and wave a hand but still order the fire built high and set upon the boy with an oilcloth he rub the skin fast but light and hold him out as near against the flames as he can. Such an awful thing to watch. The hair on his own hands burn. The nails turn black. But still the boy glow brighter and brighter til the fire even seem to back off. The nerves inside his body tinsel in bright lines. The fever turn his skin clear for us to watch the blood run spitting in pulses and catch as water frozen in pipes. Tuthill shake the limp boy and holler at him to be alive now. Right now.
June tell me the snow come and her mother burn up in a stove fire what take the whole house. The oldest mother we have gone up in the heat and light and send me the last baby down from over the heavens.