Maddie smiles up at me proudly. “It’s good?”
“The best.” I give her a little bump as I polish it off in two more bites.
The swinging door opens, and Leon walks into the room. He’s wearing a cap and he looks like he’s dressed for work.
“Come on.” He slaps the side of my arm. “Let’s get out of here before they start trying to paint your nails, too.”
“Ooo, Mav. You’d look very edgy with a coat of black nail polish,” Dove calls from the table.
“See what I mean?” He stops, holding the back door for me. “You should’ve seen what Noel made me do when she was testing her skin care line.”
“She had him in one of those peach masks…” Mindy laughs as we head out the door. “Pure blackmail material.”
“Skincare for men is an emerging market,” Dove’s mom argues.
I follow Leon to the old red pickup parked outside the peach shed. “Thought you might want to see what we’ve been working on around here.”
“I do.” I slide into my seat, glancing over at him. “Dove said y’all were caught completely off-guard by that fungus.”
“It was pretty overwhelming at first.” He shakes his head, passing a hand over his mouth. “We were able to get some money from the government to help at first, but this thing is insidious. We’re doing everything we can to stay on top of it.”
I look out the windshield at the sun shining over the rows of trees.
We’re at the top of the hill, and from this side, you wouldn’t even know a silent killer was lurking underground.
Stretching all the way to the north, healthy rows of trees bearing soft peachy-white blossoms fill the space. It’s like something out of a dream, or out of a memory from a day when Dove grabbed my arm and dragged me all the way to the top of this hill.
I’ll never forget standing with her, watching the sun set over her family’s land. Her heritage…
“This is what it looks like.” Leon turns the wheel southward, and my chest drops.
The contrast is shocking and ominous. On one side are healthy trees covered in flowers, promising a bumper crop of peaches in only a few months. On this side is death.
“Fuck.” It slips out involuntarily, and I tense. “Sorry, I didn’t mean?—”
“Don’t apologize.” Leon’s tone is grave. “It’s my sentiment exactly.”
He parks the truck, and we get out, walking up to the barren trees. A few have brown leaves that are curled and dried out on the branches. It’s like something out of a movie where an evil shadow passed over, and everything curled up and died.
Being here, seeing it in real life gives me a betterunderstanding of Dove’s emotions that night I found her crying in the living room.
“This was the first warning.” Leon takes a knee, pointing to a patch of flat, tan mushrooms growing in a clump at the base of one.
“I thought mushrooms meant the soil was healthy.”
I’ve never been much of a farmer, but Mom wanted to grow her own peppers one summer, and that’s what the old-timers told us.
“If it’s the right kind of mushroom,” he says, pulling them from the soil. “By the time we saw these, it was too late.”
“Shit,” I hiss, following him up the row to where it looks like he’s practically dug up the roots of a tree.
“Exposing it to sunlight and air is one way to kill it. Building raised beds to get the roots out of the ground is another way. It’s expensive and time-consuming, and we don’t know if we’re going to beat it.”
“Dove said the ribosomes can persist in the soil?” I look up at him.
“That’s what makes it so hard to fight.” His lips press into a frown, and he puts his hands on his hips, inhaling slowly. “I always thought we’d have this orchard for generations to come, but at this rate… I guess it’s good Dove’s making other plans.”
“What? Dove’s not making other plans,” I interject quickly. “This orchard and finding a cure for this disease is on her mind all the time. She loves these trees.”
