The Apple Orchard

By Erick Jacobsen

Its 1977 and troubled thirteen year-old Joe Shepard has been banished by his parents to spend the summer out at his Great-Uncle Amils ranch. The two of them will bond quickly over stories of baseballs glorious past. But when the heat of the summer days drive his uncle indoors, Joes restlessness will spark his sense of adventure. His explorations will take him beyond the borders of the ranchleading to a ghoulish discovery amongst the fence posts of the neighboring farm to the east.

And then there is Emilythe beautiful and enigmatic girl he befriends. Her dress, her mannerismlook so out of place in the middle of a dusty apple orchard. Joe will discover why their friendship is truly unique, and in doing so, realize that the similarities between he and his uncle are many.

Erik Jacobsen weaves an intricate story of intersecting subplots and fascinating characters spanning almost 90 years. The Apple Orchard is a lyrical tale of the continual struggle of good versus evil, of death and betrayal, and the loss of innocence. It is about the seemingly little insignificant choices made every dayhow action, as well as inaction, can bring the gravest of consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496913135

Erick Jacobsen

Erik Jacobsen grew up in California’s fertile San Joaquin Valley and has worked in its countless cotton fields, orchards and vineyards for over 25 years. His experiences with the sights and sounds and the people of this great valley provides the backdrop to The Apple Orchard. He owns an Ag related business and divides his time pursuing his passions: literature, history, and baseball. Currently he is working on a collection of short stories. This is his first novel.

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© 2014 Erik Jacobsen. All rights reserved.

Cover Artwork by Chelsea America

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 05/20/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-1314-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-1315-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-1313-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014909061

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Contents

Preface

1999

I

II

III

1977

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

XXII

XXIII

XXIV

XXV

XXVI

XXVII

XXVIII

XXIX

1911

XXX

XXXI

XXXII

XXXIII

XXXIV

1977

XXXV

XXXVI

XXXVII

XXXVIII

XXXIX

1999

XL

Preface

W hatever possessed you to write a book? A question asked most frequently from my friends and family over the years. Aren’t you busy enough running an Ag business here in the San Joaquin Valley? I was. But with agriculture—at least my little nook of it—there comes an off-season. And with those off-seasons, I found myself with plenty of time to pursue my passions. One of them was literature, more specifically, the modern American classics of Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and most of all, the writings of John Steinbeck. Over the years I’ve immersed myself in their novels, short stories, and even their non-fiction. It was Steinbeck’s telling of the simple pleasures that so captured my imagination. Only he could tell a story about breakfast and bring it to life so much so that you not only hear the sizzle of the bacon, you can smell it too.

But the story you are about to read began long before any off-season afforded me the time to write. It really all started sometime back in 1980—back at Wawona Middle School in Fresno California—in old Mrs. Hendrickson’s seventh-grade history class. I can’t remember why we had a reading break that day. Perhaps we had a substitute teacher and it was easier for her to just let us read for the period rather than try to go over a lesson plan. But whatever the reason, the book I picked out was a collection of short stories by Ruth Ainsworth called The Phantom Cyclist. I can still remember the cover well: a boy riding a bike, but not just any boy—a ghost boy. I was fascinated. I read the story as well as others. But the one that stood out the most, the one that for whatever reason stayed with me so many years later, was a story titled, Cherry Ripe. It told the tale of a sickly boy visiting his aunt out in the countryside and the girl he meets there—a mysterious girl who looks just like the girl in a painting in his aunt’s house. There was a sadness about it. And when looking back on it now, I realize what a rarity that was in a children’s book. It was that feeling of sadness that so haunted me—even then. The story remained with me in my early twenties—on those long days out in the middle of nowhere, working as a field checker in the endless cotton fields, vineyards, and almond orchards of the San Joaquin Valley. Who was that little girl? Whatever became of her? What was her story?

And so I began to imagine just what her story might be. It was out there in the dust and heat of the orchards and vineyards that I began to form the story. It can be awfully lonely out there all by yourself—with only your imagination to keep you company. New characters would materialize as I was taking soil samples—subplots forming as I pressure-bombed grape petioles. Soon I was incorporating my own family history into the story—that and the sights and sounds of the valley. It was out in the cotton fields that I first discovered the coyotes—so ghastly they were, I could not look away. They haunted my thoughts.

Then I came across the 1903 Frank Benson painting, The Hilltop. The golden-hair girl waving her handkerchief, the boy shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun, and the dog obediently sitting by his side—not only did I now have my muse for the girl, but a new, important character made its way into the book. The painting inspired me so that I made sure to incorporate the scene into the story.

And so it all swirled around in my head—a children’s tale once read a lifetime ago, a painting from the turn of the century, more than a hundred years of family history, the sights of the San Joaquin Valley, and surprisingly, even the music of Nick Drake found its way into the mix. Such were the many influences that created the book. For many years I had the basis of it written in my head, but it was all a jumbled, discombobulated mess, so I never started to write. To be sure, I really doubted that it would ever be written. But then one night, as I watched late night TV in bed, it finally came to me—the ending. I furiously scrambled down notes all night long and within a few weeks had the first 10,000 words down on paper. And so began a new phase in my life. Where it might lead, I know not. But as the saying goes regarding all great, exciting new adventures: Life is a journey, not a destination.

—EJ

For my mother …

For revealing the wonderful world of books to me—and in

doing so, creating a reader of many and a writer of one.

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong as its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place; and this too will be swept away.

—Marcus Aurelius

The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.

—Albert Einstein

1999

I

J oe Shepard shivered as he stood by his car. He wondered how many times he had stopped here before to fill his tank with gas. He wasn’t sure, though he couldn’t help but think that the last time he had stopped, his uncle was still alive. He shook off that unpleasant fact and remembered back so many years ago when he first received his driver’s license—that it was here where he first filled up his tank. How prohibitive the cost seemed at the time, but also how luxurious it was to drive by so many stations without glancing at the fuel gauge and seeing the needle pointing to that dreaded E . He had promised himself then that there would be no more piddling two- and five-dollar purchases of gas in his future—and that promise lasted nearly two weeks, just short of pa yday.

Joe Shepard had made many stops here during the nineteen years he’d been driving. From the beginning, when first behind the wheel and noticing the car nearly out of gas, he had planned that it would be here at Dakota Market & Deli where the first fill-up would take place. He couldn’t remember why it was so important at the time, only that he kept repeating the phrase heard so often from his old man—Fill ’er up, fill ’er up, Mac. Perhaps it was important because the age of the gas station attendant was rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and Dakota Market & Deli was the only station he could think of that still provided full service. Soon there would be no place where he could say the words—the phrase that was rapidly vanishing from the American lexicon: Fill ’er up, fill ’er up, Mac. Joe Shepard grinned at this recollection of that first drive to his uncle’s ranch—how he had repeated the phrase over and over during the two-hour drive and how ridiculous it all seemed now.

Indeed, he had been coming here for many years—before he could drive, when he was a boy, before Dakota Market & Deli even had gas pumps. Of course, back then it was better known as Mokelumne Market & Tavern—appropriately named for the river that passed close by. The name changed as new ownership took over shortly after the killing. The tavern portion then closed its doors to make way for expansion and the addition of a brand-new deli counter. But that was a long time ago—back when it changed names, back when Adeline Mooney sold it to go off and search for Buffalo.

The market sat cradled between the river and the highway that ran either northeasterly toward town or southwesterly toward Freeway 99, and depending on what direction a traveler might be taking, it offered a first or last chance to support the local economy. The new owners instantly recognized the advantages that such a location presented—perhaps that fact alone proving to be the deciding factor in purchasing the small store in the first place. In addition to its great location, the new owners also reasoned that to offer a first or last chance to purchase gas could ultimately see a rise in customer traffic. This alone would create another reason to stop and shop, therefore cornering the market of the tiny hamlet. And so, soon after its sale and subsequent name change, two new gas pumps stood, resplendent—proudly beaming out as a beacon in the night to weary and fuel-dependent travelers.

Joe Shepard was now one of those travelers, and weary he was. Like so many times before, he had stopped on his way to his uncle’s ranch to fill up the tank of his car so he might make a quick getaway later that evening. He was close now, only a few minutes’ drive away.

The funeral had gone off without a hitch, and now he needed to get back to the ranch to entertain the throngs of mourners that so desperately needed to be fed—for it was in bad taste and downright impolite to mourn on an empty stomach.

It was the shortest day of the year. It was cold and wet, and a slight breeze had begun to stir—jostling the trees that bordered the nearby bridge and shaking tiny water droplets from their bare limbs. The sound of the trees brushing up against one another caught his attention around the same time a cold gust briefly lifted his overcoat. Joe Shepard closed his eyes and breathed in the bitter cold air. So calming the wind was to him. It had been that way for a long time now—his bond with the wind.

A high-pitched yelp sounded from across the road, stirring Joe from his reverie. When he opened his eyes and looked toward the trees, he caught a glimpse of what he thought to be a dog scampering off into a thicket of broken and tangled limbs. A sense of familiarity struck him, and before he realized what he was doing, he had already made his way to the middle of the road—all the while not taking his eye off the small cluster of trees. It was then he became distracted by the gray bird fluttering about on a low branch of a birch tree, and he watched for it to take flight. But the bird fluttered on—never moving up or down the branch.

He remembered the birch tree well, all those years ago when he last crossed the bridge by foot—during that terrible summer of 1977. As he approached the tree, he realized that it was not a bird at all, but a tattered rag nailed to a branch. He hesitated a moment and gave another quick look around, hoping he might see the dog, but it was nowhere to be seen—apparently disappearing among the countless orchards that bordered the river. Turning back to the tree, he gazed at the rag once more as it flapped and twisted in the breeze. A shiver ran up his spine as he carefully pulled it down from its perch to examine it. He had seen it before—when it was new, twenty-two years ago. More than half of it was missing now, and the bloodstains that once covered it had faded to a barely noticeable light brown—bleached by the many seasons under the sun.

II

T hrough the ages, man has refined and cultivated the proper administrations for burying the dead. When such an occurrence has presented itself, the bereaved announces the event with a brief summary of their loved one’s life and achievements, usually two to three paragraphs long—an entire life, era, and legacy reduced to the immortal words of survived by . There seems to be a sort of dichotomy that is experienced when such an announcement is found by those marking the start of their morning routine with the deathwatch of the obituaries. Though they hardly realize it, or more so hardly admit it, the sense of exhilaration they first feel from actually recognizing the recently departed must eventually give way to the inevitable helplessness that their turn will also come.

He was just a few years older than me!

She seemed perfectly healthy the last time I saw her! And so it goes.

If the recently departed was actually close to the reader, an actual pang of regret and sadness might also follow. It is their sympathy cards that are usually the first to arrive along with a mixture from friends and family who had heard more expeditiously by telephone.

There is an etiquette that must also be followed at funerals. The amount of graveside flowers marks the greatness of that particular individual, and accordingly, the bigger the bouquet sent by a mourner, the greater their friendship or relationship must have been. Men hold their heads down when discussing the recently deceased—perhaps taking a discreet swig from a shared flask before surreptitiously passing it along. They are allowed to chuckle over long-forgotten tales of battle and drunkenness, but an outright guffaw is considered inappropriate. Wives, mothers, and sisters make it their private duty to ensure that no one goes hungry while secretly taking stock of current fashion trends that such occasions create.

The cuisine is usually of a mixed and simple fare. A veritable smorgasbord of pasta, breads, condiments, cheeses, meats, fruits, and vegetables diced and sliced to allow easy consumption with one hand while freeing up the other to help shepherd stray offspring who have little concern or understanding of the proper funeral etiquette required of them. Those youngsters who are fortunate enough to have had luck smile upon them that day may discover a garden, park, empty lot, oak tree, or dry riverbed that is just out of reach from the radar senses of their keepers. This game of cat and mouse continues throughout the day until responsible parties deem that sufficient mourning has indeed elapsed and the appropriate time for departure has now come. This is the way it is—this is the way it has always been.

And so it was with Uncle Amil’s funeral. It was a large turnout. Amil Ingward Shepard was both a Master Free Mason and a charter member of the Twilight League Baseball Hall of Fame. Both organizations tried to outdo each other in their presentation of their condolences. Ultimately though, Lodge 247 proved too prolific over the dwindling number of the boys of summer from an extinct league of fifty-seven years and eventually won the day with a flowered likeness of the Square and Compass made of white carnations.

Amil had considered it a misfortune of being among the last of his friends left remaining from those halcyon days of yesteryear. The curse of a long life, he would ruefully concede as he helplessly looked on as, one by one, his friends left him for what he called that last great road trip of life. Just about all of the greats of that local league that went on to play in the majors were gone now. Sloppy Thurston and Alex Metzler had died a little more than two months apart back in 1973; Monte Pearson just five years later. Services held for ex-Twilight leaguers had actually become a rarity now—since most had passed on years before. Amil knew his time soon approached.

There’s just a few of us left, he had told Earl Jones, but I’ll be ready when it’s my time.

Earl died a short time later—who had himself a cup of coffee in the big leagues back in 1945. Nine months after that, Amil received news of the passing of Bill Phebus. Amil was eighty-nine then and, unbeknownst to his friends and family, made the cross-country trip all the way to Florida to attend Bill’s funeral. He never did trust airplanes and traveled the some twenty-eight hundred miles in his beloved 1963 Ford Falcon. That was ten years ago.

The few Twilighters who were healthy enough to attend Amil’s funeral regaled one another on the glorious past of great teams like First Christian Church, Power Club, Wolf-Shelton, and the Sciots. An eighty-nine-year-old Frenchy Boardagary insisted on attending and held a captive audience as he retold his perspective of one of baseball’s greatest stories—DiMaggio’s consecutive game hit streak. Frenchy was with the Yankees just one year, but what a year it was. In 1941, he would play in just thirty-six games with the Bronx Bombers and would see brief action in the 1941 World Series as a pinch runner in Game 2. He was thirty-one that season and would play four more years, finishing his big league career with the St. Louis Browns in 1945. But for Frenchy, any conversation about baseball always came back full-circle to Joltin’ Joe. In the years that followed, his frequent retelling of the stories of that glorious season had created a consecutive streak all his own—eventually snapping with his death sixty years later on a crisp spring day in April 2001.

Jimmy Hill, representing the Free Mason contingent, recognized a break in the proceedings and decided it was time to speak on the behalf of Lodge 247. He was a cherubic little fellow that seemed to walk with a slight tilt to his left. Most of his associates teased that it was due to the flask he often produced during such solemn occasions, but it was actually the result of when he jumped into France with the 101st Airborne on that Day of Days. His parachute grazed a tree as he was preparing to land and rocked him parallel to the ground for a brief moment. His body then swung back as a pendulum, driving his left leg into the ground and shattering it like fine crystal. The war was over for him. It lasted all for two minutes.

It was not considered a show of disrespect to call him Jimmy. There were few in town that knew James Madison Hill as anything but Jimmy—not Jim, not James, just Jimmy.

Can I get you a chair, Mr. Hill?

No thank you, son. We’re all friends here. You can call me just Jimmy.

Why don’t you draw out that flask, James, and give us a snort.

Now that sounds like a fine idea, but it’s just Jimmy. No need for formalities. Only my pappy called me that.

And so a nickname was born. Everyone at the Lodge knew him as Just Jimmy. He was always quick with a story but somewhat slow in remembering the finer details. Over time, one tale would eventually merge with another, but they were all based in truth, and whether or not the details ever seemed to match any historical evidence was simply inconsequential.

Because this was a somber occasion, Just Jimmy spoke in a prepared, monotone voice that was at once very choppy and yet still quite hypnotic—of course, this was more likely due to the faulty furnace and the sweltering heat inside the church than to his oratory prowess. He continued this way for another ten minutes, mispronouncing names of relatives and old teammates and confusing stories from fellow lodge members with his own, and finally concluded with the Free Mason funeral mantra.

One by one they pass away, the brothers of our adoption, the companions of our choice. A brother whose hand we have clasped in the bonds of fraternal fellowship is now passing from our sight, and we know that we shall meet him on Earth no more.

This being said, Just Jimmy tilted on down the center aisle of First Lutheran Church and was soon followed by the other Masons in attendance, not to be seen ever more—at least by the Shepards.

III

T he Shepards were once a prodigious clan. A brief history reveals that through the generations, an unusual familial strain had emerged. At least one son of each generation would not marry or procreate, and over time, the great lineage of Augustus Lam had dwindled down to just three brothers—Amil, Leonard, and H enry.

All three Shepard boys were well-known around town, for they had distinguished themselves well in the theater of baseball. Their celebrity peaked in 1930 when all three were named to the Twilight League All-City Team—the brothers’ exploits of donning the monkey suit, smacking the apple, and prancing about the diamond were colorfully depicted to local baseball fans with the sportswriter’s parlance of the day.

But of the three brothers, it was Amil that shined. His talent with the bat and glove not only exceeded his brothers’ but also that of his fellow peers in the league. He became a fan favorite and local legend before his twenty-fifth birthday, and it wasn’t long before word spread of Amil’s heroics. Along with his brother Leonard, he was offered a pro contract with the San Francisco Seals—a stepping stone to the major leagues. But the offer tormented Amil. He was never one to embrace change, so he decided to stay—or more so thought it his duty to stay and help his parents with the family farm.

So Leonard would travel to San Francisco alone. He was a fine third sacker and would play a few years with the Seals but was never able to make the leap to the big show. He soon learned that there wasn’t much money playing in San Francisco, so Leonard hung up his cleats and opened a radio repair shop in 1935. He would marry just one year later and would become the proud father of two lovely and feisty daughters. He made a decent living and led a decent life. Mondays started a workweek that was fifty-five hours long and ended with a shared snort with the boys after closing time at six o’clock on Friday. The weekends began with assorted duties and missions ordered by his beloved and ended in a flurry of activity ranging from church services in the morning to a gala dinner with relatives in his dining room Sunday nights. This was a good arrangement for Leonard. This was order in his world. For Leonard didn’t like change, and when circumstances deemed it necessary to vary from this pattern, he found that meals didn’t quite taste the same, the house always felt slightly warmer, traffic slowed as he drove to work, and ridiculous questions from clients tended to increase. This frequently left Leonard in less than amiable spirits, and family, friends, employees, and customers alike would tiptoe nervously on eggshells until Leonard’s routine settled back into its proper place and all was right with the world. This rollercoaster of emotions would eventually lead to a long fight with high blood pressure, and Leonard’s orderly routine life would come to a disorderly end by a massive heart attack in 1966.

The baby of the three brothers was Henry. He was towheaded as a child and never did lose the look as he grew into manhood. Young Henry towered over people by the time he was fifteen, and as a lanky young man of twenty-two, he had already reached six and a half feet tall. His appearance was hardly intimidating though—due in large part to his good-natured countenance. To be sure, citizens could not remember a time or place when his smile didn’t make an appearance. His manner was so infectious that outsiders—perhaps a college scout—who might inquire about Henry would be hard-pressed to find a local that couldn’t bring the young man to mind without a smile themselves. Where Leonard tended to gravitate between one mood and the next, Henry had only one. Being polite was not something he begrudgingly did but heartily embraced. And though he would forgo the numerous college scholarships offered to him, there was rarely a story or passage he could not quote from the likes of Aeschylus to Zola.

The local sports pages heralded his acrobatics at shortstop, but this proved only to be the splashing of a big fish in a little pond. His journeys through pro ball took him to Kansas—playing in Topeka, then Salina, and then later finishing the season in Emporia. He didn’t much care for the idea of now being such a little fish in such a vast pond and decided to come back to the Twilight Leagues. Over the next few years, in between occasional weekend doubleheaders and what was locally billed as the Little World Series, the gentle giant squeezed in time to make a living as a blacksmith, marry his sixteen-year-old girlfriend, and have three children—Elizabeth, Thomas, and William.

Henry was a tinkerer. He was good with his hands and blessed, or cursed if one was to press the issue with his wife, with the many friends and well-intentioned patrons that such wide-ranging skills often attract. The problem, as his wife saw it, was his inability to refuse those offering mere promises of payment in lieu of currency. But in the end, somehow, the tiny blacksmith shop managed to stay afloat. Even in those fearful early days when the blue eagle stood guard in the windows of every merchant in town, bills were paid, customers were happy, and laughter continued to be heard between the strikes of the hammer.

Then came war, and with it a shortage of men—men with the knowledge of tools and how to use them. Henry’s skills were soon in high demand, and his little shop would do well in those years; that is, he stayed busy as customer lines of credit increased. But after VJ Day—after the gleam of a hard-earned victory and the resultant fellowship of community had worn dull, after returning husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers had now settled in to the humdrum trivialities of everyday life—came time for business and the squaring of accounts. One by one, they came to Henry—to talk of the war, the upcoming harvest, and to pay their bills. They joked of the ineptitude of their wives’ bookkeeping as they looked over the balance sheet with eyes askance. And though they knew him to be of good character and an honest man—and their wives’ accounts of Henry’s good deeds still fresh in their minds—they could not hide the doubt that passed across their faces. Henry saw the look and understood it. And because it was them that had fought off the Hun and the Jap, and not he, old balances were conveniently forgotten or misremembered. He would see less and less of his old customers as their attentions turned toward suburbia—their focus and pocketbook committed to the purchase of a new automobile or a new home, and perhaps with it, that new technological innovation called air-conditioning.

The shop became a quieter and lonely place then. Callers still checked in to get the latest on the happenings around the baseball diamond—both local and in the major leagues. On occasion, the subject would turn to politics, but these digressions never lasted long, for it seemed unnatural to them. Soon the familiar laughs would return, and Henry’s pearly whites could be seen through all the soot and grime that the furnace wrought.

With the demand for such a skilled tradesman diminished, Henry eventually found himself working a second job as a bartender in the evenings. If this bothered the tired man, no one ever knew, for he always found time and energy to escort his delicate and precious bride to the Saturday night dances.