After Alice by Karen Hofmann Page A

series, so they’re labour-intensive. And if they end up going to processing, the orchardist takes a loss. Everyone grows some peaches — they fill the space between cherries and apples — but only a block. Soft fruit’s a gamble.
    Then the new saplings, chest-high, their trunks the thickness of two thumbs, still bearing the graft scars. But they’ve all taken — purple buds swell the twigs.
    Scions, they’re called, the new grafts. All apple cultivars in this part of the world are grafted onto root stock of the Transparent, a tough Russian breed. Somehow, the tree bears the fruit of the graft. The root stock provides hardiness. It’s a kind of miracle.
    â€œThe new grafts look healthy,” she says. She reads the plastic tags: Pink Lady, Honeycrisp, Ambrosia. Fancy names.
    â€œExperimenting,” Jack says. “See what grows best on this slope.”
    Gingergold, Jazz.
    â€œJazz, now,” Jack says, “That’s a cross of Gala and Braeburn.”
    Healthy young trees, all.
    â€œIt’s the middle generation that’s missing,” Walt says. “You’ll have a gap in your production.”
    It is true. The orchard looks well cared for: pruning completed, last-year’s props and sprinkler pipes stacked in the shed, sulfur powder from the dormant oil visible in the cracks and crotches of the trees. The obedient rows of trees, pleasing variations on the theme of trunk, branch, twig. (Could this be represented by a formula?) But there is an absence of young trees, those that should have been planted out and grafted in over a decade or two ago. Perhaps they should plant some earlier-producing varieties to catch up, fill the gap. More peaches, which reach puberty at two or three years. The tradeoff will be a shorter lifespan, of course. But it might work out. They will have to do some calculations.
    She points this out; it’s not Walt’s fault, of course, as he wasn’t responsible for the orchard during that time, but it will affect his and Jack’s yield in the next decade or two.
    Jack says nothing, only tosses his father a look.
    What was that? But she has missed it.
    Such satisfaction, that Walt and Jack are leasing Beauvoir, that they are caring for this place. They are orchard men, the Rilkes: it is in their bones. And they know Beauvoir. The Rilkes have been neighbours of Beauvoir, they have worked at Beauvoir for half a century, off and on. The stir, now, of the cultivator’s instinct, the same she has felt in starting a new research project. A combination of gambler’s euphoria, that locking-in of attention and optimism, and a sort of curiosity, and a third element: energy. A surge of endorphins. How it all floods back — the knowledge of the profession, the body-memory of seasonal tasks, the sensory triggers of the timing and shape of tasks. Pruning and spraying, thinning, picking — all these she would know when and how to do by the angle of the sun, the warmth on her forearms, the size and colour of the buds and fruit, the form of the tree on the screen of her mind.
    She must be careful. She must not become too involved in this: it is not her occupation. Not her business. She is only maintaining Beauvoir, husbanding it for the future. She has never wanted to run an orchard, to be tied brain and limb to the work. It is only for the future.
    Only body memory, trip-alarmed by walking among the trees.
    The look between Jack and Walt, back there. But if something is amiss, it will come out later at the kitchen table, where they will negotiate new terms, and discuss what Jack will plant this year, what will be grafted in. For now, they will perform this inspection of the trees, the sloped land, on foot. It is not necessary; it is a ceremony of some kind. Nevertheless, it must be done.
    Up the hill (her newly-healed foot paining her a little), to the highest part, the most exposed shoulder of the slope. From here she can see for