orangutan thing you used to talk about when I was little. Everyone can see that I have a flange.”
“Everyone at school?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“So now you’ve seen what school is like, maybe you don’t belong there after all,” I said.
“I do belong there,” he said.
“But if the other kids are giving you a hard time,” I said.
“They aren’t giving me a hard time,” he said.
“Perley,” I said. “You’re not an orangutan. That’s not what we meant by flange.”
“What’s a faggot?” Perley asked.
“It’s a bundle of sticks,” I said.
“What’s a bastard?” he asked.
“It’s what you say when you stub your toe,” I said. “If you’re rude.”
Perley reached out and shook a branch to make a drumroll of acorns against the wheelbarrow, the tarp, the rake, my boots, my skull, the forest floor. I knew a lot. I knew I was helpful. I knew I was an interrupter. I knew I could have talked to Perley more about what those words meant, why they might be used against him. But I also knew Perley hardly preferred me anymore. And I knew that sometimes I was the only one who could just let him be.
* * *
The principal lived in the middle of town. He lived directly across the street from his school. His house was a big old Victorian, newly painted. It reminded me of my aunt’s house, the kind of place I rejected when I left the coast. The most recent letter I received from her, she was holding on to it, but barely. In the principal’s side yard, a massive tulip poplar was ready to drop a limb right on the flash-new roofing job. I sorted gear in the driveway, untangled the bull rope, filled the saws with gas and oil. Rudy unloaded two Ginger Gold apple trees from the back of the truck.
“How much are we going to charge for them?” I asked. Rudy looked at me like I was scum.
“No charge,” he said. “We just give them away. Selling fruit trees is immoral.”
“I thought you said it was a business idea,” I said.
“It’s my life path,” he said. “Anyway, you get paid the same either way, so what do you care?”
Rudy climbed, I worked the Port-a-Wrap, we lowered the dead limb to the ground and bucked it up. It took three hours all told. When we were done, the principal brought us each a watery beer, not the kind of watery we liked, not Natural Ice. It was Michelob Ultra he brought us. He set the bottles down on the back step, and he carefully closed the door behind his back to make it clear that we weren’t to go inside. Rudy asked him if he’d like a couple of apple trees.
“No,” the principal said.
Rudy dug into his ear and pulled out the wax. “Say again,” he said.
“No, thanks,” the principal said. “All I wanted was that poplar trimmed. I don’t have room for an apple tree, let alone two or three. Where would I put them?”
“Just about anywhere,” said Rudy. “Take up some of your fucking lawn. When I see a lawn I just about want to shoot myself in the fucking head.” The principal laughed, but not very hard.
“I don’t know why you think that’s funny,” Rudy said. He stuck his ponytail in his mouth.
“You do good tree work, Rudy Gibbs. Let’s just leave it at that,” the principal said. He held out a check, and Rudy accepted it, and we climbed in the truck to leave, but not before it hit me. That laugh. Gentle, sad, sinister. It was what I had heard welling up from Perley’s young voice box for the past two months, and it turned that warm day cold.
* * *
Four tree jobs that week, and no one wanted apple trees. No one wanted pear trees. No one wanted peach trees, plum trees, Saskatoons, or even cherries. Not Ginger Gold, not Lodi, not Potomac, not Idared, not Fellenberg, not Dwarf Meteor, not Dwarf North Star, not Red Haven. None of Rudy’s clients wanted fruit trees. Not one.
I thought this would enrage Rudy, but instead I had never seen him so innocent, so unprotected. “Why?” he asked, sitting in the truck at the end of a hard day. I recited some of the standard answers. “Too much maintenance. No room. Doesn’t go with their landscaping plan. Don’t eat fruit.” Rudy lowered his head gently onto the steering wheel.