The Year Money Grew on Trees Read online

  Chapter 2

  Saved from the Scrap Yard

  In only a matter of hours, my life had accelerated uncontrollably. My only worries had been homework and girls, but all that seemed in the distant past. My future depended on a choice between two terrible jobs I didn't need. I realized I didn't want to feel grown-up anymore.

  I hadn't decided anything until lunch at school the next day. I watched Slim's son Skeeter cut in the cafeteria line and then punch the kid behind him who protested. Skeeter was a grade ahead of me but a couple of years older. He was built like his dad and maybe even meaner. The proudest moment of his life was when he made a substitute teacher run out of his class crying. While the sub was gone, Skeeter lit the garbage can on fire and then peed it out, bragging he was "saving the class."

  I stared at Skeeter and realized he'd be at the scrap yard all summer too. Maybe he'd even be my boss. That afternoon I knocked on Mrs. Nelson's door right after getting off the bus.

  "Ah, Jackson. I thought you'd be back," she said when she answered the door. "Why don't you come in again?"

  I shuffled over to the same chair I'd sat in the day before. Mrs. Nelson sat across from me again looking more composed. The tears were gone and all her hair was neatly in place.

  "I've been thinking about the orchard," I began, "and I think I'd like to do it. There's just one little thing."

  "Oh? What's that?"

  "Could we maybe agree on a way to split the money from the apples? Say, you get a certain percentage and I get a certain percentage?"

  "You're still worried about the money, are you? Remember, that's not what's important to me. I could just go hire anyone off the street if I wanted to make money. After you left yesterday, I realized I was really looking for the orchard's true heir." She said that last sentence as if she were reading from a book of fairy tales.

  I wasn't sure what to say about the "true heir" stuff. All I wanted was to get some number or percentage out of her mouth. "I promise to work super hard. But maybe if I had a goal to shoot for, it would help keep me going."

  "I told you I'd take care of you. You'll get rewarded according to how you work."

  "Yes, but if there was just something specific, I think it would be better. You know, if I do this and this, then you do that."

  "Ah, don't you trust me? Think I'm not really serious?"

  "No, it's not that—it's just..."

  "Fine. Let's be specific," she said, cutting me off. "You get that orchard running and pay me a certain amount, and then you can have the rest of the money and more importantly the orchard."

  "Okay," I said cautiously, "how much?"

  "Let's see," she said with a look of disgust on her face, as if the very thought of money was repulsive. "From what I remember my husband making, I'd say $8,000 would be about right."

  "Eight thousand dollars? That's impossible!" I gasped almost involuntarily. I hadn't imagined making even a tenth of that.

  "Impossible? You're thinking like a child. There are 300 trees out there. They'll each produce several bushels, and at the grocery store a bushel of apples is $25 or more. That's a lot more than $8,000. It's practically like growing money on trees."

  I roughly did the math in my head, and it came out to almost twice $8,000. I wasn't 100 percent sure of her or my math, but if the numbers were right, I'd make plenty of money plus whatever the orchard was worth. "It would be a lot of work, though," I finally said.

  "It's supposed to be. I'm looking for the true heir, remember. If you do that much work, I'm sure you'll want to keep watching over those trees."

  There she went with the "true heir" stuff again. It still sounded like there was a good chance I wouldn't get anything. "I don't understand why we can't just split the money, and then you can decide whether you want to give me the orchard or not."

  "It doesn't matter if you don't understand. I understand and it's my orchard and I'm going to do what's best for it." Her voice got higher and took on a tone that meant I shouldn't argue. I could tell I was getting pushed around, but I had nowhere else to go.

  "I guess it will be all right, then," I said quietly. "I'll just have to make that $8,000 somehow." I was mostly talking to myself, trying to quiet all the doubts raging through my head.

  "We're agreed, then," Mrs. Nelson said, smiling for the first time.

  "Shall we shake hands on it or something?" I asked sheepishly.

  "I've got a better idea. Let's put it in writing. I've got a lawyer in town working on my will. We'll have him write something up. I told Tommy about our plan this morning, and he said I'd never do it. I can't wait to show him a written contract." A vindictive grin spread over her face. "We can still get there before the lawyer leaves for the day."

  "Now? Go now?"

  "Yes, now. Let me get my coat."

  Mrs. Nelson stood up and I followed her. "Let me just run home and tell my mom," I said, a little dazed.

  "Right, right. I'll meet you out at my car."

  Mrs. Nelson didn't seem like the type of person to do things on the spur of the moment, so it was surprising to see how determined she was to act immediately. I wasn't about to argue, however, so I ran home and found my mom. She was talking on the phone, but I cut in.

  "Mrs. Nelson needs me to go to Farmington with her. Needs some help with something," I said, out of breath.

  Mom excused herself on the phone and then looked at me suspiciously. "What kind of help?"

  "I dunno. Didn't really say."

  "Okay. But you behave yourself." She gave me an annoyed look and went back to her phone call.

  I could tell she wanted to say I couldn't go but couldn't think of a good-enough reason.

  "Let's go before it gets too late," called Mrs. Nelson from inside her car as I walked up.

  I got in the front seat. Mrs. Nelson had a 1982 Caprice Classic that was only a year old, and it was the nicest car I'd ever sat in. She drove it at two speeds: gas pedal to the floor and lurching stop. We pinballed through traffic all the way into Farmington. I had to keep my eyes on the road to keep from throwing up. Mrs. Nelson turned the heat on full blast, and I quickly regretted wearing a coat.

  We reached the lawyer's office at 4:55. I jumped out and tore off my coat, relieved to be on solid ground and out of the inferno inside the Caprice. There was a sign in front of the building with large brass letters that read COLE, PARKINSON, AND PALMER. Mrs. Nelson walked right past the reception area without saying a word and began to weave through a maze of desks and chairs. Girls in skirts and dresses were getting ready to leave for the day. They looked at us curiously, but Mrs. Nelson just kept walking while I trailed with my head down. We reached a desk behind which sat a tall lady with bright red hair. She looked up and smiled very cheerfully.

  "Hello, miss," began Mrs. Nelson, "is Mr. Palmer in?"

  "Do you have an appointment with him?" the lady asked as she looked us over.

  "Well, no, but I need to see him for a few minutes. He's been helping me with some business."

  "Oh, right. You've been here before. Well, he was about to leave, and he hates to see anyone without an appointment. But since he made me take a short lunch today, I think we could impose on him a little." She let out a mischievous giggle and then whispered, "Besides, I don't think he's actually doing anything except reading a magazine."

  We followed her toward a closed door. She gave a couple of short knocks and then opened it. A man in a white shirt and tie threw down the magazine he was reading and stood up.

  "Some clients to see you, Mr. Palmer," said the red-haired lady.

  "What? I, uh ... It's almost five. What's this about?" he stammered, trying very hard to remember something.

  "You've been helping me with my will, remember?" Mrs. Nelson cut in.

  "Oh, yes, that's right. I thought we'd finished that. Have you changed your mind already?"

  Mr. Palmer was still standing behind his desk when Mrs. Nelson sat down in one of the chairs on the other side of it.

&nb
sp; "This will just take a minute. Let me introduce you to my neighbor Jackson," she said, gesturing toward me.

  Mr. Palmer stuck out a soft, chubby hand, and I shook it cautiously. "Pleased to meet you," he said automatically.

  I suddenly felt very underdressed and realized I was the only one wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

  "Well, I guess you might as well sit down for a minute," said Mr. Palmer as he sunk back into his chair with a defeated look.

  "I'll just be back at my desk," called the red-haired lady as she backed out of the office with a big smile.

  "Thank you," Mr. Palmer replied sarcastically. He turned toward Mrs. Nelson and asked, "Okay, what can I do for you?"

  "Jackson and I have made an agreement we want to formalize," she began, and then she described our conversations from the past two days. Mr. Palmer's expression turned from bored to confused.

  "Let me get this straight. You want to give Jackson the orchard property, so you want me to change your will? Just a week ago all of it was going to your son."

  "Oh, I'm not giving Jackson the orchard. He's going to earn it. Well, that is if he can keep his part of our agreement and show he's the true heir. You know, like I explained," she responded, getting excited.

  "You want me to take the orchard out of the will so you can maybe give it to Jackson?" he asked, growing frustrated.

  "Well, I guess you should do that, too, but I also want you to draw up a formal agreement between Jackson and me. Like a contract that says if he does so-and-so, I do such-and-such."

  The top of Mr. Palmer's bald head began to turn red. "I've got to tell you, Mrs. Nelson, this is highly unorthodox. Certainly not the kind of thing with which I am typically involved."

  "It is unusual, maybe, but we already agreed. So if you would just please write something down that we could sign, we could then leave you alone."

  Mr. Palmer looked like he wanted to yell at or maybe even kick someone. He looked at me, and I thought he had chosen his target. "And you want to do this? Sign your name to something and all that?" he asked, glaring at me.

  "That's what we agreed to," I answered weakly, and shrugged my shoulders.

  "Oh, all right! Jean, get in here," he called toward the door.

  The red-haired lady walked in instantly, as if she had been standing just outside the door. She was holding a pad of paper and had a big grin on her face. Mr. Palmer began to recite some words that sounded very official in phrases like "it is agreed between the two parties." Mrs. Nelson would frequently interrupt him to correct details of the contract.

  "It's $8,000 earned from apple sales, Mr. Palmer. Make sure you put in 'within a single growing season' too."

  Jean was writing furiously on her paper and giggled when Mrs. Nelson would say something. Finally, Mr. Palmer looked up some numbers off a document that sounded like they described where the orchard was located.

  "Now go type that up quickly, Jean, so we can get out of here. Oh, yes, what's your last name, Jackson?"

  "Jones," I said, as Jean hurried out of the room to her typewriter.

  Clack, clack, click, clack came the sound from outside the door. The three of us stared around the office un comfortably. To break the tension, I said, "She's a really fast typist."

  "She better be," replied Mr. Palmer, looking away from us and out the window toward the parking lot.

  When Jean returned, she kept smiling and chuckling to herself. She laid the piece of paper out on the desk in front of us. The same names were on the top of the paper as those I had seen above the door while we were walking into the building. There were places for Mrs. Nelson and me to sign our names. She signed "Violet Nelson." I hadn't known what her first name was before. I admired her signature for a couple of seconds before signing mine. My signature looked like a five-year-old's next to hers. Mr. Palmer signed as a witness, and it was done.

  "So all nice and legal, huh?" Mrs. Nelson asked cheerfully.

  "I don't know. Maybe. As long as you think so," mumbled Mr. Palmer, who was busy putting on a coat and stuffing things into his briefcase.

  "Could I have a copy of it too? For my records?" I asked timidly.

  Mr. Palmer looked back at me and gave his first grin. "Yeah, Jean, make him a copy. I'm sure you wouldn't mind staying a little later to do that and then showing them out. But I've got to go." And with that, he walked out of the office.

  I had heard a lot about them but had never seen a copying machine work before. We were still getting ditto handouts in all my classes. It took Jean a few minutes to warm up the thing. I watched in awe as a flash of light swept over the typed page and a piece of paper that looked like a grayer, blurrier version of the original slid out.

  It was already dark when we got home. I hurried back to my house and into my room before anyone could ask questions. I took my copy of the contract, folded it in two, and put it in between the pages of the single encyclopedia volume I had on a shelf. I had gotten it when they were having a promotion at the supermarket. They pretty much gave you the first volume, hoping you'd buy the rest of them. For one penny I got A—Ar. I filed the contract under "Apple" and rushed out before anyone came looking for me.

  Chapter 3

  Help! Anyone?

  I sneaked into the kitchen and joined the rest of my family for dinner. Upon seeing me, my mom instantly asked, "When did you come in? So what did you do to help Mrs. Nelson?"

  "Oh, well, I think she just wanted some company."

  "Really? Mrs. Nelson? A sixty-five-year-old woman wants you for company?"

  "I also carried some stuff," I added quickly. In my mind "the stuff" was my copy of the contract and I had actually carried it home. So I felt that the last statement did have at least some truth to it.

  "Well, that makes more sense. I guess it's nice that you're friendly with her. She's kind of kept to herself most of the time, but she's still our neighbor," Mom concluded, in what I hoped was the end of that conversation.

  "'Kept to herself' is an interesting way of putting it," Dad blurted out. "Remember how she wouldn't speak to you for the first five years we were here?" He had a sarcastic grin on his face.

  "Let's try not to judge Mrs. Nelson, honey," Mom said, staring at Dad with a determined look on her face. "If she's trying to be friendly to Jackson, he should be happy to be friendly back."

  "That's not what you said..." Dad began, but was abruptly cut off when Mom gave him a scowl and motioned her head toward my sisters and me. He gave a little eye roll and shook his head.

  I lay in bed that night thinking about what might be ahead of me. Now that the deal with Mrs. Nelson was "maybe" legal, I needed to figure out how to raise apples. But what made apples grow and how did you get them off the trees? Maybe you didn't have to do much. An apple tree naturally wants to make apples. I just had to let them come.

  ***

  Since I had mentally committed myself to the orchard, when I got to school the next day, I began telling a few friends how I was taking over the old Nelson place. No one seemed to care until I started bragging about how much money I was going to make.

  "Oh, I'm sure you will 'cause there are tons of Mexicans who come up here to get rich picking fruits and vegetables," Chad Heslop said sarcastically while copying my math homework. That got things rolling, and before I knew it, variations of "Jackson Appleseed" were being invented all around me. There was no use fighting back, so I put my head on my desk, wishing I had kept my big mouth shut.

  I decided that afternoon that I was going to be the greatest apple farmer there ever was just to show those idiots. I also decided I should keep the details of Mrs. Nelson's agreement to myself. There had been enough laughing without telling everyone that I might be doing it all for nothing if I wasn't the "true heir." That provision would have to remain a secret between Violet Nelson, the encyclopedia, and me.

  When I got off the bus after school, instead of following my sisters and cousins down the road that led around the orchard and to our houses, I turned lef
t and walked through the orchard itself. This had always seemed like forbidden territory before, but now I felt like I belonged. I ran my fingers up and down the reddish-brown trunk of the nearest tree, feeling the rough bark and all the knotholes. The branches looked naked and wild in their winter state, with hundreds, maybe thousands of little shoots going off in all directions.

  I first walked south, counting ten trees in that direction. Then I walked east, counting trees as I went. The middle of the orchard looked much more overgrown with weeds than the outside. The little ditches next to the trees were caved in and barely recognizable. The trees seemed taller too. When I had counted to ten, I found a plow abandoned between two trees. A couple of rows farther, there was a funny-looking machine that was flat on top and looked like it was supposed to be pulled by a tractor. Instead of wheels, though, it had lots of round metal discs attached inside it that looked like they would spin around as it moved.

  By the time I counted twenty rows, I didn't feel as welcome anymore. By thirty, I felt the same way I had when I was looking at Mrs. Nelson's signature compared to mine. There were three hundred trees all right, all of them more than twice as tall as I was.

  Mrs. Nelson was waving at me from the dirt road when I came out of the orchard. I was sure she had been watching me through a window the whole time. "I see you're walking through the orchard, inspecting all the trees," she said excitedly as I walked up to her.

  "Uh-huh. Three hundred seems like a lot when you count them up close."

  "My husband always thought that three hundred was a lucky number, at least for trees, I guess."

  "Mrs. Nelson, do you know what that machine is in the orchard next to the plow?"

  "No, not really."

  "I've kind of been thinking that if I'm going to raise $8,000 worth of apples, maybe I should be working on the orchard already. You know, getting it ready for apple growing. What's the first thing I should do? Can you even do anything while it's still winter?"