Colby Galliher

When Jo’s little orchard of six peach trees finally gifted her its first bumper crop, someone filched them.

She had sweated through the haze of July, waiting as the sun imprinted its red speckle-sweep on the peaches’ skin, sweetened their flesh. Every day the branches sagged lower with the weight of the fat, sumptuous pearls. As August began she made a dusk ritual of testing their firmness. Until one cool evening near month’s end when her fingers dimpled one of the globes and in its lessened resistance she could taste the harvest.

The next morning she walked out after dawn with several buckets hugged in her arms only to find the lichen-ornamented trees stripped of their bounty. All that remained was the drop-fruit rotting in the grass, the yellowjackets sucking at the rank juice.

Her mouth jarred open. She spiked the buckets into the dirt. She pored over each branch, the foliage rustling and swaying around her head, as though she might lift fingerprints from the scene. Her pupils strained like cold-shrunk wood.

Phil tried to convince her it was kids, or deer. Jo steamed and waved off his perfunctory explanations. She vowed further investigation, swore revenge. The culprit’s anonymity ate at her even as the days shortened and summer ebbed from the air.

So the following year she practiced a surgical vigilance. As the fruit ripened again in August she scanned the front yard at every free moment and plotted her defense.

One night, as Jo washed the dishes after her dinner, she spied through the kitchen windows headlights creeping along the street. She imagined wolfish eyes coveting her treasure in the sultry dark, planning a twilight heist.

When the car drove off she vaulted into action. She lathered herself in bug spray and fetched a flashlight and her grandfather’s corroded Winchester rifle from the attic. Thus equipped, she decamped to her humble orchard.

She took up her ambush post: An old, rickety beach chair placed before the copse of stunted junipers by the peach trees. Once the last muted light drained from the west there was perfect darkness. Wooly, ink-black clouds blotted out the moon and stars. She waited with the rifle laid across her knees like some dogged sheriff, the one wedge between social harmony and chaos.

The nightbugs and tree frogs chittered from every pocket of the leafy cornucopia around her. Moth wings vibrated her ears. Loose hair strands stuck to her damp forehead. All the while Jo trained the dagger of her attention on the street: watching for the shimmer-hush of lightbeams; listening for the exhale of a killed engine, the scrape of approaching steps.

            Her every muscle tensed when she heard tires ply the bend in the road bordering the yard. The car’s headlights were off. Jo rose silently. She positioned the butt of the flashlight against her chest, slipping her thumb over the switch in preparation. With her other hand she leaned the rifle against her leg and palmed its stock. The muzzle pointed into the grass.

She trembled with anticipation as the darkness ten feet before her refracted the movements of a body.

            The flashlight clicked on.

Eyes gasped with horror. Air vacuumed into lungs.

“OH!”

The perpetrator’s hand retracted from its reach up to a plump, Edenic peach and she swung the plastic bucket she held behind her back. She squinted in the blast of light, unable to see her persecutor.

            It took Jo a moment to recognize Martha Cataldo. When she did, the maniacal excitement at having finally caught her thief turned to disbelief. Her stomach soured. Then it all flattened. Her head bowed slightly and the skin over her forehead went taut.

            “I—Phil, that’s you, isn’t it?”

            Jo’s head tilted to the side. She watched the woman and said nothing. The light burned through the darkness voicelessly.

            “It’s me!” Martha Cataldo cried in a whisper. The panic in her voice began to fall. Her arm and the bucket unfolded from behind her back. As the woman’s features relaxed Jo studied the restored, soft curve of her chin, the pert nose, the glossy cherry of her mouth. She pondered their allure, distracted from her rage.

“Lord, Phil, you scared me,” Martha Cataldo mewed. “I didn’t mean to act like some outlaw. I meant to ask when you were over last week, but I figured that since you were fine with me taking some last year—”

Jo’s fascination disintegrated, wrath reemerging from its ashes. Her grip on the handle of the flashlight tightened.

“I was just going to pick a few.” The thief strutted forward with a self-assured step. “I thought you’d like me to have—"

            “To have what?”

Martha Cataldo stopped dead. Dread flickered into her eyes. A whimper escaped from her lips. The bucket dropped into the grass.

            “J—Josie?”

            “Are you stealing my peaches?”

            “Stealing? Josie, n—no, no! I would nev—”

            “It was you last year. Slithering around here in the dark, helping yourself. And to more than just the fruit. I should’ve known it was you. The two of you.”

            “‘Slithering?’ No, Josie, I—we—the neighborhood thought the fruit was to share! You and Phil have—”

            “Say more about Phil.”

            Jo fingered the rifle trigger at her side. The tiny, unmistakable noise riveted the dark.

Martha Cataldo’s eyes flew down into the oblivion beneath the blinding cone of light, scrounging for confirmation of what she feared she had heard. Jo watched the woman’s pupils go frantic in their search for a gun in the darkness.

            Jo noticed the small shadow of a stain on the front of Martha Cataldo’s jeans then. She felt as though she might vomit, whether out of remorse or disgust she was not sure.

            The flashlight switched off.

            “Get in your car.”

            The nausea still bubbled in her gut even though she could no longer see Martha Cataldo’s face.

            “J—Josie, please—Phil and I, we haven’t—there’s nothing—”

            “Go.”

            The dewy darkness seethed and wriggled; feet stumbled over the dropped bucket and through the grass. Footsteps skittered down the road. Off along the shoulder a car door opened and flung shut. An engine kicked to life, the diffuse headlights painting the road a dim yellow. The low hum died away as Martha Cataldo fled.

            Jo let the unloaded, broken rifle drop into the grass. She exhaled and a low growl grated from her throat like she had overeaten. Her head reeled and fizzled with shreds of indigo.

            She clicked on the flashlight. Its rays illuminated the drooping branches of the nearest peach tree. The leaves shuddered as she pulled one of the sherbet-skinned orbs from its stem.

            Jo rotated the folding chair to face back toward the house and collapsed into it. All the windows were dark, as were those in the neighboring cottage where she knew Phil slept unbotheredly. When she thought of him Martha Cataldo’s horror-stricken face flashed into her mind. Her forehead grew hot. Her fist clenched over the peach.

Jo bit into the fruit. Its tender, cloying juice puckered her mouth like bad wine. She spat the mouthful into the grass.

***

            “Erm, Jo.”

            The blade of the folding knife, its nacre handle sanded smooth by her father’s palm, sliced into the peach in Jo’s hand. She drew the edge through the flesh and extracted the pit with her thumb and index finger. The two separated halves and the pit dropped into their respective bowls on the counter.

            “I need a hand, Jo.”

            She paused without looking up. She put the next peach down on the towel before her and lowered the readied knife. Her forehead tightened and her lips begrudged an exhale. She wiped her hands on the tan apron she wore over her t-shirt.

            “What is it, Phil,” she pushed out like a cough, lifting her eyes to him.

            She gasped. Blood coursed down his face. The neck of his white, sweat-stained t-shirt was a garish red. He held a wad of blood-soaked paper towels to the crown of his head. A tepid smile cowered on his lips.

            Her kneejerk concern cooled to exasperation at another of his weekend workman’s self-inflicted injuries.

“What’d you do now?”

He studied her face as he pretended to examine the soiled paper towels.

            “It doesn’t seem to want to stop bleeding. I don’t have any disinfectant over there.”

A probing finger approached the wound.

            “Stop. Don’t touch it.”

Jo washed her hands in the sink. She took a clean dish towel from a drawer beneath the counter and went to him. She bent his head down to examine the top of his skull. Thicketed by blood-glommed, thinning chestnut hair was a small circular gash.

Jo pressed the towel to the wound.

            Phil winced.

            “Ah,” he grabbed her arm. “Jesus, Jo, not so hard.”

            She leaned back and looked at his fingers wrapped around her forearm. Her eyes hardened.

            His lower lip quivered.

            “Sorry,” and he dropped his hand from its conceit.

            She dabbed the wound gently.

            “What’d you do?” she repeated. The edge remained in her voice.

            “I was in the attic rafters in the cottage fiddling with the new insulation. When I got up on the ladder I missed a nail. Climbed right into it. It wasn’t even too bad. Just bloody.”

            She shook her head.

“C’mon.”

She removed her apron and laid it on the counter. With one hand she applied pressure to the wound and with the other on his back she led him up the stairs to the bathroom.

“Sit down.”

Phil obeyed. He sat on his hands on the toilet.

From the medicine cabinet she pulled an arsenal of medical supplies.

            “I didn’t know if you were here. I thought I’d check before I went out and scared half the town with the carnage.”

            Jo untangled the matted hair around the wound. In the morning light coming in from the windows beside the toilet she could see the puncture. It was no more than an eighth of an inch wide.

            “Did you happen to look to see if the nail was rusty?”

            “No. I was a little distracted,” he started to chuckle and then hushed himself. “I’ll be fine. I had my tetanus shot.”

            His feet began tapping the white tile floor. The rhythm grated on her.

            Phil swiveled his head. He looked out the windows and down into the front yard.

            “Were those buckets on the counter the peach—”

            She jabbed an iodine-soaked cotton ball into the wound.

            “Ahh,” he sucked in through his teeth.

            “Hold still.”

            The cotton ball absorbed the excess blood. She pulled a white hand towel from a drawer beneath the vanity and ran it under hot water.

Phil’s feet started tapping again. Jo ground her teeth. Taking his chin between her thumb and index finger she upturned his face. His sea-blue eyes peered into hers with a tentative intimacy, like an acquaintance scanning for recognition in another’s gaze. Dirt and grease stuffed his pebbly pores. Two coagulating tendrils of blood, going dark like oxidized copper, cascaded down his nose and cheeks.

            With the damp towel she dabbed the crusting bloodtrails from her husband’s face. The warmth of the cloth pampered him. His eyelids fluttered with the bliss of one doted on by a caretaker, one who believes himself somehow faultless despite his betrayal.

            His look of blamelessness, the familiar smell of him, wood and metal shavings and sweat, turned her stomach. It was a musk Martha Cataldo knew too.

            “Those were the peaches on the counter,” she told him as she continued to work. She refreshed the towel under the faucet, swabbed the puncture with disinfected cotton balls.

The normality in her voice disarmed him.

            “I thought so!” he exclaimed, seizing on her overture. “Looked like a big crop.”

            “It was. Especially after last year.”

            “Yes! Right, we didn’t get a single fruit,” he chirped along. “I told you it was kids. My friends and I used to raid orchards with no regard.”

            “Nope,” she cut all inflection in her tone.

His forehead creased.

“Nope what?”

Jo discarded the last cotton ball in the trash bin beside the toilet.

“It wasn’t kids.”

            Confusion blinked in his eyes. The bubbles in them popped like soda going flat. He scanned her face for a clue as she wiped the last of the blood from his neck and hairline.

            “Did you see who? Or what? Maybe it was deer.”

            “Yup, I saw. Wasn’t deer.”

            She wrung the towel over the sink. The strangled fabric retched its reddish liquid down the drain.

            “Who then?”

            She squeezed a spot of ointment onto a bandage. She took a fresh towel from the drawer.

            “Guess.”

            “Of course I don’t know, Jo.” He tried to level his voice but it rang high with anxiety. “Who?!”

            The bandage stuck to the wound with the pressure of her fingertip. She dried his hair with the towel and wiped the last water droplets from his neck and face. She could feel his eyes glued to hers.

            She examined his head one final time like a sculptor assaying her work and then pulled back, looking into his drained face.

            “Martha Cataldo.”

            She watched with fascination as Phil did everything in his power not to wilt. She thought he might bite through his tongue. She savored the stabs she knew afflicted his stomach, the heat boiling up into his face at the mention of the co-conspirator in his poorly hidden affair, of the reason for his and Jo’s estrangement whom he had nevertheless refused to name for more than a year.

A tremor shook his body even as he struggled to suppress it.

            “What? Who—Martha Cataldo?”

            “Buffoon,” she thought.

            “Yup. Came at dark with a bucket and everything. I caught her in the act.”

            She remained standing before him. A blithe confidence set in her shoulders; her left hand clasped her right wrist before her waist. She watched him calmly, relishing, forgetting her anger.

            “Wow. That is…” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked out the windows like there was something outside worth appraising. His feet were still. “That is audacious. Martha Cataldo.” He forced a chuckle that dropped lifeless to the floor like a shot duck. “Did she say anything?” Quickly he added, “About the peaches?”

            “Nope.”

            Some foolish hope kindled in his eyes.

            “She just pissed herself.”

            He turned his face back to hers.

            “You’re kidding.”

            “Nope.”

            “Jesus.” He looked straight ahead as he curled a hand up to probe the bandage covering the wound. “Did you threaten her or someth—”

            “Actually, I lied.”

            The last remnant of hope drained from his face.

            “She did say a few words. Oddly enough, it seemed like she felt entitled to the peaches. Like in some way she thought she had a right to them.”

            He gulped.

            “You have any idea of why that’d be?” Jo deadpanned.

            The morning light paled on the walls, on the tiles, on Phil’s face as the sun rose higher outside and lost its golden luster. He peered up at her. His complexion was wan but a wily, intransigent defiance parried in his eyes. So the two of them clashed in silence for a moment, glaring at each other like two elk before a rut, until he caved.

            “I never told her she could have them all but she—”

            “Get out.”

***

            When Phil was gone and the house was empty and quiet again Jo returned to her peaches. She shooed the fruit flies from the sweating carcasses. A light breeze rose outside and through the windows opposite the counter Jo watched the newly unencumbered branches of the peach trees lilt and sigh. She began to process the fruit in the last of the five filled buckets. In some protest against the thieves’ attempts to take that joy from her. Against their ruination.

            Her stomach growled and mechanically she popped a chunk of the fruit into her mouth. As she withdrew her fingers she caught a whiff of antiseptic and blood which the soap hadn’t fully excised. Phil’s pity-begging face and Martha Cataldo’s mask of mortal terror forced themselves into her head. Her mouth went sour. She hocked the morsel into the sink with disgust where it spattered wet and tarnished.

One by one she ferried the filled buckets to the back door that faced the cottage. The door opened at the shove of her hip. She bent and crushed one of the mutilated fruits between her fingers, the flesh squelching, the juice oozing down her arm as she lifted it behind her head. Her elbow cracked like a whip. The peach thudded against the boards of the cottage and dropped to the ground. She pitched another, then one of the pits, then more until the impact splatters on the cottage wall reflected the sharp sunlight. Until the screens on the two windows frayed and bent in and the first cracks splintered the glass. Until she panted, until her arm was raw.

Phil appeared in the left window of his hovel of exile. He looked down through the cracked glass at the graveyard of smashed peach halves and dented pits littering the ground. Then, pale, afraid, up at Jo as she readied her sling-arm again. The yellowjackets descended upon the strewn corpses like jackals.