The Year Money Grew on Trees (14 page)

On Monday after school, we cranked the water on again. The ditch filled up to the dam, and we let Amy start all the pipes while Sam, Michael, and I watched the rows. There were little breaks, but nothing like what happened on Saturday. We dug and filled to get the channels just right, and soon ten rows had shining streams of water flowing toward them. We left the water running until it was dark and then crossed over the road holding flashlights and turned off the gate. On Tuesday we moved the dams and pipes and repeated the process on the next ten rows. On Wednesday we did the same thing for the last ten.

Amy was never really happy with our first main ditch, and Sam, Michael, and I were forced to dig it deeper with shovels for the next two months. Our hands became thick with calluses, and as we dug we would refer to Amy as "the ditch witch."

After a few rounds, watering became pretty routine and floods a rarity. Eventually, I was as good at starting the siphon hoses as Amy, although she would never admit it. We even dug a couple of shallow trenches into our yards and would flood my mom's lawn once a week. She said it never looked greener, and my dad said it had never looked cheaper. Sometimes we would take off our shoes and walk around barefoot in the water splashing each other. Almost like we were kids.

I was feeling pretty confident after our first successful round of watering. I had even stomped up to Mrs. Nelson's door with muddy shoes to show her the little beginnings of apples on a branch I had pulled off.

"I think we figured it out," I said, telling her about the watering. "Just a matter of time now for these apples."

"That's nice," she said, looking at the branch. There was none of the enthusiasm she had showed toward the blossoms.

My parents were equally ambivalent. They didn't seem to realize how incredible it was for a bunch of kids to
figure out irrigation, no matter how difficult I made it sound. The one adult I hoped might appreciate our success was Brother Brown. I cornered him after Sunday school again.

"We got those trees watered after all," I said. "Even figured out our plow." I had a proud grin on my face and was hoping to hear some congratulations.

Brother Brown looked me up and down. "You get those trees sprayed yet?" he croaked out.

My face fell. "Sprayed with what?"

"Somethin' to kill the worms."

"What worms?" I paused to think if I had read about worms. "Are they really that bad? Do you have to kill 'em?" I asked, my voice getting higher as I spoke.

"Not if you like sharin' your apples with 'em."

It was one unpleasant surprise after another with these apples. "What am I supposed to do about it? Can I watch you do some spraying?" I asked.

"Nah. Go down to General Supply. Tell 'em you want something for worms."

"But then what?"

"They'll help you. And you're smart."

He walked off with all my confidence. Back home I looked over the pages I had copied from the apple book. There were a few things about bugs and larva, but I hadn't written anything too specific. I began to remember, though, that the book had talked about natural
and chemical ways to kill bugs. At the time I had tried to ignore that part, hoping it was something I wouldn't have to deal with. Bugs seemed like a bigger problem for people living in swamps than on New Mexican plateaus.

I remembered, too, that natural bug control sounded good to me. The book had talked about using ladybugs and things like that. How could I be sure, though, that the Haslam guy who wrote it had ever raised his own apples? The only person I knew who had was Brother Brown. And if he used something from General Supply, that was probably the way to go. Getting fancy with ladybugs might be risky.

I explained to my cousins that we needed to make a trip to investigate worm spraying.

"Let me guess how you think we're getting there," said Amy with a frown. "If it's on the tractor, I'm not going. You can take one of these two with you. They don't have a reputation to worry about."

I would definitely have preferred her. "So who wants to go with me?" I asked the boys.

"Me!" they both said in unison.

That started an argument about why I didn't want to keep track of them both. A coin flip followed, along with a promise to the loser that they would get to go the next time.

Between our house and Farmington was Fruitland.
Fruitland wasn't really a town by any strict definitions. It was mostly just a name. There was no mayor or police or city limits, just some houses and a post office. Maybe our house was even part of Fruitland. Everyone I knew drove into Farmington if they wanted to shop for food or clothes or toothpaste because the only store in Fruitland was General Supply. I hadn't been there much, mostly for emergencies, like when we ran out of toilet paper.

A tractor going down the side of the road in Fruitland was pretty common, so no one paid much attention to Sam and me on our way to General Supply. Even in third gear and full throttle, it took us about twenty minutes to get there. I parked the tractor out front on the torn-up pavement next to some beaten-up pickup trucks.

When you walked into General Supply, you had to give your eyes a few seconds to adjust to all the shapes and colors. Every inch of the place from floor to ceiling held something for sale. A bell over the door rang as Sam and I moved inside. We quickly shuffled toward a dimly lit back section and began to look around.

We kept moving until we saw saddles and harnesses and then salt licks and different bags of feed. "This looks kind of like a farming section," I whispered to Sam. "I'll bet what we're looking for is around here somewhere."

Sam wasn't paying attention because he was poking at the baby chicks for sale in a big wire pen.

I walked up and down looking at various "chows" for dogs and rabbits and sheep. There were bags full of baby goat formula but nothing that looked like worm poison.

"Maybe we should ask someone," said Sam, who was following me.

I looked around nervously. "But I don't know anyone. They might think we're idiots," I whispered. I wished Amy had come.

After another few minutes of random searching, I had to agree with Sam. We moved back toward the front of the store and hid behind some shelves so I could spy on whoever worked there.

The store seemed to have two employees. One was a huge man who looked tall even though he was sitting on a stool behind a counter. He was talking loudly with a customer, and his big stomach would shake against the counter as he laughed.

The other worker looked like he was in high school, maybe three or four years older than me, although I didn't recognize him. He was trying to add up someone's purchases and kept looking nervously at the huge man and brushing his messy hair out of his face. I waited until he was done with his customer and then hurried up to him.

"Hi," I began.

"Can I help you?" he asked, looking unsure of himself.

"Do you know anything about sprays? Worm poisons you could use on apple trees?"

"Well, I don't really know too much about them." He looked over at the fat man. "I could probably show you where they are, though."

I don't know why I liked him, but I did. Maybe it was because he was more flustered and nervous than I was. Sam and I followed him toward the back of the store near the baby chicks.

"So how long have you been working here?" I asked, trying to sound friendly.

"About three weeks. After school and Saturdays. I still don't know my way around very well."

"I'm Jackson and this is Sam."

"I'm Jimmy. So here's where most of this stuff is. Do you know what kind you need?" He pointed at a group of dusty bags on one of the shelves.

"No, not really," I said, staring at them. "Do you know what kind Jess Brown uses?"

"Jess Brown?"

"He's kind of short. Wears blue bib overalls. Talks in a croaky voice."

A look of recognition crossed over Jimmy's face. "Oh yeah. He was in here a couple of days ago and bought a bunch of this, uh..."—he pointed his finger along a few of the bags—"Diazinon."

"That's what we need, then."

Jimmy grabbed one of the bags and started walking back toward the front. We followed him wordlessly.

"So will that be cash or charge?" asked Jimmy, setting the bag on the glass counter.

I hadn't thought about the fact that bug spray would cost money. I guess just finding out about the spray seemed like such a huge obstacle, I never bothered thinking about what came next.

Since I didn't have any money, I said, "Maybe I could charge it."

"Do you have an account set up already? Or maybe your parents?" Jimmy looked hopefully at me, trying his best to be helpful.

"Can you check for my dad's account? Dan Jones?"

Jimmy turned around and grabbed what looked like an old shoebox. Inside was a collection of cards with names and numbers on them. He thumbed through looking for Dan Jones while Sam and I waited nervously.

"Ah, here it is," he said, pulling the card out. "Hasn't had anything charged in a long time," he said, inspecting it. "Shall I put the Diazinon down?"

I turned to look at Sam, but he quickly turned away, trying to avoid any involvement in what I was about to do.

"How much is it?" I asked Jimmy weakly.

"Twenty dollars."

"Yeah, I guess you better put it down," I said slowly. "How often are you supposed to come in and pay that, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Jimmy starting to write. "From the looks of some of these cards, not very often."

That cheered me up a little.

"Do you have any tools that you could use to do the actual spraying?" I asked Jimmy, looking at the bag. "'Cause this is like a powder that I would pour into water and mix up, right?"

"I know we have some hand sprayers I can show you."

He led me to where a couple of the hand sprayers were sitting on a shelf. They looked to hold about two gallons of water and had a handle that you could pump to pressurize the liquid inside. There was also a little nozzle attached to a hose.

"I think people mostly use these to spray around their houses, to kill ants and things like that," Jimmy said, demonstrating how the pump worked. He let me try too.

"How many trees do you have to spray?" he asked.

"Three hundred."

"Oh, man, it'd probably take a year with one of those," he said, shaking his head. "I think most people doing that kind of job have big tanks and pumps."

I looked around the store feeling discouraged. "I guess I'll have to figure something else out," I finally said.

As we walked back toward the front, we passed the cold case holding the cans of pop. Sam motioned toward it and gave me a begging look.

"Better get one for Amy and Michael too," I said to him.

"Can we charge these four pops too?" I asked Jimmy when we got to the counter. "Oh, and we might as well fill up the tractor with gas."

"Anything else?" he asked as he wrote on the card.

I looked at the bag of poison again. "Any idea how much water to mix up with it?"

Jimmy turned to the fat man sitting on the stool.

"Mr. Sherwood, how much water should you mix with this stuff?" he called out, holding up the bag.

"One bag to about two hundred gallons," the man yelled back very loudly, eyeing me closely.

"How much should you put on a tree?" I asked Jimmy.

"How much should you put on a tree?" he called out to the man again.

"About half a gallon."

"Should be good for about four hundred trees, then," said Jimmy.

We filled up the tractor with Jimmy's help at the old gas pump outside.

"Thanks a lot," I shouted to him as we drove off with Sam sitting in the wagon to make sure the Diazinon and pops didn't fall out. "We'll be seeing you again."

I placed my hopes in there being something in Mr. Nelson's old shed that could be used for spraying. My cousins and I had taken quite a few things out of the shed already, but there were still lots of cardboard boxes and bags around and various mechanical parts scattered everywhere. I rummaged through them, not really sure what a pump would look like. My eyes kept coming back to a coil of black tubing that looked like a long garden hose. I grabbed the tubing and started to unravel it. At one end was a metal gun shaped just like a big water pistol. It had a trigger and everything. I pulled the whole contraption out of the shed to investigate.

The other end of the hose was attached to a round metal piece with a hole in the middle that then led to a long straight pipe. I laid the hose out in the driveway next to my house and tried to figure out how the thing worked. The round piece had a section that turned around inside. If it was a pump, it was hard to see how a person was supposed to turn it.

My dad arrived home from work as I was playing with the round, turning piece. He pulled up beside me and jumped out of his car.

"What's this?" he asked with an interested look on his face.

"I'm not sure. I think it could be some kind of pump and water sprayer."

He looked it over. "Where'd you get it?"

"Mr. Nelson's shed."

I could tell he was curious because he was already grabbing the gun and pulling the trigger. I knew that if I could just keep him interested, he might be able to figure it out.

"I think this part is a pump, if I only knew how it worked." I pointed toward the round piece. "I'll bet this thing can really shoot out lots of water!"

He moved over and started spinning the inner piece I had showed him. "Hmm ... uh-huh," he grunted. "Looks like you attach this to some sort of shaft that turns this around..." he mumbled to himself. He turned the piece over in his hands for a minute and then stopped. He looked up and squinted his eyes. "I wonder if that..."

All of a sudden, he got up and walked toward the other side of the house carrying the piece with him. "Drag those hoses over here," he called to me.

We pulled everything to the tractor, and he knelt behind its rear axle where we would usually attach the plow or wagon. He lifted up the round piece and slid it over a metal shaft that stuck out of the tractor.