APPLE PICKING

[croatia trip]
The fog stretched far, dense across every field and the one long dirt road. From where we stood, I could barely see the plain white spire of the church just at the crook of the road, beyond the row of floating houses. The air was a moist wooly cloak filling our lungs with wispy wetness, slowly making little drops on our noses and hair.

I peered sharp-eyed straight down the newly planted orchard row. Walnuts.

My hands were already blistered from the thick wooden handle of the spade. I had jabbed it into the black earth with much gusto, exhilarated by good, hard work.

Walnuts. Those were the new trees. But the oldest in the middle was an apple, heavy with mostly rotting fruit, fermenting with the hazy smell of those that had already fallen in the tall grass around its trunk.

We found a tin bucket and started hucking fallen apples at the good ones still on the tree. (A fresh snack to go with our morning tea time.) I accidently stuck my thumb in a soft spot, brown juice running down my thumb. The smell was strong and sweet.

Huck! Missed. Huck! Already on the second try, two had been hit and had fallen with swift thuds. Huck--Thwack! More apple pellets falling falling falling.

Soon my hands were sticky; me shaking them in the cold air, running round and round the tree picking up the spotty yellow and red-tinged apples. We'd churned up the dirt and mushy apples below with all our squirrel-scampering that the air was a thick sphere, we in its midst, all dripping honeylike with fermented apples and wet grass.