Free September Song by William Humphrey Page B

tenements, abuzz inside and with gossipy gatherings on the stoops. Now they stood empty, deserted. He had advertised them for sale but had found no buyer, another sign of the disappearance of orchardmen—a vanishing species. Their source of livelihood gone, the bees had left in search of another. They would have to adapt themselves to strange nectars, though it was to be doubted that the clearing of the land hereabouts would leave blossoms of any sort for years to come.
    In the center of the cemetery stood a lone apple tree. Though he himself had planted it, it was old now, and time had thinned its blossoms as it had his hair. Its branches overhung several closely spaced graves. He had pruned the tree, sprayed it; he had not picked it. Its fruit had been allowed to fall—an annual offering to those who rested below. Golden Delicious they were, and on the ground they were a shower of gold. He called it “the family tree.” With him gone, no one would tend it anymore and its fruit would grow cankered and gnarled, for with him the Bennett line came to its end. It seemed to him more than ever fitting that on his and Molly’s tombstone the surname should have been left off, for they were not passing it on. Beneath stones bearing their married names their daughters would lie dispersed among their husbands’ family plots.
    With no sons that was bound to happen. Though it was painful, he accepted that. It did not mean that the world, his world, had come to an end. He was old enough to have known varieties of apples that were now extinct. The Rock Pippin, the Repka Malenka, the Buckingham—the list was a long one. They had been hybridized with other kinds and in the marriage their names were changed. But their offspring were still apples. With him not just the name but the life that the name had stood for was dying out.
    He had not bred true to type, and his failure made him feel beholden to these, his and his daughters’ ancestors. He did not regret having had daughters but he could not help regretting having had the daughters he had. He blamed each for the dereliction of all, particularly Janet, the one given the opportunity to redeem the others and make herself—as she had been until then—the apple of his eye. A sense not of the impermanence of life but of his long lineage, of his deep-delving roots in this consecrated earth, was what he had always felt when straying among these graves. Now he would come here no more until he came forever.
    â€œSpeak now, or forevermore hold your peace.”
    The Wedding March had been rendered on the wheezy old parlor organ, pedal-power supplied by the undertaker, while the bride descended the stairs on her father’s arm. Now facing the preacher, beside the groom, stood his Best Man, at the bride’s side her father, the preacher’s father-in-law. Seated on chairs and on the sofa were the wedding party: the bride’s mother, her sisters, the parents of the groom, and Pete Jeffers. He had been invited to stay on in the house while looking for a new job. Farther to the north, out of commuting distance, there were still working orchards, and he had made several trips up there. He had found no opening. He was here now as a wedding guest against his will, and it showed in his illness-at-ease.
    â€œBut, Seth, it’s a family affair,” he protested.
    â€œYou’re family. Or might have been. You had my blessing.”
    He was determined that Pete be present both as a punishment to him for having been so unenterprising and as the embodiment of his own disappointment. But though he was demanding a favor of Pete, and a painful one at that, he had not ingratiated himself when, after a second tumbler of it, the hundred-proof homemade applejack began to talk: “It’s all your fault.”
    â€œSeth, you can lead a horse to water—”
    â€œLead a horse to water! You never even got a halter on her. How many nights did I take