Sasha wakes to the smell of pretzels. It’s so near, the buttery tough skin baking, that she could be inside the oven herself, tacky dough knotting around her, expanding in hot bands against her skin amidst the roar of the convection fan. She sits up fast, writhes in her sheets.
It’s just her room, the same as ever, a fly beating itself brainless against her window. She sniffs again, and the fly throws itself at the pane. Does it smell that too? Cheesy jalapeño pretzels, plain ones covered in thick crystals of sea salt, sweet ones with cinnamon sugar wreathed through the dough. Pretzels. Pretzels. Pretzels. It couldn’t be Lil baking downstairs; she doesn’t have the patience. And pretzels only remind Sasha of one person. There’s only one person she used to split them with behind the bleachers at high school football games, fighting over the nacho cheese.
Sasha checks the time—late, obviously—and hops up. Her nose aches like she’s inhaled cayenne pepper. She’s trying to get out to the bathroom when she sneezes hard and knocks her head against the door frame. “Argh!” she screams at the house. “I am having a confusing morning!”
Lil arches an eyebrow at her when she comes downstairs, coffee in hand as she pores over some papers. “You look rough.”
Sasha stumbles past her to the door. She’s too hot, desperate for some fresh air. The pretzel smell has only intensified, taking on an interesting golden saffron edge. “I have a brain tumor and will almost definitely die,” she announces piteously as she goes out. “At least you’ll inherit everything just like you always wanted.”
“You’ll be remembered as a martyr,” Lil calls after her. The door slams. Sasha jogs down the road, toward town. She trips over several cracks in the pavement, ones that seem wider and deeper than ever. Her mouth waters.
Town lists around her as she walks. The old timber place that still has smoke pouring out of the stack, even if she never sees anyone go in or out. The faded POP’S BARBECUE, EST. 1946, with a single car outside. The little blue building with an angel out front that sells home furnishings that haven’t changed in thirty years. Lou’s junk shop, with a light on. Su’s grocery.
And then the bakery, a sandy building in a row of two-story shops, built more than a hundred years before, with the same bright-red door. It’s been shuttered for a long time, no one there to write specials on the chalkboard, no one to unfold the patio furniture that leans under the awning, gathering scarves of orange leaves. The sign says it’s closed, but light glows from inside. Someone is moving around in there.
Sasha tries the door; it’s open and the smell of pretzels blooms afresh in her nose, in her mouth, her throat. She steps inside. The place is almost all kitchen—three tables feel like a crowd in the tiny sitting area. The display is empty, no careful cardstock labels for the old favorites like pecan pie, or slapdash Post-It notes for spontaneous specials like bourbon fig cheesecake. But the kitchen isn’t empty.
“If you’re a robber, just know I’m broke,” a familiar voice calls from the back.
The double doors that lead to the kitchen swing open and she steps through. Her auburn hair is swept into the world’s messiest, most lopsided ponytail, and a hunk of pretzel is tucked in the thin curve of her lips like a cigarette—she was always trying to quit, back then—and flour or sugar dusts the knobby heels of her hands and wrists. When she looks up and sees Sasha, she breaks out beaming.
“There you are,” she says, her voice warm. Like Sasha is welcome. “Come on. I need your thumbs.”
Autumn. Autumn is back.
“It’s you,” Sasha says dumbly. She sways back, thudding against the wall, then transforms the fall into a lean, very nonchalant, there against the bare brick. Her head pounds. “But I thought—you’re here?”
That had been her on the bank that night, watching. No mistake—Autumn had been there.
Then how did she cross the river?
“I’m here,” she confirms, biting her bit of pretzel in two and offering her the other half. “Since someone isn’t answering my calls anymore.”
Sasha charges her, grabbing her in a hug that is too tight, too much, enough to lift her right off the ground. The bite of pretzel hits the floor and bounces away. “I missed you,” she grumbles out against Autumn’s shoulder, hoarser than ever. She feels almost angry about it.
Autumn chuckles and pats the top of her head, sprinkling her with flour. It showers in a faint cloud around them. “Come make cookies with me. I’m doing the thumbprint kind.”
Sasha lets her go. She’s still feeling unsettled, a little off balance, like Autumn’s arrival might signal an earthquake. But Sasha gives her a double thumbs-up, and they go into the kitchen, where baking sheets are laid out and waiting. Strawberry jam glows in a jar by the window, ready to fill the centers.
Autumn has sometimes said she’s never more peaceful than when she’s baking. When she ran the bakery, she’d wake in the pitch black of 3:00 a.m. to spend very quiet, lonely mornings with the ancient receiver radio’s buggy antennas tuned to jazz as she cut chilled butter into flour or whipped eggs to a stiff meringue or wrapped long logs of oatmeal cookie dough. Autumn never planned what she made each day. There used to be one kind of focaccia (unless she was very stressed, in which case there might be five), and whatever assortment of cakes, pies, tarts, and donuts struck her. Then she went to culinary school, others took over the space, but…there was no possible replacement for her, so for a while now, the bakery has just been floating in stasis, unused, waiting for her to come back. “Wash hands,” she commands with the sternness of a teddy bear. “And present your thumbs.”
Sasha washes with the bergamot soap by the sink, then holds her hands out to Autumn. “Thumbs ready.” She wants to ask her things, but the questions feel odd somehow, and so she doesn’t ask, Where were you? or How did you get back?; she asks, “How have you been, Pip?” It was an old nickname, short for Pippi Longstocking, for the braids she wore as a child.
“Not bad,” she says. “My parents are on their retirement RV trip around the country. They’re sending me polaroids from the Grand Canyon.” Sasha has always liked Autumn’s parents. They used to grow pretty decent hemp. “Maybe a little homesick. You though, I thought you’d never move back home.”
“Well, I’m just back for a little while,” Sasha reminds them both. “You missed this place?”
“Yeah. This is still my favorite oven. And my favorite sous chef.” There’s a tray of pretzels cooling on the rack. But she leads Sasha over to a pan full of cream-colored dough balls, rolled into perfect spheres. “Come on.” She snags Sasha’s arm, positioning her thumb over the cookies. “Mine are too small. My Achilles’ heel.” She presses their thumbs down gently, together. “You never returned my calls. As I mentioned.”
“You know how it is. I’m working a lot. And service is bad out here.” Sasha hadn’t gotten any of those calls. Had she? It’s true that she doesn’t have the best track record with follow-through… All her previous relationships are proof enough of that. Sasha squishes a dough ball, then another. She rests her other hand on the counter, and a tendril of russet hair tickles her cheek. “Giant thumbs are terrible at dialing numbers into telephones.”
“Fee fie fo fum. What have you been up to? Fighting with Lil?” Autumn teases.
“Constantly.” Sasha shrugs. “Also doing a bunch of odd jobs around town. I basically run the ferry service now too.” She hesitates. “Actually—I thought I saw you the other day by the river.”
Autumn’s work pauses. “You saw me?”
Sasha nods, reading the stillness. But then Autumn keeps on. “If you’re running the ferry, I should get you a jaunty captain’s hat.”
Sasha laughs. “I think that would suit me.” It feels so comfortable to be there, like they can just fall back into step again. “I’m also doing this photography project and helping Dale survey some of those old orchards west of town. It’s pretty creepy out there.”
“I used to play in those orchards.” Autumn’s smile turns a little dreamy. “Mom didn’t like it though.”
“I get it. It feels a bit…” But there are no words, only a sort of twist in the gut, which some might interpret as the wriggle of fear and Sasha chooses to call a thrill. She leans around to catch Autumn’s eye, smirking. “Want to go play out there again?”
Danger feels far away to Sasha as they wander along the train tracks toward one of the nearer properties on Dale’s list. They finished the cookies first, of course, and ate them too hot, with jam spilling onto their fingers. Autumn is a twinkle of light through lush leaves; something about her keeps Sasha’s dark thoughts at bay. It even seems like the kudzu has retreated, thin fingers only gently caressing the trees on the far side of the railroad. The sun crashes down on the rails, drawing out a scent of crushed wildflowers, rust, and, below that, an old ambition, faded from a century past. The few houses here are shotguns, small shuttered husks. The ground is a mix of hard dirt and trash, beer cans, and tires. It’s tired. The stray cats that live out here stay away from people.
“Why did we never hang around out here when we skipped school?” Sasha wonders as they pass the rotting timbers of an abandoned barn. She hoists her camera strap on her shoulder, raises the lens. “I guess we always had the tree house as an out-of-bounds hangout.” Their secret place, the tree house by the creek, cypress knees nudging out of the mud and reeds below. That had been their major repository for dark secrets.
“Yeah. I don’t know.” Autumn is kicking around what looks like an old horseshoe; Sasha snaps her picture. A little delinquent with her scuffed shoes and weathered denim jacket, she catches Sasha in the act and sticks her tongue out. “It’s…” She tilts her head into the sun. “It’s dirtier, smaller than I remember.”
They wander the railroad, an easy amble, weeds growing up through rusting bars. A faded stop sign lies dangerously close to the track. The properties they pass grow more and more dilapidated, one with a rocking chair that creaks along on its own. Any paint that ever touched these old skeletons is long gone, flaked off in the sunlight.
“Do you remember—” Autumn begins and abruptly cuts off. She frowns. Something in the tall grass startles and darts for the trees.
“You know I never remember anything. What?” Sasha nudges, watching her through the viewfinder.
“That weird little legend people used to talk about. You know.” Autumn turns with a spooky wiggle of her fingers. “About what falls out of the abandoned trees. It’s funny, I haven’t thought about this stuff in ages, but now that I’m here, it’s all flooding back to me. All these old stories I’d forgotten.”
Sasha frowns. “Lou was trying to tell me something about that on the boat. Something important. About—kids.” It’s been on her mind since then, along with a wriggling discomfort that she’s missing something, failing him.
“Yeah.” Autumn pokes along down the tracks a little further. “Some of the grannies used to talk about it. They said in the old days, some trees stopped dropping pecans, and then later, people found babies sleeping under them instead.
“Granted”—Autumn turns back—“I remember some different versions. There’s also one where the rich matriarch of an orchard wanted a child so badly, she prayed to the trees until they gave her one, but as payment, the harvests stopped and she died penniless. Sort of a cautionary be-careful-what-you-wish-for tale. But the more common story is about babies, born of otherwise barren trees. I like that version better,” she admits.
Feral, angry children lost in abandoned orchards that never bear fruit, children of the ground with no one to love them, who shiver on cold nights and grow up nursing their own bruises. To Sasha, it follows the same vein as fairy changelings and lost boys, just with added local flavor.
“Did you ever find a baby out here, Pip?” Sasha asks lightly, only it doesn’t feel light.
“I used to play with these kids that I never saw in school.” That wasn’t so strange; it wasn’t as if every kid in the surrounding area went to their school. Just…most did. Wisps of hair float around Autumn’s sharp face, river-colored eyes. She’s all points and angles in a way that really shouldn’t appear as friendly and open as she does. “I haven’t thought about that old story in years.”
They reach the property line of the old orchard on Dale’s list, and Sasha walks the boundaries, checking the old markers, taking a measurement or two the way he’d taught her. A few unharvested Pawnee pecans litter the ground, crunching under her feet in a way that makes her jump. It smells like leaf mold and damp earth, and they’re quiet.
There’s almost too much to say for small talk. She’s been home longer than she meant to be. The photo project has taken too long; Sasha hasn’t even bothered sorting through her film yet. Her last breakup is no longer raw. She’s running a little thin on funny anecdotes, her main social currency. Maybe Autumn has met new friends, better company that’s a little easier to love.
Once upon a time, Autumn never did anything Sasha didn’t hear about—and very little Sasha wasn’t there for, right at her side. Now, both of their lives are full of fresh, new pages the other hasn’t written on at all.
Sasha glances back. “How long are you staying?”
Autumn fixes her with curious eyes. “How long are you staying?”
“Oh. Well, I mean—” Sasha shifts between her feet. “I meant to leave after our birthday but then there was everything with the road and Theon and…” Which birthday?
How long has the road been closed?
They stare at one another, the great boughs creaking overhead.
“What’s that?” Autumn darts down the tracks and crouches down. When trains were more frequent, they’d blow through town like hurricanes. When the horns wailed, kids rushed up close to put copper pennies on the rails, which rattled as the locomotive blurred past. They’d traded the pennies around, warm and pressed completely flat. If a train comes now, they’ll hear it in time to move, right?
“Autumn,” Sasha calls, walking more quickly toward her. She doesn’t respond, but beckons.
Sasha follows like she’s bound on a string.
When she reaches her, Autumn’s face is pale with apprehension as she stares at the center of the tracks, where something is tied with rough, homemade twine. At first, it’s easily mistaken for an art project; three slender sticks are tied together at a point a foot high, and full colored leaves wreathe around the base. It’s almost pretty.
Except the skinned body of a squirrel hangs from it by the neck. It isn’t a sculpture, but a strange, clumsy gallows. Or an offering on a crude altar.
Numbly, Sasha snaps a photo. Its black beady eyes are still slitted enough to reflect light, and its mouth is cracked open.
“Poor thing. Who would do this?” Autumn flutters like she wants to take it down.
“Don’t touch it.” Sasha pulls her back, picturing maggots and foaming mouths. “There’s nothing you can do for it anyway.”
“Right. Yeah. Diseases.” Autumn stands and leans against Sasha’s shoulder. “I didn’t know anyone else ever came out here, except you.”
“They don’t,” Sasha admits, somewhat soothed by the weight of her there. She almost wants to slip her arm around her, to sneak her hand into the pocket of that tattered old blue jean jacket—but she doesn’t. The idea turns to vapor and dissipates with a breeze. But they still don’t move yet, or get back to the surveyor work. They just stare up at the trees together, the sour stink of decay tickling Sasha’s nose.
She’s not even quite sure what she’s staring at. High up in a wizened oak, a twitch of movement catches her eye. For a split second, a small face with blank dark eyes glares out at her from between the limbs of the tree. She blinks—and it’s gone. It’s got to be a trick of pale roundish bark and knots in the wood. Too much folklore in too quiet a place.
“Tell me next time you come out here,” Autumn says. “I want to join you.”