Friday morning dawns bright and crisp. The perfect weather to set up the Autumn Apple festival. The small town has already been transformed. Main Street is lined with hay bales and gourd displays. Each small business, from the Houseplant Haven to the animal clinic to even the co-op, has a wooden booth set up on the sidewalk.
The festival includes apple bobbing, apple artwork, apple-themed crafts for sale. The tai chi group has developed a routine in honor of the apple harvest. Some of the elderly women in town embroidered apple blossoms on beautiful silk pillowcases. I make a mental note to buy a set, imagining how they’ll feel against my cheek while I’m rolling around in my bed with Hunter.
Despite our nose dive into the insatiable phase of our relationship, I feel comfortable in my life with him. Which is not to say I feel like I’m settling.
I spoke with my parents earlier in the week. They admitted that things have been fine in the business—they hired someone else to work in the office, and she’s doing a fine job. They still seem to think I’m going to come home and patch things up with Jack, who is evidently now working nights as a security guard at the bank.
I asked them not to call me again for awhile. I need some time to figure out how to mend a relationship with a family who simply will not see that I’ve made a positive change in my life. That seems to be the beauty of Oak Creek. People are supported in their desires to change…unless it involves archaic alcohol laws.
Looking around the festival, at all the volunteers looking to me for direction and helping to fold the brochures and festival programs that I created, I feel pride in what I’ve accomplished and sadness that my own family won’t know or see that I can do big things.
Our staging ground for setup is at Sara’s law office, which is in the same building as Archer Crawford’s CPA office. The parking lot is crawling with Crawfords hauling crates of apples, boxes of wrist bands. I hear Indigo explaining sperm donation to a fascinated Archer. “It’s gonna come in a giant tank,” Indigo says. “They ship it on dry ice. Sara’s going to squirt it in me at our house.”
“Now how does that work,” he says, counting out a stack of aprons for the different shifts of Autumn Apple staffers. “Is it really a turkey baster situation?”
Indigo laughs. “More like a syringe, silly.” I clear my throat. “Abigail! Yay! Now we can really get going.” Indigo rushes over to me with marching orders. Soon all thoughts of my family drama slip away and I work up a sweat as we all set up the booths.
After lunch I start checking my watch, counting down the minutes until Hunter gets here to help. I’m eager for his assistance, but mostly I just miss him. It feels strange since we share a roof and have been spending all our time together.
But he’s so supportive and, when he remembers to say his thoughts out loud, he says the most wonderful, earnest things about what he enjoys about my brain, my body, and the way I massage his balls.
I smile, flushing, as I remember his intense stare this morning, when he said, “Abigail, I never knew how good it would feel for someone to pinch my epididymus.”
My smile gives way to growing anxiety when Hunter is not here by 4. I know his students finished their midterm exam an hour before, and he was meant to help hoist the heavy kegs of hard cider from the delivery truck.
“Where’s my damn brother,” Diana hollers, grunting under the weight of one of the kegs.
“He’s not answering his phone,” I admit, adding embarrassment to my list of emotions simmering to the surface the longer he goes without contacting us. The sting of spoiled expectations blends with my concern for where he could be. I hate this feeling of not knowing, of wondering whether I should worry or be irritated that he just forgot.
“Fuck it,” Diana says. She strips off her sweater and powers through the unloading on her own. Her muscles flex as she rage-lifts enough alcohol for an entire town for tomorrow’s festival. I try to help her, but even after months working out with Hunter, I’m not strong enough to do more than topple a keg to its side. “Don’t roll it, Abigail. It’ll explode.”
I sink onto a hay bale feeling dejected while Diana finishes. “Listen,” she says, guzzling the water bottle I hand her. It’s after dark by now and my teeth chatter, but Diana stands in the glow of the twinkle lights, sweating. “My brother always does this shit. He gets focused on his microscope and the rest of the world melts away. I don’t think it’s on purpose, but I also don’t think he’s going to change.” She tosses the empty bottle in the recycling bin by the front of the booth and pats me on the shoulder. “I’m going home to shower. Get some rest. We’re going to sling a lot of apples tomorrow, girl.”
After Diana leaves, I’m alone at the cider booth. The rest of the crew mills around nearby, and every now and then Sara gestures thumbs up, thumbs down, questioning whether I’m ok over here. I flash her a thumb sideways and sit down to consult my checklist. I think we got everything ready. I should feel proud of the work I did, of the way this small town embraced me into the fold and we all collaborated to make something that looks like a storybook. Everything is sparkling with twinkle lights. The scents of cinnamon and cloves permeate the air from the pie booths and slow cookers full of fresh apple cider, set to simmer overnight for the morning crowd.
Tomorrow is going to be amazing. Despite Hunter Crawford, I think, angrily.
No longer able to process my disappointment in public, I start toward home, letting the tears well up and looking forward to locking myself inside to sob.
Diana is right—I knew this about him. And yet, here I am, deeply upset and rattled by something my new boyfriend did. Or didn’t do. I can’t even concentrate at this point.
I should never have gotten so intimate with Hunter so quickly. I should have worked harder to take things slowly, kept it light so I wasn’t this gutted when he stood me up. Then I remind myself that he stood up the whole town and his family. Diana said he does this all the time. Maybe accepting Hunter as a flake is part of accepting him.
Just as I’m wrestling with all these thoughts, I see Hunter and his friend Moorely approaching. And they’re each carrying a chicken.
Moorely seems out of breath and flustered, holding his chicken upside-down by its feet as it flaps and squawks. “Abigail,” he huffs. “Here.” He thrusts the bird into my arms and storms off toward Archer, shouting, “Oy! Other-Crawford! Tell me you’ve got something over in that dunk tank to scrub chicken shit off my trainers.”
I look down at the bird in my arms, who has calmed down now that I’m holding her more like a baby, cradled in one arm. She looks up at me as if she’s confused, too.
When I meet Hunter’s eyes, I can’t help myself. I start crying, whether from relief or anger or confusion, I can’t tell. “I’m really angry at you, Hunter!” I sniff, unable to wipe away my tears while I’m holding the bird.
“Abigail, I owe you an apology,” he says, petting the bird tucked under his arm. Both chickens are speckled, with soft black and white feathers and a bright red comb. Hunter nods his chin in the direction of my hen. “I brought these as a symbol of my commitment to do better.”
“I don’t understand, Hunter. Where did you get chickens?”
“Well, I took them from my father,” he says, shifting his weight and passing the chicken to the other side. “Look, can we walk home and I promise to explain?”
Only because I am so taken aback by the presence of a pair of chickens do I let him convince me to walk with him along the creek.
When we reach a muddy patch on the bank he stoops and puts his bird down, gesturing that I should do so, too. The girls begin pecking around in the mud, extracting plump worms and happily slurping them down in the moonlight. “I tend to do things like this,” Hunter says. “I get absorbed in my work and then I let people down.”
“So I see.” I nudge a pebble with my toe until one of the hens comes and pecks at it, evidently thinking it’s a beetle. “I don’t want to be someone’s second priority, Hunter. I mean, you didn’t even call.”
“Tonight I had actually finished my work when Moorely showed up for a drink, and because I’m not in the practice of acting like part of a team, I went with him.” I open my mouth to interject something angry, but he continues. “But I want to do better, Abigail. That’s the difference you’ve made in my life. You make me want to improve this aspect of myself. I am committing to do better. This is my vow.”
“Hunter, I’m sorry, but I just don’t see what stealing your father’s chickens has to do with a commitment to anything.” I feel myself growing more angry the more he talks about chatting with his British buddy while Diana single-handedly unloaded a truck of heavy kegs.
“I’m getting there.” He sighs. “This is new to me—expressing my feelings and…caring whether another person understands my motivations.” I see him swallow, illuminated by the moon. “I thought having a pet could help me. If there’s always a living being at home who requires my care, I can’t let my own work overpower my thoughts. And I thought of a chicken because, well, you have to be there every day to collect the eggs or they get broody.”
Hunter steps closer to me. “Broody?”
He nods. “These are my chickens, Abigail. I don’t want you to think I’ll just get absent-minded and leave you with additional work. This is my commitment to begin living a life that considers others.” He raises his eyebrows as he extends his arms, asking silent permission to touch me. I step into his embrace and he pulls me tight, whispering into my ear that he wants to gather eggs for me every morning, and be present to make sure the birds have water each night before bed.
“My dad told me it was ok to take them,” he murmurs. “He has plenty.”