Basket of Apples

One day a woman was carrying a basket full of apples to her sister in the next village. The path lay along the river that, not too far away, ran into the sea.

From the middle of the current, a voice hailed her. "Well met, my love!" She looked up. The voice belonged to the fellow she had promised to marry seven years ago. The morning after he fastened the coral bracelet on her wrist, his captain had called him back to ship. They sailed in the afternoon. "I'll be back in nine months. Maybe a year," he said. He wasn't.

By shading her eyes with her hand against the glare of the sun on the water, she could see that he was burnt, bearded, something stouter. She stood on shore as he rowed closer. "Have you missed me?" he said.

"I married the carpenter five years ago come Michaelmas."

The sailor threw a rope around a stump below the path. "I might have made many marriages myself, in foreign parts," he said. "There was a girl who told me she was a king's daughter. I didn't believe her, but she was beautiful." He squinted up at her standing on the bank with a basketful of apples and a kerchief on her head. "I have my own ship now, sitting in the harbor. Will you come with me?"

When they courted, his hands had rasped through her hair and left enough salt on her skin that her mother's cat came creeping in after his visits to lick clean her face and neck.

"I need to go home for a bit of money and a cloak." The woman put down her basket of apples and turned back up the path. When she looked back for a moment, she saw the sailor had sat down on the stump and was filling his pipe.

She walked away from the river, up through trees, to her own house, opened her own gate. The garden looked unkempt, since she'd not yet pulled up and burned the dead foliage after harvest. A child grubbed among the roots of the hollyhocks; she kissed it. She fished a bitter wad of nasturtiums out of the mouth of another child and kissed it too. The last child lay dreamless in the cradle at the foot of the bed. She lifted her cloak from the peg and drew out the stocking full of egg money in the drawer beneath her winter linen. From behind the house, her husband's whistling was swift and cheerful. She smiled. The tune flowed clear and crisp as the river at the bottom of the garden. By looking out the window she saw that he was at work on a bedstead, carving grapes into the headboard.

Then she returned to the river, walking quickly but not running, to where the boat and the basket of apples waited for her. The sailor reached out a hand to steady her as she stepped aboard, knocked the ashes out of his pipe and took up the oars.

The ship was large and handsome. The bay smelled clean and cold. The wind came steadily from the east. They sailed in the afternoon.

They lay beneath the deck in the dark with the sea knocking outside. In her hands, his limbs were as solid and polished as oak. "I'm glad I found you," he said. "I'm glad you came."

"Why has no one spoken to me?" she asked.

A jewel in his ear winked as he shrugged and turned to snuff the candle.

It was three weeks before she knew where they were going.

"Why are you weeping so?" he said. "Aren't you comfortable? Are you sick? Or do you miss your carpenter?"

"No," she said, but a tear fell on every stitch she made, until the cloth lay crumpled and soiled in her lap and she could sew no more.

The sailor gathered himself for sharper words, but then the ship dipped, the prow groaned as the tree does under the axe, and the roar of rock and salt wave came between them. Water spun into their shoes, gripped their hems and then knees. She looked toward the shore. It was not too far off. Fair gentle hills were quilted with orchards, close enough to see the crutched poles that kept the boughs from kissing the ground.

"What hills are those?" she asked.

"The hills of Heaven, love," he replied. "You and I shall not reach there."

He pointed behind her, to the other side. She turned. Damp air weighed heavy in her hair. The sky felt so low. It shivered like foam above her head. He took her by the wrist.

"What hills are those?" she asked.

"We're going there."

The distant hills sat so squat it seemed the overcast had pushed them down like a hand. She saw no trees, no rivers, no apples there.

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