by James Callen
Among the vacant land behind Shangri-La, the trailer park where I grew up, an
old orchard broke the surface of relentless weeds. Unpruned, the trees grew tall,
unruly, and became overburdened with fruit. There were apples, pears, and cherries,
and so many citrus that the unshorn grass was often weighed down with fallen lemons
and fist-sized oranges that had gone patina with mold. But it was the plums that were
the best, that seemed to proliferate without bounds, weighing down the limbs that
bore them all the way to the ground. They came in all colors --purple, pink, red, and
yellow-- one variety ready to eat while the next one began to ripen. They hovered in
the hot air, sweet temptations as numerous as the stars, a bounty that lasted from early
summer through to mid-autumn.
Every Christmas, into the new year, well past Valentine’s Day, the Superbowl,
and beyond my birthday in early March, for many months the trees in the orchard
looked dead, skeletal and somber. I’d receive a postcard from Dad, a fifty dollar bill,
and I’d know: the orchard would soon come back to life. My mother would unearth
the plums that she plucked in the autumn, the flesh she had cut free of their stones,
bagged and stored in our tiny freezer with startling efficiency. Later, among the snow,
she’d store them outside in a cooler, where they never thawed.
Throughout the winter, it was cold and dark --this is the way of the world, and as
such, was expected. But there was warmth in our little trailer: cheap, scented candles
too near to the curtains; the amber glow of each inward breath on Virginia Slims;
frequent baking. I’d burn the roof of my mouth on plum pie or plum muffins,
prodding the scorched flap of skin with my tongue. From Halloween to April Fool’s
Day, our trailer smelled of stone fruit as much as cigarettes, an odd combination that
had become the scent of my childhood.
Month after month, the orchard behind Shangri-La remained barren, twisted and
ugly, like giant spider husks turned over on their backs. And yet, the end of each
winter was heralded --celebrated it seemed-- by the copious white blossoms, thick as
fresh, wet snow on the tangle of black branches. An orchard, I discovered, more than
any printed calendar, reflects the seasons, tells you what time of year it is. In mid-
spring, there came leaves, virgin green, bursting from compact buds, and not long
after that, a summer bounty: fruits as dark and ripe as bruises.
My mother collected men like windfall stone fruit, one after the next, many
shapes and colors. Some were sweet, others sour, and some were fully rotten, through
to the pit. Nothing is private in a trailer, so I knew which men could make her laugh,
make her scream, make her shout out Yes in rhythm with the rusty springboard. In the
end, they’d disappear --by request, by demand, or by threat. Sometimes they’d wander
off of their own volition, but more often than not, they were tossed aside like spoiled
fruit, like used up cigarettes. “It’s not their fault,” she’d tell me, no matter how mean
or rough her partners might have treated her. “No man can fill the void,” she’d say,
then heat up the oven, fetching more plums from the freezer.
My mother was never happy, which I assumed throughout my youth, and later,
when I was almost an adult, confirmed when she told me so, when she informed me
that she loved me but that it wasn’t enough to save her, that she required something
life could not provide. Though I see it now, how miserable my mother was, I am
certain that her smiles each winter were real, that in isolated seasons she was prolific
with joy.
When the trailer burned to a crisp, blackened like plum muffins left in the oven
far too long, the coroner said Mother laid on her bed without a struggle, that she bled
out before she felt the fire. I wondered if spring would bring her back, like a white
blossom followed by a bud, a ripe, juicy plum, and, much later, a molten pie that was
pleasure and pain in one.
An orchard has many seasons, each tree its sequence of life following a
dormancy masked as death. People may endure many winters, they may outlive the
trees in their orchard, but they only have one long season for themselves. It comes and
goes, and doesn't return.
Long after my mother left, after the husk of our home was hauled away, the smell of plums and cigarettes pervaded the trailer park. The trees flowered and bore more fruit, but the baking was never the same. Shangri-La had flowers, pies, smiles, many apples, citrus, and so many plums. It was anything but paradise, but it did have its charms, even if they did not last.
James Callan is the author of the novel A Transcendental Habit (Queer Space, 2023). His fiction has appeared in Bridge Eight, BULL, Carte Blanche, Hawaii Pacific Review, Mystery Tribune, and elsewhere. He lives on the Kāpiti Coast, Aotearoa New Zealand.Find him at jamescallanauthor.com
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