excerpt
After Poodie made them understand that he needed to read their
lips, they looked into his face when they let their slow words out
but turned away when they joked about him. The sight of their
laughter warmed Poodie and he encouraged them with sounds that
increased their merriment. Soon, the three sat on their cots with
tears rolling down their cheeks.
They were all working, the tall, sinewy pickers from Arkansas,
the family of five from west of the mountains, the three big Thorps
and Poodie. The orchard was alive with picking and hauling. The
apples went from the bags into the boxes, and the boxes had to be
moved out. Dan Thorp took a chance that Poodie would be able to
control the horse. The pickers laughed when Poodie grunted his
commands, but the horse responded to his inflections and moved
the wagonload of boxes down the lane to the shed beyond the house.
When the harvest was done, Thorp paid the pickers and asked them
back for the next year.He gave Poodie the first twenty dollar bill he
had ever seen. Poodie laughed and carried on for half an hour. He
showed the money to everyone in the family. He showed it to the
pickers. He showed it to the horse.He hid it in his suitcase and went
down to look at the river and think about his good fortune.
Over the next few years, Poodie learned about sprays,
pollenization, storage and, to Dan Thorp’s surprise, the intricacies
of pruning and grafting. He worked alongside Dan in the orchard
and helped Ruth look after the twins. In his third year with the
Thorps, they allowed him to stay with the twins when they and
their older boy visited relatives in Seattle. He was part of the family
and he was becoming part of the town. When the pickers and
Thanksgiving had gone in 1928 and Christmas came, the Thorps
presented Poodie with a wagon that Dan found in a trash heap and
spent evenings rebuilding and painting. It was half again bigger
than the twins’ wagon, red with yellow wheels, fitted with wooden
stakes. Poodie spent Christmas afternoon pulling it up and down
the lane through the snow, into the horse shed, through the storage
barn, around the house. He gave the Thorps rides in the lane,
the adults one at a time, the children all together.
Hellenic Canadian Literature 