While Liz liked to lie in bed and read after she woke up, I always wanted to get up and get cracking and I went downstairs for breakfast. Uncle Tinsley was in the ballroom, nursing a cup of coffee and staring out the French doors. “I hadn’t realized how tall the grass has gotten,” he said. “I do believe it’s time to mow.”
After breakfast, I went with Uncle Tinsley up to the equipment shed. Inside was an old-timey red tractor with FARMALL on the side, a little side step up to the seat, and an empty paint can over the exhaust pipe that, Uncle Tinsley explained, kept out the critters. The tractor coughed when he turned the engine over, but then it fired right up, a big belch of black smoke coming out from under the paint can. Uncle Tinsley backed it up to his pull-behind mower, a big green contraption, and I helped him attach the mower to the rear of the tractor, getting grease all over my hands and under my fingernails.
While Uncle Tinsley mowed, I used a shovel and rake to clear the leaves from the koi pond. I discovered overgrown brick paths running between the old flower beds, and I started pulling the weeds off them. It was hard work—the wet leaves were heavier than you’d think, and the weeds were itchy—but by the end of the morning, I had cleared out the pond and most of the brick around it. The flower beds, however, still had a ways to go before they won any new prizes. Uncle Tinsley motioned me over. “Let’s see if we can get us some peaches for lunch,” he said.
He hoisted me up onto the tractor’s little side step, explaining that you really weren’t supposed to do this but every farm kid did it anyway, and with me standing on the step and hanging on for dear life, we drove past the barn, up the hill to the orchard, the old Farmall shaking so much it made my teeth rattle and my eyeballs jiggle.
The apples and pears were too green, Uncle Tinsley said, they’d be ripe in August and September. But he had some early peaches that were ready to eat. They were old varieties, bred centuries ago for the climate in this particular county, and they tasted nothing like the mealy Styrofoam that passed for fruit in your modern supermarkets.
There was fruit on the ground under the peach trees, and bees, wasps, and butterflies were swarming around, feasting on it. Uncle Tinsley pulled a peach down and passed it to me. It was small and red, covered with fuzz, and warm from the sun. That peach was so juicy that when I bit into it, I felt like it almost burst in my mouth. I wolfed it down, all that juice leaving my chin and fingers sticky.
“Dang,” I said.
“Now, that’s a peach,” Uncle Tinsley said. “A Holladay peach.”
We brought back a paper bag full of peaches. They were so irresistible that Liz and I ate them all that afternoon, and the next morning, I went back up to the orchard for more.
The peach trees were behind the apples, and as I approached, I saw the branches of one swaying back and forth. When I got closer, I realized that someone was behind the tree, a guy, and he was filling a bag with peaches just as fast as he could.
“Hey!” I shouted. “What are you doing?”
The guy, who was about my age, looked at me. We stared at each other for a moment. He had longish brown hair that flopped in his face and eyes as dark as coffee. He was shirtless, and his sunbaked skin was streaked with sweat and grime, like he ran around half-wild. He held a peach in one hand, and I saw that part of a finger was missing.
“What are you doing?” I shouted again. “Those are our peaches.”
The boy suddenly turned and ran, the bag in one hand, arms and legs pumping like a sprinter’s.
“Stop!” I shouted. “Thief!”
I ran after him for a few steps, but he was fast and had a good head start, and I knew I couldn’t catch him. I was so mad at that dirty kid for stealing our delicious peaches that I picked one up and threw it after him. “Peach thief!”
I headed back to the house. Uncle Tinsley was in the library, working on his geology papers. I fully expected him to share my outrage over the low-down scoundrel stealing our peaches. Instead, he smiled and started asking me questions. What did he look like? How tall was he? Did I happen to notice if he was missing part of a finger?
“He sure was,” I said. “Probably got it chopped off for stealing.”
“That’s Joe Wyatt,” Uncle Tinsley said. “He’s your father’s family. His father was your father’s brother. He’s your cousin.”
I was so stunned, I sat down on the floor.
“And I don’t mind him taking a few peaches,” he added.
Mom didn’t talk much about either Liz’s dad or my dad. All she’d told us was that she had met Liz’s dad, Shelton Stewart, while in college in Richmond, and after a whirlwind romance, they got married in the most lavish wedding Byler had seen in a generation. Mom became pregnant almost immediately, and it didn’t take long for her to discover that Shelton Stewart was a dishonest parasite. He’d come from an old South Carolina family, but their money was gone, and he expected Mom’s family to support them while he spent his days playing golf and shooting grouse. Her father made it clear that wasn’t going to happen, and so, shortly after Liz was born, Shelton Stewart walked out on Mom, and she and Liz never saw him again.