UNDER THE APRICOT TREE

Uncle Len’s empty left sleeve was always tucked into his overall pocket. Once in a while, to tease the children, he would pull out the sleeve that was empty up to the shoulder and ask them if they could do that.

Jenny liked Uncle Len. He looked something like Daddy, only he talked slower. He always had a twinkle in his eyes. He never complained of the loss of his arm. Folks that knew him hardly thought of it any more. It had happened about ten years ago. During an exchange of labor, his hand and sleeve had been caught in a moving chain on a piece of machinery and his entire arm was torn off at the shoulder before they could stop the machine or realized what had happened.

“Mother, what did they do with Uncle Len’s arm?” Jenny suddenly asked. He had been there that morning. It was a delicate subject, but Mother decided she’d better answer.

“They put it in a metal box and buried it under the apricot tree south of the potato patch.”

“Why did they do that?”

“Well, they had to do something with it. They didn’t want to just leave it lying around for the chickens to peck at. A person’s arm is an important part of him. It seemed like the only decent thing to do. They buried it on our place because we own the land and will be here for a long time.”

Jenny went out to the apricot tree. She thought of the arm in its box and wondered how it must have looked. Had it been all bloody? Had they buried it in a sleeve, or bare? Was the hand open or closed.? Maybe someone said a prayer over the arm. When Uncle Len went to Heaven, would he get his arm back? There was a low spot under the apricot tree where someone might have dug a hole one time. Who would have dug the hole? Daddy? One of her Uncles? One of the neighbors? Jenny looked at the dying tree. She remembered that long ago they had eaten apricots from it. Now the drought had made all but one of the branches die. They were gray and bare. Golden sap had oozed and hardened in a low fork. She pulled off some little beads of it. Crack! She snapped off a dead branch and wondered why things had to die.