Her father muttered:
“Please stop saying that.”
Her younger brother climbed the fence.
“Are we rich?”
Everyone said no simultaneously.
The brother looked disappointed.
The older farmer laughed.
“Finally, something we agree on.”
By dark, they had cleared only enough to expose thirty-one trees.
The girl marked each with survey tape.
Red for apparently dead.
Yellow uncertain.
Blue alive.
She ran out of blue tape first.
That felt encouraging.
The next morning, she called the county extension office.
The extension agent thought she was exaggerating.
“How many acres?”
“Fifty total.”
“And the trees are beneath kudzu?”
“Yes.”
“How old?”
“I don't know.”
“What varieties?”
“I don't know.”
“Are you sure they're fruit trees?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Graft unions.”
A pause.
“You're nineteen?”
The girl closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
“I'm not saying—”
“You are.”
The agent laughed apologetically.
“Can you send photographs?”
She did.
An hour later, the agent called back.
The tone had changed.
“Don't clear anything else yet.”
The girl looked toward the machete in her hand.
“Why?”
“I forwarded the pictures to our horticulture specialist.”
“And?”
“She wants to come.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
The specialist arrived with three people.
Not one.
That was the first sign something unusual might be happening.
The horticulture specialist was a white American woman in her fifties wearing field pants, boots, a canvas hat, and the expression of someone who had spent her career preventing enthusiastic landowners from murdering trees through kindness.
She stepped out of the university vehicle.
Looked at the kudzu.
Looked at the nineteen-year-old.
Then asked:
“You bought this?”
“Yes.”
“For three dollars?”
The girl sighed.
“Apparently that detail is legally required every time someone visits.”
The specialist laughed.
“Fair.”
The others were a graduate student, an orchard historian, and a county extension agent.
The older farmer stood nearby pretending he was not interested.
Nobody believed him.
They entered the cleared section.
The specialist examined the first graft union.
Then the second.
She checked bark.
Buds.
Branch structure.
Took a small sample from a living shoot.
The orchard historian focused on tags.
At the fourth tree, he stopped.
“Where did you find this?”
“Nailed there.”
“Any more?”
“Seven so far.”
He photographed it.
The farm girl watched.
“What does it mean?”
“Nursery code.”
“For what?”
“Possibly variety.”
“Possibly rootstock.”
“Possibly customer lot.”
“Can you tell?”
“Not yet.”
At tree seventeen, the graduate student found a fruit spur.
At tree twenty-one, a second metal tag.
At tree twenty-eight, a faded strip of painted wood partly buried in leaf mold.
The orchard historian dug carefully.
A sign.
Only fragments of lettering remained.
He cleaned it.
Then sat back on his heels.
“What?”
The girl asked.
He looked up.
“Do you know what a preservation orchard is?”
“No.”