The juice ran down his chin. It was sharp, sweet, tannic, alive. It tasted like the rain. It tasted like the drought that came before it. It tasted like everything the tree had stored up in its dark, patient roots.
When it stopped, Elias walked outside and stopped breathing. autumn falls round and robust
He thought of the poets and smiled. They had it backwards. Autumn wasn’t the death of the year. The juice ran down his chin
He spent the rest of that week harvesting like a man possessed. He didn’t pick the apples gently—he shook the branches and let them fall in booming drifts. He hauled pumpkins two at a time, staggering under their weight, laughing like a fool. He made pies with crusts so thick they could have been roof shingles. He pressed cider until the press groaned. He invited neighbors he hadn’t spoken to in years, and they came with their own round, robust offerings: jars of pickled beets, loaves of bread like golden cannonballs, a stew that simmered for two days and tasted like the earth’s own marrow. It tasted like the drought that came before it
And then, with a soft, final thump , the last apple fell from the last tree.