Ice on the Valencia

The ice on the orange leaves had the texture of window glass, thin and sharp enough to cut a man's thumb if he ran it along the margin. Arthur walked between the rows of Valencias, his boots crunching on the frozen sand of Lake County, where the hills were supposed to protect the fruit from the north winds. The air was five below freezing, a rare, dry cold that had come down from Georgia during the night and killed every hibiscus in his garden. He reached up to pluck an orange, its skin hard and cold as a billiard ball, its inside probably a block of yellow ice.

He took Ames, his old red setter, who kept his nose close to the frozen ruts where the tractor had passed the day before. The heaters were still smoking in the lower groves, their iron bellies glowing a dull, angry red under the dark green canopy. Arthur had spent three thousand dollars on fuel oil that week, but the wind had been too strong, blowing the warm air out over the highway before it could settle around the trunks. He knew the bank would call him by Tuesday, their voices polite and flat, like the voices of people who had never smelled orange blossoms.

He sat on the tailgate of his truck, his fingers too stiff to light his pipe, watching the sun rise like a cold white plate over the lake. His father had lost half the grove in the freeze of eighty-nine, but he had stayed, replanting the dead wood with sour orange rootstock that had taken ten years to bear. Arthur looked at the green leaves around him, their glossy skins already turning grey and limp as the sun began to melt the ice, and realized that the earth here never truly forgot its winter, no matter how many palms they planted along the road.