Red Apple [short story]

Literary fiction about orchards and common good.

A dirt road runs through the orchard along its tidy rows. The blooms of the apple trees last a long time, and Dubinin - the old landowner - takes long walks with his wife in the spring time.

Then their kids join in. Under a parasol with their books they tag along in their white dresses, frolicking under the crowns of the trees in the shade.

Bloom.

Harvest.

The expectant silence of winter.

Then comes February. Interrupting the natural cycle with its icy frostbites and grim premonitions, it flashes through the minds of the peasantry, giving excitement to some, concern to some and immeasurable worry to a few.

And then there is Andreika.

The storm of the revolutionary Petrograd settles in his perpetually drunken skullbox and infests his thin yellowish face with a grin sinister and malicious.

The seeds of February give their flaming harvest in October, and Andreika gets restless. The Reds come, and he drags Dubinin out of the house with his own hands and tosses him into a horse-drawn wagon. As the cart pulls through the orchard and to the east Andreika throws a slimy ball of soil with an embedded rock right into the landowner's wife's face, slashing it bloody. She wails. Kids cry. Landowner sits pale and silent.

Andreika says, “Today we form the Committee of the Poor! Down with the exploitation of the working class! Let their capital be nationalized and expropriated - and finally do some good for the common folk.”

He was born to a solid Hrapov family - my wife Liza is his third cousin - but among the fields being lazy and drunk didn’t do him any favors. But it got him a loyal pack of boozing joint buddies - excuse me - the Committee of the Poor. So they get to work - and for the first time in their lives, they apply full effort.

Krapivin family is going east for being kulaks. They had a small well-managed plot of land and used to employ several hired laborers. Ten years ago Sergey Krapivin made a grave mistake of kicking Andreika out for showing up so wasted he cut himself with a scythe. Down to Siberia they go.

Petrov family is going east now too. Maria, Prokofiy’s daughter, rejected Andreika’s advances, and suddenly his class consciousness strikes him and he remembers that Petrov owns a tavern. Miroyed is no better than a kulak. Down to Siberia goes the family of Prokofiy Petrov.

I am feeding the horses when I hear Liza’s cry. She runs from the orchard, her dress torn, and I see Andreika’s wild gaze and contorted face from behind trees. He sees me and runs away.

As I try to calm Liza down, I see Pashka - her brother. He points his finger to the orchard:

“Was it our Comrade?”

Liza nods as tears run down her cheeks.

“That does it,” Pashka dashes into his porch and pulls out the obrez he’d made after limping back from the Austrian front one leg short. I grab a shovel and we rush into the orchard, trying to reason with him. He runs fast on his peg leg and his gaze is shifting through the trunks of the trees.

We catch up with Andreika near an old tree where Dubinin used to read tales to his children.

“You can’t touch me. VChK will hang you for this,” Andreika says, panting and sweating.

Pashka spits on the ground, “I’ve seen you and your VChK in the coffin.”

“This is counterrevolutionary!"

“It is.”

“We - the new authorities - will build a better place for all workers and peasants. Think of the good for the common people!”

Pashka raises obrez and shoots Andreika in the stomach. He staggers back and sags on the roots of the apple tree and groans:

“What are you going to do now, you miserable nit? The whole village will be here in a minute.”

I say nothing. I grip my shovel harder and slice Andreika’s head open in one swing, sending him face-down, blood gushing into the soil as his body twitches in convulsions.

Nastasia - Andreika’s wife - runs towards the scene. Her left eye is swollen in a fist-size hematoma and her lip is busted. As she sees her dead husband, she stops and wails in a quiet sob.

“There’s something ungodly about all this,” she finally says.

“There was nothing godly about him in the first place. Go to your house, lock the door,” I say and start digging the hole in between trees. Nastasia leaves, murmuring under her breath:

“So unchristian."

Five years pass.

A dirt road runs through the orchard along the tidy rows of trees. I pick a heart-shaped apple full of vital crimson from the old tree and hand it to Yegorka, Nastasia’s six-years-old son. He smiles and bites into the apple as its juice runs down his dirty face.

“How is it?”

“It’s good, uncle Vanya. It’s so good.”

P.S. I have originally planned to submit it here:

https://substack.com/home/post/p-167935661

But I don’t see anything I could cut from the story to fit it under 500 words. So, here is is. Maybe I’ll submit something else to that prompt. But this story is the one I had to tell.