The highway into town was strangely barren, and then she remembered it was Saturday and quite early for travelers. In the three mile walk they saw only one vehicle, a truck, most likely headed to California, loaded with pears. She watched the truck pass with its neat wooden crates and wished for a pot hole that would kick one of those treasure boxes loose and rain golden pears down into her lap.
They entered the town just as the shop keepers were arriving. Some glanced warily at the man with the mule, and the girl in the oversized coat. Others smiled and offered a cheery, “Good morning!” She smelled bread from the bakery and took a deep draw, hoping to taste it on her tongue. As they passed the café she saw a man and a woman eating hot dishes and she wished her father would slow in hopes that they might see the hungry girl and invite her in. There was a Model A pickup parked by the square and she studied it to see if it was the one her father sold. As they headed past the feed store she noticed the Harry and David truck parked with a young man in leather boots and tweed pants, re-working the straps of the canvas tarp. As they passed, the man smiled and addressed the girl, “Well, good morning young lady.” He reached over and scratched the mule’s ears.
“Good morning.” She said quietly.
“I used to ride a mule like this when I was your age.” He stretched out his other hand and began rubbing both ears. The mule’s eyes went half shut in pleasure. “You must feel like a princess riding up there like that.” The young man winked at the father. The girl looked down, uncertain how to respond. “Well I have a royal gift for a young princess like you.” The young man reached under the tarp and pulled out a golden pear, one of the Royal Rivieras her father used to pick when he worked in the orchards. She looked at her father to see if he approved. He nodded, and she quickly snatched the pear from the young man’s hand and hid it under her jacket.
“Thank the man.” Her father whispered. Without looking up she turned and said, “Thank you.” The young man leaned in close. “Certainly, young lady. Now you let that mule have the core when you’re finished. Even mules need a treat now and then.” The young man patted the mule’s head, adjusted his suspenders, tipped his hat to her father, then jumped into the cab and started away.
They walked behind the store fronts and her father tied the mule strap to a young alder. The mule turned from the girl and began to forage among a cluster of choke cherries. The father hoisted the girl to the ground, took the pear from her hand, and dropped it into his jacket pocket. “We’ll save that for later,” he told her. She felt hot tears gathering from the loss, but her father noticed and quickly explained. “Hold on darling. I’m going to get you something else for breakfast. We’ll have that pear for dessert. Now you wait right here.”
The father walked across the alley and tapped gently on the back door of the bakery. A square headed man in a white apron opened the door. Her father spoke in a low voice. The man looked at the father, looked over at the girl, then left the door open and disappeared into the store. A minute later he returned smiling with a greased paper bag, rolled tight at the top. Her father took the bag with two hands, made sounds of appreciation, tipped his hat, and then walked across the dirt alley to the girl waiting by the mule.
The father knelt by his daughter, opened the bag, and looked inside. “Now let’s see,” he said pondering the contents, “Oh yes.” He reached inside and took out a round bun with slice of sugared apple baked right into the top. “Try this one.” The girl couldn’t believe her eyes. She hadn’t had such a pastry since her mother had disappeared. She took the sugared bun and without thinking, licked the crystal topping, which made her father laugh. The girl looked up startled; she hadn’t seen her father laugh in a long time. The girl smiled and licked the bun again. “Gracie, you are your mother’s daughter. That’s for sure.”
Her father took out two bread rolls and dropped them in the large overcoat pocket beside the pear. He rolled up the remaining contents of the paper bag and tucked them into the mule pack. “Come on, Gracie. Let’s walk the park.” She pulled her arms from the sleeves and wrapped her mother’s coat around her shoulders. She looked and noticed the hem hung below her knees. She kept one hand by her chest holding the edges of the jacket at her neckline while her other hand held the apple pastry safe within. The father reached down and took an empty coat sleeve and they crossed the road toward the city park. They stepped the damp wide lawn full of tiny yellow dandelions and headed toward a bench made of river rock at the edge of a duck pond. She looked across the mirrored water and noticed a cluster of birds hunkered down beneath a Japanese maple, planted like a giant’s delicate umbrella.
“What are we doing, Daddy?” the girl asked, her mouth full of warm apple filling. “We’re going to see the bear,” he replied while taking a roll from his pocket and holding up to his nose. The girl looked up. She had overheard kids at school talking about a captured bear, but she never knew it was real. She looked around to see if there was a bear walking around the town. “When your mother and I first came to Oregon, before you were born, we stopped and walked this park. We sat at this pond and fed crusts to the ducks. We walked and talked the whole day.”
Gracie never heard her father speak of her mother. Even when she asked he just shook his head and stayed quiet. She wanted to hear more, but didn’t know if he’d quit talking. “Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“Can we do everything you and mother did that day?” He stopped and examined her face. Grace noticed his eyes were holding tears. “Yes dear. Yes. That’s exactly what we’re going to do.” He turned and pointed at a bench by the pond. “We’ll start there. That bench. That’s where we had lunch and fed ducks.” They walked to the edge of the pond and sat on a bench made of river rock. Gracie squinted her eyes and tried to see back in time. She tried to see her mother and father sitting on this same bench and wondered what they looked like. Did they smile? Were they laughing? Did they sit close, or at a distance? She tried to concentrate, but she could hardly remember what her mother looked like. They sat down and the ducks took notice and paddled over.
“Daddy?”
“Yes.”
“What did you and mother talk about when you ‘talked the whole day?’” Her father broke off a piece of his roll and threw it in the water, then handed a small piece to Gracie. The ducks quickly congregated around the floating bread and soon they were quacking and snapping at one another. Gracie didn’t want to throw her piece to the ducks. She wanted to eat it. Her father could see what she was thinking, reached into his pocket, and took out a braided roll and placed it in her lap. Gracie smiled and then threw her little piece at a brown-speckled female floating off to the side of the quacking males.
“Let’s see. We talked about a lot of things. We talked about our new life here. We talked about growing peaches and building a house. Mostly, we talked about you.”
“You talked about me?” Gracie could feel her chest beating warm and fast. She wanted to hear her mother’s words. “Yes. Your mother was carrying you, of course we didn’t know it was you, but we both were hoping for a girl. We talked about names and decided if you were a girl we’d name you Gracie, after my mother. We tried to imagine what you’d look like, what color of hair, what kind of eyes…you know, that sort of thing.” Gracie sat still. She wanted him to keep talking. She had forgotten about the cold, she was completely wrapped in her father’s words. Her mother had sat on this very bench and thought of her! Now here she was doing the same thing in reverse, trying to imagine her mother—her voice, her hair, her smell.
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