The Veil (SOME?!)

 

You might have heard of this through a little post about 

It's not as bad as it sounds.

IT'S WORSE. 

The smell got there first.

Apples — too many apples, the specific sweet-rot smell of fermentation that has gone past "interesting experiment" and well into "this is now a process." It came from the direction of the shed. The shed has a padlock now. The padlock is new.

I found Earl beside it, polishing something.

"Earl."

"Yes."

"There are two thousand apples in that shed."

"1,896."

"That is not better."

"It's more accurate."

I breathed in. Held it. The way you do before saying something you've rehearsed in the car.

"You cannot steal almost two thousand apples."

"Agreed."

"Good."

"That would be wrong."

"Exactly."

I felt the ground under that word. Solid. Wrong. Earl had agreed. 

This was, for once, going to be straightforward.

"Which is why," Earl said, "I obtained permission."

The ground stopped being solid.

He produced a contract. Single page. 

                        Folded once, sharp crease, 

                                            the kind of fold that's been done by someone who folds things on purpose.

I read it.

                    For "some".

Two words. Signed. Dated. A neighbour's signature, slightly shaky, the kind of signature someone gives when they're being friendly and not paying close attention to nouns.

"You took 1,896 apples."

"Leaving some."

"Four apples is not some."

"Four is some. Some is not zero. I checked."

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"And the rest?"

"Cider."

"You made cider."

"I made a thousand bottles of cider."

"And sold them."

"Yes."

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I looked at the shed. At the padlock. At the faint, unmistakable label visible through the gap in the door — neat lettering, hand-drawn, Earl's Apple Ever After — and at Earl, who was still polishing the thing in his hands, unhurried, as if none of this required his full attention because none of it was, to him, in question.

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"You can't just slap labels on bottles and declare yourself a distillery."

"A cidery."

"What?"

"Distilleries make whiskey. You make cider in a cidery."

"Earl."

"Or a press house. But that sounded a bit too Gazette."

"Do not — " I pressed two fingers to my temple. "Do not grammar your way out of Grand Theft Orchard."

"It's not grammar," Earl said. "It's terminology."

                                                    

                                                                                    "Terminology matters."

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"The labels," 

I said, deciding to try a different angle. 

"Where did you even —"

"I made them myself."

"With what?"

"The crayons."

🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎   A pause. 🍎🍏🍎🍏🍎

The specific pause of someone recalculating everything 

they thought they understood about a previous conversation.

"The Crappola — " I stopped. Started again. "The crayons I said you'd never use."

"Yes."

"Those crayons."

"You said I would never use them," Earl said. "And I did."

I opened my mouth.

"So you admit," Earl said, before she could, "that the crayons were useful."

"That is not the point."

"It's one of the points."

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There was a folder.

I had not asked for a folder. The folder arrived anyway, the way folders do around Earl — produced from somewhere, already tabbed, already in order, as though it had been sitting there the entire time waiting for someone to be wrong enough to need it.

"What is this?"

"Export documentation."

"Export —"

"For the cider."

I looked at the forms. Looked at the stamps. Looked at the box, near the bottom, marked Approved, in a font that suggested an actual authority had actually approved it.

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"Why," I said, very carefully, "did you look up export law?"

                                              "Unrelated."

                                                                                    "Earl."

                                                                                                            "Hypothetically."

"The paperwork is already approved."

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I sat down.

Not dramatically. Just — sat, on the nearest available surface, which happened to be an upturned crate that she suspected had, at some point recently, also contained apples.

I looked at the contract. For "some". Four apples returned, in good faith, alongside two bottles of something that — I had been assured, by Earl, with total confidence — was actually quite good.

I looked at the labels. Hand-lettered. Carefully misleading. Not one word of them untrue.

I looked at the export forms. Approved.

"You're a real git, Earl."

"Thank you."

He smiled. Pleasant. Entirely sincere. The smile of someone who has been called a great many things over a great many years and has long since stopped hearing git as anything other than accurate.

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I stood. Brushed something off my sleeve that I didn't want to think too hard about.

"This," I said, gesturing — at the shed, the padlock, the labels, the folder, the four apples, all of it — "is you. Swathed in a veil of your own creation."

Earl considered this.

"And yet," he said, "I have receipts."

"That's not —" I pressed my fingers to my temple again. "Swathed in a veil of your own creation is not the same as morally right, Earl."

"No," Earl agreed.

He went back to polishing.

"It's the same as correct."

 

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Filed under: Transactions of Note.

No Further Action Required.

— GW