Summary: A response to an Apple Pie Writing Challenge, through the eyes and home-spun philosophy of Hoss and his alternate-universe-wife. Spiced accordingly, tasting left for the reader.
Rated: T (1,705 words)
Fruity Thoughts
All characters, settings, and events are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot belong to me, the ones known from Bonanza belong to their rightful owners and creators.
(Border-Pie Story)
(Featuring my romantic lead and heroine from my longer story, Borderland)
Hoss sat by the kitchen table and wiped the plate with a piece of bread. His wife was surrounded by buckets and buckets of apples, their sour and sweet smell covering the air and mixing with the scent coming from the stove. She was preserving the apples and cooking them into jams and sauces, her face was glowing and she hummed silently while her hands were stirring the mix. Her head was covered under a checkered scarf, so that her hair wouldn’t fall around and spice the jars.
Her humming was soft and tuned well with the steaming pots, even if her throat sounded a bit dry and coarse.
Hoss put the last piece of the dark, bitter bread into his mouth and crossed his hands under his chin, still chewing. The taste of the gravy mixed with the deep taste of the bread, in a fulfilling way, but for a moment he still thought he’d like to lick the plate. Just in case.
As for the apples, Hoss didn’t quite understand the joy of them, when there were so many other fruit around. Take for instance Adam – in the garden of Eden, not his brother – who ate the apple given by the snake. Why would he have bothered for such a fruit?
Adam must have been in a hurry and not in control of his thoughts. He mustn’t have really known what was available, too; there were so many sweeter things to bite, to start with. And it had to be a real snake, to try to bargain a place in Heaven and Paradise, for something as simple as an apple. Heck, that Adam wasn’t blessed with the same head for business as his older brother was – no, that Adam sure wouldn’t have been cheated away from the garden of Eden that easily.
Thinking still of the fruit, Hoss grabbed an apple on the table and looked at its surface. It was a little wrinkled and spotted with black, brown, and Elin had set it aside. It wasn’t fit to preserve, but horses would eat it. Or the kids, especially Rebecka wasn’t too picky on her apples, anyhow.
Looking at the red-and-green side of the fruit, Hoss frowned and puckered his lips in deep concentration. His eyes were shadowed, but there was nobody in particular to look at his darkening expression. He put the apple back.
Why not some other fruit than apples? Take for example plums. Hoss was plum honest when it came to the happiness over a bowl full of ripe and juicy plums. Smaller than apples, and darker, but so much sweeter without extra trouble. Every time he was able to dig into a portion of heavy, dripping flesh that nearly mashed under the clammy, bouncy skin, he indulged himself by licking the sweet remains of the plums from his fingers, if’n so the plums had been so soft that they were nearly gone off. Yep, he enjoyed those a lot more than any of those sour apples, for sure.
Hoss swallowed, and furrowed his brow in thought, twisting his pursed lips a bit to the left and then right, letting his eyes gaze further away and leaning to the crossed fingers under his chin. There, there were those peaches, too. Peaches would have been within the league of a better choice. Had the snake come to him with perky and rosy-cheeked peaches with a fuzzy, resilient skin… The image was so strong that he almost squelched. To have a bite of a peach right now; to part the luscious fruit with one’s teeth, carefully avoiding to bite against the stone inside. Even if the little strings of flesh tended to stick between his teeth and annoy the gums, their sweet taste was enough to compensate the disturbing feel.
Or even pears. With their shape like a woman’s back, their firm skin over the round curvature, which hid to their shape the sweet, juicy inside that beat the apples any time. Despite the similarity of looks, similar tones of complexion, look of a surface and the freckles, to touch the pear was definitely different than touching the apple. A soft pear squished nicely when the teeth broke into its peel, not anything like apple core to resist the pleasure, and the moist was often enough to fall from the corners of the mouth and make a mess, flooding over the jaw. Uhm-hum.
But apples.
Hoss stood up, and noticed how Elin’s braid had fallen down from the bun and hung over her back, out of the cover of the scarf. The cinnamon brown hair reflected the autumn light from the window, and reminded Hoss how cinnamon made apples good. Elin – his wife – she used to bake apples in the oven, or in the fireplace, and add a lot of sugar and cinnamon. Maybe there was a point, with them apples, too.
He walked to Elin, and pressed his chin over her shoulder while his hands closed around her waist. Apples tended to go well with tasty crumbs and crusts, and Elin had several few recipes for hiding slices, chunks or cubes of apples, and all of them included a lot of sweet dough, some even a touch of sauce. “Could we have apple pie for dinner?”
Elin shook her shoulders, but not hard enough to cast him off. “It’s ‘dessert’, not dinner.”
Her hair smelled a bit of cinnamon, too, and her cheeks were rosy and red, reflecting the colours of the apples. Looking at it at this light, Hoss thought it was dang good she resembled a gloating apple, rather, since he might have been darn ashamed to have a pear-faced wife. He crossed his hands over her belly. “So we’ll have some for dessert, then?”
She laughed, and leaned against him. “You’ll get fat.” The curve of her back seemed less empty than in the early times of their marriage, before the bump under Hoss’ chest had started to form a tiny bit rounder – just a tiny bit, mind you – and started to imitate the lines of her curving back.
“Never mind. I’ll be happy to be a bit chubby with such a sweet little wife.” He knew she liked to be called small, even if she matched Joe by her height, and Joe wasn’t always so happy to be Little. Hoss raised his head a little, and looked at the freckles over Elin’s gloating cheeks. “Did I ever tell you your freckles look like they were made of that fudge?”
Elin arched an eyebrow at him. Or she moved her forehead; in this light, the eyebrows were faint as the hair from melted sugar, and the threatening gesture sort of lost its scary edge. “A thousand times. You mean you wanna have fudge with your apple pie, too?”
Hoss grinned. His walking cookbook. “Yeah. I reckon I would. I’m starting to understand Adam.”
The motion of Elin’s ladle stopped, and her head turned. Or tried to turn, his head took too much space on her shoulder. The colourless eyebrow remained high and astute, the eyes looked at him like he had gone weird. “Your brother?”
“No. The one in the Garden of Eden.” Hoss pulled a bit further away from her, and looked at her shoulders and her chest and wiped some specks of sugar and other disturbance from her shirt collar.
Elin kept her frozen posture. “You’re not making any sense.”
“No, wife, I am. But I’m just letting you hear only bits and pieces.” There was a bit of apple sauce on her face, and Hoss leaned back against her, and wiped the apple sauce away from her cheek with his thumb, licking it off the finger. Not too bad, even after all that thought of them plums and the rest, he thought, and fixed his attention back at her cheek and the forgotten movement of the hand that had stirred the pot with a ladle. The sauce was good, she was good with them apples. As far as Hoss remembered, she was good in snaking and squiggling, too, but that was another story.
She snorted; he was used to it. The arched eyebrow remained suspicious, but the ladle started its endless journey around the pot again. A smile nudged the surface of her cheek, though, and a little giggle escaped. “All right, apple pie, and fudge. Now, go, before you learn all my secrets with preserving, better than the girls!”
Hoss kissed her cheek so that the sound rang in symphony with the sound of the cooking apples. “Yeah. They ain’t so interested in the fruit as their Mama. Maybe they’re not wise enough to appreciate the apple season, just yet. Do we by any chance have pears?”
Elin thumped him in the stomach with her elbow, and pointed at the door with her wooden spoon. Sauce was dropping out of the end of her cludger, but she ignored the mess and even shook the weapon. “Out! Don’t you ever think of anything else than food?” The laughter in her voice and the twinkle of her eyes told Hoss she wasn’t mad, though. Not the least.
Hoss grinned, and picked his hat and his coat, seeking shelter under the hat’s rim. “No, ma’am. I’m quite content with it as it is.” He was able to draw the door shut between himself and a flying kitchen towel, while Elin’s chiming laughter shooed him away from her queendom.
Sweet wife.
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