The farm hand was old and unmarried. She wondered if
in his youth he had ever loved a woman. She decided he had. His words about
the sap were, she was sure, in some way connected with the idea of love.
How strong his hands were. They were gnarled and rough, but there was
something beautifully powerful about them. She half wished the old man had
been her father. In his youth, in the darkness at night or when he was
alone with a girl, perhaps in a quiet wood in the late afternoon when the
sun was going down, he had put his hands on her shoulders. He had drawn the
girl to him. He had kissed her.
Clara jumped quickly out of the hammock and walked about under the trees in
the orchard. Her thoughts of Jim Priest's youth startled her. It was as
though she had walked suddenly into a room where a man and woman were
making love. Her cheeks burned and her hands trembled. As she walked slowly
through the clumps of grass and weeds that grew between the trees where the
sunlight struggled through, bees coming home to the hives heavily laden
with honey flew in droves about her head. There was something heady and
purposeful about the song of labor that arose out of the beehives. It got
into her blood and her step quickened. The words of Jim Priest that kept
running through her mind seemed a part of the same song the bees were
singing. "The sap has begun to run up the tree," she repeated aloud.
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