The Barrel That Rolled Downhill

The cabin stood alone at the edge of a pine forest. A gravel track that nobody had mended in years led up to it. Sade and Eira arrived on a Friday afternoon. They brought two bags of food and a plan to do nothing at all.

It was the first holiday they had taken together in almost a year. Eira had picked the cabin from a website because of one photograph. It showed a wooden porch, a stone chimney and a hammock hanging between two trees.

"It is smaller than the picture," Sade said, standing in the doorway with her bag.

"Everything is smaller than the picture," Eira said. "That is why they call it a picture."

Inside, the cabin smelled of wood smoke and old books. A narrow bed stood under the roof window, and a woodstove sat in one corner. On the table lay a note from the owner, held down by a small brass bell.

Welcome! Please take the apples from the barrel on the porch. They are from our own trees, and they are better eaten than wasted. Mind the slope.

They found the barrel by the porch steps. It was a fat oak barrel, as tall as Eira's waist, filled to the top with green apples. The smell was sweet and sharp, like a cold morning in a garden.

For two days they were happy, and nothing went wrong. They walked in the forest and swam in a cold, clear pool. They read in the hammock until their arms went numb. In the evenings they cooked on the woodstove. They ate on the porch with a blanket over their knees.

Still, something sat between them, quiet and heavy, like a stone at the bottom of a bag.

Sade knew exactly what it was. Three weeks earlier, a company in another country had offered her a job. It was a good one, with a big salary and a project she had wanted for years. She had read the email four times and told nobody. Then, one evening, she had left her laptop open on the kitchen table.

Eira knew exactly what it was too. She had seen the email, and she had said nothing. She had closed the laptop gently, as if it might wake up and bite her.

Now each of them was waiting for the other to speak first, and neither could do it. They talked about the forest, the stove and the price of coffee. They talked about the light in the pine needles. They talked about everything except the one thing that mattered.

On Sunday morning, Eira woke early and went out to the porch with her coffee. The sun had just come over the hill. The barrel stood where they had left it, with a single apple lying on the step beside it.

She decided to move the barrel, because it was blocking the top stair. She pushed it with her knee, then with her shoulder, and it moved a little. Then it moved a little more.

"Sade!" she shouted. "Come quickly!"

The barrel tipped over the edge of the porch. For one long second it balanced, almost thoughtful. Then it fell down the steps, hit the grass, and began to roll.

Sade ran out in her socks, with her hair standing up in every direction. The barrel gathered speed down the slope. It bounced over a tree root and lost its lid. The apples poured out behind it in a bright, bouncing river.

"Do something!" Eira cried.

"What am I supposed to do?" Sade shouted back. "Argue with it?"

They ran after it together, slipping on the dewy grass, snatching apples as they went. Sade caught three in her arms and dropped two. Eira fell on her knees and rolled up again, laughing so hard that she could hardly breathe. The barrel rolled all the way to the bottom of the hill and crashed gently into a stream.

It lay there on its side, with the water running through it, almost proud of itself.

For a while they only stood and laughed, bent over, holding their sides. Apples bobbed in the stream like small green boats. Others had come to rest in the ferns and in the tall grass.

Then, slowly, they began to pick them up.

They worked in silence at first. The sun climbed higher, and the clean smell of apples rose all around them. Sade stood knee-deep in the stream, filling the barrel again. Eira crouched at the bank and passed her the fruit, one apple at a time.

After a long while, Eira said, "I read the email."

Sade stopped with an apple in her hand.

"I know," she said. "I left the laptop open. I think I wanted you to."

"Then why did you not say something?"

"Why did you not?" Sade asked.

Eira looked at the water for a moment. A leaf floated past her boot. She felt her heart beating in her ears. It beat like that on the day she met Sade.

"Because I was afraid of the answer," she said. "I did not want to be the person who asked you to stay. And I did not want to hear you say you were going."

"I have not said yes," Sade said gently. "I have not said anything. I have carried that offer for three weeks. Every day I thought, she will ask me tonight."

"I am asking now." Eira stood up, and her knees were green with grass. "Are you going to take the job?"

Sade put the apple in the barrel. She took her time. She wiped her wet hands on her shirt, and her face was serious, but her eyes were bright.

"I would only go if you came with me," she said. "That is the part I could not write in any email. I have spent three weeks working up the courage to ask you."

"Then ask," Eira said.

"Will you come?"

Eira did not answer at once. She looked up the hill, at the small cabin with its chimney and its crooked porch. She looked back at the stream and the barrel lying in the water. The apples glowed in the grass.

"I will need a lot of time to think about it," she said. Then her mouth twitched, and the smile broke through. "About two minutes. Maybe less."

Sade laughed and threw an apple at her. Eira caught it with one hand.

They carried the barrel back up the slope together, one on each side, stopping twice to rest. When they reached the porch, Sade put her end down and wiped her forehead.

"Do you think they grow apples where we are going?" Sade asked.

"Does it matter?" Eira said. "We know where to find a barrel."