PEACH TREES

Summers have always been tragic.

“I can’t stand the thought of leaving,” said Peter, who lived on a farm at the edge of town.

We loved his property—the long, looping grapevines. The daffodils that grew around his mailbox. The peach trees, and beyond them, the pond, where we used to catch frogs when we were little.

Kristen skipped a stone, and we all watched it sink. Her bare toes squished over mud, a tanned stomach exposed—she lifted her hand to cover her eyes, skin sheening with sweat, a lock of curly brown hair stuck to her forehead. She didn’t say anything. The evening cicadas chirped.

I turned to look at him, squinting in the sun. “Don’t think of that now, Peter.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not the one leaving.”

“I am leaving. We all are.” “You’re not the one dying.” Kristen looked away.

“Peter,” I said. “Don’t say that.”

He fiddled with a wildflower, then threw it into the pond—it left a faint purple residue on his fingers. I sat down next to him, and the flower floated sadly over the murky brown.

“I’ll write to you all the time,” I said and handed him the peach I had picked. He bit into it, and the sweet, clear juice dripped down his fingertips, then his wrist.

“Me too,” said Kristen.

“I’ll send you books. All the new releases. And tapes—I can make you a mixtape. I’ll send you lots of chocolates. And I’ll cut out the cartoons from the paper.”

Peter was staring at the flower—his eyes, hazel, flashed a brilliant golden in the sun. And his profile, which I had seen so often, studied so often all throughout my youth, seemed to shimmer right before my eyes. The haziness that comes with fading memories. His long eyelashes and the faint freckles that dotted his sharp nose. It was the face of my best—and my oldest—friend.

“The war won’t even last that long,” said Kristen confidently. She sat on a rock by the water facing the two of us and stretched out her legs. “You’ll be home by December.”

“And we’ll go caroling.”

Kristen snorted. “With your perfect voice.”

“And Father John will say, ‘Peter, I’m going to have to ask you to sing a little bit quieter.’”

“Can you believe he really said that?”

“The look on his face, though. You know he felt awful.”

“Well, to be fair, we all heard that voice. Don’t you remember, Peter?”

Kristen and I watched Peter, waiting for an answer, or at least some sort of reaction—a smile. A roll of the eyes. Instead, he bit into the peach and chewed slowly, and with thought.

“Maybe we can all go camping next weekend,” he said finally. “Our last weekend together.”

“Sure!” said Kristen. “We can drive up to the mountains.”

In the fall, I would be at university, and Kristen would be working at her family’s business. And Peter would be in Vietnam, which I had only ever heard about on the news until Peter got drafted with three other boys in our graduating class; I pictured them with guns strapped to their backs, struggling under the weight of heavy machinery and supplies, slashing through the jungle. It was particularly hard to picture Peter, who once cried in the second grade when a bird flew into the window and died. And I had held his hand as we stood on the edge of the property, muttering prayers that Father John recited every Sunday under our breaths, the wind rolling over the hills and through the branches of the bare peach trees.

“We can go stargazing,” I said.

“And fishing,” said Kristen. “And I’ll bring my guitar, and I will serenade you both as you make me s’mores.”

Peter smiled, dimples curling on his cheeks. “I should be the one serenading you.”

Kristen skipped more stones, shadows deepening across her body as the sun continued to sink, then she crossed the hill to pick another peach. Peter tucked a wildflower—a yellow one this time—behind my ear, his fingers soft and damp with dew against my cheek.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said as he stared at the flower. “What I said earlier. I’m not going to die.”

“Oh, Peter,” I said. “I know that.”

“I’m just scared.”

“I know that too.”

“Will you really write?”

“All the time. I’ll write you every single day.”

Kristen came back with three peaches, and she tossed one to each of us. I leaned against Peter’s arm. And the peaches were juicy and sweet with summer-tinted nostalgia, but there was something tragic, too, in the sweetness, and then the sun went down and the cicadas cried.

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