In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

412 The Kentucky Anthology Sallie Bingham “Apricots” Sallie Bingham was born during the hugely destructive 1937 Ohio River flood that inundated most of downtown Louisville. Despite, and to some extent because of, the wealthy, powerful Bingham family into which she was born, she became a gifted writer of short stories, novels, poetry, and plays. As a successful writer she has in many ways been able to live out the dreams of her father, Barry Bingham Sr., who once told me that he had always wanted to write and publish a good book. Instead, he ran the family communications business, which included radio and television stations, two newspapers, and a printing company. Sallie Bingham has published a number of good books, including After Such Knowledge (1959), a novel, and three collections of short stories, The Touching Hand (1965), The Way It Is Now (1970), and Transgressions (2002). She has also written and published poems and plays of great originality and passion. Since she made Santa Fe her permanent home several years ago, she has exchanged—and to good advantage—the verdant Kentucky landscapes of her earlier works for the arid deserts of the southwest. The following story of an older woman and her young, eager lover shows that her various talents have transferred to her new home very well. h That June Caroline’s apricot tree finally bore fruit. In the six years she’d lived in the house behind the tree, late frost had nipped its buds in April and only a few dwarfed apricots had hung on the branches. Neighbors said the apricot trees were not native to northern New Mexico but were brought as seedlings in the saddlebags of the Spanish conquest; over the centuries they had not adapted to the harsh climate, but neither had they died. All along Caroline’s dirt road, the tall conical shapes stood out in winter and, in a rare spring, were thickly hung with white blossoms and bees. Living alone after a lifetime of living with other people granted Caroline time and leisure that had mystified and depressed her at first—where were the faces that used to surround her kitchen table, where were the feet that had pounded on her stairs?—but that lately had seemed the only real luxury life had ever, or could ever offer: to lie in bed late, dozing until the sun slid into her window and across her bed, a blade of hot brass; to eat alone off tray in this or that corner of the house or garden; to fall asleep, sometimes, on the porch, while a summer storm rattled overhead, then gave way to stars and 412 Sallie Bingham 413 the pondering moon. To Caroline at sixty-three it seemed all the nature that surrounded her sustained her—the moon in its silver cycles, the pink-red geraniums and long flowing native grasses in her garden, and now the apricot tree itself with its bridal finery that didn’t droop and was replaced, overnight , it seemed, with an astonishing crop. All pondered, all watched from within their private and separate existences. At first she picked all the apricots she could and filled bowls and baskets where the fruit fermented, giving off a sweet perfume that reminded her of the candy shops of her childhood. She hated to throw out all that luxury, that unprecedented generosity, but at first she could not think of an alternative. For a few days she let the fruit drop from the tree and ground it under the tires of her car every time she went in and out; that was an unacceptable waste. Finally she remembered another scene from her childhood, of women sweating, chatting , bending over pots on a stove, and she decided to do some canning. For a city woman, once a New York City woman, at that, the idea of spending a day in a hot steamy kitchen was, at first, unthinkable, but she remembered all the friends who would prize squat jars of apricot jam, and how a few of those jars would blaze on her pantry shelf in the depths of winter. And so she went out and bought four large, light aluminum pots, bigger than any pots she had ever owned, and after some searching, discovered that the cardboard trays of quilted jam glasses she remembered were still available, along with the white oblongs of paraffin needed to seal the tops. But the task was daunting and Caroline soon realized she would...

Share