“Ouch!” cried Lula Belle, and she raised fingertips to her head.
“Sorry, darling, casualty of war,” said Charles.

Charles crouched in the sturdy limbs of an orange tree. Through the dark leaves he could see his wife’s mouth, he watched her tongue licking across her sunburnt lips. He felt nothing whatsoever as he watched her rub her temple. “You’re the one who wanted something sweet,” said Charles.

The orange tree was in an orchard, on a hill, owned for generations by the Rodriguez-Lopez family. Until a few years ago, when the family sold it to the Englishman, Charles, and his American wife, Lula Belle.

“I can’t believe you interrupted my work, for this!” said Charles. He squatted, high up in the tree. With one hand he grasped at a branch, and with his free hand he reached for the ripe fruit. Lula Belle held the bucket steady, tight against her torso. There were three small oranges in it, mottled white and yellow.

“I don’t want oranges,” Lula Belle was near crying, “I want chocolate.”
“Hold still,” said Charles, and he made as if to lob the fruit. At the last moment he flicked his wrist, giving the missile topspin.
“Hey! Ow!” Lula Belle screamed, and dropped the basket, clutched at her ribs.

Tonio heard the scream. He was walking near the hill that used to belong to his father. The hill where he was born, his ancestors were born, and buried. Tonio grew up believing this land would one day be his. He did not mean to turn his head and look, but he did. He was at the exact spot where he and his brothers, returning home from midnight escapades, would slip through the forrest of bamboo, and the grove of lemon and orange trees, from which his mother would make fresh juice. Tonio and his brothers would ease back into hammocks, never waking the snoring family, or snoozing dogs.

Just as when they were children, these country boys, now grown, would leave their homes late at night. Tonio led them to the secret meetings in the jungle. In mud-splattered, threadbare clothes, and scuffed knee-high rubber boots, the brothers climbed the red earth mountain paths, deep into the steep jungly hills, where no roads would ever be paved. Tonio was a natural leader. One day he would get back his father’s land.

Lula Belle gathered up the basket, and the spilled fruit. “I love our life,” she said, and instantly, her eyes welled with tears, and she added, under her breath, “I just wish I could spend it with someone other than you.”

“Bitch,” muttered Charles, as he unwound an orange from its stem, and aimed it at the bridge of his wife’s nose, where it exploded.
“Stop!” cried Lula Belle.
“Accident, luvie, sorry,” said Charles, with a thin grin.

What really annoyed her, was that after this pelting, she knew she would be the one to squeeze the damn oranges.