Montgomery Bartholomew Sodinsky III loves peaches. And not just peaches by themselves, but anything containing peaches. Peach ice cream, peach smoothies, peach candy, peach soda, peach air freshener, peach shampoo--he even sliced up peaches and laid them on his steak one time. (He insisted that it was delicious, but his wife is inclined to disbelieve him since he has never tried it again).
At this very moment, in fact, he is eating a peach. A very juicy peach. And this is pleasent for two reasons. One, it is a peach. A very juicy peach, his favorite kind. Two, it is a celebration peach. For Montgomery Bartholomew Sodinsky III has just finished his fence. Monty (as anyone with anything to do this afternoon would rather call him) has just moved into this house with his new wife. The house is exactly the kind of house that most newly married young couples dream of: quiet neighborhood, green lawn, two car garage, new carpet. The backyard was not finished though, in Monty's opinion, because the well manicured back yard is not fenced in. It backs up to a national forest and the former owners had enjoyed the idea that their backyard stretched for miles and miles. Not Monty. A backyard isn't really your backyard until nobody else can get there. So up went the fence. And since Monty was the kind of guy who hated to pay someone to do things that he could do himself, he was the one that put it up.
And so, standing back and admiring his handiwork, he takes the last very juicy bite out of his celebratory peach (which was preceded by a regular peach and would probably be followed by one as well) and throws the pit over the fence into the forest.
Well, lots of stuff happens after that, far more things than this story has time to tell, even if many of those things are worth telling. There is a funny moment when Monty's wife goes into the backyard just before Monty comes home and she comes back in after he's gone upstairs to bed thinking she'll be home later. So she stays up all night in the recliner waiting for him while he sleeps soundly upstairs. And then there is a sad moment when Monty's dog finally curls up in front of the fireplace for the last time and is buried in the backyard. But none of these stories are important to us here in this story, so they will have to wait for another time.
What is important to this story is that peach pit that Monty threw over the fence so long ago. It has done very well for itself in the passing years, having landed in a rather lucky place of good soil and light and is now a strapping peach tree with wide branches, brilliantly green leaves and--most importantly--very juicy peaches. Monty noticed the tree a little while back when it had just started to peek over the fence into his backyard. He didn't realize what it was at first, but as a few more years passed he started smelling his favorite smell every fall and began to be suspicious. It was only last year that he realized what he had just beyond his fence. A Very Juicy Peach Tree. The day he discovered it has been marked on his calendar and is celebrated each year with a peach pie. An additional peach pie, that is.
The problem Monty has now is that even though the peach tree is so close, he cannot get to it easily. Everyone else on his street have fences as well, so to get to the other side of his fence he has to walk to the end of the block, down an alley and then through the woods along the back of his neighbors' yards. It's a good twenty minute walk to the peach tree and another twenty back and he doesn't carry too many peaches with him for fear that the neighbors will notice his bounty and go collecting as well. His wife has become a bit frustrated with his absence and insists that she can buy just as good peaches at the store that don't require her husband to go out for an hour every night after dinner, but he won't have any of it. "These are the best peaches in the world!" he cries, as if it was sheer lunacy to think that his peach fetching hikes were not worth it.
One day, during dinner, his wife, a quiet and unassuming woman who, if it weren't for her love for her husband, would be quite happy to never see another peach again, suggests an idea: "What if you just took down a section of fence in the back yard? Then you could just walk out the back door and have a peach right off the tree whenever you want!"
"It's not our backyard unless there's a fence around it, honey. The fence needs to stay," he replies.
And she persists. "But honey, who is going to come into our backyard? It takes twenty minutes to get back there now; have you ever even seen anyone back there?"
"Everyone has a fence around their backyard. That's what makes it a backyard!" he answers again in a frustrated voice. The idea of a fenceless backyard disturbs him deeply for reasons he does not understand. He knows the reasons he gives for a fence sound silly, but he cannot think of better ones. All he knows, deep in his peach-sized heart, is that a backyard needs a fence.
And so it goes for several more months. Long evening walks to fetch the peaches, a lonely wife cleaning up the dishes by herself, a backyard that is never used and soon grows a bit disheveled. But something is happening to Monty that he finds fascinating and disturbing at the same time. He is beginning to see hints that backyards and fences may not be quite as symbiotic as he has always believed. The first time is a magazine in the grocery aisle that features a picture of a beach house along the shore in Virginia. His eye is first caught (though he'll never admit it) by the headline about two women fighting over a particular celebrity, but is then drawn to the house. The house just backs up to the beach. There is no fence. "It's a beach house," he says to himself, and that explains everything.
But it keeps happening. His brother talks about his in-laws' cabin which sits by itself in a quiet valley. "You look out your window and there's the forest!" he tells Monty, "Nothing stopping you from just walking for miles!" Another time it is a visit to a friend's house who lives on a golf course. He can tee off to the fourth hole from his back patio, only a row of pansies showing the course mowers where to stop and let him take care of his own grass. Bit by bit Monty's belief in the necessary boundary between his patio furniture and the outside world is worn away. And Monty is getting tired. Tired of walking to the peach tree, tired of arguing with his wife, tired of that stupid fence.
And so Monty, peach in one hand and hammer in the other walks out to the fence one afternoon. His wife is out shopping, he's chosen this particular afternoon carefully. Upsetting one's beliefs about fences is hard enough without someone watching you. He looks at the fence he built so carefully, so long ago and eats the peach. It's a good fence. And there is nothing wrong with it but for its location between him and the peach tree. He considers his options one more time. And then tossing the peach pit over the fence, he raises his hammer and grabs a slightly protruding nail head.
One by one the nails pull free, one by one the slats come down. Several more peaches are eaten and his wife comes home. She stays inside and begins to prepare a crust for the peach pie she expects to be able to make later on. And when it is all finished, Monty stands in the middle of his back yard and looks out at the forest beyond. The forest that contains a very juicy peach tree. Then he takes no more than fifteen steps forward and pulls a peach off the tree.
Today is the best day in Montgomery Bartholomew Sodinsky III's life.