At the Edge of the Orchard

by Tracy Chevalier

  “Here, now, what was that shooting for?” The man fingered a long moustache that cut the lower third of his round face from the rest. He wore a ratty silk top hat pushed back from his forehead and a shirt with the sleeves rolled above his elbows, its whiteness revealing his trade: he was a money man, not a worker. “What are you doing there?”

  Lobb continued working. “Digging.”

  “Yes, but what are you digging? And why are you digging? And shooting too. There is no gold here, sir, if that’s what you’re looking for,” the man added, pulling a grubby handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his hands and then his brow. “Perhaps you’re new to this business and misunderstand the nature of gold, but I assure you there is none under these trees. You’re better off going to the river and following it down a ways. Though I’ve not heard of any gold found in the Stanislaus for a good two years.”

  He stopped, expecting William Lobb to stop too. But Lobb kept slicing the ground around the seedling, then lifted it and placed it into one of the pails. Robert went back to picking up cones. The man fingered his moustache again, then held out his hand. “Name’s Lapham. Billie Lapham. I got a claim on this land.”

  William Lobb ignored his hand. Robert felt a little sorry for Billie Lapham with his hand left suspended in the air, so after a moment he went over and shook it.

  That seemed to perk up the money man. “Which is why I want to know when someone’s shooting on my land, and digging on my land, what it is they’re doing,” he continued.

  “This is not your land,” William Lobb said.

  “Oh, it is, it is. I got the papers. I can show you, back at camp.”

  “This is Indian land, if it’s anyone’s.” William Lobb spoke as if he hadn’t heard Billie Lapham. “Those Miwoks encamped just south of here—they’ve been here longer than you. It’s theirs, or it’s God’s land—take your pick.”

  “No, it’s mine, mine and my brother’s. We’re building, see, for the tourists. A saloon, a bowling alley, and farther back we’re extending the cottage to make it into a hotel. The Big Trees Hotel.” Billie Lapham listed these achievements proudly. “Wait a minute, is that trees you’re digging up?” William Lobb had placed another sequoia seedling in a pail. “You can’t dig up trees! What are you gonna do with them?”

  Lobb paused. “What, aren’t there enough trees here for you? I noticed you don’t seem much concerned about the big ones since you’ve gone and cut one down to make it into—what? The floor of a bowling alley.”

  “Well, now, it wasn’t me that cut it down! It was others decided to do that.” Billie Lapham wiped his hands again. “But there were good reasons why they did that. Educational reasons. People want to see how big the trees are, and it ain’t so easy, standing up close to ’em, did you notice? With a stump that big, though, and a trunk that long, you get a better idea of the size and scale of the thing. I figured with it already down like that I might as well make something out of it! The Great Stump is gonna be a dance floor, you know. And they only cut down just the one. We’ll protect the rest.” He must have been criticized before to be so well versed in his defense. Then he tried to flip the argument. “And I want to protect what’s growing too.” He gestured at the seedling in its pail. “If you dig these up and take ’em away, we won’t have them in the future, will we?”

  William Lobb stopped digging; it seemed incredulity halted his spade. “You think these giants’—he waved at the trees around him—“are going to let these little ones survive? There’s no room. Look around you! Once these trees established themselves, nothing could grow to any height under them. I’m doing these seedlings a favor—giving them a chance. They might actually grow up somewhere.”

  “Wait a minute, now,” Billie Lapham protested, smoothing his moustache. He was a man full of twitches. “You planning to plant ’em somewhere else?”

  What else would a man do with seedlings he’d dug up? Robert thought but kept to himself, smiling into the sack of cones.

  “I can’t allow that,” Billie Lapham continued. “Oh, no! You’re stealing trees here to grow a grove to compete with this one. No, sir, I can’t allow that. Not at all.”

  William Lobb grunted. “Even if I planted a grove a mile away, it would take a good five hundred years before it would look anything like this one. Your bones and my bones would be dust long before that. Anyway, you can rest assured these trees won’t compete with this grove: they’re going to England.”

  Billie Lapham looked taken aback only for a second. “England! You plant redwoods there, nobody’ll come from there to see Cally Grove trees.”

  To this ridiculous argument William Lobb did not bother with an answer. A fourth seedling landed in a pail, a little more roughly than the previous three.

  “They’re sequoias,” Robert murmured.

  “What?” Billie Lapham turned to Robert as if only just noticing him. “What did you say?”

  “They’re not redwoods—they’re giant sequoias.” Robert found he enjoyed correcting Billie Lapham, even if he did not really know what he was saying.

  “Of course they’re redwoods.” But William Lobb’s indifference to his authority had clearly shaken Billie Lapham’s confidence. “They got to be—the ads I’m running in the papers say they are.”

  “An advertisement does not decide what a tree is called,” William Lobb said. “The California Academy of Sciences decided it is a different genus from redwoods and have named it a giant sequoia, with a Latin name to follow shortly. Redwoods are coastal, and tall and relatively thin, though still huge compared to other trees. Sequoias are in the foothills, and are wider and shorter.”

  “Look here, now.” Billie Lapham cycled through all of his nervous tics, smoothing his moustache, then wiping his hands and brow. The gestures seemed to give him strength. “Are you planning to dig up more than them four pails? ’Cause I’m gonna have to charge you.”

  William Lobb stopped digging and stabbed his spade into the ground, close enough to Billie Lapham’s feet to make him jump. “I’m done here,” he said to Robert. “When you’ve filled another sack, bring them over to the stables.” He pulled up the spade, took the four pails and hooked them over the handle. As he strode off, holding the spade horizontal so that the pails hung in a row, the seedlings bounced in time to his step.

  Robert watched him go, aware that Billie Lapham had now turned towards him. It occurred to him that William Lobb had handed him his second job—negotiating with the owner of Calaveras Grove. Robert was not a negotiator, but if it meant working for Lobb, he would have to do it. From watching animals he had learned that he must not show weakness. And so, as Lobb had done, he did not look at Billie Lapham but continued to toss cones into the sack. At the same time, he considered the situation from the other’s point of view. Robert had never owned land, but he thought back to the Goodenough farm in the Black Swamp. If someone had come along and dug up apple seedlings on their property, and gathered seeds from windfalls, how would his father have responded? What would he have expected? A payment, at the very least. Robert tried to recall what John Chapman had charged for seedlings, so long ago. He thought it might have been five cents a seedling. Not that such figures really helped: California prices had been blown all out of proportion by the demands of the gold rush. When he was a boy back east, with a dollar fifty you could buy a whole barrel of hard cider. Here that amount would buy you one dinner in Sacramento. A pound of flour had been ten cents; now it was forty. Tobacco that cost six cents in New York was a dollar in California. But then, two years ago men were making a thousand dollars a month from gold, more than his father would have made in ten years.

  It was impossible for Robert to place a value on trees; to him they stood apart from commerce. In pondering the price of a sequoia seedling, he recalled that John Appleseed himself—the consummate tree salesman—had been inconsistent about his prices. For no reason he had sometimes charged James Goodenough six cents a seedling rather than five, yet had also been know
n to give away bags of seeds.

  It had been some time since Robert had thought about apple trees. He had not allowed himself to—when he did it made him feel sick and empty.

  He did not want to value each sequoia cone or seedling. And he did not want to haggle. There must be another way. Robert looked up at Billie Lapham, who was once more mopping his brow, readying himself for the negotiation. Before he could touch his moustache as well, Robert said, “We’ll pay you five dollars for the seeds and seedlings we’re collecting from Calaveras Grove.”

  Billie Lapham stroked his moustache. Clearly he didn’t know the value of the trees either. “All right,” he said, then seemed surprised at himself for agreeing. “Wait a minute—where would you collect ’em if I said no? There ain’t no giant redwoods—sequoias—anywhere else. Are there?”

  “You’ve already agreed.” Robert stood and held out his hand. Billie Lapham hesitated, then took it. Obviously he was not much of a haggler either.

  Robert spent the rest of the day collecting cones while William Lobb took more notes and sketched the trees. Lobb also gathered branches, needles and bark, carefully preserving their structure. “These I’ll dose in camphor and send to Kew to be studied,” he explained.

  “‘Q,’” Robert repeated. “What’s that?”

  “A botanical garden outside of London—the finest in the world. They collect and study all sorts of trees and plants. I always instruct Veitch to send them new discoveries. They’ll want to see the sequoias.”

  Robert nodded, trying to imagine people interested enough in plants to study them. But then he thought of his father grafting the apple trees, how methodical he had been, and it didn’t seem so strange.

  They camped just beyond Calaveras Grove rather than near the others—“so I don’t have to listen to braggarts all night,” William Lobb muttered. After they’d eaten and were sitting by the fire, Lobb smoking a pipe, Robert shyly asked if he could look at the leather notebook the Englishman had been using all day. When Lobb handed it over he held it to the firelight and leafed through the many notes and the drawings of the Calaveras Grove sequoias. Overviews Lobb had done of a whole tree, sitting several hundred feet away in order to see it from several angles. Drawings of the trunk, the bark, several different branches, the needles, the cones, the habitat under and around it. He had also sketched clumps of trees, and several sketches that could be put together into a panorama to give an idea of the size and scale of the whole grove. In some of the drawings Lobb had included a small figure standing next to the sequoia, wearing a hat similar to Robert’s own. He had never seen himself in a drawing, and though it was unsettling, he was pleased to be in William Lobb’s notebook. There were also sketches of the cones, as well as notes about their collecting: the date and location and elevation of where they had been picked up.

  “What will you do with the seeds?” Robert asked, handing back the notebook.

  “Send ’em to England.” Lobb stowed the notebook away. “The English will go crazy for these trees. They already love the redwoods I’ve sent back, and lots of the California pines. These sequoias will be the kings of many an estate in Bedfordshire or Staffordshire or Hertfordshire—if they survive.”

  “Is the weather the same?”

  William Lobb snorted. “No! Plenty of rain, not much sun. The redwoods seem to be doing all right, though: some of the seeds I collected a few years ago have been growing in England. But these—it’s dry here, with fires that pop the cones open so the seeds can get out. That will never happen in England. And it’s high up here—the beginning of mountains such as England doesn’t have. It will be a gamble. But if they take …” He tossed a pinecone into the fire.

  “What do the English do with the trees?” Robert persisted.

  “Plant ’em on their property.”

  “Don’t they have trees in England?”

  William Lobb chuckled. “Of course. But they want new and different, you see. The wealthy landowners have been busy creating ‘tableaux’ on their grounds.” At Robert’s blank look, he added, “They lay out trees so they look like works of art rather than just letting nature grow as it will. Now they’re demanding conifers, for they love exotic trees that remain green all year round. They set off the broadleaf trees, with their changing colors, and provide structure and life when everything else is bare. There are few native conifers there—only the Scots pine, the yew, the juniper. So I’ve been sending as many as I can from California. Some of them are even creating ‘pinetums’ on their property where they plant and show off a variety of conifers.”

  “You send trees to England.” A thought was stirring deep in Robert’s mind, like a fish swimming below the surface of a lake.

  “Yes, saplings sometimes, though they often don’t survive the journey. Seedlings are better—being smaller they don’t snap off so easily. But you may as well send seeds, that’s best. Even then, many seeds never grow. You might plant a hundred and get twenty seedlings from them, and of those, five might grow into saplings, and two into trees. That’s why I have to collect so many cones—as many as my horse can carry. Your horse too, if you’ve the time to ride to San Francisco. I assume you do or you wouldn’t be out here just to look at trees.”

  It took Robert a moment to understand William Lobb was asking him to work for him for longer than just that day. Before he could answer, Lobb added, “I’ll pay you, of course. It’s worth my while to be able to collect and carry twice as many cones.” Clearly he’d thought Robert’s hesitation was over money.

  Actually Robert would have helped him for nothing. He had been hesitating because the thought was now surfacing. “Have you ever heard of a Golden Pippin?” he asked.

  “Of course.” William Lobb had finished his pipe and was taking off his boots. He seemed unbothered by the swerve in conversation. “I’m more of a Cornish Gilliflower man myself, though. I prefer my apples with a bit of red on ’em.”

  “Are Golden Pippins common in England, then?” Robert tried to hide his disappointment. From the way his father had talked, he’d always assumed that Golden Pippins were very rare, known only to the Goodenoughs.

  “Common enough. Not as common as a Ribston Pippin or a Blenheim Orange, but easily found. You know George Washington had them brought over to Mount Vernon? They didn’t thrive, though—not the right climate.”

  “The Goodenoughs’ trees did.”

  “Did what?”

  “Thrive. We grew Golden Pippins in Ohio, and Connecticut before that. My grandparents brought branches from England and grafted them, then my father did the same when he went to Ohio.”

  “Really?” For the first time, William Lobb looked at Robert with genuine interest. “Your father was a grafter, was he?”

  Robert nodded.

  “My brother and I used to do a bit of grafting at Killerton, back in Devonshire. What was the yield of yours?”

  “Ten bushels a tree.” Robert allowed himself to think about the Golden Pippins for the first time in years. “Have you ever tasted a pineapple?”

  “Pineapple?” William Lobb chuckled. “I ate them every day in South America. Got tired of them. Why?”

  “That’s what our Golden Pippins tasted of: first nuts and honey, then pineapple. That’s how Pa described it, anyway. I never tasted real pineapple. Not sure he did either.”

  William Lobb was staring at him. “Where did the Goodenoughs come from in England?”

  Robert frowned. He wanted to say he couldn’t remember, but he knew that was not an acceptable answer to someone like William Lobb. He tried to think of what his father had said, so long ago. “Herefordshire,” he dug out at last.

  Lobb suddenly laughed, a great bark, almost a shout. “Pitmaston Pineapple,” he announced.

  Robert raised his eyebrows.

  “Pitmaston Pineapple,” William Lobb repeated. “That’s what your father grew. It was a Golden Pippin seedling that originally grew in Herefordshire, had an unusual taste and a local following. Several y
ears ago a man growing it in Pitmaston exhibited it at the London Horticultural Society. Gave it the name ‘Pitmaston Pineapple’ because of the pineapple finish. I’ve read about it but never had one. Been out of England too much to keep up with apples.”

  “I didn’t know apples could change their taste.”

  “Well, they go from sour to sweet sometimes.”

  “I know. One in ten seedlings turns out sweet.” Robert repeated his father’s words.

  William Lobb nodded, pleased. “If they can change from sour to sweet, there’s no reason why other tastes can’t change: from lemon to pineapple, for instance.” He pulled a blanket from his bag.

  “So an English tree has come to America,” Robert spoke his thoughts aloud, “and now you are sending American trees to England.”

  “True. There is a commerce in trees, just as in people. But a Pitmaston Pineapple growing in Ohio?” William Lobb chuckled, wrapping his blanket around him in preparation for sleep. “That’s almost enough to make me go there, just to taste it!”

  In the morning they collected more cones, then loaded their horses with what they had gathered. The gray did not like carrying the four bulging sacks, which were light but bulky, and spun round and round to try to fling them off. The clanking of the pails that held the seedlings also made him skitter sideways. Lobb watched these antics with amusement while his own horse—a big buckskin mare with black stockings, seeming dumb but probably as smart as her owner—stood stolid and indifferent, though she carried more complicated baggage. In the end Lobb had collected four sequoia seedlings and two larger saplings, all in pails which he hung all over the horse so that she resembled a traveling trader, bumping and jangling with her load of tin. This was apart from saddlebags and a leather box of drying specimens that hung from her and bumped her side. Lobb had to ride with care, sitting ramrod straight, but like his horse he seemed used to it.