At the Edge of the Orchard

by Tracy Chevalier

  They treated Molly far worse than had the Texas cowboys, who had been grateful to her for her food and her bed and her cheerfulness. The miners only cared about gold: how big the nuggets, how abundant the flakes, how easily they could find it. They were never satisfied with what they got, and always worried that they had missed the bigger nugget, the better claim. Anything that stood in the way of their search, even things they needed—food, sleep, sex—was at best dispatched with quickly. At worst, they turned violent, taking out on these necessities all their frustration at not discovering the gold that would cure their fever. They threw meat at Molly’s feet if it was too tough, spat weak whiskey in her face, swore at her. Yet she put up with it, watchful, waiting for the man most likely to allow her to live with her feet up as she wanted. She worked, and took men to bed, and was beaten, and waited.

  Her bedroom at least was comfortable. Molly always knew how to make a nest for herself, with a thick mattress, a pillow filled with duck feathers, good sheets, and fringed shawls and painted screens for decoration. She took baths often, and kept out of the rain and harsh sun. She also had a knack for doing as little as possible without seeming lazy, getting others to help her with a smile or a tease. Robert doubted she had ever lifted anything heavier than a five-pound sack of cornmeal. She managed to get the seat closest to the fire without seeming greedy or ashamed to take it. Nor did she walk far, but wheedled lifts, either on horseback or, preferably, in a wagon, where she sat back and surveyed the land around her with the entitled air of a queen. It made the miners’ ill treatment of her all the harder to bear. While he was there he brought her coffee in bed each morning, as if to make up for the other men’s cruelty. He knew how to make only a crude version with burnt beans he’d hammered and boiled, but Molly acted gladder than she need be for this small gesture.

  After breakfast on the third day, Robert saddled up the gray, Molly watching. “I’ve packed you food for the road, honey,” she said, “but you don’t have to go.” She did not plead, but Robert sensed the rising panic in her and struggled not to be infected by it. He did not let himself tighten the stirrups any faster. He respected Molly enough to hide his desire to get away. “I have seeds to collect,” he said.

  “When are you coming back?”

  She did not give him the opportunity not to return, extracting his promise to visit again within three months. Which is how Robert Goodenough became Molly’s backup plan in case a respectable miner did not emerge from the jackals she lived among. Every few months he stayed with her at French Creek for two nights—never more—pumped her until he was sore, then escaped back to his trees. He felt guilty for not falling back in love with her, but though he tried, he could not recreate that week in Texas when all the world led back to her. That feeling belonged to other people.

  Robert was at the stables near Mrs. Bienenstock’s, checking on his horse. It was early December and he had just come back to San Francisco after another visit to Molly, leaving as the snow came, which would mean no visiting for months unless he wanted to risk getting caught in a snowdrift and freezing to death. Seeing Molly was still new enough that he thought he might risk it, though the gray was not fond of snow. The horse had stepped on a sharp rock on the final stretch of road. Robert had taken care of it as soon as they arrived, removing the gray’s shoe and scraping out the pus before applying a poultice. Now he wanted to make sure there was no infection. The horse seemed all right, though he was not the sort to communicate much. Perhaps he sensed Robert’s own lack of commitment, for he showed little affection for his owner. Robert had been around men who loved their horses more than their wives, and cried when they died or were stolen. Some swore they could feel their horses laughing under their thighs. Robert suspected that if the gray had a sense of humor, it was a dry one.

  He sat back on a barrel, watching his horse and eating an apple—a Gravenstein, one of the few apples available in California. Newly picked, they were juicy and tasted of berries, but they didn’t keep well and by December were mushy and tasteless, with a disagreeably waxy skin. Robert grimaced, wondered why he was bothering, and fed it to the gray, who was not picky about the taste or feel of an apple.

  “I got one you’ll like better.”

  William Lobb stood in the doorway. Pulling an apple from his pocket, he tossed it to Robert. It was small and yellow and wrinkled, and Robert turned it over and over in his hand.

  “Try it. I’ve brought it all this way for you, lad. Go on, bite into it.”

  Robert bit, and though old and soft from its long journey, the apple still contained a trace of the distinctive honey and pineapple taste of a Golden Pippin.

  “Thought that would make you smile. Pitmaston Pineapples have become quite the thing in England. Even Veitch is selling ’em, and he’s not much bothered about apple trees.”

  Robert thought about shaking William Lobb’s hand, but such formality didn’t seem appropriate with him. They had only ever shaken hands once, when they first met. “Did the shipments I sent arrive?” he asked instead. “There were three of them, but I didn’t hear anything.”

  “They did indeed. Didn’t I write to tell you? No? My apologies. Yes, they all arrived, and mostly intact. The Ward’s cases were fine, the seedlings fresh as the day they were dug up. You lost three cases of cones to damp, but that’s not bad out of a few dozen. It’s what you’d expect.” Lobb stepped over to the stall that housed his buckskin mare. Others had used her while he was away, but she had begun whinnying the moment she heard his voice. Lobb patted her and fed her an apple—not a Pitmaston Pineapple, Robert hoped, for it would be wasted on a horse.

  “Did I collect what you wanted?”

  “Yes. You mixed up the Noble Fir and the Red Fir cones—but that’s easily done, and easily made right,” William Lobb added when he caught sight of Robert’s face, perhaps understanding that after over a year away, what his assistant needed was reassurance rather than a list of things he’d done wrong.

  “How are the sequoias doing in England? Did they believe you about the size?”

  “Oh, they did, they did! The English love the idea of these huge trees. In fact, I’ve rather done Billie Lapham a disservice. His publicity of Calaveras Grove reached as far as Europe, and once they’d read about the Mammoth Tree grove, everyone wanted one. My timing was perfect.” Lobb continued stroking the buckskin mare. “Of course, at first customers were put out that there were no giant trees ready for them to plant—as if they expected us to dig up mature sequoias and send them by ship! But we grew seedlings quick enough, and that seems to satisfy them. It tickles them to imagine their great-great-grandchildren enjoying a tree whose size they can only dream of.”

  “What about the seedlings?”

  “Of the four I brought back, two are still growing; the other two perished after being transplanted into English soil, the like of which probably shocked them to death after the Californian soil they were accustomed to. I myself felt rather similarly.”

  Indeed, William Lobb did not look quite himself. He seemed tired, the T of his face more prominent because of his sunken cheeks and hollowed eye sockets. Of course it was not surprising—three months on ships would likely carve out any man’s face. But there was something deeper than surface fatigue and illness. He moved stiffly, as if he didn’t have his legs entirely in control. His black hair was much grayer, and lank rather than glossy. His talk was also less modulated: his laughter seemed louder, and he swore more. Later when they went to an eating house—a place where rough talk was more common than kind words—his tone made customers glance over, though they were careful not to meet Lobb’s eye.

  His anger at James Veitch made a vein bulge in his temple. “He’s milking me dry, like an old cow with withered dugs!” he exclaimed, shoveling ham into his mouth. “All he wants is for me to collect plants till my balls fall off, the cheating bastard. Makes his money from my knowledge with no respect for it!”

  “How much is he selling the sequoias for?”

/>   “Two guineas a seedling.” When Robert didn’t respond to the figure, Lobb added, “That’s eight dollars a tree!”

  Robert widened his eyes. “We could buy a hundred and fifty apple seedlings for that price back in Ohio.”

  “Yes, and do I see any of that money? Only a pittance!”

  Robert let him continue to rant, hoping he would eventually empty himself of his bile and they could talk more sensibly about work. He did not really care about how much the trees cost, or even how Veitch was treating his employer. He just wanted to know if he would still be working for Lobb.

  When there was a pause, Robert ventured to ask, “What will we be collecting next?”

  William Lobb exploded. “Goddammit, lad, can’t a man rest without being pestered and bullied? I’m just off the boat, my legs hurt, my head hurts, I just want to sleep without your badgering!” He stood up from his unfinished plate and stormed off, leaving Robert to pay.

  Lobb remained in his room for several days. If he hadn’t been there Robert would have made his own plans, but now that his sometime employer was back he felt obliged to wait for instructions from him. He hated being idle, though, and took to helping Mrs. Bienenstock when he could. He tidied up the backyard for her, and one afternoon they cleared mud from the road in front of the house—a futile effort since it would reappear with the next rain, but Mrs. B. insisted. “Standards,” she replied when he pointed this out.

  As they worked, he asked her what was wrong with William Lobb. Mrs. B. paused, leaning on her shovel. “Spanish disease, of course. What do you think he got up to down in South America? It wasn’t all plants.” She gestured at his crotch. “Mind you don’t get it yourself, with your trips up to French Creek. It’s called the French disease too, you know!” Mrs. B. enjoyed teasing him about Molly.

  She stopped chuckling, however, when she noted Robert’s stricken expression. “Don’t worry about him, man—he’ll be up in a day or two. I’ve seen some suffer much worse than him.”

  She was right—William Lobb was up the next day. He said nothing about his outburst at the eating house; nor did he repay Robert for his meal. Instead he announced that they would go south to collect flowering plants. “Yellow flowers, that’s what Veitch says the English want now. Poppies, violets, primroses. They’ve already got ’em in purple, but now they want yellow Californian poppies and violets to plant near their Californian conifers. You know about trees—now it’s time I taught you about flowers.”

  They spent the next eighteen months collecting a wide variety of flowers, shrubs and trees for Veitch to sell to English gardeners hungry for novelty, traveling as far south as Santa Barbara and as far north as the Oregon mountains. Or rather, Robert went north: William Lobb was less willing to go to more remote areas. Physically he suffered from joint pains and numbness and blinding headaches. Mentally he was at times confused and forgetful. Emotionally he was temperamental, sometimes shouting at Robert but most often directing his anger at Veitch, who he complained didn’t appreciate his skills as a collector. “Without me Veitch Nurseries would be nothing,” he ranted. “They’d be selling only roses and daffodil bulbs and box hedges. The most exotic plant they’d offer would be a subspecies of Sambucus nigra! I have brought them rhododendrons and ceanothus. I have brought them the fuchsias you see in every decent British garden. I have brought the monkey puzzle and the redwood. And what do I get for my trouble? Complaints and demands!” Yet he also fretted when he didn’t receive letters from Veitch asking for more seeds and specimens. “He’s found someone else,” he declared. “Bridges or Beardsley or some other biddable lackey who will work for him for less money.”

  Robert learned not to listen, and to offer to go alone on the more strenuous trips. Sometimes Lobb agreed. Other times, though, his paranoia extended to his assistant and he became convinced Robert was trying to take over his business. Then he would insist on coming along, though he rode more slowly now, sometimes hiring a wagon instead of riding the buckskin mare. Though he learned a great deal from his employer, Robert was disappointed that they never rediscovered the charmed magic of that first trip they had taken together from Calaveras Grove to San Francisco, when Robert was the sponge and Lobb the river of knowledge he soaked in.

  After a year of increasingly slow and difficult travels, William Lobb decided to remain in San Francisco at Mrs. Bienenstock’s and focus on the packing and shipping while Robert did the collecting. It was Mrs. B. who suggested the arrangement. “Jesus H. Christ,” she interrupted Lobb one day as he sat in her kitchen complaining of the aches and pains he’d suffered from their latest trip to Monterey. “Stay here and do the packing and let the young one run all over California for you! Don’t you always say the success of collecting is in the packing? You’re the boss—take the most important role and stop moaning!”

  Lobb was silent for a moment. He still showed Mrs. B. more respect than he did anyone else, his mania miraculously abating whenever she gave him a look or made a sharp remark. “Maybe you’re right,” he agreed at last.

  Mrs. B. raised her eyebrows. “Maybe?”

  The arrangement suited Robert too. He could travel alone, visit Molly now and then, and enjoy small doses of William Lobb, tempered by Mrs. Bienenstock. He was, almost, happy.

  The British mania for giant sequoias showed no signs of dying down, and Robert made regular trips up to Calaveras Grove to collect seeds. Whenever he had the chance, he took a few days to explore the surrounding area. He never told anyone—not William Lobb, or Billie Lapham, or Mrs. Bienenstock, or Molly—but he was looking for more sequoias. Lobb himself had suggested early on that there could be more growing somewhere along the mountain range at a similar elevation, but now his illness had eroded his adventurous spirit and he preferred to collect at known places.

  It took three years of searching, but in the late summer of 1856 Robert at last stumbled upon more giant trees. He was picking his way through thick woods only five miles southeast of Calaveras Grove when the gray began to snort and whinny, then kick out with his hooves. Robert assumed he had seen a snake, but the horse was looking ahead rather than down. He dismounted and held tight to the reins, his heart beating faster. Though he couldn’t see anything—no telltale auburn presence in the distance—Robert sensed a difference in the woods ahead. It was quieter, with fewer birds and less rustling of leaves.

  He dragged the gray through the trees until he saw the first sequoia, then tied up his horse with its back to the grove and its nose in a bag full of oats, and went to explore. Here were dozens of giant sequoias, more spread out than at Calaveras Grove, and even bigger and more beautiful. There were no raked paths or signs or laughing tourists spilling out of saloons or standing on giant stumps. He was amazed that no one had found the grove before him, though he had learned in his travels that people tended to stick to well-worn paths rather than push into new places.

  Robert was the trees’ only witness, and he planned to keep it that way. He would not collect cones here: the grove would remain untouched, as trees should be. James Goodenough would have approved. It was even worth paying Billie Lapham for the privilege of continuing to collect at Cally Grove if that would keep these sequoias secret. Robert had come to like Billie Lapham, but he knew the businessman would want to lay claim to the new grove and expand his business if he could.

  The next day he continued on to Calaveras Grove. As he arrived, passing the Two Sentinels that marked the beginning of the grove, he saw that there was dancing on the Great Stump. Indeed, there had been dancing on it every time Robert visited, and he had grown used to the sight, though he still refused to set foot on the stump himself. Californians loved to dance more than any other people he had met. This was the case both of gold rush miners and of Californios up from Mexico. It seemed once they arrived they caught two fevers: gold and dance. There was dancing everywhere, even when there were no women to dance with. At the mining camps he’d lived in, after a long day bent over pans, the men danced with each other or di
d a solo jig to a fiddle and a guitar.

  Today there were just two couples, dancing a fast polka to the whistling of one of the men. They danced with their partners; then, after a signal known only to themselves, switched. Robert was always surprised by this unspoken fluidity. He was not a dancer. Despite Molly’s attempts to teach him a few simple steps, he had never been able to join dances after supper when the tables and chairs were pushed back, or outside by the fire. Instead he had stood or squatted on his heels and watched.

  Now his eyes followed the women first, as they always did. One was round and buxom, and once she realized that Robert was watching her, she began exaggerating her movements so that her hips swayed and the arcs of her turns followed the curves of her body, drawing them in the air. He didn’t know if she intended to embarrass him or if she liked the attention, but he shifted his eyes to the other woman. Small, slight, with wisps of hair escaping her bun, she did not look at Robert, or the men who held her, or anyone, but danced as if she were not in the arms of a gold miner on top of a giant sequoia stump, but somewhere far away.

  At least today there were only four of them. Robert had witnessed a Fourth of July cotillion where thirty-two people had danced on the Great Stump, with enough space for the musicians as well. The cotillion had made the newspapers in Stockton and Sacramento and even San Francisco, with a drawing of the dance published alongside the articles. They were more like advertisements than news, orchestrated by Billie Lapham to publicize Calaveras Grove.

  His eyes moved from the women on to the dancing men. Both had the weathered skin of miners, their obsession with gold putting them outside in all weathers and giving them a reason to ignore the hail, the heat, the ice, the wind that chapped their cheeks and lips. It was not just skin that marked them as gold miners, though, for Robert also had the scoured face of a life lived outdoors. These two still had that trace of gold obsession haunting their eyes, eight years after gold had first been discovered in California, and six years since the peak of the gold rush. Their dreams were still full of those minute glittering flashes. It was a dream common to many, wherever they came from. Robert had met French and Spanish and German and Dutch and Chinese chasing that dream. He had met men and a few women from Maine and Florida, Indiana and Missouri, Wisconsin and Connecticut. He had met people from Ohio. He had even once met a man from the Black Swamp, who had lived there only briefly, long after Robert’s time. Robert almost asked him about the Goodenough farm, but stopped himself: the man was drunk, and besides, Robert was not sure what he wanted to hear. From their clothes and the fact that they were drinking French brandy—a flamboyant expense when so much cheap Cuban rum or local whiskey was available—it seemed these two had done well out of gold, had managed not to gamble away all of their earnings. This was rare; no wonder the women, with their pale indoor skin and well-cut dresses, were willing to dance with them. These were the kind of men Molly was looking for to take her away from French Creek. These were the tourists Billie Lapham had been trying to attract with his ads and his well-kept road and his hotel and bowling alley.