At the Edge of the Orchard

by Tracy Chevalier

  And here he was. “Goodenough! Ain’t you the man of the moment. There’s a gal been lookin’ for you.”

  Robert turned around. Billie Lapham’s top hat was pushed back as usual, its brim partly detached from the crown, and he was stroking his moustache with one hand and reaching out to shake Robert’s hand with the other.

  “Nancy wants to see me?” Robert said.

  Billie Lapham’s face fell. “Nance is a little poorly—though of course she’ll want to see you, sick or not. Put your head around the door, make her smile again.”

  Lapham’s wife Nancy was soft and sickly, with faded hair and a face wide at the cheeks and narrowed to a point at the chin like a cat’s. The first time he heard her cough, Robert had known what it meant: eventually consumption would take her. Every time he came to Cally Grove, he braced himself for Nancy’s absence, and was relieved to find her still greeting visitors on the front porch of the Big Trees Hotel, or sweeping the floor in the saloon, or washing glasses out back. She always smiled at Robert and seemed pleased to see him.

  It also pleased Billie Lapham to see his wife happy. He was not the jealous type, but hospitable, inviting Robert to supper or for a whiskey, both of which Robert always accepted. Or he told him he could dance on the Great Stump for free rather than pay fifty cents like the others. This offer Robert never took up. But he was happy to establish with Lapham an easy business relationship that tipped over into friendliness, helped along by the five dollars he handed over as a fee each time he collected seeds there.

  Billie Lapham fingered his moustache and watched the couples dancing their polka. “Just between us, Goodenough, I’m selling my share of Cally Grove and taking Nancy to live at Murphys. More people there who can look after her, rather’n her lookin’ after people.”

  “Who are you selling to?”

  Billie Lapham made a face. “Haynes bought me out.”

  Dr. Smith Haynes had been Billie Lapham’s business partner for almost two years, and Robert had never taken to him. He was a harder man than Lapham, with a full beard, a long stare, a snug waistcoat and his hands always in his pockets. He insisted on being called “Doctor,” though Robert had never heard of him doing any doctoring. He treated Billie Lapham with unwarranted disdain.

  What bothered Robert even more was his dismissiveness of Nancy’s role as hostess of the Big Trees Hotel. Haynes wanted a hostess to be everything Nancy wasn’t: loud, bosomy, funny and assertive. He wanted her to ply visitors with drinks, tell them jokes, flirt with the men and commiserate with the women. Nancy did none of these things, though she had a quiet charm that worked if given a chance. Haynes never gave her a chance, though. As she grew sicker and weaker, he glared as if she had deliberately contracted TB to provoke him. Of course he couldn’t fire her since she was his business partner’s wife, and Billie Lapham defended her robustly, if anxiously. “She’s improving, looking better, don’t you think?” he’d say to Robert in front of Haynes, and Robert would agree even when Nancy was clearly worse. “The customers like her,” Lapham would remind Haynes. It was true that visitors liked Nancy, despite her flat chest and lack of jokes. She was gentle, and she listened when they complained about fog obscuring good views of the sequoias, or fleas in the beds, or their losses at the card tables, or the blisters they got from dancing on the Great Stump’s rough surface. When she could she did something to help: stuffed mattresses with pennyroyal and rosemary to drive away the fleas, suggested excursions to escape the fog, appealed to her husband to install a sprung floor on the stump. Otherwise she sympathized with a smile and a cough. But Haynes felt it wasn’t enough. He would be delighted the Laphams were going.

  “In fact,” Billie Lapham continued, “you’ll need to make a new deal with Haynes about the seed collecting. He always thought five dollars a time wasn’t enough for what you’re takin’ from the property. Me, I don’t mind. I know how much Nancy likes to see you. My wife’s smile is worth a lot more than the five extra dollars Haynes wants to charge you.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I’ll come see you and Nancy at Murphys when you move.”

  Billie Lapham nodded. “We’d like that. Now, this other gal …”

  “What other gal?”

  “The one I just mentioned was looking for you.”

  “I thought you meant Nancy.”

  “Naw, this was a visitor. She came yesterday and asked for you.” Billie Lapham grinned. “Looked urgent to me so I sent her to Nance. Women know the right questions to ask, you see. Best to find out from her. I’ll take you to her now—I want to check on her anyway.”

  Robert followed him to the hotel, a sinking feeling in his belly. The last time he’d seen Molly, four months before, she’d talked about visiting Calaveras Grove to see the trees. So, as she had with her threats to come to California, she had actually done what she’d said she would do. While she was at French Creek Robert felt he could keep her separate from the rest of his life. If she came here, though, she would stay. Haynes would love her, and with Nancy going, Molly could be the hostess he wanted, with her laugh and her bosom and her big open bed.

  Nancy and Billie Lapham slept in a small room at the top of the hotel where you would expect the maid to live rather than the proprietor. But that was how businessmen made their money—by renting out the good rooms and ignoring their own comfort until they could afford to think about it. Nancy lay in a bed that took up most of the space yet was hardly big enough for both of them. Though the window was open, the room smelled of milk someone had left to sour in the glass, of the chamber pot that was not emptied often enough, of a body confined. Robert wished he could carry her downstairs and put her in one of the rocking chairs on the hotel porch, but he suspected Haynes wouldn’t want her there, advertising illness to the visitors.

  He stood in the doorway, hat in hand, while Billie Lapham woke his wife. Nancy whimpered, but when Billie whispered Robert’s name to her, she struggled to sit up. Her pointed face was white apart from two bright dots of red on her cheeks, as if she had been leaning on her hands. And she smiled. “Robert,” she croaked, “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

  “Yes, ma’am, I am too.” Whenever Robert was with her he became formal.

  “Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me. I’m your friend, not a minister’s wife. Come and sit with me.” Nancy patted the edge of the bed.

  Robert glanced at Billie Lapham, who nodded. “I brought you a pitcher of fresh water, Nance,” her husband said. “Straight from the well, nice and cold. I drew it myself.” Throwing the sour milk out of the window, he rinsed the glass and filled it with water. “You want anything else?”

  “No, thank you, honey. I’ll just visit awhile here with Robert. We got things to discuss.”

  Billie Lapham chuckled. “You sure do.” His laughter puzzled Robert, as did Nancy’s widening smile. They seemed to be sharing a joke at his expense.

  When Billie Lapham had clattered down the stairs, Nancy’s smile dimmed a little, and Robert frowned. He was often surprised at himself for caring so much about her. “How are you keeping, Nancy?” he asked, making sure to use her name.

  Nancy raised her free hand and gestured to her bed-bound body, then let it drop. “Well, it’s obvious, ain’t it? I just get worse ’n’ worse. Did Billie tell you we’re moving to Murphys?”

  Robert nodded.

  “I’m doin’ it to humor him, really. Bein’ in bed there or here won’t make no difference to me. Might make him feel better, though—rest easier about me. And he won’t have to deal with Haynes any more. That man: I wish a sugarpine cone would fall right on his head.” Seeing Robert smile, Nancy became more elaborate in her revenge. “A big one, a foot long like they come, nice and green and heavy. And with the sap on it that’s so sticky you can’t get it off you, and the dirt gets in it and you can’t get that off either, so you go round lookin’ unwashed. That’s what I would like to have happen to that man.”

  “Want me to shoot some cones off a tree when he’s passing un
der it?”

  “You do that.” Nancy closed her eyes and leaned back into the pillows. “I’ll miss the big trees. That I do regret.”

  Robert waited. After a few minutes he thought she must be asleep, the glass of water tipping in her hand. He took it gently from her and set it on the small table by her bed, where there was a Bible, a candle and a stack of handkerchiefs freshly laundered. One of them was crumpled; Robert could see specks of blood on it.

  Then he froze. Behind the handkerchiefs was a small brown glass pot with a label that read: “Jonah Parks’ Respiratory Balm—for efficacious breathing.” Next to the words was a crude sketch of a woman holding a bouquet of flowers that Robert himself might well have drawn fifteen years ago, for the pot looked that old.

  He reached over and picked it up, and Nancy opened her eyes. “Nancy, where’d you get this?”

  “Oh, a visitor gave it to me last week, said it would help me to breathe easier. And it has! Why, have you ever used it?”

  “No.”

  Nancy looked at him more closely. “What is it?” When he didn’t answer, she sighed. “Robert Goodenough, you never tell me anything!”

  “It’s nothing, really—just that I once worked for Mr. Parks.”

  “Did you? That’s funny! Where was this?”

  “Indiana.” Robert did not add that the balm was simply a mixture of beeswax, camphor and sassafras root cooked in a pot over a campfire—as was the snake oil, brain salt, cure for baldness, and all the other medicines Jonah Parks made up. Nancy wanted to believe it helped her breathe, and for that reason, maybe it did. He sat now looking at this piece of his past, and marveled that it had found its way to Nancy’s bedside table. Indiana was a long way from California, and Ohio ever further. And yet, what a small world this was.

  Nancy’s eyes had drooped again and Robert thought he would slip out and let her sleep. When he got up, though, she grabbed his arm with more strength than he’d expected. “Where do you think you’re goin’?” she demanded, her eyes still shut.

  “I thought you were asleep.”

  “You think I’m gonna sleep when we got a woman to talk about? I was just restin’ my eyes, is all.” She opened her eyes and Robert sat back down.

  “You know,” Nancy said, “when I first met you a few years ago, I couldn’t believe you weren’t married, or at least have a gal. ‘Somebody oughta snap him up,’ I told Billie. You’re a handsome fella—don’t duck your head, you are! You got the brightest brown eyes, would make any gal happy just to have you look at her. You keep clean, you don’t drink or gamble, and you listen to people. If you’d had any money to invest, Billie would’ve asked you to partner him running Cally Grove. We knew you’d look after these trees.”

  Robert had never heard of this idea, and wondered how he would have responded if they had asked.

  “Anyway, it’s too late now—we’re stuck with Haynes, and Billie and I are gettin’ out of here.” Nancy closed her eyes again. Talking clearly tired her, and Robert would have to wait and let her catch up with herself. He didn’t mind: he was in no rush to hear about Molly.

  Nancy opened her eyes again. “So wasn’t I blown over to find out you did have a woman. Why didn’t you tell us, Robert? All this time I been worryin’ over you when I didn’t have to!”

  “Well …” Robert couldn’t think how to describe his relationship with Molly in a way that would satisfy Nancy. “I didn’t think you minded one way or another.”

  “Course I mind! I like to know you’re happy. ’Cause you don’t always seem happy, you know, except out in the trees. With people—with Billie and me, even—you don’t say much. Like I never knew till just now that you were in Indiana once. I always hoped you’d feel you could tell me things, if you wanted.”

  “I—I know.” Robert felt his chest tightening, as it had whenever Molly asked him too many questions. “I just don’t think about the past much.”

  Nancy could have asked why that was, but she seemed to know that she had pushed far enough. Instead she said, “So all those times you say you’re off collecting trees you’re actually with her?”

  “No,” Robert protested. “Mostly I am collecting trees. It’s just now and again I visit her.”

  “Sure.” Nancy was smiling again. Clearly she didn’t believe him.

  “When did you see her?”

  “Yesterday. We had a little visit. She sat right where you are now.”

  Robert blushed and rubbed his head. It was hard to imagine Molly here with her curves and her laugh and her desperation. The room was too small. He was embarrassed too: Molly was not the kind of woman Nancy would expect him to be with. He was embarrassed, and he was ashamed that he was embarrassed, for it was disrespectful of Molly. He wished he could leave this hot, stale room, but he couldn’t walk away from Nancy.

  “What did she say?” he asked.

  “Not much—didn’t need to. She wants to see you, of course. It’s lucky you turned up when you did!”

  “Where is she now?”

  “I told her I didn’t know when you’d be passin’ through next, and that she should get herself a room and wait, and we’d try to get word out to you since it’s urgent. She said she couldn’t afford it, so I told her to rest herself here a day or two, then get a lift back to Murphys where the rooms are cheaper and more plentiful.”

  Robert’s mind rested on the one word both Billie and Nancy Lapham had used: urgent. He could only think of one reason why it might be urgent. “Where is she—resting?”

  “In the barn. Billie knows. I told her to keep out of Haynes’ way. That man would happily throw out a woman in her state, just like the innkeeper in Bethlehem. So she’s stayin’ out of sight.” Nancy’s speech was getting slower and more garbled as she grew tired, and Robert wasn’t sure he understood. Or he did, and didn’t want to.

  “What do you mean? Nancy?”

  Nancy’s eyes were closed. He waited with increasing impatience for her to rouse herself, but this time she slept. If he wanted to confirm why Molly was here, he would have to find her himself.

  She wasn’t in the barn. Robert wasn’t surprised—it was stifling inside. Molly wasn’t in the stables looking at the horses as she liked to do sometimes at French Creek. She wasn’t on the porch, pretending to be a visitor having coffee. She wasn’t in the saloon, or the bowling alley, or at the Great Stump, or in the kitchen chatting to the cooks.

  He returned to the barn again to make sure she hadn’t gone back while he was looking for her elsewhere. There he ran into a young hand, forking hay into a wheelbarrow to take to the horses. “You lookin’ for the lady?” the boy said. “The one like this?” And he made the gesture Robert had feared since Billie and Nancy Lapham had both smiled at him: the unmistakable curve of a belly carrying a child.

  “You know where she is?”

  “She was here, but she went to see the trees.” The boy grinned as Robert turned and stumbled out into the fresh air.

  He had never asked Molly about babies. He’d never asked her much about herself since their first few nights together. As far as he knew she’d not had any. But nor had she made him withdraw early or wear something on his cock. He knew there were things women did to prevent babies involving hot baths and mustard or vinegar, or visits to doctors. They were women’s things he did not ask about, or feel he needed to know about.

  If she was as big as the stable hand had indicated, she must have already been pregnant the last time he’d seen her four months before. She’d said nothing, though Robert tried to think back to how she’d been. Had her stomach swelled and tightened like a drum? Had her already substantial breasts gotten bigger? He couldn’t recall. His visits to Molly’s bed blended into one long session of sweaty flesh and rumpled sheets, of a release that only ever scratched the surface of his itch, no matter how often he entered her. That a child would emerge from that chaotic pleasure seemed improbable. But then, his parents had had ten children that way. He shook his head, standing in the sun,
the sequoias flashing red in the distance.

  He headed out to them. A trail wound among the big trees for the ease of visitors, but Robert ignored it, for walking through undergrowth did not bother him. Apart from making the path, Billie Lapham and his various partners had also named some of the trees, hanging signs on them. Visitors liked that, for they wanted a way to differentiate between the sequoias and make sense of them. So there were the Two Sentinels at the entrance to Calaveras Grove. Nearby was the Discovery Tree, which the hunter from Murphys first saw when he was chasing a grizzly bear; it was the sequoia that had been felled and now had the bowling alley built on it. Then there were the Three Graces, a trio of beautiful trees standing side by side. The Old Bachelor, a rough tree. The Hermit, a tree that stood alone. The Siamese Twins, with two trees growing out of one trunk. The Burnt Tree, which had fallen and been burnt hollow by lightning so a person could ride through it on horseback. Robert hated the signs; he hated the names. Occasionally he thought about stealing all the signs and burning them, but he knew they would just be replaced.