“Of course not!”
“Then I got a stage to Murphys, and there I asked around and they all knew you. The Tree Man, they call you. They were nice too—for a mining town.” Again Martha seemed to have unexpected knowledge of the world. “Put me on a horse this way.”
“You rode a horse like that?” Robert nodded at her belly.
Martha shrugged. “I just wanted to find you, Robert. You’re my family. I traveled all these months, and I wasn’t going to wait around when you were only fifteen miles away.”
“How come you didn’t tell Nancy you were my sister?”
“I didn’t want you to find out from someone else that I was here—I wanted to surprise you, see your reaction myself.”
“You sure did surprise me. I thought …” Robert’s throat became tight with what he’d thought.
“What?”
“I thought you were dead of the swamp fever. I’m sorry.” He choked on the last words, and his eyes filled with tears.
Martha let him swallow a sob, then squeezed his arm. “I don’t believe you. You know why?”
Robert shook his head.
“’Cause when you wrote all those letters, you wrote ‘Brothers and Sisters’—not ‘Sister’ like you’d have done if you thought only Sal was left. No, you thought I was alive, or you hoped I was alive—and that’s the same thing in my book.”
Robert stopped trying to hold back sobs, for Martha’s words made them dry up, except for a tear that got away down his cheek before he could catch it. “Maybe you’re right,” he said after a while. “How come you know me better than I know myself?”
Martha smiled. “It’s easy to know other people. Not so easy to know ourselves.”
It was then that Robert really saw her, saw that she might be small but she was not frail as he had remembered; she was huge of heart. It almost made him cry again, and so he focused on the practical. “You tired?”
Martha shook her head. “Hungry. I could eat a whole pot of beans!”
“Let’s go back to the hotel, get you something to eat.”
As they walked along the path that wound through the grove, still talking, Martha kept her hand tucked in Robert’s elbow. At first she didn’t seem to notice the giant trees they walked past, and he did not point out Father of the Forest or Mother of the Forest or any of the others. But eventually as they were passing the Three Graces, she seemed to take them in for the first time. “They’re so big, aren’t they? How come they’re so big and other trees aren’t?”
“I don’t know,” Robert replied, wondering why he had never asked this question himself. “There’s another grove of these trees a few miles away where there’s one that’s even bigger, and more beautiful. Nobody knows about it but me. I’ll show you sometime if you want.” Already he was giving his sister his most precious gift—his secret grove of trees.
“I’d like that.”
“We could go now—it’s only a few miles. You could manage that on a horse, couldn’t you?” Suddenly the idea of taking his sister to see the secret trees was all Robert could think of.
His eagerness made Martha smile. “Maybe tomorrow. I’ve got some pain now and then.”
“That doesn’t sound good. Do you know when the baby’s coming?”
“Soon. Real soon. It’s moved down.” Martha shook her head at his alarmed look. “You haven’t been around women having babies, have you? Mrs. Day and I helped out with neighbors in the Black Swamp. The labor starts a long time before it gets going for real. It’s just getting itself ready. I’ve got time.”
They walked for a bit in silence before Robert said, “What are we going to do?”
“I already know,” Martha replied firmly. “Mrs. Lapham talked to me about it. She’s real nice, Mrs. Lapham.”
“Nancy? What did she say?”
“That we should go with them to Murphys. They’re leaving tomorrow. I can have the baby there.”
Robert nodded. Though he had been thinking further ahead, her answer made him realize it would be best to concentrate on the next few days for now, and leave the future to sort itself out.
Nancy Lapham was delighted to discover that Martha was Robert’s sister rather than his lover. The knowledge seemed to rally her. “A sister! Of course!” she cried, sitting up in bed and reaching out to pat Martha’s arm. “That makes sense. You got a Goodenough look about you, now I see you two side by side. Oh, how wonderful that you’ve found each other! Tell me how it happened,” and she made Martha tell the story all over again, of lost letters and her journey by boat and barge and ship and steamboat and stage and horse. Already Martha was repeating phrases, leaving out unnecessary details, hurrying over questionable moments, shaping her journey into a story ready for retelling. Nancy asked her many more questions than Robert had—not about the baby or its father, but about the months on board the ship going down and up the South American coastlines and around Cape Horn. “Did you see penguins?” she asked. “Natives with spears? Dolphins? Were the men respectful? Respectable? How many other women were on board? Could you wash? How much fresh water did you get? Was the passage rough? Were there rats? Fleas? What did you eat? Were there weevils in the flour? What kind of fruit did they bring on board? Coconuts? Pineapples?”
At the mention of pineapples, Martha started. “Oh! Robert, will you get my bag? I hid it in the last stall in the stables. Please.”
By the time he’d brought it back, the women had come down to the front porch, aided by Billie Lapham, and were sitting side by side in rocking chairs. “I am truly honored to meet you, ma’am,” Lapham was saying to Martha, his top hat in his hands. “Really and truly. Any sister of Robert’s is a sister to me.”
“Where’d you get this?” Robert asked as he handed his sister a battered carpetbag.
“New York.” As Martha rummaged around in the bag, Robert marveled at the thought of his timid sister navigating the streets of America’s biggest city. She didn’t seem capable of it. But then, she had gotten herself all the way across the country to him. He was going to have to change his idea of her from the shy, defenseless girl he’d known when they were young, the last sight of her a muddy boot dangling from an apple tree.
Martha pulled out a handkerchief. As she unfolded it, something scattered into her lap and rolled off her belly onto the porch floorboards. “Oh!” she cried. “Don’t move!”
“What is that?” Robert stepped carefully over.
“Seeds. They’re for you. I brought them all this way, and now—”
“It’s all right, I see them.” Robert picked at the floor till he held a dozen small brown seeds shaped like tears. He recognized them but asked anyway, “What are these?”
“From one of the Golden Pippin trees back home, the one that tasted of pineapple. They’re from the tree you grafted on the Injun trail that you mentioned in your letter. I thought you could plant one out here.”
Robert rolled the hard seeds between his fingers. “I know they’ll mostly turn out to be spitters,” Martha added, “but isn’t one in ten trees usually an eater if you plant them from seed?”
Robert nodded. “You remember.”
“Course I do. You’ve got more than ten seeds there, so if you plant them all you’ll likely get at least one sweet Golden Pippin.”
“Yes.”
Nancy was staring at them. “What are you two talking about?”
“Apples,” Martha said. “Family apples.”
After a while Nancy sent the men away. “Get me my shawl, Billie. Me and Martha are gonna sit here and get to know each other.” She held out her hand and Martha took it.
Billie Lapham glanced at Robert, who shrugged. This would give him a little time to collect the sequoia cones he had come to Calaveras Grove for—though now that he was free for a moment he found he didn’t want to leave his sister, fearful that she was a dream he would suddenly wake from.
He forced himself to head for the stables to get sacks and his shotgun, but he kept turning
back around to look at Martha. Seeing the two women together, he understood at last why he’d always been drawn to Nancy Lapham, even in her illness: she and Martha were alike enough that they could be sisters. Nancy’s face was wide where Martha’s was narrow, and her hair was darker to Martha’s fair, but both were delicate and shy and loving.
Each time Robert looked back, Martha laughed and waved. Her laughter was tinkly, tinged with a hint of hysteria, or perhaps merely fatigue, as the nine-month journey caught up with her. Or maybe she worried that, after her coming thousands of miles to find him, Robert might walk into the giant sequoia grove and disappear. After all, he had walked away from her before. He hated to do so now.
He collected his equipment and hurried into the woods. At the nearest giant sequoia, he shot down a few branches and threw the green cones into a sack, not bothering to inspect each for signs of rot or chickaree damage.
Deeper in the woods, though, out of sight of the hotel, he slowed down. In fact he was glad to have the time alone as he tried to put what had just happened into some kind of order. In the space of an hour, his life had changed completely. Seeing Martha was a dream he had never dared to think would become real. All of those letters he’d sent had been a hook thrown out into the wilderness to snag her, or the memory of her; he had not actually expected her to come and find him. Now she had, with a Goodenough baby on the way, and that brought him a stack of new responsibilities and expectations. Since the age of nine Robert had lived his life more or less alone: he could walk away from work, from people, move on, go west. No one had been gripping his arm. When someone did—when Molly did—he had ducked from her. But he could not duck from Martha. Nor did he want to: he was thrilled to feel her holding on to his arm. Only a sliver of him wanted to pry her hand loose and say, “I don’t know how to be a brother anymore.”
While he pondered this sudden change, his collecting instincts took over and he began to gather cones more methodically, even finding three seedlings to bring back. He had just dug up the third one when the stable boy appeared to tell him he was needed back at the hotel.
Though he had only been gone an hour, Martha was in tears on the porch, with Nancy rocking in time beside her, squeezing her hand. Robert set down the sack and the seedlings and took his sister’s other hand. “Martha, Martha, I’m here, I haven’t gone away. I was just collecting seeds. It’s my job. I won’t leave you. I promise.”
“Your brother is a good man,” Nancy added. “Billie and me always said so. Anybody here will tell you that too: Robert Goodenough is a good man.”
Martha nodded and pulled free the hand Nancy held to wipe her eyes. “I know. Course I know.”
But Robert was not sure she did know.
They made a stately procession down the mountain from Calaveras Grove the next day. Robert was used to traveling on his own, just him and the gray, or with William Lobb before his employer’s illness kept him close to San Francisco. And he was not used to traveling with women—one ill, one close to giving birth. They rode together in a wagon bed, Nancy lying down on a mattress, Martha preferring to lean beside her on one of Robert’s sacks of cones. A second wagon carried the Laphams’ possessions: a bed frame, a chest of drawers, a table and chairs, quilts, dishes, trunks of clothes. Wedged among them were the sequoia seedlings and Martha’s bag. Two of Haynes’ men drove the wagons while Robert and Billie Lapham rode behind. Robert had never ridden so slowly. Though it was a reasonable road, they were being careful because of Martha, who winced occasionally, though whether from the jolts from the road or the pain of the baby preparing to come out, he was not sure.
Billie Lapham was full of plans. “It’ll be better being based at Murphys,” he explained. “I can drum up business there, and bring tourists up to Cally Grove, act as their guide, without having to worry about running the place. Leave that to Haynes. I bet there are plenty of miners at Murphys and the surrounding camps—Angels, Columbia, Jamestown—who’d like a day or two out to see the trees. Maybe even the French and the Chinese.”
Robert smiled to himself. Clearly Billie Lapham didn’t know miners if he thought they would willingly take time off from their search for gold to look at some trees, no matter how big they were. But he did not say so. It was heartening to hear of Lapham’s dreams—ever the optimist, even when his business was failing and his wife dying. Also, he was clearly attached to the sequoias, and that love of trees endeared him to Robert. For a moment he considered telling him about the second sequoia grove; it could change the businessman’s fortunes.
Before he could, though, Lapham continued, “This state is made up of people from other places, but they don’t know California at all, except for the little bit where they are. The mining’s dying down and people want to move around, see what there is here before they take their earnings back home. Some of them might even look around for a place to settle. It’s the best time to be in the tourism business. Not just these big trees, but the mountains all around. I hear there are rock formations and waterfalls south of here in Yosemite Valley that’ll knock you over with how big and bold they are. Lots of potential there. Then you got the shoreline with whales and seals, and canyons full of redwoods. Me, though, I’m settin’ my sights on a lake north of here they call Bigler. You seen it? They says it’s the most beautiful lake in the world, huge, with sandy beaches and green bays. Perfect for steamboats and saloons.”
That was never how Robert would envisage a lake, but he was not in the tourist trade. Perhaps Billie Lapham’s enthusiasm could inspire even hard-bitten gold miners to lay down their pans and sluice boxes to look at giant trees and whales and waterfalls, and paddle in an emerald lake. Who was he to say? He was glad he’d just kept his mouth shut about the secret sequoias; otherwise he could have seen them ruined with saloons and bowling alleys. Let Lapham take his tourist attractions to the emerald lake instead. “What about Nancy?” he asked. “Is she going to come with you to this lake?”
“Oh, of course I won’t go anywhere till Nance is better. Give her some time to convalesce at Murphys, then we’ll see.”
They were quiet for a bit, riding down through the pines and cedars lining the road, the sky an intense blue backdrop. Other times Robert had relished this ride from Calaveras Grove, admiring the trees, and the jays and finches and flycatchers flying back and forth, and the layered hills in the distance. Now, though, he was distracted by his companions, noticing, for instance, how closely Billie Lapham was studying the women in the wagon ahead of them. “Your sister gonna be all right?” Lapham murmured under the sound of the wagon wheels and horse hooves.
The question was like a punch to Robert’s stomach. “What do you mean?”
Billie Lapham pulled up his horse and let the wagons move away. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his brow. “Well, now, she’s a little thing, ain’t she, a lot like Nancy. Doctors always warned Nance she was too small to have a baby easily. Said it was a risk she shouldn’t chance. Course, maybe we would’ve tried anyway,” he added quickly when he saw the look on Robert’s face, “but she got sick and that was the end of that. But I tell you what—I could ride ahead and find a doctor in Murphys who can be waitin’ at the hotel, ready to check on Martha as soon as you get there.”
Robert stared at his sister, measuring her swollen belly against her slight frame, and knew Lapham was right. Some women were built to give birth easily; others struggled. Martha was likely to be a struggler. She was pale, too, and a film of sweat glistened on her forehead. Though she was smiling now at something Nancy said, she was also gripping the side of the wagon so hard that her knuckles were white. “You don’t mind going ahead?”
“Not at all. My horse could do with a run anyway after goin’ so slow all morning. You look after the girls. Nance,” he called to his wife, “I’m just gonna ride ahead, take care of a little business at Murphys, get things ready for you. Want to make sure we get rooms out back, away from the saloon. Robert will stay with you. I’ll see you down there, al
l right?”
His wife nodded; she knew her husband.
Billie Lapham was about to spur on his horse when a wagon appeared in the distance on the road below, climbing towards them. All Robert could see from where he sat was a bright red and yellow parasol, twirling slowly.
“What kind of fancy tourist is that?” Billie Lapham said.
They pulled up and watched the wagon draw closer. After a few minutes it became clear the parasol was made of Chinese silk brocade, and was being spun by Molly Jones, who sat in the wagon bed while a bemused old man drove. There was just enough room for the wagon to stop alongside the one carrying Nancy and Martha.
“Halloo there!” Molly cried. “Well, now, Robert Goodenough, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes—or sore thighs, I oughta say. You never told me the big trees were so damned out of the way!”
Nancy and Martha sat up and stared at Molly, then turned their heads to look up at Robert. Billie Lapham gazed from Molly to Robert and back again, then chuckled. Robert sat frozen on the gray, unable to move for all the sets of eyes on him—even those of the wagon drivers, who had felt invisible up to now.
“Ain’t you gonna come down here and kiss me hello?”
It was only when Robert dismounted and stepped up to the wagon, hesitating with his hand on the edge of one side, that he took in the full enormity of Molly, understanding long after the others had worked it out that she was carrying a child. Carrying his child. Carrying his child he’d thought the day before he had managed to dodge when it turned out to be Martha’s.
Molly leaned over and kissed him full on the lips. “Surprise, honey!”
No one spoke, but the gray whinnied and it sounded like a laugh.
“You ain’t runnin’ away from me now, are you?” Molly looked over at the women in the other wagon across from her—a direct, assessing gaze that said, “Explain yourselves.”
Nancy at least knew how to respond. “I’m Nancy Lapham.” She held out her small, pale hand. “And that’s my husband, Billie.”
At the Edge of the Orchard Page 18