At the Edge of the Orchard

by Tracy Chevalier

  He knew he was sitting as if he were about to stand again, run back to the stables and gallop off on the gray. He leaned back and tried not to think about his sister.

  Molly arranged her yellow skirts around her bump. “Now, we got to have a little talk.”

  Robert studied the Old Bachelor. It was a huge, grizzled old tree, set off from the others a bit up the hill. It would have been even bigger but the top had died and come down, leaving it with the rounded crown you saw on the older giant trees. He was beginning to understand its name better.

  “Look at you. Can’t even look at me.”

  Midway up the trunk of the tree was a line of woodpecker holes. Robert counted them in his head, then asked what he needed to ask. “Is the baby mine?”

  He could feel her flinch next to him. Though in his head it seemed a logical question, spoken aloud Robert understood how hurtful it was.

  But Molly did not shout at him. “I’m sure as I’m ever gonna be that it’s yours,” she replied evenly.

  He knew that was the most honest answer he would get. “Do you want …” Robert could not finish his sentence.

  “How do you know I actually want something from you?”

  Robert noticed that Molly had at last dropped her cheerfulness. It was a relief.

  “I’ll do right by you,” he said.

  “What does that mean? You know, you ain’t even said you’re glad to see me. Are you glad?”

  “I—”

  “I think you ain’t glad. That’s what I think.” Molly was getting that look again that he hated, that made him feel a metal band was strapped around his chest and tightening. But she was also angry.

  “I am glad. But—”

  “You don’t want me here, do you?”

  “Molly! Stop. Just—” Robert held up his hand. “Just let me speak.” He held Molly’s eye, and she became still, her hands folded over her belly.

  “My sister Martha only just arrived two days ago. I haven’t seen her in eighteen years. In fact, I didn’t even know if she was alive or not.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No.”

  “What about the rest of your family? Your parents?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “You never told me that. When did they die?”

  “Eighteen years ago.”

  Molly raised her eyebrows.

  Robert hesitated. Then, because she was waiting for more, he finally spoke aloud the words he had never said before. “They—they killed each other when I was a boy.” The words cut through the air like a knife through meat—resistant, and then gliding effortlessly.

  Molly stared at him. “Say that again so I’ll know I’m hearin’ right.”

  “They killed each other.”

  “How can two people kill each other?”

  Robert sighed, then told her in as few words as he could what had happened in the orchard. He could feel the splinter of sadness poking at his heart. “I ran off afterwards. Never went back.”

  “Good Lord.” Molly sat still, twisting her hands in her lap. She was not easily shocked, but Robert saw that the Goodenough family had managed to stun her.

  “I left Martha behind,” Robert added. “I can never forgive myself for leaving her. In fact, I shouldn’t have left her today.”

  But Molly was already beginning to recover, and anger was overtaking her surprise. “Why in hell’s name didn’t you ever tell me this, Robert Goodenough? I told you about my Ma and Pa and my brother and sister, but you never said a thing about yours—jest told me silly stories about your medicine man and the wooden leg when you had all this in your past!”

  “I’m sorry, Molly, but I don’t talk about it to anyone. It’s easier that way.”

  She was glaring at him, and he knew he owed her more than that. “If I don’t tell people about it, I don’t have to think about it, and it can be like it never happened.”

  “But it did happen.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then don’t you know that anyway? Underneath all your silence, you know it’s still there.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ain’t it better to be open about it? Then at least you’re honest, so you don’t have it diggin’ at you, deep inside.”

  “Maybe. We’re just different, I guess.”

  “I guess.” Molly’s anger had burnt out as quickly as it flared. She took his hand. “Lord, I feel real bad for you, Robert. This world’s full of sorrows, ain’t it?”

  They sat for a while, and Robert let her hold his hand.

  “The Bible’s never brought me a whole lotta comfort,” Molly said presently, “but I can see how these trees might. They been around a lot longer than any of us with our foolishness, and they’ll still be laughin’ at us in a few hundred years, don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” It was easier to agree than to explain what he really thought. Back when he’d first seen the giant trees, Robert too had marveled at their age and what they had witnessed. Now, though, he did not see them as witnesses at all. Trees lived in a different world from people. However much he pruned their branches, picked their fruit, collected their cones, dug up their seedlings, they did not respond to him. Even his horse responded to him more than trees did. They were not made to. They were not selves. It bothered him when people gave them human qualities when they were so clearly not human. That was why he did not like the sequoias’ being given names; the Old Bachelor was a tree, not a man. Yet he knew he still slipped into that trap too. For instance, he had been stupidly pleased that Martha had chosen the Orphans to sit under, though the trees were not orphans.

  But he let Molly turn the trees into witnesses of human folly, and then he said, “Molly, I need to go back to Murphys. It don’t feel right leaving Martha.” It was easier now to say these simple words.

  Molly accepted them with more ease too. “Go back to her,” she said. “Make that flea-biter gallop faster than he ever has before.”

  “You can come down with me if I can find you a wagon.”

  “Naw, I’ll jest hold you back. I’ll be down in a day or two.” Molly stretched her legs out before her and pointed her toes. “Right now I’m gonna set here a bit and look at the trees.”

  The gray was not an eager horse, but he had a sense from his rider that now was the time to gallop. They flew down the mountain in an hour and a half.

  But Robert too had a sense, and it was of a dread that grew faster than he could ride.

  He stood in the doorway of the hotel bedroom, looking at the bed soaked with blood, at Martha’s head turned towards the door as if expecting him, at her open eyes like two candles blown out, at Billie Lapham next to her with his handkerchief over his face, crying, and he thought, There is a God and He is a very harsh one, giving with one hand and taking more with the other so that I am even emptier than when I started.

  He removed his hat and went up to the bed and took Martha’s hand. It was only just starting to cool. “If you are still in this room,” he said, “I want to tell you that I never should’ve left you in the Black Swamp. I did it because I was scared and I was only thinking of myself when I should have been thinking of you too. I was just a boy, but I should’ve looked after you and I didn’t, and I will be sorry for that for the rest of my days.”

  There was a wailing sound behind him, and when he turned, Nancy was standing in the doorway with Jimmy in her arms, wrapped in Martha’s shawl. “I’m real sorry, Robert. I truly am.”

  “What happened?”

  “Hemorrhage. The doctor said it happens sometimes when something’s left inside the mother that should’ve come out. She was fine, chattin’ away with me while the baby slept, then suddenly there was blood everywhere. Billie ran for the doctor, but it was too late.”

  Jimmy cried louder. “I know I shouldn’t be holdin’ him ’cause of my illness,” Nancy said, “but Billie ain’t in a fit state to. He always was soft.” She gazed fondly at her weeping husband. “Here.” She walked over and held out the baby. �
��Go on, take him,” Nancy chided when Robert hesitated. “You’re all he’s got now.”

  Robert took Jimmy, propping him in the crook of his arm as he’d seen Nancy do. The transfer made the baby go quiet for a moment and open his eyes. It was the first time Robert had seen them open. They were not brown or blue yet but a muddy mix of the two, and they could not focus, but Robert could see they were Goodenough eyes. He stared at Jimmy and it was like looking at his family all pressed into one face, young and old, man and woman, boy and girl.

  After the baby found this new holder was not giving him any food, he began to cry again, voicing his displeasure.

  “You got to get him something to eat,” Nancy said. “Problem is, there’s only twenty-five women in this town, and none who got babies.”

  Robert was finding Jimmy’s crying almost unbearable.

  “Jiggle him, and walk him up and down,” Nancy suggested. “That’s what I been doing.”

  Robert took his nephew out to the hallway, for walking with him in front of the mother he would never know seemed heartless. As he passed along the carpeted corridor, two men were coming the other way: the hotel owner and another who introduced himself as the sheriff. They were brisk, talking over the baby’s cries. “Just come to check,” the sheriff said. “You got the money to bury her?”

  Robert nodded.

  “Then someone’ll be along to measure for a coffin. That’ll cost you six dollars. You want to have a wake or a service? We’d have to send to Stockton for the minister who comes up to the church here. Could take a day or two.”

  “No, no need to wait.”

  The hotel owner looked relieved: a death in the hotel was bad enough, but a body remaining for any length of time was not good for business. He nodded at Jimmy, who by now was screaming. “Looks like you got your hands full. I’ll get two boys to dig a grave for you. Cost you a dollar. All right?”

  Robert could only nod again. All of these practical questions, accompanied by Jimmy’s urgent cries, made it hard for him to hold on to the fact that Martha was dead.

  “You know what my wife used to do to quiet a baby?” the sheriff said. “She stuck her little finger in its mouth, gave it something to suck on. Sometimes that’s all they want—to suck. Try it.”

  Robert frowned, then put his pinkie up to the baby’s mouth, tickling his lips. Jimmy dived at the finger and began to suck, surprisingly hard.

  “There you go. Course, once it finds out there’s no milk in that teat it’ll yell louder’n ever.” The sheriff chuckled.

  “Now, you gonna stay in that room tonight?” the hotel owner asked.

  “I guess so.”

  “You’ll need to pay a night’s charge up front, and pay for the sheets and the mattress—they’re ruined.”

  Robert nodded. His nephew’s pull on his finger was beginning to hurt.

  “I’ll tell you another trick,” the sheriff interjected, sensing that Robert was out of his depth. “Pull out the bottom drawer of the dresser and line it with a quilt, and the baby can sleep in that.” He clapped Robert on the back and went into the room where Martha lay.

  Robert had been around deaths before. He had seen men die from fever or a snakebite or a fall from a horse or, once, a goring from an angry bull. Sometimes it wasn’t clear why they died; it seemed they just gave up. He had dug graves and moved bodies and stood at gravesides, hat in hand. Some of the dead were strangers, others he knew and had been friendly with. But never had he had to deal with the aftermath of the death of someone he loved, with its uncomfortable mix of the practical with the emotional. He had not seen his parents’ final moments—their eyes were both still open when he left, and they were staring at each other. It must have been Nathan and Caleb who took charge, building coffins and digging graves, Sal who ran for the neighbors, she and Martha and Mrs. Day who washed and dressed Sadie and James for their laying out. During that time he would have been following the Portage River down to Lake Erie, already losing himself in America.

  Now as he began to thaw from that icy moment of finding Martha on a bed soaked with her own blood, Robert feared he might sit down on the hallway carpet and not get up again. The only thing keeping him from doing so was the hard, persistent tug on his little finger. Angry now that he’d been duped into sucking something so dry all he swallowed was his own spit, Jimmy was letting little squawks erupt from the sides of his mouth. In a minute he would start to yell again. Robert had to think of something.

  He hurried along the hallway with the baby tucked in the crook of his elbow and went into the restaurant kitchen, where a man with a bulge of tobacco in his cheek was frying steaks on the range. Around his feet were gobs of tobacco and spit.

  “You got any milk?” Robert asked.

  With a glance the man took in man and baby, then jerked his head towards the back door. “Out in the creek.”

  “You mind if I take some for—” Robert waved his arm with Jimmy in it, which caused him to start up his kittenish wail.

  The cook winced. “Ten cents a cup. We’ll add it to your bill. Which room you in? Never mind, I remember. Now, get it out of here. Cryin’ babies—” He shook his head and spat.

  Upstream from where the mining family worked, a silver milk can sat in the creek, the water being the most effective way of keeping things cold. Robert awkwardly fished it out with one hand. Would he ever be able to put this baby down? How did women manage? He thought of the women he’d seen with babies. Indian women tied them in slings to their backs or chests, leaving their arms free for work. White women swaddled them tight and left them with girls or old women. But newborns generally stayed with their mothers in bed for a few weeks till both were stronger.

  Robert set Jimmy on the ground. Squinting and crying, every part of his face tightened with misery, he flung his arms out, his tiny hands making a pair of stars in the air. Robert paused between milk can and baby, then decided Jimmy might squirm and wave but he could not actually move himself.

  Unscrewing the lid, Robert poured milk into a tin mug he’d brought, took out a handkerchief—not very clean, but it was all he had—and dipped a corner of it in the milk, soaking up as much as he could. Then he sat down, took the baby in his lap, and rewrapped the shawl around him to stop him from flailing. When he brushed the milk-soaked cloth across his mouth, Jimmy ignored it and kept screaming. Robert tried a few more times, but his nephew seemed to have screamed himself beyond thinking about feeding. In desperation, Robert stuck his little finger in the baby’s mouth again, and he quieted and began sucking. Then Robert pulled his finger out, wrapped part of the handkerchief around it, and stuck it in Jimmy’s mouth again. His nephew looked so indignant when his palate and tongue met the rough cloth that Robert smiled a little. But he kept sucking, with a resigned expression. After a minute Robert pulled his finger out and shifted the cloth to a new section where there was more milk. “There you go, little fella. Work on that.” He stuck his finger back in and Jimmy sucked. It was not an ideal solution, for he wasn’t getting milk fast enough, but it would have to do until Robert worked out a better way to feed him.

  At last, more from the exhaustion of crying than from a full stomach, Jimmy fell asleep, and Robert sat with him across his knees by the stream, afraid to move lest he wake. He studied his nephew’s face, which was less red now that he’d stopped crying. His eyelids were pale blue, his nose flat, and his bow-shaped mouth was still going through the quivering motions of sucking. Everything about him seemed delicate, fragile. But he was quiet, and he was alive.

  “There you are. Got him to sleep?” Nancy Lapham had come up behind him. She looked stronger than Robert had seen her in months. Crises make even the sick pull themselves up. She leaned over to peer at Jimmy’s face. “Ain’t he sweet. Martha tell you who the father is?”

  Robert shook his head, his mouth tight around the knowledge he would never voice.

  “I’ve been askin’ around to see if there’s any women in nearby towns or camps who have babies and c
an feed him. Haven’t found any yet, but I’ll keep askin’.”

  “Thank you.”

  “If you want you can give him to me and I’ll put him to bed in our room for tonight,” she offered.

  To Robert’s great surprise, he was reluctant to hand over Jimmy, even to someone as sympathetic as Nancy. The bond with his nephew had already tightened around him. “That’s all right. I’ll take him back to the—the—” He stopped.

  “They moved her,” Nancy said, filling in for him. “She’s down in the barn, where they’re makin’ the coffin. They’ll bury her later—Billie’ll come get you when they’re ready.”

  Robert nodded and got up carefully so that Jimmy wouldn’t wake. Back in the bedroom, all traces of Martha were gone except for her carpetbag, which sat in a corner like an abandoned dog. The mattress and bloody bedding had been removed and a new straw mattress put in its place, less comfortable than the feather bed, but Robert figured he would end up sleeping on the floor anyway.

  He laid Jimmy in the middle of the bed and opened the bottom drawer of the bureau. Then he unbuckled Martha’s bag to look for something to line the drawer with. In it were two dresses, some underclothes, a hairbrush, the letters, and the nine-patch quilt, rolled up. Robert pulled out the quilt and spread it over his knees. Seeing the different squares brought forth a rush of memories. He sat for a long time, touching a bright blue square, a brown one and a dark green silk piece that was now frayed and threadbare but still the most beautiful patch of the quilt. Only when Billie Lapham knocked on the door did he rouse himself.

  They went together to see Martha buried in the graveyard next to the town’s church. Little was said, but at Robert’s request Nancy sang “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” her voice quavering.

  Robert spent the next two days trying out different ways to feed his nephew. He was astonished at how difficult it seemed to be to get milk inside him. When Jimmy rejected the milky handkerchief—and who could blame him—Robert tried dribbling milk into his wailing mouth with a spoon, but it just made him choke. He visited a ranch outside of Murphys and borrowed a cow’s horn drilled with holes that they used for feeding calves when the mother died, but it was too big for Jimmy’s mouth. He spent some time fashioning a teat out of leather shaped into a cone while Billie Lapham reluctantly held the baby—after Martha’s burial, Nancy lost what little strength she’d briefly gained and had gone back to bed. The baby managed to suck on the leather teat but then promptly threw up all the milk he had taken in.