Orchard

by Larry Watson

  The action of Max’s pistol was balky and unpredictable, and when Henry thumbed the hammer back it didn’t catch but fell on the cartridge and in the same instant that the gun fired Henry thought, Oh no, it’s not enough; I need something of a larger caliber for this job.

  It was enough.

  Buck did not fall sideways, not exactly. His legs crumpled under him immediately, as if this were the very second in his twenty-six years of life when the heavy cask of his body finally became too much for his spavined joints to bear. And into the grave he went, although rather than topple in sideways he slid, his weight collapsing the freshly dug edge he had stood upon, and for an instant Henry feared that he might follow Buck into the hole.

  Into the gun’s echo came a great exhalation from Buck’s lungs, a rush of air a little like a dog’s whoof, and this sound seemed to coincide with the thump of his fall, and to Henry’s imperfect hearing the wind that was breathing now in the apple boughs might have begun with these vibrations.

  Henry had left his shovel stuck in the freshly dug dirt, and now he used it to refill the hole that he had worked so hard to dig. Although he threw shovelful after shovelful down, since he couldn’t see where each load of dark loam landed, it felt as though he could have been flinging dirt into the night itself. He didn’t shine the flashlight in the hole until he was certain Buck was completely covered, and then Henry looked in only for a second. He quickly turned the light off again and continued shoveling. When he finally set out for home he further saved on the flashlight’s batteries and made his way back not by light but by darkness, following the footsteps that he and Buck had melted in the snow.

  One of the many myths concerning human tears is that they readily freeze on the cheek in cold weather, and more than one unobservant writer has included such a detail in his story or poem. In truth, temperatures must fall to a rare extreme for such a phenomenon to occur. The relative warmth of flesh and the salt content of tears are enough to keep them flowing until they are stanched at the source.

  Sonja stepped in the footprints June had made walking down the driveway. The shorter strides not only helped Sonja keep her footing—there, she could see June slipped there—but they were also a better match for Sonja’s sore legs. She kept listening for the growl of the truck’s engine— Henry coming after her to haul her back home or at least continue the argument, but when she reached the road with no sign of him, she decided that for today anyway his interest in the new orchard dominated his thoughts.

  What had he expected her to say? Oh yes, by all means, let’s go deeper in debt to buy an old neglected orchard that is likely a season or two from yielding a useful harvest. Was his mind so hemmed in from living all his life on this rocky peninsula that he could imagine no other way to bring money into their home but to grow more apples?

  This first snow had picked up moisture as it swept in over the lake, so by the time the flakes fell on the county they were as wet and gluey as plaster. Even a grass stem or weed stalk could carry its own tiny freight of snow, while the great hardwoods that had shed their leaves barely a month before now looked as though they had found a new way to blossom, crowned with snow flowers in imitation of the apple and cherry trees of May. Not a tire track or footstep blackened the road leading to Weaver’s, and as Sonja came closer, in order to linger a few moments longer in the morning’s beauty, she took steps even shorter than June’s going down the driveway.

  Not for money alone . . . Sonja had no artistic talents or skills to capture or save such scenes as this one, and she could no more stop the wind from blowing or the sun from melting the snow from the trees than she could keep her own looks from wearing away with time. But she could enter a partnership with Ned Weaver so that when she stood before him and permitted him to use her image she made her own contribution to the celebration of the world’s beauty. And preserved a measure of her humility as well. What Weaver made was the beautiful thing; it was not she. No, Henry, it was not for money alone . . . but money would buy the boots that would keep her daughter’s feet warm and dry as she walked out in the loveliness that was the season’s first snow.

  30

  Someone knocked, and Sonja’s first impulse—she didn’t know where it came from—was to say, Don’t answer it, but Weaver merely cursed—“God damn it!”—put the handle of his brush between his teeth, stood, and walked to the door. He would want her to hold the pose, but Sonja used the interruption to drop back on her haunches. Then, and she knew this would upset him even further, but she didn’t care—the knock on the door frightened her—she pulled out the blanket she had been kneeling on, the blanket on which he had chalked the outline of her pose, and covered herself. She held it tightly to her body though its rough wool chafed her skin.

  Weaver opened the door, and when Sonja saw it was Henry she wanted to ask, June? Has something happened to June? Then she saw the pistol, but still she thought of June. Dagny will care for her until a permanent home can be found. Henry’s sister will not take her in—Russell would not want a child in their home—but perhaps the Engersons will adopt June, and she can continue going to school with Betty, and the pain June will feel over losing not only her baby brother but also her mother and possibly her father will lessen over time because June will have Betty as a sister, and all the Engersons, that family of arm touchers and loud talkers, will help June overcome the feeling that she has been singled out for sorrow.

  Sonja stepped off the bed, still clutching the blanket tightly to her although only her mother could have gazed at Sonja’s naked body more than these two men had. “Please, Henry,” Sonja said. “Please. Don’t.” And though these words might have been construed as a plea for her own life, Sonja’s thoughts were still for another. She didn’t want Henry to do something that would further degrade him from the decent man he once was. But was this a selfish thought? Perhaps Sonja did not want to consider that she could marry—to say nothing of love—a man who would do what Henry was about to do with that gun.

  “Well, well,” Henry said. “Isn’t this a pretty picture.”

  For an instant Sonja thought that he was talking about the painting Weaver was working on, and that wasn’t fair. Weaver never let her see any of the pictures of her before they were finished. But no, that couldn’t be. Henry wouldn’t be able to see the easel from where he stood.

  Weaver took the brush from between his teeth, and, as if he felt nothing but frustration over this interruption to his work, flung it at the wall. Enough paint was left on the bristles to leave a smear where the brush struck. Sonja tried to determine the color of this blotch, but it simply showed as dark. Logic told her it must have been a shade of green, and Weaver was painting the blanket when Henry knocked. But then why should she assume he was depicting the blanket, the whitewashed walls, the blue-striped sagging mattress, or her chilled pink-mottled flesh as they really were? She had learned that even those paintings of his that looked like photographs were always a mix of what was and what was in his mind.

  The gun—Weaver had to have seen it too. He was backing up as people do in the face of danger, yet he began to laugh, and not the strained, nervous laughter born of tension. He threw his head back and barked out a laugh as spontaneous and free as sunlight would be if it suddenly found its way through the clouds and into this room.

  If Sonja loved anything about Weaver it was his laugh, but she wished she could clap her hand over his mouth. Nothing was as sure to enrage Henry as being mocked.

  “I’m probably going to be sorry I asked,” Henry said, “but what the hell do you think is so goddamn funny?”

  Weaver waved his hand at Henry’s question and continued to step back. “Years ago a friend of mine told me I’d likely meet my end at the hands of a jealous husband.”

  “Your friend was trying to warn you. You should’ve listened.”

  Weaver shrugged. “I thought it would at least be over a woman I managed to fuck.” He picked up his cigarettes from his paint tray and shook one to his lips.
“But since I got away with plenty, maybe this is how things even out.”

  Sonja saw now that Weaver had not been backing up in fear; he had moved there to block Henry’s view of the painting on the easel.

  “Mister,” Henry said, “if you’re trying to tell me something, you better say it plain.”

  Weaver shook his head sadly. “I can’t say it any plainer. Besides”— he pointed at the gun—“nobody can tell you anything. You’ve made that clear.”

  Did Weaver want to die? Sonja couldn’t understand what was happening in this room. Did men have some sort of code—if someone wanted to kill you then you had to act as though you didn’t care? This was supposed to be about her, yet neither man acknowledged her presence.

  “Henry,” she said softly, “we should not be here. We should go home. . . .”

  He turned to her with the expression he might have worn if she had proposed something indecent. “Home? With you?”

  She nodded emphatically and then cut her eyes in Weaver’s direction, but only for an instant. She returned her gaze to Henry to see if they might share a recognition as husbands and wives do: Look at this situation we’re in—will we laugh about this someday? In our old age will we shake our heads over how crazy we once were?

  Henry’s eyes gave nothing back to her, and in the ensuing seconds Sonja felt something change in the room, a change that could not be more drastic if the very roof over their heads suddenly lifted away. She knew at that moment what she had to do, no matter what the consequences.

  She let the blanket fall to the floor, and she walked naked to the old chest of drawers where her clothes were neatly piled. She began to dress, all the while facing Henry. “Did you come here to shoot me?” she asked him. “If that is what you mean to do, you should do it quickly because I am soon going to walk out the door.” Just before she put on her brassiere she had a moment’s hesitation—should she tell these men that if they wished to look at her breasts again in this life they should look now because they would never have another chance? And should she kiss each man before she walked out the door—Henry’s last kiss from her and Weaver’s last and first? No, she had never taunted either man, and she would not begin now. She hooked her brassiere and adjusted its cups but kept watching Henry. The hand holding the pistol was now hanging at his side.

  “I just wanted things back the way they used to be,” Henry said.

  “And you thought you could get that with your gun?” she asked. “I would laugh if I wasn’t so frightened.”

  “In my meager experience,” said Weaver, “no one ever gets things back the way they used to be.” He blew a stream of smoke toward the ceiling. “Because they never were the way they used to be.”

  Henry whipped the pistol up to eye level, aiming it directly at Weaver. “You! I don’t want to hear a goddamn thing from you!”

  “Easy.” Weaver turned his head to the side and brought his hands up before his face, but he did this in a casual way that announced he knew he had no powers that enabled him to block bullets.

  “From me, Henry?” Sonja asked as she hurriedly pulled on her dress and stepped into her shoes. “Do you want to hear something from me? Because if you do, you must ask for it quickly before I leave. And I am leaving. Alone. You were right: We can’t go home together. Never again.”

  Henry kept the pistol leveled at Weaver, but the threat in his voice was aimed at Sonja. “You stay right where you are.”

  And she knew he meant her. Nevertheless, she grabbed her coat from the nail and without pausing to button it against November’s cold, she headed for the door. She passed so close to Henry he could reach out and grab her. That way, if he were determined to stop her, shooting her would not be his only recourse. But he did nothing to impede her, and then for the second time that morning Sonja was opening a door with the expectation that her husband might come after her with the intent to alter not only her movement but also her mind.

  The snow on the other side of the threshold must have come from Henry’s boots—did he pause, even today, to stamp his feet before he entered, or had he stood there so long the snow melted off in clumps? She did not pull the door shut behind her, so the sound she had to keep listening for was not the rusty latch but a gunshot. But that could not be right— wouldn’t she feel the bullet slam into her back before she heard it? Oh, what a target she must make, her red coat the brightest color amid all those shades of gray and white!

  Five, ten, she was fifteen feet past the door and down the walk and still no shouts or gunshots to make her stop. And then she had the strangest thought: They did not need to have her there, in the room with them, not when they could have her picture. That was what allowed her to go free— the naked Sonja on the canvas remained a hostage so the red-coated Sonja could walk off through the snow.

  Sonja had just reached the road when she heard one gunshot and then another. The first, she assumed, killed Ned Weaver, while the second Henry would have used to take his own life.

  Weaver blew a lungful of smoke at the end of his cigarette and watched the ember glow bright orange. “My friend,” he said to Henry House, “I believe you’ve driven her off for good.”

  “Shut up. Just shut the hell up.” He kept the gun pointed in Weaver’s general direction, but Henry’s head was turned toward the open door so he could watch Sonja hurry away from the cabin.

  “The thing is, I’ll be able to get another model. I’ve never had any trouble in that regard. But frankly, I don’t like your chances of finding another woman, certainly not one of her caliber.”

  Henry took an angry step in Weaver’s direction, raising the pistol overhead as if in his fury he had forgotten it had any purpose deadlier than its use as a club. “Goddammit! Can you shut your fucking mouth for just one fucking minute?”

  Weaver was surprised at his own behavior. There was an excellent possibility that Henry House would shoot him, yet Weaver couldn’t keep from goading the man. Did Weaver have a death wish? He doubted it, but he had never been patient or tolerant of suspense. If his death was coming today, he’d just as soon it arrived quickly.

  Nevertheless, Weaver now waited a moment, long enough for Henry’s clenched expression to relax somewhat. “You know, if you shoot me, you’ll make my wife a very happy woman.”

  “I don’t doubt that. I’m sure she’s put up with a lot of your shit over the years.”

  “Maybe I should have said you’ll make her a rich happy woman.”

  Puzzlement flickered in Henry’s eyes, and at least for the moment, Weaver’s execution was delayed. “An artist’s work almost always appreciates right after his death. But like this? Hell, prices will go through the roof. ‘Painter murdered by jealous husband.’ My God, they won’t be able to resist. I wish I could be around to see it.”

  “Like that painting?” Henry pointed the pistol in the direction of the easel.

  Weaver stood to the side to examine his work. “That? The unfinished painting he was working on at the time of his demise? Oh yeah. They won’t be able to get their fucking checkbooks out fast enough.” He dropped his cigarette and crushed it out on the wooden floor. “Are you sure you and Harriet haven’t gone into partnership?”

  As he looked at the painting of Sonja kneeling naked on the bed, Henry cocked his head to one side just like a patron in a gallery. But then he swiftly brought the gun up to eye level, pulled back the hammer, and fired at the canvas.

  Weaver might have expected Henry House to aim at his wife’s image, but the bullet blinked a hole through the window in the painting. In the echoing aftermath of the pistol’s hollow crack, a crow began to caw in the woods behind the cabin. Just as Weaver turned to see if the bird had been startled into flight as well, Henry shot out a pane of glass in the real window.

  What was House doing—conducting his own strange experiment into the nature of art and reality? Weaver couldn’t speculate for long. His fear was fully awake now and trying to take over his entire being. Each time Henry House pulled t
he trigger it would become easier to pull it again.

  “Hey!” Weaver said. “Let’s not get carried away here.” He chose the phrase for its note of understatement, yet something cringing in his voice betrayed his rising panic.

  House, meanwhile, looked as though finally firing the gun had calmed him. Purposefully, he crossed the room and picked up the blanket his wife had used to cover herself. He dragged it back and tossed it under the painting. He surveyed the room before asking Weaver, “You got turpentine around here, don’t you?”

  So, Weaver thought, it wasn’t enough for House to blow a hole through the painting; now he wanted to wash the paint away. Nevertheless, Weaver simply pointed to the bench where his brushes rested in coffee cans and mason jars—right next to the turpentine and varnish.

  Keeping the gun aimed casually at Weaver, Henry House backed over to the bench, unscrewed the cap on the tin of turpentine, and, letting it trickle all the way across the floor, carried it back to the easel. He poured the remainder of the can on the blanket. The oily, piney odor of turpentine stung Weaver’s nostrils.

  House flung the empty can toward the window he had shot out. He missed, and the tin clanged against the iron bed frame.

  “Carried away?” House said to Weaver. “You’ll get carried away from here a dead man if you don’t get the hell out now.” With that, he brought out a box of kitchen matches from his coat pocket.

  Weaver knew what he was supposed to do. He was an artist, and this was his life’s work being threatened. He should throw himself on that blanket, even if it meant he would be lying down on his own funeral pyre. But Weaver was never much for doing what he was supposed to do.

  “This is your show,” Weaver said, and, snapping Henry House a quick salute, headed for the door.

  Weaver was halfway between the cabin and the house when he heard the studio door slam shut. Because the sound might have meant House was coming after him, Weaver broke into a run and did not stop until he was inside his home. He bolted the lock, and only then did he permit himself a look back.