Orchard (13 page)

She walked without a destination in mind until she came to Denmark Road, and only then did she realize she was moving in the direction of the only door that something other than pity or good manners had invited her to enter.

When she arrived at the mailbox bearing the Weaver name, she stopped at the bottom of the long, rutted driveway and stared up at the grand house. She could start up the drive, but what would she say when he answered the door?
You asked me to come, so I came?
And if he didn’t remember his offer? She could hardly argue her way inside. Worse yet, what if he looked at her and, like Henry driving away with her beside the truck, simply didn’t see her? Twice in one day? That would be too much, too much. She turned and walked back the way she came.

A week later, Sonja repeated her experiment, but this time she did not follow Henry out of the house. She anticipated his departure, and she went out ahead of him. When he came out and climbed into the truck, she hurried to her position right at the point where the drive curved and sloped away from the house, and she did not stand in the weeds beside the gravel but just on the edge of the drive itself and on Henry’s side of the truck. He would have to see her and, one way or another, alter his path.

He did not honk his horn or lean out the window and yell at her to step back. Neither did he stop and ask her quietly why she was standing there. All the while staring straight ahead, Henry turned the steering wheel slightly and drove so close to Sonja she could have reached out and touched Henry on the arm. But she did not, and as the truck slowly passed, Sonja caught a glimpse of herself in the side-view mirror. She was sure Henry was not looking at the same reflection.

The following day, when June was in school, Sonja set out again for Denmark Road, and when she came to the Weaver house, she did not hesitate at the bottom of the hill. She walked right up the driveway, past the big house with its many windows, and on to the cabin.

She didn’t need to know the right words. She only had to watch the artist’s eyes. If his pupils widened at the sight of her, that would be enough.

20

Even when Henry finally shook off the lethargy he had been draped in following his accident, he still had trouble getting back to work. He set out to prune his trees, and with his first attempt to work a saw back and forth the pain in his shoulder became so severe he had to stop. He tried shifting the tool to his left hand, but if he kept working that way the job would take forever, so the saw was soon back in his right hand and he was trying to push and pull his way through the pain.

It wasn’t pain alone that hindered him. Whenever he extended his arm beyond a certain point, something in his shoulder seized, as though bone suddenly jammed against bone, and he had to turn his entire torso to free the joint. Then, for a minute or two, his whole arm hummed with an ache that felt like an electrical current.

Frustrated, he brought the saw down, and stepped back from the tree. He looked up and down the orchard’s snowy lanes and wondered when— or if—Max Sherry would appear.

Max Sherry was a sour, tough little man who had worked in the House family’s orchards for decades, though not in continuous service. At irregular intervals—just often enough so relying on him became impossible— Max would vanish without warning or explanation. Some said he was running from the family of a man he had come close to killing with a wrench when they worked together at a shipyard in Sturgeon Bay. Another rumor assigned to Max a wife and children somewhere whom he occasionally visited. Still another story, the most improbable of all, made Max a wealthy eccentric who worked only because he wanted to rub elbows with the common folk. Henry’s father had dismissed all these theories. “He’s a drunk, pure and simple,” Mr. House used to say. “And like all drunks, he goes off on a bender now and then. Either that or he’s holing up somewhere drying out.” But Henry’s father also spoke highly of Max Sherry as a worker. “He knows the apple business, and if he shows up, he ’ll give you full value for your dollar.” When Max wanted to work, the Houses were always willing to hire him.

Today, however, Henry was not at all confident he would see Max. That morning, the thermometer outside the kitchen window read only twelve degrees, and what little relief daylight brought was more than offset by the wind that rose with the sun. The cold, as if it had teeth, eyes, and a black heart, went unerringly for any exposed skin—Henry’s face or wrist when he lifted his arm to saw—and bit hard. Henry couldn’t blame Max if he chose to stay indoors and count his fortune, write to his wife, or see how much space he could free up in a fifth of whiskey. Henry wondered too if he had started the job too early. You didn’t want to do the dormant pruning until you could be sure the temperature wouldn’t drop below zero again. But since he was already out there, and alone, he might as well get on with it.

Just as he reached this moment of resignation, Henry saw someone coming his way. Max was on snowshoes, the only means to navigate the knee-high drifts that filled the pathless woods to the east of the orchard. Henry waved to him, and Max kept trudging forward, though he offered no sign in response.

Max finally stopped ten feet from Henry. Max’s dress varied little according to season. He wore the same pac boots and wool cap all year round and the same canvas chore coat September to May. In the coldest weather, the flaps came down on his cap, and he layered as many shirts and sweaters under his coat as he could.

“I thought you’d be coming from the other direction,” Henry said. His jaw had stiffened from the cold, and it felt as though words were stones he had to work his mouth around.

“I been staying over at Bertram’s lately,” Max said.

“How’s that boy of theirs?” If Henry remembered correctly, Harv and Mary Bertram had a son born within months of John House.

“They got him rigged up with some kind of special boot to fix his foot. Clumps around the house like a horse with one shod hoof.”

Henry nodded toward the few trees he had managed to prune so far. “You can see I haven’t made much progress. I don’t know how you want to proceed. I’ve got a lopper, shears, and another saw over there in the truck.”

Max took a long look at the tree Henry had been working on, and the expression on his face took Henry back to childhood and his first attempt to help out with the family business. Then, now, and in all the intervening years, Max’s coldly appraising eye seemed to find the efforts of the boss’s son wanting.

“I didn’t come out here to trim trees,” Max said.

If the cold had not made speech a special exertion, Henry might have blurted out what came instantly to mind—
then what the hell did you come
out here for?
—but given Max’s prickly nature a remark like that would probably have done nothing but cause him to turn around and walk back in his own tracks. Henry waited, and Max soon continued.

“You ain’t going to like what I got to say. Unless you already know.”

Henry guessed that Max no longer wanted to work in the House orchards. Fine. Perhaps Henry couldn’t hire a man who knew the labor of apples as well as Max Sherry, but more dependable hands could certainly be found. And a damn sight less peevish. If Henry had to, he’d lean once again on friends and family.

Max said, “I seen your wife naked.”

Henry had been standing on that spot long enough to pack down the snow, and he had the sudden strange feeling that he had better remain exactly where he was, that if he stepped onto untrodden snow he might sink through and keep right on sinking, as if firm earth was nowhere but where he stood.

And yet shouldn’t he barrel into Max Sherry? Take a swing at him and knock him on his ass? Wasn’t that what a man was supposed to do after he heard the kind of remark that Max just made?

And yet Henry still couldn’t make himself move. The very idea of a fight out there in the cold seemed ridiculous. Their hands were gloved, and their bodies were padded with layers of clothing. And then there was the problem of Henry’s shoulder. If he experienced that much pain sawing a branch, what would throwing a punch feel like?

But if Henry were honest with himself he would admit that neither the temperature nor his shoulder was the real reason he didn’t try to hit Max Sherry. The truth was Henry felt immediately defeated, although this feeling was not the type associated with losing a contest or a match. This defeat came before the game even began. It was very similar to what he felt when he learned his son had died.

“I know you didn’t even want to hear that,” Max said, “so maybe you don’t want the rest.”

“I’m listening. Go ahead.”

“Your wife’s been posing for that artist.”

Henry feared he knew the answer, but he asked the question anyway. “Who?”

“He’s got that big place off Denmark Road. Right below those orchards that used to belong to the Pepperdells.”

Max’s identification wasn’t necessary. Two autumns ago, when Sonja’s precarious mental condition made a gun in the house too great a temptation and danger, Henry had sold his Winchester, and that artist was the buyer. And now, so Henry’s thinking went, the man had in his possession something else of Henry’s.

“All right,” Henry said. “I know where the Pepperdell orchard is. Go ahead.”

“I guess you didn’t know about her, eh? This artist’s got a cabin toward the back of his property, and that’s where your wife’s posing.”

It occurred to Henry that Max had not yet spoken her name. “Sonja.”

“I know your wife. We ain’t been introduced, but I know who she is.” Max looked into the distance the way some men glance at their watches. “Maybe you don’t want to hear any more until you talk to her.”

“I’m still listening.”

“If that painter’s got shades in that cabin, he don’t bother pulling them. Not even on the days your wife’s there in her birthday suit.”

By monitoring the steam of his breath, Henry could gauge the modulation of his response. As long as the little clouds came out at the same rate, as long as each was the same size as the one preceding it, he was fine.

“Ernie Glaser was the one first discovered her. He was back in those trees for one reason or other—”

“When was this?”

Max looked exasperated at the interruption. “Late summer? Early fall? I ain’t sure. There was still plenty of leaves on the trees, I know that. Anyway, Ernie found out there’s a spot on that hill where you can see right down into the cabin. And there’s enough cover so they ain’t likely to spot you from inside.”

“And it didn’t take Ernie long to spread the word.”

Max shrugged. “He didn’t tell too many. Ernie didn’t want a big crowd back there.”

“No, that might close down the show.”

“What the hell do you suppose I’m doing now? I tell you about what your wife’s been up to, and you’re going to bring down the curtain. Ernie won’t like it. A few others won’t be too happy either. They find out I’m the one told you, they’ll kick my ass here to Sunday.”

“And what makes you think I’m not going to do the same? A man hears something like this about his wife, it’s not like he wants to say thank you to the one who brings the news.”

Max simply stared darkly at Henry, and for a long moment, neither man spoke. The boughs of the apple tree creaked with cold, and a knee-high gust of snow blew through the orchard as if it had been swept by a broom. Finally, without taking his eyes from Henry, Max Sherry brought his hand out from his coat pocket. He did not hold the pistol by its grip or trigger guard. Instead, he held it in his palm as if he were proffering an object for inspection.

Henry guessed the revolver to be a .38, and hard-used at that. The plating was worn and chipped in so many places the gun showed as much black as nickel. The bottom half of the grip was wrapped with electrician’s tape.

“Looks like you came prepared for anything,” Henry said.

“Everything but pruning trees.”

“So if I took this message wrong,” said Henry, “what were you going to do—kill me?”

Apparently satisfied that Henry was not about to mount a charge, Max slipped the pistol back in his pocket. “Maybe shoot you in the foot.”

Henry stared up into the gnarled branches of the tree next to him. And to think that only moments ago the most daunting element in his life was the pruning of apple trees.

Max must have interpreted Henry’s long gaze as that of a man whose greatest concern was still his orchard. Max lifted his knees high and walked a few steps closer to the tree. “You let your leader get too tall here.”

His father’s words came back to Henry: Watch Max when it comes to pruning—he’s got a good eye. Mr. House said he himself expected to be a good pruner someday—if he lived to be a hundred.

“I could still use a hand,” Henry said.

“Too damn cold. For me and the trees. This wind keeps up and we lose our cloud cover, it’ll get down below zero tonight.”

Max Sherry’s word had been enough for Henry to believe that Sonja was taking her clothes off for another man, yet now Henry needed evidence to confirm the truth of Max’s statement about the weather. Henry looked off to the western sky. Sure enough. The clouds were fraying, and patches of pale, icy blue were freezing their way through.

“I’m not sure what to do,” Henry said.

“Well, if you can put this pruning business off for another week, I can help you out,” Max said. “For now, maybe you ought to get on home and straighten out that wife of yours. Because I have to tell you: If she keeps putting on a show, I ain’t going to look the other way.”

Henry was twelve
the first time his father took him grouse hunting. They had been walking through heavy woods when a bird fewer than ten feet from Henry burst from the leaves and whirred into flight. Not only did Henry fail to raise his shotgun to his shoulder in time to fire, he had jumped back, startled.

“Hey,” his father said, laughing, “
we’re
hunting
them
—remember?”

His heart still racing, Henry confessed, “It happened so fast—I didn’t know what to do!”

The incident stayed with Henry because, typical of remembered moments, it bore little resemblance to most of his life’s events. He almost always knew what to do, and it was not reason or planning that showed him the way but instinct, exactly the faculty that failed him that day in the woods. For the most part, Henry moved through his days trusting that when action was required something inside him would automatically bring forth the right one. He no more had to devise in advance what he would say or do in a situation than he had to plan to set a hook or stiff-arm a tackler.

Yet now, as he turned off the road at his own home and saw Sonja— she was shoveling the section of the driveway that always drifted over when the wind blew—he felt just as he had on that day when a ruffed grouse exploded from the dry leaves and frightened Henry into inaction. And if he could not trust that the right response would be ready now when he confronted his wife, perhaps Henry should never have put his faith in that power.

She put up the shovel, and Henry rolled down his window as he drove the truck abreast of her. He stopped, but he did not keep his foot on the brake. He shifted to first and kept the truck in place by giving it just a little gas and holding the clutch just so.

Smiling, Sonja stepped toward him. She wore an old felt hat of his and tied it down with a wool scarf knotted under her chin. The wind and cold had reddened her cheeks. If she didn’t put lotion on tonight her face would be chapped and dry for days.

“Are you finished already?” she asked.

“Finished? Jesus. I’ll be at that job for weeks. No. I quit. It’s too goddamn cold.”

She winced at his language.

“For the trees,” he added. “If you make any cuts now and the temperature drops, you can damage the tree. And it’s going to be cold tonight.”

She tilted her head away from the stiffening wind. “The cold gets inside the tree?”

“Something like that. I’ve explained it to you before.” He pointed to the mound of snow she had piled up in her shoveling. “I told you I was going to do this.”

“I wanted to help. You said you’d be busy all day—”

“I’m not a goddamn cripple, you know. I can lift a shovel. Or I could if you weren’t in such a hurry to beat me to every job around this place.”