The Orchardist (26 page)

L
ate fall the wrangler came into the orchard alone, without the horses, at a time when he otherwise would not have been there, and told Talmadge he had received word: a young woman who was reported to be Della had been injured in a horse stampede in Idaho. He himself hadn’t seen the girl, said the wrangler, but there were reports that it was her. Clee had already gone ahead to the place where the girl was convalescing, in a small hospital outside Coeur d’Alene.

Talmadge made arrangements immediately. Angelene would stay with Caroline Middey. No, said Angelene, I want to go with you. He didn’t argue with her, was too distracted. All right, he said.

Angelene didn’t know why, exactly, she wanted to go. She did not want to see the woman she barely remembered mangled in some country hospital. But she had seen Talmadge’s face when the wrangler gave him this news, and knew she had to go with him. To comfort him, if necessary; to protect him.

They traveled by train to Spokane, and took horses from there. The wrangler went with them. When they arrived at the hospital, the wrangler and Angelene waited in the lobby while Talmadge went in to see the woman. He came out less than a minute later, his face ashen.

It’s not her, he said.

A
fter the lumber camp Della avoided entering towns and lived in the forest. For a time she was not ill, but in her right mind. When she finally entered a town for supplies, nobody looked at her twice—or if they did, it was for other reasons—and nobody pursued her. When she ran out of money, it did not matter so much; she found what she needed in the woods.

Trouble in the form of winter was approaching. But still she did not seek the respite of towns. The forest would absorb her, she thought, it would keep her until the future showed itself.

C
lee had known before coming to Coeur d’Alene that the girl in question was not Della, because he had seen her—Della—several weeks before, coming out of the forest north of Sultan Creek on the western slopes of the Cascades. He and a small band of men led some horses—what had not sold at a winter auction in Seattle—through the depressed and mostly empty mining town. He had looked over his shoulder once at the road dappled with snow, and saw a figure beyond the horses, fading into the trees twenty yards away. He blinked, and she was gone. But some instinct told him it was her. Had it been her? It could have been anybody, he told himself. And this creature was hatless, and short-haired. Had he imagined the pallor? Her hunched posture?

He was imagining things, he thought. It was some guilt—though he did not believe he was guilty—coming to visit him.

He had left the men, however, and gone into the forest to track the creature. He thought he would find nothing.

But there she was—and it was her—just letting an armload of kindling fall to the ground. He got off his horse and walked, leading the animal, toward her.

But it was as if he was invisible; she did not acknowledge him, after an initial glance. She crouched down, began to prepare a fire. She could not light the tinder, and so he came forward and offered her a matchbook from his vest pocket. She took it from him, wordlessly.

Her hair was short, as if it had been cropped carelessly with shears, and there were sores and scabs on her face and neck. Her eyes were depthless. She was in the throes of some sickness, he thought.

It was early November, and cold. The first snow had fallen a week before, was ankle-deep on the ground.

She wore boots, strips of fabric tied around the soles.

He took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders. She accepted it, pulling it tighter around her, huddling closer to the fire. He hung back and watched her. The sun was beginning to set. He considered taking her arm—or even gathering her whole body up, quickly—and carrying her back to his camp. But he knew suddenly—of course—he could not put his hands on her.

But neither could he leave her. He stayed until darkness fell.

She slept, and he returned to town for food. At a tavern he bought hot sandwiches, and brought them back to the space in the forest. At the odor of the food she rose to eat—and then immediately fell asleep again.

He went to his horse and unstrapped a blanket, put it over her. Covered himself in a saddle blanket and sat at the base of a tree, near the girl, settled against the trunk.

He slept.

In the morning she was gone. She had kicked dirt on the fire. His coat lay in a pile near his feet.

W
hen he heard the rumors about the girl in Idaho, he thought: It could be her. She had seemed witless when he saw her in the forest, but he wanted to believe she could have gotten a job, despite this, working again with the horses. But when he saw the girl in the hospital bed—a large, strapping red-haired girl—he was not surprised.

H
e would not tell Talmadge about seeing Della in the woods.

Salt in the wound, he thought.

D
ella headed east, over the mountains.

She did not realize, in her growing disorientation, that in moving east she was walking toward her past. Was returning to it, unconsciously. Like a dog to its vomit.

T
here was a man she had traveled with briefly before she found work at the lumber camp. She had met him at the canning factory; he had a job swabbing the floors. He was very tall and lean and had a long face, hazel eyes—one eye was glass, slightly larger and greener, rounder, than the other—and a perpetual thin, hand-rolled cigarette hanging off his lip. He did not try to talk to her at first, but she saw him in the morning when she was getting off her shift and he was coming in. The long, slow movements of him pushing the mop across the floor.

The first conversation they had was about the sickening odor of fish guts. Gets in everything, he said. Your hair, your clothes. Sometimes I think
I
smell like it. He sniffed his arm.

Getting out of here, he said one day. She wasn’t even sure he was speaking to her; but they were the only ones in the cloakroom at the time. She nodded. Then, out of simple curiosity, she asked: Where are you going? North, he said. Maybe to Seattle. Inland, anyway.

It was enough for her. She was tired of working at the factory. She knew that once she left she would never see the place again.

Her instinct proved sound: the man was harmless. She would not travel with him far, but for some reason she did not find it repugnant to ride with him—he drove a mule and wagon with his few belongings inside, and she rode a horse—for a little ways.

One night they sat fireside and he told her of his travels in Oklahoma and Texas, of the people and animals he had encountered there. He had not worked with horses but had cared for them, and mostly done cooking for various ranching establishments. He told her about weevils, and sandstorms, and scorpions. Had she ever seen a scorpion? The most satisfying thing he had ever done was to kill a scorpion with a piece of pewter—just stabbed its belly while it slept. I’m not one for killing, he said. But I didn’t feel bad killing that scorpion.

That night she dreamed that Michaelson’s throat had been cut. He was on his knees; and he wore a necklace of blood. When he upturned his head—to take in some awful visage in the trees, or perhaps gape at the star-filled sky that surrounded him—his head, nearly decapitated, fell too far back, and his neck was a blood-rich stump. In the dream she was moved, awed. Terrified.

I
t was November, and there was much work to be done. Angelene helped Talmadge in the apple orchard, and in the evenings studied at the kitchen table while he dozed in the chair in the corner. He seemed more tired than usual, she thought.

D
ella dreamed of cold, of snow. And then realized she was awake.

She wasn’t hungry anymore. When one accepted the cold, one didn’t mind it. Was warm, even.

At times she was walking, and other times she was on her back, staring at the sun, which seemed very close and muted in the overcast, viridescent sky.

It seemed there was laughter everywhere. And then she heard crying—terrible, terrible crying—and was afraid.