The Orchardist (37 page)

Attacked
somebody? Talmadge’s voice reflected that he did not believe it, that it was an impossibility. Almost scoffing.

Yes, Mr. Talmadge.

But—how? Who did she attack?

The warden clenched his jaw. It seems, he said, she procured—or, more likely
made—
a weapon, and when she was passing one of the male prisoners, she attempted to stab him with it.

Stabbing again, thought Talmadge, and tried to imagine it; but despite what he knew of the girl, he could not imagine it.

And what happened? asked Talmadge impatiently. Was he hurt?

The warden shrugged. The injuries sustained were negligible, he said. What was
not
negligible were her intentions. To stab another prisoner? In my jail? The warden laughed shortly. That is why I insisted she be put in solitary confinement—

Talmadge could not bring himself to nod, to agree with the other man, and so kept still.

What did he do, this man? said Talmadge, after a silence, after he had again tried to imagine it. Obviously she would not attack him, he implicitly argued, had he not done something first to provoke her.

The warden shrugged. What could the other man have possibly ever done to her? As far as the warden knew, the two had never even exchanged words. She hadn’t spoken to any of the other prisoners; they were kept away from each other, except, he admitted, lately, when this—embarrassment—happened. The guards were lazy, he said, and had been bringing in the men from the yard while Della was being led into it; their paths had crossed.

We have recognized our fault in the situation, said the warden. A man has been let go. But as far as this being a personal attack— The warden paused, and shook his head, and then his words came slowly, as if he had thought carefully about them, and wanted to deliver them with the same care: I think it is more that she wanted to act out, show her superiority somehow. He paused, thinking. Maybe it is a message to me. I don’t know.

Talmadge did not know what to make of this speculation. They were both silent for a minute.

What does she say about it? said Talmadge.

The warden shrugged again, and sighed. She doesn’t. She was a fount of information when she wanted to get in here, and now she’s shut up. I don’t know what she’s got up her sleeve. Or if she’s just crazy. I can’t decide. He appraised Talmadge. Maybe
you
can tell
me
.

Talmadge did not respond for a moment. He had not liked the warden calling Della crazy. He did not like the other man’s tone at all now. He said, looking away: I haven’t seen her for a while. I don’t know—I would have to talk to her first.

The warden nodded. Said, after some thought: Has she always been this—violent?

Talmadge didn’t answer at first.

No, he said, but his answer was too late. He could feel the warden’s skepticism.

Talmadge followed the warden out of the outer office and down the tall-ceilinged, boot-echoing hallway to the eastern end of the building. Down a flight of whitewashed stairs. A very grave and portly guard stood on duty outside the jail. The warden spoke to the guard, and the latter unlocked the door; and the warden turned to Talmadge and said he would return shortly.

The guard patted down Talmadge.

Do you have any gun on you? Any knife?

No, said Talmadge, and then remembered his pocketknife, took it from his pocket, and handed it to the guard, who placed it on a shelf beneath the counter.

Pick it up on your way out.

The guard asked Talmadge to disassemble the canvas sack and laid the contents on the counter. Talmadge pulled out the magazines, the packages from Caroline Middey—I’ll have to unwrap these, sir—and then the loose apples, the sleeve of lemon drops tied with twine. Candy, said Talmadge, and the guard eyed him warily, and then turned to weigh the apples on a scale at his back. As he did so, Talmadge felt within the bag at the last item in there, Angelene’s gift. He did not want to hand it over to the man, did not want him to cut into the carefully tied twine. Did not want that small tag “For Della” in the impressive script to be damaged or, for that case, seen by another person. He wanted to give Della one gift untouched by the guard, and unseen even by him, Talmadge. And so before the man turned around again, Talmadge slipped the box into his jacket pocket without even so much as a tremor of his hand or of his voice when he answered the guard when asked if that was all.

You have to leave some of these apples, said the guard. You’re over limit here.

Can you save them for her? Talmadge said, just as the warden came out of the open door and beckoned to him. Talmadge repacked the sack, only taking two apples—I’ll get the others when I come out—and the guard placed the apples on the shelf under the counter without comment.

Talmadge followed the warden into the jail. His ears felt immediately stuffed with cotton wool. It was dim, quiet. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and humidity.

He coughed.

We usually have you go to another room—we have a room for when visitors come—but unfortunately it was flooded last week. . . . Did you get rains down there? No? And we have men still in there working on it. Damaged some of the floor, which is a shame. It’s the original floor, pine boards— The warden paused. But she’s the only one here right now, and it doesn’t hurt, I suppose, to leave you here. Twenty minutes, no more. And I’m keeping the door open. You call the guard if you need anything—

But Talmadge did not hear these last words, or witness the warden leave, because he had seen Della.

She sat on the edge of the bed. Only after a minute did she turn her head to him. It was a brief glance, not scared so much as alert and disbelieving—as one looks at a ghost—and then she looked ahead of her again. All this while hardly moving her body.

Several minutes passed in silence.

Hello, he said. Then, in a voice that belied its message: You look well.

Again she turned her face to him, briefly.

He removed his hat.

Was she scared? Was that it? He did not anticipate this, that she would not speak to him.

He stood there awkwardly.

We found out where you were. I came the last time. You got my letter? I was here before—

Down the hallway, outside the door, the guard cleared his throat. Somewhere in the jail a faucet dripped.

Then Della wiped her nose with her forearm. When she cleared her throat, he strained to listen, to hear what her voice might sound like now. But she did not speak.

They told me what happened—

But he should not speak of that. Her features tightened. It was a very slight change, and he could sense it more than see it. She put her hands on the mattress, moved slightly.

I’ve been talking to the Judge about when you get out. When you get out, we’ll—

It was not the time to speak of it. Why was he speaking of it?

He lifted the canvas sack after a moment.

These are for you. From—all of us. From me, and Caroline Middey, and Angelene.

She glanced at him.

He reached inside the bag.

Come over here, I’ll hand these things to you. I have to take the sack back with me.

It seemed she would not move, but then she got up and came over to the bars. He had the impression when she rose from the bed that she was larger—she had grown—but as she came closer he thought she had shrunken. It wasn’t a normal shrunkenness. What was left of her body was her eyes, and her torso—muscular but also tough-poor in the mean way of those without a home, who live in the weather. Her face—her expression—was faraway and strange. It lied that she knew nobody on the earth. There was the hardness to her mouth: he wanted to touch it, suddenly, wanted to change it, to when she was a child and was characterized by dumb passion. He had not liked that expression then, but it was preferable to this distance, this resignation. He wanted to bring back her former pain. But this mouth was beyond pain. If he were to slap it, it would not change. Her eyes were both beautiful—black-dark as always—and empty. He wanted to touch her through the bars, he wanted to reach inside and grab hold of her arms, not so much as to shake her but to squeeze her. As she reached toward him—he was offering her a magazine now—he glimpsed a tattoo on the inside of her small, hard wrist.

One by one he handed her the gifts, her arms becoming uncomfortably full. At his prompting, she deposited the magazines and candy, the fruit, on the bed and stood in the center of the room and unwrapped the packages from Caroline Middey—he had rewrapped and tied them messily after the guard inspected them; held up, awkwardly, the leather pants and the lilac-colored shirt. On her face utter blankness. The pants might be all right, she might wear those, he thought; but the shirt was something else. It was ridiculous, he thought—she would never wear it—but it was something she would have worn when she was younger, it was something she would have worn to supper, once in a great while, after washing her face in the creek and brushing her hair and letting it fall thick over her shoulders. That was the other thing; her hair was cut short, curved close to her skull. It made her eyes look large, owlish.

This is from Angelene, he said, and reached inside his pocket and withdrew the box. After a moment she came forward and took it from him through the bars. She did not open it, but stood holding it.

He looked into the corner of the cell.

If there’s anything you need, you should tell the warden. Tell the warden and—

I don’t need anything from you.

He looked at her.

She went to the bed and sat down in the position he had first observed her, and stared ahead. The gifts were scattered around her, some of the butcher paper on the floor.

He would remember how she had looked at him then—once, slowly, with blankness—before he moved down the hallway, toward the opening of the jail. And also he would remember those words, that phrase—
I don’t need anything from you
—the only phrase she had said to him that day, in her measured voice that was without emotion, without animosity even. It played in his mind, and he checked for emotion but constantly found none—
I don’t need anything from you
—and it was not her, he thought, but it was her, he had gone to see her and this is what she had said to him, and he thought about this as he made his way down the hallway and then out past the guard, on the way to the boardinghouse, and then as he was sleeping and failed to sleep—she turned her face to him, slowly, with hatred now—and the next day, on the train.
I don’t need anything from you.
But you do, he wanted to tell her—you do need something from me. But he did not know what it was. Like her, he did not know what it was.

D
ella recalled the day she had first seen him, that day in town when she and Jane stood on the street platform, waiting for him to fall asleep so they could steal his fruit. She had been amazed that day, through her hunger, at how slowly he had moved, how alone he seemed. Or maybe this was something she thought later. He was quite large, and tall, but he did not scare them in the least. And in the beginning, when they were all together, Jane kept aloof from him, and Della knew that she should too, but there were those weeks in the orchard when she followed him, and he was kind to her. His kindness was there—it had not changed—as he reached through the bars, his hands clutching the top of the bag.

He was speaking, but she had not been paying attention. He reached forward and gripped one of the bars. She stared at his knuckles. She realized, when she stole a glance at his face under the brim of his hat—the world of his face—that he was utterly familiar to her.

What did she say to him?
I don’t need anything from you.
But that wasn’t important. What one said wasn’t important.

When he was gone, she went to the window and looked out, but couldn’t see him.

H
e slept little on the train to Cashmere. The motion and the constantly changing landscape outside the window gnawed at him and kept him awake. He was dismayed by the thought—his mind kept coming back to it—that he could board a train in Chelan and be delivered to Cashmere the same day. This was the reason for the confusion that kept welling in him, that his mind would not fully accept. And each time he had to reassure himself that such a thing was possible, that he lived in a time when it was possible; and wasn’t that grand? His body did not understand; he had been upset the other time as well, taking Angelene to the ocean. His stomach gripped, he was distracted, kept drawing his face to the window to verify that it was true: he was in Chelan before, but he had left that place, and soon he would be in Cashmere; but that morning he had been at the boardinghouse in the city in which he had seen her. It seemed impossible that he could hold those two places—Chelan, where she was imprisoned, and the orchard, where she was not—in his body at once, that his body could access both places in the realm of one day. It did not seem right. It was the rapidity that overwhelmed him and bothered his sensibility. He had moved slowly all of his life. He was used to seeing things drawn out of themselves by temperature and light, not by harsh action.