The Orchardist (38 page)

But this was something different. This was how people lived, now.

B
ut what did she
do
? said Angelene. She and Caroline Middey sat on the porch, peeling potatoes. What had preceded this question—this outburst—was a timid line of inquiry, begun by the girl, and paced out slowly so as not to jar Caroline Middey, not to upset her. But when Angelene received vague answers—She’s led a different life than you or I, poor dear; or, She just came to her senses, bless her, she’s taking responsibility for her actions; and that from someone who had always been honest with her and avoided simple answers, told her straight what she thought, what the facts were—finally she lost patience and asked the question, the answer to which Caroline Middey kept stepping around—

What did she
do
?

Caroline Middey paused in her work, and then wiped her brow with the back of her hand. It was as if she hadn’t heard Angelene, but Angelene knew she was thinking, and would speak when she was ready.

Well, I’m going to tell you, said Caroline Middey. And it’s going to be something to take in, all right, but I’m warning you—she lifted her eyes from her work—you will want to judge her, and you are allowed that, I suppose, but it is also your responsibility as . . . part of her—family—to know the whole story about her. Well, she stabbed a man. Yes. And that’s terrible. Just terrible. But—we do not know the whole story, not even me, not even Talmadge. He and the Judge are sorting it out. She stabbed a man—we don’t know why, not really, or who he was—and then she turned herself in. That’s what’s happening. But I doubt we know the half of it.

Angelene listened carefully. She did not know if she was unimpressed by such news—if she had been expecting it to be something like that, violent—or if she was numb from the shock of it. She hardly felt anything at all. What impressed her most was that Talmadge was visiting
somebody who had stabbed someone
.

Did he die? said Angelene. The man?

We don’t even know that, said Caroline Middey.

T
wo guards and the warden came into Della’s cell before breakfast, and the warden told her to step into the corner and remain there: they were going to search her cell for weapons.

There aren’t any, she said.

Kindly step back, Della.

She did as she was told. What shocked her was that he had called her Della. He had always called her Miss Michaelson before. She did not know why it bothered her so much.

She stood with her back to them so she wouldn’t have to watch what they were doing. They found another stick in the middle stages of being sharpened, and her collection of stones. A bottle.

This is very bad, said the warden quietly, as he passed her. The guards shuffled behind him. The door was closed, locked behind them; and she was left alone.

T
almadge immediately forgot about, but was revisited, days later, by the warden’s phrase: how Della had been “a fount of information when she wanted to get in there,” meaning the jail. Talmadge had been surprised, at the time, that the warden had put it that way. Why on earth would anybody
want
to be incarcerated? Or—he forced himself to ask the question—why would Della?

Maybe the answer was simple. It was the end of winter—or was it early spring?—when she had turned herself in. Maybe she was cold, and hungry. Warmer weather was coming; but maybe she could not wait any longer. He assumed, at the time of her confession, she was itinerant. Maybe—because of her physical state—she was not in her right mind. He was able to imagine that much: in such a situation, he would concede the possibility of certain mental weakness.

And maybe, after turning herself in, she realized what she had done—confessed to something terrible, and untrue—and was ashamed to retract her story.

As for her attacking this other man at the jail—Talmadge did not believe the man totally innocent. He had most likely called to Della, teased her. Provoked her. Talmadge did not believe the warden’s claim that Della and the men had no contact—of course they did. He did not see how the warden could be so naive. Della and the men lived in the same environs. Physical contact was only part of the potential harm.

Della had her reasons, he believed, for everything. He just needed to talk to her, to understand what had happened—the
truth
, if you will—so that he would know how best to help her. He had been overwhelmed upon seeing her the first time; but the next time he would gather all the information and not accept silence or any evasion; he would have to be prepared, he would have to be stern. Even intimidating, he thought; though he did not know exactly what that meant, or how it would manifest—

N
ow the warden made the guards sweep the yard for objects that could be made into weapons.

But the yard was large.

On her tour around the perimeter, in a depression at one end of the yard, near the fence, was a sort of quarry—the smaller stones had been collected by the guards, and only the larger, half-submerged stones remained. There, shining for a moment in the sagebrush—but was it a mirage?—was a flat green bottle, most of the surface coated in dust. A long-legged spider crawled out of the mouth as she took it up.

Her back was to the courthouse, where the guard might or might not have been watching. She fit the bottle into her waistband and pulled her shirt over it. Smoothed her shirt and glanced over her shoulder. But nobody was watching, nobody was paying attention. She continued onward, toward the other end of the yard.

A
ngelene preferred usually to dress in dull, unassuming frocks, complete with her signature straw hat when she went out into the sun or on wagon rides to town, but for her birthday she wore dresses the shades of pale flowers. Also she washed her hair and braided it over her shoulder, as she had when she was very young. It was he who had braided her hair then, securing the ends with bits of twine tied very tight. He had never questioned her about this birthday ritual where she dressed remarkably different from her usual self; thought, somehow, his drawing attention to it would embarrass her.

The day she turned fourteen, a week after he came back from his second trip to Chelan, he came out of his bedroom in the early morning to see her preparing breakfast. The last year or so she had been waking before him—at dawn, or just after—and spent the mornings alone, outdoors, walking, looking at the fruit. Thinking her thoughts, some of which she told him and others not. This morning she glanced at him, brought him coffee as he sat at the table. She wore the pale purple dress Caroline Middey had sent with him two weeks before, as an early present. It was, he thought, made of the same material as Della’s new shirt, the one Caroline Middey had sent with him as a gift. The morning was cold; the door stood open, and the girl had wrapped a shawl around her shoulders. The way she gathered the shawl across her front, he thought, was distinctly womanly. She glanced at him again, and said: What?

You look nice today.

Well— She turned back to the stove and stirred the eggs. Blushing.

Caroline Middey arrived late morning. She looked out at the men and horses below as if she had seen them every day of her life, and told Angelene to help her unload the sacks of groceries from the wagon.

There was a ritual to this day: the men would have arrived two or three days beforehand and begun their work in the trees, and then on the day itself, Caroline Middey would arrive, with the groceries necessary to feed twenty people. Bread and corn stew and pickled vegetables this year, with strawberry cake. It was her contribution, said Caroline Middey, when Talmadge tried to give her money for it. He tried to give her money every year, and every year she refused him. Besides this, she would have another gift for the girl; the dress that she had sent with Talmadge before did not count. Spreading out the gift-giving like this was her way of reassuring herself that she was not spoiling the child. But she had another gift for the girl, stowed up with her in the wagon; she would present it after they had eaten, when Talmadge would give her his gift as well, and Clee.

The men this year had arrived two days before. In the morning the wrangler reminded them of the girl’s birthday, the day they would all take off work early and participate in a feast up on the lawn before the cabin. They worked until noon and then hiked to the upper pool to wash. Afterward they dressed in their fine town clothes if they had them, or at least made an effort to look polished. There was a lot of goofiness with flowers and grass; flowers in their buttonholes, crowns made of grass and cattails. (Some of these were given as gifts to Angelene, who took them and donned them all, or as many as she could, some unspringing from their knots; she crouched down to fetch them up again, tried to reassemble them, on her face her usual look of intense concentration.) Waiting for the call, some men milled about talking and watching the horses, others napped, and others, because they could not help themselves, drew again to the trees, began to do light work there. But all were waiting to be called at the particular time when they would be invited up to eat before the apricot orchard. Finally the time came; the girl went to the ledge above the creek and beckoned them with uncharacteristic boldness, and they traveled to the upper lawn, some settling in chairs or on the grass, some standing. Wordlessly, they took the food offered by Caroline Middey or the girl. They ate second and even third helpings if they were offered, but did not ever ask. Talmadge sat in one of the birchwood chairs on the grass, near the porch. Clee sat beside him, in the other chair; the wrangler beside him, perched on one of the walnut chairs that had been brought out; and Caroline Middey and the girl on the porch steps. They sat with plates of food in their laps.

How does it feel to be—what is it now—fourteen? said Caroline Middey.

Angelene looked at her, smiling.

What? said Caroline Middey.

It doesn’t feel any different, said Angelene. Or none that I can tell, anyway.

Fourteen, mused Caroline Middey. That is an important age.