The Orchardist (5 page)

When the saplings were ready, he planted them at the end of the orchard rows. He kept constant watch over them, building wooden latticework to support them during their precarious adolescence. Some of his experiments failed, were destroyed by weather or circumstance. Others, however, flourished.

In the shed he surveyed the apricot saplings and decided upon one and took hold of the clay pot in which it was secured and carried it outside, across the grass to the orchard. He knelt and studied the broken limb and compared it to those on the healthy sapling. Finally he chose a limb on the new sapling and cut into the bark with his pocketknife. Likewise he cut two inches above the ragged limb, and fit the appendages together so they joined at complementary angles. He had chosen and cut well and was pleased. He returned to the shed and retrieved a jar of wax and twine and set to work setting a wax cast for the new limb.

He sat in the grass bent over his work like a large child. The dread of last night’s dreams had all but evaporated. The two girls watched him from the edge of the field. They did not speak to each other but sat in the heat motionless. One girl clawed the ground with her fingers and brought a fistful of dirt to her mouth and ate it.

H
e did not see them that day. But the next day he stood in the midsection of an apple tree and saw them come meandering down the orchard rows. He continued cutting with the shears in the high branches and watched them indirectly. They stopped down the row from him and sat in the grass. The smaller one ran her hand up and down the stalks of grass and then desisted, turned her head as if hearing a call. When he climbed down from the tree they sat up straight and held still but did not look at him. He pretended not to notice them—they seemed to prefer it that way—and momentarily considered walking around the row to avoid passing them, but walked toward them instead. They stiffened. He approached them, passed. He walked out of the orchard and they followed him across the field and through the creek, up the hill and to the shed, where he replaced the shears. When he came back out they were standing, hesitant, at the edge of the plum orchard. As he approached them, the smaller one stepped back, but the other—braid over her shoulder, sleepy-looking now—remained.

In the cabin he set to frying trout he had caught that morning. As he turned from the stove, he glanced out the door and saw that the taller one had crept forward across the grass. The smaller one stood at the edge of the lawn and looked over her shoulder as if gauging escape.

Fish, tomatoes, eggs and onions, fried bread. His face flushed. He worked with possession. When he was finished, the cabin was hot and pungent with the odor of fried fish and onions.

The long-haired one hung back from the porch. Dusk had fallen across the grass, and the other girl stood now a shadow on the edge of the lawn. He set the two plates of food on the porch. Then he turned and walked back into the cabin.

He sat at the table with a plate of fish in front of him. A minute later he got up from his chair, blew out the lantern perched on the stove mantel, walked to the door, and looked out. The girls knelt in the grass and ate with their heads together, silently.

O
ne hundred dollars apiece, the poster said, for the capture of two girls called Jane and Della. To be returned to James Michaelson of Okanogan, Washington.

He stood looking at the poster nailed to the wall outside the feed and supply store and thought of the notice he had drawn up those years ago, the notary at the bank saying, How do you spell that—Elsbeth? And Talmadge looked up at him raw-eyed—he was seventeen years old, and his sister had disappeared into the forest for going on three days now—and the notary sighed and wagged his pen and bent and wrote: To those persons with information regarding the whereabouts of Miss Elsbeth Talmadge, please contact William Talmadge—What’s your address, son? Again the blank stare. How do you expect them to get ahold of you? Talmadge shook his head, lifted his arm, and gesticulated west, toward the mountains. The notary said, almost angrily, How about if they leave word at the P.O.? How’s that? Talmadge nodded, and the notary wrote the rest of the notice and looked up and said, There. Talmadge said, There’s a reward. The notary eyed him ruefully. How much? he said. Talmadge said, A hundred dollars. The notary sat back in his chair. Son, do you even have a hundred dollars? Talmadge hesitated. He didn’t see what the problem was. If Elsbeth returned, the money wouldn’t matter. If they had to pay a hundred dollars, then they would pay a hundred dollars.

Talmadge unpinned the poster from the wall and stood looking at it and then folded it and put it in his pocket.

T
he next evening the girls sat at the edge of the lawn. He turned from the window to the pantry, regarded his supplies. Took a bag of cornmeal and set to making cakes and fried apples. Turning in the kitchen, he glanced out the window and noticed a girl moving slowly across the grass toward the porch. He stopped working and watched her. It was the older one again, he thought, the one with the braid. She clasped a plate to her breast. The oil spat in the pan behind him and the room warmed with the odor of cornbread. She stopped at the edge of the porch. He wiped his hands on his pants and went to the door. She held the plate tightly to her chest and stood outside the sphere of light the lantern cast. He stepped out onto the porch. She looked past him into the cabin, as if the food and the odor of the food was a body she had expected to greet her. Finally she looked at his chest and then stepped forward, held out the plate. He took it from her and went inside and heaped food on it. When he returned, she was walking back to him across the grass with another plate. The other girl stood alone on the edge of the grass, watching. He held out the plate of food to the girl, and after a moment she took it. He took the other plate inside, filled it. When he returned to the porch, the girl lifted her face from the plate. Her cheeks were filled with food and her eyes watered. It’s hot, he said. She blinked rapidly. For some reason she would not take the other plate from him, and so he set it on the porch and returned inside the cabin.

From the window he watched her retreat across the grass, pausing to lower her face into the food. The other girl met her and seized the heaping plate. They sunk to their knees in the grass and ate as they had before.

O
h, I wouldn’t do that, said Caroline Middey.

She and Talmadge sat on her front porch again, this time eating brisket and steamed carrots and greens in broth. Talmadge wiped his mouth with a blue-checked napkin. He should not have spoken. But he could not help himself. Even if her response was not what he wanted to hear, he needed her advice. He had told her, once they had begun the meal, that he was going to visit Michaelson on the Okanogan.

If you were able to catch them, said Caroline Middey suddenly, reverting to an earlier conversation about the girls, I could have a look at them. I could have a look at them, and see what kind of shape they’re in. Could you do that?

He thought for a moment. But why was he considering it?

No, he said. After a moment: You can come out there and see if they’ll come to you. You’re a woman; it might be different. But there is to be no—
catching
—

She said nothing to this, was thinking.

You go up there and see this fellow, she said, nodding. All right. But you best bring a gun. She brought a forkful of brisket and put it into her mouth, chewed.

He was still. He had already thought of that. The rifle was in the wagon, underneath a canvas bag in the back. But he did not want to tell her he had already thought of this, because he did not want her to think that he too expected to find an adversary. He was disgusted that that had been his first reaction. He said, without inflection: I brought it. But I won’t need it.

Caroline Middey raised her eyebrows. Again she stabbed a forkful of meat.

Never know what you might need, she said, and brought the meat to her mouth, ate it.

I
t was not a negligible distance he would have to travel—seventy miles, more or less, as the crow flies—and he considered how he would do it. Finally he chose to leave his mule with Caroline Middey, who then drove him in her wagon to Wenatchee. He boarded a steamboat heading north, into the highlands. It was a Tuesday, just before dawn; not many people boarded with him.

Up the Columbia, the water splashing steadily against the hull; past Orondo and Entiat, the orchards along the benches materializing in the dawn. Chelan Falls, where morning broke. The sun glinting on the water. He crossed to the other side of the boat, looked out over the country. East of there was the place he hunted in the fall: a place of long flat fields and sweeping rock quarries, weak, haunted sunlight. The animals moving suddenly in that landscape—strong, beautiful, unexpected forms.

He arrived in Okanogan late afternoon. He found a place to eat, and then a boardinghouse, where, despite the hour—the sun had not yet set—he fell immediately asleep.

T
he next morning he inquired at the general store where he could find James Michaelson. The storekeeper, an elderly man with whom Talmadge had just had a pleasant conversation about the weather and the season, set his jaw. Looked past Talmadge, out the window. Said, after a moment, stiffly: We aren’t party to any of that. When Talmadge said, What do you mean? the man turned his head farther away and said he didn’t know any James Michaelson. And was that it, he said, or did Talmadge have any other business at the store?

Talmadge received more or less the same answer at the feed and supply store. And then he questioned an ironmonger working in an open stall at the end of the street, who regarded him briefly before telling him the Michaelson outfit was north of there, on the Salmon Creek just beyond Ruby City. You get to Conconully, said the man, you’ve gone too far. He fixed Talmadge in one long compassionless stare before bending again to his work.

Talmadge rode a mule out of Okanogan—Are you sure you don’t want a horse? You want a horse, don’t you? the man at the stables had asked, incredulous. No, a mule suits me fine, said Talmadge—and into the hot, dull country of the Okanogan highlands. His saddlebag packed with sandwiches and water, his rifle slung across his back.

An hour outside Okanogan he entered a town where the buildings were ramshackle and squat and looked as if they had weathered a thousand storms but would not survive another. Was this Ruby City? Or had he somehow ridden past that place and come too far north, to Conconully? He didn’t think he had ridden far enough to have reached Conconully. A dog ambled around the corner of a building and halted when it saw Talmadge and the mule, and backed up a little ways and began to snarl. Talmadge slowed the mule, leaned forward and touched the mule’s neck. A child came around the side of the building the way the dog had come and drew close to the dog and squatted down and put his arms around the dog’s neck. The dog struggled and whined as the child spoke into its ear. The dog gave one long creaking moan and then remained still as the child stood and gazed at Talmadge. He was a gaunt boy, with brown eyes that seemed too large for his skull.

Morning, said Talmadge. He straightened up in the saddle. The mule sidestepped, chewed the bit, stomped. Talmadge said: I’m looking for the Michaelson place.

The boy stared at him. It seemed he would not move at all, but then he turned slightly and lifted his arm and pointed to a stand of evergreens in the distance.

Talmadge peered at where the boy pointed. He thanked him and was about to leave when he noticed the boy still staring at him, as if he had something to say.

Talmadge waited.

The boy came forward. The dog rocked on its tailbone and scratched frantically behind its ear. The boy stopped next to the mule and stood looking up at Talmadge until Talmadge said, What?

The boy said: Usually they give me something for it.

Talmadge gazed at him for a moment and then reached into his pocket and pinched out a penny and leaned down and put it into the boy’s outstretched palm. The boy glanced at the penny and then turned and walked back to the corner from which he had appeared. The dog followed him.

Talmadge waited, looking in the direction the boy had gone. There was no other sound, no movement in the town. He looked at the trees—the evergreens—the boy had indicated. He knew enough to turn around and go home. But still he hesitated. Eventually, he urged the mule forward.

A
s soon as he entered the clearing from the trees, a boy separated from a gambrel-roofed barn in the distance and drew toward him. As he neared, Talmadge saw that this boy was lean, pale, and red-haired, and walked with his elbows held slightly out. Talmadge saw the strong jaw and hardness around the eyes. He was about fifteen years old, Talmadge guessed.

Your mule, mister.

Talmadge sat the mule a moment, taking in the land and the situation of the house and barn. The house was maybe fifty yards away. No smoke came from the chimney. The barn was farther away, set back in the expansive field. One portion of the barn was charred and had collapsed in on itself. Swallows flew intermittently in and out of the collapsed portion.

Talmadge got down off the mule.

Somebody tried to burn it down, said the boy. A couple of good-for-nothing girls.

What?

The barn.

Talmadge handed him the reins. He adjusted the strap that held the rifle—hooded in canvas—on his back. I’m here for Michaelson.

The boy nodded toward the house. Hey, he said, when Talmadge turned away.

Talmadge turned back to him.

Your gun, said the boy.

Talmadge again touched the strap across his chest, reflexively. But he did not remove it from his body.

The boy finally raised his eyebrows. Suit yourself, he said. But he won’t like it.

The house was a blend of pulpwood and spruce timber and was poorly built. The porch groaned nauseously beneath him. Two lanterns hung on hooks on either side of the door, the glass oily with soot. The door was open but screened. He could see inside the house, into a room like a parlor and then beyond that into another room, the kitchen, maybe, with a window of smudged light. He hesitated and then rapped twice on the doorframe. From the bowels of the house there was movement, and Talmadge drew himself up and listened. There was someone clearing his throat and muffled steps and then a man appeared behind the screen. He was tall—a whole head taller than Talmadge, who was just over six feet—with a large head, dun-colored pate, a wide mouth, large, stone-colored, heavy-lidded eyes. Talmadge was struck with the possibility that the man was blind: he aimed his stare, heavy, over Talmadge’s shoulder. And he moved very slowly: shuffled. But then he met Talmadge’s eyes, and there was recognition there. The man could see him. Talmadge looked at him and then looked away. Gripped—again, reflexively—the leather strap at his shoulder. The man watched Talmadge without blinking—but he had taken in the rifle, Talmadge felt—and opened the screen door while simultaneously rolling up the cuffs of his worn white shirt. Come in, he said. An uninterested murmur.