Трейси Шевалье - At the Edge of the Orchard

“How did you pay for the passage on the ship? It’s not cheap.”

“There was some money at home.”

“Caleb know you used it?”

His sister’s hand tightened around his arm in a fierce grip and she fixed her gray eyes on him. “Don’t you ever say his name again.”

Robert looked away and took a deep breath, then ran his eyes up and down a ponderosa pine, following the deep cracks in its yellow-gray bark. What he really wanted to ask was the most obvious question: who was the father? But it seemed she had given him the answer. Suddenly he understood how a man might feel able to kill another man.

“How’d you know I was up here?” he asked when he was calmer.

“Mrs. Bienenstock told me you’d gone to Calaveras Grove. She’s real efficient-found me a steamboat to Stockton and even paid for the ticket, saying she’d get it back from you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not!”

“Then I got a stage to Murphys, and there I asked around and they all knew you. The Tree Man, they call you. They were nice too-for a mining town.” Again Martha seemed to have unexpected knowledge of the world. “Put me on a horse this way.”

“You rode a horse like that?” Robert nodded at her belly.

Martha shrugged. “I just wanted to find you, Robert. You’re my family. I traveled all these months, and I wasn’t going to wait around when you were only fifteen miles away.”

“How come you didn’t tell Nancy you were my sister?”

“I didn’t want you to find out from someone else that I was here-I wanted to surprise you, see your reaction myself.”

“You sure did surprise me. I thought…” Robert’s throat became tight with what he’d thought.

“What?”

“I thought you were dead of the swamp fever. I’m sorry.” He choked on the last words, and his eyes filled with tears.

Martha let him swallow a sob, then squeezed his arm. “I don’t believe you. You know why?”

Robert shook his head.

“’Cause when you wrote all those letters, you wrote ‘Brothers and Sisters’-not ‘Sister’ like you’d have done if you thought only Sal was left. No, you thought I was alive, or you hoped I was alive-and that’s the same thing in my book.”

Robert stopped trying to hold back sobs, for Martha’s words made them dry up, except for a tear that got away down his cheek before he could catch it. “Maybe you’re right,” he said after a while. “How come you know me better than I know myself?”

Martha smiled. “It’s easy to know other people. Not so easy to know ourselves.”

It was then that Robert really saw her, saw that she might be small but she was not frail as he had remembered; she was huge of heart. It almost made him cry again, and so he focused on the practical. “You tired?”

Martha shook her head. “Hungry. I could eat a whole pot of beans!”

“Let’s go back to the hotel, get you something to eat.”

As they walked along the path that wound through the grove, still talking, Martha kept her hand tucked in Robert’s elbow. At first she didn’t seem to notice the giant trees they walked past, and he did not point out Father of the Forest or Mother of the Forest or any of the others. But eventually as they were passing the Three Graces, she seemed to take them in for the first time. “They’re so big, aren’t they? How come they’re so big and other trees aren’t?”

“I don’t know,” Robert replied, wondering why he had never asked this question himself. “There’s another grove of these trees a few miles away where there’s one that’s even bigger, and more beautiful. Nobody knows about it but me. I’ll show you sometime if you want.” Already he was giving his sister his most precious gift-his secret grove of trees.

“I’d like that.”

“We could go now-it’s only a few miles. You could manage that on a horse, couldn’t you?” Suddenly the idea of taking his sister to see the secret trees was all Robert could think of.

His eagerness made Martha smile. “Maybe tomorrow. I’ve got some pain now and then.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Do you know when the baby’s coming?”

“Soon. Real soon. It’s moved down.” Martha shook her head at his alarmed look. “You haven’t been around women having babies, have you? Mrs. Day and I helped out with neighbors in the Black Swamp. The labor starts a long time before it gets going for real. It’s just getting itself ready. I’ve got time.”

They walked for a bit in silence before Robert said, “What are we going to do?”

“I already know,” Martha replied firmly. “Mrs. Lapham talked to me about it. She’s real nice, Mrs. Lapham.”

“Nancy? What did she say?”

“That we should go with them to Murphys. They’re leaving tomorrow. I can have the baby there.”

Robert nodded. Though he had been thinking further ahead, her answer made him realize it would be best to concentrate on the next few days for now, and leave the future to sort itself out.

Nancy Lapham was delighted to discover that Martha was Robert’s sister rather than his lover. The knowledge seemed to rally her. “A sister! Of course!” she cried, sitting up in bed and reaching out to pat Martha’s arm. “ That makes sense. You got a Goodenough look about you, now I see you two side by side. Oh, how wonderful that you’ve found each other! Tell me how it happened,” and she made Martha tell the story all over again, of lost letters and her journey by boat and barge and ship and steamboat and stage and horse. Already Martha was repeating phrases, leaving out unnecessary details, hurrying over questionable moments, shaping her journey into a story ready for retelling. Nancy asked her many more questions than Robert had-not about the baby or its father, but about the months on board the ship going down and up the South American coastlines and around Cape Horn. “Did you see penguins?” she asked. “Natives with spears? Dolphins? Were the men respectful? Respectable? How many other women were on board? Could you wash? How much fresh water did you get? Was the passage rough? Were there rats? Fleas? What did you eat? Were there weevils in the flour? What kind of fruit did they bring on board? Coconuts? Pineapples?”

At the mention of pineapples, Martha started. “Oh! Robert, will you get my bag? I hid it in the last stall in the stables. Please.”

By the time he’d brought it back, the women had come down to the front porch, aided by Billie Lapham, and were sitting side by side in rocking chairs. “I am truly honored to meet you, ma’am,” Lapham was saying to Martha, his top hat in his hands. “Really and truly. Any sister of Robert’s is a sister to me.”

“Where’d you get this?” Robert asked as he handed his sister a battered carpetbag.

“New York.” As Martha rummaged around in the bag, Robert marveled at the thought of his timid sister navigating the streets of America’s biggest city. She didn’t seem capable of it. But then, she had gotten herself all the way across the country to him. He was going to have to change his idea of her from the shy, defenseless girl he’d known when they were young, the last sight of her a muddy boot dangling from an apple tree.

Martha pulled out a handkerchief. As she unfolded it, something scattered into her lap and rolled off her belly onto the porch floorboards. “Oh!” she cried. “Don’t move!”

“What is that?” Robert stepped carefully over.

“Seeds. They’re for you. I brought them all this way, and now-”

“It’s all right, I see them.” Robert picked at the floor till he held a dozen small brown seeds shaped like tears. He recognized them but asked anyway, “What are these?”