Трейси Шевалье - At the Edge of the Orchard

While they ate together in the hotel room, the baby asleep on the bed beside Martha, he asked her more about that trip, about New York City and, tentatively, about the Black Swamp. Martha was in the middle of telling him something funny about Hattie Day when she stopped. “You know I can’t ever go back there,” she said, interrupting her own story. “’Cause of what I did to Caleb.”

Robert swallowed. “Is he…”

“I don’t know. I run off. But there was a lot of blood.” Martha fixed her eyes on the candle by her bed. “I thought they might be looking for me in New York so I kept real quiet there, and slipped onto the ship at the last minute. But there’s a whole country between me and the Black Swamp. They won’t come looking for me all the way out here, will they?”

“Of course not. I’ll keep you safe.” Robert tried to sound reassuring, hiding his shock over her mention of blood. “We can live somewhere out of the way. There’s plenty of land out here. California is where you get to start over.”

Martha turned her eyes back to him from the candle. “What about Molly?”

“What about her?” Robert’s reply was cockier than he actually felt.

“She’s family now. Her baby will be a Goodenough too, and so will she once you marry her.”

“Marry Molly?”

“She seems real nice. Spirited. And it’d be good to live with someone else having a baby at the same time-makes it easier.” Martha chuckled at the look on his face. “You haven’t thought about it much, have you?”

Robert shook his head. “There hasn’t been any time.”

“Well, now you can start to plan. Tomorrow you go up to Calaveras Grove and talk to her about the future, make sure she doesn’t mind if I live with you all.”

“Of course she won’t mind!” Robert didn’t add, “No one has talked about living together.” Martha was making assumptions, and he suspected Molly was too. That was how women had to be, he supposed: pragmatic, looking out for their children.

To his relief, they didn’t have to talk about the future anymore, for exhaustion had caught up with her and Martha’s eyes were closing. Robert quietly unrolled his bedding and spread it on the floor. He pretended to be asleep each time his nephew woke for a feeding.

In the morning, despite the night’s interruptions, Martha was clear-eyed and smooth-faced, and insistent that he go back to Calaveras Grove to see Molly. “Please,” she added as Robert hesitated. “It’ll set me at ease to know where Jimmy and me fit in to the future. And besides, she’s carrying your child. You got to see she’s all right.”

The Laphams were with them by then, Nancy sitting with Martha and Billie walking up and down with the baby in his arms. “Go on, Goodenough, we’ll take good care of your family,” he said, jiggling his bundle.

“Course we will,” Nancy added. “I’ll get my knitting and sit here all day for company. This little boy needs some warm clothes for the winter!”

“All right,” Robert agreed finally. “I’ll be back tonight.” Part of him was relieved to get away from his nephew. He had only held him once, briefly, and his red skin and his eyes squeezed shut and his grasping mouth were alien to Robert. Secretly he couldn’t understand why the others were praising the baby so much when he resembled an animal rather than a human.

He leaned down and kissed his sister’s forehead. She smiled up at him. “Say hello to Molly for me. Tell her I’m looking forward to the cousins playing together.”

Robert nodded. As he left, Nancy Lapham was making arrangements for a tin bath to be brought up so that Martha could wash away the sweat and blood of the previous day.

At Calaveras Grove he found Molly leaning against the Chip Of the Old Block, chatting to other visitors and looking as if she lived there. As he dismounted and headed towards her she was saying, “Myself, I like a waltz, especially when I’m so big. Imagine trying to polka with this belly!” The group with her laughed.

Molly brightened when she saw him, and went to put her arm through his. “Robert Goodenough, you were right about this place. It’s wonderful!”

“You walked through the trees yet?”

“Naw, just saw those.” She waved at the Two Sentinels. “I’ve been waitin’ for you to come and show me. How’s your sister?”

“Good. She had the baby. She’s calling him James-Jimmy. She-she sends her regards.” Robert could not bring himself to repeat the part about the cousins playing together, and about living together: it was too much too soon. “Let me stable the gray, then I’ll show you the trees. I can only stay for the day.”

Molly frowned. “Ain’t you even gonna stay the night? The food is good here-I had a long talk with the cook. And I love the bowling! Have you tried it?”

Robert shook his head, remembering how scathing William Lobb had been about the game. “I promised Martha I’d come back tonight. She’s still pretty tired, and I want to make sure she’s all right, and knows I’m there.” Thinking of his sister gave him a pang, and he began to regret having left her to come to Cally Grove.

Molly looked as if she were going to say something, but stopped herself. “All right, then, Robert Goodenough, let’s enjoy the day while we got it.”

She accompanied him to the stables to put up the gray. After only a day she clearly knew her way around, and she hallooed everyone in sight, for it seemed she had introduced herself to those who worked at the Grove and all the visitors too. In fact, Molly seemed much more interested in the human element of Calaveras Grove than she was in the sequoias themselves-which to Robert was missing the point. However, it did mean he didn’t have to take her all the way around the mile-and-a-half circuit to see every tree. She was content to look at the trees that were only a little way into the woods, insisting as they went around on leaning on Robert’s arm, as Martha had two days before. This time he felt the weight of her expectation even more heavily than Martha’s. She held herself like a ship steering a slow, proud passage through calm waters. The visitors who encountered them smiled to see such a large woman among large trees-a response Molly accepted as if it were her due, like a queen or a president.

When they neared one of the named trees, Molly stopped and squinted. “The Old Bachelor,” she read aloud from a plaque that had been hung on it. “Huh!” She glanced sideways at Robert. “Let’s set here awhile.” Without waiting for him to agree, she settled onto a nearby bench placed so that there was a good view of the tree. Robert perched beside her.

“Sit back!” she said, pulling at his shoulder. “You’re tense as a cat in a thunderstorm.”

He knew he was sitting as if he were about to stand again, run back to the stables and gallop off on the gray. He leaned back and tried not to think about his sister.

Molly arranged her yellow skirts around her bump. “Now, we got to have a little talk.”

Robert studied the Old Bachelor. It was a huge, grizzled old tree, set off from the others a bit up the hill. It would have been even bigger but the top had died and come down, leaving it with the rounded crown you saw on the older giant trees. He was beginning to understand its name better.

“Look at you. Can’t even look at me.”

Midway up the trunk of the tree was a line of woodpecker holes. Robert counted them in his head, then asked what he needed to ask. “Is the baby mine?”

He could feel her flinch next to him. Though in his head it seemed a logical question, spoken aloud Robert understood how hurtful it was.