Трейси Шевалье - At the Edge of the Orchard

“What about me?”

“You?” William Lobb shrugged. “You, lad, can do what you like. The British will still want Californian trees. You can collect for Veitch if you want. I won’t stand in your way. It looks like you’ve got people depending on you.” He raised his eyebrows towards the window where Molly had appeared.

“But…” Robert couldn’t tell if he was being cut loose by his employer.

“You’ve got enough knowledge. Use it now: where are we going to find fifty redwood seedlings fast?”

At least Lobb had used “we.” That was something. Robert thought for a moment. “It has to be close by.”

“Yes. And?”

“There need to be a lot of seedlings germinating.”

“And where do you get that?”

“Someplace where there was a fire a year ago.” Rather than destroying the redwoods, fire cleared the forest floor of the thick duff around them and provided seeds with a new bed full of minerals. Robert had seen many more redwood seedlings in scorched earth than in a ground full of old needles.

“Yes. Fire. There was a fire above the Oakland hills a year ago. Good redwoods up there and it’s just across the bay. Oakland will do. You can take the ferry across.”

“But I need your help.”

Lobb winced. “Listen, lad, I can’t do a thing. There are shooting pains in my legs and I’ve no energy. All my years of travel have caught up with me.” He paused. “Don’t let that happen to you. Mind you, looks like you’re heading in the right direction.” He nodded again at Molly’s window.

“You can show me where the redwoods are, organize the wagon. You won’t have to do the digging. Just come with me. Please.” Robert didn’t know why he was so insistent that Lobb accompany him. Nonetheless, he stared at his employer intently until Lobb relented.

“Damn your brown eyes, Goodenough! All right. Never mind the ferry: run down to the docks and hire us a boat and a man willing to take us first thing tomorrow-as early as possible so we’ve got a full day. Now, wagons: I think we can manage with just one if we stack the pails right. And pails-we’ve got to get more. A whole lot more.” As he and Robert began discussing the logistics of collecting so many trees in one go, William Lobb seemed to brighten and regain his energy, pacing Mrs. Bienenstock’s yard without the stiff gait he had adopted over the past year.

Molly did not seem to mind Robert going off almost immediately after they had arrived in San Francisco. Like him, she was used to doing things herself without expecting much from others. When he went to tell her, she was busy in the bedroom, settling in with her blankets on the bed, dresses on pegs, bottles on the chest of drawers, and Jimmy popped into the cradle, with the Goodenough quilt as his bedding. Again she seemed to be able to quickly make a home out of a space, pressing down a tangible mark where Robert would have left no footprint.

He was relieved that she was cheerful and amenable. She was only disappointed not to see the ocean right away. “You could get Mrs. B. to take you out to Black Point,” Robert suggested. “Or out by Seal Rocks where they’re building a fort. You get a good view of it there.”

“Naw, I want to see it with you ,” Molly insisted. “Anyway, there’s plenty for me to see around here. All those houses we saw on the way! And the saloons! And the ships! I’m gonna have me a little holiday.”

Going to Oakland felt like a little holiday to Robert. There were no women or babies to consider, and only a few drunk miners around. He did not have to be careful about tracking mud into Mrs. B.”s, or lie in bed at night with Molly too warm beside him, feeling the four walls closing him in. After crossing the bay in a boat large enough to hold fifty pails, two men, the boat’s owner and Robert’s horse, he saddled the gray so he could ride into the hills, while William Lobb stayed behind in the small town to hire a wagon he would bring up after Robert. It had been almost a year since the men had gone out collecting together. Lobb also seemed happy to be out and away from the responsibilities and debilitations of the city. He walked almost normally and his brow was clear of its usual furrows.

“Up there.” He pointed at a ridge above Oakland. “Take the Indian trail up, and go right at the fork. About a mile up you’ll find a beauty of a grove. I’ve been saving it. You should be able to find enough seedlings there. Take some pails to get started on-we’ll bring along the rest.”

He was right about the redwood grove. It was full of tall trees with their distinctive auburn bark and needled branches getting bigger the higher up they grew. Robert knew he didn’t have much time to collect fifty seedlings, yet when he had walked a little way into the grove he took a few minutes to sit on a log and look around him. Last year’s fire had charred parts of many of the trunks, but redwood bark was thick and full of tannin that protected it from burning, and redwood branches grew starting halfway up the trunk, which meant that flames couldn’t use them as a ladder to reach the top of the tree. The forest floor had been cleaned by the fire, and now tiny seedlings were sprouting everywhere, amid a carpet of emerald-green redwood sorrel.

Though not so big as the Calaveras sequoias he had been among weeks before, the redwoods gave him the familiar soothing sense of being insignificant. If only I could keep this feeling with me everywhere I am, Robert thought. Maybe then it wouldn’t be so hard to adjust to all the things that have happened to me.

He spent a happy few hours finding seedlings and digging them up. As he worked, he wondered which trees would not survive the long journey across the ocean, and what the rest would look like planted in foreign soil. It was a relief to think only of the trees and of what he needed rather than of what others needed from him. Though it was not easy finding so many seedlings at one time, Robert did not hurry or worry, but worked steadily, ferrying what he had on the gray down to the larger road where William Lobb waited with the wagon. The gray was not happy about being hung again with pails, but Robert had brought along a supply of sugar lumps and early Gravenstein apples to keep him reasonably quiet.

By sunset he had dug up the fiftieth tree and tipped it into a pail. When he brought the last seedlings down to the wagon, William Lobb nodded, satisfied. “They’ll do, lad. Good work.”

Back in Oakland, the owner of the boat was missing, and Robert went to search for him among the saloons strung along the main street. He was passed out in one of them, and Robert couldn’t bring him to. “He’s too drunk to sail,” he said to William Lobb back at the wagon, worried about his employer’s response.

But Lobb was sanguine. “We’ll rouse him first thing tomorrow,” he said. “There’s no steamers leaving tomorrow, so Beardsley can’t take off before us. Star of the West leaves the day after tomorrow. We’ve got time.”

Lobb was too stiff to sleep outside, and took a room at one of the basic hotels, but Robert stabled the gray, borrowed a blanket and walked a ways out of town to light a fire, wrap himself up and sleep under the stars. He hadn’t slept outside since Molly’s arrival. As he lay by the fire, he marveled at how quiet it was without Molly and Jimmy with him, and how much easier it was to live this kind of traveling life. The next minute, though, he was feeling guilty about being apart from them. He would not describe it as missing them, exactly, but he was very aware that he was alone. He was not sure what a family was meant to be like. Not James and Sadie Goodenough, that was clear. But what else was there? It felt like fumbling around in the dark, trying to light a candle, losing track of where he was, touching things he didn’t mean to touch.