Трейси Шевалье - At the Edge of the Orchard

“I’d forgotten how good it is to sit and eat without someone hanging off me,” she commented with her mouth full. “I might jest eat this whole plate of biscuits. You want one?” She held out the plate to him.

“Molly.”

“They ain’t like mine, I’ll admit that. Dody don’t exactly have a light touch in most things, much less biscuit dough. But I don’t mind. Things always taste better when someone else has made ’em for you, don’t they? I always liked the coffee you made for me up at French Creek-even though it was miners’ coffee.” She was running on the way she did when her desperation became more marked, except that she didn’t seem desperate now, but calm, even a little indifferent. Of course she must have heard him talking to Mrs. Bienenstock outside.

“Molly.”

“What is it this time, honey.” Molly said it as a statement rather than a question. She took another bite of the tough biscuit and left a smear of honey on her chin.

“William Lobb wants me to go with the trees to Wales, to make sure they survive.”

“Course he does.” Molly wiped her chin. “The question is, do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

Molly breathed out hard through her nose. “That’s the problem with you, Robert Goodenough. You’ve been bouncin’ all over this country for years-since you was a boy. But you don’t choose to go somewhere, you jest end up there because others are goin’ and you’re expected to, rather than because you think, ‘Right, this is what I want to do.’”

“I did know what I wanted.”

“Which was?”

“To go west.”

“To get away from your family.”

“Well. Yes.” Robert chewed on his lip. Time was passing and the ship would be leaving soon-if it hadn’t already.

Molly picked up a biscuit and began to crumble it between her fingers. “So you kept goin’ west. And then what happened?”

“I reached the Pacific.” Robert pictured the whale’s tail, flipping up in the ocean. “I saw it, and I couldn’t go any further, so I had to turn back.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why stop? Why not keep goin’?”

“Because-because I can’t swim.” It was a foolish answer to what felt like a foolish question.

But Molly was not foolish. “You can get on a ship. Get on a ship,” she repeated, and it became a command.

“You want me to go?”

“Who said anything about ‘me’? You know, I’ve done a lot of thinkin’ these past weeks, even with one baby or another grabbin’ at me. How long did you mine for gold?”

Robert frowned. “A year or so. Why?”

“I been around a lot of miners. I’ve seen how they are. You ain’t like them. You don’t gamble, you don’t drink, you don’t spend your money on women-well, you don’t on me, that’s all I know. Same hat, same boots, same saddle, same rundown horse. No flashy watch on a chain. You don’t own land or a house or even a bed, far as I know. But I bet you were a good miner. You kept at it, didn’t chase down rumors like the others. So I thought about all this, and finally I realized somethin’, and it made me laugh out loud. You want to know what it was I realized?”

Robert nodded, though he was painfully aware that an entire ship was waiting for him.

“It’s you , Robert Goodenough. You’re the miner I’ve been lookin’ for-the one who’s saved his gold money, who I can put my feet up with. You got some money from all that mining?”

“A little. It cost a lot to be a miner, but I saved a little.”

“Good. You got enough to pay for a woman and two babies to go to England?”

Robert stared at the babies in their basket. “Can they go on a ship?”

Molly laughed. “Honey, babies are made and born and live on ships.”

“But-don’t you want to stay here?”

“Here?” Molly looked around the kitchen. “I could. Mrs. B.”s the only woman I’ve met in California I like. But I was three years in French Creek. I wouldn’t mind movin’ around some, babies or not.” As if that were her cue, Sarah began to whimper in preparation for full-blown crying. “The question ain’t about me, though, it’s about whether you want to be alone or with us. Now, we don’t have to come with you. I got offers of work at Murphys and up at Cally Grove, or I could stay in San Francisco and work, find a gal to look after the babies. I could make a life in California, and have fun without even havin’ a miner to look after me. So don’t you say you want me to come because you feel you have to. You got to want to.”

“Molly, I’m not good at family.”

“You’re doin’ all right with Jimmy and Sarah.”

When he didn’t speak, she added, “You ain’t like your parents, you know. If that’s what you’re worried about. You ain’t violent. I don’t have any worries on that front. Besides, the way you described it back in Cally Grove, it sounds like your parents didn’t mean to kill each other. It was an accident-a double accident. You said your Ma was goin’ to chop down the apple tree?”

“Yes.”

“That’s real different from goin’ out with an axe intendin’ to kill someone. She was aimin’ for the tree, not your Pa. And she fell into the stakes, you said, ’cause he pushed her. Well, that’s jest pushin’ away, it don’t mean he meant to kill her.”

Robert was silent, playing through the scene in his head. “Maybe you’re right,” he said at last. “Actually, I am like my father, a little.” If he was my father, he said to himself, then understood that he could choose to make him so, as there was no one to tell him otherwise. “He was a tree man,” he added, because he could.

“Then your father must have been a good man-”cause you’re a good man, Robert Goodenough. Better than your name. Don’t you forget that. You can choose to be different from your past. You have chosen, haven’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Now you got another choice: do you want the babies and me to come with you or not?”

She waited for him to answer and he knew the pause was too long, even though at the end of it was a “Yes,” and even though he meant it.

“All right, then. When does the ship sail?” If Molly was disappointed by his hesitation, she didn’t show it. It was a moment, however, that he knew would always remain between them.

Robert cleared his throat. “Now. We have to go right now.”

“Dody! We got some packin’ to do!”

The next half hour was a blur of panic, of throwing things into trunks and running up and down the stairs to load a wagon commandeered by Mrs. Bienenstock. Robert stopped thinking and simply did whatever Molly and Mrs. B. ordered. Jimmy and Sarah cried all the way through the commotion, and Robert marveled at how easily Molly ignored them when she had to.

Robert himself had little to pack. He took a few clothes, the Goodenough quilt, notebooks full of tree notes, and the handkerchief of Golden Pippin seeds, selling Mrs. B. his shotgun, saddle, and a few cook pans. She also bought the gray, very cheaply. Robert was surprised to find he regretted selling his horse, but he didn’t know when he’d be back. He had no idea what was going to happen to him. To them. He would have to get better at thinking in the plural.

Though there was no time, Molly insisted he go to the stables where he kept the gray and say goodbye. When Robert protested, she just looked at him. “It’s your horse .” And so he went and stood with the gray for a few minutes while it chewed on oats and ignored him. When he moved to go, though, the gray stretched out and nipped Robert on the arm. “Fair enough,” he said. “Guess I deserved that.”