The Orchardist (46 page)

To shoot a creature from a distance was perhaps enjoyable at first, as a game, but to see the effects close up—the bloody corpse, or the suffering animal pulling its mangled appendage across the forest floor—was not only distasteful to her, but appalling. She would, even if often she could not be found to do the chore, help butcher a deer. But a shade would come down over her eyes, and she would perform the task perfunctorily, her attention divorced from the job at hand.

She had stabbed this man Michaelson so superficially and embarrassingly in the jail, he thought, because she had not the stomach for close physical violence. That was the simplest answer—or one answer—to why she would not kill him. She might think she wanted to kill him; but finally, she was incapable of it.

Clee stirred from where he had been holding still, watching Talmadge, who had given up his quest for the grubs and now watched the soil, scanned it, disinterestedly. What was he looking for?

If there’s another way, I don’t see it, said Talmadge, as if talking to himself.

Let her be, Clee wanted to say. Let her—finally, finally—alone. She will kill him, or she will not. If she does not, something else will come in its place. It’s not for us to decide.

I have to do it, said Talmadge, staring, defeated, at the soil.

T
hey stay up there, said Angelene—I don’t know where they go—but while the rest of us work, they go up there into the canyon, and don’t come down until the sun has set. I don’t know what they do up there, or how they eat. They don’t even bring any food with them, she said, flustered.

Caroline Middey had arrived in her wagon in the afternoon, and Angelene had gone to her, drawn to her from the trees, and when she reached the older woman, Angelene embraced her, placed her head on the other woman’s breast, unabashedly, like a child. What is it? said Caroline Middey. What’s happened? And Angelene, after shedding preliminary tears—these quickly ceased after a flood, and she was embarrassed—led Caroline Middey to the cabin, where Angelene removed the older woman’s boots, and then made her tea. They sat in the birchwood chairs in the new darkness, and Angelene told her what was happening: that Talmadge and Clee held deep conferences in the canyon, leaving the rest of them to work. And lately he hardly spoke to Angelene at all.

It’s like he’s sick, said Angelene. It’s like he can’t help himself.

Caroline Middey was nodding. She was silent for several minutes, lost in thought. Eventually she said: He has got it into his mind that he is to be the savior of that girl, and it won’t let him alone. He is going to die of it—

Don’t say that, said Angelene, sitting up.

I’m sorry, child, said Caroline Middey. But I have not seen the likes of it before.

She was silent then, because she had just remembered an exception: his feverish existence after the disappearance of his sister: him refusing food, combing the forest, pocketing different objects—rocks, sticks, flowers—which, he claimed, bore some sort of sign within them. Some sort of map that would show him the way.

I’ll talk to him, said Caroline Middey. We’ll get this sorted out between us.

Angelene was silent. Didn’t want to say what she was thinking: that she—Angelene—and Caroline Middey had receded in importance to Talmadge; they had become insubstantial to him. Della was the only one who mattered to him now.

A
nd then Frederick appeared outside the bars, in the darkness. Della sensed him more than she saw him, and rose from the cot. Nearing the bars, she observed with surprise that he held the posture of one who had been waiting a long time. What had he been doing? Watching her sleep? He was looking at her almost as if he disapproved of her—as if she had done something to deliberately betray him, and he had come to have it out with her. A grimness plagued his mouth.

What, she said. Then: How long have you been standing there?

He still peered at her. It was hard to see him in the darkness, which seemed, with every passing moment, to increase. What time was it?

And then Frederick spoke. At the end of the week, he said, they were taking Michaelson to the hospital ward in Seattle.

Della waited, alarmed. Why was he telling her this? She asked him if this news was supposed to make her happy. He hesitated and then said it didn’t seem right that a man like Michaelson should die in the comfort of a hospital, while someone like her, Della, for example, was locked up for a crime she committed when she was probably just protecting herself.

Isn’t that right, he said, looking at her. And that was when she understood what was happening. She told him he was right. He’s going to die anyway, said Frederick, looking away. Probably doing the son of a bitch a favor. And he snorted quietly, gathered phlegm to spit; but he did not.

Somebody had hurt him, she thought suddenly, without wanting to know it. But she knew it. Big, strapping Frederick. Or not him, but his mother, perhaps. A sister.

Della asked if he was really telling her what she thought he was telling her.

He said he was working the morning of the transfer, and would come open her cell. He would come and do that, and then be on his way, he said. What you do outside of that is up to you. I won’t have no more part of it.

But then he looked at her again.

They’ll catch you more likely than not, he said. Even if they don’t catch you in the act—and they probably will—they’ll know who did it. This isn’t good for you. He winced with frustration. I mean, you’re going to do it, but—you have to know they’re going to catch you. You have to—decide if it’s worth it. If it is, fine. But if not—

But Della could not absorb this, she could not listen. Her body had become cold and her fingertips beat. I am a bird, she thought. I am as light as air.

H
arvest was not over yet, but the men had done their preliminary picking and were packing up to leave. Talmadge was preparing to go with them. He and Clee would ride with the men for part of the way and then split off to go to Chelan.

He did not tell Angelene what they were doing, what was happening. We’re going to go see Della, he said, but would not look at her.

Is she coming back with you? she asked him, baffled. Were there developments he had failed to tell her about? Correspondence from the Judge? The warden? Della herself? And if so, why hadn’t he told her? Why wouldn’t he look at her now? He wouldn’t even answer her questions.

I can help, she said. Whatever it is, I can help—

You’ll help by staying here and not asking questions.

Hurt, she withdrew, went deep into the orchard with her picking bag. He would regret the way he had talked to her, she thought, and come find her, penitent. But he did not. When she went back to the cabin, hungry, after dusk, he had already gone to bed.

C
lee had picked out a horse for Talmadge to ride, and in the morning, at dawn, when the other men were decamping, Talmadge packed his saddlebags. Angelene sat wrapped in a blanket on the porch and watched him. After he was done packing, he went inside the cabin and saw that she had prepared breakfast enough for the both of them. The meal laid out on the table. He hesitated, then retreated to the porch. Stood in front of her.

Thank you, he said.

After a moment she rose, and they went inside to eat. They did not speak during the meal.

He did not want to hurt her. He thought, after he had set off with Clee and the other men, that he would make it up to her when he returned to the orchard. When this whole situation was resolved. He knew he had been absentminded, he had neglected his duties in the orchard and toward her. He had not cared for her as he should have. But it was only because the other one in Chelan needed him so much. He had neglected Angelene for a few weeks, but the other one he had neglected for years—since the beginning, almost. It was time to make up for that now.

He should have taken Della in hand much sooner, instead of fooling himself into believing he was giving her her independence and freedom. He should have said: No, you may not travel with the men—excusing all his reasons why he had decided otherwise. He had learned, these last few months, the extent of how much he had been responsible for her, and how he had failed her. Where had it begun? He was not fool enough to believe it had begun with him not taking up arms against Michaelson—or not taking up arms to the extent she might have expected, or wanted, him to. It was not as simple as that. The beginning of his failure was unclear. He was not even sure that it was something that he could have prevented. And that, finally, was the hardest part, the hardest thing to accept. His only excuse was that he never knew that it would go this far. He did not know Jane would kill herself from fear. He realized the girl, Della, might have blamed him all this time for not standing up to the other man—she thought he, Talmadge, was weak—but this was only what she felt superficially. Her anger at him was deep, but finally had little to nothing to do with him. The anger was the mask of an emotion that would not show its true face. She fought against the same force against which he fought. Fate, inevitability, luck. God. He would fly in the face of this force now, for her. If she could be freed from it, he would free her. He would make it all up to her, now.

D
ella half turned toward the bars, squinting in the sun coming through the small window. There was something she had just remembered or wanted to remember; she did not want to forget it, and at the time of remembering it, it had seemed impossible that she would ever forget it, but now she had forgotten it. She stood and looked at the sun-covered wall. Her mind struggled, but she could not grasp it, that thing.

A moment before, she had gotten up from the cot on which she lay looking at the window because someone down the hallway was trying to get her attention. Someone had not called her name but something close to it. It was the call and then something after it like a cough and a moan. And then silence. She had risen and gone to the bars, strained to look down the hallway. But it was silent and nobody was there. She had thought for a moment that it was Michaelson trying to get her attention. Trying to communicate a message to her, trying to persuade her not to kill him.