Orchard (2 page)

He could not see a single hunter, but Henry believed that with each gunshot he could name the particulars of the situation—that deep
boom,
a noise like a heavy wooden door slammed on an empty church, was a shotgun rifled for slugs and likely fired from that stand of tamarack bordering the east orchard; that sharper
krang,
a plank dropped from the scaffolding of a house under construction, issued from the stone wall separating Blander’s land from Otley’s; and that
blam-blam-blam
series, a screen door banging in the wind, probably came from an inexperienced hunter up on the ridge, someone shooting down at a deer running for the trees. That was the autumn of Henry’s fourteenth year, and though his father returned the rifle to Henry’s hands one year later, in time for deer season, Henry had always felt a vacancy in his life where that lost season should have gone.

Henry supposed he should head home, but he had trouble making himself move in that direction. The sun was low in the west, and if he stayed on this road, he would soon find himself climbing the rocky bluffs that looked down on the bay. So he had choices. He could keep walking and enjoy the view. He could return to the Top Deck—after all, he had fifty dollars in his pocket. Or he could go back to his family, to a waiting meal, though the potatoes that Sonja had boiled were surely cold by now. In another minute he’d turn around. . . . He kept thinking—as he looked out at the ashy brown-black of the tree trunks, the bone white of the rocks, the yellow-green of the grasses and leaves—of the painter’s trousers. He must have been painting a scene similar to the one Henry was contemplating—how could an artist resist it?—yet there had been no streaks of blue on the man’s pants. Where was the water? Where was the sky?

In the painting,
the rifle barely shows. A window at the front of the house is open, and the curtains billow outward, as if the wind has found a way to reach inside the house and pull out the tattered lace. Through that window a table is visible, and leaning against the table, the rifle, only the tip of its barrel revealed. But really, one would have to stare at the painting a long time before noticing the rifle at all. It is the deer that captures the eye, the dead deer hanging head down from a tree branch. The season is obviously autumn, but perhaps the year’s last warm day—hence, the open, unscreened window. Leaves, all shades of ocher, litter the yard, and the wind has swept—is sweeping, for a few leaves hover in the air—some of them into a little pile under the deer, so it appears that once the animal was split open, leaves tumbled out.

4

Winter still—yes, that was both how and when Weaver first saw her.

He had been in his gallery sorting through a series of landscapes— few of them his, and those only watercolors he had done years before— and when he came out, she was there, a brushstroke of scarlet amid all the surrounding shades of gray, dun, rust, and ash. She was sitting on a boulder, staring down at the ice-locked little bay that gave Fox Harbor its name.

As Weaver approached her—she was hatless and her red duffel coat was unbuttoned, though the northwest wind was blade-sharp and each gust tore loose a few snowflakes—she did not look his way. Yet she had to see him coming. He walked right along the edge of her field of vision, but her gaze was as frozen as the harbor and she was as motionless as the rock she sat upon.
Winter still.

“I remember a year not so long ago,” he said, “when they were ice fishing out there on Easter Sunday. In April.”

When she turned to face him, Weaver almost walked away in disappointment. He wanted her for his subject, yet when he saw her full-on—the high forehead and prominent cheekbones, the square jaw, the wide-set, downturned eyes, the upper lip fuller than the lower—he thought, I’m too late; another artist has already created this work. A sculptor chiseled her from stone and set her upon stone, here on a wind-blown hill above water as still as stone. And then he gave her an expression as blank as stone . . .

But statues do not wear red coats. Nor do they pull back and plait their hair, hair the color of the bur oak leaves that hang on through the winter. And the faces of statues do not redden and chafe in the wind and the cold.

“A winter like this one,” Weaver went on, “I wonder if it might just hang on. April, May—we’ve had snow in those months. June, July— maybe this is the year winter won’t leave.”

And what did she think of the man who stood before her, yammering on in so inconsequential a way? Surely she saw in him no threat. Even in his work boots, Weaver did not top five and a half feet, and in build he was thin-boned and slender. His haircut was a schoolboy’s, his steel-gray thatch close-cropped. The face, however, was a man’s, tanned, gaunt, and riven from days of sun and wind and nights of whiskey and tobacco. While he waited for her to finish her appraisal, Weaver burrowed in the pockets of his peacoat for his cigarettes and lighter.

He twisted away from the wind to light his cigarette, and when he came back, she was fixed once again on the frozen harbor.

Very well. Weaver would forgo any further attempts at smiling charm or weather chitchat. “Do you know who I am?” he asked.

“I know.”

“Who? Who am I?”

“You’re the artist.” She lifted her chin in the direction of his gallery. “The painter.” A tongue tap at the
th,
the vowels forward, a little lift on an odd syllable—Scandinavia? Sweden, perhaps?

“That’s right,” Weaver said. “And I’d like to paint you.”

She did not giggle. Neither did she blush or look away or stammer a response. All good signs.

“I mean it. This is a serious proposition. Come to my cabin sometime.”

“For money?”

Weaver drew deeply on his cigarette. He exhaled hard and watched to see how close to her face the wind would blow the smoke before it diffused in the frigid air.

“If that would be the only circumstance under which you would pose, then yes. For money. Certainly for money.”

Was she about to answer? Over her shoulder, Weaver saw a young man and a little girl approach. They came from the direction of the Lutheran church, and they were dressed for services, he in an ill-fitting dark suit and she in a pale-green gingham dress and white shoes. Her new Easter outfit. But her dress hung below the wool coat that she had outgrown and that would need to be replaced before next winter. Weaver guessed she was about seven or eight. The color of her hair and the geometry of her jaw—she was without doubt her mother’s daughter. But her father’s as well. She wore the same unguarded, ready-to-smile expression as the tall, wide-shouldered man at her side.

The woman must have noticed where Weaver’s gaze had gone, and she turned quickly. When she saw the man and child, she climbed down from her rock and joined them. She put one arm around her daughter, linked the other with her husband’s, and together they walked away from Weaver. The husband, however, kept glancing back over his shoulder and finally tugged his arm free to wave to Weaver.

Then it came to him—this was the young fellow who had been so desperate to sell his rifle that day in the Top Deck Tavern. Weaver wondered if that desperation had anything to do with his wife’s refusal to enter church. Of course it did. Desperation did not enter one room of a family’s house and stay out of the others.

Weaver smoked and waited until they were out of sight. Then he walked over to the rock and put his palm right where she had sat. Of course, granite had no properties that would allow it to hold any of her body’s heat. . . .

And to think she preferred this surface—rough, hard, and almost as cold to the touch as if it had been chipped from a glacier—to the warm, dark pew where her husband and daughter had sat through the last hour. For his part, Weaver preferred a faith founded on a rock like this one.

5

This was the wager Harriet Weaver made with herself as she watched from the second-story window: If the woman standing at the bottom of the driveway came up to the house by way of the rutted track on the left, Ned would take the woman to Paris. If she chose the right track, they would visit London. If she walked the grassy mound between, she would do no better than New York. Most certainly he would take her to Chicago. But if she wanted more, she had only to set a foot forward on the right, left, or middle path.

Yes, Chicago was assured, as much a part of the pattern as the art itself. Pencil first. Rapid sketches in pencil and perhaps charcoal, lines hardly enough to flatter. But then a few would be washed in with watercolor. More sketches, possibly a pen-and-ink drawing, and in the cross-hatching she might see how close her shadows were to her sunlit spaces. Finally, if she made it that far, oils. And if something in her remained uncaptured, perhaps he would move back through the entire process. The next time, however, each rendering might be sparser, more austere, as he put more pressure on each individual line or stroke, asking it to reveal as much of her essence as possible.

And how would Harriet remember the terms of her wager? It was simple—the track on the left was the trip to Paris. Paris, famous for its Left Bank, the site, oddly enough, of Harriet’s happiest night. And what a quiet, unadorned set of hours it was, if any hour spent in Paris can be said to exist without adornment. It was May, and they walked from their hotel—back then they stayed at the tiny Hotel Antinea on rue Cujas—to Violon, their favorite restaurant, for a meal they could barely afford. After dinner, in the soft, everlasting light of a Paris spring evening, they simply wandered through the streets near the Sorbonne. Ned never spoke of art or ambition, and he never stopped touching her, whether it was to hold her hand or drape his arm across her shoulder and caress the top of her breast. And when dark finally fell, back at their room, after lovemaking, Harriet stood at the window, looking out at the empty street. From the window box the smell of geraniums and fresh dirt rose to her nostrils. He came up behind her and pulled open her robe, under which she wore nothing. She tried to scold him and cover herself, but he would have none of it. From her thighs to her throat, his hands slowly traveled. The curtain’s open, she protested, and Ned said, What of it? Let all of Paris see what’s mine.

The month was May, she was sure of that, but what was the year? It was before the girls were born—if nothing else, the way she remembered her body told her that. They had no money. Ned had no fame. My God, shouldn’t she be able to recall more than the month when her happiness was at its greatest height?

If she won this bet she made with herself, her reward, Harriet decided, would be a meal of Ned’s favorite foods, not a particularly easy thing to do since food gave him so little pleasure. But she recalled that once he admired a roast duck that Sheila Hartwick prepared—or was he merely flattering Sheila?—and on their Friday-night excursions to the Ship and Shore for boiled whitefish, Ned frequently ate nothing but cherry pie. So, Harriet would roast a duck and bake a cherry pie.

Since eating this meal would mean she had won her wager and would therefore be eating alone, Harriet would indulge herself. She would eat only the breast of the duck, and even then, if so much as a single bite was in the least stringy or dry, she would throw the rest away. With the pie, she would break through the center of the crust and spoon out as many mouthfuls of the tart cherries and sweet syrup as she liked. When she tired of it, the rest of the pie, tin and all, would go into the garbage. Others might gratify themselves with excess; Harriet’s extravagance would be waste.

She was tempted to make another bet—how long from this date would it be until the results of her first wager played out?—when the woman at the bottom of the hill suddenly turned and began to walk back the way she came. Her stride was long and purposeful, yet for all the vigor of the woman’s forward motion, the thick braid that hung down her back swung from side to side.

Harriet supposed she could make another wager—would the woman return?—but what was the point? That, as Ned liked to say, was a sucker’s bet.

6

The first time Henry House walked Sonja Skordahl home, he led her through one of his family’s orchards. It was a warm evening in late summer, and the trees were heavy with fully grown apples.

She reached up and touched an apple lightly as if she were testing its weight upon the bough. She had just finished a day of work and was wearing the dirndl and apron that all the women at Axel’s Norske Inn were required to wear. Henry thought she looked, dressed that way and cupping an apple in her hand, like an illustration from a book of fairy tales.

“These must all come down?” she asked.

“Beg pardon?” Henry had spent most of the war years as an artillery range instructor in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and an accident with a defective 105-millimeter howitzer shell left him with a perforated eardrum and the loss of hearing in one ear. He bent closer to her and turned his head slightly.

“They must all come off the tree?” she repeated.

“Every last one of them.”

“And you will pick them?”

“Well, not all. But I’ll pick a hell of a lot of them.”

“They are for eating?”

“Eating. Baking. Sauce. Cider. That’s a good all-purpose apple.”

She touched it again, tapping it as if she were testing the strength of the stem’s hold. “They will come down easy?”

“See for yourself. Go ahead. Give it a pull.”

At the first feel of resistance, Sonja turned her head as if she feared with a harder tug the tree would release a torrent of apples. Then, when the apple popped free, she laughed in surprise. She brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply. “Christmas,” she said with her eyes closed. “The smell of apples is Christmas to me. In Norway, Uncle Karl—my mother’s brother—would come to our home for Christmas, and he would bring a small sack of apples for my brothers and me.”

“Did he grow them? Your uncle Karl—was he an apple grower?”

She laughed again. “I believe he stole them!”

She brought the apple to her mouth and pretended she was about to take a bite. Her eyes widened in mock apprehension as if she feared Henry would scold her.

“Go ahead,” he said. “Help yourself.”

Sonja first rubbed the apple on her apron, then took a small, side-of-the-mouth bite. Immediately her face puckered.

“Too tart?”

She nodded.

Henry pulled another apple from the tree. When the branch whipped back into place, he heard the crackle and muffled thump of another apple falling to the ground. “Here,” he said. “Try this one. Give us another chance.”

This time she made no attempt to clean the apple before biting into it. Once again she winced at the taste.

“That one too?”

“It’s better, I think.”

He brushed that apple from her hand. “Come on. Let’s try another tree.”

They were losing light, but Henry still took the time to select a tree slightly taller than those on either side of it. Although he had never thoroughly tested his theory, he believed that a tree’s larger share of sunlight resulted in sweeter fruit. He pulled a branch down so close to Sonja’s face, she asked merrily, “Shall I bite it on the bough?”

“Pick one of the darkest,” he said. “And one of the roundest.”

She reached for an apple, hesitated, then moved her hand toward another. Henry shook the branch, hoping that an apple would fall off in her hand and make the decision for her.

“They all look like the best,” she said.

“That one there. I guarantee that one.”

As soon as she picked it, Henry had his doubts. She had to work too hard to pull it free, and the ripest apples always seemed to jump into your hand.

After a small, tentative bite, she meekly declared, “It’s very good.”

Henry took it from her. Her teeth had not sunk far beneath the skin. He turned the apple around, opened his mouth as wide as his jaws would allow, and snapped off an oval of apple flesh. It made a sound like cracking wood. The texture was just what it should have been, crisp and distinct, but the taste was so sour it seemed to bite back. He let the apple fall.

“Here. I’m going to find you one, goddammit.”

He led her farther down the row to a tree so thick with apples that every branch sagged under the weight. He pulled off one that was as large as a softball and thrust it close to her face. She bent down to bite it while it was still in his hand. Droplets of apple juice sprayed onto Henry’s fingers.

“Well?”

“The best,” she said, but Henry suspected she was only being polite.

He tossed it aside and picked another. “Is this one better still?”

She opened her mouth, but Henry pulled the apple back. “Make sure the taste of the other is gone.”

She exaggerated both her chewing and swallowing motions before closing her eyes, leaning forward, and opening her mouth wide. She trusted him to put an apple in her mouth, even if she was behaving as though she had to take a dose of bitter medicine.

Once again the bite she took was so small he wondered if something might be wrong with her teeth. Henry had an uncle who, because of his bridgework, always bit into an apple from the side.

“Also very good,” she said.

“You’re not just saying that?”

“Your family grows very good apples.”

“Come on. We’ll try some more.” Henry had, for the moment, set aside his notions of romance. The reputation of his family’s apples was more important.

They walked down the darkening corridor of trees, sampling apple after apple as they went and then casting the bitten fruit aside. Sonja continued to compliment each apple’s excellence, and although Henry did not mistrust her exactly, he wished he could see in her expression a sign that the fruit gave her the pleasure she said it did. But since they were nearing the end of the orchard, Henry supposed he had no choice but to believe her.

The trees gave out, and Henry and Sonja stood by a dirt road across which the lights of the Singstad farm shone. Since her husband had died a few years earlier, Dagny Singstad rented rooms to young women who came to Door County to work but had difficulty finding a place to live, much less one they could afford. As it was, Sonja shared a room with a woman who clerked at Mast’s Pharmacy.

As they stepped onto the road, the smell of wood smoke replaced the aroma of apples. From Mrs. Singstad’s chimney smoke rose as straight as a plumb line in the windless evening air.

Henry nodded in the direction of the house. “A little warm for a fire, isn’t it?”

“Probably she has the furnace on too. She says she is cold in her bones. She keeps it so hot it is suffocating in that house. We must have our window open always just to have air to breathe.”

“Where’s your room?”

“You can’t see it from here. It’s in the back above the kitchen. Do you see that tree? Its branches are right outside our window.”

“Maybe I’ll climb up that tree some night. Sneak in through your window and surprise you while you’re sleeping.”

Sonja laughed. “You might have a very bad surprise if you do. Dottie keeps a hammer by her bed.”

“Dottie expecting trouble, is she?”

“Dagny’s boys. When they come to the house, they look at you like . . . like I don’t know what.”

“You tell Dottie she doesn’t have to worry about Nils. But she better keep her hammer handy when Bjorn’s around.”

In the distance, a car’s headlights appeared. Henry and Sonja both turned to watch, wondering if they would have to move from the middle of the road. When the car was a good quarter of a mile away, however, it turned off at the Lonsdorf place.

“I must go in,” she said. “Dagny waits up.” Sonja took a step back and bowed slightly. “So I will thank you now for the . . . for the wonderful apple feast.”

She had barely finished her little speech when Henry moved to close the distance between them. He tried to kiss her, but Sonja had time to lift her fingers into the space between their lips.

“No, I think tonight—just apples.”

Before Henry could form a response, either argument or apology, she was gone, hastening toward her little room under Dagny Singstad’s roof. For another moment, Henry remained in the road, analyzing the language of her rebuff. Tonight—just apples. Was any other meaning possible—on another night, there would be more than apples?

Henry walked back the way they came. Even in the dark, he could tell when he reached the place in the orchard where he was as far from any path leading in as any leading out. Here he stepped into the space between two trees that grew so close their upper branches tangled and made it impossible to tell which apples belonged on which tree. Henry unbuckled his trousers. He spit twice into his hand to oil its motion up and down his cock. He had had women before, but now he scarcely went further in his mind than the thought of coming up behind Sonja Skordahl, pulling her dress from her shoulders, and baring her bosom. Just when he imagined reaching around her to cup her breasts, ripe and heavy in his hands as fruit about to fall, his semen burst from him with such force that he was staggered on his feet.

The following morning,
Sonja left the house at first light. She entered once again the House family orchard, and she gathered up in her apron as many of the apples as she could find that she and Henry had scattered the night before. She worried that someone from Henry’s family might be able to follow the trail of once- or twice-bitten fruit and see that it led toward Dagny’s. Eventually they would learn that Sonja herself was responsible for such thievery and worse, such waste. They would never approve of such a woman.

She found a mound of soft dirt between two apple trees, and with her fingers she scraped out a depression deep enough to bury the apples. Each apple bore either a small or large scar, depending on whether the teeth that sunk into it had been hers or Henry’s. The last apple she pushed into the hole was his, and before she covered it, she ran her finger around the rim of the bite mark where the peel, like human skin, puckered around its wound and tried to heal itself.

When Sonja reported to work, Axel banished her to the kitchen to wash dishes for the remainder of her shift. He had noticed her hands, and he would not allow someone with dirt under her fingernails to serve food to his paying customers.