The Orchardist (16 page)

Some men remained, thinking that she might do it. But then one man turned away, headed to the camp. Dusk was falling.

Talmadge was walking down the hill.

When he understood what they were all looking at, it was too late for him to call for her to stop. And he had known—how to avoid it, how to ignore it?—this was coming. This was what she wanted. Fear and a kind of disgust rose in his throat as he watched her approach the beast.

But then she rushed the horse—there was no other word for it—and grabbed the withers and wrenched her body upon his back. There was the moment when she wore an expression of surprise; and then she was grinning. The men roused, and cheered; they applauded; some of the men who had gone away came jogging back. She lay now almost horizontally on the horse’s back. Her arms almost encircled his neck. She was still grinning. And then the horse bucked—that awful ripple of muscle as he bowed his head—and instead of being thrown, Della slid off the horse while his head was down. Skipped away quickly.

Talmadge was bewildered by what he suspected was not only her luck, but her skill up on the horse. He marveled at the speed with which she had mounted the horse—she had been on his back instantly, almost within a blink of an eye—and when she scanned the crowd and saw him, he raised his arm to her. Waved. But wasn’t he angry? He let his arm drop. Was he congratulating her?

But she looked at him only for a moment; and he wasn’t even sure she had seen him. She was laughing now, and crying. The men had taken her up on their shoulders.

Clee and Talmadge stood together now, regarding her from a distance. Talmadge did not say, Don’t do that again, because he knew it was too late. He was too tired to even reprimand either of them: Clee or the girl. He said, finally, That’s enough for tonight, and then, without looking at Clee, trudged back up the hill.

That night, Della ate her supper with the men.

L
et her have something that makes her happy, thought Talmadge: it was his refrain at the time. Though frequently he thought it was a mistake to reward her. Her work—in the orchard, and with the household chores—was shoddy. At times she left a mess on the counter after she fixed herself something to eat, or she damaged the scions while she picked even though he had shown her, repeatedly and with exceeding patience, how to do it correctly. She went for weeks without changing her clothes. Her hair was full of knots. He was fairly certain, after seeing her scratching, she had lice from sleeping in the barn. He should not bother her, he thought, he should not pester her. And yet how was he helping her, he thought, if he allowed her rudeness, her standards of squalor, to go unchecked? To put it bluntly, he was unsure of his role in her life. He was unsure if he had a right to tell her what to do. Or, if he did, what tone he should take: one of gentle suggestion, or firmer, one of demand.

In his indecision, he was clumsy, and ultimately let her get away with many things, while at other times speaking roughly to her over matters that seemed trivial. They were both, to certain degrees, confused by each other.

W
hen the men came back into the orchard, Della continued to shadow them. Her skill at riding, but then also wrangling, improved. She wanted to travel with Clee and the men, she said, she wanted to see what they did at auction. And she wanted most of all to go with the men, if they would let her, into the mountains, where they hunted the horses. She told Talmadge this while making a great effort to look at him directly, her gaze peeling away from him.

He listened to her silently. He wanted to encourage her interest in anything other than what lay behind her, but at the same time he did not want to encourage such fantasies with the horses and men. To allow the girl to be taught how to ride was one thing, but to allow her to accompany a group of men to a place where more men gathered, to drink and carouse and observe the beasts they had trained, was another. It was beyond inappropriate that she should go, that he should allow her to go. It was all utter foolishness and danger. He did not understand at first why such a prospect would even be attractive to her. But he did not utter that word—No—that would have, he thought, squelched the hope in her. He did not know then that she did not need words from him, that she would do what she wanted regardless of his opinion.

She began to follow the men after they had left the orchard. She traveled behind them at a distance and joined them, suddenly, at auction. There she appeared, and acted as if she had been among them all the time. The first time this happened a man spotted her a day out of the orchard, and one of them escorted her back. It was amusing to some of the men, since she had been riding one of their own horses that she had stolen at some point and hidden in the woods. And so she was a horse thief too. This first time Talmadge accepted her back and told her, as she ate the food he had prepared for her, that it was wrong to follow the men, they could not be bothered by children in what they did, and it was no place for a child to be, the places they went were very dangerous. She listened impassively. The men returned three weeks later, and when they set out again, this time for Seattle, she followed them and got as far as the river crossing at Icicle, where her horse shied and would not enter the water. Someone noticed her then, and brought her back.

I
n the winter, the men and horses absent from the orchard, Della helped Talmadge with the chores. Bored, she spoke down at Angelene on a blanket on the floor, made faces at her. Caroline Middey taught Della to knit and can food, but Della did not care for either of these things. When the men returned in the spring, she changed again into her riding clothes, a motley outfit assembled out of Talmadge’s old clothes and maybe things that were cast off, or stolen, from the men.

She approached Talmadge one day as he worked in the late afternoon. The men had just climbed out of the trees and made their way across the field to their camp, to eat. They would leave the next day. She said: The only reason they won’t let me go with them is because they know you don’t like it. If you say so, they’ll let me go with them.

At supper that night he told her again that the men could not be bothered with young female company, that she needed to leave them alone. Or at least put it out of her head that she would travel with them. It’s not your place, he said, and she looked at him with a gaze that surprised him: it was an adult gaze, calm and slightly amused. He looked away from her, unsettled. Her gaze told him that he did not know what he was talking about; as if he, and not she, was the hardheaded one.

When Talmadge talked to Clee about Della and asked him to forgive her nuisance and to forgive him also for not being able to keep her movements in check, Clee, after waiting to see if he was finished speaking, nodded. Talmadge said: Of course she cannot travel with you. I understand that. And Clee looked at Talmadge in much the same way as Della had, which annoyed him. Is that what you want? said the wrangler, approaching Talmadge the next day. If it is what you want, we will take her with us the next time—

Caroline Middey said that she was only surprised that Della had returned to the orchard at all between her failed excursions to join the men. Why would Della need permission from Talmadge to do anything? Was he her father?

She asked you to speak to the men out of respect, said Caroline Middey, but she does not need your permission.

And so I should let her go because of that? said Talmadge, incredulous.

Caroline Middey shrugged. To her, the girl could no longer be protected. Caroline Middey asked what it was exactly that he had planned for the girl. Was he going to train her in the ways of the orchard? (There was a note of sarcasm to this comment he chose to ignore.) There had been a glimmer, when Della and Jane first entered the orchard, that perhaps he could train them, they could be his apprentices and find a living at it like he had done. And they would have a trade and a way of earning money that would make them independent. Surely that was the most important thing. And they had helped him at first, for a short time, after Angelene’s birth. They had all worked together in the orchard. But after Jane died, Della’s interest in the orchard ceased. To her the orchard was an empty scene that did not fill until the horses entered it. And now she wanted to be a horsewoman. It was the only thing she wanted.

She was maybe sixteen at this time. If you wait, said Talmadge in the wake of another of the men’s departures, if you wait until you are eighteen, if you wait two years from now, I will buy you a riding outfit and I will buy you a gun and I will show you how to use it. I will give you all these things, if you wait. You are too small now, he wanted to say to her. You are stupid and young, he wanted to say, and you still will be two years from now, but I will have less responsibility for you then. Or, he thought, she would have changed her mind. He wished for her to outgrow the desire to ride with the men without ever passing through it. That was what he hoped would happen.

She said nothing to these references—
two years from now
—these gentle bribes. She was puzzled by references to the future, quietly infuriated by them. She attempted twice more to join the men and each time was rebuffed and delivered back to the orchard with increasing grimness on the part of the man who escorted her.

A
nd then one night in May, two months before apricot harvest—her third in the orchard—Della came into his bedroom and stood at the foot of his bed. He had woken a moment before with a start. The air coming through the open window smelled of blossom. The moon lit up a portion of her chest and shoulder. They regarded each other. When she came closer, stepping through the moonlight, he saw she wore a white nightgown and her hair was untied from its braid and loosed down one shoulder. She had bathed. In the nearer darkness he could not make out the features of her face. She pulled up the gown and removed it.

No-no, he said, as one would to a small child, when she attempted to round the bed.

No-no, he said again, but she came around quickly and got into bed beside him. Put her leg over him. She was small, but strong. He laughed out of helplessness and then pushed her off him and she tumbled to the floor with a thump. She grunted and then was on her feet in an instant.

I don’t want you, he said when she came at him again. I don’t want you!

She stood still, her dark face observing him, both of them breathing hard, and then she turned and left the room.

She did not come to him again. The first few nights after the incident he waited for her, sitting up in bed, his heart beating fast. But she had made her bed in the forest and did not come back for three days. When she returned, coming out of the trees at dusk, smudged and frowning, she did not seem overly bothered or upset. She ate the supper set in front of her with the usual indifference and distraction. It was as if the scene in the bedroom had never happened. But it had happened, he told himself. She had come into his bedroom at night and undressed at the foot of his bed and come toward him—

He would never tell anyone.

T
here was a man he saw every year at the plant sale in Malaga, another orchardist, who designed rifles. Ten years ago this man had invited Talmadge to see his work, and Talmadge, standing in the man’s workshop, had admired what he had seen. It was this man Talmadge approached now about a rifle for Della. The man was pleased; invited Talmadge again to his workshop.

The rifles were fine, but nothing impressed Talmadge in the way he had hoped. Should he have brought the girl, he thought, to pick one out? The man had a catalog of rifle designs, and he gave it to Talmadge to look at. Talmadge flipped through the catalog but still found nothing. The desire to buy her something special, the certainty that he would find it, had dissipated.

I’ll make something for you, said the man, with such quiet confidence that Talmadge was relieved. Who was the gun for? the man wanted to know. Before he realized what he was saying, Talmadge said: My sister.