The Orchardist (43 page)

The porter offered to assist Talmadge off the train.

That’s all right, said Angelene, shaking her head. We can manage ourselves.

The porter obeyed.

Caroline Middey heaved up into the train car, clapping her hat on top of her head to keep it in place, and held still for a moment, gazing down the aisle.

There you are—

Together, she and Angelene helped Talmadge from the train.

A
ngelene and Talmadge stayed that night, and the following, at Caroline Middey’s house. Talmadge spent most of that time sitting in one of the chairs on the front porch, a quilt over his legs. (A quilt over his legs, though it was July. Angelene’s own scalp perspired; sweat ran down her spine as she walked slowly through the town, her shopping basket on her arm. That was what bothered her most: not his being too weak to dismount the train by himself, but the image of him on the porch, in July, with a blanket over his legs.)

Angelene went to town the morning of the second day, and when she returned, crossing the field before the house, and approached the porch, where Talmadge and Caroline Middey both sat, they abruptly ceased speaking: she had interrupted an argument.

What is it? said Angelene. Then, when neither of them answered her: Would you like me to go?

Caroline Middey gazed sharply at Talmadge, who refused to look at her.

You might as well tell her, said Caroline Middey. Tell her all of it.

Talmadge’s jaw worked beneath his flesh; he was swallowing hard—in anger, Angelene thought.

Talmadge, said Caroline Middey. You can’t tell her only half of it. It’s worse—for everybody—if you tell her only half of it. You’d see that, if you weren’t so doggone stubborn—

What, said Angelene. What’s going on?

Neither of them looked at her.

Talmadge, she said.

He looked at her then. His face was livid, but closed.

Get your things, he said. We’re going now.

H
e was silent nearly all the way back to the orchard. But finally, as they left the road between wheatfields and entered the forest, he said that Della had been getting into trouble at the jail. She had been getting into fights. (With a
man
? she asked.) Talmadge hadn’t known who the man was, before, but this last trip he had discovered it was somebody from Della’s and Jane’s past, someone whom Della had reason to hate. The man was, he turned out to be—

Michaelson, said Angelene. She was driving the wagon, and at this utterance was careful to keep her posture stiff. But fear—or maybe it was a kind of excitement—had landed on her shoulders, substantial and terrible, like a bird of prey. She was chilled, and broke into a sweat.

Talmadge was silent, but she could feel his surprise. He had forgotten, perhaps, that he had told her the other man’s name.

What’s going to happen? said Angelene.

Talmadge was silent for a minute. I talked to the Judge. He’s writing up a petition, to get one of them transferred. He paused. When I go back to Chelan, I’m going to give it to the warden. He was quiet for several minutes. I want her to come home, he said. I’m going to try—with the Judge’s help—to bring her back here.

Angelene stared ahead. She did not know if she was angry. She wanted to be angry. She was dismayed, and irritated, by the tenderness in his voice. He was a fool, she thought suddenly.

What did Caroline Middey say? said Angelene. Back at the house. Was she angry?

Talmadge didn’t answer right away.

I didn’t want to tell you about him. And she thought you should know.

Does she want Della to come back? said Angelene, carefully, after a pause, and it was that question—she could feel it in the air between them—that Talmadge did not want to address: the real reason why he and Caroline Middey had been arguing.

Again he waited to answer.

Of course, he said.

T
here was nothing but time for her in the jail, and yet she could not come up with a plan to get close to Michaelson. In order to kill him, she must be close to him; and in order to be close to him, she would either have to find a way—by herself, or with Frederick’s help—to overcome her cell. She could not fit through the bars, even if she starved herself; she had tried it already. (Her body, miraculously, almost fit; but her head was too large.) Frederick would not lead Michaelson back to her cell. And there was no way to access him by simply passing him in the corridor, as they had done in the beginning (her perfect chance! she realized now). Now she was led out separately from the men to the yard, with a margin of several hours between them, for safety.

The other prisoners, as they passed by her cell, did not look at her anymore. They thought she was insane.

And so how to go through with it? She thought of poisoning Michaelson’s food, but ultimately rejected that idea because she could see no way to execute it, and besides that she wanted him to die by her own hand—and in a more direct way than poisoning him. She thought to stab him, and then strangle him, would be the best way. Weaken him just enough, and then place her hands around his neck—

Envisioning this, she slept poorly, and woke sweating in the sheets. At times the fetid odor of the jail seemed new to her, and she longed for the open air. She was suffocating. Became superaware of the bars, their immovability. And began to feel, during certain dark, boundless moments, the possibility of an existing chaos; that she was moving in a chaos so complete she could not fathom it, much less navigate it.

But she was in control, she told herself, waking suddenly. She rose with difficulty from the cot—at times her body ached now, from what? a unique tiredness—and shuffled to the window. A band of tepid darkness. If she bent low and craned her neck, she could just see the moon. Sometimes it was a bright island on the floor of her cell and she watched it, sitting on her cot, her legs drawn up. Suspicious, and then eventually calm. Sad. Finally, empty. When the moon disappeared, she felt an awful grief in the back of her throat, in her mouth; and she held it there for as long as she was able. She swallowed it. Eventually she lay on her side, and slept.

W
hen Talmadge asked Angelene to accompany him to see Della, she said yes.

She sat creekside, in a ladder-back chair, doing the washing, the basin at her feet and the washboard between her knees. She wore her washing dress, which was large and shapeless but nevertheless was draped high over one thigh. As she worked, some of her hair had come undone from its bun. In her concentration she poised on the balls of her feet, flexing her calf muscles.

It was a womanly pose, he decided; and as he regarded her, walking down the hill, he was surprised again at how she was changing, how youth seemed to fall away rapidly now, like a snake shedding its skin. Youth dropping away from her like veils, revealing: What?

He left his bedroom now in the mornings expecting to see Angelene the girl, but now there was this girl-woman moving about, making coffee and mending his clothes, who sometimes smiled like Angelene but who also donned another face that was gaining steel. Her smiles tended to be absent now, she was distracted; the great wheel of thought had begun to turn. She was off now, and he had to guess more than ever before, these last few weeks, the meaning of her expressions.

There was something about her appearance now, about her bare leg and the undone hair, that seemed uncouth to him. He was almost angry—but about what? he thought to himself—striding across the grass. She grimaced down at the ground in concentration, plunged her arms again and again into the grayish water. When he approached her, he did not know what to say. But then she glanced up at him, and a moment later sat up straight, ran her arm across her forehead. She was pausing for him, waiting for him to speak. And then he asked her if she wanted to come with him to Chelan, to see Della. Which was not what he had meant to say at all. But he continued: He didn’t know when he would go, but it would be soon. Maybe before the end of the week. She breathed heavily from the exertion of the washing, ran her arm across her brow again, and this time there was a slight change in her eyes—she was not looking at him, but farther down the creek—and she nodded, said, Yes. All right. She curled her lips slightly in anticipation of working again, and then bent to her task.

Lately she had been taking on more physically demanding chores, the kind that wear out the body completely, or those menial tasks that exhaust just by their mere repetitiveness. He did not ask her to do any of these tasks, and in truth some of them were unnecessary; but he woke in the mornings and she was pulling weeds in the plum orchard, or emptying the pantry, stuffing the cracks in the wall with newspaper. Repainting the shelves. (Where did you get that? he asked her, of the paint. In the shed, she said. For the life of him, he could not recall ever purchasing that paint, but she had it there in her hands, there it was: and so it must be true, he had purchased the paint.) Yesterday she combed the apricot trees for pests, lightly brushing the bark with her fingers, feeling the underside of limbs, pinching off the larvae, squelching them under her bootsole. And today it was washing the linen, even, he saw with astonishment when later it was hung to dry in a tree, the mule’s blanket.

He turned and headed up to the cabin, unsure of what had just happened. He had gone to tell her to cover herself, to remember her age and sex and where she was, but he had invited her instead to go to Chelan. He did not know what was more strange, that he had asked her such a thing, or that she had said yes.

T
hat night she asked him, over supper on the porch, when he was planning to go. He said that he hadn’t decided yet. She nodded, but there was an expression on her face: disappointment, or anger, something. After a minute he asked her if there was a time she would prefer over another. She hesitated, then shook her head.

It’s just, she said.

He waited.

It’s just—I need a hat.

He paused. A hat?

She nodded. I just have to make sure that before we go, I have time to go to town and get a hat.

He nodded, as if he understood. But then he asked:

At the feed and supply store? You mean a work hat? He wondered what was wrong with the hat she had, the good sturdy straw hat they had bought the year before, at the Malaga fair.

She shook her head. No; the hat I want is at—the lady apparel store.

He had to remember a moment where it was, the lady apparel store. He did not think he had ever had occasion to go there before. He wondered if Angelene had set foot in there; and if she had, when, and what for. He was mildly curious.

The lady apparel store?

Angelene nodded. We are going on the train, aren’t we? If we are going on the train, then I shall—I shall require a hat.

He had never heard her talk like that before. He didn’t know what to make of it. Ultimately, however, if it was a hat she wanted, then a hat she would have. She would be nervous; perhaps the hat would comfort her. And she never had been a child to ask for things: when they went to town she never begged him for sweets or trinkets like he had heard other children whine for; no, she had always been a spectacle of goodness and obedience. Or obedience was perhaps not the right word, for he never set out rules for her to obey; but she obeyed him nonetheless; she obeyed his unspoken will. He had been lucky, he thought. If she wanted a hat, then she would have a hat.

If she wanted two hats, she could have two hats.