Sal got up, but slowly, making it clear she was not moving because of her father’s command. The memory of her mother’s split lip the night before and the violence her father was capable of appeared to have no effect on her. Smirking, she sauntered back to the house rather than towards the garden. Noting the insolent set of her shoulders, James wondered when exactly he had lost authority over his family. There was no one moment, he decided, but an accumulation of Sadie’s drinking and their fighting and his fixation on his trees. And John Chapman: his canny eyes on James, a judgment about his stewardship that the Goodenough children sensed. Only Robert seemed still to respect his father, and Martha was young enough to do what her father ordered.
We’re sinking into this swamp, James thought. Eventually the mud is going to cover us and the Goodenoughs will all disappear.
“Pa,” Robert said, “you think that will take?”
James looked down at the graft. The cleft had closed so snug around the scions that they appeared to have grown out of it naturally, with tiny buds set just above. He knew. Sometimes with just a glance you could tell. “Yes, that’s a good one,” he said, surprised that his one moment of disregard, when his attention had turned to his daughter, seemed not to have mattered. The graft would take without his total devotion.
He and Robert bound the graft with strips of cloth, then packed the clay around it in a clumsy, protective sphere that resembled an oversized wasps’ nest. It would remain in place until summer. In just a few weeks they would be able to tell if the graft had taken: if the buds on the scion began to grow, that meant the sap was flowing from the tree on the bottom to the branch on the top. Then it would produce leaves, flowers and, in a few years, fruit.
When they were done, James showed Robert the last step of grafting, opening his fly and peeing near the new trees. They would do so for a few days until the area around the grafts was marked, to keep the deer away so they would not graze on them while the leaves were young and tender.
They grafted fifteen trees that morning, five more than James meant to. He kept finding promising-looking scions in the bundle, and feeling the press of the spitters dominating the orchard, and wanting to redress the imbalance, and so they kept going, Robert silent over the fact that they were taking five extra trees out of production for two or three years. Something had taken James over-that compulsive desire for creation overriding everything else. He would, he must, make the very best apple trees he could.
You should see em, Ma, Sal said. Theyre out there butcherin your trees like hogs.
Sal had always been a tattler. I knew she was lookin out for me more than any other Goodenough did, but that didnt make me like her more. Shed come to me and say, Ma, Marthas wet the bed, Ma, Nathan ate all the bacon, Ma, Robert let the fire go out. She wanted everything to be fair, when the best lesson she could learn was that life aint fair and theres no point expectin it to be.
My head still hurt from the applejack but I got up and looked out the window to see what this tree massacre was all about. Id forgotten James was graftin. The days smudged together so it was hard to keep track. Couldnt see nothin-they must have been in a far corner of the orchard. It was rainin and I didnt want to go out in it and have the drops hammer on my head when there was already a fearsome hammerin goin on inside. But I was curious too. So I said Ill look but you go on and dig up the garden, Sal, you know it needs it and you dont need me to tell you what to do, big gal that you are. Sal made a face but she took up the hoe and went out.
I put a shawl over my head and followed her out into the rain to see what James and Robert was doin. I stayed off to the side so they couldnt see me. They wouldnt have noticed anyhow, they was that intent on their trees. Seein them bent over a little stump, their heads almost touchin, made me want to throw rocks. It was like when the Goodenough wives back in Connecticut had their heads together by the fire, talkin and laughin and leavin me out.
Sal was right: they were butcherin the trees. Whatever numbers James had told me over and over, he couldnt have meant this many of my trees were gettin the chop. This meant war. I wanted to rage and shout and hit and kick. But I didnt. Stead I would wait for John Chapman to come back. Hed know what to do with those balls of shit James was hanging on the apple trees.
And a few days later he did come back in his canoe, glidin up the river and whistlin Bob white, Bob white. Thank God for my John Appleseed-and the bottles of jack he brought with him, cause he knew I needed them, for the skeeters. They wouldnt start bitin for a few months but I could look after the bottles till then.
He brought the trees him and James had talked about but didnt unload em right away from the second canoe. Instead James wanted to show him his devil work on the trees and took him down to the orchard. So he saw what unnatural business my husband had been up to. I wanted to hear what John Chapman would say about it, but I had to hide cause James didnt like me listenin to his apple talk. So I snuck down along the edge of the orchard behind the old dead brambles that barely hid me.
John Chapman was canny and didnt say nothing at first bout them shit balls hangin on the trees and all the butcherin and ruinin that had gone on. He was a businessman after all and he had trees to sell.
You know I got a dozen good saplings in my canoe you could have instead of seedlings, he said.
I dont want saplings, James said. Just fifteen seedlings.
My saplings are strong, they wont die on you. Theyll be producing fruit in three years-maybe even two years.
We dont have the money for saplings.
I will take credit. Youre trustworthy and not moving anywhere. Pay it back when you can.
With interest, you mean, James said. My husband aint as dumb as all that.
I see you have been doing Gods work for him again, John Chapman said, noddin at the grafted trees.
So?
Those trees will never be as strong as those grown from seed.
What, the ones you want to sell me?
Trees are stronger left to grow themselves. Man does not need to tinker with them.
So no pruning either? No thinning out trees so others grow stronger? No mulching with straw to protect em from the cold? No spreading ashes to help em grow?
God will take care of all that.
I am taking care-of the trees, of my family.
I do not think you are taking care of your wife.
I liked how John Chapman brought the conversation back to me. I liked that they were fightin about me. May have sounded like it was about trees, but it was me. I aint had men fight over me much. Maybe a little when I was just ripe. But not after ten children and nine years in a swamp.
You want to talk about trees or my wife? James said. Its one or the other.
There was a silence, then John Chapman said, Fifteen seedlings will cost you ninety cents.
James whistled. Thats a cent more per seedling than last year.
That is my price.
Thats the price I gotta pay to stop you takin an interest in Sadie?
Its you who chooses to see it that way. I am simply selling apple trees.
Bring em down, then. Ill send Robert to help you.
They went off and I was left sittin in the dead brambles, wonderin why of the three of us, I probably felt the worst.
James kept a close eye on his wife while the new grafts were vulnerable to her attention. He made a point of working near the orchard, beginning to plow the small field behind it where they would grow oats. But Sadie made no move to look at the grafts; she remained digging in the garden with Sal and Martha.
One morning when James woke he saw a muddy foot poking out from under the quilts. He glanced over at Sadie asleep beside him, then jumped up and went straight outside without even putting his boots or coat on, and ran to the orchard. One of the cows was loose among the trees, and in its wanderings it had rubbed up against seven of the fifteen graft balls, knocking them off and snapping the fragile splices. All that was left were the stumps of the root stock. The Golden Pippin scions had been trampled and chewed.