Another fallen sequoia had broken in two when it came down, and parts of it were half buried. Billie Lapham had measured these parts and estimated that the tree was the largest in the grove, at over four hundred feet long. Robert thought the length exaggerated, but Billie Lapham stood by his measurements, and named the tree Father of the Forest. Whenever Robert saw it he thought of his father, and so he avoided it.
He also stayed away from Mother of the Forest, which made him even sadder, for its bark had been stripped over a hundred feet up the tree, to be shipped to New York and exhibited for those skeptics who thought the sequoias were a tall tale. The trunk was naked except for the scaffolding it was still clad in. Robert assumed this was to show visitors how it had been done; otherwise he could not imagine why Billie Lapham would leave up something so ugly. For a couple of years Mother of the Forest seemed to suffer no ill effects from this stripping, but Robert had noticed recently that its foliage was thinning. He suspected it would eventually die, after hundreds, maybe even thousands of years free from human touch. Robert liked Billie Lapham, but hated what he and his partners had done in the name of promoting the Calaveras Grove trees.
There were other family groups: Mother and Son, with a larger and smaller tree, their foliage touching. Husband and Wife, leaning towards each other. The Three Sisters. He did not find Molly by any of these trees, though. Instead she had chosen to sit under the Orphans, two sequoias on the eastern edge of the grove, which stood so close to each other they seemed to have grown from the same root, with their branches entwined. She looked very small sitting under those giant trees, though when she saw him and struggled to her feet, already starting to cry, Robert saw that Nancy and Billie Lapham had been right about her condition. She was very close to having a baby.
They were wrong, though, about the other important thing. Very wrong. It was not Molly. It was Martha.
When he recognized his sister, eighteen years after leaving her hidden up an apple tree, a smile crossed Robert’s face like a crack in plaster. He smiled so hard his face hurt, and he realized that he had not smiled with such deep pure joy since he was a boy.
Black Swamp, Ohio
Fall 1838
“ROBERT, BRING ME SOME cold water.”
“Martha, git me another quilt!”
James and Sadie Goodenough spoke at the same time, and had to repeat themselves before their words could be untangled and understood. They were lying side by side in their bed, flat on their backs. James held himself as rigid as possible to counter the shakes that racked his body. This was how he had always dealt with swamp fever—fighting it by not succumbing to its demands. If he felt cold he refused to wrap himself in quilts. If his teeth were chattering he gripped his jaw tight. His only concession was water: if he was thirsty, he drank, demanding cold water freshly drawn rather than taking it from the pitcher left on the floor by the bed.
As expected, Sadie had a different response to illness: she indulged in it. If she was thirsty she drank the whole pitcher dry. When she shook she rattled the bed so much James thought he would fall off. During a spike in her fever she would talk all sorts of gibberish, laughing and swearing and holding imaginary conversations, sometimes with other men in a way that embarrassed him. Now she was cold, and rubbed her arms more vigorously than she needed to. Rolling around in the bed, she pulled the quilt off James, then called again for another.
Martha appeared with the nine-patch quilt in her arms, hesitating by the bed, her small face wary, as it always was around her mother. “It’s still damp from your sweat, Ma,” she said. “I been airing it but there hasn’t been enough sun today to dry it.”
“Give it to me!” Sadie snatched the quilt. Someone was calling out upstairs and Martha went to climb the ladder and see what they wanted.
James was less demonstrative, taking the mug Robert held out to him and managing a mild, “Thank you, son,” to contrast with Sadie. Robert watched while he gulped down the water, then took the mug from him, refilled it, and set it down on the floor within James’ reach. “You want anything else, Pa?”
“No. You fed the animals?”
“Yes, Pa.”
“How’s the corn? You brought any of it in yet?”
“Tomorrow. Mr. Day’s gonna help me now the hay’s in.”
“What are you doing today? You been working with Martha in the garden?”
“Yup. We’re gonna pickle cucumbers and stew tomatoes. Mrs. Day said she’d be along to help.”
“The Days are helping too much.”
Robert shrugged. There was nothing they could do about that: Nathan and Caleb and Sal were all sick too. One of them was going through the shakes now in the attic, rattling the floor above them. It was one of the ironies of swamp fever that it normally struck at the height of harvest when everyone was most needed. The crops were ready; the people weren’t, except for Robert, who had to be counted on to do the work of a grown man, though he was just nine. And Martha, unexpectedly: usually she was the first to go down with the fever and the last to get up again.
“You checked the apples?” James couldn’t help asking. He asked every day. “You sure they aren’t ready? Some of the spitters could be ready by now.”
“They don’t look ready, Pa.”
“Bring me one. No, bring me two. Bring me the reddest of the spitters and a Golden Pippin.”
Robert sighed, and James understood he was being a nuisance. His son would have to pull up some of the deer fence poles to get to one of the Golden Pippin trees. He knew the apples were not ripe, but he could not help fretting.
Sadie poked her face out from beneath the folds of the quilt. “Stop talkin’ ’bout those goddamn apples,” she growled. “If I wasn’t abed I’d chop down those trees!”
“Shut up. You’re even more of an idiot when you’re sick than when you’re drunk.”
Sadie kicked at her husband, but she was so weak that it did not have much effect. James inched himself to the edge of the bed, though he was still within kicking reach. Hearing the racket one of his children was making above him—the crack of teeth battering uncontrollably against each other—almost caused him to start shaking as well.
James and Sadie had not spent so much time together in months. Since returning from the camp meeting in May, she had avoided being alone with him, and kept quiet, throwing herself into cleaning the house, working in the garden, and even trying to clear a strip of land to plant with winter potatoes, something she had nagged James to do for years. James had watched her go at the trees—mostly elm and ash and oak—with an axe, chopping them down and cutting up the trunks and branches to stack and dry out for firewood. She had managed that much on her own. But the stumps defeated her. She hacked and dug at one, pulling off pieces of wood and making what was left even harder to get a hold on, until she collapsed and lay on her back next to the stump, sweating and swearing. James said nothing. Still bruised from her behavior at the camp meeting, he offered no help or advice. Sadie left the rest of the stumps, now an ugly strip alongside the garden covered with creepers and brambles.
Her new activeness coincided with a new sobriety as well, for the applejack had run out. She could only drink cider, and it was hard to get drunk on that. When she came to bed at night—the only time they were alone together—he no longer reached for her. They slept side by side, as far apart as possible, chaste as children.
Swamp fever brought back the meanness in her, though it left her too weak to act, so she had to resort to speech. James had to listen to endless complaints, accompanied by a torrent of swearing, and strange talk and sounds when the fever spiked each day in the late afternoon. Most of it made no sense, but she often spilled out names: of their children, of John Chapman, of family back in Connecticut. Never of him, though. Never James. He was not sure if he wanted her to say his name, for other names were often accompanied by mutterings and curses, and he did not want to hear what she thought of him in her delirium. He already knew anyway.
Wh
ile he waited for Robert to bring him the apples, he lay as still as he could and studied the planks of the ceiling above him, with its distinctive oak grain festooned with cobwebs—a familiar sight from yearly bouts of fever. When James had built the cabin nine years before he’d used pine logs for the walls and oak he’d had planked in Perrysburg for the floors and ceilings. His father had used oak back in Connecticut, and James liked the familiarity of its whorls and knots and dense grain. Later he discovered he would have been better off using maple for the floors as it was lighter and more flexible. Only the English used oak for building, and James was made fun of for it. “English Goodenough,” he was called for a time by neighbors, a nickname taken up by Sadie, though she’d added to it, calling him “English Ain’t Goodenough.” Now, though, he was glad to have the close oak grain above him.
He closed his eyes for a moment, and then Robert was back, holding out a small yellow and brown Golden Pippin and a red and green spitter—more green than red. James took the apples and bit into the spitter. “Not ready.” He handed it back to Robert. “Give it to the pig.”
The Golden Pippin was clearly not ripe either, or it would have been yellower. James bit into it anyway. It was still sour. They would need another week, probably two, before they could be picked. By then he would be well enough to oversee their harvest.
James lay back and let the apple drop onto the bed. Sadie promptly kicked it, and it thudded into a corner. Then she began throwing herself back and forth and calling out—though it was still morning and she didn’t usually have a high fever then. She started to moan and rant, and James heard her cry out “Charlie!” and make unmistakable rutting sounds and moves. After it became clear what she was doing, he blocked his ears with his pillow.
I punished him with his brother Charlie. I didnt have no fever, I jest wanted to tug his chain. I seen him watchin me try to clear that tater patch full of stumps, not liftin a hand or gettin Caleb or Nathan to help me or even jest tell me what I was doin wrong.
I so badly wanted to make things better. Everyone was silent with me after the camp meeting. Wouldnt meet my eye or ask me how I did or fill my plate without askin. Not even Sal, who I could usually count on for the little things that showed she respected her Ma. It was like I had a disease and everybody took a step back from me.
I cleaned that cabin better than Id ever done before, scrubbed and swept every speck of dirt, brought down every cobweb, washed away the mold, aired everything that could be aired then aired it again. Washed all the clothes to get out the mud, scrubbed all the boots ready for winter. I weeded every inch of that garden, picked slugs off the lettuce, shooed away the birds and rabbits. Boiled the jars ready for puttin up the vegetables, and put up the beans soon as they was ready.
Then I had the idea to make me that winter tater patch. If you planted em in the fall in a trench full of manure and dead leaves, they grew even during winter and were ready earlier in the spring, when we usually ran out of food. My Pa did it back in Connecticut. I told James—one of the few things I said direct to him—and all he said was, Good luck. Caleb and Nathan and Robert looked on while I was choppin down the trees but their father must of said something cause none of them come over to help—though when Robert passed by he did whisper to me to sharpen the axe and it would go easier.
When I wanted to do something nothing stopped me doin it. That was how Id always been. Determined. My Ma called it ornery but she was jest jealous. Those stumps, though—they were one of the few things that ever defeated me. Id no idea trees got such strong roots clingin to the earth like that. Clearly they had no interest in ever movin. I spent a whole day trying to pry out a stump and couldnt get but half of it out. And this was jest one of twenty stumps. Sweated half myself away on that stump, got the worst headache I ever had, worse than a jack headache even. Had to sit down every few minutes cause I was so faint I had black spots in front of my eyes. Next morning I woke and knew I couldnt go back to those stumps or theyd kill me surer than any fever or rattler bite. There had to be a way to get em out but nobody was gonna tell me and I was too proud to ask. Maybe if John Chapman came along then he could of told me, but he didnt usually visit in the middle of the summer. So I left the stumps settin there like a whole line of rotten teeth I had to look at every day I was out in the garden.
Now in bed with James, both of us with the shakes, I got back at him. There werent many ways to wage a war when you got the fever, but I thought of one. I pretended the fever was worse and I started to call out names—any old names mostly but then I fastened on to Charlie Goodenough and kept repeatin it. I bunched up the quilt and stuck it tween my legs and started to hump it and called out Charlie, Charlie, give it to me good. And the thing was, it felt good, fever and all. I could of thrust for a long time. James muttered and shoved the pillow round his ears and I jest laughed. Thats for the stumps, I thought. Thats for carin more about your apples than about your wife.
James was thankful Sadie had finished with her rutting and was asleep when Hattie Day came by to help the children put up the vegetables. The first thing their neighbor did when she arrived was to string a rope across the room and hang the quilts Sadie had tossed off the bed over it so that he and Sadie were curtained off from the kitchen. “Tush,” she answered when James feebly protested. “You don’t need to see us and we don’t need to see you while we’re working.” She was so firm that he didn’t try to argue. He knew Sadie would have if she’d been awake, and he was tempted to nudge her. Instead he lay in bed listening to Mrs. Day’s efficiency on the other side of the quilt.
They got to work stewing tomatoes and pickling eggs. Normally the Goodenoughs didn’t need to pickle their eggs, as they ate and baked with what the chickens produced each day. But now with all but two of the family ill for over a week and consuming nothing but water, the eggs were rotting. Hattie Day declared they mustn’t go to waste and they’d pickle them before they did the cucumbers. She set the eggs to boil on the range as well as a pot of salted water and vinegar, and soon the house was filled with its tang. Then she had the children peel the hard-boiled eggs while she chopped the tomatoes and put them on to stew, and boiled and dried the jars.
For the most part Robert and Martha were quiet, with just the sound of eggshells cracking and sliding off to indicate they were there, and Mrs. Day clanking the jars and knocking the spoon against the side of the pot. James had a sudden desire to see his children bent over their work at the table, but he didn’t dare pull back the quilt for fear of the look Hattie Day would give him. Instead he traced a finger around the patchwork squares in blue and yellow and brown. Closest to his head was a square of green silk from an old dress of his mother’s that caught the eye more than any of the other patchwork squares.
“Brine’s ready,” he heard Hattie Day say. “You finished peeling the eggs?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Robert answered.
“You dipped ’em in water like I showed you to get all the shell off before we put ’em in the jars?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“All right, then. What flavorings you like to add? Mr. Day and me just like salt and pepper, but maybe your family does different.”
“Salt and pepper’s good.”
“Bring me the peppercorns, Martha. Put a little handful in each jar. That’s right. Now, sometimes I put in a little beet to color the water pink, just for show—it don’t make the eggs taste different. Want me to do that with these?”
“Hell, no!”
James started. He’d thought Sadie was asleep. Her voice was cracked and croaky, so she wasn’t as loud as she intended. Hattie Day must not have heard her, but she did hear Martha’s soft words. “We usually just leave the water plain.”
“Bitch is takin’ over my kitchen,” Sadie muttered.
“Leave her be—she’s just trying to help. God knows we need it.” But James shared Sadie’s sentiment. There was something too cozy about Hattie Day in their house, telling their children what to do. Worst of a
ll, she said something he didn’t catch, and he heard a sound he hadn’t for a long time: Martha and Robert’s laughter. They never laugh around me, he thought.
That was it. The colored water was bad enough, but I couldnt stand it any more when that woman made my children laugh.
It took every bit of gumption I had left but I sprang from the bed and pushed right through the hanging quilt. Get the hell out of my kitchen! I shouted. That was all I could say before the quilt got tangled in my legs and brought me down and I knocked myself out.
When I come to I was back in bed with James next to me. The quilt was hung up again but it had a big rip down the middle where Id pulled it and the wool for the batting was comin out worse than before. Id have to get Martha to mend it, her stitches was more even than mine or Sals.
Stupid woman, he muttered when he saw my eyes open. Why did you do that? But he was smilin as he said it. You should of seen Hattie Days face, he added all quiet so the others couldnt hear. Look like a cat had crawled up under her skirt.
I chuckled. Whens she gonna go? I said, not loud but not quiet either. I didnt care if she heard me or not.
Hush now. Shes just being neighborly. Once were up and about we wont need the help.
Jest then Martha come in with a mug of cool water, helped me to drink it. I looked up into her face so pinched and felt a pain in my chest. But I couldnt think of a thing to say except, Them tomaters aint catchin are they? I think I smell em burnin. That made her run off to check. I could feel James lookin at me and I didnt want him to anymore so I turned on my side and pretended to sleep. It was murder havin to listen to that bitch bossin my children and busyin herself in my kitchen but I shut myself up and let her.