East of the Mountains

  "He lets me ride it," said Rachel.

  "He just about sold it last spring, I think, but then he changed his mind."

  Ben knelt as she had at the spring, but on one knee only, his elbow against the other, and drank by raising the water in his free hand more than a dozen times. "You're out early," he said.

  "It's not that early."

  "You're wearing snake chaps."

  "They're riding chaps."

  "What's the difference?"

  "These are longer."

  "You always wear them?"

  "They're smart to wear."

  "I guess so," said Ben.

  Rachel turned her back on him and went to her saddlebag. The riding chaps cut across her thighs and were clipped behind her calves. The seat of her pants was worn, dusty. She spoke to him from over one shoulder, so that he saw her face and neck in profile, the fine shape of her chin. "I've got a couple of shortcakes," she said. "Help me eat them, why don't you."

  "I wont say no, I guess."

  "There's cherries, too, if you're not tired of those."

  "I'm not," said Ben.

  They sat on the ground, out in the open, where the heat of the sun could reach them. The dogs probed aimlessly along the verge of willows, went their way, and came again. Rachel unclasped and set aside her chaps. She slapped the dust from the seat of her pants and folded the chaps to sit tailor-fashion on them, but then changed her mind and settled instead with her legs folded to one side.

  They ate the shortcakes together. Ben pointed to a place in the canyon where she could find serviceberry. "The petals are white," he explained.

  "I guess you remember the last time we talked. That time you were standing in the ditch, remember? You mentioned this serviceberry."

  "That's right," Ben said. "And ditch weed."

  Rachel nodded and smiled. "You have a pretty fair memory."

  "My memory's bad. I can't remember anything. You're the one with the memory."

  "Mines fair. Close things, I forget. Faraway things, I remember better. I was three when my mom died, but I remember her."

  "I cant do that," Ben answered. "I don't know what happened when."

  Rachel lay down with one hip against the chaps and propped her head on her hand.

  "My mom died, too," Ben told her. "But I was twelve, so I remember it."

  "That's worse, being twelve like that. I don't really remember her, so it doesn't affect me like it does you. I'm guessing, anyway."

  "It does affect me," Ben answered.

  They were silent for a while. Ben ate the last of the shortcake in his hand. Rachel sat up again and reached behind with the ball of her thumb to scratch the middle of her back.

  "I'm curious," Ben said. "Why did you come out here?"

  "Ôut here?" lo your cousins, 1 mean.

  "To help with the picking."

  "But you're from Maine, way back east. It's a long way to come to pick fruit."

  "September I go to nursing school. In San Francisco."

  "Nursing school?"

  "The Cadet Nurse Corps."

  "You're going to be—you want to be—a nurse?"

  "I hope so," said Rachel.

  She had one boot crossed over the other, both drumming the ground idly, her free hand resting on her hip. The fingers of her other hand disappeared in her hair, and her long torso rose with her breathing just beneath her T-shirt.

  "You'll end up in the war," said Ben. "That's where they're sending nurses."

  "That's the plan," answered Rachel.

  They followed a cowpath down from the sage hills—Rachel with her horse on a Manila tether, Bens dogs ranging far and wide—and he showed her small mats of stonecrop and white stickseed flowers. Beyond rose mountains in the west, blue against the horizon. "I'd like to ride up there," said Rachel.

  "You'd need time. After picking's done. Maybe late in October."

  "I'll be gone before then, though."

  They came down into orchards after ten o'clock. They walked between trees with the sorrel mare and the Labs, apples growing overhead. The light fell soft and diffused between the limbs, and the smell was of ripening fruit. "This is where it's just so beautiful," said Rachel. "This is what really just kills me."

  "I feel the same," Ben answered.

  A letter came for Ben one afternoon from the adjutant general's office in Washington: an order to report for active service in the 10th Mountain Division. Ben read it closely, twice; his heart began to pound. Then he turned between the trees to find his father in the south orchard, where he was laying new irrigating pipe.

  Ben's father read, squinting a little, and scratched his weathered forehead. It was a clear day, windless and hot. The afternoon light fell full and strong, piercing the orchard shade. His father had the Farmall idling—he'd been using it to haul pipe about—but now he shut the motor down and hopped free of the seat. "Well," he said. That was all.

  "I'm all accepted," answered Ben.

  "I guess you are," said his father.

  They leaned together against the Farmall while his father put one boot up behind him and read the letter again. "I don't like this," he said finally. "I don't want you to go."

  "I have to go."

  "I know that."

  "It'll mostly be skiing."

  "No, it won't." His father slowly measured his beard stubble. "I don't guess it'll mostly be skiing. But I hope it is, for your sake."

  "Me too," Ben answered.

  His father sighed, handed him the letter, and beat one heel against the grass.

  "Anyway," said Ben, "where could they send me? Norway, or someplace like that. Finland or Sweden, maybe."

  "It doesn't matter where they send you. It's still a war, Ben."

  "I guess so.

  "It iS."

  His father put a hand on Ben's shoulder and squeezed. "It just doesn't seem like it ought to be, you going off to fight a war."

  "Well," said Ben. "I have to go anyway."

  "You're seventeen," said his father.

  The season of pears was upon them soon, at that point in August when nothing tangible suggests the demise of summer, except our apprehension. They pulled the props from the limbs as they picked, leaning them in the forks of trees, and picked the Bartletts with a steady insistence, easing them out of picking sacks as though pears were delicate as eggs. Ladders stood up and down the rows with the pickers perched in them loading bags by laying fruit on other fruit, the weight of pears gently pulling them forward, their bags swelling deep and low. In silhouette they resembled pregnant women.

  On the third day of pears, Ben went with a blade of grass between his teeth and stood under Rachel's ladder. He could see her in among the leaves. She seemed self-contained, absorbed in her silent picking world. "Hey," he called. "It's me."

  "Hey," she answered, and stopped working. She turned on her ladder and faced him, her bag of pears against her belly. "What are you doing?" she asked.

  Ben pulled the blade of grass from his mouth. "I don't know," he answered. "Just saying hey, I guess."

  "Well hey to you, too."

  "Hey."

  She worked down the ladder, walked past him. She unhooked the ties of her picking bag and unloaded her pears, a slow slide, so that none would bruise or dent. "It's hot today," she said.

  "It is," he said. "A day like this, sometimes, I swim in the river after work. Just down there where it eddies."

  "I know where it is."

  She hooked the straps of her bag into place, then worked the ladder into a new set, in between the pear branches.

  "What time will you go?"

  "At dusk. In the dark."

  "That sounds good," said Rachel.

  He met her at the river bend, in the soft sand of the talus butte, to watch the setting of the August sun over the Colockum Hills. In the dark they went down to the edge of the water with the stars spread wide and high overhead, and stood on the rocks together. Ben stripped down to his trousers, Rachel to the union sui
t he'd seen her in before. She stood with her arms across her chest, her hands in fists at her collarbones, and hesitated with her toes in the river. "There's a strong eddy," she said.

  "My brother and I used to come here," said Ben. "Almost every day, after work."

  "What brother?"

  "He's in the Army."

  "What about you?"

  "I joined up."

  "When do you go?"

  "End of October."

  "That isn't a lot of time, is it?"

  "More than you," answered Ben.

  They stood in the river with some distance between them, the water swirling past their legs. "You know what?" Rachel said, pinching the fabric of her union suit. "I'm embarrassed to swim in this thing."

  "It's okay," Ben told her. "We don't have to swim or anything. Whatever you want is okay."

  "But that's it. I don't know what I want."

  "Well, wait until you do."

  "Does that point come?"

  "I don't know any better than you."

  She looked at him, a long gaze, then took her arms from her chest. He turned away and squatted against the shore rocks, looking out across the river so as not to embarrass her further. "I'm going in," she said.

  He watched her wade into the river. The union suit revealed her waist and shoulders. The river was running hard for August, and the light washed just where her legs met it in a phosphorescent surge. Then, thigh deep, she dove in and rose a little downstream. She swept her hair back and rubbed her eyes. The union suit clung to her torso now. "The water's perfect," she announced.

  He dove in too, and they swam against the current. The water divided and flowed around her. It shone on the skin of her face.

  Afterward, still in their wet clothes, they built a fire out of drifts. The drifts burned white and smokeless enough that they could sit close beside them in a bright womb of heat. The world beyond disappeared. Darkness lay beyond the firelight. The stars appeared awash in pale ether. There was a hound, faintly distant, calling. Venus had risen low in the west, as brilliant as the moon.

  Ben shoved a limb deeper into the fire. "Why do you want to be a nurse?"

  "It's something I think I can do, I guess. Something I can put my hands on."

  "I'm not sure I follow that."

  "Like Florence Nightingale. Clara Barton. I don't know, maybe I'm stupid. I just have this picture of it."

  "It might not be that way, though."

  "Probably. I don't know."

  She sat with her hands and feet toward the fire. The light played across her face.

  "How long do you train for?"

  "Nine months. They've compressed the courses."

  "Then what?"

  "I go to the Army."

  "Where exactly?"

  "I don't know."

  "You could go anywhere."

  "I guess I could."

  "Me, too," he said.

  Ben turned once more to take in her face, richly lit by firelight. While he watched, she pressed the hair at her neck to squeeze the river water from it.

  "So you go at the end of October," she said. "Didn't you say October?"

  "The twenty-seventh," answered Ben.

  "Why are you going? Why do you want to fight?"

  "I don't want to fight," he told her. "But I also don't want to be drafted and end up peeling potatoes."

  "Well, you shouldn't enlist if you don't want to fight. You should train as a medic or something."

  "A medic?"

  "Yes."

  "First aid?"

  "Yes."

  "What if everyone wanted to do that?"

  "Then we wouldn't have a war," said Rachel.

  Ben placed another drift on the fire and worked it into the flames.

  "You could die, you know," said Rachel. "You're putting your life on the line."

  "I try not to think about things like that."

  "You should, though."

  "I don't."

  He thought about dying, not seeing her anymore. "I wouldn't want any regrets," he said. "So I guess I should just say it."

  "What do you mean? You'd better say what?"

  "That I like you, Rachel. That's all."

  "I like you, too," she answered.

  They kissed by the heat of the fire. He was surprised at the human smell of her flesh, the human smell of her mouth. It was not something he would have thought to predict, because for so long he'd imagined her sweetly perfumed—but here she was, mysteriously human, so that it seemed to him, with his lips against hers, that he grasped her mortality. "I don't know," he whispered in her ear. "This might be a mistake."

  "I don't think so," said Rachel.

  "We ought to think about this," said Ben.

  "I already have," said Rachel.

  There were evenings together in apple orchards laden bountifully. The apples hung heavy in the late-day sun, the leaves stirred in the wind. The green orchards were cool and inviting against the dun-colored sagelands. Thousands of apple trees gathered light and heat, on every branch a profusion of fruit, so many apples growing there it seemed an impossibility, a feat of nature rightly to be met with astonishment and awe. Ben and Rachel took a picnic basket deep into the coolest rows, where there were trees, quack grass, and sky. The sun came low from out of the west to filter in between the limbs, and it lit her face, arms, and throat as she sat with her legs tucked under her, searching inside their picnic basket—tomato sandwiches, spearmint tea, celery stuffed with peanut butter, cherries in syrup, walnuts. The light fell and blurred the contours of shadows. The late summer air o(f the orchard cooled. They lay on their blanket and stared up between branches with their hands behind their heads. They watched it come dark more swiftly than it had the month before. The sky passed from dusk to night. There were bats about in the orchard now. The apples in the trees hung black and still, poised above their heads.

  In the darkness, Rachel spoke easily. Her father, she said, was a farmhand and millwright. She had two sisters, one older, one younger. They grew up south of Waterville, Maine, in five rooms heated by a barrel stove, on the property of a one-legged dairy farmer. Her father's mother cared for them; she was stern and demanded discipline. Each morning they milked a half dozen cows and fed chickens, geese, and ducks. Her father acted as stable keeper; Rachel and her sisters groomed and fed horses and cleaned out stalls every day. Her older sister had married last June, to a man who owned a bakery in town; she worked nights rolling and kneading dough and brought them day-old loaves. Over the course of the past school year, the dairy farmer's son courted Rachel. She wasn't interested in him, though. She had it in mind now to be a nurse. A girl she knew, an acquaintance at school, had signed up to join the Cadet Nurse Corps—free tuition, she told Rachel, a free uniform, free room and board, and fifteen dollars a month. Rachel signed up, too.

  She saved money for train fare and traveled west with her belongings stowed in a battered leather grip. She got her sleep curled up on a wooden bench and watched the land pass behind her. All of it was foreign and beautiful. She had never really been anywhere before, except to Boston, twice. On the train she decided that nursing was good, that caring for the ill was a worthwhile thing and not merely an excuse to flee Waterville. She began to look forward to the work of nursing, to her training in San Francisco. She felt liberated.

  A soldier had flirted with Rachel on the train, and she'd agreed to lunch in the dining car, but nothing came of it. Later she sat with two other girls who had heard there was work in Seattle. The three of them drank from a bottle of gin while crossing eastern Montana. Rachel vomited in the toilet stall, twice. She slept, and when she woke again, they were crossing the Rocky Mountains. The train passed across the wheat plateau and at last came down into the river country, where the apple orchards were in spring bloom, their white blossoms brilliant. Seeing this, she had no regrets, or felt she wanted to be elsewhere. She believed that a better life was starting.

  But now it was time for Rachel to leave. They
went to the river and stood knee-deep, embracing there in the current. Her skin felt smooth and cool to his touch. "I'm going to miss you," she said.

  Her uncle's car idled in the yard. They kissed hidden in the orchard rows, and she promised to write from San Francisco. There was even a telephone in the dormitory, and she left the number with him. "This is it," she said firmly. "Wish me luck, Ben."

  "I do," he said. "Good luck, Rachel."

  "You too. Good luck."

  She brought her fingers gently to his face. "I'm memorizing your features," she said. "I want to remember you."

  "Don't say that," Ben pleaded. "It sounds like I'm dead already."

  "You do it with me," answered Rachel. "Memorize my face."

  Ben left the apple country when the picking was done, the bins and ladders put away, the canvas bags hung up. All the apples had been taken from the trees, the orchards brought to silence now, the transient pickers moving on, disappearing down the river road, leaving the country hushed and lonely: not even an evening breeze.

  His father took him to the bus station in Wenatchee. He gave Ben six five-dollar bills and a new pocketknife. They milled about in silence for a while, then sat waiting with their hats in their laps, outside, in the loading bay.

  "I'm going to worry," said his father. "Just like I do with Aidan."

  "It wont do him or me any good."

  "Just the same, I'm going to worry."

  "There's too much to do to waste time on that."

  "Picking's over," said his father. "I've got time on my hands."

  They paused to watch the bus pull in. It came to a stop in front of them. "You take care," said Ben.

  "Never mind," said his father.

  "You keep yourself away from that hooch."

  I'm not on it.

  "Yes, you are."

  His father knocked a boot heel against the ground. "No, I'm not," he said.

  In the open doorway of the bus they embraced, and Ben smelled his father's hair. "Thanks," he said. "For everything."

  His father hugged him harder in reply. "Jesus," he said, "don't go."