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The Orchardist: A Novel
The Orchardist: A Novel
The Orchardist: A Novel
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The Orchardist: A Novel

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“There are echoes of John Steinbeck in this beautiful and haunting debut novel. . . . Coplin depicts the frontier landscape and the plainspoken characters who inhabit it with dazzling clarity.” — Entertainment Weekly

“A stunning debut. . . . Stands on par with Charles Frazier’s COLD MOUNTAIN.”  — The Oregonian (Portland)

New York Times Bestseller • A Best Book of the Year: Washington PostSeattle TimesThe Oregonian • National Public Radio • Amazon • Kirkus ReviewsPublishers WeeklyThe Daily Beast

At once intimate and epic, The Orchardist is historical fiction at its best, in the grand literary tradition of William Faulkner, Marilynne Robinson, Michael Ondaatje, Annie Proulx, and Toni Morrison.

In her stunningly original and haunting debut novel, Amanda Coplin evokes a powerful sense of place, mixing tenderness and violence as she spins an engrossing tale of a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the untamed American West, and the dramatic consequences of his actions. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, in a rural stretch of the Pacific Northwest, a reclusive orchardist, William Talmadge, tends to apples and apricots as if they were loved ones. A gentle man, he's found solace in the sweetness of the fruit he grows and the quiet, beating heart of the land he cultivates. One day, two teenage girls appear and steal his fruit at the market; they later return to the outskirts of his orchard to see the man who gave them no chase.

Feral, scared, and very pregnant, the girls take up on Talmadge's land and indulge in his deep reservoir of compassion. Just as the girls begin to trust him, men arrive in the orchard with guns, and the shattering tragedy that follows will set Talmadge on an irrevocable course not only to save and protect them but also to reconcile the ghosts of his own troubled past.

Transcribing America as it once was before railways and roads connected its corners, Coplin weaves a tapestry of solitary souls who come together in the wake of unspeakable cruelty and misfortune. She writes with breathtaking precision and empathy, and crafts an astonishing novel about a man who disrupts the lonely harmony of an ordered life when he opens his heart and lets the world in.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateAug 21, 2012
ISBN9780062188526
The Orchardist: A Novel
Author

Amanda Coplin

Amanda Coplin was born in Wenatchee, Washington. She received her BA from the University of Oregon and MFA from the University of Minnesota. A recipient of residencies from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and the Omi International Arts Center at Ledig House in Ghent, New York, she lives in Portland, Oregon.

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Rating: 3.8954294454293628 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Extremely slow story of a bachelor orchardist in turn-of-the-century Washington state whose life is changed when two young girls, running away from a child-brothel, take refuge on his land. The writing is nicely crafted, and the local-to-me location gives it a certain amount of interest, but … nothing really happens.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Quite good. Some stylistic choices I didn't quite get. The lack of quotations when characters were speaking was only noticeable for the first 50 or so pages. Calling Caroline Middey her full name was redundant and unnecessary. Noticeable always.

    The story was fascinating and the strong female characters were a delight, even if there situation was often anything but.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    My mother and I rarely like the same books, but this is an exception and falls a bit outside of my normal reading genres. It’s solid literary fiction, but far enough in the past to be historical fiction as well. What drew me to read it were the characters, an orchardist and some orphans, the distinct location, Wenatchee Washington (a place I’ve been and recall a traffic jam at the town’s one stoplight, well it seemed like one stoplight) and the praise it has gotten. Well-deserved praise. It’s written with verve and creativity and while a lot of what is described is pretty quotidian, it remained taut and interesting throughout.The real stand-out are Coplin’s characterizations. Starting with William Talmage, the Orchardist of the title and his relationship with local midwife Caroline Middey and then introducing the two orphan girls who show up in town. Don’t get too comfortable with how you imagine the story will go; it won’t. I promise. While nothing terribly dramatic happens, things take turns that I didn’t expect and didn’t understand. Particularly with Della. I didn’t have much patience with her or her sister, Jane, but they said and did things that kept me guessing and intrigued. I think a situation like this could only be plausible in the past. Now, the state and local authorities would take over and Caroline and Talmage would never have had the opportunity to care for the girls or enrich their lives with the person that Angelene became. How they bond gives a tremendous sense of community that I rarely encounter in the novels I read and I hope Coplin writes more.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Talmadge, an apricot and apple grower in the state of Washington, lives a life of solitude in harmony with the land. His life is disrupted by the arrival of Della and Jane, two teenaged sisters who have escaped a life as sexual captives. Gradually the two are brought into his home until their sadistic master appears. Violence ensues. Talmadge is left to care for Della and her daughter Angelene. The theme of loss is central. Talmadge lost his entire family; the mysterious disappearance of his teenaged sister was especially traumatic for him. His decision to help Della and Jane can be seen as a way of creating a family; perhaps he is hoping that someone helped Elsbeth as he helps the two girls. Della suffers loses of her own; her way of dealing with loss is to seek vengeance even though that path may destroy her. Talmadge emerges as the hero. He is not perfect; his lack of communication, for example, causes unnecessary problems, and he makes mistakes in his attempts to help Della. He is, however, eminently admirable. He is a good man who tries to protect those whom he has brought into his life. He never gives up trying to rescue Della as she continues to be pursued by her demons. And just as he nurtures his fruit trees, he nurtures Angelene. The tragedy is that it is not possible to protect people from themselves or to heal a damaged spirit like it is possible to protect or heal a damaged fruit tree. Talmadge is not the only memorable character. The herbalist Caroline Middey and Clee, the mute Nez Perce, emerge as worthy friends. Della is feral and damaged, yet sympathetic. In personality, Angelene becomes the daughter Talmadge never had.I purchased this novel as an audiobook; I listened to it only when I was driving a considerable distance so I actually listened to it over a period of about four months. Normally in such circumstances, I would have difficulty remembering events and characters, but that was not the case. The book had an almost hypnotic effect on me, and I had no difficulty being drawn into its world every time I listened.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Nicely written. However, that ALL of the characters were so totally reclusive was hard for me to "swallow". I listened to the audiobook and it was well done. Sometimes as I was listening I found myself thinking that this seemed to be a pretty long book to contain such a limited cast. For example, Angelique never mentioned a school friend or peer? Young Jane & Della's early behavior was understandable, but I just couldn't get how the rest of them could really develop in the social isolation described. This made the story, and its resolution, rather bland for my taste. Was that the point? Of four people who were totally "stuck"? I don't know ... I won't have this book on my list of recommended reading for friends.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Orchardist is Amanda Coplin's first novel. She delivers beautifully developed characters that one comes to love. The location is Washington state in the last half of the 19th century and early 20th century. Talmadge is a solitary man who has experienced much loss and has developed an orchard of apricots, apples, and plums. In his middle age two starving, pregnant, teenage girls appear at the edge of his world to steal fruit. In tending to them as he does the orchard an unusual family is formed. There is love, sadness, and redemption in this story of lives that have been broken by hard times and human cruelty. I should add that I kept going to the cupboard for dried apricots while I read this story...so you may want to stock up if you plan on reading this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin is the story of a gentle man who lives in a violent time. I listened to the audio version of this novel, read by Mark Bramhall. A good narrator always brings his interpretation to the story and that was the case here. Bramhall's voice seemed perfectly matched with Coplin's novel, like an accomplished pianist performing Chopin. The down side of my listening rather than reading is that I couldn't dwell on the passages I enjoyed. The Orchardist has many cases I would have liked to read a few times before moving on.I found it interesting that love in this novel has nothing to do with sex. Talmadge's relationships with Jane and Della are non-sexual, like father/daughter relationships; and his relationship with Caroline Middey is the same, although in her case they are two friends who help each other out. Sex is mentioned in the book, but only in negative ways. I can think of three in particular: when it is mentioned that Talmadge had visited a prostitute Caroline recommended, when Michaelson's sadistic behavior is described, and when a few loveless scenes involving Della are described. So although this book is about love, it is nontraditional in its approach.Another type of love is important to Talmadge, the love of his land. He shows this love by taking care of the land and receiving its gifts with gratitude. He does the same with the people in his world. Although he is always there for the people he cares about, he speaks only when necessary. In fact, all the characters in The Orchardist keep their thoughts to themselves. One of them, Cree, never speaks to anyone, but is a loyal friend when he's needed.The Orchardist creates a beautiful world through the author's careful writing (mentioned many times by other reviewers). The scenes are excellent, but what impressed me the most was the way Amanda Coplin described the thoughts of her characters. Here's an example from Caroline Middey's point of view: And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Middey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death. A distraction dressed as a blessing: but dressed so well, and so truly, that it became a blessing. Or maybe it was the other way around: a blessing first, before a distraction.I would recommend this novel to anyone who enjoys character oriented fiction and American history.Steve Lindahl - Motherless Soul and White Horse Regressions
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This debut novel from Amanda Chopin takes place at the turn of the century in the early 1900's in rural Washington state. A lone orchard farmer named Talmadge whose lived an isolated life after his sister mysteriously disappeared some years ago. He is a quiet, committed, hard worker devoting his life to his orchard.One day two runaway sisters arrive and steal the fruit off Talmadge's trees and when he doesn't object they hesitantly begin to trust him. Once he has earned their trust he discovers they are both pregnant and they cannot go back to their previous home. This slowly begins their relationship as they decide to stay with him. The neighbor medicine woman, Talmadge's friend Caroline delivers the babies. While one baby dies in birth the other sister dies in childbirth leaving Della and her niece Angelene.Della has a restless spirit and sets out on her own first wrangling horses and then whatever else she can find to occupy herself to keep from returning home. Eventually Talmadge sets out to find her thinking she should be home caring for her niece. Angelene is the opposite of her aunt and is serenely grounded and very similar to Talmadge, the man who has raised her. While this story was mostly peacefully reflective it completely lured me to the end. This book came highly recommended and I am of the same opinion.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I finished The Orchardist today. I gave it to my Mother as a birthday gift in April after reading a promo, then we loaned it to a neighbor who loves excellent writing and then this holiday weekend it was my turn to be captivated by your writing. As a voracious reader and a retired librarian, I have read more titles than I can count. It is difficult to perceive this special book as a "first" novel. As my Mother so precisely described said, "It draws you in". Thank you for your story. Thank you for your writing that mesmerizes - it is lyrical, it is intelligent, it is thoughtful - and without doubt generates emotion through your rich character development and exquisite design of describing the atmosphere and setting in which the characters live and evolve. Thank you for sharing your gift of writing with us. I hope you never stop writing. ♥
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    a story set in the pnw at the turn of the century. some wonderful writing, a very comfortable read. interesting characters
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What to say about Amanda Coplin's first novel, THE ORCHARDIST, which has already amassed praise from near and far over the past year or so? Well, it's simply a stunningly beautiful book in every possible way. There is such as sense of quiet dignity about the story, which incorporates the beauty of nature as reflected in the fruit trees tended so lovingly and faithfully by its reclusive title character, William Talmadge, and the mountains which surround them in central Washington state around the turn of the last century. Author Amanda Coplin, despite her youth, displays a sure touch in the descriptions and dialogue of this majestically paced story of loneliness, loss and love of the land. The major characters here - Talmadge, Della, Caroline Middey and Angelene - come completely and realistically to life under Coplin's hand, each reflecting the losses suffered, as well as the solace sometimes found in solitude and work done well. Talmadge himself is the central enigma of the story. His habitual, sometimes almost maddening, reticence in all things is central to the tragedies which befall him and the others. (Indeed, all of the characters seem to have a problem with looking anyone in the eye, always looking at a space just over the adressee's shoulder, or at a corner of the room, or desk. Its' almost like an epidemic of autistic behavior. Or perhaps just shyness.) But this quiet hesitance to speak is understandable, given the fact of the early loss of his beloved sister and how he spent most of his life subsequently alone, up until the arrival of the two pregnant girls, Jane and Della. The only one who outdoes Talmadge in his silence is Clee, the mute Indian horse trainer. And then there is the character 'mid'way between them, the herbalist and midwife, Caroline Middey, who has also spent most of her life alone, although there is a hint of sorrow there too, in the loss of a beautiful onetime young Indian apprentice, Diana. With the mention of a shrine-like photograph of this girl in Caroline Middey's house, one wonders if this might be a tastefully veiled hint at a romantic relationship between the two women, which would also help explain the completely platonic bond between Middey and Talmadge.The character Della is a mystery in herself, like the wild and half-broken horses that arrive in the orchards every year, she remains "unknowable" in her "unhandledness." Having been sexually mistreated and traumatized early in her life, by the whoremaster Michaelson (who may also be her father) and stillborn twins, she comes across as a wild thing, ruled by whims and passions without regard to consequences. Her niece, Angelene, brought bloodily into the world by Talmadge, seems the only nearly normal character, a product of being guarded and looked after by Caroline Middey and Talmadge.The sure but stately progress of the plotline and the elegance of the language and its halting exactness brought to mind Reynolds Price and his SURFACE OF EARTH trilogy, or perhaps Marilynne Robinson's GILEAD, Jeffrey Lent's IN THE FALL, or Molly Gloss's THE HEARTS OF HORSES, which is, like this novel, set in the Pacific Northwest of the early 1900s.I kept looking for significance in the characters' names (my own little quirk as a reader), but didn't really find much, aside from Caroline Middey, the midwife. But then there was the villainous, opium-addicted Michaelson, who, reformed, began calling himself DeQuincey, so of course I thought of the DeQuincey who authored "Confessions of an English Opium Eater." I couldn't help but wonder if Coplin considered this when she had this villain take a new identity.Well, whaddayaknow? I guess I found something to say about the book after all. Plenty has already been said, but the comments I found most annoying were those quibbling and complaining about the dropping of quotation marks from dialogue. My response: So what?I'll finish where I started. A stunningly beautiful book. Very highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A craggy solitary orchardist's life intersects with two pregnant teens fleeing from a truly unspeakable situation. The book follows life, birth, death, companionship, love, nurturing. All of which is mirrored in the orchards, where fruit trees must be tenderly cared for in order that they bear their fruit, as the characters bear theirs.The fruit trees are a powerful metaphor whose fruit is not always plump and juicy; sometimes it is rotten.A compelling book you will not soon forget
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the perfect atmospheric choice for fall. Talmadge is a lonely man. He has lost both his parents and his last family member, a sister, disappears from the orchard when he is seventeen. He lives a modest life and finds solace in his work in the family apple orchard. For many years Talmadge carries on a rather solitary existence with his only friends being the rather rough around the edges Caroline Middey and a native American Clee. One day two young, starving sisters, Jane and Della show up in town. They are both pregnant and on the run from some truly terrible circumstances. Talmadge tries to help the girls but they are too damaged to be the family he craves. Instead they inadvertently leave him a gift that will change everything in his life. This story is incredibly well told but it is so sad. The characters go through so much that I kept hoping they would find some peace and happiness. Like life, not everything is tied up in the end in a neat bow. Some characters seem to escape their due punishment while others never stop suffering for the sins committed against them. While this book left me feeling rather melancholy I enjoyed the story and couldn't put it down. This was an excellent debut novel by a gifted author.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    What an astonishing book. I considered and passed by this novel several times before giving it a chance, and I'm glad I did.
    This is a quiet tale...not in terms of plot but in how the author presents the different lives. There is a lot of upheaval for the individuals, and each has to work out their relationships with each other in their self-made family and with others. But the voice and how each of the events and relationships are presented is paced in a way that makes you feel the lives they are leading.
    Really an exceptional experience.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved absolutely everything about this book: the cover, the setting, the prose and the characters. That this is a first novel is staggering. Talmadge has lived alone for forty years, after the death of his mother and the disappearance of his sister, tending his orchards and giving a free pass to the wranglers and Indians that come onto his land with wild horses. His characters is stoic, strong, he is someone who always tries to do the right thing and he is someone I would love to meet in real life. Two young pregnant girls appear and they will be the catalyst for one of his greatest joys but also the cause of much sorrow. The beauty of the orchard is sharply contrasted with the violence that eventually comes his way. Although the subject and the tone verge on the melancholic , the novel is so beautifully written , the descriptions of the land, with the orchards so alive that this novel genders much admiration rather than depression. There are so many quotes I could choose from this book but this one is one of my favorites. "Her hair gathered at her neck, its color in the lantern light like a young oak. How like the orchard she was. Because of her slowness and the attitude in which she held herself - seemingly deferent, quiet - it appeared even a harsh word would smite her. But it would not. She was like an egg encased in iron. She was the dream of the place that bore her, and she did not even know it."I truly did not want this book to end and wish I could read it again for the first time.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    couldn't finish; story not compelling enough;writing not engaging
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Talmadge is a loner. He is also an orchardist. His mother brought he and his sister to the orchard when he was only nine years old. He is the only one left. The men and the horses come each year to help with the harvests. Clee, the Indian, has always accompanied the men since he was a child. He and Talmadge have been friends for that long. Now Clee leads the men back to the orchard each year. When Jane and Della appear in the orchard, Talmadge's quite life of solitude among the fruit trees is interrupted forever. When Jane and Della arrive at the orchard they both are pregnant and will not allow Talmadge near them. He had to lure them in like you would a frighten and abused animal. And abused they had been. He sets out food for them. They watch and follow him at a safe distance. Jane is the elder. Talmadge confides in his friend Caroline Middey about the girls. Caroline is skeptical but assists. The babies come and only one lives, they name her Angelene. Jane is her mother. Talmadge is a quite character but not a peaceful one. He has a lot of inner turmoil and discontentment. You want Talmadge, Jane, and Della, to be a "happy" family but it can't be due to the horrific and tramatic past events all parties have suffered through. Instead of Angelene being the connective thread she turns into somewhat of a pawn for Talmadge. She is loyal to him. Della, the rebel, is restless throughout the entire novel. Della not only drained Talmadge but, in my opinion, she was a burden on me the reader. The Orchardist is equally full of extreme beauty and tragedy. The scenes in the orchard allows the reader to escape from all the darkness of the characters. Coplin describes the landscape so vividly that you feel as if you are walking down the rows of plum, apple, and apricot trees. My favorite scenes from the book is the yearly arrival of the horses to the orchard. Like the characters you anticipate their arrival. Words escape me as to how to describe it. During a difficult time in the novel, Angelene gives Della a gift and it was so touching. It was one of those "hidden nuggets" that are in well written novels that the reader may miss if they aren't paying close attention. Like Twelve Tribes of Hattie, I did not love or hate The Orchardist but I cannot not deny the fact that it is beautifully written. These aren't lollipop characters. They are dark, complex, and haunting. There is also a calmness about them that allows you to enjoy the story. The beginning and ending of this novel is quite enveloping but you can get bogged down in the middle.ARC provided by publisher. In no way does this influence my review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The basics: The Orchardist, a debut novel from Amanda Coplin, is the story of Talmadge. When he was a boy, his father died. His mother took him and his sister west to an orchard in the Pacific Northwest. Tragedy continues to befall this family, as Talmadge's mother dies when he is 15. His sister disappears two years later, yet Talmadge lives on growing and selling fruit. When two young, pregnant girls, begin stealing from him, he tries to take them under his wing and provide food and shelter for him.My thoughts: I confess: the description of this novel did not entice me to read it, but as it kept appearing on "Best of the Fall" lists, I took a chance, and I'm so glad I did. I think the word haunting may be approaching overuse for describing novels, but in the case of The Orchardist, it's apt. Coplin's writing is as haunting as her characters:"She'd had the look of departure about a year before she disappeared. A watchfulness. Stirrings of restlessness in a creature otherwise inimitably patient."The pace of the novel is also somewhat haunting. The novel is told in vignettes of varying length and time moves slowly sometimes and quickly at others. The story always flows beautifully, and I found myself reading it slowly to savor its stillness and depth.Favorite passage: "And that was the point of children, thought Caroline Middey: to bind us to the earth and to the present, to distract us from death. A distraction dressed as a blessing: but dressed so well, as so truly that it became a blessing. Or maybe it was the other way around: a blessing first, before a distraction. Caroline Middey scrutinized this point; did not know if the distinction was important. (But all distinctions are important.)The verdict: The Orchardist is simultaneously heart-breaking and heart-warming. It's a beautifully rendered debut novel, and Coplin's prose is as haunting as Talmadge himself.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    At the begining I wasn't sure this was for me, but the further I read the better I liked it. This is the story of a solitary man in pioneer times. After the loss of his mother and sister, at different times, he becomes somewhat of a recluse. Two young girls come to his secluded farm. He helps them as best he can and the story unfolds. He suffers much and gains much from the aid he is able to give them.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sad, quiet, and incredibly poetic.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Rating: 4.5 of 5 Superb debut novel. The descriptions of the orchard are unforgettable, as is Talmadge, who is one of the best "good guys" I've ever read - from the opening paragraph he was a person, not a mere character; in fact, all of the characters were equally alive and distinct, memorable. Overall, an excellent story. Disclaimer: The Orchardist contains unconventional dialogue (there were no quotation marks and it was often mixed in with a character's thoughts) so if you can't abide such devices then you may not be able to enjoy the story as much. Also, this is not a story for those looking to experience shock-and-awe at every turn.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    There were nights when I stayed up too late to finish a section. Other nights, it was such a chore to continue reading, I fell asleep. The fact that there were no quotation marks was hard to get used to. I didn't know if the character was talking to themselves or to someone else. The author extensively used hyphens (dashes?) and after a while, it was annoying because it made me go back to re-read the sentence again. Having noted the stylistic problems I had, it was an interesting story set in an unfamiliar location. I dug out my road atlas to see just where all of these places were located. It was a good geography lesson for a new resident of Washington State. The fact that Talmadge didn't really know how to interact with Della or Jane shouldn't have been a surprise. He had lived alone for so long and his memories of his mother (who looked for a solitary life) and his sister who disappeared, I don't think anyone in the family did much talking. What did surprise me was how he stepped up to the plate and cared for Angelene. His obsession about Della was over the top, but I suppose when someone is trying to rescue you from yourself, that's how it seems. I appreciated the no-nonsense style of Caroline Middey, but why was she always called by her full name? There was no one else in the story with a name remotely like hers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is beautifully written and it is hard to believe that it is a first novel for Ms. Coplin. She writes exquisitely. The setting is late 19 and early 20 century and the place is Washington State. The story is really about Talmadge, the Orchardist. Talmadge is a quiet man who lives by himself. He is a man that will visit with close friends and enjoys doing this every so often, but he much prefers the quiet and solitude of his own orchard. He carries around a great sadness since his beloved sister disappeared without a trace when they were both young and living together on the orchard. Talmadge never finds out what happened to his sister and this haunts him for the rest of his life. Then one day two very dirty and very pregnant young girls steal some fruit from him on one of his visits to town. From this random act, Talmadge finds that his life is inexplicably twined with theirs, and his life forever changes. These two young girls have escaped from a truly terrible life. They are on the run from the man who has kept them imprisoned for his own and for his customers' sexual needs. Della and Jane are strangely drawn to Talmadge after they help themselves to some of his fruit. They find a form of peace with this quiet and gentle man. They don't allow him to communicate with them except on a minimal level, but they stay near his cabin and eat the food that he provides for them. The girls have their babies. One loses hers and the other gives birth to a little girl. Then life intrudes and Talmadge is visited by the man who abused the two girls. Terrible consequences occur after this and the rest of the book is about how Talmadge reconciles himself to some of the choices that he has made with respect to the two girls. This book is so unremittingly sad that I found it difficult at times to continue to read, but did so because Ms. Coplin's prose is so wonderfully crafted. I also anticipated that the book would be historical fiction because of the time frame, but it really wasn't that. It's a story of lives lived, hardships experienced and decisions made as a result of happenings. It also first and foremost a book about Talmadge. Ms. Coplin has drawn a picture of a man who is not to be forgotten.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Toward the end of this book, the title character reflects on a life that has been dramatic and sordid in spite of itself. I felt rather the opposite about this story. It's uncanny how so many salacious events could make for such a sleepy plot. I mean that almost literally--listening to this book in the car, I felt myself start to nod off once or twice. If you like horses and/or fruit, then there's enough in this book to sustain you. If you're expecting anything else, whether that be a wild west yarn or a heartwarming not-all-families-are-related tale, look elsewhere.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I really loved this book, the perfect balance of story and lyrical writing. This book draws you in like a dream or a meditation on people and place.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Coplin's compelling, well-crafted debut tracks the growing obsession of orchardist William Talmadge, who has lived at the foothills of the Cascade Mountains since the summer of 1857, when he was nine. A loner shaped by the land he loves, Talmadge has carefully tended his orchard for nearly 50 years. His only real confidante is Caroline Middey, an herbalist, midwife, and natural healer. His orderly life is altered forever when two runaway girls, Jane and Della, arrive at the edge of his orchard, dirty, starving, and pregnant. A tragedy leaves Talmadge caring for Jane's baby, Angelene. Della has no interest in childcare or boring fruit picking and soon takes off with the horse wranglers who visit Talmadge's field every spring. Talmadge cannot accept Della's desire to leave the orchard, which in his mind strangely parallels the disappearance of his sister Elsbeth when they were children. Still tortured by Elsbeth's unexplained disappearance, he attempts to help Della in a way he couldn't help his sister, but this obsession leads Talmadge into increasingly dark terrain. Summary BPLImpressive first novel by Ms Coplin! Dense, unsentimental, metaphoric, The Orchardist transcribes the slow and elemental nature of life in late 19th century Washington. Through the concrete minutiae of Talmadge's, the "orchardist's", life, the author unveils grand themes of love and guardianship, growth and fruition, confirming Henri Nouwen's opinion that what is most personal is also most universal. At 426 pages, it can seem at times more dilatory than expansive (but economy of words is a preference of mine--in American storytelling I prefer the spare sentences of Willa Cather to the voluminous paragraphs of Herman Melville).7.5 out of 10 Recommended to fans of American literature and historical fiction.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Good book club book.Talmadge and his family travel from the Oregon Territory to an area where his mother and then himself can plant and orchard and use the goods in barter with others for items for their livelihood.Two girls come to his orchard. One gives birth and commits suicide. The other stays but travels with a group of men who want to capture wild horses.The child who was born stays with Talmadge and we see the history of their relationship.A good slice of life.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Talmadge has lived a very quiet, solitary life until the day two young girls show up at his orchard. They are almost feral, and he soon realizes that the two very young girls are pregnant and need his help. They won't come near him, so he leaves food out for them. He helps them as well as he can, trying to bring them into his fold and offter them some type of security. Still sleeping outside but accepting his food, all is going pretty well until that fateful day when Michaelson, their tormentor, comes.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Orchardist can touch your soul as it did for me. It may be a slow read for some but slow to me was soaking in all the descriptions of the landscape and main characters. This tale would make an excellent Hallmark Hall of Fame movies; strong character who make a family without blood relations. The author, Amanda Coplin, took eight years to write this endearing tale. Take your time reading the novel as the chracters are so well developed.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I like the concept of this book. The story sure took some surprising turns. The descriptive tone was very painterly but after putting it down (total page turner) I found myself thinking wow, huh... why I don't like it more? Maybe I felt it was trying to force my emotions.

Book preview

The Orchardist - Amanda Coplin

I

HIS FACE WAS as pitted as the moon. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and thick without being stocky, though one could see how he would pass into stockiness; he had already taken on the barrel-chested sturdiness of an old man. His ears were elephantine, a feature most commented on when he was younger, when the ears stuck out from his head; but now they had darkened like the rest of his sun-exposed flesh and lay against his skull more than at any other time in his life, and were tough, the flesh granular like the rind of some fruit. He was clean-shaven, large-pored; his skin was oily. In some lights his flesh was gray; others, tallow; others, red. His lips were the same color as his face, had given way to the overall visage, had begun to disappear. His nose was large, bulbous. His eyes were cornflower blue. His eyelashes nothing to speak of now, but when he was young they were thick-black, and his cheeks bloomed, and his lips were as pure and sculpted as a cherub’s. These things together made the women compulsively kiss him, lean down on their way to do other chores, collapse him to their breasts. All his mother’s sisters he could no longer remember, from Arkansas, who were but shadows of shadows now in his consciousness. Oh my lovely, they would say. Oh my sweet lamb.

His arms were sun-darkened and flecked with old scars. He combed his hair over his head, a dark, sparse wing kept in place with pine-scented pomade.

He regarded the world—objects right in front of his face—as if from a great distance. For when he moved on the earth he also moved in other realms. In certain seasons, in certain shades, memories alighted on him like sharp-taloned birds: a head turning in the foliage, lantern light flaring in a room. And there were other constant preoccupations he likewise half acknowledged, in which his attention was nevertheless steeped at all times: present and past projects in the orchard; desires he had had as a young man, worries, fears, of which he remembered only the husks; trees he had hoped to plant; experiments with grafting and irrigation; jam recipes; cellar temperatures; chemical combinations for poisoning or at least discouraging a range of pests—deer and rabbits and rodents and grubs, a universe of insects; how to draw bees. Important was the weather, and patterns of certain years, the likelihood of repetition meteorologically speaking, what that would mean for the landscape; the wisdom of the almanacs, the words of other men, other orchardists, the unimportant but mostly the important words. He thought of where he would go hunting next fall. Considered constantly the state of his land, his property, his buildings, his animal. And mostly he thought of the weather that week, the temperature, and existence of, or potential for, rainfall; recent calamities and how he was responding to them; the position of the season; his position in the rigid scaffolding of chores—what he would have to do that day, that afternoon and evening, how he would prepare for the next morning’s work; when were the men coming, and would he be ready for them? But he would be ready for them, he always was, he was nothing if not prepared. He considered those times in life when he had uttered words to a person—Caroline Middey or Clee, or his mother, or a stranger who had long forgotten him—he wished he had never uttered, or had uttered differently, or he thought of the times he remained silent when he should have spoken as little as a single word. He tried to recollect every word he had ever spoken to his sister, tried to detect his own meanness or thoughtlessness, his own insensitivity to certain inflections she might have employed. How long ago it was now. At times he fretted about forgetting her, though in fact—he did not like to admit this—he had already forgotten much.

Now, at his back, the shrouded bushels of apples and apricots rustled in the wagon bed, the wagon creaking forward beneath the weight; the old, old familiar rhythm in accordance with these leagues of thought. Dazzled and suspended by the sun. The mountains—cold—at his back. It was June; the road was already dusty. His frame slightly hunkered down, the floppy calfskin hat shielding his brow, under which was a scowl holding no animosity. The large hands, swollen knuckles, loosely holding the reins.

From the wheatfields he entered the town, and drew down the main street. Quiet. It was Sunday. The nearer church, he thought—the Methodist was on the other side of town—had yet to release its congregation. He hitched up outside the feed and supply store, watered the mule. While he was setting up the fruit stand—tugging forward each burlap-covered bushel in the back of the wagon and unveiling them and unloading them—a woman rounded the corner and gained the platform, approached him. Half her face was mottled and pink, as if burned, her mouth an angry pucker. She held defensively to her breast a burlap sack and bent and inspected the uptilted bushel of Arkansas Blacks. She reached for an apple but did not touch it; glanced dubiously at a bushel of paler apples he presently uncovered. What’re those?

He glanced down. Greenings. Rhode Island Greenings.

When he spoke, his voice was low and sounded unused; he cleared his throat. The woman waited, considered the apples. All right. I’ll take a few of those. From the folds of her skirt she brought out a dull green change purse. How much?

He told her. She pinched out the correct change and handed it to him.

As he filled the sack with fruit, the woman turned and gazed behind her. Said:

Look what the cat drug in. Those two looking over here like that, you aren’t careful, they’ll come rob you. Hooligan-looking. She sniffed.

After a moment he looked where she nodded. Down the street, under the awning of the hardware store, two girls—raggedy, smudge-faced—stood conspiratorially, half turned toward each other. When they saw Talmadge and the woman observing them, they turned their backs to them. He handed the burlap sack to the woman, the bottom heavy and misshapen with fruit.

The woman hesitated, still looking at the girls, then turned and nodded shortly to him, stepped off the platform, moved down the street.

From the wagon he retrieved his wooden folding chair and sat down next to the bushels. Wind gusted and threw sand onto the platform, and then it was quiet. Rain was coming; maybe that evening, or early the next day. The girls moved; stood now with their shoulders pressed together, looking into the window of the dry goods store. A gust of wind blew their dresses flat against their calves, but they remained motionless. He pulled his cap low. What did two girls mean to him? He dozed. Woke to someone addressing him:

That you, Talmadge? Those girls just robbed you.

He righted his cap. A slack-mouthed boy stood gaping at him.

I saw them do it, said the boy. I watched them do it. You give me a nickel, I’ll run them down and get your apples back for you.

The girls had gotten farther than Talmadge would have expected. They made a grunting sound between them, in their effort at speed. Apples dropped from their swooped-up dresses and they crouched or bent awkwardly to retrieve them. The awkwardness was due, he saw, to their grotesquely swollen bellies. He had not realized before that they were pregnant. The nearer one—smaller, pouting, her hair a great hive around her face—looked over her shoulder and cried out, let go the hem of her dress, lurched forward through the heavy thud of apples. The other girl swung her head around. She was taller, had black eyes, the hard startle of a hawk. Her hair in a thick braid over her shoulder. She grabbed the other girl’s wrist and yanked her along and they went down the empty road like that, panting, one crying, at a hobble-trot. He stopped and watched them go. The boy, at his side, looked wildly back and forth between Talmadge and the ragged duo. I can get them, I can catch them, Talmadge, he said. Wildly back and forth.

Talmadge, the boy repeated.

Talmadge watched the girls retreat.

HE AND HIS mother and sister had come into the valley in the summer of 1857, when he was nine years old. They had come from the north-central portion of the Oregon Territory, where his father had worked the silver mines. When the mines collapsed, their mother did not even wait for the body of their father to be dredged up with the rest, but gathered their few belongings and set off with Talmadge and his sister at once. They traveled north and then west, west and then north.

They walked, mostly, and rode in wagons when they came along. They crossed the Wallowas and the Blue Mountains, and then came across great baked plains, what looked to be a desert. And then when they reached the Columbia they took a steamboat upriver to its confluence with another river, where the steamboat did not go farther. They would have to walk, said the steamboat operator, uncertain; if they were thinking of going across the mountain pass, to the coast, they would have to find someone—a trapper, an Indian—to guide them. And still Talmadge’s mother was undeterred. From the confluence of the river they walked four days toward mountains that did not seem to get any closer. The elevation climbed; the Cascades rose before them like gods. It was May; it snowed. Talmadge’s sister, Elsbeth, who was a year younger than him, was cold; she was hungry. Talmadge rubbed her hands in his own and told her stories of the food they would eat when they set up house: cornbread and bacon gravy, turnip greens, stewed apples. Their mother said nothing to these stories. Why did she lead them north and then west, west and then north, as if drawing toward a destination already envisioned?

They had heard that many, many miles away, but not so many as before they started, on the other side of the mountains, was the ocean. Constant rain. Greenness. Maybe that’s where they were going, thought Talmadge. Sometimes—but how could he think this? how could a child think this of his mother?—he thought she was leading them to their deaths. Their mother was considered odd by the other women at the mining camp; he knew this, he knew how they talked about her. But there was nothing really wrong with her, he thought (forgetting the judgment of a moment before); it was just that she wanted different things than those women did. That was what set them and his mother apart. Where some women wanted mere privacy, she yearned for complete solitude that verged on the violent; solitude that forced you constantly back upon yourself, even when you did not want it anymore. But she wanted it nonetheless. From the time she was a small girl, she wanted to be alone. The sound of other people’s voices grated on her: to travel to town, to interact with others who were not Talmadge or Talmadge’s father or sister, was torture to her: it subtracted days from her life. And so they walked: to find a place that would absorb and annihilate her, a place to be her home, and the home for her children. A place to show her children: and you belong to the earth, and the earth is hard.

They climbed through cold-embittered forest and sought respite in bright meadows thick with wildflowers and insect thrumming. Maybe, thought Talmadge, they had already died, and this was heaven. It was easy, at moments, to believe. They came to a mining camp where five men sat inside an open hut, shivering, malnourished, warming their hands around a fire. It was lightly raining outside. When Talmadge and his mother and sister came and stood before them, the men looked at them as if they were ghosts. Their mother asked the men if they had any food to spare. The men just stared at her. They stared at the children. Where are you going? said one of the men finally. You shouldn’t be here. The men had some beans that they shared with them, ate them straight out of the can. And then—Talmadge would always remember this—a man took out a banjo and began to play, and eventually, to sing. His teeth were crooked and stained, as were his mustache and his beard. His eyes were light blue and watery. He sang songs about a place that sounded familiar to Talmadge: Tennessee. It was where his own father was from. Talmadge thought later that the man was crying. But why was he crying? He missed his home, said Talmadge’s mother.

The men told them that there was a post ten miles up the creek where they could trade for supplies. It was a good time to travel, since it was summer, but in the winter it would be impassable. Talmadge and his mother and sister set off from the miners and reached the trading post later that day. And then they kept walking. What are you doing? the people said. Turn around. You have young children. There were two days of rain, and cold. His sister developed a hacking cough. And then they came through dense forest, and stood on the rim of a valley illuminated as if it was the end or the beginning of the world. A valley of yellow grass. Still but for a ribbon of water moving at the bottom of it. His sister, beside him, caught her breath; and on the other side of him he could feel his mother’s silent, reluctant satisfaction.

They walked into the valley.

On a plateau stretching back from the creek was a filthy miner’s shack, and two diseased Gravenstein apple trees. On the opposite side of the creek was the outlying field, bordered on its far edges by forest. To the east was a dark maw of a canyon. Three weeks later they discovered, a mile away into the canyon and through more forest, along a portion of the upper creek, a cabin. And here, as well as down below, was a miner’s sluice box situated along a shallow portion of the creek. One of the first chores Talmadge’s mother assigned herself was to dismantle the sluice box and take this, as well as other tools she found pertaining to that trade, and bury them in the forest. I’ve had enough of mining for one lifetime, she said.

For a year he and his mother and sister tended the ailing Gravensteins and also planted vegetables from seeds his mother had sewn into the linings of their winter clothes. The summer of the next year they sold fruit to the miners at Peshastin Creek, and traded for supplies at the post in Icicle.

Late that first summer and then again in the spring, a band of native men came out of the forest with a herd of over two hundred horses. The men did not try to speak to Talmadge or his mother or sister; and neither did Talmadge or his mother or sister attempt to speak to the men. They remained in the field for three days.

When the men arrived again the following summer, Talmadge’s mother went down to the field where they camped and offered them fruit and vegetables, loaves of potato bread. The men accepted her gifts; and when they returned, four weeks later, they offered her a deer they had killed, strapped to the back of a horse.

They were horse wranglers—mostly Nez Perce at that time, but later there were also men from other tribes: Palouse, Yakama, Cayuse, Walla Walla, Umatilla. They hunted horses in the ranges to the southeast—the Blue Mountains, the Wallowas, the Steens, the Sawtooths—and trained them and sold them at auctions abroad. They had been stopping over in the valley for the last decade or so to feed and rest the horses, and to avoid the lawmen who scouted the countryside searching for rogue bands such as theirs.

On their trips south, after selling the horses at auction—when the men came into the orchard with their herd largely diminished, and many of them sporting handsome leather vests and saddlebags—they brought gifts for Talmadge and his sister: candy, or bits of milk glass in the shapes of animals. They let Talmadge and his sister explore their packs, and took them on easy rides around the field, the children sitting before the men in the saddles.

These trips south the men would stay just overnight, and would be gone by the time Talmadge woke in the morning. The ash of their firepits not yet cold, and the general odor of horses and tobacco hung in the air for hours afterward, provoking in the young Talmadge a particular melancholy, and emptiness.

Among the men there were sometimes boy children—sometimes two or three, but rarely more. Some of these children appeared only once; they came for a season and then were not seen again. The only child constant from the beginning was the nephew of the Nez Perce leader, a boy known to Talmadge and Elsbeth as Clee; he had another, private name used only among the men. He was dark-skinned, muscular, tall, with a wide, pensive forehead and a large, careful, expressive mouth, although he was not known to smile often, or make exaggerated facial expressions. Even as a child he was quietly, fiercely attentive. His hair came down to almost his elbows; at times it was fixed in two braids, with hair crowding his eyes.

But there was from the beginning something distinctly different about Clee. He did not speak. It was not just that he was shy, or particularly wary of Talmadge and his sister, or chose not to speak to white people; he did not speak at all, even to the men he rode with. He was not deaf, for he heard the noises Talmadge and his sister heard, turned his head, physically reacted when they did. He had the habit of cocking his head, slightly, to speakers who addressed him. But no words issued from him, ever.

What’s wrong with him? Elsbeth asked their mother once. Their mother, who was washing dishes at the time, crouching creekside, shrugged. There might be something wrong with his vocal cords, she said. Or—maybe he just doesn’t want to talk.

But why?

Their mother shrugged again. I don’t know, child, she said.

There was no exact moment Talmadge could recall when he and Elsbeth became friends with Clee; but when the men came into the field with the horses, Talmadge and Elsbeth sought Clee out, and in the privacy of the outer forest, or in the canyon, they would show him treasures they had acquired—rocks, candy, bits of animal hide—and also show him places, nooks and crannies, weird sunbathed basins of grass deep within a bramble hedge, they had discovered. And likewise Clee showed them objects he had accumulated that year from auctions—small toys and carvings, folded illustrations, carnival and sideshow posters, even swatches of fabric—velvet, satin, chamois—they rubbed between their fingers, against their lips and cheeks. It did not seem to matter, then, that Clee could not—or did not—speak. There was no deficit in their relationship, no lack.

Talmadge and Elsbeth’s mother died of a respiratory disease in the spring of 1860. Two years later they harvested two acres of apples and one acre of apricots, and with the money they earned from selling the fruit they razed the miner’s shack and built a two-room cabin. He was fifteen years old, and Elsbeth was fourteen. The next spring they planted three plum trees around the side of the cabin, and the first apple trees inside the canyon mouth.

In the fall of 1864 Talmadge contracted smallpox and nearly died. The sickness left him badly scarred on his face, chest, and arms, and partially deaf in his right ear. In the spring of the next year the canyon flooded, and they lost many apple trees. That summer, in 1865, Elsbeth went into the forest beyond the field to collect herbs and did not return. He enlisted the help of the miners at the Peshastin camp, and when they did not find her, he asked the men who came through with the horses if they would help him search. Clee found her bonnet, and another, her picking basket. That was all they ever found.

Elsbeth Colleen Talmadge. She had black hair like him, like their mother, and a large bulbous nose. That nose will be the end of her, murmured his mother’s sisters. A deformity (but it was not that, only an exaggerated feature) one wore inside one’s clothes was one thing, but on a face—they pitied her. Talmadge’s mother did not comment; she did not talk about such things as a girl’s looks, because she did not think they were important. Her daughter was simple, but sturdy-bodied, large-footed. She would do well on a homestead. She had Talmadge, also, to guide and help her. It was Talmadge who was the brains of any operation the two of them—he and Elsbeth—undertook. Always thinking, always planning. A new way to plant, to harvest. Ideas for irrigation. Even at that age. This is what we will do, he would announce, quietly, seriously. What do you think? He always included her: every project he engineered that succeeded, he credited her as well, naturally. Once or twice, very rarely, she had her own opinion about how to do things—or a variation of his own idea—and if it was a poor idea, he corrected it, silently, in the doing. But she was not stupid—brain-addled—no matter what people said. He loved her, he loved her deliberation and her decisiveness in certain small domestic activities, her gentleness with animals; her heavy, serious inwardness. She was able to cross-stitch elaborate scenes without the aid of a model or picture—scenes that bewildered him, and her too, if he asked her about them. Where did such images come from? Groves, large lakes, lions, angels. And yet it was true she had trouble, at times, constructing sentences to speak into the air, the air that seemed to get thinner when she was speaking to someone who was not Talmadge or their mother, on the verge of tears. He protected her, he placed himself between her and the world. She did not have to go to town and interact with the people; he would do that, though he was shy, too.

And though she trusted him—had always seemed to trust him—and did not seem to begrudge him, or withdraw from him, she must have had aspirations that she did not tell him about, that she kept to herself. He remembered one day, as she entered a room, he suddenly seemed to recognize her—her physical being came into stark relief for him—but he did not know why. And then he realized: it was because she wore a new frock. It was not a new dress, but an apron. Sky blue and not like the other gray one she usually wore. What’s that? he said. Where did you get that? This was after their mother died, when, very rarely, his tone became careless. She touched the cloth but did not look down at it. I made it, she said. I got the fabric from—but he did not remember where now. He said, because he was suddenly angry, You can’t be spending money on things we haven’t discussed. We’re supposed to be saving up for—but again he could not recall what he had said. Some project or another. The whole time she did not move her head. Her eyes—an opaque light blue, the same color as his—did not alter, but her mouth hardened. A barely perceptible change. The fingers of her left hand hanging at her side twitched—a reflex, maybe, of the hurt or anger that did not show on her face. And all at once he was no longer angry. Moments passed in silence. When he was angry it was not serious, and it came out in little sideways bursts like this. He was quickly ashamed afterward. Now he said quietly, not looking at her: Your frock is nice. And: I can see you did a nice job with the—but he had no vocabulary for what she had done—the tailoring—and so gestured generally instead. She responded a moment later with a slight nod of her head. And then they broke out of the scene and continued as if it had never happened.

He came around always to that frock, as if the key to her disappearance lay there. Why that frock? It was new, the material—the color—was strange, even fetching. It was not like the clothes she usually wore. Later he would think of it as a traveling outfit—a start to a traveling outfit. She was preparing already to go—

Or perhaps it was on sale, in the bin with other cheap scraps at the general store, and she had bought it impulsively—not out of any vanity, or with any motivation attached to it, but because it was a bargain. That was something that she would do, he could imagine her doing something like that.

But, finally, what the apron meant—if it meant anything at all—he would never know.

The night after Clee came out of the forest with a piece of fabric—Elsbeth’s bonnet—clutched in his fist, he and Talmadge sat together on the darkened porch, and Clee wanted, though he was unable to do so, to communicate to Talmadge the events of his life. About how he was related to many of the men by blood, but did not have any immediate family. His father and two of his brothers had died in wars in the 1850s. His own mother had taken care of the remaining siblings—and how many of them were there? how many brothers and sisters had he had, once?—and even though the others told him that he was too young to remember his mother or what had happened to her, he remembered: the tepee walls shuddering as if from a great wind, his mother, who squatted across from him—she was attempting to light a fire—ceasing her movements, gazing at him, her eyes wide, listening. And then the animal skins ruptured and Clee could see the sky beyond the man’s head, and a hairy arm grabbed Clee’s mother around her waist. Clee’s mother was sucked out of the tepee, into the sky. She disappeared all at once, in the blink of an eye. And although this was one act of violence among many in their village that day, dozens killed, and tepees and storehouses set afire, he remembered a kind of peace afterward: just the sky and the animal skins flapping.

He had made sounds, the others said, when he was a baby. But after the raid he was speechless. His voice had been carried away; it had pledged allegiance to his mother, or to some other element of that day; and without those elements restored to that place, his voice also remained outside it, outside himself.

After the main village was destroyed, his other brothers—the ones who had remained after the others had left—simply disappeared forever. He did not even know how many sisters he had had. When he found Elsbeth’s bonnet, his own family had been gone for over half his life.

The other men thought Elsbeth had run away, or the forest had claimed her. It was not so very strange. But Clee searched with a certain quiet resolve uncommon for someone his age. He tried, with his skills, to track her, but she could not be tracked. Maybe at one time she could have been, but no longer. He circled and recircled where he had found the bonnet. When the men set up camp, far away from where she had disappeared, he nevertheless scouted a wide perimeter, watching out. The other men regarded him warily but did not interrupt him, did not mock him, understanding, in a way, his sickness. He never stopped looking for Elsbeth—not really—but he forgot what she looked like. There was something about the color of her eyes, and the shape of her nose. But the rest of her, for him, had faded. He would know her when he saw her, he thought, to comfort and encourage himself.

Out of this brief obsession Clee and Talmadge’s relationship solidified. When the men passed through with the horses, Talmadge and Clee sat on the porch in the evening, looking out over the land and with a view of the field below where the other men camped, their fires like distant stars. Clee and Talmadge smoked tobacco, and Talmadge did not speak much. Sometimes one or both of them would come away from the evening—and who was the first to move? had they slept?—with the impression that leagues had been discussed between them. Talmadge knew little of Clee’s past, and Clee had forgotten Talmadge’s sister’s shape, her face, but the young men appeared regularly in each other’s dreams, where it was as if their chests were unstoppered, and they walked together and sometimes turned and faced each other directly, and spoke volumes.

By the time Talmadge was forty years old the orchards had grown to almost twenty-five acres. It was an expansion of what he had originally planned with his mother, and then his sister. On the hill above the creek was the cabin and three acres of apricot trees, and around the side of the cabin, surrounding the shed, a half acre of plum trees. In the field across the creek, before the canyon mouth, nearly a quarter mile away, were nine acres of apples; and inside were twelve acres.

The men helped him groom and harvest the orchards in season, and he in turn lied to the authorities who infrequently came through asking about the men and their business. Horse stealing, emphasized the authorities; but Talmadge feigned supreme innocence. What the men did or did not do within the realm of legality was not his concern: he provided a place for them to stay, and they in turn helped with the chores, the scale of which would overwhelm him otherwise. When the bulk of the fruit became too much for him to manage at harvesttime, he sent a portion with the men, who sold it at auctions and fairs, and he split the profit with them.

The land claim was officially one hundred and sixty acres under the Homestead Act of 1862; he purchased the land as soon as he was able, on his eighteenth birthday. Over the years he bought the lots around it as well so that he owned over four hundred acres of land. He left this other land uncultivated, was satisfied to keep it as forest.

He did not articulate it as such, but he thought of the land as holding his sister—her living form, or her remains. He would keep it for her, then, untouched. All that space would conjure her, if not her physical form, then an apparition: she might visit him in dreams, and tell him what had gone wrong, why she had left him. Where did she exist if not on the earth—was there such a place?—and did he want to know about it, if it existed? What was a place if not earthbound? His mind balked. He was giving her earth, to feed her in that place that was without it. An endless gift, a gesture that seemed right: and it need never be reciprocated, for it was a gift to himself as well, to be surrounded by land, by silence, and always—but how could this be, after so much time?—by the hope that she might step out of the trees, a woman now, but strangely the same, and reclaim her position in that place.

THREE DAYS AFTER he saw the girls in town, he was braced aloft in an apricot tree on the homestead and saw them come out of the upper forest. He quit the shears and watched them. It was morning. They paused at the treeline and then came down through the pasture, their dark hair like flags riding the grass. At the edge of the yard they hesitated, discussing between themselves—what?—glancing repeatedly at the cabin, the outlying land.

He climbed out of the tree, the shears clamped in his armpit. When he walked out of the orchard, the taller girl—the one with the braid over her shoulder—turned to him, and froze. The other girl—her hair also dark, but fuzzy, tangled, unkempt—had been chattering to the other, but ceased abruptly when she saw him approaching. Both stood watching him, their eyes swarming the shears. He halted twenty yards from them.

You-all lost? he called. They looked away at the trees. The shorter one—younger one, he decided—held her mouth open and panted slightly. Their faces were filthy. Even from where he stood, he saw their arms discolored with dirt.

He crossed the yard and went into the cabin. He laid the shears on the table and took his time stoking the ashes in the woodstove. When he went outside again, they had come closer, but feinted back when he came out onto the porch. He took the buckets near the door and went down to the creek and gathered water. Returning to the cabin, mounting the rise in the orchard, he saw that the lawn was empty. Then he saw them; he tried not to fix them directly, where they lay now in the border between the lawn and the outer grass, peering out, thinking themselves hidden.

In the cabin he rebuilt the fire, and made thick cakes out of meal and creek water, and fried them over the stove. Lost himself in the task. When he came to, he thought: Why was he making so many? And then he reminded himself: the girls had come to eat with him. He set the cakes on the table along with an uncapped jar of milk. He hesitated. Finally he left the cabin, shears in hand, and walked to the apple orchard, a deeper section up the creek, leaving them to themselves.

Late afternoon, when he returned to the cabin, there was no sign of them. The food had been eaten. The plates were clean. They had even eaten the crud on the griddletop, the charred remains of the mealcakes. The bowl on the table was empty of fruit. He stood for a moment, then checked the cold pantry. They had taken his eggs and milk. Backing out, he checked the cupboard by the stove. They had taken his cornmeal, and salt. He waited a moment, then went out onto the porch and looked across the lawn, at the trees. They were not there any longer, he thought; they had gone. He looked at the trees. Dusk settled within the branches, touched the ground.

Inside, he took off his boots, and slept.

THE FOLLOWING DAY at dawn he hitched the wagon to the mule and loaded a small supply of apples and apricots. Before stepping into the wagon, he carefully counted his money. He fit the soiled bills into his leather wallet and gazed at the trees sharpening in the blue light.

Before he reached town the sun was high and rinsing the standing wheatfields, quiet but for their resplendent shushing. The heat warmed his face but was not oppressive, and blew a clean scent down the road. A few white wisps of cloud in the sky posed silently.

He tied the wagon outside the feed and supply store and watered the mule, walked down the platform to the café. Inside, he sat at the counter and ordered fried eggs and coffee. The girl who took his order was maybe thirteen years old. He studied her from under his hat brim as she wiped down the counter, carried a stack of dirty dishes to the kitchen. He guessed the girls he had seen were about the same age. When she came back out, she set his eggs in front of him. Refilled his mug quickly. He watched her awhile longer, until she looked at him pointedly, unsmiling, and he looked away.

A little while later she came to pour him more coffee and said, My daddy’s got something to say to you. She withdrew and disappeared into the kitchen. A moment later the proprietor, Weems, came out from the back.

I told you, Pa, said the girl, and floated past them down the counter.

Weems came to sit down next to Talmadge, looked after the girl. Only after a moment did he seem to recognize her.

My youngest, he said. Been working here a week and thinks she owns the place. He smiled faintly, scratched his chin. That’s all my girls working here now—and the boys, all but the youngest, working next door.

Talmadge nodded absently—he was not really interested in the other man’s family dynamics—and drank his coffee.

Weems half turned toward Talmadge, regarded him. I told her you only come Thursday to Sunday—

Well, said Talmadge. Need supplies.

Weems motioned for coffee, and peered past Talmadge to the lot in front of the café. The day glaring now. You bring the wagon? You planning on doing some business?

That’s what I come about.

Weems nodded distractedly. With Sykes?

With Sykes. Or you.

Weems squinted outside again. But you’re just in here a few days ago. You got something new? He frowned. You still got some of those Northern Spies?

Talmadge shook his head. Naw, he said. Just more of the same. And some ’cots.

Well, I don’t know, said Weems after a pause. I just don’t know. Couldn’t give you money no way.

Talmadge nodded again, absently. What about trade?

Show me what you got, and we’ll talk. I’d like to see those ’cots.

On the way out the door, Weems said, Lord, I almost forgot. I had Jinny out there keeping an eye out for you, and I almost forgot. Somebody’s looking for you.

Talmadge frowned at the ground. Outside was a breath of hot air.

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