Читать книгу At the Edge of the Orchard - Tracy Chevalier - Страница 9

THEY WERE FIGHTING OVER apples again. He wanted to grow more eaters, to eat; she wanted spitters, to drink. It was an argument rehearsed so often that by now they both played their parts perfectly, their words flowing smooth and monotonous around each other since they had heard them enough times not to have to listen anymore.

What made the fight between sweet and sour different this time was not that James Goodenough was tired; he was always tired. It wore a man down, carving out a life from the Black Swamp. It was not that Sadie Goodenough was hung over; she was often hung over. The difference was that John Chapman had been with them the night before. Of all the Goodenoughs, only Sadie stayed up and listened to him talk late into the night, occasionally throwing pinecones onto the fire to make it flare. The spark in his eyes and belly and God knows where else had leapt over to her like a flame finding its true path from one curled wood shaving to another. She was always happier, sassier and surer of herself after John Chapman visited.

Tired as he was, James could not sleep while John Chapman’s voice drilled through the cabin with the persistence of a swamp mosquito. He might have managed if he had joined his children up in the attic, but he did not want to leave the bed across the room from the hearth like an open invitation. After twenty years together, he no longer lusted after Sadie as he once had, particularly since applejack had brought out her vicious side. But when John Chapman came to see the Goodenoughs, James found himself noting the heft of her breasts beneath her threadbare blue dress, and the surprise of her waist, thicker but still intact after ten children. He did not know if John Chapman noticed such things as well—for a man in his sixties, he was still lean and vigorous, despite the iron gray in his unkempt hair. James did not want to find out.

John Chapman was an apple man who paddled up and down Ohio rivers in a double canoe full of apple trees, selling them to settlers. He first appeared when the Goodenoughs were new arrivals in the Black Swamp, bringing his boatload of trees and mildly reminding them that they were expected to grow fifty fruit trees on their claim within three years if they wanted to hold on to it legally. In the law’s eyes an orchard was a clear sign of a settler’s intention to remain. James bought twenty trees on the spot.

He did not want to point a finger at John Chapman for their subsequent misfortunes, but occasionally he was reminded of this initial sale and grimaced. On offer were one-year-old seedlings or three-year-old saplings, which were three times the price of seedlings but would produce fruit two years sooner. If he had been sensible—and he was sensible!—James would simply have bought fifty cheaper seedlings, cleared a nursery space for them and left them to grow while he methodically cleared land for an orchard whenever he had the time. But it would also have meant going five years without the taste of apples. James Goodenough did not think he could bear that loss for so long—not in the misery of the Black Swamp, with its stagnant water, its stench of rot and mold, its thick black mud that even scrubbing couldn’t get out of skin and cloth. He needed a taste to sweeten the blow of ending up here. Planting saplings meant they would have apples two years sooner. And so he bought twenty saplings he could not really afford, and took the time he did not really have to clear a patch of land for them. That put him behind on planting crops, so that their first harvest was poor, and they got into a debt he was still paying off, nine years on.

“They’re my trees,” Sadie insisted now, laying claim to a row of ten spitters James was planning to graft into eaters. “John Chapman gave ’em to me four years ago. You can ask him when he comes back—he’ll remember. Don’t you dare touch ’em.” She took a knife to a side of ham to cut slices for supper.

“We bought those seedlings from him. He didn’t give them to you. Chapman never gives away trees, only seeds—seedlings and saplings are worth too much for him to give away. Anyway, you’re wrong—those trees are too big to be from seeds planted four years ago. And they’re not yours—they’re the farm’s.” As he spoke James could see his wife blocking out his words, but he couldn’t help piling sentence upon sentence to try to get her to listen.

It needled him that Sadie would try to lay claim to trees in the orchard when she couldn’t even tell you their history. It was really not that difficult to recall the details of thirty-eight trees. Point at any one of them and James could tell you what year it was planted, from seed or seedling or sapling, or grafted. He could tell you where it came from—a graft from the Goodenough farm back in Connecticut, or a handful of seeds from a Toledo farmer’s Roxbury Russet, or another sapling bought from John Chapman when a bear fur brought in a little money. He could tell you the yield of each tree each year, which week in May each blossomed, when the apples would be ready for picking and whether they should be cooked, dried, pressed or eaten just as they were. He knew which trees had suffered from scab, which from mildew, which from red spider mite and what you did to get rid of each. It was knowledge so basic to James Goodenough that he couldn’t imagine it would not be to others, and so he was constantly astonished at his family’s ignorance concerning their apples. They seemed to think you scattered some seeds and picked the results, with no steps in between. Except for Robert. The youngest Goodenough child was always the exception.

“They’re my trees,” Sadie repeated, her face set to sullen. “You can’t cut ’em down. Good apples from them trees. Good cider. You cut one down and we’ll be losing a barrel of cider. You gonna take cider away from your children?”

“Martha, help your mother.” James could not bear to watch Sadie work with the knife, slicing uneven steaks too thick at one end, too thin at the other, her fingers threatening to be included in their supper as well. She was bound to keep cutting steaks until the whole ham was chopped up, or lose interest and stop after only three.

James waited until his daughter—a leaf of a girl with thin hair and pinched gray eyes—continued with the slicing. The Goodenough daughters were used to taking over the making of meals from their mother. “I’m not cutting them down,” he explained once more to Sadie. “I’m grafting them so they’ll produce sweet apples. You know that. We need more Golden Pippins. We lost nine trees this winter, most of them eaters. Now we got thirty-five spitters and just three eaters. If I graft Golden Pippins onto ten of the spitters, that’ll give us thirteen eaters in a few years. We won’t have so many trees producing for a while, but in the long run it will suit our needs better.”

“Your needs. You’re the one with the sweet tooth.”

James could have reminded Sadie that it was she who put sugar in her tea, and noticed when they were running low and nagged James to go to Perrysburg for more. Instead he doggedly set out the numbers as he’d done several times over the last week when he’d announced his intention to graft more trees this year. “That’ll make thirteen eaters and twenty-five spitters. Add to that fifteen of John Chapman’s seedlings he’s bringing us next week, and that takes us to fifty-three trees, three more than we need to satisfy the law. Thirteen eaters and forty spitters, all producing in a few years. Eventually we’ll have more spitters than we do now for cider. And we can always press eaters if we have to.” Secretly he vowed never to waste eaters on making cider.

Slumped at the table, her daughter moving lightly around her as she prepared supper, Sadie watched her husband through her eyebrows. Her eyes were red. “That’s your latest apple plan, is it? You gonna go straight past the magic number fifty to fifty-three?”

James knew he should not have used so many numbers to explain what he wanted to do. They bothered Sadie like wasps, especially when she had applejack in her. “Numbers are a Yankee invention, and we ain’t in Connecticut now,” she often reminded him. “Ohioans don’t care a spit about numbers. I don’t want to know exactly how many mouths I got to feed—I jest want to put food on the table.”

But James could not help himself: it comforted him to count his trees, to mull over the number, add another Golden Pippin, remove a mongrel spitter that was a result of one of John Chapman’s visits. Solid numbers held back the woods surrounding their claim, so dense you could never count all the trees. Numbers made you feel in charge.

Today Sadie’s response to the numbers he laid out in his argument was even blunter. “Fuck your numbers,” she said. “You ain’t never gonna reach fifty, much less fifty-three.”

Disrespect for numbers: that was what made James slap her—though he wouldn’t have if she’d still held the knife.

She responded by going for him with her fists, and got in a jab to the side of his head before he wrestled her back into her seat and slapped her again. At least she didn’t manage to catch an eye, as she had done once; his neighbors enjoyed teasing James about the shiner his wife had given him. Buckeye, they called it, after the chestnuts so common in Ohio. Lots of wives sported buckeyes; not so many husbands.

The second slap split Sadie’s lip. She seemed puzzled by the sight of her own blood, and remained seated, the bright drops spotting her dress like fallen berries.

“Get your mother cleaned up, and call me when supper’s ready,” James said to Martha, who set down the knife and went to get a cloth. Martha was his favorite, being gentle and never challenging him or seeming to laugh at him as some of his other children did. He feared for her each August when the swamp fever arrived. Almost every year one of his children was picked off, to join the row of graves marked with wooden crosses in a slightly higher spot in the woods not far from the cabin. With each grave he’d had to clear maples and ash to make space to dig. He’d learned to do this in July, before anyone died, so that the body did not have to wait for him to wrestle with the trees’ extensive roots. Best to get the wrestling out of the way when he had the time.

I was used to his slaps. Didnt bother me none. Fightin over apples was jest what we did.

Funny, I didnt think much about apples fore we came to the Black Swamp. When I was growin up we had an orchard like everybody else but I didnt pay it no attention cept when the blossom was out in May. Then Id go and lie there smellin some sweet perfume and listenin to the bees hum so happy cause they had flowers to play with. That was where James and I lay our first time together. I shouldve known then he wasnt for me. He was so busy inspectin my familys trees and askin how old each was—like I would know—and what the fruit was like (Juicy like me, I said) that finally I had to unbutton my dress myself. That shut him up a while.

I never was a good picker. Ma said I was too quick, let too many drop and pulled off the stems of the rest. I was quick cause I wanted to get it done. I used two hands to twist and pull two apples and then the third would drop and bruise and wed have to gather all the bruised ones separate and cook em up right away into apple butter. Beginnin of each season Ma and Pa would get me pickin till they remembered about that third apple always droppin. So they put me on to gatherin the windfalls that were bruised and damaged from fallin off the tree. Windfalls werent all bad apples. They could still be stewed or made into cider. Or theyd have me cookin or slicin rings to dry. I liked the slicin. If you cut an apple across the core rather than along it you get the seeds makin flowers or stars in the middle of the circle. I told John Chapman once and he smiled at me. Gods ways, he said. Youre smart to see that, Sadie. Only time anyone ever called me smart.

James wouldnt let me touch the apples on his trees either. His precious thirty-eight trees. (Oh I knew how many he had. He thought I wasnt listenin when he was rattlin through his numbers but drunk or not I heard him cause he repeated himself so much.) When we was married back in Connecticut he learned real quick how many apples I spoiled. So in the Black Swamp he got some of the children to pick em—Martha and Robert and Sal. He wouldnt let Caleb or Nathan pick, said we were all too rough. He was like a little old woman with his trees. Drove me crazy.

James headed out behind the cabin, past the garden they’d begun turning over now the ground was no longer frozen, and out to the orchard. Upon settling in the Black Swamp, the first thing the Goodenoughs had done after building a rough cabin close to the Portage River was to clear land for the orchard so as to plant John Chapman’s apple saplings. Every oak, every hickory, every elm he cut down was an agony of effort. It was hard enough to chop up and haul the trunk and branches to set aside for firewood, or for making bed frames or chairs or wheels or coffins. But extracting the stumps and roots almost killed him each time he hacked and dug and pulled and ground. Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man—he did not cry when his children died, he simply dug the graves and buried them—James was silent each time he killed a tree, thinking of its time spent in that spot. He never did this with the animals he hunted—they were food, and transient, passing through this world and out again, as people did. But trees felt permanent—until you had to cut them down.

He stood in the melting March dusk and surveyed his orchard—five rows of trees, with a small nursery of seedlings in one corner. It was rare to see space around individual trees in the Black Swamp; normally there was either open water or dense woods. The Goodenough orchard was not spectacular, but it was proof to James that he could tame one small patch of land, make the trees do what he wanted. Beyond them, wilderness waited in the tangled undergrowth and sudden bogs; you had to take each step with care or find yourself up to your thighs in black stagnant water. After going into the swamp, to hunt or cut wood or visit a neighbor, James was always relieved to step back into the safe order of his orchard.

Now he counted his apple trees, even though he already knew that he had thirty-eight. He had expected the requirement for settling in Ohio of fifty viable fruit trees in three years would be easy to achieve, but he had been assuming apple trees would grow in the swamp as they had done on his father’s farm in Connecticut, where the ground was fertile and well drained. But swampland was different: waterlogged and brackish, it rotted roots, encouraged mildew, attracted blackfly. It was surprising that apple trees could survive there at all. There were plenty of other trees: maple was abundant, also ash and elm and hickory and several kinds of oak. But apple trees needed light and dry soil or they could easily not produce fruit. And if they did not produce, the Goodenoughs must go without. The Black Swamp was not like Connecticut, where if your trees had blight or scab or mildew and grew no apples, you could barter or buy from neighbors. Their neighbors here were few and scattered—only the Days two miles away had been there almost as long, though lately others had begun to settle nearby—and had no apples to spare.

James Goodenough was a sensible man, but apples were his weakness. They had been since he was a child and his mother had given him sweet apples as a special treat. Sweetness was a rare taste, for sugar cost dear; but an apple’s tart sweetness was almost free since, once planted, apple trees took little work. He recalled with a shudder their first years in the Black Swamp without apples. He hadn’t realized till he had to go without for over three years how large a part apples had played in his life, how he craved them more than whiskey or tobacco or coffee or sex. That first autumn when, after a lifetime of taking them for granted, James finally understood that there would be no apples to pick and store and eat, he went into a kind of mourning that surprised him. His desperation even drove him to pick the tiny fruit from a wild apple tree he came across along one of the Indian trails; it must have grown from a settler’s discarded apple core. He could only manage three before the sourness forced him to stop, and his stomach ached afterwards. Later, over near Perrysburg, he shamed himself by stealing from a stranger’s orchard, though he took only one apple, and it turned out to be a spitter rather than an eater. He ate it anyway.

In subsequent years he bought more trees from John Chapman—seedlings this time—and grew his own from seeds as well. Trees grown from seeds usually produced sour apples but, as James liked to point out to whoever would listen, one in ten tended to turn out sweet. Like growing anything in the Black Swamp, it took time for the apple trees to thrive, and even those that seemed healthy could easily die over the winter. While the Goodenoughs did have apples within three years of their arrival, they could not be relied on. Sometimes the crop was heavy; other times the apples were scarce and tiny. Sometimes disease killed the trees. For several years James struggled to get thirty trees to grow, much less fifty. More recently he’d had more success, and the previous fall had picked apples from forty-seven trees. Over the winter, however, it appeared nine had died, like a punishment for his hubris.

Luckily no one ever came around to count how many trees they had, as it was too hard to get in and out of the Black Swamp for law officials to bother. None of his few neighbors seemed concerned about the fifty-trees rule. Sadie was amused by the number, and enjoyed taunting her husband with it. Sometimes she would whisper “fifty” to him as she passed. But James fretted over it, always expecting someone to show up on the river or along one of the Indian trails that crisscrossed the Black Swamp and inform him that his farm was no longer his.

I never wanted to live in the Black Swamp. Who would? It aint a name that draws you in. You get stuck there, more like—stuck in the mud and cant go no farther, so you stay cause theres land and no people, which was what we were lookin for. James was second youngest of six healthy sons, so there werent but a little bit of Goodenough farm in Connecticut for us. We managed for a time but James kept reachin for me at night and the children kept comin. Then his father, an old killjoy who never liked me, started hintin about us moving west where we could settle more land. He got the wives of James brothers to talk to their husbands, which they were glad to do cause they didnt like me either. They didnt trust me round their men. I got something they didnt have. So the brothers started pushin James to be more adventurous than he was. Really they shouldve gotten James brother Charlie to go west. Charlie Goodenough was the youngest and by tradition he was the one shouldve gone. Plus he had the gumption in him. Charlie wouldnt of let mud trap him in the swamp. Hed have bust through it and got out into the open where theres good healthy land solid under your feet, with sun and grass and clean water. But everybody loved Charlie, his wife most of all. It was she took against me the worst. Maybe she had reason to. Damned if she werent the nicest of the wives too.

Then all of a sudden Charlie also said James ought to go—though he looked real sorry when we did leave. Stood longer than the rest, watchin our wagon go down the long track away from the Goodenough farm. I bet he wished it was him beside me headin towards a new life.

Turns out lots of Connecticut farmers had gone to Ohio before us. Too many. We went across New York then took a boat on the lake from Buffalo to Cleveland and started lookin, expectin our pick of land to be laid out before us like a nicely made bed, but all we found were other Yankees—most of them war veterans got their allotment from the government. We made a circle round Cleveland, then heard we was better off goin west to the Maumee River, and even into Indiana. After Lower Sandusky we was headed towards Perrysburg when the road—if you can call it that—got worse and worse. That road was where we met our first enemy. Mud. I never saw anything stick so much. It stuck to the wagon wheels and when they turned they collected more mud like a ball of snow gettin bigger and bigger. Got so we had to stop the wagon every fifty feet to scrape it off. Near broke the horses legs. Finally they wouldnt budge and we had to wait till they recovered. Next day we got half a mile before they stopped again. Along that stretch of road there were inns every quarter mile for all the travelers gettin stuck. The inns themselves were set up by settlers who couldnt get no further.

At last we got to the Portage River and decided that was it, we couldnt go no farther so it looked like wed arrived at our Promised Land. By then everything was covered in mud. Wed been wadin through it and couldnt get it off our boots or off our dresses or out from under our toenails. Sometimes the boys would take off their trousers at night and in the morning theyd be standin up by themselves with the mud dried on em. Had to live with it, and wash in the river. John Chapman was a smart one with his canoe glidin up and down the rivers and creeks easy as you like, stayin out of the mud.

After a time we got used to it. Maybe I jest stopped carin. Id hear new settlers complain bout the mud and think, Theres worse things than mud. Jest you wait.

We arrived in the swamp in early April which is a good time to settle cept theres a rush to plant crops and a garden and build a house. And to do any of those things you first got to clear the trees. They was another enemy waitin for us in the Black Swamp. Oh, there were a lot of enemies there.

Damn them trees. I hate em, God love me I do. Back east we didnt have the tree problem the way we did in Ohio. James and I both grew up on farms that had been made some time before, with houses and barns built and cleared fields and gardens. My mother even had flower beds. Thered been settlers in Connecticut for two hundred years, and theyd been the ones breakin their backs to dig up the trees. Every garden, every field, every churchyard and road had to be made by takin out the trees. Wasnt till we was faced with a slice of land full of Ohio trees that we realized how much work we had to do. Well, James had to do, and the older children. I was carryin Robert in my belly and was too big to use an axe or haul wood or pull at those goddamn stumps. There sure wasnt gonna be any flower beds in the Black Swamp. Any clearin had to be done for a better reason than flowers. It was for feedin you and keepin you warm and dry.

Clearin took so much out of my children that sometimes I think thats what killed Jimmy and Patty, weakened em so the swamp fever got em that much easier. Patty died the first summer, Jimmy the next. I never forgave the trees for that, and never will. If I could Id gladly burn down these woods.

Even when we thought wed cleared all the trees we needed to, they kept growin and growin, pressin in on us. We had to keep an eye out for the seedlings that sprung up everywhere. It reminded me of dirty pots or dirty clothes: you scrub and scrub and get em clean, then an hour later youve burnt oatmeal on the bottom of the pot or smeared mud on your apron, and you realize it never ends, theres always gonna be pots and laundry to do. Trees are the same, you clear a field and they start springin up again. At least theyre slower than laundry. But you think youre payin attention, then a year goes by and you find you overlooked a seedling and suddenly its a tree, with roots that dont want to come out.

I heard theres land out west thats got no trees on it at all. Prairie. Lord send me there. I tried to talk to James bout goin there, but he wouldnt listen, said weve made a place for ourselves, hunkered down like toads in the stinkin rottin swamp, and here well stay.

A branch snapped behind him in the orchard. My shadow, James thought. He did not turn around but reached out to run his finger along the branch of the nearest tree—a spitter—and feel the satisfying bump of a nascent bud. “Robert, get me a Golden Pippin from the cold cellar.”

A few minutes later his youngest child returned and handed him a yellow apple speckled with brown dots—the only yellow apple in the Black Swamp that James knew of. It had an unusual oblong shape, as if someone had stretched it, and it was small enough to be held comfortably in his hand. He squeezed it, relishing the anticipation of its taste. It might be wrinkled and soft and well past its prime, but Golden Pippins retained their taste for months, if not their crunch.

James bit into it, and though he did not smile—smiles were rare in the Black Swamp—he shut his eyes for a moment better to appreciate the taste. Golden Pippins combined the flavors of nuts and honey, with a sharp finish he’d been told was like pineapple. It reminded him of his mother and sister laughing at the kitchen table in Connecticut as they sliced apples into rings to be dried. The three trees on the edge of the Black Swamp orchard that produced these sweet apples were all grafts from the Golden Pippin tree James had grown up with. He had grafted them when the Goodenoughs first arrived in the Black Swamp nine years before, from branches James insisted on bringing with them to Ohio. Though grafted at the same time, they had grown up to be different sizes; it always surprised James that the trees could turn out as varied as his children.

Robert was watching him with brown eyes the color of pine resin, still and intent like one of the smarter breeds of dog—English sheep or German shepherd. He rarely needed looking after, and he seemed to understand trees in a way none of the other Goodenoughs did. By rights he should be James’ favorite: a son, slight but healthy, clever and alert, the Goodenough child most likely to survive swamp life. He had been born just after they moved to the Black Swamp, and maybe because he was a native to the swamp, the mosquitoes left him alone, looking for foreign blood. Even when he was very young, it was Robert who nursed the Goodenoughs through swamp fever, sometimes the only family member unaffected. He followed his father around, watching and learning from him as his older brothers Caleb and Nathan never bothered to. Yet James found his son’s attention disconcerting. At almost nine Robert was too young to judge others, but he often caused James to look at himself, and there he always found fault. However much he taught Robert—how to skin squirrels, how to build a wormwood fence, how to plug gaps between the logs of the cabin to make it warmer, how to store apples so they did not bruise—his son continued to stare at him expectantly. That was why he preferred fragile, floating Martha, who did not seem to want more than James could give.

Now Robert’s direct gaze made James feel nailed like a hide to a wall, and he fumbled with the half-eaten Golden Pippin and dropped it. It rolled into dead leaves, catching them in its exposed flesh. Before James could move, Robert had picked it up, brushed it off and held it out to his father.

“You finish it,” James said.

“There’s not many left, Pa.”

“That’s all right. You eat it.” James watched with satisfaction as his son finished the apple in two bites, his face revealing his shy pleasure in the taste.

“Where do those Golden Pippins come from?” he quizzed his son.

“Connecticut.”

“And before that?”

“England. Your grandparents brought over branches of their favorite apple tree.”

“Where in England?”

Robert stared at his father with his unsettling eyes and shook his head. He was not the kind of boy to bluff if he didn’t know. James was glad of his honesty. “Herefordshire. Now, tomorrow we’ll graft. Go and check the grafting clay, make sure it hasn’t dried out. If it needs it, add a little water and stir it in.”

Robert nodded.

“You know what you’re looking for? You don’t need me to check it with you?”

“I’m all right, Pa.” Robert trudged off towards the river, picking up a wooden bucket as he went.

Most springs James Goodenough grafted a few apple trees, turning spitters into eaters, or poor spitters into better spitters. In Connecticut he had learned from his father how to make a productive tree from an indifferent one, and though he had now performed successful grafts dozens of times, he still appreciated the surprise of this re-creation. Their fourth autumn in the Black Swamp, they picked their first crop of Golden Pippins, small and with a thicker skin than those in Connecticut, but edible. James could still recall the first bite he took of one, savoring the crunch and the honey taste with the pineapple finish. The fact that Golden Pippins could grow in the swamp—that a sliver of his ordered life in Connecticut was now tucked into Ohio mud—made him hopeful that one day he might finally feel at home there.

Grafting had always seemed a miracle to James, that you could take the best part of one tree—its roots, say—bind to it the best part of another tree—one producing sweet apples—and create a third tree, strong and productive. It was a little like making a baby, he supposed, except that you had control over what characteristics you chose. If he could graft his children, what parts of himself and Sadie would he choose to put together? Perhaps his steadiness with her spirit—which, though mercurial, was infectious. In the right mood she could make a room full of people dance.

But he could not choose the parts: they came potluck. The Goodenough children were not a combination of the best of their parents, but a sometimes painful mixture of the things that bothered James about himself and what he hated in Sadie, with an added pinch of their own particular characters. Caleb was dour and violent, Sal tetchy, Martha uncertain, Nathan sarcastic. Robert was a mystery—a changeling, James sometimes thought, a child he would not have thought could be Sadie’s if he’d not seen him slip out of her womb in a wave of water and blood, landing ashore without even a cry.

Sadie viewed grafting with suspicion, an attitude she had picked up from John Chapman. “You ain’t God,” she liked to say. “Choppin’ and changin’ and makin’ monsters. It ain’t right.” He noticed, though, that she still ate the apples from the grafted trees. Once when he pointed this out she threw the apple she was eating at him and gave him a bloody nose. Afterwards he retrieved the apple and finished it himself. He did not like to see fruit wasted.

The first time John Chapman came through we hadnt been in the Black Swamp but a few weeks and were livin half in the wagon half under canvas thrown over a frame James had knocked together. The girls and I were down at the river on the edge of our claim washin clothes when we heard a whistle sounded like that bird they call a bob white. Then along comes this grizzled man, paddlin in a canoe and hallooin us like we was old friends. He had long greasy hair and a beard stained yellow round his mouth from chewin baccy, and he wore a coffee sack belted round the middle with a piece of rope, and holes cut out for the neck and arms. He looked like a crazed swamp man, but we was glad to see him, as there werent a whole lotta folks around and it was a treat to get a visitor, even a crazy one.

He had a second canoe lashed to the first and it was full of pails of little trees. Turned out John Chapman sold apple trees for a livin—little ones, bigger ones and sacks of seeds he gave away for free. Him and James got to talkin right away about apples, which pleased them both no end, and James even stopped work on the cabin and went walkin with John Chapman all over the woods where he was goin to plant an orchard, showin him the bits of tree hed brought from Connecticut and was goin to graft into new trees. John Chapman sold him twenty saplings, sayin it was best to start with them rather than graftin. Its up to God to improve the trees, he said, though gentle like, not forceful about it as hed later become. Would have sold him more saplings but James had so much land to clear he couldnt do it fast enough to get more than twenty trees into the ground.

They was off so long it started to get dark, so I told John Chapman to stay for supper, though we couldnt offer more than some pease and a couple of squirrels Jimmyd shot. Three squirrels dont go far tween nine mouths, and a tenth aint so welcome then. But John Chapman told us he didnt eat meat cause he couldnt stand for somethin livin to be killed jest to keep him alive. Well. None of us had heard such a thing before but it meant we all got more squirrel, so we werent complainin. Even the pease he didnt take much of and drunk water rather than cider.

After supper he walked round as we sat by the fire. That man was a pacer and a talker. Now he werent talkin apples, though. Instead he said, Let me bring you some fresh news right from Heaven. I wouldnt of taken him for one of them types, who got to share their religion like theyre passin round a bottle for everyone to drink from. He started to talk and I confess that first time—in fact the first few times—I didnt understand a word. After a while the children rolled their eyes and wandered off, and James got intent on his whittlin. I didnt mind though cause I liked watchin John Chapman. He didnt want to sleep in the wagon or under the canvas that night but said he was fine in the woods. Wouldnt even borrow an old quilt. Nathan spied on him and came back sayin John Chapman was sleepin in a pile of leaves.

Next day he was gone fore we was up, though he came back a week later with the saplings. We hardly had the money to buy em, havin spent it all to get to Ohio. But James said it was worth it as wed have apples two years sooner than if we planted seeds. Then he was goin to graft the branches hed brought from Connecticut onto some of the saplings, though he never told John Chapman that as hed learned pretty quick how John didnt like graftin cause it tampered with Gods creation.

John Chapman started to pay us visits two or three times a year. Always in the spring when he come up to see how we and our trees had fared over the winter and sell us more if we needed any, and then in the fall when he was checkin on his nursery of trees further up the river. Sometimes in the summer hed stop by too, on his way from one place to another. I liked to think he stopped to see us cause of me, and Id run out to the river whenever I heard him whistle Bob white, Bob white.

John Chapman was a singular man, thats for sure. I never once saw him wear clothes like other men, breeches or trousers and shirt and suspenders. Nor shoes, nor jacket, even when there was frost at night. Dont know what he did for clothes in the winter since we never saw him then. Maybe he holed up like a bear. He was a shaggy man too—shaggy hair and beard, long fingernails, heels like cheese rinds. Bright eyes though that flashed and followed their own conversation.

He always took the time to talk to me, once hed figured out no other Goodenough was gonna listen to his God talk. When he found out I could read a little he used to lend me bits of books hed cut up and given to settlers up and down the rivers. All fired up from his visit, I would take the pages gladly, but once hed gone I couldnt make head nor tail of what was written on them. I never told him but I preferred the revivalist camp meetings we went to now and then when the mud was dry enough and we could walk to Perrysburg. Got to meet a lot of people there and be entertained by a God I understood.

What I liked best about John Chapman was that he didnt judge me like some I wont name did. He never said, Sadie youre drunk. Sadie youre a disgrace. Sadie youre draggin this family down in the swamp. He didnt take the bottle from me, or hide it, or empty it so I had to drink vinegar instead. John Chapman understood the power of apples and the things that come from em. It was he who showed me how apples could be the cure for another of our enemies. That was the swamp fever.

Swamp fever came alongside skeeters. They started bitin in June, but in August they swarmed so bad we had to wrap sheets round our heads and wear gloves, even in the heat, and burn smudge pots day and night so the smoke drove em away. Even then they still got us, bitin so much that our faces and hands and ankles—anything not covered by our clothes—swelled up, hurtin and itchin at the same time. I never seen anything like it. It was enough to drive a person wild as a cat. Patty and Sal had it the worst. Poor Pattys face was so swollen she didnt look like a Goodenough no more, but like a swamp creature.

She was the first to get the fever. Begun to shake so hard her teeth cracked. I held her down in bed and doused her in water, tried mayweed and catnip and rattle root, but nothin worked. Jimmy was taken the next year, and baby Lizzie after that, then baby Tom, then Mary Ann. Did I get that order right? Hard to keep track. Some years we were spared. Sometimes I wished it would take me. I birthed ten children and got five left.

Only Robert werent never touched by swamp fever. But then he never was like the rest of us. I birthed him two months after we settled in the swamp. I was wonderin if Patty or Mary Ann was up to helpin me through the birth, as in those days there werent no neighbors close by. James would have to do, though I never liked men to be at a birth, it was bad luck. As it was I didnt need James or the gals or nobody—I was only jest settlin down with the pain when Robert slipped out so he almost dropped in the dirt. We had walls by then and canvas on the roof, but no floor yet. Robert didnt cry at all and he looked at me right away like he could see me, not all dazed or squinty or squally like the others. He grew up like that too—would give me a straight look that made me a little scared of him and ashamed of myself. I loved him best cause he seemed to come from a different place from the rest of us. Maybe he did. I could never be sure, though I had my suspicions. But I could never show it, couldnt hug him or kiss him cause hed give me that look like he was holdin up a mirror to me to show me jest how bad I was.

Robert had to look after the sick ones during the swamp fever. One October John Chapman come through when all but Robert and Sal was laid up, shiverin and shakin and rattlin the beds till I was sure our neighbors could hear us even though they were a couple miles away. John Chapman had planted stinkin fennel for us near the house to use when we was poorly, but neither that nor nothin else seemed to stop us from rattlin and shakin—nothin cept time or death. This time he helped Robert and Sal with the animals and the cookin, and he picked all our apples for us.

Sadie, this is what you need, he said when he come in with a sack of spitters.

I didnt know what he meant and didnt care at the time cause I was so cold and shaky I jest wanted to die right there.

John Chapman took some of our spitters away in his canoes and paddled all the way down to Port Clinton and come back with five barrels of cider. It wasnt hard yet, that would take some weeks, but John Chapman said to drink it and it would drive the fever out. So I drunk it and you know, I felt better. James said I was improvin by then anyway without the help of the cider. That smart remark of his was the beginnin of our apple fights that last to this day. He didnt like John Chapman payin me attention, was what it was, so he cut under whatever the man said. But John was a man of the woods, hed lived with swamp fever for many years, so why wouldnt he know what he was talkin bout? I ignored James and listened to John Chapman. He told me soft cider was fine against skeeters but hard cider was better and applejack best of all.

Id never made applejack, and he told me how. You put a barrel of cider outside in the winter, and the top where the water is freezes, and you throw away that ice, then do it again and again till youre left with just a little in the barrel, but its strong like its got fire in it with jest a little taste of apple behind it. James wouldnt drink it, said it was a waste of good cider. I didnt care—that was more jack for me. And John Chapman was right—when it was in my blood the skeeters didnt like it and left me alone, and the swamp fever didnt come. The problem was keepin enough jack around to last till August when it was really needed. We needed to make more jack, meanin we needed more trees—spitters, not the eaters from Connecticut James loved more than his own wife. Golden Pippins. I didnt understand why he thought they taste so good. Went on bout honey and pineapple when all them apples tasted like was apples.

The next morning was a gray, rainy day, and James was teaching Robert how to graft. He had shown his son the process before, but now that he was almost nine, he was old enough to take in and retain information and make it his own.

Other years Sadie came out to watch James graft and make harsh remarks about ruining perfectly good trees. Today, though, she was still asleep, stinking of the applejack she had drunk the night before. Since John Chapman’s departure she had been drinking steadily. She was an unpredictable drunk—angry and violent one minute, crying and petting the children the next. Sometimes she would sit in a corner and talk to one of her dead children—usually Patty—as if they were there with her. The living Goodenoughs had learned to ignore Sadie, though Nathan and Sal enjoyed the petting.

“We ready?” James said to his son. “You got the scions?”

Robert held up the bundle of branches James had cut from the centers of the Golden Pippins when pruning them in November; he’d carefully stored them in the cellar behind wooden boxes of apples and carrots and potatoes, sticking the ends in a pile of soil for the winter. He’d hidden another bundle in the woods in case Sadie discovered and burned the cellar scions as she had one year, claiming she’d run out of kindling.

Lined up neatly on the ground were the tools and materials they needed for grafting: a saw, a hammer and chisel, a knife James had sharpened the previous night, a pile of strips torn from one of Sadie’s old aprons and a bucket of grafting clay made from a mixture of river clay and horse dung, plus the contents of Sadie’s hairbrush over a few weeks, which he’d had Martha gather without her mother’s knowledge. He had also brought one of the sacks of sand he’d dug up a few years before from the Lake Erie shore, making a special trip to get it. Golden Pippins particularly favored sandy soil, and James would need to fork in sand around the grafts now and then.

Though they were ready—tools and scions and clay and sand and son—James did not move yet, but stood in the light rain with his trees. He could almost see the branches unclenching after the frozen winter, the sap starting to circulate, buds emerging in tiny dots like foxes poking their noses from their dens, testing the air. Colorless now, in a few weeks those dots would show green, signaling the leaves to come. Growth seemed to happen so slowly and yet each year leaves and blossoms and fruit came and went in their cyclical miracle.

The process of grafting did not take long, but like everything he did with apple trees—planting, winter and summer pruning, picking—James was methodical. Now, however, he must be bold. “All right,” he said. Picking up the saw, he stepped up to one of the spitters—a mediocre producer, planted from a John Chapman seedling four years back—grasped the trunk at waist height and sawed rapidly through it, trying not to look at the nascent buds dotted along all of the branches he was cutting off, for those buds would have produced leaves and flowers and fruit. He always did this fast, as it was the destructive part, and he did not like to dwell on it. He must also move quickly before Sadie came out and witnessed the sacrifice of the source of her applejack. When she saw only the results—two sticks bound to a trunk with a ball of clay surrounding the join—rather than the act, she was not so likely to lose her temper. Confronted with something new, it could be surprisingly easy to forget what had been there before, like a man’s freshly shaved beard drawing attention instead to his long hair.

The cross-section of the sacrificial tree was about three inches across—enough for two scions. “This needs to be good and flat,” he said to Robert, scraping the surface with his knife. Then he took up the hammer and chisel. “Now we make a cut about two inches deep, straight across.” As James hammered carefully, the feel of the handle, the tinking of metal against metal, the presence of his son at his elbow, the dripping trees, all made him think of being with his father in Connecticut, learning so that he too could create good trees and pass on the skill, over and over along the chain of Goodenoughs stretching into the future. It was not always easy to feel a part of that chain while living in the Black Swamp, especially when a child every other year was being sacrificed to it, but when he was working on apple trees, he could feel its unique tug.

James cut the ends of two Golden Pippin scions into wedge shapes. “Look here,” he said to Robert, showing him the ends. “A graft’ll be more likely to take if there’s a bud eye at the base of the wedge—see there?—where the bark begins again. Buds attract sap. You get that sap circulating through the two bits of wood, that knits them together into one tree.”

Robert nodded.

They were inserting two scions into the cross-section cleft when Sal appeared. James wished she hadn’t arrived at this delicate moment in the process, with him holding open the cleft with the chisel and directing Robert to fit the scions so the bark matched that of the root stock and a bud eye was just above the surface. Only when both scions were in the right place could he withdraw the chisel so that the cleft closed around them. They had already tried it once and pulled the scions back out to cut new ends that would fit better. James did not need the daughter who reminded him the most of Sadie to come and sit nearby on a stump, and then not even watch what they were doing, but pick at the dry mud on the hem of her skirt. If she was going to be there, he wanted her to care about grafting.

“Your Ma up?” he asked, with the vague hope that a question might lure her over. Who could not be interested in the surprise and magic of grafting?

But Sal did not look up from her futile picking—any mud she removed would soon be replaced by more. “Just for some water. Said her head hurt.”

“You getting dinner on?”

Sal shrugged, a gesture she used often. Even aged twelve she had learned that it was no good caring about things too much, and she held the world at an arm’s length. “Martha’s doin’ it.”

“The boys still working in the barn?”

When she did not answer, James said, “You go and dig up the garden, then.”

“It’s raining.”

“That’ll make the ground easier to dig.” James renewed his grip on the chisel. Robert was fumbling with the scions, turning them to find just the right position. “Go on, now.” When Sal did not move, James pulled the chisel from the cleft and stepped towards her. “Git!”

Sal got up, but slowly, making it clear she was not moving because of her father’s command. The memory of her mother’s split lip the night before and the violence her father was capable of appeared to have no effect on her. Smirking, she sauntered back to the house rather than towards the garden. Noting the insolent set of her shoulders, James wondered when exactly he had lost authority over his family. There was no one moment, he decided, but an accumulation of Sadie’s drinking and their fighting and his fixation on his trees. And John Chapman: his canny eyes on James, a judgment about his stewardship that the Goodenough children sensed. Only Robert seemed still to respect his father, and Martha was young enough to do what her father ordered.

We’re sinking into this swamp, James thought. Eventually the mud is going to cover us and the Goodenoughs will all disappear.

“Pa,” Robert said, “you think that will take?”

James looked down at the graft. The cleft had closed so snug around the scions that they appeared to have grown out of it naturally, with tiny buds set just above. He knew. Sometimes with just a glance you could tell. “Yes, that’s a good one,” he said, surprised that his one moment of disregard, when his attention had turned to his daughter, seemed not to have mattered. The graft would take without his total devotion.

He and Robert bound the graft with strips of cloth, then packed the clay around it in a clumsy, protective sphere that resembled an oversized wasps’ nest. It would remain in place until summer. In just a few weeks they would be able to tell if the graft had taken: if the buds on the scion began to grow, that meant the sap was flowing from the tree on the bottom to the branch on the top. Then it would produce leaves, flowers and, in a few years, fruit.

When they were done, James showed Robert the last step of grafting, opening his fly and peeing near the new trees. They would do so for a few days until the area around the grafts was marked, to keep the deer away so they would not graze on them while the leaves were young and tender.

They grafted fifteen trees that morning, five more than James meant to. He kept finding promising-looking scions in the bundle, and feeling the press of the spitters dominating the orchard, and wanting to redress the imbalance, and so they kept going, Robert silent over the fact that they were taking five extra trees out of production for two or three years. Something had taken James over—that compulsive desire for creation overriding everything else. He would, he must, make the very best apple trees he could.

You should see em, Ma, Sal said. Theyre out there butcherin your trees like hogs.

Sal had always been a tattler. I knew she was lookin out for me more than any other Goodenough did, but that didnt make me like her more. Shed come to me and say, Ma, Marthas wet the bed, Ma, Nathan ate all the bacon, Ma, Robert let the fire go out. She wanted everything to be fair, when the best lesson she could learn was that life aint fair and theres no point expectin it to be.

My head still hurt from the applejack but I got up and looked out the window to see what this tree massacre was all about. Id forgotten James was graftin. The days smudged together so it was hard to keep track. Couldnt see nothin—they must have been in a far corner of the orchard. It was rainin and I didnt want to go out in it and have the drops hammer on my head when there was already a fearsome hammerin goin on inside. But I was curious too. So I said Ill look but you go on and dig up the garden, Sal, you know it needs it and you dont need me to tell you what to do, big gal that you are. Sal made a face but she took up the hoe and went out.

I put a shawl over my head and followed her out into the rain to see what James and Robert was doin. I stayed off to the side so they couldnt see me. They wouldnt have noticed anyhow, they was that intent on their trees. Seein them bent over a little stump, their heads almost touchin, made me want to throw rocks. It was like when the Goodenough wives back in Connecticut had their heads together by the fire, talkin and laughin and leavin me out.

Sal was right: they were butcherin the trees. Whatever numbers James had told me over and over, he couldnt have meant this many of my trees were gettin the chop. This meant war. I wanted to rage and shout and hit and kick. But I didnt. Stead I would wait for John Chapman to come back. Hed know what to do with those balls of shit James was hanging on the apple trees.

And a few days later he did come back in his canoe, glidin up the river and whistlin Bob white, Bob white. Thank God for my John Appleseed—and the bottles of jack he brought with him, cause he knew I needed them, for the skeeters. They wouldnt start bitin for a few months but I could look after the bottles till then.

He brought the trees him and James had talked about but didnt unload em right away from the second canoe. Instead James wanted to show him his devil work on the trees and took him down to the orchard. So he saw what unnatural business my husband had been up to. I wanted to hear what John Chapman would say about it, but I had to hide cause James didnt like me listenin to his apple talk. So I snuck down along the edge of the orchard behind the old dead brambles that barely hid me.

John Chapman was canny and didnt say nothing at first bout them shit balls hangin on the trees and all the butcherin and ruinin that had gone on. He was a businessman after all and he had trees to sell.

You know I got a dozen good saplings in my canoe you could have instead of seedlings, he said.

I dont want saplings, James said. Just fifteen seedlings.

My saplings are strong, they wont die on you. Theyll be producing fruit in three years—maybe even two years.

We dont have the money for saplings.

I will take credit. Youre trustworthy and not moving anywhere. Pay it back when you can.

With interest, you mean, James said. My husband aint as dumb as all that.

I see you have been doing Gods work for him again, John Chapman said, noddin at the grafted trees.

So?

Those trees will never be as strong as those grown from seed.

What, the ones you want to sell me?

Trees are stronger left to grow themselves. Man does not need to tinker with them.

So no pruning either? No thinning out trees so others grow stronger? No mulching with straw to protect em from the cold? No spreading ashes to help em grow?

God will take care of all that.

I am taking care—of the trees, of my family.

I do not think you are taking care of your wife.

I liked how John Chapman brought the conversation back to me. I liked that they were fightin about me. May have sounded like it was about trees, but it was me. I aint had men fight over me much. Maybe a little when I was just ripe. But not after ten children and nine years in a swamp.

You want to talk about trees or my wife? James said. Its one or the other.

There was a silence, then John Chapman said, Fifteen seedlings will cost you ninety cents.

James whistled. Thats a cent more per seedling than last year.

That is my price.

Thats the price I gotta pay to stop you takin an interest in Sadie?

Its you who chooses to see it that way. I am simply selling apple trees.

Bring em down, then. Ill send Robert to help you.

They went off and I was left sittin in the dead brambles, wonderin why of the three of us, I probably felt the worst.

James kept a close eye on his wife while the new grafts were vulnerable to her attention. He made a point of working near the orchard, beginning to plow the small field behind it where they would grow oats. But Sadie made no move to look at the grafts; she remained digging in the garden with Sal and Martha.

One morning when James woke he saw a muddy foot poking out from under the quilts. He glanced over at Sadie asleep beside him, then jumped up and went straight outside without even putting his boots or coat on, and ran to the orchard. One of the cows was loose among the trees, and in its wanderings it had rubbed up against seven of the fifteen graft balls, knocking them off and snapping the fragile splices. All that was left were the stumps of the root stock. The Golden Pippin scions had been trampled and chewed.

After he had shut the cow in the barn, James went back to the cabin and stood over the bed. Sadie was still asleep, her face happier and more peaceful than it should be. Or maybe he just saw what he wanted to see. He did not wake her and beat her. He did not say anything to anyone, not even to his helper Robert. Instead he mixed up more grafting clay, got out the scions he had hidden in the woods, and regrafted the trees. There was still time for them to grow, and perhaps Sadie would not notice if he did not make a fuss about it.

That night he plowed her as hard as he dared. She seemed to like it.

I was sore in the morning, snatch and head, and had to sit back down on the bed cause I felt dizzy all of a sudden. The jack can make my mornings a misery—though if I have a nip of it first thing that helps. Fight fire with fire as my Pa used to say. I wanted to ask someone to bring me a drop but for once the house was quiet. Only Martha was in, so light on her feet you couldnt hear her cept she was hummin to herself while she moved round the table and fire. She was like a little mouse waitin for me to drop a crumb for her. If I asked her for jack shed get it but hold it out so timid with her mouse paws that Id feel worse than I already did. Martha was the runt of the litter, the only weak one left who hadnt died. She hummed all the time, hymns to block out the sound of Deaths footsteps behind her. Rock of Ages, Sometimes a Light Surprises, Blest Be the Tie That Binds and that goddamn Amazin Grace. Save a wretch like me indeed. Dunno where she knew em from—I didnt teach her. Probably it was our neighbor Hattie Day, a woman who knows her hymns and how to lord em over us.

What you makin, honey? I said to her, thinkin if I used some kind words then I could ask for the jack more easily.

Pie, she said.

I could see callin her honey made her brighten like a lantern shone on her. So I used it again. What kind of pie, honey?

That second honey was a mistake—it come out false and Martha knew she wasnt my honey.

Apple pie. Im goin to get some now, she said, then wiped her hands so there was flour up and down her apron, and ran away, leavin me all alone.

Quick before she come back I went to the bottle and took a swig. That would have to do. Dont know why I didnt want Martha seein me drink, but I didnt.

It wasnt often that no one was in the house but me. It made me nervous, I liked people around even if I didnt always want to talk to em. Back east there were too many Goodenoughs nearby and I had to hide in the hay sometimes for a little peace. Not here. The hay wasnt sweet and dry like Connecticut hay. Swamp liked to get in and rot it.

I looked around the empty room. Sal and Martha kept it neat, Ill say that for em. Wood stacked, floor swept, fire burnin clear, dishes stacked on the shelves. Up in the attic theyd have made the beds all smooth. Quilts not aired cause of the rain, but they could go a few days without airin. End of the day thered be mud tracked everywhere, a pile of muddy boots by the door, food on the floor where Caleb and Nathan dropped it. But for now it was all prepared and ready for a day of battlin the Black Swamp. We werent livin with the land, but alive despite it. Cause it wanted to kill us every chance it got, either the skeeters or the fever or the mud or the damp or the heat or the cold. At least the house was warm enough, easy to do now the winters back was broken. Sometimes durin the cold spells when the snow was high against the house, all seven of us would be huddlin by the fire wrapped in quilts and not movin the whole day cept to feed the animals and the fire and ourselves. I was glad those days were done, cause my family drove me crazy then.

Martha had already made the pastry for the pie and rolled it out on the table into a perfect circle. Jest like her. Sal or me wouldnt of bothered but left it ragged, but Martha would crimp the edges all even with her little fingers and weave a pie top that looked like checkered cloth.

I was still lookin at the pastry when she come back with her apron full of apples—spitters wed kept back from the cider press for cookin. I frowned. You gonna put some sugar in with them?

Martha peeped at me with her startled eyes. No, Ma. None left.

I already knew that when I asked her. I knew what we had and didnt have. We had thirty-eight apple trees and no sugar. So what you doin with spitters? I said. Pie will be too sour to eat.

Martha didnt say anything, jest tucked her hair behind her ears like she always does.

Go back and get some of them Golden Pippins.

Martha peeped again. There arent many left, Ma.

You heard me. Go on and get em. Take those back. I nodded at the spitters shed tumbled onto the table.

Martha looked over her shoulder towards the orchard, but of course James couldnt hear. Pa wont like it, she said in a small mousy voice to go with her mousy eyes and paws.

Dont matter. You do what I say. Bring em all back here. All of em.

So she did. She took away the spitters and brought back the rest of the Golden Pippins. Funny lookin apples. Theyre little but long too, like someones pulled on em. Then she chopped em all up for the pies. Didnt say a word, but wept little mouse tears.

I couldnt wait for dinner so I could see James face when he bit into that pie. First though we had to get through the pork chops and pickled cabbage and corn pone and apple sauce—made back when we still had some sugar. James looked mighty pleased when Martha brought out the pies—gave her a big smile cause he likes pie. She served everybody a slice but herself, though nobody noticed but me. They didnt know about the apples. Course none of them cared about apple taste like James. Caleb and Nathan jest gobbled theirs down. Sal picked at her piece cause she was wet and cold from hoein in the rain and wanted to complain about that rather than enjoy some fresh baked pie by the best pie maker in the family. Even Robert ate his slice without a word, cept for a smile at his sister.

I ate mine with my eyes on my husband. James looked so contented with that first sweet taste. Only slowly did it come to him that these were his special apples, the ones he said tasted like honey and nuts but jest tasted like water to me. He squinched his face and said, What apples are in this pie?

Martha kept her eyes on her empty plate. Golden Pippins, she said so soft only I could hear. But James didnt need to ask—he knew his apples.

Whyd you use those? You know youre not supposed to cook with those. Thats what spitters are for.

He was waitin for her to say somethin but she didnt.

Are there any left?

Marthas tongue was frozen, and it seemed like the rest of her was too. Finally she managed to shake her head. I was shovelin my pie in faster and faster, expectin her to look at me any second and then James would know I was behind it and who knows what hed do then. Not knowin made me nervous and happy. But Martha didnt say another word, didnt tell him she had been obeyin me, even though it was gonna hurt her.

It did hurt her, cause he whipped her. Id been all set to laugh and tease him about wastin his apples in the pies, but whippin Martha kind of took the fun out of it. I finished my slice, but I wasnt really tastin what I was eatin. To be honest, pies are better made with spitters anyway, even without the sugar. The tartness holds up better than the sweet when its baked.

He was whipping his daughter but he was thinking of his wife. With each red strap mark that appeared across Martha’s narrow buttocks and twig-like calves, James grew angrier at himself for punishing her when he should be aiming his blows at Sadie. He knew she was behind Martha’s using Golden Pippins for the pies. But Martha would never admit it. In all her short life she had never tattled on anyone, preferring to take the blame. Her brothers and sisters always took advantage of her silence—all except Robert. He and Martha were both quiet, though it was not the same kind of quiet. Robert was stronger, and would stand up to someone he felt was wrong. He looked straight at people with his bright brown eyes, and his level gaze unsettled them so that they didn’t dare blame him for something he did not do. Martha had watery gray eyes and never held a gaze; she tended to hunch over and keep her eyes on the ground, reminding James of a willow tree with its spindly dangling branches. This morning Sal had braided Martha’s hair in a fishtail plait that did not suit her thin locks. The braid hung down her back like a frayed piece of twine with a kink in its tail, and every time James looked at it as she leaned against the wall, awaiting the strap, its wispiness made him strike her harder than he had intended. She didn’t even cry properly, but was silent while tears dripped down her cheeks. Her siblings were silent too, watching the whipping, mostly indifferent. Only when James saw Robert grimace did he cease.

Sadie was smirking into her pie. “War,” she said, and got up to go to the bottle of applejack.

Is this a war? James thought as he escaped the airless cabin. Because if it was, he would surely lose, as his wife was more experienced than he was at cruelty and ruthlessness. It was also easier to go on the offensive, as she did, than to defend, as he must his trees.

Nonetheless, he took precautions. If he was to protect them, he would do so thoroughly. Taking precious time out from plowing—turning it over to Nathan and Caleb, who as predicted did not plow straight furrows and chipped the blade—James built around each graft a shoulder-high fence made of hickory branches sharpened to points at both ends and driven into the ground. He told the family that peeing around the trees wasn’t enough and they needed the fences to keep the deer away; but they were equally effective at stopping Sadie, or at least slowing her down. To get to a graft she would have to pull out some of the sticks. Unfortunately it meant that James could not get close to the grafts either, depriving him of the pleasure of inspecting them closely for progress. He could only peer at them from several feet away, when what he wanted to do was squeeze the buds and scrape his nail along the scion’s bark to see if it was greening. He still did not feel secure enough, and so he ringed the older Golden Pippins with deer fences as well, though they were mature enough that deer were unlikely to want their tougher leaves. Even as he built them he worried that the fences might send a signal to Sadie, tempting her to mischief she had not even thought of.

Luckily spring was such a busy time of year that she was unlikely to visit the orchard. There was too much to do: plowing and planting fields of oats and corn, digging and planting the kitchen garden, repairing roofs, cleaning out the barn and the house. While James worked with Nathan and Caleb in the fields, Sal and Martha dug the garden, and Robert swung between garden and field, helping whoever needed it most.

Because she did not like digging and did not mind making her daughters do it, Sadie mostly stayed out of the garden, and spring-cleaned the house after the long winter, throwing back the doors and windows, sweeping and scrubbing and beating and dusting. This was when she could be bothered. Sadie had never been very house-proud, not even back east. She was even less interested in it in Ohio, where it was harder to keep clean. She would get an idea into her head that something needed to be done—the quilts aired, for instance. Then she would make a great show of stringing a rope between two trees and bringing out the quilts to hang up and beat. Inevitably she would carry too much at once, and drag the ends through the mud so that they had to be scrubbed—not by Sadie, who never liked to fix what she had broken. Sal, or more likely Martha, would have to boil water and wash out the mud. By then Sadie would have moved on to another task, such as scrubbing every surface with so much vinegar that the sour acrid smell drove the family outside again. She moved between extremes: attractive when she was loving, which wasn’t often these days; or, more often, unpredictable, vicious or indifferent. James had to remind himself of the lively girl in the blue dress who had wrapped her legs around him and laughed. That Sadie was long gone, left somewhere in a field in Connecticut, the dress faded to the color of the sky.

At least she did not touch his grafts. After the declaration of war and the letting loose of the cow, she let it drop—typical of Sadie. James did not trust her, though. She might be addled with applejack most of the time, but she did not forget grudges. Indeed, she seemed to relish holding tight to them.

One April day after they had finished plowing and planting the fields, James was walking through the woods along one of the old Indian trails they didn’t use much, looking for muskrat push-ups he could set snares near, when he became aware of a green haze overhead. The leaves on the trees had come out, small and new and creased like a summer quilt that has been folded away during the winter months and needs a day or two of shaking out to become smooth. Although he knew that unless God had other, apocalyptic plans, it would happen every year, James was always caught off guard by the leaves’ appearance. He thought he had been keeping a close watch, yet they still managed to surprise him so that he never caught the midpoint between closed bud and open leaf.

With his eyes on the leaves, he stepped into a mudhole that slopped over the top of his boots and stank of rot. James cursed and stopped to shake them out. This was why his children often went through the swamp barefoot—it was easier washing your feet than getting boots clean of swamp mud. But James hated the squelching clay between his toes, and preferred the civility of shoes.

When he stood up again he noticed, just off the path, a gray-brown boll plastered around the sawn-off branch of a wild apple tree, a small wand sticking up out of it. It was the tree he’d once eaten sour fruit from when he was desperate for the taste of apples.

He stepped up to the graft, but didn’t even need to examine it to know it was Robert’s work, for it looked exactly like a graft James himself would have made. There was no one within a hundred miles who could copy him so well. Not only that: the graft had taken, with buds on the scions close to bursting into leaves. He couldn’t be sure until it flowered, but he suspected the blossoms would be tinged the pink of Golden Pippins. Robert was thinking ahead, cultivating an apple tree out of Sadie’s way. James smiled at his son’s foresight.

Though he should have gone on to look for signs of muskrats—the drag of their tails, the underwater entrance in the stream he was following—James instead did something a settler would never normally do during the busy springtime when food stores are still low and there is so much work to be done. He did nothing. Lowering himself onto a damp log, he sat and looked at the green fuzz taking over the trees, at the birds flitting through the branches as they built nests, at the trout lilies and trilliums and Dutchman’s breeches at his feet and at the graft his son had created at a safe remove from Sadie and her wrath.

Gradually he relaxed on the log in a way he never could around people. He liked to note the cycle of the trees through the seasons, with their leaves unfurling to an intense green, then flaring and browning and falling. Trees did not talk back, or willfully disobey, or laugh at him. They were not here to torment him; indeed, they were not here for him at all. James’ sitting under them did not matter one way or another, and for that he was profoundly grateful.

He contemplated the grafted Golden Pippin before him, and wondered how long it would manage to grow before the Black Swamp got to it with mildew or mold or rot. Humid swampland, full of grasses and reeds and trees run wild, was not ideal for an apple tree—though the wild one had managed somehow.

James sighed and looked down at his hands, roughened and scarred from years of the worst kind of hard work—the futile kind. After nine years he knew he should have gotten used to the life here. The Goodenoughs were old-timers compared to all the newcomers whose axes rang through the woods as they fought the trees. They were now the people new settlers came to for advice on how to drain a field to grow barley (Grow potatoes), on how to keep the skeeters at bay (Wear mittens in August), on whether the numerous bullfrogs were tasty enough to eat in a pinch (You’ll find out).

At last he got to his feet. He would not tell Robert he’d found the grafted tree. There were few secrets in a family who lived in such close quarters, but he would keep one now.

As he walked back towards the farm he was overwhelmed by the need to look at the grafts in his orchard. They had shown no sign of budding on the top scions as Robert’s already had, but it was hard to tell with the spiked deer fences keeping him away. Now with the leaves emerging all around in the woods, he had to know if the grafts had been a success.

He spotted it from the edge of the orchard: an applejack bottle tipped upside down and hung over one of the fence spikes. James’ stomach twisted. Drawing closer, though, he saw that the grafted trees were still intact, and in fact were all budding above the graft. Their leaves would open soon, to join the rest of the greening woods.

The upended bottle was a reminder that Sadie was watching them too.

James always said the best part about May was that the apple blossoms were out. He would say that. For me the best part was goin to Perrysburg for the first time since November. It was only twelve miles away but with the state of the roads it might as well be a hundred, we were that cut off. By May the snow was gone and the mud was bad but not as bad as April. And our stocks were real low then—wed been livin on bacon and squirrels and corn pone for months. It was always hard in the spring how everything was growin but we had so little food to eat. Id been dreamin of bread made with flour and of eggs—fox got most of the chickens—of coffee and tea and of a stir of sugar to go in it. Needed some lettuce seeds, some tomato seeds. Besides that, our boots all had holes and the plow blade needed mendin. Id run out of white thread and was havin to repair quilts and shirts the mice got to with brown. James wanted nails. We needed a couple of chickens.

And all of us wanted to see other people. The Goodenoughs were sick of the Goodenoughs. Who wouldnt be, trapped in that cabin all the long winter. Back in Connecticut the winters were hard but there was family all around and plenty of neighbors too. If I got sick of one of those Goodenough wives I could go into another room and sit with another one. If James drove me crazy I could talk to Charlie Goodenough. I could run down the road to a neighbor or to my mother or sisters. Here the neighbors were too far to run to in the snow and cold just for fun. And they got that mad-eyed look from the mud and the cabin fever. None of them were people I wanted to spend my days with, though James said I was too picky. Why dont you visit with Hattie Day, he kept sayin. Ill tell you why. That woman was dull as a bucket of water. I sat with her once to sew and fell asleep over my patchwork. Id brought Sal with me and she had to kick me to wake me up. After that Sal and I got the giggles while Hattie Day jest sat there frownin. Looked over her specs perched on the end of her piggy nose and told us it was time for us to git home before dark even though the sun still had hours left in the sky.

Perrysburg had some life to it—a few stores, a blacksmith, a tavern or two, a school. And people. Thats what it had. Every time I went I sucked up the people, starin at their faces till they made a face at me to stop. I could see em laughin at us swamp folk with our backwater ways and the mud we shed from our clothes. I didnt care, I was that glad to see other people.

Best of all was that there was a big camp meeting every May, went on for days in tents pitched jest outside of town. We stayed a night or two, depending on James mood. They got preachers talkin all day and all night and I stayed up listenin to the God talk and singin the hymns. Bein at the revival set me up for a time, gave me a reason to smile. It wasnt the God talk that made me so happy, though I liked that well enough. It was the other people, especially the ones that stayed up late like me. At home nobody ever wanted to stay up with me, so at the meetings I was glad to be with my other night owls. Wed sing and share bottles—though lots of the preachers frowned on whiskey or jack and we kept the bottles low so they didnt see. James and the children would go to sleep back in the wagon and Id jest carry on all night with my new friends.

It was always hard to leave the camp meetings. Id have stayed a week if I could but James never wanted to. Hed start talkin about gettin back home practically the minute we left the farm, fret about the corn or the trees or the snares hed set. Or he worried about the children left behind, that theyd set fire to the chimney or the cow would get loose or theyd get bit by a rattler. After a time all those worries would take him over and wed have to go back.

We always left two behind. We had to, to protect our property and feed the animals and milk the cow and keep the fire goin. We had to leave one of the older ones, Nathan or Caleb, who could shoot an Indian or a fox or a rattler if they had to. Then we left another to keep em company and run for help. Nathan and Caleb took turns each time we went but the younger children drew straws. Sals a cheater and never had to stay behind. The last few times Martha drew the short straw. Typical of that gal.

She drew the short straw this time too and you should of seen her face. Ill stay back, Robert said. You go in my place, I dont mind.

Martha gave him a smile made me want to kick a cat. No, I said, that would jest defeat the purpose of drawin straws. Otherwise you might as well volunteer to stay every time. Straws means its fate and no ones fault, so no one gets the blame.

But—

No, I interrupted him. And dont you ever talk back to your mother or youll get a whippin will send you straight to Sandusky.

He gave me that Robert look cause he knew I would never whip him. But he didnt argue with me. Sorry, Martha, he said. Im selling some squirrels tails and Ill buy you some candy. You want lemon or peppermint?

Lemon, she said real quiet. Fool should of chose peppermint. The taste is stronger.

We took the wagon for sleepin in and for the supplies but we walked most of the way to Perrysburg, takin turns to ride and rest our feet. Wed learned what we didnt know when we first tried to come through the swamp—you keep the wagon light on the corduroy road and it dont get stuck so much. Also we had a pair of oxen now that were used to swamp ways—the old Connecticut horses died, one of a leg broke goin through the logs laid across to make up the road, the other cause it was jest too damned tired of all the swamp work it had to do. The oxen were big and dumb but they knew how to step along a rough corduroy road.

I didnt mind walkin cause we were goin somewhere and it was sunny and there was other wagons and people walkin to Perrysburg for the same reasons as us—supplies and the camp meeting. So I talked to em while James jest nodded and kept to himself. Made me some friends along the road I promised to find at the camp. Heard there was plans to start to macadamize this road in a month or two. Meant it would be easier to get around. Easier to leave too.

Closer to Perrysburg the road was better and the oxen went easier and I was tired so I rode a while settin next to James while Sal and Nathan and Robert walked a little behind. We was quiet, content for a change. Jest for a little while I could forget James and me were havin a war.

I hear theyre settin to start fixin this road soon, I said.

James grunted.

Be work there for some. Nathan and Caleb could work on it, bring in some money. Jest while we can spare em till harvest.

James still didnt say anything. I could tell he wasnt really listenin to me.

Then he said, Sadie, you ever think about goin back?

I was so surprised I didnt say anything for a minute. Back where? I said then though I knew what he meant.

Back east.

I didnt know whether I wanted to lie or tell the truth. No, I said finally.

Well, I been thinkin about it.

Damn. I looked out at the trees along the road. The leaves were all bright and there were still some dogwood flowers out. A yellow butterfly was flappin over the road like a little leaf got caught up in the wind. Suddenly everything looked different. Why? I said.

Its too hard here. Theres always something dying.

We didnt lose any children last year. Thats somethin.

We lost nine trees.

I begun to laugh. Thats what this is about? Those goddamned trees? Five of our children died in this swamp and you want to go back because of trees?

James gritted his teeth so his jaw flexed and I felt the thrill I got when he was angry. Are we goin to fight right here on the road with people all around? I thought. Cause there were people ahead of us and behind us, and they would all get to see the Goodenoughs go at each other. If I was lucky Id give him a buckeye he could show off in Perrysburg.

But he didnt hit me. He surprised me again. This is a hard life to be passing on to our children, he said. I will feel guilty about that all my life, that we could have made it easier for them by staying in Connecticut. Then there wouldnt have been so many died, and so much death and hard work in their futures.

Theyll be all right, I said. Five children. That aint so bad. Sides, we got nothin back east. Your familys got no land for you.

I was surprisin myself by defendin us stayin in the Black Swamp. So many times over the years Id wished we could load the wagon and head back. But too much time had gone by, and when I thought about Connecticut it didnt make me smile. Instead I remembered how the wives all hated me. I could even admit now that Charlie Goodenough had probably been relieved to see the back of me. There was nothing to return for. Besides, we had five children buried in the swamp. We couldnt leave em.

Sadie, James said, that swamp is defeating me. I cant even grow fifty apple trees.

Numbers again. Dont worry bout that goddamn number, I said. Nobodys countin but you.

Perrysburg always made James feel a little better and then a little worse. Seeing the small collection of rough buildings after miles of trees and marsh reeds made his heart beat faster. Here was smoke from chimneys. Here were right angles and pine boards planed at a mill. Here was whitewash. Here were curtains in windows, and windowpanes rather than paper greased with bear fat. Here were planks to walk on over mud, hitching posts, the sound of laughter, even the tinkle of a piano. Here were women wearing brightly colored hats and dresses with hems that weren’t muddy. Here was civilization that did not rely on Goodenough sweat to make it happen.

Very soon he felt worse, though. For all the hardships of the swamp, there was a purity to it that Perrysburg lacked, or had destroyed. Buildings had been raised with no thought to the surroundings. Bits of wood had been left where they fell—splinters from planks, ends hacked off and strewn about, stumps half-chopped and then abandoned. Piles of earth left from excavated cold cellars had been rained and snowed on so that they solidified into ugly miniature mountains. Here and there were smoldering piles of leaves and rags. The outhouses stank of shit. No one cleared up the horse dung from the street. The planks outside the saloons were slick with spit and piss and puke. When anticipating a trip to Perrysburg, James always managed to forget about this aspect of the town. Now as he looked about him from the safety of the wagon seat, he had a sudden desire to be back on the farm, in the orchard, where the apple trees were blooming. It was the most beautiful time of the year there and he was missing it to come and be among people and their dirt.

The Goodenoughs scattered the moment James pulled up: Sadie to look over the merchandise in Fuller’s General Store, Nathan and Robert to trade their squirrel tails, Sal to look for other girls. James would ride on to the blacksmith to drop off the plow blade, then bring his own furs to the trading post. He reminded Sadie that they would not have much to spend. She gave him a look. “Got to get flour and thread and nails and sugar. Fabric for new shirts for Caleb—he’s grown out of everything we got. Shoes need mending. We need seeds.”

“No ribbons, that’s what I meant,” James said. “Brown sugar, not white. And leave the shoes—we won’t need ’em for the summer. We can get ’em fixed in the fall.”

Sadie snorted and disappeared inside. Now that he had forbidden ribbons, she would probably buy some.

He left the plow blade with the blacksmith, frowning at the cost, and arranged to pick it up the next day. That would mean only one night at the camp meeting, James hoped—though he knew the repaired blade could wait at the blacksmith’s for a few days. He was always looking for reasons not to stay at the camp. All those noisy people praising the Lord made him uncomfortable.

He went on to the trading post to see what he could get for the furs and pelts he had brought in the wagon, a bundle that represented the winter’s hunting and eating: muskrats, beavers, rabbits. Nathan and Robert were already there, watching the proceedings and jingling the few coins they had made from their squirrels. From all over the area, men and boys were bringing in skins. Like the Goodenoughs, most of the swamp people brought in muskrats and beavers and deer, but a few had made more exotic kills: a polecat, a few wolves, a fox with a bushy red tail. One brought in a black bear skin, and everyone stroked it, though the greasy musk was so strong and persistent that James smelled it on his hands for the rest of the day.

As they were leaving—James disappointed with the prices he got, for he was not a good haggler—a ragged man with a ginger beard entered and threw down the pelt of a panther. “There!” he cried, triumphant. “Betcha ain’t seen many of these!”

They hadn’t, and stopped to look: the sleek midnight fur, the cat’s fangs frozen into a snarl, one eye gone, the other dead yellow. Nathan stayed behind with the crowd to admire it, but Robert followed his father out. James was not sentimental about animals; he’d killed to eat—pigs, chicken, deer, wild birds, rabbits, boars—without hesitation. But the cat’s snarl made him sad.

He grew uneasy as they approached Fuller’s. It was bad enough that he would have to tell Sadie he’d gotten less than expected for his furs, so that even buying brown sugar was out of the question. He was also nervous about going into the shop at all. Though run by men, and with plenty of male customers, general stores were still a woman’s domain, something James had felt even back in Connecticut. The gossip, the laughter, the emphasis on the look of things—the yellowness of the cornmeal, the redness of the check cloth, the shininess of the silver pins—seemed to him to be misplaced priorities. He understood the pragmatism behind it—pale cornmeal was not as tasty; tarnished pins left marks on fabric—but James could not take an active interest himself. Stepping inside the shop, he noted that most of the other men there were standing around the edges of the room and remaining silent as well.

Sadie was in the center, a few women gathered around. That was not new: she always found her way to the center. Her voice could be heard even from outside the store, and made him wince. She was talking about apples. As he sidled in she was saying, “Don’t know why he’s got such a sweet tooth he has to have eatin’ apples all the time instead of spitters. Cider’s what we need, not apples to eat. Don’t it feel good to have those barrels full of cider lined up, and the bottles of applejack. And the vinegar, of course.” James suspected Sadie tacked vinegar on to the list because of the reaction of a short woman standing nearby, who jerked her head at the mention of applejack. It was Hattie Day, the Goodenoughs’ closest neighbor. Two more different women you could not imagine in the same room: Hattie Day was short and stout and shapeless, with a broad, smile-free face and a sideways look that implied many thoughts, all held back. She had unfortunate taste in hats; today she was wearing a stiff straw one with a straight brim that sliced across her forehead, trimmed with tiny white silk flowers that had gone gray from swamp life. James did not notice women’s hats much, but he could see it did not suit her. Even Sadie’s ragged bonnet was better than those limp gray flowers.

But he would not judge. The Days had been their neighbors for seven years, and Hattie had set aside her own wordless judgment many times in order to help out the Goodenoughs, whether through fever or flood or hunger or one of Sadie’s rages when she ran out of applejack. The Days were prudent farmers, John Day a good hunter, and they had no children, so they always had enough to spare.

It wasn’t all one way. Sal and Martha had been sent over on wash day to help Hattie. James and the boys had helped John Day build a bigger barn and harvest corn and hay. But the Days seemed to be in control of their farm, and treated the Goodenoughs’ help as if they could get by without it—which they probably could. James never talked to John Day about apples, or offered to trade scions or help him to graft eaters. He couldn’t help envying how the Day farm seemed steadily to grow, with a little more land cleared, an extra cow bought, a smokehouse added, a pantry filled with more jars of food than they could eat in a year. The only way in which they did not expand was children—which made the other expansion irrelevant in James’ eyes. For all his envy of the cows, the army of jars and an orchard planted with exactly fifty apple and pear trees, he would not want to switch places with them.

“I’ll tell you what I did,” Sadie continued now to the group of women. “We only had a few eaters left, and I used ’em all up in a pie! You should’ve seen my husband’s face when he tasted it. You’d of thought he was eatin’ his own children, the way he went on about it!”

The women around her laughed, except for Hattie Day, who seemed to take a step away from Sadie’s words, and began examining bolts of fabric. Her move away was not subtle enough, though. James could have told her there was nothing Sadie hated more than to have someone choose not to listen to her. Leaving her admiring circle, she followed the one person not taking in every word. “What would you do if your husband was crazy about apples, Hattie?” she said.

Hattie Day gazed at Sadie. “I would be glad my husband was growing something good and plentiful to eat,” she said. “It’s a hard life in the swamp. Least he can do is enjoy his apples.” She turned her back on Sadie and went over to the shopkeeper, pointedly engaging him in conversation. Sadie stood alone for a moment, the other women smirking behind her at such a public slight.

It was a rare feeling, but James pitied his wife. She had never really learned how to get along with other women, he’d noticed. Those worthy of her did not take to her, and Sadie usually ended up with the sycophantic or the unsound. She’d had a terrible time with his brothers’ wives: seeing her with them was like watching someone pet a cat against its fur.

He looked down, then stepped towards her as if he hadn’t seen her or heard what she’d said about him and the apples. “Got the fur money,” he said. “You can get some sugar, and a ribbon or two.”

“White sugar?”

“Yes, white sugar.” It was worth the further debt he would get into, just to see her rare grateful smile. Women might shun her, but James would not.

Id never been to a camp meeting till we moved to Ohio. They aint something New England Methodists ever needed—we had our churches to go to every Sunday. But there were no churches in the Black Swamp, only one in Perrysburg. Imagine wadin through all that mud or snow or with a fever to get to a church twelve miles away, then find out the preacher was sick or stuck somewhere.

So we got our religion readin the Bible, and once or twice a year at camp meetings held out in the woods outside of Perrysburg. People came from all over, and like us Goodenoughs they were straight out of the swamp and starved of company. Wed gone when there were a thousand people gathered, maybe even two thousand, sleepin in wagons or under canvas strung between trees.

This time we left our wagon and went into the woods to find a place to set. James hung back cause he was always like that at camp meetings, leavin it to me to fit us in. It was crowded with people settin all over, spreadin out quilts to claim their place. Looked like there werent no space but I found a little opening between two families and spread out a Goodenough quilt—a frayed old nine-patch I would have to get Martha to mend again—and though they gave us the side eye, the people next to us shifted a little and we squeezed ourselves in. Five minutes later another family done the same thing, and by this time we were old hands and had the right to grunt and roll our eyes at them for makin it more crowded. But for the most part people was that happy to be with others that no one stayed mad for long.

At the camps everybody brought food and cooked over fires, some families for themselves, others pitchin in together. Course James wanted the Goodenoughs to keep to ourselves, while I was all for joinin with others. But I was the cook so I decided what we were goin to do. Near us there was a big pot hung over a fire, and I added a knuckle of ham to it without askin James or anybody else. Once Id done that the women tendin the pot got a whole lot friendlier, welcomin me in to cook and chat. I sent Nathan and Robert off to look for firewood. Nathan complained that with so many people around and hundreds of fires, there wouldnt be wood close by and theyd have to go a long way to find any. But I made em go anyway, and Sal went off to find some other gals, and James went out to the road to stand by the wagons and listen to the other men without sayin a word himself. Then I could relax and start to enjoy myself.

There were so many people campin that we were a ways from the platform where the preachers stood so everybody could see em and hear em. Once Id made sure people had seen me do my share of stirrin the pot and Nathan and Robert had brought back armfuls of wood, I slipped off to hear some God talk.

I hadnt been to a camp meeting since the previous summer, and the only God talk Id had since then had been John Chapmans, with all his big words like correspondences and redemption and regeneration. These preachers were very different from him. They was usually Methodist ministers, but now and then youd get a stray Baptist or Congregationalist preacher come through and get a turn to speak. We wasnt picky that way. In fact of all the preachers I liked the Baptists best. The Methodists I was used to from my childhood, and they talked a long time without sayin anything new. But the Baptists shouted with fire straight from their bellies—straight from God, I expect. Also they asked questions and we could call back to em.

When Id pushed my way up so I was close enough to hear I knew I was in luck and it was a Congregationalist preacher—they was almost as good as the Baptists. I couldnt see him but I heard him ask: Where do you think God is today?

Hes here, people round me answered.

Where did you say He is?

Right here with us.

Does He ever leave you?

No he does not.

Is He in your heart?

Yes he is.

Is He in your hands?

Yes he is.

No! You are in His hands. Where are you?

In His hands.

Right away I got that soarin feelin of not havin to think or make any decisions, jest answerin with the crowd what the preacher and God wanted me to say. Thats what I loved about camp meetings—lettin go of my whole life so I didnt have to think about James or the children or what we were gonna eat or the hardship of livin in the Black Swamp. I could jest be.

Course it helped that I had a little jack in me by then. Somewhere between the cookin pot and the preacher Id managed to get handed a bottle, and I took a big gulp cause I didnt know when Id get another chance. It was powerful strong jack, stronger than what I was used to. It cut a path straight to my belly then spread out all over so that I tingled to my fingertips and toes. It loosened my tongue too so it was easy to shout back at the preacher.

Then he got us to sing, and I liked that even better. The hymns were different from what I knew back home but they were easy enough to pick up, and more fun to sing too. I sang real loud:

This night my soul has caught new fire

Halle, hallelujah!

I feel that Heaven is drawin nigher

Glory hallelujah!

Shout, shout, we are gainin ground

Halle, hallelujah!

Satans kingdom is tumblin down

Glory hallelujah!

I jumped as high as I could when I sang, Shout shout. People round me were singin too, but I noticed a couple of women were givin me those side eyes looks I knew too well, and the men were laughin and I knew it was at me. The good thing about camps is theyre so big you can jest move and after a few minutes youll be with new people who are more welcomin.

I made my way round, callin and singin and movin, and then there was another bottle and I stayed a while havin a spree with those friendly people till they turned on me all of a sudden like a mean dog and I had to move on.

Preachers changed a few times—some quieter, some talked so long I fell asleep and someone poked me awake cause I was snorin.

Then along came a real Baptist preacher who was the best of all. He was jest a little man but with a long brown beard ended in a point. He had on a yaller checkered suit, and though he was in the sun and sweatin like a man choppin wood, he still kept his jacket on. He stood completely still on the platform and started off real soft so at first I couldnt hear him. Then he got a little louder, sayin: I feel the Lord now. Do you feel the Lord?

Yes, a few people said.

I feel the Lord now, he repeated. Do you feel the Lord?

A few more said, Yes I feel the Lord.

He jest said it over and over. I feel the Lord now. Do you feel the Lord? Each time he was a little louder.

Yes I feel the Lord, I said all of a sudden. It jest popped out of my mouth without me even thinkin.

Then the preacher started to shake a little bit—his hands, then his arms, then his chest. And he was repeatin himself over and over and shakin a little more and a little more until he was head to toe shakin, and then we were all of us answerin, Yes, I feel the Lord, over and over like a wave. And I couldnt help it, I started to shake too, it was like a force took me over. My teeth started chatterin like I had the swamp fever, and my arms were jerkin so I hit people round me without meanin to. But they was flailin too, we were all shakin together and sweatin and crying and shoutin, Yes I feel the Lord! Id never felt so good in all my life, not even when I went with Charlie Goodenough way high up in the new hay in the barn and lay with him. I was full of joy, and full of the Lord.

And in the middle of all that jumpin and jerkin and shoutin I opened my eyes, which had sweat rollin into them and stingin them, and I looked across the field of writhin witnesses to the Lord and I saw Robert standin still. It was easy to see him cause he was the only person not movin. And he was lookin at me.

His look made me want to stop, cause there was no God in it, jest a boy lookin at his mother and thinkin, Why, Ma?

I couldnt stand that, cause I didnt want to stop. So I turned my back on him. I turned my back on my son. Then I started jumpin and shoutin again, but it wasnt the same as before—not at all. Suddenly I saw myself the way he saw me, and it was so ugly I had to sit down in the middle of all those people and cry. Real tears now, not what the preacher had wrung from me. These were the real tears from God.

James found the talk by the wagons tiring after a while. He liked to listen, and he had thoughts of what he’d like to say about the weather, or the corn crop, or the road being macadamized, or the rascals in Congress. But he never quite had the courage to speak them aloud. By the time he had formed words to his liking, the conversation had moved on.

Then one of the men in the circle James was hovering near commented, “Lost eight apple trees this winter.”

Without thinking James said, “I lost nine.”

“Four,” another said.

“Two, but I’ve got my eye on a third that’s still not blossomed.”

“I didn’t lose any. Luck, I guess. If there is luck in this swamp.”

“What kind you got? Seek-No-Further? Fall Queens? Milans?”

“No—Early Chandler. From back east. I grew it from seed.”

There was a pause, then James said, “I grafted fifteen Golden Pippins this spring.”

“Golden Pippin,” the first man repeated. “Never heard of it. Where’s it from?”

“A tree from Connecticut, and before that, England. My grandparents brought it over. It’s a yellow apple, an eater.”

“What’s its yield?”

“Usually ten bushels a year.”

“Not bad. And the taste?”

“Honey and nuts, then pineapple at the end,” James answered almost automatically. He had been describing that taste all his life.

“You grafted them, you say?”

“I did.”

“You use wax on the strips?”

“Don’t need to. Clay’s enough, as long as you mix hair into it to keep it from breaking.”

“The grafts take?”

“Yup.” James almost added that the grafts had blossomed, but decided he’d better not overstate their success.

The talk moved on, but those few minutes were enough to elate him for several hours—all the way through the long evening and into the night of preaching and singing, eating stew and listening to folks talk. His good mood was ruined only when he was making his way through the woods towards the wagon to get to sleep, and stumbled upon Sadie, skirts up, being pumped by the ginger man who’d brought in the panther fur to the trading post. They were both so drunk they didn’t notice him, not even when he held his lantern high to shine down on them. He watched them for a moment. Then he knocked the man off Sadie like he was flicking a fly off a piece of pie. The man didn’t fight back, but lay in a slump and started to snore. Sadie looked up at her husband in the lantern light and laughed.

“We’re going,” he said. “You coming?”

“I ain’t finished yet.”

James said nothing more, but turned away and continued threading through sleeping forms all over the ground. It was hard not to step on people, and his boot caught hands and ankles and shoulders, leaving shouts and mutterings in his wake. He did not respond, for he was in no mood to apologize to anyone.

He found the oxen tethered in the field where he’d left them, asleep on their feet. James patted them for a moment before blowing into their nostrils, resisting the urge to yank them; he must not take out his rage on innocent beasts.

The oxen were reluctant to start up again in the dark. A handful of oats and an apple—a spitter but they didn’t seem to mind—at last roused them, and James led them over to the wagon, where the children were asleep under the nine-patch quilt. He raised his lantern and studied it for a moment. The quilt had come with them from Connecticut nine years before—new then, finished in a hurry by Sadie and his sisters, for they had decided to go west suddenly. James knew the squares well, even in the dim lantern light. They were made up of fabric from dresses and aprons and old sheets and other scraps of family: a worn yellow bonnet of his mother’s, a blue skirt of Sadie’s that had torn, his brother Charlie’s breeches, also torn. His whole Connecticut family was sewn into it in quick, uneven stitches now unraveling in places. There were tears between the squares where the stuffing was coming through. But despite its ragged appearance, it was a comfort.