The Endless Forest
Page 22
“But it’s so late,” Becca said, not for the first time. “What can she be doing?”
Charlie yawned noisily. “My guess is she’s over there with a lantern taking the toll.”
Becca woke sometime later to the sound of murmured voices. Charlie had already gone to their chamber door and opened it a crack. He listened for a moment and then he closed it and came back to bed, stubbing his toe in the process.
“I told you,” he said. “Now will you stop fussing about Callie Wilde? You need all your strength for tomorrow’s worries. We all will.”
The finest room at the Red Dog was the one that looked down over the lane. It had a big bed hung with faded curtains and an adjoining room no bigger than a closet with a single bed, a servant’s lot.
The entire Cunningham family had crowded into the bigger room and now slept uneasily, older children wrapped in blankets on the floor and what looked like two or three grown-ups in the bed with Jane’s youngest between them. Callie stepped carefully by the light of a tallow candle and then closed herself into the servant’s cabinet.
It was narrow and stuffy, but she had it to herself for the simple reason that there was not room enough for anyone to stretch out on the floor. She sat down heavily and started to peel herself out of clothes that were drenched with water and dirt. Her face and arms were tight with dried mud, but the very idea of looking for a washbasin and water was so absurd that it brought out a small smile.
When she was naked she wrapped herself in the rough wool blanket, put out the candle, and lay down.
The dark was a comfort. Absolute and unyielding, she made a place for herself inside it. A safe place, where she could let her iron grip loosen for a little while. She wept until her eyes were swollen shut, silent tears that burned like lye. For the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to want to go to sleep and not wake up again. She understood why her father had simply … walked away.
Callie wished for the thousandth time that she hadn’t sent Levi to Johnstown for supplies. But she had, and so had spent the day alone, walking her property lines back and forth for hours, venturing as far as she could go before water and mud stopped her.
With some effort she turned her mind to other things. The cider house still stood, minus a few shingles but otherwise intact on the hillside above the orchard. Inside, the cider press, rows of jugs, and stacks of baskets and barrels, all as she had last seen them. She continued on, a quarter mile into the woods to the spot where Levi’s small cabin stood in a circle of birch trees, undisturbed. It was one thing to be thankful for.
And they still had three dozen trees that had survived and might still bear fruit this year. Even poor fruit could be made into applejack, and applejack would carry them through yet another disastrous year.
In the close, damp dark she found she could not keep control of her thoughts, or of the images she had gathered by the light of a pierced tin lantern.
Every single Bleeding Heart was gone, and in the rushing and confusion of the escape from the flood, she had lost her scion wood bag too.
As soon as Levi got home she would ask him to go searching downriver to see what he might find. There must be something, and if there was not, then she needed to know about the wild apple tree.
If God was at all merciful, the wild Bleeding Heart would be there. Callie tried to pray, and had time to realize she didn’t know where to start before sleep overcame her.
Levi came back from Johnstown with the supplies, spent ten minutes listening to Callie’s halting story of the disaster that had come upon them, and then set out immediately downriver. He took two axes with him, a bucket, and a long rifle on his back, and told Callie he might be gone until dark or after.
She swept out the cider house, fetched water, built a fire to heat it, and scrubbed the press and the buckets clean of dust and mold. Her hands were red and swollen with work, and she was so light-headed that sometimes she had to sit for five minutes until her vision cleared.
In the village they would have started the digging out, but Callie had no intention of leaving this place until she knew the whole story. She would wait for Levi if it meant sleeping on the bare ground.
It was midafternoon when she looked up and saw him coming toward her, and the only thing she felt in that moment was fear. The strongest urge, almost too strong to resist, was to turn her back and run. The things he had to tell her, the things he must tell her, were the things that would break her in half or set her on the road back to herself.
He put down the bucket so she could see that it was filled with scion wood. Callie glanced up at him and he shook his head.
This wood was not from the Bleeding Heart, then. A shudder ran through her, but Levi took no note. He was reaching behind himself to undo something strapped along his spine.
A three-year-old Bleeding Heart sapling, its root ball wrapped in wet and muddy cloth. Two branches had been broken off, but there were three others.
“I found it sitting right on top of a mountain of deadwood and rock twelve feet high. Still got your tag on it.”
They had been hoping for fifty Bleeding Hearts, and had now only this one.
She said, “Tell me about the wild tree.”
He didn’t answer until she raised her face to look at him.
“Gone,” he said. “Ripped right up out of the ground and pounded to pulp, is what I guess. No sign of her anywhere. But we got this one, Miss Callie. We got a healthy tree, and that’s all we had two years ago. We just got to start again.”
Chapter XII
Charlie yawned noisily. “My guess is she’s over there with a lantern taking the toll.”
Becca woke sometime later to the sound of murmured voices. Charlie had already gone to their chamber door and opened it a crack. He listened for a moment and then he closed it and came back to bed, stubbing his toe in the process.
“I told you,” he said. “Now will you stop fussing about Callie Wilde? You need all your strength for tomorrow’s worries. We all will.”
The finest room at the Red Dog was the one that looked down over the lane. It had a big bed hung with faded curtains and an adjoining room no bigger than a closet with a single bed, a servant’s lot.
The entire Cunningham family had crowded into the bigger room and now slept uneasily, older children wrapped in blankets on the floor and what looked like two or three grown-ups in the bed with Jane’s youngest between them. Callie stepped carefully by the light of a tallow candle and then closed herself into the servant’s cabinet.
It was narrow and stuffy, but she had it to herself for the simple reason that there was not room enough for anyone to stretch out on the floor. She sat down heavily and started to peel herself out of clothes that were drenched with water and dirt. Her face and arms were tight with dried mud, but the very idea of looking for a washbasin and water was so absurd that it brought out a small smile.
When she was naked she wrapped herself in the rough wool blanket, put out the candle, and lay down.
The dark was a comfort. Absolute and unyielding, she made a place for herself inside it. A safe place, where she could let her iron grip loosen for a little while. She wept until her eyes were swollen shut, silent tears that burned like lye. For the first time in her life, she understood what it meant to want to go to sleep and not wake up again. She understood why her father had simply … walked away.
Callie wished for the thousandth time that she hadn’t sent Levi to Johnstown for supplies. But she had, and so had spent the day alone, walking her property lines back and forth for hours, venturing as far as she could go before water and mud stopped her.
With some effort she turned her mind to other things. The cider house still stood, minus a few shingles but otherwise intact on the hillside above the orchard. Inside, the cider press, rows of jugs, and stacks of baskets and barrels, all as she had last seen them. She continued on, a quarter mile into the woods to the spot where Levi’s small cabin stood in a circle of birch trees, undisturbed. It was one thing to be thankful for.
And they still had three dozen trees that had survived and might still bear fruit this year. Even poor fruit could be made into applejack, and applejack would carry them through yet another disastrous year.
In the close, damp dark she found she could not keep control of her thoughts, or of the images she had gathered by the light of a pierced tin lantern.
Every single Bleeding Heart was gone, and in the rushing and confusion of the escape from the flood, she had lost her scion wood bag too.
As soon as Levi got home she would ask him to go searching downriver to see what he might find. There must be something, and if there was not, then she needed to know about the wild apple tree.
If God was at all merciful, the wild Bleeding Heart would be there. Callie tried to pray, and had time to realize she didn’t know where to start before sleep overcame her.
Levi came back from Johnstown with the supplies, spent ten minutes listening to Callie’s halting story of the disaster that had come upon them, and then set out immediately downriver. He took two axes with him, a bucket, and a long rifle on his back, and told Callie he might be gone until dark or after.
She swept out the cider house, fetched water, built a fire to heat it, and scrubbed the press and the buckets clean of dust and mold. Her hands were red and swollen with work, and she was so light-headed that sometimes she had to sit for five minutes until her vision cleared.
In the village they would have started the digging out, but Callie had no intention of leaving this place until she knew the whole story. She would wait for Levi if it meant sleeping on the bare ground.
It was midafternoon when she looked up and saw him coming toward her, and the only thing she felt in that moment was fear. The strongest urge, almost too strong to resist, was to turn her back and run. The things he had to tell her, the things he must tell her, were the things that would break her in half or set her on the road back to herself.
He put down the bucket so she could see that it was filled with scion wood. Callie glanced up at him and he shook his head.
This wood was not from the Bleeding Heart, then. A shudder ran through her, but Levi took no note. He was reaching behind himself to undo something strapped along his spine.
A three-year-old Bleeding Heart sapling, its root ball wrapped in wet and muddy cloth. Two branches had been broken off, but there were three others.
“I found it sitting right on top of a mountain of deadwood and rock twelve feet high. Still got your tag on it.”
They had been hoping for fifty Bleeding Hearts, and had now only this one.
She said, “Tell me about the wild tree.”
He didn’t answer until she raised her face to look at him.
“Gone,” he said. “Ripped right up out of the ground and pounded to pulp, is what I guess. No sign of her anywhere. But we got this one, Miss Callie. We got a healthy tree, and that’s all we had two years ago. We just got to start again.”
Chapter XII
