At the Edge of the Orchard. Tracy ChevalierЧитать онлайн книгу.
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