At the Edge of the Orchard

California: 1856

MARTHA COULD NOT STOP holding on to Robert. His sister kept her hand on his arm all the while they sat under the Orphans sequoias and he read the packet of letters she handed to him. He did not really want to read them-his reading was slow even when he wasn’t distracted-but Martha insisted. “They explain better than I can now what happened to me, when it happened,” she said. “Besides, it tickles me to see you read them at last.”

“But how?” he kept repeating even after he’d skimmed the letters, not fully taking them in. “How did you find me?” He’d known-or had thought he’d known-exactly where she was, but he’d never imagined his sister could find him in such a vast country.

“It wasn’t so hard,” she explained patiently. “I had the address of Mrs. Bienenstock’s boardinghouse from your letter, so I knew where I was aiming for. There are two ways you can do it: overland or by sea. It was winter and I didn’t want to travel through all that snow, so I knew I’d have to go by sea. So I got up to Lake Erie and took a boat over to Buffalo, then got a barge along the Erie Canal to New York. I was lucky, ’cause it wasn’t cold enough yet to freeze the canal, otherwise I would’ve been stuck in Buffalo all winter waiting for the thaw.”

“You went east?”

“Yes, first I had to go east so I could then go west to find you. I know it is strange,” she added as Robert shook his head, “but sometimes that’s what you have to do-go back to go forward. Then I went by ship all the way around South America and up again to San Francisco. It took six months.” Martha tucked stray hairs behind her ears, pulling out her bonnet to reach them; Robert recognized the gesture from childhood and it almost made him cry. She seemed so fragile, and yet she spoke confidently of America and how to navigate its tricky expanse.

“When did you leave Ohio?”

“Middle of November. I had to wait in New York City for some weeks ’cause I was ill with-” Martha gestured at her belly. “Once I was better I got on a ship, but it all took such a long time. You know I even wrote to you from New York, but the letter ended up on the same ship as me! It arrived at Mrs. Bienenstock’s just an hour after I did.”

“How did you pay for the passage on the ship? It’s not cheap.”

“There was some money at home.”

“Caleb know you used it?”

His sister’s hand tightened around his arm in a fierce grip and she fixed her gray eyes on him. “Don’t you ever say his name again.”

Robert looked away and took a deep breath, then ran his eyes up and down a ponderosa pine, following the deep cracks in its yellow-gray bark. What he really wanted to ask was the most obvious question: who was the father? But it seemed she had given him the answer. Suddenly he understood how a man might feel able to kill another man.

“How’d you know I was up here?” he asked when he was calmer.

“Mrs. Bienenstock told me you’d gone to Calaveras Grove. She’s real efficient-found me a steamboat to Stockton and even paid for the ticket, saying she’d get it back from you. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not!”

“Then I got a stage to Murphys, and there I asked around and they all knew you. The Tree Man, they call you. They were nice too-for a mining town.” Again Martha seemed to have unexpected knowledge of the world. “Put me on a horse this way.”

“You rode a horse like that?” Robert nodded at her belly.

Martha shrugged. “I just wanted to find you, Robert. You’re my family. I traveled all these months, and I wasn’t going to wait around when you were only fifteen miles away.”

“How come you didn’t tell Nancy you were my sister?”

“I didn’t want you to find out from someone else that I was here-I wanted to surprise you, see your reaction myself.”

“You sure did surprise me. I thought…” Robert’s throat became tight with what he’d thought.

“What?”

“I thought you were dead of the swamp fever. I’m sorry.” He choked on the last words, and his eyes filled with tears.

Martha let him swallow a sob, then squeezed his arm. “I don’t believe you. You know why?”

Robert shook his head.

“’Cause when you wrote all those letters, you wrote ‘Brothers and Sisters’-not ‘Sister’ like you’d have done if you thought only Sal was left. No, you thought I was alive, or you hoped I was alive-and that’s the same thing in my book.”

Robert stopped trying to hold back sobs, for Martha’s words made them dry up, except for a tear that got away down his cheek before he could catch it. “Maybe you’re right,” he said after a while. “How come you know me better than I know myself?”

Martha smiled. “It’s easy to know other people. Not so easy to know ourselves.”

It was then that Robert really saw her, saw that she might be small but she was not frail as he had remembered; she was huge of heart. It almost made him cry again, and so he focused on the practical. “You tired?”

Martha shook her head. “Hungry. I could eat a whole pot of beans!”

“Let’s go back to the hotel, get you something to eat.”

As they walked along the path that wound through the grove, still talking, Martha kept her hand tucked in Robert’s elbow. At first she didn’t seem to notice the giant trees they walked past, and he did not point out Father of the Forest or Mother of the Forest or any of the others. But eventually as they were passing the Three Graces, she seemed to take them in for the first time. “They’re so big, aren’t they? How come they’re so big and other trees aren’t?”

“I don’t know,” Robert replied, wondering why he had never asked this question himself. “There’s another grove of these trees a few miles away where there’s one that’s even bigger, and more beautiful. Nobody knows about it but me. I’ll show you sometime if you want.” Already he was giving his sister his most precious gift-his secret grove of trees.

“I’d like that.”

“We could go now-it’s only a few miles. You could manage that on a horse, couldn’t you?” Suddenly the idea of taking his sister to see the secret trees was all Robert could think of.

His eagerness made Martha smile. “Maybe tomorrow. I’ve got some pain now and then.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Do you know when the baby’s coming?”

“Soon. Real soon. It’s moved down.” Martha shook her head at his alarmed look. “You haven’t been around women having babies, have you? Mrs. Day and I helped out with neighbors in the Black Swamp. The labor starts a long time before it gets going for real. It’s just getting itself ready. I’ve got time.”

They walked for a bit in silence before Robert said, “What are we going to do?”

“I already know,” Martha replied firmly. “Mrs. Lapham talked to me about it. She’s real nice, Mrs. Lapham.”

“Nancy? What did she say?”

“That we should go with them to Murphys. They’re leaving tomorrow. I can have the baby there.”

Robert nodded. Though he had been thinking further ahead, her answer made him realize it would be best to concentrate on the next few days for now, and leave the future to sort itself out.

Nancy Lapham was delighted to discover that Martha was Robert’s sister rather than his lover. The knowledge seemed to rally her. “A sister! Of course!” she cried, sitting up in bed and reaching out to pat Martha’s arm. “That makes sense. You got a Goodenough look about you, now I see you two side by side. Oh, how wonderful that you’ve found each other! Tell me how it happened,” and she made Martha tell the story all over again, of lost letters and her journey by boat and barge and ship and steamboat and stage and horse. Already Martha was repeating phrases, leaving out unnecessary details, hurrying over questionable moments, shaping her journey into a story ready for retelling. Nancy asked her many more questions than Robert had-not about the baby or its father, but about the months on board the ship going down and up the South American coastlines and around Cape Horn. “Did you see penguins?” she asked. “Natives with spears? Dolphins? Were the men respectful? Respectable? How many other women were on board? Could you wash? How much fresh water did you get? Was the passage rough? Were there rats? Fleas? What did you eat? Were there weevils in the flour? What kind of fruit did they bring on board? Coconuts? Pineapples?”

At the mention of pineapples, Martha started. “Oh! Robert, will you get my bag? I hid it in the last stall in the stables. Please.”

By the time he’d brought it back, the women had come down to the front porch, aided by Billie Lapham, and were sitting side by side in rocking chairs. “I am truly honored to meet you, ma’am,” Lapham was saying to Martha, his top hat in his hands. “Really and truly. Any sister of Robert’s is a sister to me.”

“Where’d you get this?” Robert asked as he handed his sister a battered carpetbag.

“New York.” As Martha rummaged around in the bag, Robert marveled at the thought of his timid sister navigating the streets of America’s biggest city. She didn’t seem capable of it. But then, she had gotten herself all the way across the country to him. He was going to have to change his idea of her from the shy, defenseless girl he’d known when they were young, the last sight of her a muddy boot dangling from an apple tree.

Martha pulled out a handkerchief. As she unfolded it, something scattered into her lap and rolled off her belly onto the porch floorboards. “Oh!” she cried. “Don’t move!”

“What is that?” Robert stepped carefully over.

“Seeds. They’re for you. I brought them all this way, and now-”

“It’s all right, I see them.” Robert picked at the floor till he held a dozen small brown seeds shaped like tears. He recognized them but asked anyway, “What are these?”

“From one of the Golden Pippin trees back home, the one that tasted of pineapple. They’re from the tree you grafted on the Injun trail that you mentioned in your letter. I thought you could plant one out here.”

Robert rolled the hard seeds between his fingers. “I know they’ll mostly turn out to be spitters,” Martha added, “but isn’t one in ten trees usually an eater if you plant them from seed?”

Robert nodded. “You remember.”

“Course I do. You’ve got more than ten seeds there, so if you plant them all you’ll likely get at least one sweet Golden Pippin.”

“Yes.”

Nancy was staring at them. “What are you two talking about?”

“Apples,” Martha said. “Family apples.”

After a while Nancy sent the men away. “Get me my shawl, Billie. Me and Martha are gonna sit here and get to know each other.” She held out her hand and Martha took it.

Billie Lapham glanced at Robert, who shrugged. This would give him a little time to collect the sequoia cones he had come to Calaveras Grove for-though now that he was free for a moment he found he didn’t want to leave his sister, fearful that she was a dream he would suddenly wake from.

He forced himself to head for the stables to get sacks and his shotgun, but he kept turning back around to look at Martha. Seeing the two women together, he understood at last why he’d always been drawn to Nancy Lapham, even in her illness: she and Martha were alike enough that they could be sisters. Nancy’s face was wide where Martha’s was narrow, and her hair was darker to Martha’s fair, but both were delicate and shy and loving.

Each time Robert looked back, Martha laughed and waved. Her laughter was tinkly, tinged with a hint of hysteria, or perhaps merely fatigue, as the nine-month journey caught up with her. Or maybe she worried that, after her coming thousands of miles to find him, Robert might walk into the giant sequoia grove and disappear. After all, he had walked away from her before. He hated to do so now.

He collected his equipment and hurried into the woods. At the nearest giant sequoia, he shot down a few branches and threw the green cones into a sack, not bothering to inspect each for signs of rot or chickaree damage.

Deeper in the woods, though, out of sight of the hotel, he slowed down. In fact he was glad to have the time alone as he tried to put what had just happened into some kind of order. In the space of an hour, his life had changed completely. Seeing Martha was a dream he had never dared to think would become real. All of those letters he’d sent had been a hook thrown out into the wilderness to snag her, or the memory of her; he had not actually expected her to come and find him. Now she had, with a Goodenough baby on the way, and that brought him a stack of new responsibilities and expectations. Since the age of nine Robert had lived his life more or less alone: he could walk away from work, from people, move on, go west. No one had been gripping his arm. When someone did-when Molly did-he had ducked from her. But he could not duck from Martha. Nor did he want to: he was thrilled to feel her holding on to his arm. Only a sliver of him wanted to pry her hand loose and say, “I don’t know how to be a brother anymore.”

While he pondered this sudden change, his collecting instincts took over and he began to gather cones more methodically, even finding three seedlings to bring back. He had just dug up the third one when the stable boy appeared to tell him he was needed back at the hotel.

Though he had only been gone an hour, Martha was in tears on the porch, with Nancy rocking in time beside her, squeezing her hand. Robert set down the sack and the seedlings and took his sister’s other hand. “Martha, Martha, I’m here, I haven’t gone away. I was just collecting seeds. It’s my job. I won’t leave you. I promise.”

“Your brother is a good man,” Nancy added. “Billie and me always said so. Anybody here will tell you that too: Robert Goodenough is a good man.”

Martha nodded and pulled free the hand Nancy held to wipe her eyes. “I know. Course I know.”

But Robert was not sure she did know.

They made a stately procession down the mountain from Calaveras Grove the next day. Robert was used to traveling on his own, just him and the gray, or with William Lobb before his employer’s illness kept him close to San Francisco. And he was not used to traveling with women-one ill, one close to giving birth. They rode together in a wagon bed, Nancy lying down on a mattress, Martha preferring to lean beside her on one of Robert’s sacks of cones. A second wagon carried the Laphams’ possessions: a bed frame, a chest of drawers, a table and chairs, quilts, dishes, trunks of clothes. Wedged among them were the sequoia seedlings and Martha’s bag. Two of Haynes’ men drove the wagons while Robert and Billie Lapham rode behind. Robert had never ridden so slowly. Though it was a reasonable road, they were being careful because of Martha, who winced occasionally, though whether from the jolts from the road or the pain of the baby preparing to come out, he was not sure.

Billie Lapham was full of plans. “It’ll be better being based at Murphys,” he explained. “I can drum up business there, and bring tourists up to Cally Grove, act as their guide, without having to worry about running the place. Leave that to Haynes. I bet there are plenty of miners at Murphys and the surrounding camps-Angels, Columbia, Jamestown-who’d like a day or two out to see the trees. Maybe even the French and the Chinese.”

Robert smiled to himself. Clearly Billie Lapham didn’t know miners if he thought they would willingly take time off from their search for gold to look at some trees, no matter how big they were. But he did not say so. It was heartening to hear of Lapham’s dreams-ever the optimist, even when his business was failing and his wife dying. Also, he was clearly attached to the sequoias, and that love of trees endeared him to Robert. For a moment he considered telling him about the second sequoia grove; it could change the businessman’s fortunes.

Before he could, though, Lapham continued, “This state is made up of people from other places, but they don’t know California at all, except for the little bit where they are. The mining’s dying down and people want to move around, see what there is here before they take their earnings back home. Some of them might even look around for a place to settle. It’s the best time to be in the tourism business. Not just these big trees, but the mountains all around. I hear there are rock formations and waterfalls south of here in Yosemite Valley that’ll knock you over with how big and bold they are. Lots of potential there. Then you got the shoreline with whales and seals, and canyons full of redwoods. Me, though, I’m settin’ my sights on a lake north of here they call Bigler. You seen it? They says it’s the most beautiful lake in the world, huge, with sandy beaches and green bays. Perfect for steamboats and saloons.”

That was never how Robert would envisage a lake, but he was not in the tourist trade. Perhaps Billie Lapham’s enthusiasm could inspire even hard-bitten gold miners to lay down their pans and sluice boxes to look at giant trees and whales and waterfalls, and paddle in an emerald lake. Who was he to say? He was glad he’d just kept his mouth shut about the secret sequoias; otherwise he could have seen them ruined with saloons and bowling alleys. Let Lapham take his tourist attractions to the emerald lake instead. “What about Nancy?” he asked. “Is she going to come with you to this lake?”

“Oh, of course I won’t go anywhere till Nance is better. Give her some time to convalesce at Murphys, then we’ll see.”

They were quiet for a bit, riding down through the pines and cedars lining the road, the sky an intense blue backdrop. Other times Robert had relished this ride from Calaveras Grove, admiring the trees, and the jays and finches and flycatchers flying back and forth, and the layered hills in the distance. Now, though, he was distracted by his companions, noticing, for instance, how closely Billie Lapham was studying the women in the wagon ahead of them. “Your sister gonna be all right?” Lapham murmured under the sound of the wagon wheels and horse hooves.

The question was like a punch to Robert’s stomach. “What do you mean?”

Billie Lapham pulled up his horse and let the wagons move away. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he wiped his brow. “Well, now, she’s a little thing, ain’t she, a lot like Nancy. Doctors always warned Nance she was too small to have a baby easily. Said it was a risk she shouldn’t chance. Course, maybe we would’ve tried anyway,” he added quickly when he saw the look on Robert’s face, “but she got sick and that was the end of that. But I tell you what-I could ride ahead and find a doctor in Murphys who can be waitin’ at the hotel, ready to check on Martha as soon as you get there.”

Robert stared at his sister, measuring her swollen belly against her slight frame, and knew Lapham was right. Some women were built to give birth easily; others struggled. Martha was likely to be a struggler. She was pale, too, and a film of sweat glistened on her forehead. Though she was smiling now at something Nancy said, she was also gripping the side of the wagon so hard that her knuckles were white. “You don’t mind going ahead?”

“Not at all. My horse could do with a run anyway after goin’ so slow all morning. You look after the girls. Nance,” he called to his wife, “I’m just gonna ride ahead, take care of a little business at Murphys, get things ready for you. Want to make sure we get rooms out back, away from the saloon. Robert will stay with you. I’ll see you down there, all right?”

His wife nodded; she knew her husband.

Billie Lapham was about to spur on his horse when a wagon appeared in the distance on the road below, climbing towards them. All Robert could see from where he sat was a bright red and yellow parasol, twirling slowly.

“What kind of fancy tourist is that?” Billie Lapham said.

They pulled up and watched the wagon draw closer. After a few minutes it became clear the parasol was made of Chinese silk brocade, and was being spun by Molly Jones, who sat in the wagon bed while a bemused old man drove. There was just enough room for the wagon to stop alongside the one carrying Nancy and Martha.

“Halloo there!” Molly cried. “Well, now, Robert Goodenough, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes-or sore thighs, I oughta say. You never told me the big trees were so damned out of the way!”

Nancy and Martha sat up and stared at Molly, then turned their heads to look up at Robert. Billie Lapham gazed from Molly to Robert and back again, then chuckled. Robert sat frozen on the gray, unable to move for all the sets of eyes on him-even those of the wagon drivers, who had felt invisible up to now.

“Ain’t you gonna come down here and kiss me hello?”

It was only when Robert dismounted and stepped up to the wagon, hesitating with his hand on the edge of one side, that he took in the full enormity of Molly, understanding long after the others had worked it out that she was carrying a child. Carrying his child. Carrying his child he’d thought the day before he had managed to dodge when it turned out to be Martha’s.

Molly leaned over and kissed him full on the lips. “Surprise, honey!”

No one spoke, but the gray whinnied and it sounded like a laugh.

“You ain’t runnin’ away from me now, are you?” Molly looked over at the women in the other wagon across from her-a direct, assessing gaze that said, “Explain yourselves.”

Nancy at least knew how to respond. “I’m Nancy Lapham.” She held out her small, pale hand. “And that’s my husband, Billie.”

Billie Lapham removed his top hat and nodded at Molly. “Ma’am.”

Molly turned her attention to Martha, eyes fastened on her stomach. “Well, now, who’ve we got here?”

Robert was too stunned to speak. Martha, in the midst of a contraction, clutched the side of the wagon again and could say nothing. Their silence brought on the expression Robert had seen in Molly when he was leaving her at French Creek: that desperation, the desire to be in control when it was clear she was not in control. It was almost unbearable, and he did not want the others to see it. “That’s my sister, Martha,” he managed to mutter. “She’s only just come out here from Ohio.”

Immediately Molly’s face cleared and she was able to laugh. “Of course, I should’ve guessed! Ain’t you two the spits of each other. You never told me you had a sister. And look at that, a baby, jest like me. When you due, honey?”

“Soon-now,” Martha gasped.

“I’ve still got a couple of months to go, I think, but I’m as big as you now. Wonder if it’s twins?” Molly pulled the skirts of her yellow dress-already let out in most places-tight over her belly.

“We’re headed down to Murphys,” Robert explained. “Billie and Nancy are moving there, and Martha and I…” He didn’t finish, though several pairs of curious eyes watched him to see how he would finish that sentence.

“What, you’re not leavin’ the big trees when I ain’t even seen ’em yet, are you? I come all this way!”

Robert shrugged, not knowing how to answer her question.

“You gonna stay at the new hotel at Murphys?”

“We are indeed, ma’am,” Billie Lapham replied, clearly sensing that Robert needed help.

“I loved it there. It’s got two floors, with balconies running around three sides. There are basins in every room, and mahogany everywhere! I didn’t like the first room they gave me, so I had them show me all the others and I chose the one in the front, above the street. You can sit out on the balcony and watch all the comings and goings-of which there are plenty ’cause there’s a saloon and a restaurant. And they let me store my mattress in the barn.”

Robert pictured the big feather mattress he had spent so much time in, and began to understand. “Have you left French Creek?”

Molly wrinkled her nose. “Of course! You don’t think I’m gonna bring up a child there, do you? Not with all those rascally miners around, I’m not. No, this baby’s gonna have a better life than that.” She smiled at him expectantly.

“Why don’t you go on up to Cally Grove and stay at the hotel there?” Robert suggested. “I’ll come back up in a day or two.”

“Why would I want to stay there on my own?” Molly spun her parasol again as if trying to mesmerize Robert with it. “Ain’t you gonna come back with me and show me the trees?”

Martha stared at Robert with big eyes, one hand still clutching the side of the wagon as if it had jolted her. The look on her face decided him. “No,” he said to Molly. “Martha’s having her baby now, and I’m taking her to Murphys to see her through it. I’m her brother. That’s what a brother does.”

Molly stopped spinning the parasol. “You hurtin’, honey?” she said to Martha, who nodded.

“Poor thing. You should be in bed, not out here in a wagon! Of course, you all go on. I’ll settle myself up at Calaveras, see what there is to see. Isn’t there a bowling alley up there?”

Billie Lapham sat straighter in his saddle. “There sure is, ma’am!” He was proud of the bowling alley.

“Maybe I’ll try it, if this don’t get in the way.” Molly patted her belly. “Give me another kiss, Robert, then I’ll head on up, and see you soon as you’re ready to come find me.” She seemed somehow to pull out of the awkward situation with her dignity intact.

“Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Billie Lapham said, raising his top hat again, and Nancy murmured in agreement.

“You too. And good luck, honey!” Molly nodded at Martha, then tapped her driver with the top of her parasol and they moved on.

They were all silent for a moment. Once Molly was out of earshot, Billie Lapham started to laugh. “Well, I’ll be damned, Goodenough! You sure keep us guessin’, don’t you?”

Once Billie Lapham had ridden ahead to Murphys, the wagon continued slowly down the mountain. Robert remained riding behind it until Nancy called out, “Don’t stay back there, Robert Goodenough. You come up alongside us so you can answer some questions!”

Robert sighed. He would prefer not to talk, and to be alone, so that he could take in the reality of Molly and another baby. His life was rapidly filling with other people, without the time to figure out how that was going to change things. No one else seemed bothered by this, though. It wasn’t their life that was being tumbled around.

He brought the gray forward so that he was level with the women. Even looking at them made him blush: though Martha was clearly in pain, she was also smiling, and Nancy was openly grinning. “All right, now,” she said, “tell us all about her!”

Robert reluctantly explained about meeting Molly in Texas and again in Sacramento, and his subsequent visits to French Creek. He mentioned her cooking but not the other side of her job, and hoped they would not speculate too much. He found it embarrassing to have to reveal this side of his life, but at least it distracted Martha from her contractions. She let Nancy ask the questions, but she listened as closely as she could.

When Nancy had finally finished interrogating him, Martha nodded at her belly and said, “This baby will have a cousin.” Put that way, with her simple words making the lines between her and Robert and Molly clear, Robert felt a whole lot better.

Billie Lapham had two back bedrooms ready for them at Murphys Hotel when they arrived mid-afternoon, and had found a doctor and even a rare woman to help with the birth. The room was as nice as Molly had said-nicer than any room Robert had stayed in, with carpet on the floor and striped wallpaper and solid mahogany bedboards and washstands and good glass in the windows. He could not imagine sleeping well in it.

He hovered in the doorway as the woman got Martha into bed, but she waved him away. “Out-you’re no use,” she muttered. “Don’t need a doctor either-this ain’t no illness.”

“I’ll be nearby,” Robert called to his sister, but by then she had moved into the kind of pain that blocked out everything around her, and he doubted she heard. For a while he waited out in the hallway, but when she began to scream he went out and walked up and down Main Street.

Murphys was like other mining towns, full of supplies and alcohol, but it had a heft to it-like a building with a proper foundation laid-that made it likely to survive gold fever and become something more. Robert saw none of this, however, too shaken by his sister’s screams to notice the sturdy planks laid out for walking along the streets, the brick buildings, the gutters that had been dug. For a while he sat in one of the saloons with a glass of whiskey before him, but he was not a drinking man, and eventually he left, the glass untouched.

He preferred the outskirts of Murphys, where a few miners were camped. A creek-a tributary of the Stanislaus River-ran back behind the hotel, and he sat for a long time on its bank, watching a family dig up the mud from the bed and sluice it through a rocking box-one of the few who were still mining using the early methods Robert was familiar with. It was unusual to see a woman and children mining. He wanted to stop the woman and ask her what was happening to Martha, how a woman could survive so much pain. But he didn’t: she’d had the two children he could see with her and clearly survived that, and she would probably say as much about his sister. So Robert sat in the sun and watched them find their meager flakes of gold and tried not to think.

That was where Billie Lapham found him. Lapham was a man who wore his emotions physically, and Robert knew from the moment he saw his friend hurrying down the path that Martha was all right. He let out a breath he hadn’t even realized he was holding.

“Goodenough, you got yourself a nephew!” Billie Lapham pumped Robert’s hand and wiped his forehead. He clearly liked being the bearer of good news.

“How’s Martha?”

“Oh, she’s fine. Tired, of course. It’s incredible what women have to go through, ain’t it?” He shook his head in wonder. “She’s asking for you, and I said I’d find you. Looked everywhere except back here. C’mon, I’ll take you to her.”

She was lying in bed with the baby in her arms, oblivious to the activity around her: Nancy Lapham bringing her a cup of tea, the doctor putting away bottles and metal instruments Robert didn’t want to look at too closely, and the woman bundling sheets into buckets of water. Before he joined his sister he paid the doctor and gave something to the woman too. Then he sat on the chair next to the bed. “Martha,” he said.

“Oh, Robert,” she rasped, her throat raw from yelling. “You’re here.” Martha’s hair was clumped together with sweat, and she had new lines around her eyes and mouth. The pain she had just been through had pressed its heavy mark on her. But when she held out her hand to take his, her grip was firm.

“You all right?” Robert asked. Despite the woman taking the sheets away, the room was metallic with the smell of blood.

“Sure I am. I’m just glad he’s out. Look at him.” She pointed a tiny, wrinkled red face at him with the radiance only a mother can have for her baby. Robert couldn’t take in his nephew for the moment; it was his sister he was concerned with.

“What shall we call him?” Martha said.

Robert shook his head. “You decide.”

“I want to call him after our father. James.”

Robert flinched. “Your father, you mean,” he said after a moment, though immediately he regretted bringing up the subject at such a time.

But Martha looked at him steadily. “I meant what I said. Our father. I never paid attention to what Ma said about Uncle Charlie. She was just-well. She was being Ma. Fighting to the last.”

Robert wasn’t so sure. He had put his mother’s last words to him up on a high shelf that he never visited. But maybe he would let Martha do the visiting for him.

“Let’s call him Jimmy to start with,” she said. “James is awful serious for a boy.”

Robert had another, dim memory of the name Jimmy carved on one of the wooden crosses that marked the graves of his dead brothers and sisters in the Black Swamp. When his mother was drunk she had shouted at God and the swamp fever for taking her oldest boy. Maybe a new Jimmy was some kind of an answer to that loss.

The red face let out a sudden cry. Robert reared back like the gray would when it saw a snake, but Martha pulled open her dress and put him on her breast. Robert looked away. “You want anything?”

“Some bread soaked in a little milk would be nice-I’m starving! And a towel to wrap around Jimmy for a diaper.”

Robert went down to the restaurant and ordered food for Martha and himself, and asked about towels. These were unfamiliar domestic arrangements to him, and he found himself thinking about his bedroll, about the gray in the stables, about the camps surrounding Murphys and the fires the miners would soon be sitting around, eating tack and hard biscuits and smoking cigars. Would he ever join such campfires again? He could not imagine Martha sitting by one with a baby in her arms or, later, a child playing at her feet. But then, he had never imagined her coping with the rough life on board a ship going around South America.

While they ate together in the hotel room, the baby asleep on the bed beside Martha, he asked her more about that trip, about New York City and, tentatively, about the Black Swamp. Martha was in the middle of telling him something funny about Hattie Day when she stopped. “You know I can’t ever go back there,” she said, interrupting her own story. “’Cause of what I did to Caleb.”

Robert swallowed. “Is he…”

“I don’t know. I run off. But there was a lot of blood.” Martha fixed her eyes on the candle by her bed. “I thought they might be looking for me in New York so I kept real quiet there, and slipped onto the ship at the last minute. But there’s a whole country between me and the Black Swamp. They won’t come looking for me all the way out here, will they?”

“Of course not. I’ll keep you safe.” Robert tried to sound reassuring, hiding his shock over her mention of blood. “We can live somewhere out of the way. There’s plenty of land out here. California is where you get to start over.”

Martha turned her eyes back to him from the candle. “What about Molly?”

“What about her?” Robert’s reply was cockier than he actually felt.

“She’s family now. Her baby will be a Goodenough too, and so will she once you marry her.”

“Marry Molly?”

“She seems real nice. Spirited. And it’d be good to live with someone else having a baby at the same time-makes it easier.” Martha chuckled at the look on his face. “You haven’t thought about it much, have you?”

Robert shook his head. “There hasn’t been any time.”

“Well, now you can start to plan. Tomorrow you go up to Calaveras Grove and talk to her about the future, make sure she doesn’t mind if I live with you all.”

“Of course she won’t mind!” Robert didn’t add, “No one has talked about living together.” Martha was making assumptions, and he suspected Molly was too. That was how women had to be, he supposed: pragmatic, looking out for their children.

To his relief, they didn’t have to talk about the future anymore, for exhaustion had caught up with her and Martha’s eyes were closing. Robert quietly unrolled his bedding and spread it on the floor. He pretended to be asleep each time his nephew woke for a feeding.

In the morning, despite the night’s interruptions, Martha was clear-eyed and smooth-faced, and insistent that he go back to Calaveras Grove to see Molly. “Please,” she added as Robert hesitated. “It’ll set me at ease to know where Jimmy and me fit in to the future. And besides, she’s carrying your child. You got to see she’s all right.”

The Laphams were with them by then, Nancy sitting with Martha and Billie walking up and down with the baby in his arms. “Go on, Goodenough, we’ll take good care of your family,” he said, jiggling his bundle.

“Course we will,” Nancy added. “I’ll get my knitting and sit here all day for company. This little boy needs some warm clothes for the winter!”

“All right,” Robert agreed finally. “I’ll be back tonight.” Part of him was relieved to get away from his nephew. He had only held him once, briefly, and his red skin and his eyes squeezed shut and his grasping mouth were alien to Robert. Secretly he couldn’t understand why the others were praising the baby so much when he resembled an animal rather than a human.

He leaned down and kissed his sister’s forehead. She smiled up at him. “Say hello to Molly for me. Tell her I’m looking forward to the cousins playing together.”

Robert nodded. As he left, Nancy Lapham was making arrangements for a tin bath to be brought up so that Martha could wash away the sweat and blood of the previous day.

At Calaveras Grove he found Molly leaning against the Chip Of the Old Block, chatting to other visitors and looking as if she lived there. As he dismounted and headed towards her she was saying, “Myself, I like a waltz, especially when I’m so big. Imagine trying to polka with this belly!” The group with her laughed.

Molly brightened when she saw him, and went to put her arm through his. “Robert Goodenough, you were right about this place. It’s wonderful!”

“You walked through the trees yet?”

“Naw, just saw those.” She waved at the Two Sentinels. “I’ve been waitin’ for you to come and show me. How’s your sister?”

“Good. She had the baby. She’s calling him James-Jimmy. She-she sends her regards.” Robert could not bring himself to repeat the part about the cousins playing together, and about living together: it was too much too soon. “Let me stable the gray, then I’ll show you the trees. I can only stay for the day.”

Molly frowned. “Ain’t you even gonna stay the night? The food is good here-I had a long talk with the cook. And I love the bowling! Have you tried it?”

Robert shook his head, remembering how scathing William Lobb had been about the game. “I promised Martha I’d come back tonight. She’s still pretty tired, and I want to make sure she’s all right, and knows I’m there.” Thinking of his sister gave him a pang, and he began to regret having left her to come to Cally Grove.

Molly looked as if she were going to say something, but stopped herself. “All right, then, Robert Goodenough, let’s enjoy the day while we got it.”

She accompanied him to the stables to put up the gray. After only a day she clearly knew her way around, and she hallooed everyone in sight, for it seemed she had introduced herself to those who worked at the Grove and all the visitors too. In fact, Molly seemed much more interested in the human element of Calaveras Grove than she was in the sequoias themselves-which to Robert was missing the point. However, it did mean he didn’t have to take her all the way around the mile-and-a-half circuit to see every tree. She was content to look at the trees that were only a little way into the woods, insisting as they went around on leaning on Robert’s arm, as Martha had two days before. This time he felt the weight of her expectation even more heavily than Martha’s. She held herself like a ship steering a slow, proud passage through calm waters. The visitors who encountered them smiled to see such a large woman among large trees-a response Molly accepted as if it were her due, like a queen or a president.

When they neared one of the named trees, Molly stopped and squinted. “The Old Bachelor,” she read aloud from a plaque that had been hung on it. “Huh!” She glanced sideways at Robert. “Let’s set here awhile.” Without waiting for him to agree, she settled onto a nearby bench placed so that there was a good view of the tree. Robert perched beside her.

“Sit back!” she said, pulling at his shoulder. “You’re tense as a cat in a thunderstorm.”

He knew he was sitting as if he were about to stand again, run back to the stables and gallop off on the gray. He leaned back and tried not to think about his sister.

Molly arranged her yellow skirts around her bump. “Now, we got to have a little talk.”

Robert studied the Old Bachelor. It was a huge, grizzled old tree, set off from the others a bit up the hill. It would have been even bigger but the top had died and come down, leaving it with the rounded crown you saw on the older giant trees. He was beginning to understand its name better.

“Look at you. Can’t even look at me.”

Midway up the trunk of the tree was a line of woodpecker holes. Robert counted them in his head, then asked what he needed to ask. “Is the baby mine?”

He could feel her flinch next to him. Though in his head it seemed a logical question, spoken aloud Robert understood how hurtful it was.

But Molly did not shout at him. “I’m sure as I’m ever gonna be that it’s yours,” she replied evenly.

He knew that was the most honest answer he would get. “Do you want…” Robert could not finish his sentence.

“How do you know I actually want something from you?”

Robert noticed that Molly had at last dropped her cheerfulness. It was a relief.

“I’ll do right by you,” he said.

“What does that mean? You know, you ain’t even said you’re glad to see me. Are you glad?”

“I-”

“I think you ain’t glad. That’s what I think.” Molly was getting that look again that he hated, that made him feel a metal band was strapped around his chest and tightening. But she was also angry.

“I am glad. But-”

“You don’t want me here, do you?”

“Molly! Stop. Just-” Robert held up his hand. “Just let me speak.” He held Molly’s eye, and she became still, her hands folded over her belly.

“My sister Martha only just arrived two days ago. I haven’t seen her in eighteen years. In fact, I didn’t even know if she was alive or not.”

“You didn’t?”

“No.”

“What about the rest of your family? Your parents?”

“They’re dead.”

“You never told me that. When did they die?”

“Eighteen years ago.”

Molly raised her eyebrows.

Robert hesitated. Then, because she was waiting for more, he finally spoke aloud the words he had never said before. “They-they killed each other when I was a boy.” The words cut through the air like a knife through meat-resistant, and then gliding effortlessly.

Molly stared at him. “Say that again so I’ll know I’m hearin’ right.”

“They killed each other.”

“How can two people kill each other?”

Robert sighed, then told her in as few words as he could what had happened in the orchard. He could feel the splinter of sadness poking at his heart. “I ran off afterwards. Never went back.”

“Good Lord.” Molly sat still, twisting her hands in her lap. She was not easily shocked, but Robert saw that the Goodenough family had managed to stun her.

“I left Martha behind,” Robert added. “I can never forgive myself for leaving her. In fact, I shouldn’t have left her today.”

But Molly was already beginning to recover, and anger was overtaking her surprise. “Why in hell’s name didn’t you ever tell me this, Robert Goodenough? I told you about my Ma and Pa and my brother and sister, but you never said a thing about yours-jest told me silly stories about your medicine man and the wooden leg when you had all this in your past!”

“I’m sorry, Molly, but I don’t talk about it to anyone. It’s easier that way.”

She was glaring at him, and he knew he owed her more than that. “If I don’t tell people about it, I don’t have to think about it, and it can be like it never happened.”

“But it did happen.”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t you know that anyway? Underneath all your silence, you know it’s still there.”

“Yes.”

“Ain’t it better to be open about it? Then at least you’re honest, so you don’t have it diggin’ at you, deep inside.”

“Maybe. We’re just different, I guess.”

“I guess.” Molly’s anger had burnt out as quickly as it flared. She took his hand. “Lord, I feel real bad for you, Robert. This world’s full of sorrows, ain’t it?”

They sat for a while, and Robert let her hold his hand.

“The Bible’s never brought me a whole lotta comfort,” Molly said presently, “but I can see how these trees might. They been around a lot longer than any of us with our foolishness, and they’ll still be laughin’ at us in a few hundred years, don’t you think?”

“Yes.” It was easier to agree than to explain what he really thought. Back when he’d first seen the giant trees, Robert too had marveled at their age and what they had witnessed. Now, though, he did not see them as witnesses at all. Trees lived in a different world from people. However much he pruned their branches, picked their fruit, collected their cones, dug up their seedlings, they did not respond to him. Even his horse responded to him more than trees did. They were not made to. They were not selves. It bothered him when people gave them human qualities when they were so clearly not human. That was why he did not like the sequoias’ being given names; the Old Bachelor was a tree, not a man. Yet he knew he still slipped into that trap too. For instance, he had been stupidly pleased that Martha had chosen the Orphans to sit under, though the trees were not orphans.

But he let Molly turn the trees into witnesses of human folly, and then he said, “Molly, I need to go back to Murphys. It don’t feel right leaving Martha.” It was easier now to say these simple words.

Molly accepted them with more ease too. “Go back to her,” she said. “Make that flea-biter gallop faster than he ever has before.”

“You can come down with me if I can find you a wagon.”

“Naw, I’ll jest hold you back. I’ll be down in a day or two.” Molly stretched her legs out before her and pointed her toes. “Right now I’m gonna set here a bit and look at the trees.”

The gray was not an eager horse, but he had a sense from his rider that now was the time to gallop. They flew down the mountain in an hour and a half.

But Robert too had a sense, and it was of a dread that grew faster than he could ride.

He stood in the doorway of the hotel bedroom, looking at the bed soaked with blood, at Martha’s head turned towards the door as if expecting him, at her open eyes like two candles blown out, at Billie Lapham next to her with his handkerchief over his face, crying, and he thought, There is a God and He is a very harsh one, giving with one hand and taking more with the other so that I am even emptier than when I started.

He removed his hat and went up to the bed and took Martha’s hand. It was only just starting to cool. “If you are still in this room,” he said, “I want to tell you that I never should’ve left you in the Black Swamp. I did it because I was scared and I was only thinking of myself when I should have been thinking of you too. I was just a boy, but I should’ve looked after you and I didn’t, and I will be sorry for that for the rest of my days.”

There was a wailing sound behind him, and when he turned, Nancy was standing in the doorway with Jimmy in her arms, wrapped in Martha’s shawl. “I’m real sorry, Robert. I truly am.”

“What happened?”

“Hemorrhage. The doctor said it happens sometimes when something’s left inside the mother that should’ve come out. She was fine, chattin’ away with me while the baby slept, then suddenly there was blood everywhere. Billie ran for the doctor, but it was too late.”

Jimmy cried louder. “I know I shouldn’t be holdin’ him ’cause of my illness,” Nancy said, “but Billie ain’t in a fit state to. He always was soft.” She gazed fondly at her weeping husband. “Here.” She walked over and held out the baby. “Go on, take him,” Nancy chided when Robert hesitated. “You’re all he’s got now.”

Robert took Jimmy, propping him in the crook of his arm as he’d seen Nancy do. The transfer made the baby go quiet for a moment and open his eyes. It was the first time Robert had seen them open. They were not brown or blue yet but a muddy mix of the two, and they could not focus, but Robert could see they were Goodenough eyes. He stared at Jimmy and it was like looking at his family all pressed into one face, young and old, man and woman, boy and girl.

After the baby found this new holder was not giving him any food, he began to cry again, voicing his displeasure.

“You got to get him something to eat,” Nancy said. “Problem is, there’s only twenty-five women in this town, and none who got babies.”

Robert was finding Jimmy’s crying almost unbearable.

“Jiggle him, and walk him up and down,” Nancy suggested. “That’s what I been doing.”

Robert took his nephew out to the hallway, for walking with him in front of the mother he would never know seemed heartless. As he passed along the carpeted corridor, two men were coming the other way: the hotel owner and another who introduced himself as the sheriff. They were brisk, talking over the baby’s cries. “Just come to check,” the sheriff said. “You got the money to bury her?”

Robert nodded.

“Then someone’ll be along to measure for a coffin. That’ll cost you six dollars. You want to have a wake or a service? We’d have to send to Stockton for the minister who comes up to the church here. Could take a day or two.”

“No, no need to wait.”

The hotel owner looked relieved: a death in the hotel was bad enough, but a body remaining for any length of time was not good for business. He nodded at Jimmy, who by now was screaming. “Looks like you got your hands full. I’ll get two boys to dig a grave for you. Cost you a dollar. All right?”

Robert could only nod again. All of these practical questions, accompanied by Jimmy’s urgent cries, made it hard for him to hold on to the fact that Martha was dead.

“You know what my wife used to do to quiet a baby?” the sheriff said. “She stuck her little finger in its mouth, gave it something to suck on. Sometimes that’s all they want-to suck. Try it.”

Robert frowned, then put his pinkie up to the baby’s mouth, tickling his lips. Jimmy dived at the finger and began to suck, surprisingly hard.

“There you go. Course, once it finds out there’s no milk in that teat it’ll yell louder’n ever.” The sheriff chuckled.

“Now, you gonna stay in that room tonight?” the hotel owner asked.

“I guess so.”

“You’ll need to pay a night’s charge up front, and pay for the sheets and the mattress-they’re ruined.”

Robert nodded. His nephew’s pull on his finger was beginning to hurt.

“I’ll tell you another trick,” the sheriff interjected, sensing that Robert was out of his depth. “Pull out the bottom drawer of the dresser and line it with a quilt, and the baby can sleep in that.” He clapped Robert on the back and went into the room where Martha lay.

Robert had been around deaths before. He had seen men die from fever or a snakebite or a fall from a horse or, once, a goring from an angry bull. Sometimes it wasn’t clear why they died; it seemed they just gave up. He had dug graves and moved bodies and stood at gravesides, hat in hand. Some of the dead were strangers, others he knew and had been friendly with. But never had he had to deal with the aftermath of the death of someone he loved, with its uncomfortable mix of the practical with the emotional. He had not seen his parents’ final moments-their eyes were both still open when he left, and they were staring at each other. It must have been Nathan and Caleb who took charge, building coffins and digging graves, Sal who ran for the neighbors, she and Martha and Mrs. Day who washed and dressed Sadie and James for their laying out. During that time he would have been following the Portage River down to Lake Erie, already losing himself in America.

Now as he began to thaw from that icy moment of finding Martha on a bed soaked with her own blood, Robert feared he might sit down on the hallway carpet and not get up again. The only thing keeping him from doing so was the hard, persistent tug on his little finger. Angry now that he’d been duped into sucking something so dry all he swallowed was his own spit, Jimmy was letting little squawks erupt from the sides of his mouth. In a minute he would start to yell again. Robert had to think of something.

He hurried along the hallway with the baby tucked in the crook of his elbow and went into the restaurant kitchen, where a man with a bulge of tobacco in his cheek was frying steaks on the range. Around his feet were gobs of tobacco and spit.

“You got any milk?” Robert asked.

With a glance the man took in man and baby, then jerked his head towards the back door. “Out in the creek.”

“You mind if I take some for-” Robert waved his arm with Jimmy in it, which caused him to start up his kittenish wail.

The cook winced. “Ten cents a cup. We’ll add it to your bill. Which room you in? Never mind, I remember. Now, get it out of here. Cryin’ babies-” He shook his head and spat.

Upstream from where the mining family worked, a silver milk can sat in the creek, the water being the most effective way of keeping things cold. Robert awkwardly fished it out with one hand. Would he ever be able to put this baby down? How did women manage? He thought of the women he’d seen with babies. Indian women tied them in slings to their backs or chests, leaving their arms free for work. White women swaddled them tight and left them with girls or old women. But newborns generally stayed with their mothers in bed for a few weeks till both were stronger.

Robert set Jimmy on the ground. Squinting and crying, every part of his face tightened with misery, he flung his arms out, his tiny hands making a pair of stars in the air. Robert paused between milk can and baby, then decided Jimmy might squirm and wave but he could not actually move himself.

Unscrewing the lid, Robert poured milk into a tin mug he’d brought, took out a handkerchief-not very clean, but it was all he had-and dipped a corner of it in the milk, soaking up as much as he could. Then he sat down, took the baby in his lap, and rewrapped the shawl around him to stop him from flailing. When he brushed the milk-soaked cloth across his mouth, Jimmy ignored it and kept screaming. Robert tried a few more times, but his nephew seemed to have screamed himself beyond thinking about feeding. In desperation, Robert stuck his little finger in the baby’s mouth again, and he quieted and began sucking. Then Robert pulled his finger out, wrapped part of the handkerchief around it, and stuck it in Jimmy’s mouth again. His nephew looked so indignant when his palate and tongue met the rough cloth that Robert smiled a little. But he kept sucking, with a resigned expression. After a minute Robert pulled his finger out and shifted the cloth to a new section where there was more milk. “There you go, little fella. Work on that.” He stuck his finger back in and Jimmy sucked. It was not an ideal solution, for he wasn’t getting milk fast enough, but it would have to do until Robert worked out a better way to feed him.

At last, more from the exhaustion of crying than from a full stomach, Jimmy fell asleep, and Robert sat with him across his knees by the stream, afraid to move lest he wake. He studied his nephew’s face, which was less red now that he’d stopped crying. His eyelids were pale blue, his nose flat, and his bow-shaped mouth was still going through the quivering motions of sucking. Everything about him seemed delicate, fragile. But he was quiet, and he was alive.

“There you are. Got him to sleep?” Nancy Lapham had come up behind him. She looked stronger than Robert had seen her in months. Crises make even the sick pull themselves up. She leaned over to peer at Jimmy’s face. “Ain’t he sweet. Martha tell you who the father is?”

Robert shook his head, his mouth tight around the knowledge he would never voice.

“I’ve been askin’ around to see if there’s any women in nearby towns or camps who have babies and can feed him. Haven’t found any yet, but I’ll keep askin’.”

“Thank you.”

“If you want you can give him to me and I’ll put him to bed in our room for tonight,” she offered.

To Robert’s great surprise, he was reluctant to hand over Jimmy, even to someone as sympathetic as Nancy. The bond with his nephew had already tightened around him. “That’s all right. I’ll take him back to the-the-” He stopped.

“They moved her,” Nancy said, filling in for him. “She’s down in the barn, where they’re makin’ the coffin. They’ll bury her later-Billie’ll come get you when they’re ready.”

Robert nodded and got up carefully so that Jimmy wouldn’t wake. Back in the bedroom, all traces of Martha were gone except for her carpetbag, which sat in a corner like an abandoned dog. The mattress and bloody bedding had been removed and a new straw mattress put in its place, less comfortable than the feather bed, but Robert figured he would end up sleeping on the floor anyway.

He laid Jimmy in the middle of the bed and opened the bottom drawer of the bureau. Then he unbuckled Martha’s bag to look for something to line the drawer with. In it were two dresses, some underclothes, a hairbrush, the letters, and the nine-patch quilt, rolled up. Robert pulled out the quilt and spread it over his knees. Seeing the different squares brought forth a rush of memories. He sat for a long time, touching a bright blue square, a brown one and a dark green silk piece that was now frayed and threadbare but still the most beautiful patch of the quilt. Only when Billie Lapham knocked on the door did he rouse himself.

They went together to see Martha buried in the graveyard next to the town’s church. Little was said, but at Robert’s request Nancy sang “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” her voice quavering.

Robert spent the next two days trying out different ways to feed his nephew. He was astonished at how difficult it seemed to be to get milk inside him. When Jimmy rejected the milky handkerchief-and who could blame him-Robert tried dribbling milk into his wailing mouth with a spoon, but it just made him choke. He visited a ranch outside of Murphys and borrowed a cow’s horn drilled with holes that they used for feeding calves when the mother died, but it was too big for Jimmy’s mouth. He spent some time fashioning a teat out of leather shaped into a cone while Billie Lapham reluctantly held the baby-after Martha’s burial, Nancy lost what little strength she’d briefly gained and had gone back to bed. The baby managed to suck on the leather teat but then promptly threw up all the milk he had taken in.

It was bad enough hearing Jimmy cry. Even worse was when his crying grew weaker and it was clear he was failing. In desperation Robert walked all over town, as well as through the nearby miners’ camps, looking for women and asking them what to do. Wherever he went, he got amused looks, for it was unusual to see a man carrying a baby around, especially a newborn. The women he met had plenty of advice. The one who had helped with the birth tore a towel into triangles and showed Robert how to pin it around Jimmy for a diaper. Another showed him how to properly swaddle a baby; when she got through wrapping Jimmy in Martha’s shawl he could move nothing but his mouth, and seemed stunned by this fact.

The most sensible woman was the one Robert had watched mining with her family a few days before. Now she was sitting alongside the creek, resting while her husband and sons worked. She had a smear of dirt across her nose and cheek, and she rubbed at it while contemplating Jimmy. “He’s spitting up cow’s milk? You gotta find you some goat’s milk, then, or sheep. And if you can’t find that? Go find a woman with a baby. Go farther away to the other camps, or better yet, down to Stockton. More women there, more babies maybe.”

Robert frowned. Stockton was sixty miles away. Even if he could find a way to tie Jimmy on so they could ride the gray that far, it would take another day to get there. His nephew might be dead by then. And there was no guarantee that there were babies in Stockton.

“Course, you could always try the Indians,” the woman added. “There’s Miwoks camped up near Cally Grove.”

Robert recalled that there were definitely babies there-he’d seen them recently in their slings on their mothers’ backs, so natural there it was easy to forget them. He frowned. “Think they’d do it?”

The woman shrugged. “Everybody’s got a price.”

Robert wasn’t so sure. Most Indians he’d seen maintained a distance from white people, as if taking a step back and watching to see what would happen. Why would an Indian woman agree to feed a white child who might grow up to push her family off the land?

By the next day, though, he had no choice. He could not find any goats or sheep nearby. Jimmy continued to spit up the cow’s milk, and the sugar water Robert managed to get down him was not sustaining him. When he stopped crying altogether, Robert went to saddle the gray. He would have to go back up to Calaveras Grove.

Jimmy was too small and floppy to be tied in a sling to Robert’s chest or back. Instead he swaddled him extra tight-already he was getting better at that-and had Billie Lapham hand the baby up to him once he was astride the gray. His arm ached from carrying the baby almost nonstop for two days, but he couldn’t see a better way.

“Goodenough, I never thought I’d see you ridin’ round with your saddlebags stuffed with diapers and sugar water,” Billie Lapham said as he stood at the gray’s side. “You want me to water the seedlings while you’re gone?”

“Oh-yes.” Robert had forgotten about the sequoias he’d collected. These last few days he had thought of little other than keeping Jimmy alive.

“It’s good to see you lookin’ after your nephew. Your sister would have been glad.” Billie Lapham’s eyes grew watery. “Poor gal.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face and blew his nose. It occurred to Robert then that Lapham’s grief for Martha was a dress rehearsal for his wife’s death. Molly was right: the world was full of sorrows.

Robert wanted to gallop up the mountain but didn’t dare; holding Jimmy in the crook of his arm, he had to ride one-handed, trying not to think about the gray rearing up at a snake or stumbling over a rut in the track. But the horse seemed to understand that Robert was riding differently, that there was a new, demanding passenger, and adjusted his gait to a gentler trot than usual.

He had been so swamped with the practicalities of looking after a baby that he’d not had time to consider anything else. Now that Jimmy was quiet, and Robert had a plan and was moving, he was able to think about Martha. And then he was not thinking, but crying, sobbing so hard that the gray actually stopped and swung his head around to look at the sight, and Robert had to kick him to get him started again.

At last, empty of tears, he grew as calm as his listless nephew, and they rode up the mountain towards the big trees.

When he caught sight of the red and yellow parasol in the distance once again, this time coming down towards them, Robert was so relieved he almost began to cry again. Only now did he realize that these last few days he had been waiting for Molly to come and make things right.

She was lying flat in the wagon bed as the same old man drove, spinning her parasol above her and singing:

I came to the river

And I couldn’t get across

So I paid five dollars

For a big bay hoss.

Well, he wouldn’t go ahead

And he wouldn’t stand still

So he went up and down

Like an old saw mill.

Turkey in the straw

Turkey in the hay

Turkey in the straw

Turkey in the hay

Roll ’em up and twist ’em up

A high tuck a-haw

And hit ’em up a tune called

Turkey in the Straw!

The old man accompanied her by whistling the tune. Because of the singing and the whistling, she didn’t hear the first time Robert called her. “Molly!” he cried again. This time she rolled herself up and squinted towards him as the wagon came to a halt.

“Robert Goodenough, here you are again!” she cried, waving the parasol at him. “You come out to find me?” Then she caught sight of the baby and went silent. Perhaps because hers was one of the few female voices around, Jimmy roused himself from his semiconscious state in Robert’s arm and let out a thin, piercing wail.

“Good Lord.” Molly clutched her substantial breasts and laughed. “Don’t that hit me right here. Makes ’em feel tingly. Watch out, little baby, you’ll get me started too soon! That your nephew? What’d you bring him up with you for?”

“Martha…” Robert couldn’t finish, but one look at his red eyes and crumpled face told Molly all she needed to know. Getting to her knees on the wagon bed, she held out her arms. “Come down here, both of you.”

Robert handed her the baby, and by the time he’d dismounted she’d already pressed Jimmy to her chest. She reached out and put her arm around Robert and hugged him hard, the baby squashed between them. For a moment Robert tensed, fearing for Jimmy. But he was fast discovering the resilience of newborns, and after a moment he relaxed, even allowing himself to rest his head on Molly’s shoulder. For the first time since Nancy put Jimmy into his arms, Robert did not feel like the only one responsible for him.

When they pulled apart, Molly gazed down at Jimmy, who was now nuzzling at her bosom, his mouth seeking something he sensed was close by.

“What are you feeding him?”

“Sugar water is all. He won’t take cow’s milk and there’s no women back at Murphys could feed him. I thought…” Robert trailed off, for Molly was unbuttoning the top of her dress to reveal a huge, dark nipple. Cupping her breast in one hand, she lifted and held out the nipple to the baby, who lunged at it like a drowning man come up for air. Latching on, he began to suck as hard as his weak mouth could.

Molly chuckled. “Tickles. Ow!” Desperation was making him suck harder, for he seemed to know he was where he was meant to be, doing what he was meant to do.

“Is that gonna work?” Robert asked.

“Dunno. I’ve heard of it happening, but never seen it myself.” Molly winced. “He’ll jest have to keep sucking, see if that brings on the milk.”

Half an hour later Molly’s milk came in.

Robert could not get used to living in a hotel. He shared a big bed with Molly that gave him a backache because it was softer than he was used to. Sometimes when she was asleep he moved to the floor. But that didn’t really help, for he also sensed others close by, hearing murmurs and laughter and moans from adjacent rooms, and music and shouts from downstairs, and people walking up and down the street outside. Jimmy lay in the drawer near the bed, waking every two hours to feed since his tiny stomach held little and emptied quickly. Robert was woken by plenty of sounds when he was sleeping in the woods-bears crashing through the bushes, wolves howling, other animals snuffling nearby. Yet somehow these noises disturbed him less than Jimmy’s insistent cry-for it was demanding something of him in a way the animals never did.

Molly loved Murphys. She settled into her preferred room, with its mahogany bed and its balconies overlooking the street, like a miner laying claim to a choice piece of river. Within an hour her dresses and petticoats hung from the bedposts, her bonnets dangled by their ribbons from hooks by the door, her shoes were piled in a corner and her hairbrush and hand mirror and powder and tin of rouge and hairpins littered the top of the bureau. The room smelled distantly of cooking from the restaurant below, and up close of warm flesh and talcum powder and souring milk and baby shit. Robert did not complain. He was grateful just to see Jimmy sleeping in Molly’s arms, cheeks fat and rosy after two days of being wan and gray. Grateful too that she patted the bed next to her and made it easy for him to join them.

Molly asked the hotel owner to find a cradle for Jimmy, or have one made right away. “A baby needs to rock,” she said when Robert pointed out that his newfound trick of the bottom drawer bed seemed to work. Soon a rough cradle made of elm appeared in the room, and that was when Robert began to understand that she was settling in. He had assumed they would stay at Murphys a day or two and then… but what would they do? He had cones and seedlings to bring back to William Lobb in San Francisco, but it was hard to imagine Molly and Jimmy living at Mrs. Bienenstock’s. He was pretty sure no woman had ever entered the boardinghouse apart from Mrs. B. herself, and a baby there would be like a yellow dress at a funeral. San Francisco itself was too rough and dirty for a child. On the other hand, he needed to go there more regularly than anywhere else, and Molly and Jimmy couldn’t follow him around while he was collecting plants and seeds. It would slow him down, and anyway a baby was better off in one place.

What Robert did not question was that he and Molly were now linked-by his nephew more than the child he had fathered, admittedly, but Jimmy was a real, demanding baby whereas his own was still just a mound under Molly’s dress.

Molly quickly got to know the hotel staff-the owner, the cook, the barman, the maid. Being pregnant seemed to give her even more of an appetite for food and company. She would often take Jimmy down to the saloon and nurse him while she sat with the customers, laughing and singing. Her size did not stop her in bed either, and she was loud with it, crying out whenever they coupled so that passersby on the street could hear.

She did not become friends with Nancy Lapham, however, the way you might think two women would who were surrounded by men. Robert kept expecting them to seek the other out, but apart from courteous nods and Nancy’s inquiries after Jimmy, they kept out of each other’s way. Robert mentioned this first to Billie Lapham while they were checking on their horses in the hotel stables one evening. Lapham was dazzled by Molly, her sensual solidity combined with her matter-of-fact manner. “Well, now,” he said, wiping his forehead with his palm-he seemed to be missing his handkerchief-“Nance is funny that way. She likes women her own size-like your sister. She knows where she is with a woman like Martha. Whereas Molly-she’s so-well, so full of life, she makes Nance feel even sicker. Course she didn’t say that,” he hastily added. “And she admires how Molly’s taken up Jimmy so natural. We both do. She’s really somethin’ else, your woman.” Billie Lapham spoke the last two words in an incredulous tone, as if he couldn’t believe Robert’s luck at landing such a catch.

Molly was blunter about Nancy. “She’s sickly,” she said when Robert asked her. “I don’t need to get friendly with someone who’s dyin’. Maybe that’s heartless, but I’d jest lose her, and who wants to get set up to be sad?”

After two weeks at Murphys, Robert began to feel as if he were wallowing in mud, unable to escape. His daily life had slowed down. He slept later and later, sunk deep in the feather bed and Molly’s flesh. He no longer hunted for his own food, but ate greasy steaks at the restaurant. Someone else looked after the gray and washed his clothes and lit his fires with wood they had chopped. He had never had such an easy life, and he hated it. Only Jimmy’s cheeks filling out, his eyes beginning to focus, his clear contentedness made Robert feel it was worthwhile.

To break out of the feather bed comfort, one day he rode up to Calaveras Grove with Billie Lapham, who did business with Haynes while Robert collected more sequoia cones. He had thought it would be a relief to be among the giant trees, but they only reminded him of Martha’s death and the last time he was here, and he worked with little pleasure, a sadness gnawing at him that even the trees could not assuage.

He had planned to stay overnight, camping out as he used to. But when he came back to the Big Trees Hotel towards the end of the afternoon to wash, there was a letter from William Lobb waiting for him that had followed him up the mountain.

Lobb was as brief as ever.

Bienenstock’s

California & Montgomery

San Francisco

August 20, 1856

Goodenough-

A man on the Welsh border wants to plant the biggest redwood grove in Britain on his estate. He is keen to get a head start on his wealthy friends, so wants seedlings rather than seeds. Bring back 50 as quick as you can, and a few sequoia seedlings to impress his neighbours.

William Lobb

He rode straight back to Murphys, relieved to have a purpose but uncertain what to say to Molly. When he got to their room, she was walking around with Jimmy on her shoulder like a sack of flour, patting his back to burp him. She brightened. “Robert Goodenough! I guess you couldn’t stay away even for a night. Did you miss your little family?”

“Molly, I-”

“Rub my feet, won’t you, honey? Carryin’ two babies around is swellin’ ’em right up.” She sank onto the bed and stuck out her feet.

As he took one in his hands, Robert looked around the room at the new cradle by the bed, the bucket full of soaking diapers, a line strung across the room where clean diapers were pegged to dry. On a small table were the remains of a steak Molly’d had sent up. The place had an air of permanence that made him uneasy. “Molly, we got to talk about what to do next,” he said.

“Well, first thing to do is to take Jimmy and put him in his cradle.”

Once he was settled back rubbing her feet, he started again. “Willam Lobb wrote to me. I’ve got to go back to San Francisco, and collect redwoods on the way.”

He was expecting arguments and complaints. But Molly surprised him. “How long we got to pack?” she said.

“Oh. I wasn’t expecting you to-”

“’Cause I’ve been wantin’ to see that city for a long time now. You know I’ve been in California three years and not been to San Francisco yet? I ain’t even seen the ocean! Now’s as good a time as any. Easier to do it now than when the other baby comes.”

“But you don’t have to come with me. I can come back to Murphys after. Aren’t you settled here?”

Molly snorted and gestured at the room. “You call this settled? You got a funny idea of settled. Settled is when I have a range to cook on and my own front door and a garden full of beans and tomatoes. Anyway, we’d better come with you. Otherwise who’s to say if you’ll come back to us? This William Lobb I hear so much about will jest give you somethin’ else to collect, then somethin’ after that, and we’ll never see you.”

Robert stopped rubbing her feet, stung by her words. He wasn’t sure he could argue with her, though. “I’m going to have to leave tomorrow,” he said instead.

“I can be ready tomorrow.”

“Are you sure?”

“Watch me.” Molly got up and began pulling clothes down from hooks and folding them. As she moved around the room, Jimmy’s dark eyes followed her as he lay quiet in the cradle.

“What about Jimmy?”

“What about him? You think babies ain’t traveled all over this country? He’ll be fine as long as he’s fed and swaddled to feel secure. Little ones don’t need more than that. It’s when they start to walk that it gets harder.”

“And you won’t have-the other one-on the way?” They had not talked about the baby Molly was carrying. Until it cried and needed feeding, it did not take their attention. Robert no longer questioned whether or not it was his. There would never be a satisfying answer to that question.

Molly shook her head. “It ain’t due for a while yet. Git my trunk out from under the bed for me, will you, honey?”

Faster than he’d expected, she dismantled the room, then went to arrange for the rest of her things to be brought back from the stables, leaving Robert alone with his nephew. Jimmy did not cry when she was gone, but regarded Robert at the foot of the bed, his long lashes making a fringe on his cheeks.

“Well, now, Jimmy, looks like we’re going on the road again.”

Maybe it was hearing his uncle’s voice, soft and wistful, but it seemed to Robert that Jimmy smiled a little.

They left Murphys amid something like a fanfare. Robert had met many people when he was struggling to get Jimmy fed and was memorable as the desperate man with the hungry baby. Molly was equally memorable for her laughter that filled the hotel saloon, her waves and halloos from the front balconies and her strolls through town, Jimmy in one arm, her other arm cupping her ballooning belly to support it, her yellow dress let out to its fullest and sweeping the dust behind her. Robert had hired a wagon to take them to Stockton, where they would get the steamboat to San Francisco. There he would get Molly and Jimmy settled, then go back out to dig up redwood seedlings, for he didn’t see how he could do that with them in tow.

A crowd began to form as he and Billie Lapham and a few other men loaded the wagon with Molly’s things and Jimmy’s cradle, as well as the sacks of sequoia cones and the seedlings. Even Nancy Lapham came out and sat in a chair on the front porch of the hotel. She had insisted on getting dressed, and she made a point of kissing Jimmy and hugging Molly goodbye, though she stepped out of Molly’s mountainous embrace as soon as she could. Robert went and sat with her for a few moments.

Nancy took his hand. “Everything’s changing, ain’t it?” She seemed sad.

“I’ll still come up this way to collect sequoias,” Robert assured her. “I’ll stop in and see you.”

“You better!” Nancy squeezed his hand. “If I hear you’ve been to Cally Grove and not come here to Murphys, there’ll be hell to pay, Robert Goodenough!”

Robert smiled. It was hard to imagine Nancy giving him hell. He made to get up but she gripped his hand tighter. “But something tells me I ain’t gonna see you again.”

“Don’t talk like that, Nancy.”

“It’s not that.” She dismissed her own decline with a shrug. “It’s-never mind. You go on with your family now. Look after that little boy.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he said. “Real soon.”

“Sure.” Nancy let go of his hand.

After many handshakes and claps on the back-with Billie Lapham throwing his arms around him twice, and Molly laughing and crying, and the proprietor telling her she had a job at Murphys Hotel any time she wanted, and Jimmy squalling because of the noise-what Robert remembered most about their departure was Nancy seated and still on the hotel porch, dressed in white, watching them and nodding once. It turned out she was right.

Robert had only taken the steamboat from Stockton to San Francisco once before, when he’d traveled with William Lobb. Usually he preferred the gray and a mule or two and his own company coming down out of the golden foothills of the Sierra Nevadas and across the flat plain of central California, where the mountains disappeared; and then after a day of mesmeric riding in the bright hot sun, a blue haze of new mountains began to shimmer ahead. There were no miners in the plains to dirty it up, and the Indians and Californios he met along the way were benign.

But he could not travel with Molly and Jimmy and the wagon full of her belongings that way; it would take too long. As they boarded the steamboat, Molly grinned. “Ain’t this grand?” she cried. “I seen these steamers docked in Sacramento and always dreamed one day I’d take one. Now that day’s come!”

He left her on deck by the large paddle and went with the gray to his temporary stall. This time Robert could not stay with his horse for long-he had others to look after. He stood for a moment with his arm around the gray’s neck, feeling the rocking movement of the boat under his feet that he knew the horse hated. “Sorry about this,” he whispered. As he left, the gray turned to look at him, then pissed a long, hot stream all over the deck.

Molly was at the stern, feeding Jimmy and watching the buildings of Stockton pass by. When she waved at people on the bank they always waved back. Robert was amazed that she was able to nurse the baby while standing. “This is the way to travel,” she said, still grinning. “I could glide along all week like this.”

“Molly, I’m gonna need to collect some redwoods,” Robert said, thinking ahead to what he would need to do to fulfill William Lobb’s letter. “When we get to San Francisco I’ll have to take off again once you’re settled.”

Molly’s smile faded, her expression becoming one part annoyance, one part pity. “Can’t you jest enjoy this? How long have we got on board?”

“About ten hours to San Francisco.”

“Tell you what: for ten hours, let’s not think about trees. Here, you take Jimmy.” Molly detached the drowsing baby from her nipple and handed him over. “I’m gonna go and have some fun!”

Something was shifting between them: Molly had lost her desperation and was becoming impatient. Though she had been forced to leave Murphys because of Robert, somehow it no longer felt like she was chasing after him; instead she was sweeping ahead and making him decide if he would follow.

Robert sat down on a bench in the sun with Jimmy in his lap and let the scenery pass before him much as it had when he’d made the first trip with William Lobb. There were Indians strung along the bank on their horses, and even the same boys-or their younger brothers now-racing the steamboat. After these past weeks of rapid change, the familiarity of the trip was a comfort, as was the baby’s solid weight. He felt he should be thinking about something, worrying at a problem and finding a solution, but it was so peaceful sitting there in the sun that after a while he closed his eyes and, as Molly had suggested, allowed himself simply to be. Soon he was sleeping as soundly as his nephew.

It seemed Mrs. Bienenstock had seen everything before, for she showed no surprise when Robert arrived with a pregnant woman and baby just weeks after a different pregnant woman had come looking for him. California was like that. People had gone west leaving behind all sorts of trouble; what they found in California was the space and freedom to create new trouble. Though Mrs. B. had never had women or children board with her, she stood aside and let Molly and Jimmy cross her doorway without comment, except to say, “Soak the diapers out back-they can add to the smells out there rather than inside.”

Robert began to say something, to explain, but she cut him off. “You’ll need a bigger room. Take the one on the second floor at the back: two dollars a week more. You go on up,” she said to Molly. “I’ll bring up bedding-or you got your own you prefer?”

“We’re fine, thanks.” Molly and Mrs. Bienenstock eyed each other, then nodded at the same time, coming to a wordless understanding that left Robert to one side.

He watched Molly climb the stairs, then turned back to his landlady. “Is Mr. Lobb around?”

Mrs. B. frowned. “He’s down at the docks when he should be in bed. Couldn’t even walk down there-had to get a wagon to take him ’cause his legs are so bad. He’s been fretting about you, wondering when you’d be bringing back the redwoods. Fifty, is it? Where are they?” She glanced at the wagon loaded with all they’d brought from Murphys, Jimmy’s cradle turned upside down and anchoring the mountain of pillows and sheets and blankets and mattress that Molly always carted around with her. Sandwiched in somewhere with the others was the nine-patch Goodenough quilt.

“I haven’t collected them yet-I’ve been busy with-other things.”

“So you have.” Mrs. Bienenstock seemed amused.

William Lobb appeared an hour later, after Robert had unloaded their possessions and was in the yard, spreading out cones to dry. “Goodenough!” he cried, hobbling out. “Where are those damned redwoods I asked you for? I’ve just seen Beardsley nosing around down at the docks. He’s bound to be sending redwoods to Wales too. We have to get a move on!”

Before Robert could answer, Molly popped her head out of the window to their room. “Honey, bring up some towels if Mrs. B.”s got any to spare? Well, halloo there!” she called to William Lobb. “You must be the famous William Lobb. You ain’t gonna work Robert to death, are you? He’s got others need him now.”

Lobb stared up at her, with her curly black hair sticking out and the shelf of her breasts resting on the windowsill. Then Jimmy began to cry. “Ah, there he goes. Don’t forget the towels!” Molly pulled her head back inside.

William Lobb turned back to Robert. Unlike Mrs. Bienenstock, he did not keep quiet. “Who the hell is that? That’s not your sister. I met her. Quiet little thing, light hair. Didn’t have much-” Lobb gestured at his chest. “Where is she?”

The stark stillness on Robert’s face made Lobb stop. “Oh, lad, I am sorry.”

Robert reached for a sequoia cone that had been partially chewed by a chickaree and tossed it aside.

“Who is that?” Lobb nodded at the upstairs window. This time he asked more gently.

Robert continued to paw through the sack of cones so that he would not have to look up. “Molly. I knew her back in Texas. She’s been up at French Creek a few years. I may have mentioned her before.”

“And the baby?”

“My nephew.”

William Lobb nodded. They were silent for a few minutes, Robert with his cones, Lobb inspecting the sequoia seedlings. Their needles were yellowing and they were inferior to what Robert normally brought back, but the Englishman did not comment. When he judged enough time had passed, he said, “There’s a ship leaves for Panama in three days. If you can collect fifty redwoods and bring them back by then, we can get them off to Wales quickly. No time to dry those cones.” He nodded at the cones spread at Robert’s feet. “We’ll just have to pack them green.”

“Why are you in such a hurry?”

“The gentleman’s not hired any collector in particular, just said the first to get a grove worth of seedlings to him gets the commission. Of course Beardsley will be looking to get it. Maybe Bridges, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Murray brothers tried their hand too. The man’s planning a pinetum as well, so there’ll be plenty more work if he’s happy. He’ll want every kind of conifer we can send him-probably as seedlings or saplings. So we need those redwoods now to demonstrate our collecting ability. I thought you’d have brought them back with you rather than a woman and baby.”

“What does Veitch say?”

“This isn’t a commission through Veitch. It’s separate. We’ll get the whole payment.”

“Aren’t you collecting for Veitch anymore?”

Lobb frowned. “I’ve had enough of Veitch. I’m ill, and I’m tired. I’m done with him. This will be my way of thumbing my nose at him, and still get paid better.”

“What about me?”

“You?” William Lobb shrugged. “You, lad, can do what you like. The British will still want Californian trees. You can collect for Veitch if you want. I won’t stand in your way. It looks like you’ve got people depending on you.” He raised his eyebrows towards the window where Molly had appeared.

“But…” Robert couldn’t tell if he was being cut loose by his employer.

“You’ve got enough knowledge. Use it now: where are we going to find fifty redwood seedlings fast?”

At least Lobb had used “we.” That was something. Robert thought for a moment. “It has to be close by.”

“Yes. And?”

“There need to be a lot of seedlings germinating.”

“And where do you get that?”

“Someplace where there was a fire a year ago.” Rather than destroying the redwoods, fire cleared the forest floor of the thick duff around them and provided seeds with a new bed full of minerals. Robert had seen many more redwood seedlings in scorched earth than in a ground full of old needles.

“Yes. Fire. There was a fire above the Oakland hills a year ago. Good redwoods up there and it’s just across the bay. Oakland will do. You can take the ferry across.”

“But I need your help.”

Lobb winced. “Listen, lad, I can’t do a thing. There are shooting pains in my legs and I’ve no energy. All my years of travel have caught up with me.” He paused. “Don’t let that happen to you. Mind you, looks like you’re heading in the right direction.” He nodded again at Molly’s window.

“You can show me where the redwoods are, organize the wagon. You won’t have to do the digging. Just come with me. Please.” Robert didn’t know why he was so insistent that Lobb accompany him. Nonetheless, he stared at his employer intently until Lobb relented.

“Damn your brown eyes, Goodenough! All right. Never mind the ferry: run down to the docks and hire us a boat and a man willing to take us first thing tomorrow-as early as possible so we’ve got a full day. Now, wagons: I think we can manage with just one if we stack the pails right. And pails-we’ve got to get more. A whole lot more.” As he and Robert began discussing the logistics of collecting so many trees in one go, William Lobb seemed to brighten and regain his energy, pacing Mrs. Bienenstock’s yard without the stiff gait he had adopted over the past year.

Molly did not seem to mind Robert going off almost immediately after they had arrived in San Francisco. Like him, she was used to doing things herself without expecting much from others. When he went to tell her, she was busy in the bedroom, settling in with her blankets on the bed, dresses on pegs, bottles on the chest of drawers, and Jimmy popped into the cradle, with the Goodenough quilt as his bedding. Again she seemed to be able to quickly make a home out of a space, pressing down a tangible mark where Robert would have left no footprint.

He was relieved that she was cheerful and amenable. She was only disappointed not to see the ocean right away. “You could get Mrs. B. to take you out to Black Point,” Robert suggested. “Or out by Seal Rocks where they’re building a fort. You get a good view of it there.”

“Naw, I want to see it with you,” Molly insisted. “Anyway, there’s plenty for me to see around here. All those houses we saw on the way! And the saloons! And the ships! I’m gonna have me a little holiday.”

Going to Oakland felt like a little holiday to Robert. There were no women or babies to consider, and only a few drunk miners around. He did not have to be careful about tracking mud into Mrs. B.”s, or lie in bed at night with Molly too warm beside him, feeling the four walls closing him in. After crossing the bay in a boat large enough to hold fifty pails, two men, the boat’s owner and Robert’s horse, he saddled the gray so he could ride into the hills, while William Lobb stayed behind in the small town to hire a wagon he would bring up after Robert. It had been almost a year since the men had gone out collecting together. Lobb also seemed happy to be out and away from the responsibilities and debilitations of the city. He walked almost normally and his brow was clear of its usual furrows.

“Up there.” He pointed at a ridge above Oakland. “Take the Indian trail up, and go right at the fork. About a mile up you’ll find a beauty of a grove. I’ve been saving it. You should be able to find enough seedlings there. Take some pails to get started on-we’ll bring along the rest.”

He was right about the redwood grove. It was full of tall trees with their distinctive auburn bark and needled branches getting bigger the higher up they grew. Robert knew he didn’t have much time to collect fifty seedlings, yet when he had walked a little way into the grove he took a few minutes to sit on a log and look around him. Last year’s fire had charred parts of many of the trunks, but redwood bark was thick and full of tannin that protected it from burning, and redwood branches grew starting halfway up the trunk, which meant that flames couldn’t use them as a ladder to reach the top of the tree. The forest floor had been cleaned by the fire, and now tiny seedlings were sprouting everywhere, amid a carpet of emerald-green redwood sorrel.

Though not so big as the Calaveras sequoias he had been among weeks before, the redwoods gave him the familiar soothing sense of being insignificant. If only I could keep this feeling with me everywhere I am, Robert thought. Maybe then it wouldn’t be so hard to adjust to all the things that have happened to me.

He spent a happy few hours finding seedlings and digging them up. As he worked, he wondered which trees would not survive the long journey across the ocean, and what the rest would look like planted in foreign soil. It was a relief to think only of the trees and of what he needed rather than of what others needed from him. Though it was not easy finding so many seedlings at one time, Robert did not hurry or worry, but worked steadily, ferrying what he had on the gray down to the larger road where William Lobb waited with the wagon. The gray was not happy about being hung again with pails, but Robert had brought along a supply of sugar lumps and early Gravenstein apples to keep him reasonably quiet.

By sunset he had dug up the fiftieth tree and tipped it into a pail. When he brought the last seedlings down to the wagon, William Lobb nodded, satisfied. “They’ll do, lad. Good work.”

Back in Oakland, the owner of the boat was missing, and Robert went to search for him among the saloons strung along the main street. He was passed out in one of them, and Robert couldn’t bring him to. “He’s too drunk to sail,” he said to William Lobb back at the wagon, worried about his employer’s response.

But Lobb was sanguine. “We’ll rouse him first thing tomorrow,” he said. “There’s no steamers leaving tomorrow, so Beardsley can’t take off before us. Star of the West leaves the day after tomorrow. We’ve got time.”

Lobb was too stiff to sleep outside, and took a room at one of the basic hotels, but Robert stabled the gray, borrowed a blanket and walked a ways out of town to light a fire, wrap himself up and sleep under the stars. He hadn’t slept outside since Molly’s arrival. As he lay by the fire, he marveled at how quiet it was without Molly and Jimmy with him, and how much easier it was to live this kind of traveling life. The next minute, though, he was feeling guilty about being apart from them. He would not describe it as missing them, exactly, but he was very aware that he was alone. He was not sure what a family was meant to be like. Not James and Sadie Goodenough, that was clear. But what else was there? It felt like fumbling around in the dark, trying to light a candle, losing track of where he was, touching things he didn’t mean to touch.

Despite these thoughts, Robert slept well. He woke at dawn feeling more like himself than he had in weeks.

Mrs. Bienenstock was standing in the doorway of her house, smoking a cigar. She stubbed it out when the wagon pulled up. “Jesus H. Christ,” she muttered. “Jesus H. Christ.”

Robert assumed she was reacting to the army of pails double-stacked on the wagon bed. The boat full of seedlings had attracted much attention at the docks when they landed from Oakland, and William Lobb had not been willing to leave them there, even for a night, for fear they would be damaged or stolen-or worse, other tree agents would see them and know they were collecting redwoods for the Welsh estate. So they’d brought them back to the boardinghouse till they could take them onto the Star of the West the next morning.

But Mrs. B. didn’t even glance at the seedlings. “I told you I don’t like mess in my house. I told you that the first time I saw you, Robert Goodenough.”

“Sorry, ma’am, but we’ll be careful putting these in the back,” Robert reassured her. “If we track in any dirt, I’ll sweep it up afterwards, and mop too.”

She didn’t seem to hear him. “You know how hard it is to get blood out of a mattress?”

Robert stared at her. Then he pushed past Mrs. Bienenstock, took the stairs three at a time and ran down the hall.

Molly was propped up in bed, her back against the headboard. On either side of her were a few pillows stacked up, and a baby on top of each, her arms around them. Both sucked at the nearest nipple. There was no blood in sight.

Molly gave him an exhausted smile. “Hello, honey. Surprise!”

Robert was so stunned he remained in the doorway, looking from one baby to the other. Here was Jimmy. And here was-his son or daughter, it was impossible to say which. He had left for one day and come back a father.

“How?” he said.

Molly snorted. “The usual way: a whole lotta pain and yellin’ and pushin’. Actually, it wasn’t so bad-happened so fast I’d hardly time to feel it. Thank God for Dody. If she hadn’t been here to help, I’d have had it alone on the kitchen floor!”

“Dody?”

“Mrs. Bienenstock. Your landlady. Don’t you even know her Christian name?”

Mrs. B. had come up the stairs behind Robert and was leaning against the wall in the hall. Now she grunted. “I don’t give out my first name to most. Keep it formal, I say. Course Molly here asked it straightaway, so she could yell it all the while she was giving birth. Whole damned street knows it now.”

“Dody, I owe you one big batch of biscuits to thank you-when these two let me up!” Molly cupped the babies’ heads with her hands. “Now, you think you could get me a cup of coffee?”

“This one-nothing but trouble.” Mrs. B. chuckled. It seemed she liked a bit of trouble.

When she had gone, Robert perched on the side of the bed. He gestured at the new baby. “Boy or a girl?”

“Girl. What are we gonna call her?”

Robert shook his head. “You choose.”

“No. You name her. It’s time you started naming things. Your poor horse still don’t have a name. Least you can do is give one to your daughter.”

Robert stared at the whorl of dark hair on the baby’s head, which was all he could see of her with her face buried in her mother’s breast. “I don’t know what to name her.”

“Well, you called Jimmy after your Pa. Why not name her after your Ma?”

Robert shuddered. “I can’t do that.”

“Robert, your mother’s still your mother, whatever she done. What was her name?”

“Sadie.” Even saying it filled Robert’s mouth with a bitter taste, and he thought for a moment that, whatever Mrs. Bienenstock’s restrictions about her house, he might just be sick in it.

“Sadie’s a nickname for Sarah, ain’t it?” Molly persisted. “Sarah’s nice. Quieter. Less sassy than Sadie. More like you.”

“Sarah Goodenough.” When Robert said the name aloud, it did not sting, but felt like a balm.

“Goodenough! You gonna help me with these trees or not?” William Lobb was shouting up at their window.

Molly shook her head and laughed. “That man. If I worked for him I’d have run off by now.”

“I’ll give him a hand with the trees, then I’ll come back.”

Molly waved him away. “We’re jest gonna sleep anyway. Look.” Both babies were lolling away from her breasts, sated. “Put ’em in the cradle before you go, will you, honey? One at each end.”

Robert picked up his daughter carefully so that she would not wake. It felt no different holding her from holding Jimmy. He laid her carefully on the Goodenough quilt, her head next to the green silk square, and smiled.

The next morning he and William Lobb took the redwoods back down to the docks. The seedlings were still in pails, for they didn’t have the materials or the time to build the eight Ward’s cases they would have needed to ship the seedlings in. Nor had they had time to pack and seal more than four tin cases of sequoia cones. “We’ll send these to Veitch-keep him sweet for a bit,” Lobb said. “Soon enough he’ll hear about the redwoods and there’ll be hell to pay.” He chuckled, anticipating the hell.

Molly was up now, sitting in the kitchen nursing the babies and instructing Mrs. Bienenstock on how to make biscuits. “Don’t pound the dough, Dody!” Molly was crying with laughter. “You want to end up crackin’ your teeth on ’em? Pat it gentle like it’s a baby. That’s better.”

Robert had only ever seen his landlady make coffee and eggs, and he did not think she would take kindly to being taught. But Mrs. B. seemed willing; she was smoothing out the biscuit dough into a round on the table. Neither woman even glanced over at him as he moved between the yard and the wagon with the pails.

“Now, take this cup,” Molly ordered, “and cut out some circles. Don’t twist it! Twistin’ seals the dough and it don’t rise so well. Jest press and bring the cup back out. There now, put that on your sheet for bakin’.”

“We’re taking the trees down to the ship now,” Robert announced.

“Course you are, honey. We jest saw you traipsin’ back and forth with ’em. All right-twelve minutes, Dody! Just enough time for a cup of coffee.”

“See you later, then.” Robert went out to the wagon where William Lobb was waiting, seated next to the driver. He was about to climb up to join him when Mrs. Bienenstock appeared at his elbow, her hands covered in flour and a white smear on her forehead. “You bring him back,” she spoke up to William Lobb. “You leave him on that ship and I’ll make a pile of your possessions and burn ’em-notebooks and maps and all-right here in the street. You won’t be welcome back in this house. I can guarantee that.”

Robert had no idea what she was talking about, but William Lobb flinched. “It’s all right, Mrs. B.,” Robert reassured her. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

His words seemed to make no impression on Mrs. Bienenstock, who was glaring at William Lobb as he kept his eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance.

Normally when they shipped specimens to England they paid one or two of the sailors to look after them: make sure the tin cases of cones did not break open or get wet, take the Ward’s cases outside into the sun. Over the years William Lobb had gotten to know many sailors whom he felt he could trust.

This time, however, they were in such a hurry to send the trees that they were using a ship they had never tried before, and they did not know any of the crew. William Lobb had spoken to the captain of the Star of the West, who swore he’d looked after plants on other ships, including those of Lobb’s brother Thomas, collecting for Veitch in the Far East. The captain had introduced him briefly to a sailor he would entrust the trees to. Now, however, when they found the sailor hauling sacks of mail on board, he didn’t seem to recognize Lobb. His eyes were bloodshot, he stank of whiskey, and his walk was unsteady; he would have been sampling San Francisco’s saloons before the voyage. Looking over the trees crammed in their pails, he swore. It seemed that fragile, awkward freight bothered him more than the heavy trunks and boxes that would make anyone stagger under their weight.

“I did tell you there would be fifty trees-well, fifty plus three extra.” William Lobb was including in the shipment the three giant sequoia seedlings Robert had brought back from Calaveras Grove, as a sweetener to the owner of the Welsh estate. “If he wants a redwood grove, he’s bound to want sequoias as well,” Lobb had explained. “I’m just thinking ahead for him.”

Now the sailor grabbed four pails in each hand by their handles and headed up the gangplank, bumping them against the side of the ship as he went aboard.

“Careful, man!” William Lobb shouted, but his words were lost in the hubbub of porters around him yelling and grunting as they carried cargo on board: more sacks of mail, barrels of Gravenstein apples, redwood planks, boxes of gold accompanied by agents and guards. Horses were led up the gangplank, and two cows, and crates of chickens.

Robert and Lobb picked up pails and followed the sailor aboard and then down into the hold. There he dumped his load in a corner; one of the pails tipped over and spilled some dirt. Until then Robert had not really understood how vulnerable the redwoods would be to the conditions on board. Always before, he and Lobb had sent smaller quantities, in Ward’s cases where they were protected. Without someone carefully tending them, these were bound to perish. No wonder William Lobb had insisted they collect so many.

Robert reached over and righted the toppled seedling, scooping the dirt back into the pail. Then he hurried after Lobb and the sailor, who had headed back to the wagon. It took them several more trips to get them all into their dark corner.

Lobb made only one trip back to the wagon before he had to sit down from the pain in his legs. “Hang on a minute, now,” he called to the sailor, who had dropped the last of the pails and was running off. “I won’t pay you a penny till you stand still and listen to me!”

The sailor stopped and swore as he turned to face Lobb.

“Let me explain about caring for the trees,” William Lobb began. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “I’ve written it down as well.”

The sailor snorted. “Can’t read. What care do they need, anyway? Trees look after themselves.”

“Not on a ship, they don’t. They need fresh water, for one thing.”

“What’s wrong with seawater?”

“Don’t be an idiot, man. Salt water would kill them and you know it. So you must water them every other day, and when it’s fair bring them up on deck, for the sun.”

“I’m not doin’ that!”

“Your captain said he’d tell you what was expected.”

“He didn’t say nothin’ about movin’ trees in and out. I got other things to do than hump pails.” Clearly the sailor was put out by the fiddly, sensitive nature of the work.

“Then I’ll find someone else,” William Lobb declared. “I’m sure there are plenty other sailors who would rather have the ten dollars.”

The sailor narrowed his eyes. “Give me the money now.”

“No. I’ll give it to the captain to give you when they’ve got safely to Panama City and you’ve secured them across the Isthmus to Aspinwall. He’ll subtract fifty cents for each one that dies. More than twenty die and you’ll start paying me.”

The sailor spat and swore again, then stomped off. William Lobb swore as well. “Untrustworthy. The man has no love of trees. And he can’t read.” He glanced down at the instructions he had written out. “Even if the captain keeps after him-and there’s no guarantee he will, no matter how much I offer to pay-he doesn’t care about keeping them alive. We’ll be lucky if any survive. Got to try, though. We’ve no choice if we want to get redwoods to Wales before Beardsley or Bridges do.”

Robert looked out over the instant miniature forest of trees that had sprung up in the hold. Grown redwoods and sequoias were the most solid-looking of trees: they belonged to the land they were rooted in. It was hard to bring them down; even fire only made them stronger, and shoots sprang up from dead trunks. But these seedlings in their pails looked so fragile and out of place; already they seemed to have wilted. They would be neglected, left in the dark, blown around in the salt spray and heavy winds, or kicked over by indifferent sailors. They made Robert think of John Chapman’s seedlings carefully placed in their own canoe in Ohio so long ago, and the way his father looked after his trees as if they were his children.

“Can’t you go with the trees?” he asked, already knowing the answer, and indeed, the question and answer beyond that. Mrs. Bienenstock was smarter than any of them.

“My legs hurt too much,” Lobb said. “I can hardly walk as it is, and wouldn’t be able to take them above and below deck. Crossing Panama would be hell. It was bad enough riding in the wagon around Oakland. No, I’m stuck here.” William Lobb held Robert’s gaze. Then he looked out over the bay, his eyes latching on to a ferry heading across it.

“You want me to go with them.” Robert kept his voice neutral.

“I can’t ask you that, lad. You’ve got a family.” But he was asking it, even if his words didn’t.

Until recently, Robert’s life had been clean and empty. Now so many conflicting forces pulled at him that he could hardly think straight. Instead his mind was filled with a jumble of images and sensations: John Appleseed gliding down the river in his double canoe, the blasted top of the Old Bachelor sequoia, Billie Lapham’s battered top hat, Jimmy’s fingers making a star on Molly’s breast as he sucked, Martha sitting so tiny under the giant sequoias. Nancy Lapham’s cough. His mother’s raucous laugh. The pineapple finish of a Pitmaston Pineapple. His father saying, “One in ten trees comes up sweet.” Finally his thoughts settled on the handkerchief full of Golden Pippin seeds Martha had given him that lay in a drawer in the bureau in his and Molly’s room. Where would he plant them now?

“I’d better go back to Mrs. Bienenstock’s,” he said at last, “and get my things.”

Mrs. Bienenstock was waiting for him on the doorstep-unusually for her, doing nothing, not even smoking a cigar. Waiting seemed to be her chosen task for that moment.

“Don’t be stupid, Robert Goodenough,” she said, folding her arms and leaning against the doorway so that she blocked the entrance. “I am real tired of men doin’ stupid things in this town.”

“How did you know?”

Mrs. Bienenstock grunted. “Men are too easy to figure out. I need more of a challenge.”

Robert cleared his throat. “I would be obliged if you could sell my horse and give the money to Molly.”

“Sell the gray? See, that is stupidity right there. Nobody will want that fickle flea-biter.”

Robert frowned. “Never mind, I’ll ask Mr. Lobb to do it.”

“William Lobb knows an ass’ ass about selling horses. He sells trees, not animals.”

“Well, if you won’t do it, I don’t have much choice.”

“I’m not gonna do anything that will make this easier for you.”

“Where’s Molly?”

Mrs. B. jerked her head. “Kitchen.”

Robert stepped up to the door, close to his landlady, and waited. Mrs. Bienenstock stared at him, their eyes level. She had brown eyes like his, he noticed for the first time, though hers had dark specks floating in them. At last she stepped aside, and spat into the street as he passed.

Molly was sitting at the table with a plate of Mrs. B.”s biscuits. They looked nothing like the fluffy ones she normally made: these were rock-solid and functional. Molly had spread hers with honey and was biting into it. The two babies were asleep in the corner in a basket that Mrs. B. usually used for hauling wood. Already they were taking over. Robert wondered how long his landlady would put up with it.

“I’d forgotten how good it is to sit and eat without someone hanging off me,” she commented with her mouth full. “I might jest eat this whole plate of biscuits. You want one?” She held out the plate to him.

“Molly.”

“They ain’t like mine, I’ll admit that. Dody don’t exactly have a light touch in most things, much less biscuit dough. But I don’t mind. Things always taste better when someone else has made ’em for you, don’t they? I always liked the coffee you made for me up at French Creek-even though it was miners’ coffee.” She was running on the way she did when her desperation became more marked, except that she didn’t seem desperate now, but calm, even a little indifferent. Of course she must have heard him talking to Mrs. Bienenstock outside.

“Molly.”

“What is it this time, honey.” Molly said it as a statement rather than a question. She took another bite of the tough biscuit and left a smear of honey on her chin.

“William Lobb wants me to go with the trees to Wales, to make sure they survive.”

“Course he does.” Molly wiped her chin. “The question is, do you want to go?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

Molly breathed out hard through her nose. “That’s the problem with you, Robert Goodenough. You’ve been bouncin’ all over this country for years-since you was a boy. But you don’t choose to go somewhere, you jest end up there because others are goin’ and you’re expected to, rather than because you think, ‘Right, this is what I want to do.’”

“I did know what I wanted.”

“Which was?”

“To go west.”

“To get away from your family.”

“Well. Yes.” Robert chewed on his lip. Time was passing and the ship would be leaving soon-if it hadn’t already.

Molly picked up a biscuit and began to crumble it between her fingers. “So you kept goin’ west. And then what happened?”

“I reached the Pacific.” Robert pictured the whale’s tail, flipping up in the ocean. “I saw it, and I couldn’t go any further, so I had to turn back.”

“Why?”

“What do you mean, why?”

“Why stop? Why not keep goin’?”

“Because-because I can’t swim.” It was a foolish answer to what felt like a foolish question.

But Molly was not foolish. “You can get on a ship. Get on a ship,” she repeated, and it became a command.

“You want me to go?”

“Who said anything about ‘me’? You know, I’ve done a lot of thinkin’ these past weeks, even with one baby or another grabbin’ at me. How long did you mine for gold?”

Robert frowned. “A year or so. Why?”

“I been around a lot of miners. I’ve seen how they are. You ain’t like them. You don’t gamble, you don’t drink, you don’t spend your money on women-well, you don’t on me, that’s all I know. Same hat, same boots, same saddle, same rundown horse. No flashy watch on a chain. You don’t own land or a house or even a bed, far as I know. But I bet you were a good miner. You kept at it, didn’t chase down rumors like the others. So I thought about all this, and finally I realized somethin’, and it made me laugh out loud. You want to know what it was I realized?”

Robert nodded, though he was painfully aware that an entire ship was waiting for him.

“It’s you, Robert Goodenough. You’re the miner I’ve been lookin’ for-the one who’s saved his gold money, who I can put my feet up with. You got some money from all that mining?”

“A little. It cost a lot to be a miner, but I saved a little.”

“Good. You got enough to pay for a woman and two babies to go to England?”

Robert stared at the babies in their basket. “Can they go on a ship?”

Molly laughed. “Honey, babies are made and born and live on ships.”

“But-don’t you want to stay here?”

“Here?” Molly looked around the kitchen. “I could. Mrs. B.”s the only woman I’ve met in California I like. But I was three years in French Creek. I wouldn’t mind movin’ around some, babies or not.” As if that were her cue, Sarah began to whimper in preparation for full-blown crying. “The question ain’t about me, though, it’s about whether you want to be alone or with us. Now, we don’t have to come with you. I got offers of work at Murphys and up at Cally Grove, or I could stay in San Francisco and work, find a gal to look after the babies. I could make a life in California, and have fun without even havin’ a miner to look after me. So don’t you say you want me to come because you feel you have to. You got to want to.”

“Molly, I’m not good at family.”

“You’re doin’ all right with Jimmy and Sarah.”

When he didn’t speak, she added, “You ain’t like your parents, you know. If that’s what you’re worried about. You ain’t violent. I don’t have any worries on that front. Besides, the way you described it back in Cally Grove, it sounds like your parents didn’t mean to kill each other. It was an accident-a double accident. You said your Ma was goin’ to chop down the apple tree?”

“Yes.”

“That’s real different from goin’ out with an axe intendin’ to kill someone. She was aimin’ for the tree, not your Pa. And she fell into the stakes, you said, ’cause he pushed her. Well, that’s jest pushin’ away, it don’t mean he meant to kill her.”

Robert was silent, playing through the scene in his head. “Maybe you’re right,” he said at last. “Actually, I am like my father, a little.” If he was my father, he said to himself, then understood that he could choose to make him so, as there was no one to tell him otherwise. “He was a tree man,” he added, because he could.

“Then your father must have been a good man-”cause you’re a good man, Robert Goodenough. Better than your name. Don’t you forget that. You can choose to be different from your past. You have chosen, haven’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Now you got another choice: do you want the babies and me to come with you or not?”

She waited for him to answer and he knew the pause was too long, even though at the end of it was a “Yes,” and even though he meant it.

“All right, then. When does the ship sail?” If Molly was disappointed by his hesitation, she didn’t show it. It was a moment, however, that he knew would always remain between them.

Robert cleared his throat. “Now. We have to go right now.”

“Dody! We got some packin’ to do!”

The next half hour was a blur of panic, of throwing things into trunks and running up and down the stairs to load a wagon commandeered by Mrs. Bienenstock. Robert stopped thinking and simply did whatever Molly and Mrs. B. ordered. Jimmy and Sarah cried all the way through the commotion, and Robert marveled at how easily Molly ignored them when she had to.

Robert himself had little to pack. He took a few clothes, the Goodenough quilt, notebooks full of tree notes, and the handkerchief of Golden Pippin seeds, selling Mrs. B. his shotgun, saddle, and a few cook pans. She also bought the gray, very cheaply. Robert was surprised to find he regretted selling his horse, but he didn’t know when he’d be back. He had no idea what was going to happen to him. To them. He would have to get better at thinking in the plural.

Though there was no time, Molly insisted he go to the stables where he kept the gray and say goodbye. When Robert protested, she just looked at him. “It’s your horse.” And so he went and stood with the gray for a few minutes while it chewed on oats and ignored him. When he moved to go, though, the gray stretched out and nipped Robert on the arm. “Fair enough,” he said. “Guess I deserved that.”

Back at the boardinghouse he told his landlady the gray’s name was Pippin. “No, it’s not,” Mrs. B. replied as she wrestled a trunk down the stairs. “He’s mine now, till I sell him on, so I get to name him. His name’s West.”

As they pulled up to Pacific Wharf, the Star of the West was already under steam, and the deck lined with passengers taking their last look at San Francisco and the people they were leaving behind. William Lobb was among them, leaning on the rail and arguing with the captain. “There he is!” he shouted when he spotted the wagon with its mountain of possessions. “Goodenough, where the hell have you been? They’re threatening to fine us for holding up the ship!” He hobbled down the gangplank to them. Only when Molly descended from the wagon with the basket full of crying babies did he seem to notice Robert was not alone.

“You there!” Mrs. Bienenstock shouted up at the captain. “If you’re so goddamned worried about getting away, tell your men to bring this stuff on board. Standing there like a jackass won’t help. Jesus H. Christ, do I have to do everything myself?” She continued to swear joyfully as she shepherded Molly on board.

William Lobb stared after them. “Are you mad, Goodenough? Fifty-three trees, two babies and a woman to look after for three months on board a ship?”

“Maybe so. Anyway, I’ll get those trees to Wales, and plant ’em for the gentleman. I’ll let you know how it goes.”

William Lobb nodded. “You do that, lad.” Then he smiled, his teeth bright against his dark beard. It was a sight so unusual, especially since Lobb’s illness, that it made Robert smile too. They shook hands. “Have yourself a Pitmaston Pineapple or two while you’re there,” he added. “You know Pitmaston is only sixty miles from where the redwood grove will be.”

“Really?”

“The world is not so big after all. Now, don’t forget to set aside water for the trees, make sure there’s enough for the whole voyage. Don’t let the captain fob you off with rainwater they’ve captured-there’s too much sea spray in it, it’ll kill the trees.”

Even as Robert was hauling the rest of their things onto the Star of the West, Lobb was shouting instructions after him: “Don’t take the seedlings all out on deck at the same time: split ’em into two groups and take ’em up on alternate days. When you cross Panama, make sure the trees get their own wagon-don’t let them tuck the pails in with other goods, I’ve seen that before and the boxes shift and crush the seedlings. If that happens, though, don’t throw away the tree-there’s still a chance it can recover at the other end. And when you reach Cardiff, send a message ahead so the gentleman knows you’re coming with the redwoods. Look after those trees,” he finished, as Robert paused and looked down at his employer. “They deserve better than to perish at sea. Site them well, plant them carefully. Make them stars in their new land.”

Mrs. Bienenstock had gotten Molly and the babies settled into a cabin, and gave Robert a brusque clap on the shoulder before she left. “God help you all,” she muttered. “What a lot of trouble!” But she was whistling as she strode down the gangplank, and she waited with William Lobb to wave to them as the ship steamed away from the quay.

“Goodbye, goodbye!” Molly cried, though she couldn’t wave back with her arms full of babies. “Think of us on the other side of the world!”

Molly finally got to see the ocean. It did not take long for the Star of the West to clear Seal Rocks and head out into the Pacific. As they stood on deck watching the waves churn beneath them, Molly thrust both babies into Robert’s arms, held her own out wide and whooped, making the passengers near them smile. “All this water!” she cried, laughing. “You never told me it was this big! How long do we get to be on it?”

“Two to three months, with a week on land crossing Panama. From there we head up to New York, then change ships for Cardiff. Mr. Lobb said we’ll get tired of it.”

“Bah, I don’t listen to that Englishman. I hope the whole country ain’t like him.” Molly leaned against the railing and gazed out over the water unfurling before them.

The ship began its long turn from the afternoon sun towards the south so that eventually they would be following the California coast. Robert felt himself lurch inside, as if he was breaking off and taking a path where a compass would be no help.

He could not linger on this feeling, though, for Sarah was squirming and nuzzling at his arm, trying to find something to suck. He had never known a man or a woman or a horse as demanding as these babies were. “Can you feed Sarah?” he asked, glad to have someone with him to ask.

Molly took their daughter and got her latched on to a breast while keeping her eyes on the ocean. “Look!” she cried. A mile or so west of them a plume of water was sprayed high into the air, followed a moment later by the dark back of a whale arcing through the water. It was impossible not to be infected by her enthusiasm. Robert found his eyes glued to the ocean, watching for signs of the whale’s progress-the plumes of water, the humping back and the curved tail flashing and then sliding back down into the water. He shouted when he saw the tail, which made Molly laugh and grab him in a kiss, the babies sandwiched in between.

Later when Jimmy and Sarah were asleep in their cradle and Robert had checked on the trees, he and Molly leaned against the railing and watched the sun set. There were no clouds and little haze to soften it as it dropped down its burning path. It at least was certain of where it was going.

“What are you worryin’ about now, Robert Goodenough?” Molly was studying his profile as he looked out at the fiery water.

Robert shrugged. “I haven’t gone east ever in my life. I don’t know what I’m going to do back there.”

Molly’s skin was orange in the evening light. “I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna plant fifty trees-”

“Fifty-three,” Robert corrected. “There are fifty redwoods, three sequoias.”

“You’re gonna plant fifty-three trees in England-”

“Wales.”

“-Wales, and make sure they grow so there’s a redwood grove as good as any you got here. Then you’re gonna take me to London and see the sights. Then you’re gonna find me one of them Golden Pippins you’ve talked about so much-”

“Pitmaston Pineapple.”

“-A Pitmaston Pineapple, and I’m gonna taste it for myself.”

Robert was beginning to warm to Molly’s list. He felt in his pocket for the Golden Pippin seeds Martha had brought him. They were still there. Seeds could keep for a long time. All they needed was the right place to take root. He would know it when he saw it.