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?”