“A dozen cartloads, but cheap, all in all, for the privacy.”
She loved watching the wall snake up from the old foundation at the bottom of the yard. When Abram finished a rough frame, she hopped up and down in her dirty garden skirt to see if she could see out. She couldn’t, but she had him add another foot. The garden beds were staggered down the slope, with a double line of stakes spaced for fruit trees along the east edge of the property, and the day they were filled, snow fell again.
She walked around town the rest of that day, the last official day of winter, wide-brimmed hat collecting snow, and though it melted and ran down her back in gouts every five minutes, she did in fact see coverings in yards over patches that seemed planted, quilts and burlap and sail cloth pinned down with stones. Some people knew how to grow things here, but she hadn’t found a way to phrase her questions, and she didn’t knock on their doors.
At the nursery on Clark Street, she hit another hiccup: the owner refused to order peach trees for her. “I am not a fool,” he said. “How could you think such a tree would be suitable? I would no sooner give you a gun if I thought you were going to use it against me.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment, but he didn’t look up from a receipt for the indoor things she’d already selected: two nice figs, a lemon, a holly fern, a big jasmine and a melon abutilon. “The blossoms come out during a warm patch and then freeze,” he said. “Of all silly notions.”
He was a Scot named Buchanan, not obviously dramatic. If he’d explained his reasoning with humor, rather than with condescension, she might have stayed sane; now she’d grind his bones to make her bread. “I see,” said Dulcy.
“It goes warm, it goes cold, cherries and peaches and apricots explode, split right to the ground. You’d best give up on fruit. Raspberries, maybe. Strawberries.”
Now he’d offered some information—she didn’t like the sound of this tree-splitting issue—but still in the wrong tone. “Strawberries,” hissed Dulcy. A small voice in the back of her head reminded her of Samuel’s jokes about people leaving after every winter, driven away by cold and wind. Some inner rationality whispered that this nursery was the only source in town: catalogues were good, but seeing was believing. Beyond the peaches, she’d intended to order apple, plum, pear, and apricot trees, she’d chosen four types of grape vines, she’d hoped to purchase gooseberries and currants, not to mention roses and clematis, peonies and iris. She needed this little gnome.
It was hard, though, to see this nursery in April—empty benches, a small hut for bare-root storage, dirty panes on the small greenhouse—and feel a relationship was essential. Buchanan’s thin mouth twisted: he liked to win an argument. So did she. “I’m building a conservatory,” said Dulcy. “It should be tall enough for espaliered peaches, but perhaps I’d be better off with figs and quince, and I understand now that you’d rather I find another source, even for my plums and pears and apples.”
“Well, now, apples. Apples I can get you through Krohne, out on the island—”
“Perhaps I’ll ask my friends in England for cuttings. Are you using Spy for rootstock?”
“I’ll ask,” said Buchanan, who’d lost his glow.
“Any chance you’ll have any Adams, or Grimes?”
“I can see if they’re available. He may have Wealthy, and Wolf River—”
“Have a lovely year,” said Dulcy. “I’m off to order my grape trellis. Trellises.”
She let the door slam, hoping that she’d hear a tinkle of glass. She’d given up on the wide-brimmed hat, and she pulled a wool knit cap down hard on her head. The sun was out, but the gusts were icy, and the street was covered with shattered branches from last night’s wind. She slid on a stick, and her rage deepened. She found Siegfried Durr at his studio, and he promised to build her a glass house.
Spring (As defined from equinox to solstice, March 21 to June 20) March 23, 893, Ardabil, Iran, 150,000 dead.
March 26, 1872, Lone Pine, 30.
April 3, 1868, Hawaii, 77.
April 3, 1881, Chios, 7, 866.
April 6, 1667, Dubrovnik, 3,000.
April 18, 1902, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, 2,000.
April 28 & 29, 1903, Malazgirt, Turkey, 3, 500.
May 3, 1481, Rhodes, 30,000.
May 8, 1847, Nagano, Japan, 9,000. A fire.
May 19, 526, Antioch, 250,000.
May 21, 1382, Canterbury, (the Synod earthquake).
May 26, 1293, Kamakura, Japan, 23,000.
May 28, 1903, G?le, Turkey, 1,000.
June 3, 1770, Port-au-Prince, 300.
June 7, 1692, Port Royal, Jamaica, more than 2,000. A wave.
June 12, 1897, Assam, 1, 500.
June 15, 1896, Tohoku, Japan, 22,000. (The greatest waves observed after such an event, 125 feet.) —from Walton Remfrey’s red notebook
chapter 15
Easter
?
On March 26, 1905, the thirty-third anniversary of the Lone Pine earthquake John Muir and Walton had shared, Abram framed in new walls on the old shed foundation, and Durr began the greenhouse. Dulcy sketched out what she wanted—glass on one end of the old shed and frame on the other, bowed metal ribs to give height and width (the peach trees, again)—but Durr brought up constraints of finance and timing, repair and venting. Above all, he brought up the question of wind, and in the end they compromised on a plain lean-to design against Abram’s building, tall enough for two dwarf trees to be espaliered against the back wall and two smaller plants like figs trained up string ladders at either corner of the front walls. Dulcy would buy some cane furniture, and she would go there to read books and daydream and nap; maybe she’d try to paint for the first time since she was nineteen. She knew she’d be better off getting a teaching degree, or applying as a secretary at the newspaper. Samuel thought she should apply at the courthouse, but only because he wanted a spy.
Durr did not have much business now, anyway. Spring was the wet season—snow in the mountains, rain in town. During the slow, steady splatter, he photographed a few fraternal gatherings and school groups, but the tourists had not arrived yet, and poor people were always poorest at the end of winter. He talked while he measured for the metal frame and she worked on the new garden beds, Margaret giving prompts: about how much portraits differed in bad weather and good weather, about how when the wind wailed Durr’s subjects had a pinched look, as if they worried the glass of his studio would shatter onto their heads, about how little time it took to tell if a couple loved or loathed each other. If his subjects were farmers, they were preoccupied by temperature and rainfall, and if they were businessmen, they worried the summer wouldn’t save them. The children in class pictures were out of their minds with boredom, and old people were as fidgety as toddlers.
“When are people at their best, then?” asked Dulcy.