The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin

across its face and into its mouth for the mucus, brought it to his shoulder and slapped its bottom—how did he know to do this?—and the thing screamed in his ear. The room seemed to swell, to pulse; the elapsed time, the snug hours, blossomed grossly. The room had grown increasingly warm and thick with the odor of sickness and birth and it was into this world that Talmadge surfaced. He held the body close and felt that it belonged to the room as much as to the girl and at the same time that it belonged to nobody.
    Caroline Middey said, Wash it off.
    He stood and left the room.
    Outside, it was night, but he made his way to the creek without difficulty.
    Beside the water, he knelt and took a handkerchief from his pocket and plunged it beneath the riffle. He wrung out the handkerchief in his fist and situated the infant in the crook of his arm and dabbed at its face. It was a mewling thing, and small. He felt the name on his lips, the name of the thing he could not name, the name that would not come to him. He felt himself approaching it, stuttering over it, not making a sound. He dabbed at its face.
    The moonlight on the creek danced and splintered on the surface of the water.
    He returned to the cabin. He swaddled the body in a towel and stood before the fire. For a moment he hesitated as the confusion flared: Was it animal? He could not name it, the being or the feeling. It passed.
    The baby was female.

 

    D ella stood fully dressed at the edge of the apricot orchard and looked down into the field. It was morning. She leaned on a walking stick. The horses had been there—when she lay in bed she could hear them through the open window—but now they were gone. Talmadge said that any day now, however, they would return, and she would be able to see them, if she wanted to.
    She walked into the apricot orchard and when she saw Talmadge in the tree—his legs were visible, he was up on the ladder—she did not crouch down the row from him but went straight to the ladder and looked up. After a few moments he recognized her presence and looked down at her. His face was flushed and sweating, framed by branches. He was wearing the floppy calfskin hat. Are you hungry? he asked her, uneasy, and she didn’t answer, but moved away from the ladder, continued down the row. What was she looking for?
    Later, in the cabin, she sat on the edge of the bed and Caroline Middey showed her and Jane again how to feed the child. Della unbuttoned her dress to the waist and came out of her sleeves and so sat with her whole torso bared. It was easiest that way. Caroline Middey gave her the infant and showed her how to hold the child, how to brush the nipple against its mouth, how to situate the child once it started feeding.
    But like the time before, the child would not take Della’s nipple. They tried for several minutes and then Caroline Middey took the child and gave her back to Jane, whose nipple the infant greedily took into her mouth. Jane drew her face close to the infant’s skull, her eyes wide.
    It’s early yet, said Caroline Middey. We’ll keep trying. The little one has to learn she has two mothers.
    And then Della leaned into Caroline Middey—her forehead pressed against the older woman’s shoulder—while she took Della’s breast in her hand and proceeded to milk it. The milk drained into a cup below. Della tried very hard not to, but she cried. The room was very quiet except for the sound of this weeping and the sound of the child feeding.

 

    A t the café where Talmadge had gone again to sell fruit, Weems came up behind him as he sat eating at the counter, and placed a hand on his shoulder.
    Talmadge craned his neck to look up at him.
    Did that Michaelson fellow find you? said Weems. He was here a couple days ago, looking. And Weems’s eyes, which had been merry—with nervousness, maybe, concern—became sober, almost sad. The townspeople who knew anything were keeping quiet, he said. But you know how that goes. He