At The Edge Of The Orchard Quotes
"It wore a man down, carving out a life from the Black Swamp."
"The spark in his eyes and belly and God knows where else had leapt over to her like a flame finding its true path from one curled wood shaving to another."
"For a man in his sixties, he was still lean and vigorous, despite the iron gray in his unkempt hair."
"It needled him that Sadie would try to lay claim to trees in the orchard when she couldn’t even tell you their history."
"He knew which trees had suffered from scab, which from mildew, which from red spider mite and what you did to get rid of each."
"The taste of apples had played in his life, how he craved them more than whiskey or tobacco or coffee or sex."
"I never was a good picker. Ma said I was too quick, let too many drop and pulled off the stems of the rest."
"Every oak, every hickory, every elm he cut down was an agony of effort."
"It reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place."
"James Goodenough was a sensible man, but apples were his weakness."
"Funny, I didn’t think much about apples before we came to the Black Swamp."
"Martha was his favorite, being gentle and never challenging him or seeming to laugh at him as some of his other children did."
"Sometimes with just a glance you could tell."
"But he could not choose the parts: they came potluck."
"The memory of her mother’s split lip the night before and the violence her father was capable of appeared to have no effect on her."
"With each red strap mark that appeared across Martha’s narrow buttocks and twig-like calves, James grew angrier at himself."
"James Goodenough did not talk to John Day about apples, or offer to trade scions or help him to graft eaters."
"James Goodenough knew he should have gotten used to the life here."
"James was always looking for reasons not to stay at the camp."
"Sadie was an unpredictable drunk—angry and violent one minute, crying and petting the children the next."
"Sadie viewed grafting with suspicion, an attitude she had picked up from John Chapman."
"He contemplated the grafted Golden Pippin before him, and wondered how long it would manage to grow before the Black Swamp got to it with mildew or mold or rot."
"The best part was that there was a big camp meeting every May."
"My teeth started chattering like I had the swamp fever, and my arms were jerking so I hit people around me without meaning to."
"Life was often simply the repetition of the same movements in a different order, depending on the day and the place."
"I am still collecting seeds and plants for Mr. Lobb. He has taught me a lot and I am very grateful to him. I will be alright here. I have a job working with trees and that is better than I ever expected to do."
"I am writing on New Year's Day from Texas, where I have been working on a ranch now for almost two years."
"Suddenly I saw myself the way he saw me, and it was so ugly I had to sit down in the middle of all those people and cry."
"You got to smile. Otherwise, you'd cry all day."
"His look made me want to stop, because there was no God in it, just a boy looking at his mother and thinking, Why, Ma?"
"The problem was, you couldn't go west of California, and Robert had never run anywhere but west."
"If you came up close, though, you couldn’t see their lowest branches."
"Trees always move at the start. A seed has to land a ways from its mother to grow, otherwise it’s in the shade and won’t thrive."
"You got to save yourself. Go on out there now. Go."
"I thought it'd look pretty. You don't think it's pretty enough around here?"
"I hate being idle, though, and took to helping Mrs. Bienenstock when I could."
"I've been thinking that I would try to get there to you."
"It was like finding a wife but not yet marrying her—lusting after her and not knowing about her temper or her laziness or her roving eye."
"I was glad to leave, for I did not like being alone with Caleb as he has taken to drink."
"The last of the corn needed bringing in: he should at least inspect the field even if he couldn’t help yet."
"Though it has been 3 years since your last letter, I never gave up hope that I would hear from you again."
"I know you must remember me as small and weak but I am stronger than you think."
"I have been saving the little money I earn here and there to pay for a stagecoach to take me west to you."
"America is such a big country, you could be anywhere."
"It feels better to write, even if you never see this letter."
"I thought you were dead of the swamp fever. I'm sorry."
"It's easy to know other people. Not so easy to know ourselves."
"I know I should have let sleeping dogs lie, but I was so angry I couldn't help it."
"It seemed strange to go east and south in order to go west, but my life has been strange for so long that I knew I had to do it."
"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."
"It was a relief to think only of the trees and of what he needed rather than of what others needed from him."
"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."
"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."
"I can’t do that. Robert, your mother’s still your mother, whatever she done. What was her name?"
"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.'"
"‘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.'"
"You can choose to be different from your past. You have chosen, haven’t you?"
"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."
"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."