Chapter 5 The Community Responds
On the fifth day, the community arrived.
Not all at once — Pinecrest was not the kind of community that descended en masse on a new arrival, which would have been overwhelming and was not the valley's style.
It arrived in the way it arrived for all significant events, which was one at a time, with purpose, in the manner of people who had things to offer and offered them directly.
The first was Clara Caldwell, who appeared at the door of the Vance place at ten in the morning with a wrapped parcel and the specific warmth of a woman who had been new to a place herself and understood what new required.
"Mrs. Caldwell," Holly said, recognizing her from the description James had given: dark-haired, direct, schoolteacher bearing.
"Holly," Clara said, using the first name with the ease of someone who had decided they were going to be friends and saw no reason to delay the acknowledging of this. "I'm Clara. I've brought bread. I make it twice a week and there's always too much."
Holly took the bread, which was warm. "Thank you. Come in."
Clara came in and looked at the house with the assessing look that Holly was beginning to recognize as the valley's standard response to a space — people here looked at spaces the way they looked at land, with the practical attention of someone who was evaluating what it needed and what it had.
"The stove is working now," Holly said, following Clara's gaze to the kitchen.
"I heard you had some trouble with it," Clara said.
"James Breck showed me," Holly said.
Clara looked at her. Something moved in her expression that was brief and specific. "Did he," she said.
"He has been very helpful," Holly said. "He knows everything about the property."
"He does," Clara agreed. She said it with the neutral quality of a woman who had a thought about what this meant and was choosing not to produce the thought at this juncture. "Elias says he's the best cattleman in the south end of the valley."
"He told me about the land," Holly said. "He was direct about the challenges of someone without experience trying to manage it."
"Direct," Clara said. "Yes. That's James.
" She sat down at the kitchen table with the ease of someone who had sat at many kitchen tables and was comfortable in all of them.
"Tell me about yourself. I know you're Harold's niece and that you've come from Kansas City and that you haven't decided yet. What else?"
Holly told her. She told her in the organized way she had been telling people things since she was fourteen and had decided that organized communication was more efficient than the social version — the version that wandered and circled and eventually arrived at the point.
She told Clara about the account work in Kansas City and the position being eliminated and the letter from Mr. Crane and the feeling under the apple tree.
Clara listened with the complete attention that Holly was discovering was characteristic of her. "The feeling under the apple tree," she said, when Holly finished. "I know something about that."
"Did you have a feeling?" Holly said.
"I came to this valley two years ago," Clara said, "on a mail-order bride arrangement, which is a specific kind of arrival with specific kinds of feelings.
My feeling was from the wagon. When the ranch came into view in the dusk with the lights on.
I thought: this could be a life." She looked at the table. "It was."
"And the man?" Holly said.
"Also the man," Clara said, with the warmth of someone who did not need to say more than that for it to be complete.
They talked through the morning. Holly found Clara easy to talk to in the way of people who did not require the social performance — who said what they meant and received what you said without requiring you to manage their response to it.
Clara left at noon with the parting observation: "The valley is good.
The people in it are worth staying for. The land is worth learning.
" She paused at the door. "And James Breck is a good man who has had a difficult three years and who is not as simple as he appears. I thought you should know that."
"Thank you," Holly said.
"He won't tell you himself," Clara said. "He is not a man who explains himself. But he should be understood with the context."
Holly thought about this after Clara left.
About context and about a man who had worked her land for a season expecting to own it, who had lost his wife three years ago, who fixed stoves and maintained barns and came every morning to tell a stranger about her property without being asked to do it more than once.
She thought: I am getting more information than I expected.
She thought: I am not certain what to do with all of it.
* * *
Helen Granger arrived on the sixth day with opinions.
This was, Holly gathered, characteristic.
Helen Granger was a large-boned, direct woman in her early forties who had opinions about land management, community responsibility, and the correct temperature at which to serve coffee, and she expressed all of them with the comfortable authority of someone who had been right enough times to have earned the authority and who knew it.
"The Vance place is good land," she said, sitting across from Holly with the coffee at the temperature she considered correct. "Harold knew what he was doing. He was slower than he could have been, but he was sound. He didn't make mistakes."
"I've been told the same by Mr. Breck," Holly said.
"James would know," Helen said. She said it with the slightly sharp quality that meant there was something more and she was deciding whether to say it. She decided not to. "What are you thinking?"
"That I want to stay," Holly said. "That I don't know how to stay."
"Those are two different problems," Helen said. "The wanting is one thing. The how is another. The how can be learned. The wanting either is or it isn't."
"I wanted it from the apple tree," Holly said.
Helen looked at her. "Harold planted that tree," she said. "He was so pleased when it bore fruit the first time. He brought apples to every family in the valley." She was quiet for a moment. "He was private about most things but he wasn't private about the apple tree."
Holly thought about an uncle she had barely known who was private about most things but not about an apple tree. She thought this was information about him — the kind of information you only got from people who had actually known someone.
"I want to know about the community," Holly said. "If I'm going to stay. Who I would be part of."
Helen told her. She told her about the quilting circle and the church suppers and the way the valley organized itself for the hard times — the barn burnings and the hard winters and the illnesses and the deaths, the way people showed up with what was needed without being asked and without keeping score.
She told her about the school where Clara Caldwell taught, and about Reverend Hobart's services, and about what it meant to be part of a small community versus the anonymous city life that Holly had been describing.
"The valley will know your business," Helen said, with complete honesty. "That is the cost of it. The benefit is that the valley will show up when you need it. Both of these things are true and you should know both before you decide."
"I know both," Holly said. "I grew up in a small town. I know what it's like."
Helen looked at her with a new quality — the reassessment of someone who has been given new information that shifts their picture. "Then you're making an informed decision," she said.
"I'm trying to," Holly said.
Helen set down her coffee. "The land, the community, all of it — those are learnable. The one thing that isn't learnable is whether this is the right place for you. That's what you have to decide."
"I know," Holly said.
"And?" Helen said.
"I think it is," Holly said. "I have thought this since the apple tree and I have spent a week looking for evidence against it and I haven't found any."
Helen Granger looked at her across the kitchen table of the Vance place with the direct assessing eyes of a woman who had been evaluating people and their fitness for valley life for fifteen years.
"Good," she said. "Then stay. And come to the quilting circle on Thursday. You'll need to know people."