The Rocky Orchard will be my fourth novel; it will be the third one of those novels where I have re-written a large section by changing the narrative voice from the third person to the first person, or the other way around. The voice — whether the story is told from the perspective of “I did this,” or whether it’s told from an outside perspective of an onlooker as “they did this,” is pivotal to everything about how the book unfolds and how the story gets told. I thought it would be interesting to post the same section of The Rocky Orchard in two different voices. Let me know your thoughts.
First person version:
It’s been a long time since I’ve stood on this porch. One of my favorite places in the world. I take two more steps to my left, and I am at the exact spot where I can see the farthest in three different directions. Two whole sides of the old farmhouse and the wraparound porch that encircles them. On the front section of the porch the black wooden swing hangs from the ceiling, a few of my grandmother’s old throw pillows still strewn across the back. The creaky single bed with its blue-and-white embroidered cover – both there since my parents bought this place – takes up the far corner, keeping its lookout into the cave created by the copse of towering pines. The overflow bed, for times when we had more people visiting than would fit in the ten other sleeping places scattered throughout three of the house’s four rooms. Or when it was so hot, so unbearably killingly humid, that Woo would opt to sleep on the porch. I never slept well when he did this. I missed him being in the other twin bed in our upstairs room. I felt betrayed.
Beyond the porch itself, through the slight warbly dimming of the screen’s grid, a panoramic sweep of the land outside. Not all the much to see to the left, as the stone pathway leading from the porch door up to the dirt road runs up a steep bank. I have to stoop down to get a glimpse of the road itself; otherwise the view is of a vertical slope, covered by a motley assortment of ferns, and a couple of tenacious mountain laurel, clinging to the slope and struggling to keep their grip and survive.
The springhouse, off to the right in its own little valley, with its eternal smell – a pungent mixture of creosote and gasoline and a million leftover pieces and parts of a million abandoned projects that have been there forever. Long before we got here. Useless tools, boxes of screws, cartons of nails, shell cases, gas cans, broken mouse traps, hoses, pipe sections, caulk. We kept a combination lock on the rusty hasp on the springhouse door. I used to test myself each spring, after a whole winter of not coming here had gone by, to see if I could still remember the combination. But mostly, I was testing myself. The springhouse was one of so many things I was terrified of. I would open the combination lock, take off the old hasp, and see how many steps I could walk into the springhouse itself. I would stand there, just breathing the acrid air, looking at the relics that covered most of the floor space anyway. Sometimes I would touch a couple of things. But mostly it was about standing there, forcing myself to face my own terror, maybe a few more seconds each year.
Third person version:
“What a strange place to put an orchard,” Mazie thought to herself.” Mazie stood at the exact spot on the wrap-around porch — the one that covered two full sides of the old farm house – where she could see the farthest in three different directions. “I never could figure out why there.”
There was not all that much to see to her left, as the stone path leading from the porch door was steep enough that you had to stoop down just a tad to see the old dirt road at the path’s end. The steep bank had always been covered with a motley assortment of ferns, with a couple of scrawny mountain laurel struggling to survive on the slope. To her right sat the old shed, and beyond, the small, spring-fed lake her parents had dredged, and the wide expanse of field that abruptly ended at the edge of the thick woods. In the spring, if you listened very carefully, you could hear the little creek that lay just beyond the farthest edge of the field, at the very beginning of the trail into the woods. Full and ripe with the winter’s runoff, the freezing water tumbled over the rocks in rushing abandon. You could hear it, even from such a distance, before it began its languishing journey from bursting its muddy banks, to flowing in a steady and patient stream, to trickling in ever-shifting paths between the mossy stones, to its eventual disappearance in the flush of summer.
Where Mazie came from, it was a point of contention whether the proper way to say the word was “creek” or “crick.” Feelings ran strong about this. Weekend people, people who did not live there full-time – like Mazie’s family – generally said “creek;” locals said “crick.” But if you tried to say it like they did, to be nice when you were talking to them, they assumed you were making fun and immediately got quiet or mean. It made Mazie tired to think about.
Middle painting: Cathleen Rehfeld
Bottom painting: Frederic Belaubre
“Don’t fuck with me. You were definitely talking to him.” Then, Tim held up his hand, with his palm really close to my face. In the dark of the room, I couldn’t tell what in the world I was supposed to be looking at. Then I saw it. A circle. A perfect circle, faintly reddish-brown, traced the periphery of his entire palm. “It’s from a candle. I put my hand right on the candle and held it there.”
My aunt and uncle had a new baby. She was my cousin, they said. It was a miracle, they said, because my aunt had tried so hard to have a baby and wanted one so much. They told me that she had lost 15 babies, which I found completely confusing but nonetheless terrifying. How could anyone lose babies? The idea made me feel cagey about my aunt, and I guess my mother sensed this, because she kept reminding me that I loved my aunt very much, as was evidenced by the fact that I didn’t shy away from her for even a single second when she had to stick her finger down my throat and made me upchuck because I had eaten cockroach poison. That was during our last visit to my aunt and uncle. I was less than two years old; I didn’t know what I was doing. I just figured that something lying on the floor in a pretty little bowl was something I should definitely taste! Of course, I have no memory of this myself, being so young at the time, but my mother told that story so many times that it’s like a movie that can play in my mind at the merest mention. I can picture my aunt’s pin curls flopping in front of her eyes as she held me over the sink. I can smell the smell of her breath combined with the fragrance of her bright lipstick as she panted with effort. I guess I didn’t upchuck all that easily, which was all part of the story of my good nature in not holding an immense grudge against someone who hoisted me under her arm and forced her finger into the back of my throat over and over.
