The Sound of the Trees (10 page)

I don't reckon I've seen such shows.

Both men laughed and pounded the counter with their fists.

Well, you ought to, kid. You ought to.

The men went on laughing. The boy walked past them and pulled open the door.

Hey kid.

He turned with his hand propping the door open and the last light from outside falling red upon his boots.

Charlie Ford. That's the man's name. He'll take care of you. May even have some work for you. He still moves em about like the olden days. You'll know you're there when you see a big old truck stickin out of the ground like a tree with wheels. No shit, kid. Like a goddamn tree machine.

*   *   *

The inn's foyer was dark and low. He walked past tan leather chairs that stood worn and vacant and illuminated by yellow-glassed lamps under which whorls of dust spun dully. He rang the bell at the counter. A clock ticked loudly in the empty room and finally a tall heavyset man appeared from a doorway behind the counter with a filthy napkin tucked under his shirt collar. He put a finger up while he finished chewing and pulled a pencil from his shirt pocket.

Evenin, the boy said.

Yeah. You need a room?

Yes sir.

You seen which girl you want yet?

Girl? The boy looked around the room from which no such girls appeared. No sir, he said. Just me.

The proprietor brought the napkin to his face and wiped it across his mouth. Just you, he said. He fumbled around the undershelving. I got a room on the plaza side.

How much does it go for?

Four dollars.

The boy brought out his billfold and flipped through the bills. Anything cheaper?

The proprietor put the pencil back in his shirt pocket. Son, he said, I had General Sandoz in that room last week. Said this town was goin to be the model for the new West. That's what he called it. Said every one of us would be Paul Bunyans and John Henrys before all's said and done. For that I think four dollars is cheap.

The boy moved his fingers over the bills again. He shook his head.

Where you from, boy? Mexico?

Grant County.

The proprietor looked him up and down.

You sure as hell look like you could be from Mexico exceptin for your eyes, and I'm not afraid to tell you that.

Well I ain't. And I don't rightly see where that could matter.

The man glanced over his shoulder out the door. That yours out there?

The boy turned to follow the man's gaze. Triften stood nosing the ground, the slow roll and sway of her head somehow elegant in the new dark.

Yeah.

You got any alfalfa? Or oats for that matter?

Yeah.

Then I'll tell you what. You feed my Katie Mae out there in the back and I'll give you the room for two dollars. I done forgot about goin to the store for her today. Bein so busy and all. The man shot his small eyes to the staircase. A man can tend to forget these things, he said. You can sure write me down for that.

The boy shifted his hat in his hands. Well, he said. I reckon I'm more concerned myself about bein wrote down for a room.

He held out the money and the proprietor snatched it from him and snapped down the napkin from beneath his chin. He raised a brown leather-bound book from the undershelving and took the pencil from his shirt again and followed the entries down with his finger and scratched down the boy's name.

It ain't all pillows and perfume here yet boy, he said. Watch yourself.

He handed the boy a key and went back through the door.

Yes sir, the boy said to the closed door. I'll try.

Down the gravel path that wound behind the inn the boy walked his horse and mule to the half-shut barn door. He pushed the door full open with a long creak. A fine hay dust floated in a single layer at the height of the loft. He unsaddled the horse and uncinched the saddlebag from the mule.

He brought the proprietor's horse out from her stall and in the weak light examined the ribcage, stark and black on its underbelly. He fed them all greatly and watered them in a cheap tin trough against a wall of shredded tack.

He walked to a window on the north wall and looked out through the cracked glass. The sun was like a sunken moon, its copper crown barely outlining the distant mountains and coming into the barn to cast his own shadow long and pallid on the dirt floor. The air was cool and fresh coming down from the foothills and the boy thought it was indeed pretty country and he did not stop himself from thinking that it was a sign of the Colorado country to come, and though he tried to, he could not stop from thinking how fine his mother would have found it to be.

He walked back to Triften and put his face against her neck.

We could use us a rest, Trift, couldn't we? he whispered to her. Just for a while.

A bird called out from the recesses of the night. He listened for more but none came, only the distortions of guitar and fiddle from a dance hall down the lane. Out in the plaza came the flare of gooseneck lanterns that encircled the town to burnish the sky. He touched the mare's nose when she raised her head at the distant flash of light. Then he led them all back to the stalls and drew the lock across the gate. For a long time he stood and watched the horses in the dark.

S
IX

THE ROAD WEST was all gravel. For the first time in many months the boy rode his mare without the mule trailing and she bore down on the wind, her hot breath burning in the morning's dark. They rode for two steady hours, past a dry creekbed where a flurry of deer were foraging the sedge and underbrush and past a procession of farm trucks in which young Mexican boys sat in the flatbeds and held to the tying rails and tilted their hats down over their sleepy eyes.

When he reached the ranch of Charlie Ford the boy whoaed his horse and looked down upon the great slab of metal and wheel before him. The pickup truck the old men had spoken of was nearly buried beneath the ground. It stood up on its end and high in the air the hood was flung open and flower and wildflower alike spilled from the chassis where the engine had once been.

The rancher was out in the pastures herding cattle into an empty paddock. Looking out at the rancher moving the cattle like a slow drift of cloud, the boy recalled the times his mother watched him riding the plains from the kitchen window when his father had not come home for days and he was forced to work the horses and cattle long into the evening. Looking out now, he noticed how well the man sat his horse. He cut the cattle with an ease more beautiful than any song or book. The mountains behind the horse and rider seemed as though they had bore those figures up from the bosom of their own dark and soundless souls, bore them up to once again make pretty the world.

An hour later the rancher rode down from the sun and into the blue shadows that the barn cast upon the boy. He was still squatting by the fence pole and smoking and watching the cattle. When the boy saw the rancher's horse start into a high trot he raised up and flung the cigarette into the grass. He put up a hand.

Charlie Ford rode the fence line with the gelding beneath him snapping the sweat from his head. The rancher was long and thick in the shoulders and tall besides and he wore no beard nor mustache but only a red stubble which he wiped with the back of his hand. His blue shirt was stained purple with sweat and as he came upon the boy he declared, What a day, stepping down from the stirrups and into the fresh cold mud.

He fixed the belt buckle at his waist and struck off a pair of yellow cowhide gloves. Well now, he said. Can I help you with something, son?

The boy took down his hat and fingered back his hair and held the hat at his hip. I come about my horse, he said. He walked over to the mare and took her by the lead rope and stroked her nose. Her name's Triften.

Charlie Ford looked the horse over, slapping the gloves he held bunched in his hand against his pant leg. Good lookin, he said. You aimin to sell her?

No sir. Hell no.

Charlie Ford watched the boy's face tighten and he put up a hand. No offense meant, he said. Just that it's gotten so that anyone who comes by here seems to want to get rid of somethin they can't use no more. So what is it you need from me?

I need some shoes for her, that's all. And maybe a wash and a brush down.

Yes, I believe she could use that. She don't look so hot.

Yes sir. I know it.

Well. What's your name, son?

Trude.

Trude? That's all?

Trude Mason.

The rancher swathed his hand across his pant leg and held it out to the boy. I'm Charlie Ford.

I know it. Some men in town told me to come see you.

They shook. The rancher lowered his head and rolled it and snorted at the ground.

Old cigar smokers?

Yes sir. That'd be them.

Charlie Ford swiped at his chaps with his hat and snorted again.

Sons of bitches always gettin in the middle of things to which they don't belong. I'm tellin you son, stay away from that pair. That is, if you want to keep anything of yours private. That town down there ain't but seven years old from the time they laid the first brick but those boys will have you believe it's Rome with all the stories they sling around.

I guess I figured them for that.

Then you done some good figurin. That's a sign of good character. It's good to have character, specially seein how scarce it is these days. Charlie Ford wiped the side of his face and looked out at the cattle which were plodding unthoughtfully about the paddock mud.

Well, the boy said. Is there a ferrier about?

Charlie Ford turned from the cattle and tilted his hat from his eyes as if to witness some improbability. Ain't enough money in the mayor's own pocket to rustle up a ferrier these days, he said. Around these parts at least. It's like everything else nowdays. I do it myself.

Who stands the horses?

When I'm puttin on their shoes?

Yes sir.

Hell, son. If I couldn't trust my own horses, there wouldn't be nothin left at all. I'd just as soon pack my bags and move to China.

They walked the horses to the barn. The air was crisp and the breath from all four noses rose to wind through the low trees like cotton twine. The rancher's gelding drew back and slowed and sidled over and sniffed Triften's backside and Charlie Ford scolded him, telling him not to be like them old men at the cantina and that the only business he needed mindin was his own.

He showed the boy to an empty stall where he put up his mare. The boy followed him to the back of the barn where they walked through a door into the grain room and then through another door which opened onto a small foldout table and two wooden chairs whose legs were cut to fit the table.

Damnation, the boy said, looking around, I ain't never seen a kitchen in a barn.

Charlie Ford looked around as though he hadn't seen the room in a long time. No, he said. I don't suppose you have. There's a story to it, though. When I was a boy, about the same age as you, I expect, I was constantly wantin to invent something new.

He walked over to a sink basin and took down two mugs from a cabinet above his head and took up a rag and ran it under the tap and scrubbed out the mugs. Ain't that a dandy, he said, turning to the boy. Somethin new's what I always wanted and now it's the last thing on earth I crave.

Charlie Ford went to a small oven range and lit up a fresh pile of wood beneath it and filled a pot with water and set it atop a metal range plate and covered it with an outsized lid.

I knew a rancher wasn't hardly new and that a rancher would always be a rancher, so I figured I'd be the first to feed himself and his horses at the same time. Turns out I think they like it when I eat with em. Eatin a meal together has got its own type of communication, I believe.

He looked at the boy, who was standing in the middle of the room watching the water heat, then waved his hand in dismissal.

Make yourself a seat, he said.

He dredged the coffee into the mugs and brought them to the table and offered the boy a bowl of sugar. The boy stirred a spoonful into his coffee. Charlie Ford held out a cigarette from his shirt pocket and the boy took it. Then Ford turned the other chair around and sat with his elbows on the backrest and they sat smoking and drinking coffee.

How come that truck's buried out front of your drive?

Charlie Ford looked through his coffee, then off behind the boy. Well, he said. I reckon I ought to have gotten used to bein asked about that but somehow I haven't. He shook his big heavy head at the coffee. It's a gravestone, he said finally.

The boy nodded unsurely but did not speak. Ford looked up at him. It seemed he wanted to inspect just what the idea had done to the boy.

It's the truck I bought for my wife when we moved up here, he said. She came up with me from Texas when Texas wasn't worth a damn. We was in Odessa where oil and booze were the only things that moved a man out of bed in the morning, and that wasn't enough for me. Anne Marie, that was her name. She said she'd come with me if I bought her a truck. Charlie Ford chuckled to himself at that. Boy she was tough-minded, that girl. I didn't have a dime to spit-shine but somehow I was able to scrape together enough work to buy it for her. I'd of bought her the world, I was so crazy for her.

He lifted his elbows off the backrest and set them forward on the table.

One day she set off to town and didn't come back. I knew what it was before I could even think it. I rode out that night and found the truck overturned in a gravel ditch just outside of town. She was dead long before I found her. The roof had come down so hard on her head I wouldn't of been able to know it was her unless I smelled her perfume beneath the burning metal.

The boy looked down at the floor. I'm sorry about that, he said.

Well. You couldn't of done nothin for it.

I mean I'm sorry about askin.

Charlie Ford looked up at the boy. Then he looked into his coffee. He lifted the mug and held it to his mouth for a few seconds. Hell, he said. That's the one thing you should never be sorry for. Askin is about the one thing you can count on for gettin somethin in return. No matter if the answer's good or bad.