The Sound of the Trees (11 page)

He leaned forward again and stubbed out the cigarette with his swollen fingers in the metal shell of an old curry brush.

Automobile, he said, drawing the word out slowly. You've only got two choices with them things. Either it gets you there a hell of a lot faster or it gets you there dead.

I ain't never been much for driving myself, the boy said. I wouldn't even know how to get it turned on.

Charlie Ford laughed. Son, he said, believe it or not, I think that may be somethin to be proud of.

He brought another mug of coffee for the boy and one for himself. In the barn the boy could hear the horses talking to one another between the stalls.

Now there ain't another ranch for twenty miles in any direction. So where'd you come in from?

Down south. Grant County.

Comin from far off. Making for cattle?

No sir, just movin away.

What ranch were you at down there?

Mason ranch. It was my dad's. Hatley Mason.

The name felt odd and cold on his lips and he set down his coffee. Charlie Ford leaned forward and tapped his cigarette ash in the curry brush and pointed a bent finger at the boy.

Hatley Mason, he said. I heard of you all. That was a hellfire of a ranch, I recollect. Now that was quite a long time ago but it sure was a fine one, I remember.

It ain't no more. The boy lifted up his coffee mug and tilted it to his lips. It sure ain't no more, he said.

Well. That is a shame.

Yes sir.

The smoke clogged the room and spun off in thin spindles where the rancher waved his hand through it. He coughed and waved his hand again. So are you lookin for work now? he said.

The boy shrugged. Depends on who's offerin.

Ford bent a thumb back toward the door.

You seen that old pile of sticks in town they call the barroom? That's standin where my first paddock was. Used to run a crazy old colt out there during the wintertime. Back then I had enough money for the talent but not the temperament. Never could break that sumbitch, so when they came and took my land off me I had to let him go. Didn't figure he'd soften just on account of geography. But there wasn't no way I was goin to leave him for them town councilmen. They'd of just turned around and put him to the auction pens. That horse's spirit alone was worth more money than all their characters combined. If I'd of known it would turn this bad though, I'd of held on to him. Tried him one more time.

Charlie Ford spread a hand out on the table.

I'd like to help you son, he said, but it can't be me who's offerin. I don't got the head I used to and I don't got the money to pay you right wages, and I know what it's like to be shortchanged, so I ain't goin to even start to do it to you.

He shook his head and drank from his mug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again. Ranchin is chancin, he said.

Yes sir.

They drank their coffee quietly for a while. In the stillness of the room the horse's voices came loud and from outside the boy could hear the cattle shouldering into the crossposts of the paddock. He remembered the day when his own family's herd was auctioned off, and how he had opened the door at dawn on that Sunday morning to the scarred face of the auctioneer who told him to get everything ready because folks were wanting to make church service after the sale. He recalled how they had sold poorly on account of his father's constant heckling of the bidders and the threats he unleashed upon the auctioneer who stood on a peach crate by the tree beneath the boy's bedroom window. He remembered how he had watched the cattle being driven off from the auction pen and en route to a rancher down in Bayard who nodded solemnly after his final bid and went to the auction stand and took down the papers from the auctioneer who had to grapple them loose from his father's clutch and signed them and folded them up tight and placed them in his breast pocket and turned toward the pastures without ever looking up again.

I don't know what to tell you exactly, son. Charlie Ford got up with a groan and cleared the coffee mugs off the table and set them on the sideboard under a mirrored cabinet. The loggers cleared out of here about a year ago, he said. It's too damn brittle here anyway to get good wood. You want any work that pays money, you got to go look in town these days. I don't know how you feel about the railroad business, but the way I understand it they'll be movin in right soon. Other than that, I just don't know. You got any school under your belt?

I couldn't say too much. The boy pushed back from his chair and pulled the corner of his vest up to reveal the dirk knife he had sheathed in his belt. He rolled back his shoulder to drive the old ache out of it. That's about all, he said.

Shit, Charlie Ford said. I swear to you we were the same damn person in some time or another, exceptin you're a mite quieter.

Well, the boy said. I hope not always to be that way.

*   *   *

The boy helped steady the mare while Charlie Ford set her shoes and they watered her down with the horse stomping on the barn floor. The boy scrubbed her mane and her neck and he scrubbed down her barrel and withers and combed her crest and brushed her thighs and cannons. Charlie Ford wrung a sponge with fly oil over her back and the boy dried her down and in the late afternoon he led her out of the barn and into the drive.

She looked like a new animal unshelved from God's rack with her brushed forearms flexing and the muscles of her shoulders rifling and twitching. The boy walked around her and regarded her with great pride and he thanked the rancher who stood watching them with a rag in his hand. When the boy finally mounted her, Charlie Ford raised the rag up and shook it at them.

Good luck findin a piece of work, he called out. You need anything else, don't hesitate to come a callin. I always like the sight of a galloping mare comin down over the hill.

I'll do that.

Charlie Ford lifted his hat and squinted against the sun and smiled curiously upon the boy. He pointed at the horse, her smooth glinting mane. You might want to try the same for yourself, he said.

Shit, the boy said, shaking his head. I reckon I'll have to do that too.

On the way back to town the boy rode the mare at a trot. Triften's hindquarters swept through the grasses to stir up old dead leaves from the outcropping trees, her shining barrel making her look as if she'd just recovered from some long waged war, or as if in sudden preparation for its coming.

*   *   *

HE STEPPED INTO
the barbershop east of the plaza with the barber watching him through the mirror.

Well look here, he said to the boy without turning. I reckon you're just in time before you'd have to start wearin ribbons.

He sat for nearly an hour with the light going away and the barber cutting off his long brown hair and speaking affably to him, turning the chair from time to time to study his work with a grind from the chair's oilless swivel.

When he finished he brought forth a thick blue lather and a straight razor with a carved oak handle. The old barber shaved the boy's soft stubble with a shaking hand but his touch was smooth along his neck, as if he'd willed the trembling out when the blade touched the boy's skin.

In the dark of the night he went through the foyer and past the low leather chairs, running his fingers along the broad backboards and gripping the banister rail. Up the stairs he went down the dark hallway, past the low burning lamps and the pale flowers on the sideboard and into his room.

The room was walled with oak and the floor was oak as well and the wainscoting beneath the window painted white. He twisted the key on the desktop lamp and turned the desk chair to face the window. He set off his clothes slowly. It was the first time he had fully undressed in months and his skin was dry to the point of cracking. He placed the torn and mud-stained clothes at the foot of the bed, folding his overalls at the pant seam the way his mother had taught him years ago.

The thin brown muscles of his legs flashed up as he hopped down the hallway and into the bathroom. He pulled on the taps and scrubbed himself with a sliver of soap that was stuck to the tub drain. When he came out he tied a towel around his waist and went back down the hall, where from other rooms he could hear the high-pitched falsettos of whores not altogether different from cries of the injured house martins that as a child he sometimes found on the old barn floor.

From the closet he took out his saddlebag and redressed himself in his white-button shirt and took out his thick burlap pants with the heavy brown buttons his mother had sewn on and shook them up his legs and rolled back his shortly cropped hair with the fine-bristled brush from her old saddlebag. At last he pulled on his boots and got up and looked at himself briefly in the mirror that was screwed into the door of the hutch. It had been long time since he had seen his own face and there was little in it he recognized.

He went and laid upon the bed. From the bedpost he took down his hat and placed it over his face. Before long he was thinking of his mother again. How she had gone with him to buy that hat in their old hometown, and how she had straightened it for him with the shopkeeper standing by. He remembered how he had been embarrassed, but also comforted, and he lifted the hat and studied it as it was now, worn and sweat-stained and forked deeply at the center.

He awoke later in the evening and sat up at the edge of the bed. He pulled his pant cuffs down over his boots. Slid out of the saddlebag and resting beneath the dark varnish of the hutch he saw the corner of the picture frame and he leaned down and took it up. It was a picture of his grandfather taken during the early days of the ranch. He stood before the carriage house, in front of which two painted ponies were trotting by. In the far distance were the tiny skeletons of storefronts. In the picture his grandfather was flanked by the boy's young mother and father before they'd even been married. They stood with their arms locked about each other's shoulders and all three were smiling wide.

He set the picture down and smoked a cigarette in the night's quiet, the pale light of the plaza lamps fording the room to draw long shadows across the floor. He watched the smoke rise and darken at the ceiling. A bottle shattered on the thoroughfare. Car and truck horns blasted from the streets and people called out into the night, laughing at words he could not make out. He looked at the clock on the false mantle. He drew out his mother's red scarf from his back pocket. What world has become, he whispered into it. Mama, what world has become.

S
EVEN

HE WOKE AND went down and fed his horse and mule and the proprietor's horse. Back in his room he worked open the remaining tin of beans with his knife and ate and slept again. In the early evening he woke to the murmurs of a crowd of people gathered by the willow tree outside. He dressed and took up his hat and went down.

Among the people in the street he saw the waitress from the cantina and she hailed him over with a waving hand.

You decided to stay? she called.

I don't know. For a little while, at least.

The waitress slapped her hands together. Well that's just fine, is what it is. What's your name anyways?

Trude.

I'm Jane.

She looked off to the willow tree where a man vested in black unleaned himself from the tree trunk and went and put his hands over a wooden podium that stood before the people.

Here he comes, she said.

The boy followed her gaze to the man.

Who's that?

That's the mayor. Ain't he just handsome as a rose?

The man held his hands up to quiet the people. The waitress tapped the boy's arm, then went walking toward the crowd. You make sure you come by tomorrow, she said. Tom's baking up some rhubarb pies.

The boy stayed outside the crowd with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops.

My dear ladies and gentleman, the mayor called.

His voice was as smooth and even as lake water. His hands went up again, this time in greeting. He looked into the crowd and briefly beyond them at the boy, then began again to speak.

It is by the glory given unto us by God himself that we stand together tonight and continue our shaping of this great town.

The townspeople clapped fervently. The boy inspected the crowd. He saw the innkeeper whistling with his fingers to his mouth and he saw children hugging the legs of their parents and the two old men from the bar sitting on fold-out chairs and smoking their cigars, but nowhere did he see the Englishman or the girl.

If we have grown toward a new future and if there is a design that so let us, it is His, but the hands that have built that design are our own.

The mayor held his hands forth over the crowd. Another cheer came from the people. They shook one another's hands. As you all must know, the mayor went on, a final step toward that future is soon to begin.

I can hear that train whistle blowin, someone shouted.

The mayor smiled. He nodded in the direction of the voice. That's right, he said. The railroad construction will begin in just a few days and before long we will no longer need call on the outside world. The outside world will call on us.

The crowd cheered again and the mayor spoke at great lengths about the coming destiny of the town, where outlaws would be broken and cast out and where goodness and economy would thrive side by side in that very place where the new West would be forged. He spoke about the completion of the electrical wiring and telephone posts being driven at that very moment along the rim of the town. He spoke about the path the railroad would take through the eastern mountain range and endless possibilities of import and export from which they would reap enough benefits so all could live in wealth and harmony.

The boy listened vaguely and looked around the crowd until something in the distance caught his ear. In the far east corner of the plaza he could hear the hollow music of an old guitar. He looked around once more, then wandered off toward the sound.