The Sound of the Trees (15 page)

At last he bent and slid the docket under the door, shuffling his foot against it until it stiffened and flattened out and disappeared inside.

He rode back onto the thoroughfare sweating cold. It had grown night quickly, both clouds and dark snapping down like a drape. When he neared the plaza center he saw John Frank propped up against the willow tree by one shoulder and looking drunk with his knees buckling beneath him.

Cowboy, he called out when he saw the boy.

The boy rode up to him. In his haggard suit and ruffled hair John Frank looked like an attendant sent out to observe something he had long given up on finding. I'm drunkern shit, he slurred.

What the hell are you out here for?

I got a date, cowboy.

The boy studied him. Don't tell me, he said.

The cigar girl indeed, John Frank said, languidly wiping a sleeve across his mouth. Everything fly alright out there?

If there's somebody out there, they'll get the papers.

Good.

Yeah. But is there?

What?

Somebody livin out there. It don't look like it's ever been used even once.

Well hell. Course there is. What else do you think you were out there for? The wind in your hair? Shit. John Frank's mouth hung open and his eyelids closed and opened again whenever the wind kicked up. What time is it?

You're the one with the watch.

What time you think it is?

About a quarter and six.

Frank fumbled loose his pocket watch then dropped it and cussed at it and picked it up. Twenty and six, he slurred. Goddamn close, I must say.

When's she meeting you?

John Frank's brow tightened. He looked up and grinned. I got no idea when I meet her. No idea.

You sure it's here you're meeting her? You could be passed out for the balance of the night if she don't come on soon.

John Frank started up and stood straight and held a finger in the air. He dug about in his pockets and pulled loose a scrap of typing paper, picking it open roughly but trying at the same time to administer some delicacy with it. He looked down at the writing, his nose almost upon the page.

I's supposed to pick her up. Shit, I got to go.

You're one qualified certified and bonafide dumbass my friend. And your breath stinks.

But John Frank was already down the road, his coattails flailing behind him. See ya in the mornin, he called out in no particular direction.

The boy watched him until darkness covered all, then walked his horse down the road. Before heading out to the old man's hills he stopped at the general store. He went in to where a single kerosene lamp burned on the countertop. He looked through a collection of bedsheets against the near wall.

You need some help?

The boy looked up at the old lady behind the counter, her face tender and wrinkled in the lamplight.

I need a bedsheet lighter than flannel.

You want a cotton one then.

He paid for the sheet she brought forth in her tiny hands and folded it squarewise so it fit under his arm. He walked outside to his horse and stroked her mane. While he was folding the bedsheet into the saddlebag, he heard metal jangling from the far side of the plaza. The wind struck up and whistled through the trees. He took off his hat and scrubbed his hand over the bristle of his hair, listening. He stepped forward off the last porch step and toward the road. The clanking grew louder. He peered out. Then above the sounds of metal he heard rough voices. There was a sharp retort that rose above all other voices, then only the rustling metal.

His hands fell from the strappings of the saddlebag. He knew immediately the voice was hers and he went out into the road.

She was being led down a side street at the far end of town by two men wearing silver concho belts and silver pistols. They wore the broad hats of peacemakers and they eased the girl under the lights and back into the darkness.

He could see her only faintly. She wore leg irons and her hands were manacled likewise. He walked out under the plaza lights. Her dark hair flowed into the darkness like rainwater into a pool. For a moment he saw her clearly. In the last glow of the lamplight he could see her eyes fixed upon him. He stood still. She stopped talking altogether, her neck turned long and thin to better see him, her bare feet shushing upon the road.

The men gripped her shoulders when she slowed and jerked her down the road. There was a silver car parked along the roadside. The driver got out and motioned to the men. As she came abreast of the car she leaned her head back over her shoulder once more. Her dark delicate hands bound as if in terminal prayer and her eyes pitched out and burning, darkness unto darkness, collecting in him.

By the time he had mounted his horse again and rode up the plaza they were gone. He rode through the streets with the wind licking his face and the storefronts bolted and the shutters clamped back. He went along the edge of town, riding through no light from the town or even the sky. He went through the alleyways but could not find a trace of her anywhere.

Back upon the thoroughfare he stopped the horse. He quartered her around and around but neither saw nor heard anything more, the slick black of the paved road stretching out forever and empty and taking her with it.

*   *   *

When he reached the old man's cabin the boy saw his crooked form below one of the window frames. He was sitting on a tilted tree stump. A candled lantern sat beside him. In his soft mouth he worked a piece of briar root. The old man stood and squinted as the boy came on. You're back, he called.

He spat black onto the ground and put his hands on the small of his back.

Hungry?

No.

You wantin to sleep then?

Yes sir. I do.

Still want to stay out here?

Yes sir. For a while at least. I'd like to.

Mmm. What cause you got to be in town in the first place?

The boy looked off toward where the stream was running crisply down the slope. I got some things to take care of there, he said.

Well I ain't got no Lincoln bed for ya, but you can sleep on the floor if it suits you.

The boy made no response but gazed down at the dark water skirting along the bank. I wouldn't mind sleepin out here, he said. By the water.

The point of havin the cabin is most of all to sleep in.

It ain't too cold out tonight. The boy looked at his feet. Besides, he said, I reckon Zeus will watch over me.

The old man picked the weed from his mouth, then thrust it in the direction of the water. Go on then, he said. Just know that I rise with the sun and anyone wantin to stay around here best do the same. I don't want no driftage in my valley.

No sir.

Alright then, the old man said, patting his trouser pockets absently and turning toward the door. See you in the mornin.

The boy shucked the bedroll from his saddlebag as the man bent and hoisted up the lantern and disappeared inside the cabin. He walked down to the river and found level ground, laying out the bedroll with the new cotton sheet. He could hear tin pans ringing from within the cabin. He heard the old man's feet shuffling on the warped floorboards, the sound of them almost mimicking the water pass and the wind that moved it. The boy laid himself down.

For a long time he stared up at the sky. Later in the night he rolled over to face the bank so the cool breeze from the river blew on his face. He shifted once more, a thought of the girl, then fell off into a troubled sleep with the moon receding into the clouds and the face of the sky blackening still.

III

N
INE

A LOST AND forgotten grove and her hair its black fruits. Standing at dawn in the rocky shoal of the stream, this new vision or delusion or idle journey of the mind had come to him for several mornings running. He kicked at the stones beneath his feet and breathed heavily in the thick air, all about him the smell of wood smoke and untold rains.

Inside the old man was hunched over the clawfoot tub as the boy had found him every such morning. He turned and glanced at the boy coming in and turned silently back to the tub. The boy stood by the table and drew the fresh pouch of tobacco John Frank had given him from his breast pocket. The old man rose and scuttled over to the worn shelving above the stove. He took down a cup and went back to the tub and filled it. Then he sat by its side with his coverall straps dangling loosely from his hips. He motioned the boy to sit at the table, and the boy did.

On the table was a bowl of buttermilk and a plate of corn mash. He motioned to the boy again, shaking a tremulous hand at the plate and nodding ambivalently to him. The boy slowly took up one of the dark glazed spoons and made no effort to speak but only lifted the gruel to his mouth and swallowed.

After eating the boy rose and walked down to the stream, dipping his hands in and squatting with his forearms around his knees. He removed his hat and thrust it in the water until it was soaked through. He placed the hat on his head again, beads of water dripping down his nose and cheeks, and watched the water. The current was slow and beneath the turning glass sheet he could see small fish riding swiftly over the green stones.

Once upon Triften the boy fixed his shirt collar and rode to the door of the cabin. The old man was still slumped by the tub, his head cocked down into his chest and his hands fumbling around the cup. He looked up when the mare's shadow peeled away from the floor. He half raised up a hand to the boy's back.

Come back, he said.

*   *   *

What false magic or unseen hand led the boy into his quietness he could not name, but he went on for weeks in a slow procession of necessity and no real thing besides. He rose into town in the morning and at the town hall Molly passed him the papers from behind her squat desk and he rode them out to the lawyer's house, then back through the town and into the foothills. For many nights the old man was unaccounted for and many mornings too, found only occasionally curled and rigid on his shapeless ticking or folded awkwardly on the back of the boy's mule, scouring the brush for berries at dusk. He saw John Frank few times during those weeks and avoided conversation. When he did agree to meet him one night at the bar, the boy sat and drank sodas for an hour until John Frank pushed back his chair violently and stared down at him. I'm leavin if alls you're goin to do is sit there. I could have me a better time with a stick and a rock to roll.

The boy said nothing and did not look up from the bar. You ought to get goin then, he finally said.

What was in him was virulent beyond his knowledge and he rode the days out with his eyes turned down and squinting as if startled by the light. When he ate at Garrets Miss Jane watched him more than she spoke. She emptied his ashtray and filled his mug with coffee and made his change when he finished eating.

Some nights upon returning to the old man's cabin the boy would walk along the streambank, kicking old twigs and snapping leaves from the overhanging trees. The animals of that country fell and rose before him on the landscape and he studied them hunched over with his faded bed linens draped upon his shoulders. To any unlikely onlooker the boy would have seemed as much a part of that place as the beasts who roamed it.

His hair grew long again and by the close of those weeks it brushed his collarbone when he rode his mare. The staggering sun had browned his face and his stubble goldened with the wisps of hair that cropped out from under his hat brim. He faded thin, the muscles surfacing stark and stunned upon his flesh. Only his eyes remained unchanged, a pale bottomless sealike blue.

During those days the plaza rocked and swayed with heat and peddler and passersby, the explosion of commerce settling only in the wan hours of dawn. The railroad men had arrived and at night they mulled about the streets and crossed the windows of Abner's in silhouette, smoking or drawing up their stiff and blackened overalls like custodians of some dark secret. Sometimes riding back from the lawyer's house the boy could hear music from the outdoor bandstand behind the bar, the soot-faced spike drivers and the hard-helmeted engineers and their haggling and laughing and coming down from the windows of the inn their sharp cries of desire. It was not the world that he had smiled upon with his mother when they sat by the edge of that mountain creek, nor was it the world at home in his bed he had once dreamed of, but what world it was he could not quite say.

*   *   *

THE FIRST MORNING
of August brought a heavy heat. The boy woke in a pool of sweat. He rolled up and held his knees. There was no birdcall that morning and he sat listening to the quiet.

When he came out of the stream he looked over his makeshift camp and his dirty linens and the dusty spot of matted land where he had slept all summer long. A tin cup and his dirk knife lay beside it. His dull silver pistol and his grandfather's rifle were nearly covered in the fallen leaves of a cottonwood. One saddlebag was unstitched and loose with his extra clothing and wilting beneath them was his mother's old saddle.

With his shirt unbuttoned and his eyes boring down without fix on his trousers, he loosed the horse's headstall and saddled her and mounted. He did not don his hat or sit and smoke or stop to see after the old man but chucked the heel of his boot against the mare's flanks and rode on down to the town at a gallop.

At the town hall he went straight past Molly, who looked up and shifted largely in her seat to regard the boy passing. He walked down the hall buttoning his shirt as he went. When he entered the office John Frank was bending over behind his desk to relace his shoes.

He looked up for a moment when the boy came in, then leaned down to his feet again. Molly's got the papers, he said.

I know it. I was wantin to talk to you.

Frank looked up at him, his eyes just above the desk. Is that so, he said. He looked toward the floor and finished with his laces and sat up and leaned back in his chair. You in trouble?

No.