The Sound of the Trees (2 page)

No sir. No. The boy's eyes quickened and he shook his head. Not a chance, he said. You need it to get to the sick. Besides. Me and Mama been over this already. I can't drive a lick and she's no good at it neither. I doubt there's even roads to get us up there. Not ones I'd know. Not through the mountains.

Maybe not through the mountains. But you can go ahead and take a train that skirts around east a bit and can get you straight to Santa Fe. Or Albuquerque. Hell, if you take the car it's not but sixty miles before you hit paved road.

The boy shook his head again, almost a lament in the slow sway of it. Too much money for the train, he said. And I don't want yours and neither of us can drive, like I said. Besides, I can't leave Triften. You know that. She just wouldn't have it, and I guess neither would I. Most times in the last few years she's the only company I've had. I'd just as soon make a clean cut. We'll make it. We will.

The boy roused his head from his lap and looked into the doctor's eyes.

Don't you believe it?

Yes. Of course I believe it, son.

The doctor took the belt ends in his hands again and wound them deliberately over his fingers. As if to demonstrate some procedure of thought. At last he looked up at the boy and sighed.

You best take care then, he said. You hear me? You best stay as close as you can to the towns. Now I know you ain't never been one for signs and borders or the like. But remember, you ain't never been out of Grant County before. It's rough country up there if you're plannin to shoot the mountains. It's country most folks ain't never heard of, let alone seen. And I don't care how many trucks or trains you got to get you there.

Yes sir. We'll be careful. I'll make sure of it.

The boy paused, staring blankly at his hat and the shadow it cast upon his hands. The doctor watched him through the dusty slats of light that were now unfurling from the window. Then the boy raised his head.

Now I know you all are friends and I don't expect you to like it, but I came to say you a good-bye and I do expect that he won't get wind of my plans from you.

At this the doctor straightened up in his chair. His face fell grave and he puffed his cigar, looking at it momentarily then setting it in an ivory ashtray and turning the ashtray with his strong fine hands and finally turning his eyes to the fire. I reckon you're right, he said. It had to come to this.

The boy peered into the fire and they both did so for a long time. Upstairs the boy could hear the doctor's wife splashing quietly over a washbasin. He looked at the mantle clock and it ticked the seconds in the stillness, and finally he rose.

The doctor pulled long on his cigar.

Have you considered that he may follow you?

The smoke crossed the room. It rose up at the boy's waist while he turned his head and gazed out the window behind him.

I done considered it, yeah. Depends on how he feels when he sobers up. Depends on whether or not he's stashed enough money for himself. Depends if he even wants to find us. But just the same, if we go on up through the mountain passes, can you imagine him givin chase? I mean, if you want another reason for not takin the train or your car. There it is. You think he could stay set on a horse anymore? I don't know. The boy lowered his hat, then placed it atop his head again. He raised his hands as if he couldn't think what more there might be to say. Depends on a lot of things, I reckon.

The doctor set the cigar in the ashtray again. He swept a hand across the rubble of white hair on his chin. Then he took in a deep breath and rested his fists on the chair arms.

Sometimes your father used to come here at night when he was very drunk. I'd let him sleep it off on the cot in the back and in the mornin I'd feed him eggs and coffee. We were always good friends, your pa and me. He'd tell me he didn't want to go home because he was afraid of himself. I always thought that was a curious thing, but your father is a curious man. But you know, the doctor said, raising a hand toward the boy then placing it on his chest, he does have somethin that at least resembles a heart in there.

The boy stared at the hand on the doctor's chest. How long we known each other Doc?

The old man shrugged. He strained his eyes in remembrance, and it was clear from his frown that such memories were of little use to him. Long as you've been around, he said cautiously.

And you've always taken care of me with my ridin injuries and the like. Right?

Oh well yes, the doctor said, straightening up in his chair again, but look at all the ribbons you took in on account of your roping. Best young rider in the tricounty district last year.

Well sir, with all due respect, I ain't but once been injured by horse or cow.

The old doctor slouched down in his chair. He turned his head back toward the fire.

I got one more question for you, Doc. The boy now stood full in the wake of light, and it flooded over him from his back and shoulders. Is the story they tell about when I was born true? I mean, I'm leavin now and I won't see him again I reckon and you're the only friend around here I got. It'd mean a lot to me if you could just go on and say it.

The doctor rested his chin in his hand. He looked at the smoke drifting up his fingers. At long last he thumbed out his cigar in the ashtray and rose into the light of the coming day. He crossed the room and put his hands on the boy's shoulders. For a while he studied his face. Smooth and sunken as if drawn out by some indelible sorrow, yet with the boy's wheat-colored hair spraying from his hat brim and fluttering over his long eyelashes, the doctor once again saw the child he knew, and he moved his hands from the boy's shoulders to cup him under the jaw as though he meant to bear the boy's soul where he himself could not.

It's true, he said, now correcting the boy's hat on his head and trying for a tender smile. He damned you when you were born.

At the door the doctor waved him off sadly and the boy turned and regarded him and put a finger to the fork of his hat. He saw the doctor's wife descending the stairs with her long gray hair coming down over her shoulder and he wished the doctor well and began to walk his horse back toward the north and into the ashen country that awaited him.

T
WO

THERE WAS AN untraceable updraft that struck the boy and his mother as they crested the sand hills north of town. The winds kneeled and shot up again in great whorls. The roads and buildings had swiftly receded, and the country spread vacant and bitter before them. The boy shepherded his mother along the gray ridges of the hills, neither of them able to see but a few feet in front of the horses.

It's always hardest in the beginning, he called to her.

His mother tried to nod but it was difficult to move at all. Her gesture came out stilted and unnoticed. The mule carrying their provisions bayed and staggered on the lead rope.

Come on old timer, he called out, keep it steady.

With quick clutchings of his off hand the boy towed his mother's roan and kept his mother close enough to his shoulder that he could see her hair blustering beside him. He held his hand aloft and squinted out from under his hat brim. The wind groaned and groaned. It seemed to harbor a prejudice against them. And though it strapped the boy into virtual paralysis he turned his burning neck from time to time, surveying the land they had passed. He searched the land for a sign of his father with his eyes so absent of color it seemed he feared the stalking of a ghost.

Hours passing into the afternoon, they came out of the bottomland and perched over a bluff and there took to a low alcove of volcanic rock.

Here, the boy called above the din.

He came down and helped his mother calm her roan and hobbled the horses and mule on a lone acacia tree that was rooted precariously on the slope of the outcropping rocks. A swatch of burned crabgrass garlanded the tree which itself writhed in the gusts of wind. When the horses trod over the crabgrass it did not bend but crackled, and they lowered their long heads as if to sniff out some treachery beneath them.

The boy took his mother down from her saddle. The last of the thick fall heat blew in her hair. He held her face in his hands but she was looking away, her eyes wet glass. Set here, he yelled at her.

His mother did not move for a moment, then her eyelids stammered and her eyes settled on the boy's face. She nodded absently and bent and braced herself on one of the boulders and lowered herself into the belly of the cave.

The boy held his hat down with his hands and lurched back toward the mule. He uncinched one of the saddlebags they had secretly packed in the dark of the previous night, running his fingers blindly along the leather strap and pulling it loose from the animal's barrel and then went stumbling and ducking into the cave.

Tarnation.

He slapped his pant legs and shook off his hat. In the muted cup of the cave his voice resounded flatly. His mother looked up from her folded hands.

Damnation, darlin. I believe what you say here at this point is Damnation.

The last word she uttered slyly, smiling at the boy with a smile it seemed she had retrieved from pure sadness.

The boy went to wrestling open the sack, shucking his gloves and making fists of his hands to bring the numbness out of them. He drew out a small pouch of cornbread biscuits and wiped away the sweat beading up on his forehead. From his bib overalls he took out his dirk knife and unthreaded the cord and laid the cotton open on a flat slab of volcanic glass.

He removed a parcel of deer meat folded in wax paper and unfolded it with his raw trembling hands and laid it next to the biscuits and finally from the side pouch he fingered loose a beef bladder corked by bee's wax which was filled with the last milk from their lost cattle.

Should be the best dinner we've wanted in a long time, he said.

They ate slowly, looking out at the desolation and the driving winds. The boy swallowed and pointed a finger at the scene before them. You see Mama, he said, that old truck would've buried us alive.

His mother shimmied closer to the boy and put her arm around him, and for a while they sat knotted so.

Darlin, she said. If we had that truck we wouldn't be here.

After some time the sun moved behind the bluff. They watched in silence as wide shadows swept dark and weary across the desert floor. A solitary crow spun down and called out. The boy's mother withdrew her arm and laid her head back against the rock.

For as long as he could remember they were never given a choice or a chance of their own in any matter, and all they had been offered in their lives was very much like the soft greasy bills of money that passed through generations of hands. Farmer's hands and forger's hands and cobbler's and merchant's and the hands of old woodworkers long exhausted in their trade. Many hands laid upon those bills but none who could stake a claim upon them, as if they themselves had been swallowed into the commerce of a void. He wondered if the world would recover. If it could recover. And beyond that, if they could.

After a while the wind abated. The boy's mother rose up gingerly and pushed back the straw that had become her hair. The boy flicked away the cigarette he had been smoking and pulled on his gloves. I don't believe we'll make it to Silver City tonight, he said.

His mother pulled on her own gloves. How far is it? she asked.

It's a piece yet, he said. When we get there we'll bunk a night and map out our path. And if it takes till tomorrow, it don't matter. The boy stopped and gazed out at the clearing stretch of country before them. Beyond the boulders the desert appeared even more desolate, without wind or water, rise or tremor, as though it had fallen into a dream and dreamed of the only thing a desert could imagine, which was itself stretching out forever.

What we got plenty of is time, he said.

The boy's mother leaned against one of the boulders and closed her eyes while the boy collected the animals. When he had them ready he called out to her.

His mother jerked up awkwardly from her elbows. She squinted across the mouth of the cave at her son. The boy held up his hands in question until she finally got her legs under her and stumbled to the horses.

What were you doin over there?

What? Oh, nothin. Thinkin.

About what?

Trude. Honey. What do you think?

*   *   *

In the early evening they downstepped the horses into a ravine. The storm passed, only thin blue clouds like old rags slung along the skyline. With the wind gone the boy watched his mother more intensely. She appeared weaker than when they had first set out and the boy wished the sandstorm had not caught hold of them but he pressed on, concerning himself with his mother's condition and watching for the ghost. Or worse, for the man himself.

He could not summon what possible deeds would follow if indeed his father was tracking them. He could not imagine his hand or breath anymore. He remembered only that glass stare he and his mother had dreaded each night of the last year during which all reason seemed to have abandoned his father, sitting together on the davenport in the evening and trying not to hear the truck rumble into the yard or anticipate the creak of the door.

At the dusking hour they came to the confluence of two creeks which joined into a slow-moving river lined with box elder. A small congregation of Russian olive trees and in the near distance a grove of salt cedar. The boy ran a finger across his brow and spat and pushed back his hat. He looked up at the rising moon and then toward the lights of Silver City. He estimated they were still at least three hours away. Then he looked at his mother bow-shouldered on the roan and whoaed the mare.

Ma, he called. This looks like a place just as good as any to lay for the night. I can catch us some fish.

His mother said nothing nor did she make any motion of agreement, but came down from her horse and hobbled her in the grove of salt cedars and walked down to the river and sat at its edge.