The Sound of the Trees (25 page)

Yes, he said. I remember.

I wanted to find her. Even though it was him that done it.

She began to sob. He watched her with his hands held at his sides.

But she's gone, she said. And here I am.

The rain kept coming and he raised his squinted eyes to where her head rested against the bars.

He killed her?

Yes.

That man you were with in the mountains?

Yes.

He was your lover?

She raised her head to him and looked down with a sudden pity in her eyes. No, she said. He was not.

But they put you in jail.

Yes, she said.

Where's he now?

I don't know. I woke up one morning and he was gone. Then two men came out and dragged me up and brought me down here. The night I saw you. I'm eighteen and in jail and forgotten.

The manner in which she spoke, so forthrightly and with such bitter clarity, seemed a thing of wonder to him. You ain't forgotten, he said.

The girl leaned her head against the bars again and outstretched her hand into the rain. Then the boy called out, loud and heedless, his voice like a child's again. It ain't over, he said. I'm goin to get you out. I promise. I got to.

I can't hope for you, Trude. She stood back from the window. Look at me, she said. I can't.

I hoped someday I'd know your name.

The girl breathed heavily and watched his eyes. The boy could hear her chest heave above the splattering rain.

Hope for it, he said. It's the one thing left I know.

Then he was quiet again. The rain slowed. After a few minutes it surged again with a loud ripping wind across the landscape.

I wanted to, he started, but stopped himself abruptly.

He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to tell her about his mother and his father and he wanted to tell her about the mountains and the reason why he could not name but it was in him and he wanted only to tell her if he did nothing else ever. He wanted to tell her that he had dreams about her and her dying and he wanted to tell her that he loved her but when he opened his mouth he could say nothing at all.

You better go, she said.

I'm comin back.

No, she said. You can't.

Why?

She looked down at his face and spoke very softly to him now. Trude, she said. Look here at me. Who I am. In this place. I'm never comin out.

You are, he said. He spoke out louder. You are.

Her hands tightened around the bars and she called to him as he began to walk away. Trude. Please.

He turned back to her. Delilah, he said.

She crooked her long thin neck to the side and called back to him. Yes?

He looked up at her through the hissing rain and once more he spoke her name, then turned and was gone.

F
IFTEEN

AFTER A LONG night of rain the boy leaned up and shed the wet flannel bedroll he had reclothed his camp with and sat facing the river with his arms wrapped around his knees. The river was fast and swollen and he watched it going by. He could hear the old man stumbling somewhere downstream. He was singing a song about a girl named Sadie. The sun was gone and the moon high and the morning winds blew his hair across his face and after a while he lowered his head to his chest and watched the white of his breath rise between his knees.

Many days had passed since he had seen her. He'd spent little time awake, and he rose from dreams he no longer wished to recall. She was locked away and there was nothing he could yet think to do.

He rode the papers out to the lawyer's house but no longer looked inside. He saw the Italian only twice and both times what passed between them was no more than a nod and once a sideways smile from the boy from which John Frank quickly turned away.

A few times he rode through the town, speaking briefly to those who would speak to him. New storefronts were going up and the foundation of the metal press he had read about was being laid behind the inn. Wagons and trucks wobbled into the thoroughfare loaded with machinery and foodstuff. Around the plaza women sat on porch fronts, ogling and putting their hands to their mouths when deliveries from the East brought crates of clothing from New York and Chicago and paving tools and pipelines for the engineers. Sounds of hammers and nails and the groan of saws moved across the town like echoes of voices from a land far off. On the occasion when the sky was clear, he could see the path of the railroad snaking along the mesa and down through the foothills and sometimes back at the cabin at night he could hear the rails being driven and sometimes in his dreams it was he who swung the mallet, heavy and lifeless upon the earth.

During the evenings he sat as he had always done, by the river, looking out at the great and dark expanse beyond. He thought often about his old wide dreams of Colorado. He imagined his mother awake before him and he thought about the land he had roamed in the days after her death. At times in the slash of wind and cloud he even conjured his father, his figure a mere shadow in the bleak and tired fields.

And then in the darkest hours, he rode the open country. She had made him love the night and all of its colors. The tree branches became silhouettes of her hair and the ripple of stream or brook became her eyes and all of the hard brittle stone beneath them her heart.

One night he took a high trail above the prison house and looked down. He could see the lights from the guards' quarters and he counted out the windows until he was sure he was looking at hers. He stayed there for over an hour, his hands folded tensely over the saddlehorn, looking down at the bars which in his heart felt not like bars of one window in one small jail but bars slammed down into the mortar of the world.

*   *   *

He sat on the porch steps of the general store and watched the road. The weather was coming down in great heaves from the mountains and the wind slushed through the streets and raised the dust around the legs of the townspeople. Beneath the willow tree a young girl wearing a heavy twill skirt that fanned out at her ankles was peering over a wooden box filled with silver rings and clap bracelets. All of the Indian women wore their hair long to the small of their backs and wound and braided in thick ropes and studded with beads. They circled around the girl very slowly, looking out into the distance as if it were the mountains themselves that were coming down and not simply the cold. The boy stared down at the steps and wondered where their men were. Their eyes reminded him of his own, as if they belonged to other scenes. As if the world they looked upon was not truly their own.

After a while he rose and went down the road and sat in his booth at Garrets and ate with his head down. He drank a mug of coffee. When he finished his eggs he leaned back to smoke. A car passed. Smoke and dirt blew up to obscure his view. A woman came stumbling out of the inn across the plaza. Her face was screwed up in anger. She spat onto the porch but seemed to be dancing all the way out. No one else appeared in the doorway save a small dark wren who settled down on the porch floor, then flew off when the woman spat again. The boy ground out his cigarette in the ashtray and rubbed his shoulder where the Englishman's knife had gone in and drank another cup of coffee.

Miss Jane came and sat across from him. She asked the boy if he was still staying up in the hills and wasn't it cold out there and was he still working with John Frank. She asked him if he had heard about the break-in at the records building and she asked him then and more quietly if he had heard about someone being hanged before the new year. On this last question the boy stopped and put down his mug and asked her civil as he could if she knew who it was, but she only shook her head and shrugged her shoulders and said she wished it wasn't nobody at all.

It don't seem right, she said. I mean, I can't imagine the mayor allowing something like that. He's such a gentleman. And such a soft voice.

The boy pushed away the ashtray with his matchbook and then pushed the matchbook into his shirt pocket. I wish the same, he said. But he wants the town a certain way, and if fearing it out of the people is the way he thinks to do it, I reckon he will. And I doubt when he does you'll hear that soft voice you come to expect.

He nodded to himself and closed his eyes briefly, as though he had just made clear what had been in his mind by speaking it aloud, then rose from the table. I got to get on, he said.

Miss Jane got up and put her hand on his shoulder.

No more coffee? You look bad tired, Trude.

Well, he said. I don't imagine there's enough coffee in all of New Mexico that would make me feel otherwise.

*   *   *

He went toward the bar as the last light went away. The sky he and his horse walked under was black and clear and cluttered with stars. He could feel the earth hardening beneath him and he knew the colder nights were coming soon.

John Frank was sitting at a table near the back of the bar. He was blowing smoke up at the ceiling and watching it spread and fade. The bar was nearly empty and there was no music.

What'll you have, the boy said. I'll buy it.

He took out his billfold from his back pocket and set it on the table.

John Frank looked up at the boy and quickly around the dark smoked room. He leaned across the table. What the hell's happening with you? he said.

Just leave it, the boy said.

Your hair don't look much more than a mop and your body the handle.

Just leave it. What do you want.

Frank tried not to smile but could not stop himself. His face was red and heavy under the eyes. Bourbon and ice, he said.

The boy sipped at his soda. Two of the mustached brothers lingered around the bar, bending over each other's shoulders like medieval monks in mute prayer. The cigar counter was locked back and a tattered flower-printed curtain was drawn across it. After some time John Frank straightened up in his chair.

Things ain't good, bud.

The boy turned back and looked at him. You don't have to tell me, he said.

The mayor won't cut this one loose.

I didn't expect he would.

He knows about the break-in.

I heard it.

But it's worse than that.

How?

I heard him talkin about the girl. The black girl. I heard it said she's too pretty for her kind. Seems some of them boys like them up at the bar right now think she's a witch or something. I imagine it's the same one.

Delilah.

Yeah. That must be her. I also heard him talkin to that fat newsman. Talkin about layin down the law the right way so when the town gets under way there won't be no questions as to who runs the place. Said he'd have to put his foot down soon or else there'd be no place left for him to stand.

Well now, the boy said heatedly, why don't you just go ahead and tell me what you're tryin to say.

John Frank pressed his thumbs together and kept his eyes on them. Then he said, She may be the one they'll hang. He spread his thumbs apart. Then again, I heard the one who broke into the records building would be the one that goes.

They can't do that. Not either way. There's laws in this country.

John Frank shook his head very slowly.

Have you looked around at all? he said. Have you? There ain't even no courthouse here, Trude. Ain't no judge. The one judge that was here was sent up for undoin some girl. And you know who her mother was? The mayor's cousin is who. I believe that right there about says it all when it comes to what's allowed in this town and who says it is or isn't. Law in this country? Not here, he said. Not in this country.

They goin to hang her. I knew it anyway.

I think you ought to get out of here, cowboy. For a while at least.

Out of where?

Where? What do you mean where? Out of town. Do like you was goin to anyway. I hate to say it or see it happen, but I got to advise you to go on to Colorado.

Now you're my adviser? The boy waved a hand across the table. Well, I can't.

John Frank leaned into the table. You're a damn fool, he said.

I ain't goin to try to explain it again to you.

Alright then, bud. But you're goin to have to quit tellin me about what you plan to do. I mean, I don't reckon I can be a part of it anymore. Really this time. It's too goddamn tight now. And I wouldn't go quietly like I imagine you would. I'm not like you. You understand that.

The boy nodded at the table.

I just don't know what would happen were it to come down to you and me and no place left to hide. I'm not sayin I'd hamstring you. I'm only sayin that jail ain't for me and I don't think I could take it.

I'm made for jail? Is that what you mean to say?

No. I don't mean that.

And she ain't neither.

All I'm sayin is you might could handle it better. Maybe not the walls so much, but the silence.

They sat. Across the bar two of the Ralstons were pinching their mustaches and speaking under their breath to each other. Then they walked to a table where three Mexicans were reeling from drink with their arms slung over the backs of their chairs and their heads slumped onto their shoulders. A few words passed between the five men. The Mexicans' faces reddened and their hands came off the chair backs and onto their laps and then onto the table. One of them stood but sat back quickly when one of the brothers stepped back and drew open his coat to reveal the two pistols in his belt. The Mexicans stared at them a moment, their eyes red and wide with the bewilderment of the drunk. The Ralstons smiled down at the table and the Mexicans one by one rose and stumbled back from the table and filed out. The brothers watched them pass, pressing their faces close to the Mexicans'. When they were gone the Ralston brothers leaned down into the chairs and pushed back the flaps of their coats. They smiled at each other and one of them called for the waitress.

John Frank watched the boy who was watching the scene.

See, he said. Boys like them. They're made for it but they'll never go. Too many of em. And they ain't all dumb, neither. They always side with the mayor. And if they don't, they always seem to reach an agreement. Hell, he said. It ain't like I'm sayin we can't talk no more.