The Sound of the Trees (27 page)

He eyed the boy across the fire purposefully.

Cause you know son, you can't never step in the same river twice. The old man's face twisted into a strangely youthful grin. I reckon the river's got the finest mind there is, he said. The most peaceful at least. You don't believe me, go on and look for yourself.

The boy eased back and turned so they both regarded the river that was flickering brightly in the new moon glow. The boy watched it dance past. Trying to follow one strain of water all the way to the eye's end but each time he tried he lost it among all of the other waters. Soon he grew weary and turned back to the fire and stoked it with the cherry branch. The old man watched the boy move the charred stick through the embers.

You know, boy. You don't got to live like this.

Live like what?

The old man made a gesture with his hands across the campfire. They got easier ways of livin now, he said. Get yourself a nice room. Hot water from the taps stead of haulin it up from the river like we always have to be doin out here. Electrical lamp on your bed stand. Get a nice suit like you see in them papers. Ride the girls around in a pretty car. They don't make your ass hurt no more than a horse and they go a hell of a lot faster.

You don't believe that.

Well. The old man paused. He shook his head with a look that seemed to be gathering some grim recognition of an idea long pondered. It's a new time, boy. It is. Has been for a while now. What I want to know is why you still livin in mine.

The boy looked into the river, then turned back to the fire again. His eyes hovered above the flames like clouds of blue smoke. Not where I come from, he said. What I known. It ain't what I was born to. Not like this town. Couple ranchers had their trucks to ride to the auction pens. A few bars and a general and a hotel. A post office. Five-and-dime, and that's it. Rancher named Larry Bowles cut everybody's hair. Even the missus. Besides. You said it yourself. They got it all wrong down there.

The old man nodded at him. For a moment he seemed he would press on but he did not. They listened to the wind and looked out at the bent timberline on the mesa and the grackles that shot from bush to grass and they listened to the voice of the river beneath it all.

Look at them stars, the old man said after a while.

They look far off, the boy said.

Reminds me of my favorite myth. Bout a girl named Callisto. You got an ear for it, boy?

The boy looked down at the river, then up at the stars again. Yes, he said. I reckon I do.

The old man thrust his head back and breathed deeply in that same manner he always did when about to recite his stories. He pushed away the strands of hair that the wind blew over his gray eyes.

She was the daughter of a king named Lycaon.

They was in plenty back then. Yes. Lycaon weren't the good man Sisyphus was. But like Sisyphus he ended up bad off in the end.

They always seem to.

But it wasn't straight him this time. The punishment not only went on him but went down to his daughter, too. Callisto. And that punishment I ain't even sure how to figure on yet and I thought it around many a time.

The old man scratched his arms beneath the blanket and squeezed them tight against the cold. Lycaon did one of the worst things a man could do in the days of the gods, he said.

Crossed Zeus, I imagine.

The old man grinned at him.

You're catchin on, boy. Zeus came to dinner with Lycaon one night. No small thing for a mortal. In fact, was about the biggest thing a man could hope for in them days. But what does Lycaon do when the great Zeus is guest at his home? Serves him up a sup of human flesh, that's what.

So Zeus kills him.

No. No, he doesn't.

The old man peered through the fire and pointed a finger at the boy.

He turned him into a wolf for his wickedness. Sent him out to roam the world and hunt each day and night for food to fill himself with.

The old man was silent for a moment. He gazed into the fire as though the structure of the story were taking root there.

Later on now, Zeus falls in love with Callisto. Lycaon's daughter. Not a strange thing, cause that Zeus was a buckshot of love. Loved a good heap of women in his day. But what he does with Callisto didn't sit well with his old lady. Gets her pregnant is what he does. Course it weren't too long before Hera found out. That's Zeus's wife. Foul woman.

He put a finger to his lips as if to make himself silent.

Still shouldn't say that, I reckon. He looked around the sky. You never do know. Anyways, after Callisto bears out the child, Hera comes down from the mountain and changes her into a bear. Like her father she's sent out to wander the world herself. But that weren't enough for Hera. Havin a man like Zeus stickin his lightnin in all them young beauties got her blood up. So then, again this is later on, Callisto's son, who's named Arcas, he becomes the bull's-eye of her fury. At the time Arcas is growin up in the woods with Artemis. Artemis bein the goddess of huntin. Is this too much for you, boy?

No. I think I got the handle.

Alright. Arcas, he gets up to be a good hunter, but it's just as Hera had planned it.

The boy set down the cherry branch and watched the old man's face flicker and wane and rise again in the flames. He held the collar of his jacket up against the wind.

One day when Arcas has grown big and strong, Hera sets his mind to killin the bear. The bear that's really Callisto. Of course the boy don't know it's his mother. Don't know she's been watchin out for him even though she can't say it or tell him or hold him like a mother should. So he goes off ahuntin her. All day and night, Hera's made him so crazy for it.

The boy sat up and crossed his legs.

He sees the bear and she flees him. He follows her here, then she's gone to there. Imagine her heart, like that. Runnin from her own son. Well, one day he traps her. Corners her in a big gorge of rock. She tries to climb the damn thing but them rocks is all wet with dew. It's an early mornin, you see. But just as Arcas raises his bow and sets his arrow, she's suddenly gone.

The old man's eyes widened upon the fire. He made fists with both his hands, then opened them as if to release some crucial invisibility into the air.

Gone, he said. Disappeared. Why? Cause Zeus come back to save her. Snatched her right up from the earth and set her in the stars where she's called Great Bear. Later on, Arcas, he's raised up too. Called later by the people Lesser Bear.

The old man leaned back and folded his arms under his head and pulled the blanket up to the sagging flesh at his chin.

But one last time Hera sticks her nose in it. All riled up about the honor Zeus bestowed on them. So she sets the only curse she can upon them. She persuades Poseidon, god of the sea, to forbid them two stars from fallin into the ocean like all the others. So them two bears, them stars that is Callisto and Arcas, they's forever and always the only ones never to be settin below the horizon.

The old man's voice trailed off on those last words and he coughed and shifted under the blanket. The boy leaned in toward him to better hear what had now become a mere whisper from his sunken chest.

That's my favorite, he rasped. Cause it ain't one way or the other. It ain't good nor bad alone. It's both. Sometimes I'm rollin that over in my head. When I'm thinkin clear. Did Zeus win or did Hera? Are Callisto and Arcas livin good up there or do they pine for the sea? Do they want to disappear under the horizon and get a rest for a while? Do they miss all the other stars when they're up there alone?

The old man stopped and breathed long. His mouth opened and closed again and his breath settled into a dim rattle that passed out of his nose. The boy watched him from across the last licks of the fire and he turned his head back and looked up at the stars that were going slowly covered by a host of dark clouds.

What did you decide? he said.

The old man groaned and shifted under the blanket and turned away from the fire. The boy looked back down and over at him.

Who won?

He leaned over the fire and nudged the old man but in the darkness away from the fire he did not move and the night crept over both boy and river as blind and faultless as the old man's sleep.

*   *   *

The following day he rode out to Charlie Ford's ranch to have Triften's toes clipped. The air was very cold but still. He found the rancher oiling his saddle in the barn. He came down from his horse and rapped the barn door that was cast open and shedding a thin rictus of light onto the dirt floor. Charlie Ford turned with a rag in his hand and his shirtsleeves rolled up on his bulging forearms. Trude Mason from Grant County, he said, his eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. Just the man I was lookin for.

They sat in the tiny kitchen in the barn and the boy made a pot of coffee while the rancher scrubbed the grease from his hands.

What were you lookin for me for, the boy asked.

Charlie Ford turned from the sink basin, shaking off the water that was dripping down his arms.

Like mind, son. On a day like this it's nice to be around a like mind.

Yes sir, the boy said. I was thinkin the same thing.

He poured out their coffees and both sat. They spoke at great lengths about the rancher's horses and his sale of twenty head at an auction in Albuquerque. He told the boy that he had done well and cleared up some old debts and that maybe in the winter he would have some work for him if he planned to stay on.

I don't know if I will. I hope to be on my way.

The winter ain't the best time to travel in this country, son. Specially where you're headed.

I know it. But I may have no choice in it.

Charlie Ford sipped at his coffee. Has that office job got you down?

It's insubstantial for sure, but no. That ain't it.

What is it then?

The boy looked at the rancher and the rancher handed him a cigarette across the table and said, Go on and tell me, I ain't goin to judge you for it.

The boy nodded a little into the mug. I would like to tell you about it, he said.

Charlie Ford straightened up in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Sure, he said. Sure.

I feel like I can talk to you is all.

Alright.

I mean between just us two.

Charlie Ford reached across the table and gave the boy a stiff pat on the shoulder, then recrossed his arms. Only others I seem to talk to these days is my horses, he said. You go on and tell me anything you want.

The boy lit his cigarette and set it in the ashtray and blew on his coffee and told him about it. He told him about the old man he was staying with and John Frank his friend who was trying to help him and he told him about the mayor and at last and into the steam of his coffee he told him about the girl. He gave a brief account of the situation and both shook their heads as the story came forth.

When he finished Charlie Ford rose from the table and poured them more coffee and stood by the sink basin. For a while he studied his mug. Then he told the boy that he shouldn't be so sure of what the mayor was planning, but that the way the town was now was the way it would always be. He said he wished he knew what to tell him but there was little to say. He told him that he knew little about the mayor and truth be told he had left town when the organizing and expansion began. All the ranchers had, he said. And he said that no wind or wet had ever set them back the way that the mayor and his newfangled town had. They had all gone their separate ways, and the spring roundups that had once been the finest and toughest and sweetest days of their lives were lost and what's worse was that they were no longer even neighbors. Can't even sit around and chew the rag no more, he said.

Finally he shook his head and set his mug in the sink and told the boy that he once had a say in the way things went in that country but that those days had changed altogether. That they had changed once, and forever.

So there's nothin for me to do?

Oh, there's always things you can do. Charlie Ford smiled evenly at the boy. But right here I think they're things you got to figure on your own.

In the evening the boy helped the rancher bring in some strays that had drifted out along the fence line and he rode with that old swell in his heart. Both rancher and boy smiled at each other across the misty landscape and late at night when his horse's toes had been clipped they sat once more at the kitchen table, and in that stable room of Charlie Ford's in a country far from his home the boy passed into his nineteenth year without mother or father, or even a single candle to blow out.

*   *   *

When he came to the wall she was already standing there with her fingers wrapped around the iron bars and her eyes dark and swollen. The domed light from the prison wall wafted in the breeze and settled across his boots and after a while she looked down.

She saw him standing there, thin and pale and slightly shivering from the cold. His hands were stuffed deep in his jacket pockets where he was trying to stave off their shaking. Her face turned away almost fearfully. Then she began to cry. The boy stepped back and took his hat down and held it at his chest. He withdrew his other hand from his pocket and raised it up in supplication.

After a few minutes she lowered her face to the bars. She began to shake her head against them, slow and deliberate. One hand came up and pressed the photograph against her throat and still the boy did not call to her nor did she speak. He could see her face more clearly without the rain present and it seemed to him even thinner and more fine than he had remembered.

She went on shaking her head and at last, low and quiet beneath her breath, he heard her voice. No, she was saying. He stepped forward, her hair above him swinging across her face like a flag on the mast of a ship lost under the sea. He could hear her clearly now. No, she said again, but the boy knew she was telling him something else.