The Trees (24 page)

Dark fell before Wyitt came home. It was ten days since he’d had meat to take out to Genny’s and still he had nothing over his shoulder but his rifle and nothing in his hunting shirt but an empty belly. The three of them supped with hardly a word between them, then Wyitt and the bound boy went off to the half-faced cabin. When Sayward went out before going to bed, she could see their fire red among the trees. But they did not come in that night.

It wasn’t nearly light yet when she heard somebody open the unbarred door and stand beside her bed.

“That you, Wyitt?” she said but she knew who it was. Now, she told herself, whatever this was, she would hear about it.

“It’s me,” Wyitt spoke. “Will said he didn’t tell you.”

Sayward waited. She could feel him standing there, bracing himself in the dark.

“Some’un told George Roebuck he seed Louie on the trace to the English Lakes.”

Still Sayward didn’t say anything. The boy stood silent a good while as if he couldn’t come out with this thing unless Sayward helped him. Then he spoke low.

“He said some other body was with Louie. I reckoned you ought to know.”

Sayward pricked up her ears.

“Some body we know?”

“Oh, me and you know this body all right.”

“Were they a comin’ or a goin’?”

“They were a goin’,” Wyitt said shortly.

“Not Ginny?”

“No, it wa’n’t Ginny. You know now.”

Sayward lay unmoving in the form her body had made in her bed leaves, though a fine sweat rose on her upper lip. She told herself she wouldn’t take this to heart yet. A mess of tittle tattle had she heard in her born days that never held water. Her voice was steady when it came.

“When did you see Achsa out by Withers’s last?”

“I ain’t been out thataway a tall,” Wyitt said shortly.

“Well, I want you to go out this mornin’,” Sayward told him. “You kin give Achsa the flannel patch I give you for her chest. Say no more than I said she’s to wear it. If it should happen she ain’t thar, you kin come back and tell me.”

She got out on the cold floor with her bare feet and felt her way across the cabin. She heard Wyitt talk low to the bound boy who must have stood listening just outside the door. Then both started off in the early morning blackness, not waiting for something to eat.

Before it was light right they were back.

“You wa’n’t out’ar in this time!” Sayward told him.

“We didn’t have to,” Wyitt had the red flannel patch in his hand. “We seed Adam a comin’ in to Tulls’ to maul rails. He said Achsa never came around his place a tall. They had to git some body else.”

Sayward stood there on her dirt floor, the faint gray light from the open door on her face. It was true then. Clear as through spring water she could see Achsa that morning she left, they reckoned, for Sally Withers’s. Not many times could you see brier roses in Achsa’s cheeks that were brown as a young squaw’s nor her hard body as sightly as this in her new red shortgown against her coal black hair. She would take off her new shortgown when she got there but she said she wanted it to wear out. She had filled out a good deal lately, a little plenty to suit Sayward. Her plunder was down off her pegs and rolled up under her arm. She must have known then to what far parts she was going, but never did she say goodby. No, she played it to the last, tramping on at the bend in the path without a look back, although she might never see this cabin again or her oldest sister standing on the step looking after. That was Achsa all over.

“You kin eat now,” she told the two boys, her face bitter as boneset. “Then, Will, you better run home before George Roebuck gives you a britchin’.
Wyitt, you kin come on out to Ginny’s and help lug in her plunder. I’ll go on a while.”

Yes, she cast up to herself as she went down the path, she could go out to Genny’s now, for no more could she spoil Genny’s marriage with Louie Scurrah. Many’s the time had she wanted to go when it was still sweet. Now she must go when it was sour. Oh, she would give plenty had she tended Louie when she had the chance, given him what he had such a long time coming. Till she got through, he would have had to hide his face in the bushes when he heard folks coming along the path.

But then, when this came, she would have blamed it on herself. She would have reckoned that she was the one who had baited him to run off with his own woman’s sister. Maybe this was best, though it spited her what she hadn’t done. Either way, God Almighty knew, the hell gates were open and Genny must go through.

The sun was rising as she passed the MacWhirter place. It came up red as Shawanee vermilion. It slanted through the half-leafed deep woods like late afternoon. Down here on the dark ground, the tree butts and dead leaves were splotched with a strange coppery glow as if the deil’s candles were lighting the way.

It was a long piece out to Genny’s. Wyitt caught up to her crossing the footlog over Marsh Run. Oh, he let her keep the lead. He didn’t want to get
there first this time. But Sayward would hold back for nothing today. Her cheek bones stuck out like hickory gluts when she laid eyes at last on Louie Scurrah’s cabin. There it stood, choked with brush and black with rain and weather. You had to look sharp to see it wasn’t part of the dark woods. A windfall leaned against the roof and mighty near covered it. Almost the house could have been one of these monster logs laying around it. This was where their Genny had to live.

No smoke came from the chimney. Sayward didn’t like that. But where else could Genny be but here? She might have let her fire burn down to coals or stepped in the bushes. Her latch string hung out. No, she was to home. You could hear her talking in the cabin. Now who could Genny be talking to out here?

Sayward stood silent at the door till she made out the words.

Over and over the low voice went with the same words like one of the bound boy’s water wheels, racing now and then when a spurt of water came, running everything together, all the time going on and on without a letup. The short hairs on the back of Sayward’s head wanted to stand on end. You could tell now there was nobody in there listening to Genny. She was talking to herself. Wyitt stood with his fur-capped head forward, stiff as a poker. Sayward raised up and pulled the latch string. Then she went in.

The cabin was bare as a deaf nut. Stools, trencher, even the clapboard shelves Worth had made were gone. There were only a pile of fresh firewood in the chimney corner and on Genny’s bed a strange gaunt woman sitting with her bed quilts around her. Her hair was down and out of it two eyes stared at them without recognition.

Sayward’s face grew cruel as death when she saw her.

“Ginny!” she called out.

Something in that strong cry stirred life under the wasted skin. Genny fumbled to lay back the quilts and get up. The skirt of her rumpled shortgown was up to her middle showing no more than white bones for haunches before it fell, but Genny, who was always mighty careful about such things even in front of Sayward and Achsa, did not seem to know what she was doing.

“I didn’t hear nobody,” she apologized to these people who had pushed in her door. She came up, puttering for all the world like Jary, and peered at Sayward.

“She don’t know you,” Wyitt muttered.

She came up to Wyitt at that and peered at him as if half blind from living in a dark world.

“Oh, I know you,” she told him. Then she nodded toward Sayward. “I know her, too. She ain’t been out this way in a long while.”

He agreed mutely.

“Oh, I know the both of you,” Genny said triumphantly. “I kain’t mind your names. But I knowed the minute you come in I’d seed you before.”

She stood there bobbing and smirking. Wyitt’s face was screwed up cruelly. Sayward looked around the cabin to hide her feelings.

“Whar’s all your house goods?” she asked harshly.

A frightened look came in Genny’s face.

“It was up on my roof,” she said. “A tryin’ to come down my chimley.”

“Was it a painter?” Wyitt asked.

Genny’s hand shook.

“It was trees.” She watched them close from one to the other. “Oh, it wa’n’t day trees. It was night trees. When it gits dark you kin hear them come a hissin’ around like a coppersnake and a rappin’
on the door like a human. I went out once and told one to stop and it hit me in the face.”

Wyitt looked at Sayward.

“She means it was a blowin’.”

“Oh, no it wa’n’t a blowin’. Not that night. It was still as death. I could hear it a clawin’ my roof.”

“It was a painter,” Wyitt said.

Genny began to whimper though she hadn’t a tear in her eye. Those eyes didn’t look at you now. No, they looked on and beyond and you could see back through them like an open window to a fearsome country you had never laid eyes on before.

“Let her be,” Sayward said. “She kin tell it her own self.”

“It wa’n’t my man’s fault,” Genny said anxiously. “You know that don’t you? He’d a never gone off if he’d knowed.”

Sayward’s face hardened at that. Genny grew alarmed.

“You wouldn’t tell him what I done?”

“She don’t know what you done to tell,” Wyitt interposed.

“I didn’t do nothin’,” Genny whimpered. “I wouldn’t a burned my own stools and trencher!”

Sayward gave Wyitt a shove to keep him quiet. Genny would tell it her own way if you only let her go. Her bony hands had begun plaiting, unplaiting and tearing at her brown hair. A string of talk was coming from her mouth about her fresh
meat and the lady that held the horse while the soldier fought the battle.

“Would I now!” she begged Sayward. “No, never would I a done such a thing. Not if I didn’t have to. But the thing was a waitin’ up on my roof. It wanted down my chimley. Wa’n’t it pitiful I hadn’t left him fetch in my wood? That was my last log and I had a long ways to go till mornin’. Thar was Ginny all alone and her man too far off to hinder. Did you know I had to burn up my own chinkin’ board shelvin’? I had to stand thar and see the fire eat my own stool and trencher. Never could I burn up my man’s stool, for it wa’n’t mine to burn. I sat down and cried my fill and every tear would turn a mill. Slowly, slowly I rose up. My trencher fit me. It didn’t want to go to the fire. Kin you see them fine quilts on my bed? My sister give them to me after I was married. Wa’n’t it pitiful a havin’ to burn them! I had them at the fire, but the thing jumped down off the roof. I heerd it. I looked out a crack and seed it was daylight, and all the trees were a standin’ back in their places.”

Sayward heard it through with a granite face.

“Now we’re a goin’ home,” she said. “And you’re a goin’ with.”

Genny drew back.

“Oh, I kain’t leave my house. My man wouldn’t like that when he comes back.”

“He ain’t a comin’ back. He’s run off with our
Achsa,” Sayward said cruelly, for it had to be said some time and might as well be now.

“Oh, no he ain’t,” Genny told her craftily. “You kain’t fool me. Achsa never could run off with her twin gal babies.”

“Take what you kin,” Sayward said in a low voice to Wyitt. “I’ll take the rest and we’ll git her out o’ this.”

Wyitt took the pots and axe with his rifle. Sayward rolled up Genny’s scrimpy bunch of clothes. She took the quilts and clothes in one arm and Genny’s in the other. Then they went out in the dark hollow. When she looked back the lilac was like a little body looking after them. It stood there so pitiful at having to stay behind. Oh, any body could see this wasn’t a wild jit of the woods. No, it was a tame thing and needed the patter of sociable human feet around it to bloom and thrive.

“Go back and dig that lilock out with the axe,” she told Wyitt. “I’ll plant it for Ginny by our doorsill.”

All the way home the woods lay dark and dripping. The heavy butts of trees nearest the path moved furtively behind them as they tramped, but the furthest ones stood off watching them go. Oh, those wild trees stood stock still like they hated to see Genny get pulled out of their clutches. They thought they had had her fast like they had little Sulie.

Not that Genny was clear of them yet. It hadn’t a breath of wind today and yet they heard a tree off in the woods somewhere crack and fall till the ground thundered. More than once Genny would try to stop.

“What’s that’ar?” she would cry, pointing a gaunt finger. “Up in that tree. It’s a lookin’ at me. Kain’t you see it!”

Sayward had no time for such, but as she yanked Genny on she would take a look at what her sister saw, a branch or clump shaped up like a kind of beast, a wolf, a bear or even a tame house cat. Oh she knew it was only leaves, that you would see nothing if you stood on the other side. And yet as she stared at the thing it would turn realer and realer here in the dim, green forest light, and over her would come that fearsome feeling her father told about till her hair wanted to raise and her feet to run.

Never had it felt so good at last to see a cloud of white shining ahead through the dark trees. That white was sky you could tell long before you came out in the open fields of the MacWhirter improvement. The sky hung free and light overhead. The only thing of the woods left here were the black stumps in the tame wheat patch. The eye could look unhindered now. It could look across to where a log house, barn and shed stood gray and sociable together like a small settlement in
the sun. You could smell cows and manure. A guinea hen kept calling through its nose. A door banged and two young MacWhirters came out of the house yonder, quarreling and fighting with each other, a mighty pleasant sound to hear. After the long gloom of the woods, this, Sayward told herself, was as mortal bright and sweet a place as a body could wish for.

CHAPTER NINETEEN
IT CAME A TUESDAY