The Trees

by Conrad Richter

  No, Sayward didn’t reckon this notion of Jake Tench’s such a sin and a shame. If he could talk the Solitary into coming out of the woods and taking a woman, the Solitary couldn’t be much worse and he might be a good ways better off.

  When Sayward came back in the cabin, Idy Tull was still carrying on. Oh, she had the chance for attention now and wouldn’t give up telling how she’d never take the Solitary. Sayward listened, drawing down the corners of her mouth. Idy might be stuck-up and bighead, but she was an old maid. She wouldn’t let any man slip through her fingers at this date, let alone a Bay State lawyer. No, she’d jump out of her shortgown for a man who could read and write like herself. And the Solitary would have nothing to say once Jake Tench and his pack had him in tow and skinful of grog.

  Now Sayward reckoned she had heard Idy enough. She moved up where the men hemmed in that pretty white and red staved cedar keg.

  “You kin fetch him to my cabin, Jake,” she said strong and knowing her own mind. “I’ll marry with him if he’s a willin’.”

  Oh, Sayward needed no one to talk for her. She could fend for herself. Genny and Mrs. Covenhoven hurried after as she went firm and stout-willed out the front door. Mrs. Covenhoven looked sober when they caught up outside a ways and Genny had a scared look on her face.

  “Now don’t you fret, Ginny,” Sayward calmed her as she stooped to take off her shoepacks and make herself comfortable in her strong, bare feet on the path home. “I ain’t afeard a this. I had my mind on him this long time.”

  “I only hope, Saird,” Genny murmured, “the full moon ain’t got you.”

  Sayward turned her face to the east as she stooped. Here in the open hill patches Linus Greer had cleared, she could see a blob of yellow moon rising from the woods, and it was round and full. That gave her pause, for the moon can bend humans to strange ways. You could always tell on Jake when the moon was full or near it, for then he’d act the fool the worst, bellowing crazy jokes to folks half a mile off through the woods.

  Could the moon have worked on her tonight? In her mind drifted something the bound boy said once of the time he heard a voice in the woods near the Fallen Timbers. He was picking blackberries and crept through the bush till he saw the Solitary sitting alone at the open door of his hut. He had a book in his hand and was reading it out loud in that lonesome place. The words at the end of every line made rhyme, but the bound boy couldn’t make out a lick of it. When he got back to the post, George Roebuck told him that Portius Wheeler had books in Latin and Greek that nobody but himself could read, and it must be the bound boy had been listening to one of those.

  Sayward straightened up with her shoepacks in her hand. She wouldn’t take it to heart if the moon worked on her or not. She had set her triggers for Portius Wheeler and freely would she be his wife, for no man with such fine booklearning should bury himself out in the bush.

  Jake must have talked to Squire Chew, for the squire came in good time though you could see he didn’t think much of it.

  “You certain you want to go on with this, Saird?” he asked her.

  Oh, she might be sinful and out of her head, Sayward told herself, but she would go on with it. And when she saw the bridegroom that Jake and his cronies fetched to the door, she felt she had done right, for it made her mad some wilful body hadn’t the sense to do this long ago. His ruffled linen shirt was pied with doeskin patches. His home-seamed buckskin britches had got wet and stretched some time or other till he had cut the legs down to suit. Then they had shrank and dried hard as iron, and now they clapped like clapboards when he moved. Oh, you would never have told this bushnipple for a master hand to read out of a Latin book or climb a stump and give speeches to a crowd or jury.

  There he stood shaggy as a bear that for a short while would mind most anything Jake Tench told him. His high forehead was held gentle and tender to one side, but his eyes could still flash young and gray-green out of his briery beard.

  “Don’t crowd him so close!” Sayward told them angrily. “He ain’t a greased hog. He kin come in without you a helpin’.”

  They fetched him in near the chimney corner and had him stand where the bridegroom ought to be. Squire Chew gave a kind of hard-put look around, then fixed himself so the firelight fell on his pages, for Sayward had no candles. Jake kept close. You might have reckoned he was the one getting married. Portius stood there taking no more notice of her than that York State bride and bridegroom took of each other, the ones Mrs. Covenhoven told about, who as soon as they were man and wife walked one out of one door and the other out of the other, and never did they see each other again except mayhap on the far side of the earth where they were still trying to get farther off from the other.

  From where she stood, Sayward couldn’t see the wedding company, for they were behind her. All she could lay eyes on were Genny and Mrs. Covenhoven tending the meat at the fire so it wouldn’t burn on them. But she could feel that a good many waited uneasy for the time when the Solitary would have to speak out. Hardly a word had he said since they got him here. Would he make his vows when the time came or would he get balky as an ox and shame her? Or might the grog thicken his tongue and cause him to say some untoward thing that folks would always laugh and say behind her back?

  Well, she told herself, they would mighty soon find out, for the Solitary’s speaking-out place wasn’t far off now. Squire Chew was lifting his book higher to the firelight.

  “Portius Wheeler,” he read, “do you take this woman, Saird Luckett, as your lawful married wife? Will you live with her in holy wedlock, protect and guide her, forsaking all others so long as you may live?” He looked over the temple spectacles he got with the book. “The answer is, ‘I do, so help me God.’ ”

  You could tell the squire hadn’t done this but once before. He hemmed and hawed as he said it and mixed up some hims for hers. But never for a lick did Sayward wish it could have been different. The minute he stumbled and got a word wrong, she saw Portius cock his head as if something had caught in the back of his Bay State lawyer mind. From then on he listened close and when the squire got done, the bridegroom looked around in the master way he had that day on the log and his voice came out deep and schooled as a lawyer at the bar.

  “I, Portius Wheeler,” he said, and everybody turned so quiet that between words you could hear the death ticks in the logs, “a citizen of this territory, do take Miss Luckett as my lawfully married wife, vowing to protect and assuage her, to guide and direct her, and, living with her in the state of holy wedlock, to forsake all others so long as the twain of us may live or take our breath, so help me God.” No, he hadn’t taken the easy way of the book. All the squire’s words he had kept in his head and added more to them, making it still more solemn and majestic than the book, and all rolling out sure and easy as breathing till he came to the end.

  It was still the grog greasing him, Sayward knew, for this was the way he had held them spellbound for a while that Independence Day. And yet a feeling ran up her spine and over her limbs that she couldn’t recollect before. It seemed she stood high above the trees where she could look out over a vasty sea of leaves. She heard the squire ask would she cleave to Portius, serve and obey him, comfort and help him through sickness and trouble till death did them part? And away down in the cabin she heard her voice firm and knowing her own mind say she would, so help her God.

  The squire closed his book and said that by the power given him by the governor of Northwest Territory, Portius Wheeler and Sayward Luckett were now man and wife. Sayward saw Wyitt looking at her like she was somebody he had never had a good look at before. Through her cruelly triumphant mind ran that whoever that Bay State woman was and whatever she was like with her store scents, her fine rings and her whalebone stays, it was too late for her to sharpen a quill and write Portius Wheeler his letter now.

  Before the wedding supper was ready right, the younger women came to whisper in Sayward’s ear and drag her up the ladder. Everybody looked on, laughing and
calling after. Genny fetched Sayward’s bedgown from its peg behind the door. Up in the loft they offed with her shortgown, pinching at her bare skin and making screeches and giggles at what they saw in the half-light. Then they pulled on the bedgown and put her in Achsa’s, Wyitt’s and Sulie’s old bed which she had laid over with two clean-washed yarn blankets. In most of this Genny took the lead. When the others went laughing and whispering down, it was Genny who stayed up a bit to give her some married woman’s talk. Oh, you would reckon Genny was the older sister and Sayward the baby of the family being married off the way Genny busied herself about and the knowing airs she gave herself.

  Warm air lifted through the loft hole again after they all were down. But the loft shutter was open and a skift of cool air flowed across the bed. The roof shelved close and comfortable over Sayward’s head. It was a mighty peaceful place up here beside all the gabbing and taking on down in the cabin.

  You could tell they were pulling Portius for the ladder now. Everybody called out good will words to him. The men said plenty to make the women blush. The women called he might as well get used to climbing that ladder, for many’s the time he would have to, but Sayward told herself that she and him would make their bed down in the cabin after tonight. The only ones that would sleep up here would be their young ones, if God Almighty was good to her and him and sent them a loftful.

  They were pushing Portius up first. She pulled the blanket up over her breasts. It was just as good, she told herself, they hadn’t candles like the Tulls and Covenhovens. The firelight from the loft hole would make it plain enough for those men’s sharp eyes to see by. She would close hers all but the lashes so as not to shame her man while they pulled his clothes off, all save his buckskin patched linen shirt. That would be his bed shirt.

  Now the rungs of the old ladder were creaking. And now Portius stood with his head and shoulders up in the loft. And now the gray-green eyes in that tangled brier of beard were staring at her cold sober, as whose eyes wouldn’t be to find his woman lying softly waiting for him in their bridal bed.

  So far he had come easy enough. Further, no man could fetch him. One minute he was here and the next he was gone. She could hear the women and young ones pile out after him under her loft shutter and Jake Tench curse like a grenadier while the men beat the dark bushes.

  Now who would have looked for a thing like this when all had been going so good! Sayward lay still as could be, studying up at the roof. Well, that’s what she got for reckoning she could get a Bay State lawyer man who never courted her. It would have to be faced now and put up with.

  When the women came back in the cabin, they found Sayward down and dressed, taking the meat off the fire.

  “No use me a sayin’ anything,” she passed it off, hands and feet moving fast with her chore. “Every time the sheep baas, it loses a mouthful. Lucky he didn’t run off with our supper.

  Jake Tench came in, the devil raging out of his black beard.

  “I’ll learn that tarnal dolt he’s a married man now!” he swore.

  “You don’t need to call him no names,” Sayward said shortly. “He didn’t call none at you.”

  The others tried to put a better face on it for her sake.

  “You know how men are, Saird,” Mary Harbison told her. “They never know where they’ll roost from one night to the other.”

  “Don’t you mind, Saird,” Mrs. McFall said kindly. “I heerd a rhyme once. No goose so gray and none so late that at last she gits an honest gander for a mate.”

  Genny looked sick. Wyitt sneaked off shamed to his half-faced cabin. But Sayward laughed and talked that wedding supper like nothing had gone wrong. Never had they heard her raise such a sight of fun and chatter.

  Had the bridegroom not run off, the wedding frolic would have run till morning. The company would have danced and made high jack all night and gone home by daylight. Now already some said they hated to run off so soon but they had to. Others waited around while Jake and his cronies wiped the supper grease from their lips and went out with torches to the Solitary’s hut to see if he had come home. When they did not come back, the rest took light and reckoned they had to go, too. Genny told Sayward she’d stay with her this night, but Sayward said aside to Mrs. Covenhoven it would be easier on her mind and Genny’s, too, if Genny were off in her bed at the Covenhovens’ away from all this.

  When the last party took off, Sayward stood at the door and watched them down the path till all you could see were their lights floating through the woods like corpse candles over some boggy place fetching bad luck to them that saw it. Truth to tell, they hardly needed a light tonight for the full moon almost let you see the path.

  Could that full moon, Sayward pondered, be why they had all acted tonight like they were touched in the head? You hadn’t dare wash and warp wool in a waning moon or it would shrink, like it would stretch if the moon were waxing. You hadn’t dare lay roof boards when the moon was tipped up at one end or it would turn up those solid oak clapboards easy as the toe of a boot. But a moon blown up full of air as a bladder raised the most mischief of all for it made you lightheaded as itself. You couldn’t see it here by the cabin. Yet you knew that somewhere up yonder above the trees it must be and all the heavy-raftered, leaf-thatched roof of the woods couldn’t keep it out. No, if it hadn’t places for it to shine down whole, it would come down in fine pieces and drift like spook smoke under the dark trees. It turned all night things false as a gypsy. Plain leaves looked like they were fine calico quilt patches and many-pointed stars.

  Quietly she turned back indoors and redd up the cabin. Her splint broom scraped and hackled the bones, gristle, bed leaves and black boot dirt off the hard clay floor. The hearth she swept clean with a turkey wing. Her old buckskin rag wiped dust off logs and chinking. The clean-washed blankets she lugged down from the marriage bed and spread them over the everyday place she slept. Last she fetched out a choice slice of roast venison she had saved back for her man if he came home, and set a place at the trencher.

  The moon was down somewhere in the black forest when she heard them come. Yes, the moon was down now and so were their didoes. When she went to the door, there was Portius limping between them. Oh, anybody could tell he was sober now. His green-gray eyes blazed out of his briery beard. His face and hands were raw from thorns and his shirt ripped till a woman would be hard put to mend it. A couple hounds slunk in the shadows behind them. So they had gone and tried to track him with Billy Harbison’s dogs, like he was a bear that had robbed some body’s hog pen!

  Jake gave him a shove in the cabin.

  “Leave him alone!” Sayward flared at him. “Don’t you reckon you dogged him enough tonight?”

  Jake stared at her in surprise, then at his cronies. His look said, “That’s what we git for all we done for her!”

  “You kin be glad we didn’t shoot and skin him,” he said.

  Sayward’s eyes told him he better not say any more right now.

  “Keep tab on him, Saird,” Billy Harbison spoke out. “First time you turn your back, he’ll off from you like a gadd.”

  “Then he kin light off right now!” Sayward said. “I ain’t a holdin’ him.”

  She swung the door wide and stood there in her bare legs and feet, a strong figure dependent on no one or nothing. Out that door was the forest, cold, black and still. Around him inside, Portius Wheeler could see the firelight dancing cheerfully over the rubbed logs and scrubbed trencher set for one body to eat. A stool had been pulled up to it. On the poplar chip was a plump piece of brown-roasted meat. Beside it lay a cabin knife to eat it with, and a noggin stood for tea. The mint flavor of the steeped dittany filled the room.

  She waited, but the only move Portius Wheeler made was to shiver, for he was soaked to the skin from runs and wet places.

  When Jake and his cronies had gone, Sayward closed the door. She did not trouble to lay the stout hickory bar across.

  “Set up to the trencher — if you’re a hungry, Port
ius,” she told him, filling his noggin with tea.

  Oh, she didn’t sit up with him or lean behind his stool asking him how it tasted or could she get him anything more he wanted. No, she let him eat and went about mixing a sponge of sour dough to rise till morning. Should he take a notion to jump up from the trencher and run, he could go. She wouldn’t hold him. It might be she stole a look at him once in a while, for it did her good to see how hearty he ate her rations. But never did she let him know. When he was done, he waited for her to pester him and when she kept about her business, he threw her a sharp look under his heavy young eyebrows. And when she paid him no more attention than before, he came over and warmed himself at the fire.

  His teeth still chattered, and she walked over to a peg and took down her father’s old linsey hunting frock that had hung there since he went off looking for Sulie and never came home.

  “I expect you better put this on till you dry your shirt and britches,” she told him.

  She turned her back on him now and went on mixing her dough. Oh, she could tell he didn’t know for a good while whether he would do this thing or no. But when she set the dough by the fire to rise, his patched shirt and wet buckskin britches were laying on a stool and he was standing there with Worth’s hunting frock down over him till it nigh onto touched his knees.

  She gave those knees and the shanks below a sharp look.

  “When was it you washed all over last?” she put to him, and before he could answer. “Is that how they learned you back in the Bay State?”

  She fetched the wash trough Worth had hollowed out of a poplar log up to the fire and dipped hot water from the big kettle, using the gourd with the long handle. Then she laid out a sop rag and a gourd of soft soap.

  “Don’t you reckon you better wash that dirt off before you git in your bed?” she said shortly.