The Night of Trees

by Thomas Williams

  But now, after dinner, he watched Opal, and suddenly he had to sneeze, and did. He wondered if this happened to everyone when in the imagination he saw himself doing this or that. He wondered if Shim knew why he had sneezed, but discounted this: one sneezed for many reasons. Opal walked to the sink, and Richard in his mind slid between her legs. You ass! he thought, is your mind between your legs? But the self-accusing voice seemed to come from a long way away. She seemed naked to him, and he could have licked her buttocks, and put his tongue on her smooth dark flesh anywhere. For Christ’s sake!—and on a full stomach, too. This last thought he tried as an antidote, and had to smile: he was sure that if he could have seen the smile in a mirror it would have looked goatish. Murray noticed the smile—whatever it looked like—and just barely lifted an eyebrow. Shim was talking, and since the shooting of the clay pigeons that morning Richard had found himself and Murray exchanging little warnings and smiles. He wondered if Shim noticed this.

  They had eaten well: this time Opal had split the thick breasts of the partridge, braised them, and then put them into a very hot oven for a few minutes. The meat, golden on the outside, as white as paper on the inside, hadn’t lost its moisture. Now, on each plate, there were only the delicate little halves of skeletons, such graceful little structures it didn’t seem possible they could have supported so much flesh. With the birds they had had the usual country food—from boiled potatoes to bread-and-butter pickles, the flavors most bland and subtle: home-canned beet greens against homecanned dandelion greens, for one, and the difference he could hardly remember now—perhaps one of slight degrees of bitterness, perhaps one of color, the different shades of ancient green suggesting past summers, moist heat in the rich earth, one the tight skin of a lawn, the other the lush tumescence of a garden. There were sweet cider with just a mild hint of acetic acid in it; yellow cheese which crumbled and was yet somehow buttery; green olives, celery, macaroni and cheese, salt and pepper.

  Now he tried not to think of Opal’s private places and imagined lovely moans. He had better not. He had other things he had to do, and the first was to join in the ceremony of preparation for the hunt. As Opal cleared away the dishes, Shim began to show his equipment. The first item was a Randall knife for which he had paid twenty-five dollars.

  “Ain’t it wicked?” he asked, drawing the bright blade from its tanned dark sheath. It was wicked, and light in the blade, Richard found when he was allowed to hold it; the blade made itself to feel light, and dangerous, even though the balance was precisely at the base of the hilt. The blade curved perversely, like a kukri.

  “Course I carry Zach’s folding knife, too.” This Shim pulled out of his pocket, and opened. The stag handle was worn to the white by hands, and the short, straight blade had been sharpened narrow.

  “Hup! Gutted. Huch! Many a deer!” Zach said proudly. “Huch! I let him. Hoach! Use it now!”

  “You was a hunter,” Shim said, and his father, out of embarrassment and pride, smiled fiercely.

  Richard wondered if Zach had ever had doubts about his son—had ever wanted more assurance than such compliments gave him. Perhaps it was too late in Zach’s life to ask him. He looked over at Murray, and couldn’t tell if Murray had compared fathers and sons. Murray looked down at the stag-handled knife, which he now held, and his face was serious and calm; he didn’t seem to be thinking about the knife.

  And then Richard thought, Aren’t we all good people here? Don’t we all do what we do very well? Why should I doubt my son? He looked at Murray, at the steady, strong boy Murray was. What right had he to bitch about too little information? The boy had always done better than they had expected of him, always pleased and surprised his parents (a doubt here; he no longer presumed to think for Rachel). His son was a grown man—he watched the strong, square hands as they caressed the knife—and as another grown man Richard wondered if he had the right to ask prying questions.

  But he remembered too much. Not too much, maybe, but he must, as any father must, be burdened with all the scenes of all those twenty years of his twenty-year-old son. One came to him now: when the little creature came home from the hospital—that same afternoon—he held the warm, delicate little body against his chest and was surprised at the tenderness he felt, surprised at his reaction to such soft helplessness. Why so sensual, so immediate? He knew, for instance, that there was a direct nerve reaction between a woman’s teat and her womb when a baby suckled, but he had been unprepared to find himself, a man, getting an erection. He hadn’t thought of the analogy, just then, and wondered about himself. Wondered, but did not really worry. He had always been in full control of odd symptoms. He knew he was a man—knew in the rather scientific sense that proceeds from symptoms, yes, but does not leap to generalizations.

  Shim spoke to Murray, who still held Zach’s worn old knife, and now weighed it in one hand, the Randall knife in the other.

  “Which one you like best, Murray?” Shim asked in his meaningful voice; whenever Shim spoke there seemed to be some ironic implication. Murray looked up and smiled, and his generous face seemed modest.

  “One is beautiful and new,” he said, “and the other is handsome and old.” He smiled at his parallelism.

  Shim reared back in his chair and roared. “Murray, you say the God-damnedest things!” He laughed and laughed, then rubbed his chin with his fist, an imitation of a blow, and they could hear the scrape of whiskers. “Like Zach,” he said. As though he were sitting for his picture, the old man didn’t move, but he heard. “That old bone-handle jackknife, now. It ain’t too pretty, but it’s so goddam straight and plain, why, it is sort of handsome,” Shim said.

  “Hoach! Stuck! Huch! Many a deer!” Zach said.

  “Zach, he lost this knife once,” Shim said. As Zach grinned, the little diced squares of skin below his ears crowded together. Richard had heard this story years before, from Zach himself.

  “He did!” Shim said. He got up from his chair and stepped back, the knife open in his hand. “Didn’t you, Pa?” Zach quickly nodded, his washed eyes alert, the thin cartilage of his nose shining like pearl.

  “Huch!” he said, and then decided not to speak. Nodding instead, he let the air out in a plain belch.

  “Happened like this,” Shim said. He stood back from the table and crouched a little, being a hunter in the woods. “Zach had his old forty-five seventy. Wait a minute!” and he went into the living room, then came back, blowing dust from a long, brown leveraction Winchester. “This here’s what he had. Well! This was Christ-all years ago, you know, but anyways Zach was going along nice and easy, keeping his eyes open as usual. First day of the season, about two foot of fresh snow—no crust. Quiet. Just sluffing along easy, see?” Shim sluffed along a few steps. Then he stopped moving altogether, and his yellow eyes were stern and watchful. “There he was,” Shim said, still not moving at all, staring fiercely at the door. “There he was, a nice fat buck, six points.” He began to whisper. “Not more than two rod off. Buck didn’t see Zach at all. Upwind, nice soft snow, just behind some little bitty hardwood saplings. Just make him out. Ayuh! Six points.” Shim brought the rifle up slowly, and cocked it. The two clicks were very loud. “Buck heard him cock his piece!” Shim yelled, startling everybody. “Buck jumped straight up in the air five feet! Zach, he aimed and pulled the trigger!” Shim pulled the trigger: click. “Click! Goddam firing pin frozen! Son of a bitch! Click again! Buck jumps straight up in the air and comes down ass-end-to! Click! Zach, he figures maybe it’s a dud cartridge, so he jacks in a new one!” toward the door. “Buck’s up in the air again! Zach, he takes a bead on him and when he comes down, bang! Buck drops out of sight!”

  Zach was a big man, and in that year—1926—he was six feet tall and weighed 190 pounds. This Richard remembered from Zach’s account of that day. He had heard the story from others, too; it was famous in Leah. What had happened was this: the buck, when Zach came up to it, was down, and looked to be dead. Zach put down his rifle and was about to st
ick the buck in the sticking place just above the brisket, when the buck came to life. It merely had a broken hind leg and had been in what was, most likely, shock. Zach grabbed the antlers and decided he wasn’t going to let the buck go. Even with one broken leg the buck could have run right out of the country. When telling about it, Zach had said, “He soon took that knife away from me.”

  Zach and the buck, who weighed as much as Zach, wrestled all morning. The buck would soon have finished Zach except that when he went to rear up in order to stab with his front hoofs, Zach could wrestle him over against his bad leg, and down they’d both go. This way they progressed, a yard or so at a time. Somewhere along the way Zach’s jacket and shirt were torn right off him, but he wouldn’t let go. When they came to a brook Zach tried to drown the buck, but he couldn’t hold the head under water long enough. He tried to wedge the buck in the notch of a tree, but got caught himself and nearly snapped an ankle. He tried to break the buck’s neck, but couldn’t twist hard enough. All morning the two of them thrashed through the woods, face to face, snorting and glaring at each other. The buck bit his own tongue, and his blood and Zach’s blood got all over both of them. Zach wouldn’t let go, though, and finally they came to the plowed road. Then somebody came along in a T-model Ford, as Zach told it, and stunned the buck with a tire iron—stunned him long enough so Zach could let go and they could stick the big neck vein with a pocket knife.

  Zach was in bed for a couple of days after that, healing up and watching his bruises turn green and yellow. But he was in good shape in those days, and that same season he got another deer (a doe), and an elk out of a herd that passed across the mountain. These two were illegal, of course; that was a good year for venison. He found his rifle easily enough, and next spring, when the snow went out, he went back and cast around all morning until he found his knife.

  While Shim acted all this out, using a chair for the buck, Richard could not help glancing at Murray. He knew that Shim would notice any lack of attention, and that Murray would notice it too, but as he watched Murray’s face he suddenly remembered that his son had come to the mountain unwillingly, and the amusement on his face as he watched Shim’s performance might not be real. Where did Murray want to be? What did he want to be doing?

  “Why’d Zach hold on like that?” Shim said. “ ’Cause there’s one hell of a difference between a deer track and a deer. That’s what a lot of city people can’t git through their heads—that you don’t just go out and aim and shoot.” It was apparent that in this case Shim didn’t consider Richard and Murray city people. “If I got in the same position Zach did, by God, wouldn’t I be all over that buck?”

  Zach sucked air: “Huch! Didn’t git. Hough! My deer. Huch! Every damn. Hoach! Year.”

  “Legal, that is,” Shim said, and this pleased Zach very much. He smiled and rocked back and forth from the waist.

  “Huch! Not even. Huch! Then. Hough! Sometimes!”

  Zach had taken many deer from the mountain, most of them during the legal season and in daylight, but many by torch and flashlight. There had been hard times, and venison had come in handy on the rocky hill farm. His washed-out old eyes were now set deeply in his freckled lids, and he looked up into a corner as if he were thinking upon the days of his vigor. There seemed no regret in him that those days had passed, and Richard wondered if the old did pine with any strength of emotion for days that were past and gone.

  Now they were all silent for a moment; except for the chink of dishes as Opal washed them, and the metallic tick of the hot-water tank, there was no sound, and it seemed to Richard that they all thought of the deer who moved on the side of the mountain—so far away, yet so possible, it always seemed on the night before deer season began, to find and have.

  Finally Shim jumped up from his chair—the one that had a moment before been a buck deer—and went to get his rifle. Murray got his, too, and they carefully put both down upon the table.

  “Don’t those krauts make guns!” Shim said. “Ugly as sin!”

  Murray looked at him with interest. “The way a gun ought to be,” he said.

  “Right! You take a Luger pistol, for instance. It looks more like a pistol. So ugly it’s pretty. You know what I mean?”

  And so they inspected the guns and the gear—Richard’s included—and had another drink. Shim marveled at each weapon, worked the bolts many times, and finally sat back with his own Arisaka in his arms, his hand playing smoothly with the silky mechanism of its breech. Outside, it rained softly; it was too warm for snow, but Shim said, “Oh, I like it wet and quiet. Quiet, that’s how I like it. I seen more deer on rainy days than any other kind. Git the weather report,” he said to Opal. She slid down from the high stool she had been sitting on and turned on the small kitchen radio. In a moment out came music and the incredibly sleazy, whorish voice of a Negro woman singing a love song: “Oh, baby, baby! Oh, baby, baby! Oh, baby, baby! Oh, baby, baby! Oh, baby, baby, doan I love you! Oh…”

  “Agh!” Shim shouted, pretending to retch. “We got five minutes till news time. Turn it off before I puke!”

  Opal, with an indifferent shrug, switched it off.

  “ ’Oh, baby, baby, baby, baby!’“ Shim imitated the voice. “Night before deer season! ’Oh, baby, baby!’ It ain’t right!“

  PART TWO

  The skin and shell of things,

  Though fair,

  Are not

  Thy wish nor prayer,

  But got

  By mere despair

  Of wings.

  —HENRY VAUGHAN

  14

  RICHARD KNEW he had been asleep, or was still asleep: he opened his eyes (or seemed to) and there was the room, all bright but somehow just out of focus, and Murray was standing at the foot of his bed staring fiercely down at him. Not moving, just staring at him, and Murray’s face was stern and sad, it seemed, too. The horrible thing about it all was that he knew immediately from Murray’s expression that no response on his part was expected—as though he were either unconscious or dead. Richard became terribly afraid, and sat up to find the room dark except for a faint, hazy glow that was the window. The fear remained, and as he reached for the lamp beside his bed he dented the paper shade with his fingers and nearly knocked it over. He was still afraid that Murray would be there at the foot of his bed, but the yellow light came on, finally, in his fingers, and no one was there. He had dreamed that he was standing again in the field and Murray was zeroing in his rifle; but he had known that was merely a dream, because it was obviously a duplicate experience. He knew that he had been there before. The shot: ack-thuh, and the feeling that he had heard the shot before it had happened, and Murray walking up to the target—of course he had been there before. And then to wake from what he knew to be a dream into what was, presumably, reality, and to find that he hadn’t quite made it back….

  It had been Murray’s face, clear and straight, but with an expression upon it he had never seen there before—the expression of a man looking at death. He shuddered, and shuddered again, then reached down and squeezed his thighs as hard as he could. Their vibrations came back up through his arms: it was like holding onto a spinning drier with an unbalanced load—the energy of the tremors didn’t seem to come from him at all. “OK, OK,” he said in a soft, secretive voice. “Come off it right now.” He got out of bed, shakily, and went to the window. It was three o’clock, by his wrist watch, and though the night outside was not pitch black, it still misted. The moon was up, above thin but damp clouds, and he could almost make it out. The trees were wet and still, and on the branches near his window tiny highlights winked.

  He went back and lay down on the bed, and had a sudden urge for a cigarette. He didn’t have any, so that settled that; he wasn’t about to start smoking again anyway. The initial fear he had taken with him from the dream was fading away, now, and he found it possible to remember Murray’s expression without having the face itself appear in front of him. What an expression! He had seen it on the faces
of many men, and no doubt had worn it himself. Strange that one always disapproved of the dead—or maybe it was of the death they so obviously, so drably wore. He suddenly wondered how many men he had killed in the war. Impossible to tell. Impossible. One rarely aimed at a man in that war, but at the earth where men hid—it was more like spraying insects. But he had killed men—aimed straight at them and fired, and his bullets went right through them and broke their veins and crushed their lights out, so that they no longer had the strength to stand so delicately balanced upon their two legs, and had to fall down forever.

  Someone could have looked sternly down upon Richard Grimald, too. It could have happened easily, any time. And of course it would happen. Only temporarily did one manage to forget that. And then he thought of Rachel, because he could not bear to think of his own death without Rachel. Who would mourn? Not mourn, so much as, perhaps, suffer it. Yes, suffer it, and therefore keep that death, in a way, alive. The one who died did not die, but was dead, and felt nothing, and was nothing. What stupidity! he had to think. What a mess of stupid, disorganized guff that was! He was afraid, lonely in the face of his death, and he wanted his wife back, here, now, long and warm beside him. He wanted to smell her, to feel her weight upon the springs, to breathe her breath.

  “My wife,” he murmured. She should be right here, and she was not, and, therefore, something was wrong—as simple as that. And all at once it seemed terribly simple; the one word wrong solved it all. That word would stand up in court! Wrong. Simply that, and everyone would have to understand immediately. The judge’s gavel would fall, the jury would nod, the clerk would stenotype (the bailiff would bail?), the psychiatrists would relate (whatever that meant), and the whole silly mess would be over with.

  “Rachel,” he said softly; his hands gently curved themselves, and his fingertips slid along the cold sheet. For a moment he felt like crying, but the image of himself crying—the big man with the black mustache crying?—superimposed itself upon his eyes. “God damn it!” he whispered.