The afternoon passed. Rouser showed up from wherever he’d been, following my trail and finding me. Rouser and Galen argued for a while but decided it was too hot for a fracas. They lay together on the porch floor and went to sleep. To entertain myself, I had a few pretty good daydreams, with real people in them, Viridis and Nail, the woods, the trees, the moon and the stars, forever.
By and by Doc Swain returned, stopping his tired horse in the yard of his clinic and getting down. He came up and sat with me on the porch. “Latha,” he said, “I do believe you were absolutely right. It shore enough is the two-day ague, or alternate-day malaria, as you call it. But he’s gonna be all right. I gave him some quinine and some advice. He’s gonna be all right. Them two are gonna live happy ever after.”
On
The trees are singing. She notices it as soon as they reach the tall white ash beneath which Sull Jerram fell. She hears the ash itself, who starts the chorus. As she and the doctor ride between or beneath them, those last hundred yards, the trees one by one pick up the song until all of them, white ash, oak, hickory, maple, walnut, beech, chinquapin, elm, locust, and even cedar are harmonizing in their serenade of her.
The smaller dogwood, redbud, persimmon, and sassafras try to join in but are almost drowned out.
“Shore is purty way back up around in here,” Doc observes.
“Listen at that waterfall.”
“That’s not the waterfall, Colvin,” she tells him.
He stops his horse, dismounts, listens. A smile of pleasure comes to his face. “I do believe you’re right,” he says. “It’s something else. Angels, maybe.”
The late-afternoon light from the west breaks into long rays through the boughs of the high trees; the black hole of the mouth of the cavern is illuminated as if by spotlights. The singing swells. Doc’s halloo overrides it, cuts into it.
“HELLO THE CAVE!” he calls. “Nail! It’s us. It’s Colvin Swain and yore ladyfriend.”
The singing of the trees muffles whatever reply comes from within, a feeble acknowledgment or welcome.
She walks behind Doc, partly afraid. If the sight of him is truly awful and causes her to stumble, she can stumble against Doc’s back and he will turn and catch her.
But it is Doc who stumbles, on the scree or talus of the cavern’s lip. She is thoroughly familiar with every step of the way, but he is not, and falls. She helps him up. He is embarrassed. “Kinder pre-carious there,” he remarks. She waits to let him go on ahead of her.
It takes a long moment for their eyes to readjust from the spotlight beams of afternoon light to the cavern’s dim interior. While the two of them are blind, the trees, seeing her disappear, muffle their cantata to a murmur. She is aware of the quiet and the dark and the nearness of Nail. Then she sees him: he is making a great effort to get out of the bed. He has his feet outside the bed, on the ground, but the bed is not much higher than the ground itself, and he cannot rise up. Colvin Swain moves to him quickly and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Here there, boy, jist lay easy! Don’t ye try to git up.” The doctor forces him to lie back down but notices the dampness of the bedclothes and exclaims, “Woo, you shore wet the bed!”
“Sweat,” says Nail. It is his first word, but as he lies down he fixes his eyes upon hers and smiles. “Howdy, Miss Monday,” he says, with mock formality. “Glad ye could make it.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Chism,” she returns, with careful politeness. “I’m proud to be here.”
“Heck,” says Doc Swain. “I thought you two knew each other better’n that. Don’t ye even want to shake hands? I could turn my back, I reckon, if ye want to do more than that.”
“We can wait,” Nail says.
“Wal, let’s take yore temper-ture,” Doc says, and sticks a thermometer into Nail’s mouth. Then he begins his examination, palpating the spleen. After a while he removes the thermometer and studies it and says, “Hmm,” and begins asking Nail several questions. How many days now has he had this trouble? Has he had any diarrhea? Has he lost consciousness?
Viridis only half-listens to the conversation, the questioning. She is still trying to hear what the trees are singing, but it is soft and distant. She takes note of the careful array of supplies she’s left for him, all of them untouched. She opens the bag containing the spare bed linen and takes out fresh sheets, to replace the damp ones, and a fresh pillowcase.
“This is shore some layout ye got here,” Doc observes, to Nail. “You say you think you jist got here last night?”
Viridis explains, “I put all of this here, for him.” And she thinks to add, “With Latha’s help.”
“I see,” Doc says. “Been plannin a hideaway, huh?”
“He couldn’t very well go right straight to his folks’ house, could he?” she says.
“Reckon not,” the doctor admits. “The sherf would shore to haul him off to jail purty quick.”
“You won’t tell where we…you won’t tell anybody about this place, will you?” she asks.
“Wal now, that depends,” Doc says. “You’uns know that my dad is the justice of the peace, and I shore couldn’t tell my own dad a lie.” The doctor opens his gladstone bag, rummages around in it, brings out a pair of bottles. “These yere pills is for yore fever,” he says. “Take a couple of ’em whenever ye git to feelin too hot, but not more’n six or eight a day. Now, this here blue bottle is the quinine, and I want ye to take a spoonful…” (he turns to Viridis) “…is they a spoon here? okay, a spoonful ever four hours or so, till it’s all gone, and then you…” (he turns to Viridis) “…you come and git me and I’ll come and give him some more of it, if he needs it, and he probably will. Now, this quinine will probably make ye start hearin things, funny noises that aint real. It’s called tinnitus, and it aint as serious as it sounds, but I figured I’d better warn ye. You’d better jist rest and stay off yore feet and get good and well afore ye try to do anything.”
“Anything?” Nail says.
Doc Swain coughs. “Anything real strenuous. Anything that you’d have to git out of bed to do. You can do anything ye want as long as it’s in bed.” He coughs again.
“Right,” Nail says. “When can I go see my dad?”
“Not till I tell ye,” the doctor says. “I don’t want ye to go no further’n that white ash down the trail yonder till I give ye permission.”
All three of them glance at the white ash, whose pianissimo murmuring seems audible only to Viridis. She understands the significance of Doc Swain’s reference to it, and her eyes shift, as theirs do, from the white ash to the rifle lying atop the black bearskin.
“I aint never used that on a person,” Nail says of the rifle.
“Who said ye did?” Doc challenges.
“You’re makin hints,” Nail observes. “I jist want ye to know right here and now, I never kilt Sull.”
“How’d ye know he’s been kilt, if ye didn’t do it?” Doc says, almost cocky with the knowledge that he’d tripped him up and caught him.
“Latha tole me,” Nail says.
“Damn that gal!” Doc swears. “Why couldn’t she of waited and let me do it?”
“You couldn’t tell me as nice as she did,” Nail says.
“That’s a .22, aint it?” Doc demands.
“Yeah, but I aint never used it on a person. I swear.”
“How you gonna convince a jury of that?”
“I done already failed to convince one jury,” Nail says. “I hope I don’t never have to try to convince another one.”
“Boy,” Doc says sternly. “If this aint a mess. If this aint the beatenest kettle of fish ever I seed. Damned if I want to be a goldarned accessory, or even accused of one, but I am gonna take that rifle with me, and I am gonna keep it where nobody can find it, and if you’uns have to have you a firearm for keepin off the wolfs and bars at night, I’ll bring ye a different caliber next time I come up here.”
Surely, she thinks, the other two, the two men, can hear what she hears, the rising ch
orus of the trees. “Colvin Swain,” she says, “you are a very nice man.”
“Heck, shoot,” the doctor grumbles. “I got to git on back to work. I got to drop in on another patient, Nail’s dad, and give him the word. The word is gonna make him well, jist wait and see if it don’t. While I’m at it, do you want me to send yore brother Luther up here with anything you need? No, wait, I aint gonna tell nobody whar yo’re at, not yet anyhow. Not even yore folks. But they’ll be mighty proud to hear the news.” The doctor snaps shut his gladstone bag and lifts it. He stares at Viridis for a moment before finding the words he wants to say to her. “You take good keer of him, now, hear me? See to it he takes his medicine. Keep him off his feet.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
The doctor steps over and takes the rifle in his other hand. “You’uns be good now, hear?”
“Don’t be rushin off, Doc,” Nail says formally, in the code of backwoods politeness. “Stay more and spend the night with us.”
“I’d shore lak to, but I better be gittin on down home. You’uns come go home with me.”
“Better not, I reckon,” Nail says. “Stay and have supper with us.”
“Caint do it, this time,” Doc says.
Viridis listens in wonder as the two men invite and counter-invite each other until finally Nail says, “Wal, come back when ye kin stay longer,” and the doctor is allowed to leave.
She walks him to his horse and thanks him and repeats Nail’s invitation. Then she asks, “When you told us to be good, just how good did you have in mind?”
He grins, and blushes a bit. “I was jist tryin to be silly,” he says. “I didn’t mean nothin by thet.”
“So it wouldn’t hurt him if we…” she begins, but can’t quite find the words.
“Lak I said, don’t let him do nothin that caint be done in bed,” the doctor says. He climbs up on his horse and turns to go. His parting words are spoken down to her. “But I imagine there’s quite a heap of things a body can do in bed, besides sleep.” He starts to ride away. She waves. He stops the horse, reins it, holds it; he sits there listening, looking not at her but off at the forest. “Do you hear that?” he asks. He glances at her for confirmation, and she smiles and nods her head. “What d’ye reckon is makin that purty sound?”
“The trees,” she says. “They’re singing.”
“Is that what it is?” he asks. “Wal, how ’bout that? Don’t that beat all?”
“It surely does beat all,” she agrees, and the good doctor, shaking his head in wonder, rides away.
And as soon as she gets back to Nail’s bedside, she wants to know: “Don’t you hear them?”
“Yeah, but the doc tole me this medicine would cause that.”
“You haven’t taken the medicine yet,” she points out. “But you’re going to, right this minute.” And she fetches a spoon from the implements she hoarded for him and makes him take his quinine.
Some of it dribbles down his chin, and he raises his hand to wipe his mouth, but she stops his hand and licks up the dribble herself. It is very bitter; both of them make faces. She explains she did that to see what it tastes like.
He is looking all around, as if searching for something. She asks him what he’s looking for. “Bird,” he says.
“What bird?”
“The guard, Bird. I caint believe he’s not watchin us. I caint believe we’re all alone.”
She gives him a long kiss, a very long one, longer than any she’d ever done with Bird watching. He tastes of quinine, but she’s already tasted it, and it doesn’t bother her. When finally she breaks the kiss (realizing it would be up to her to start or break anything), she asks, “Would Bird have let us do that?”
“I reckon he must be off-duty,” Nail observes, grinning.
“There’s not even a table between us,” she remarks.
“Just these soppin bedcovers,” he observes.
She squeezes the fabric of the quilts and blankets, which are wet from his perspiration, although he has not been sweating for some time now. She whips the bedclothes off him. “There’s not much sun left in the afternoon,” she observes, “and I’d better hang these out to catch the last of it.” She starts to carry out the bedcovers but turns. “Are you cold?”
“Not right now,” he tells her.
She takes the wet blankets and quilts outside the cavern and drapes them in sunlight over the boughs of the cedars. She talks to the trees while she does it, and Rosabone thinks she’s talking to her and lifts her head to listen. She talks to Rosabone too. When she returns to the cavern, Nail asks her, “Who were you talkin to?” and she tells him the trees and her horse.
She kneels beside the bed and, with him still in it, begins changing the sheet: this technique she learned years ago when her mother was bedridden: you roll them to one side to remove the old sheet partway, roll them to the other side to get the rest of it, roll them back when the fresh sheet’s in place. But Nail is heavy; rolling him toward her, her hand slips and snags in the string around his neck, and she lifts it till her fingers hold the charm, the tiny golden tree. She’s nearly forgotten her little Christmas present to him, and hasn’t seen it since the day she bought it at Stifft’s Jewelers and took it home and wrapped it in a wad of tissue to enclose in her first letter to him. Thinking of that, she remembers that somewhere in Rosabone’s saddlebags is the bundle of all the letters she wrote him which they never let him have at the penitentiary, or which she has written in her idle hours in Stay More while waiting for him. More than a hundred pages, no, closer to two hundred: the story of her life, or all the parts of it she wants him to know, for now: her childhood in the big house on Arch Street, her brothers, her sister, her mother, and as much of her father as she can mention, for now. The story of her art lessons with Spotiswode Worthen. The story of her travels: an Arkansawyer in Chicago, in New York, in Paris, in London, in Arles, and then around the world with Marguerite Thompson Zorach. The story of her first visit to Stay More. The story of her visits to the governor. The story of the day she went to the ballpark to meet Irvin Bobo, and what happened that evening. All the stories. One of the letters contains a story of what was not actually allowed to happen but was only imagined: the night that the governor permitted her to spend in Nail’s cell. Another one of the letters, written in the future tense and the second person, contains the story of what will not yet have happened: the first night they will actually spend together. But she did not know, when she wrote it, that he would be ill with malaria, so that story is overly romantic, although the setting for it is actually this exact place and time, this cavern, this night, this July.
Should she let him read it? It would tickle him, amuse him, and any good humor would be sure to help him get well. But it was rather immodest and even frank in its details. Wouldn’t he be shocked? Wouldn’t he consider her brazen or indecent?
“Why do you keep on holdin it?” he asks, trying to see her hand wrapped around the golden tree beneath his chin.
“I’m thinking,” she says, and puts the tree charm back against his chest. Nestled there in the golden hair of his chest, the golden tree is like a mighty oak in a thicket of brambles. “I have a letter for you, if you’d like to read it.”
“You bet,” he says.
“But it’s nearly two hundred pages long.”
“What else have we got to do?”
She gives him a sidelong glance, and then she gives him a mock punch in the ribs. “You,” she says. And then she says, “We’ve got lots else to do. For one thing, we’ve got to eat. I’d better start supper. What would you like?”
“Chicken’n dumplins,” he announces.
“Sorry,” she says. “The eggs haven’t hatched yet. And besides, I don’t know how to make dumplings. But tomorrow I’ll go get your mother to teach me.”
Nail laughs: the first she’s heard him laugh in a long time. “You honestly would do that, wouldn’t ye?” he tells her, delighted.
No, not only have the eggs
not hatched, but there are no chickens to lay them. She wonders if they could keep a flock of fowl in this glen of the waterfall. Would the varmints of the woods get them? But she has seen no varmints. If there are wolves or bears hereabouts, they haven’t made themselves visible.
For their first meal together, she is obliged to put together a light supper of crackers, cheese, and a tin of sardines. But she discovers she has no appetite at all, not because the offering isn’t appetizing. And he discovers he hasn’t any appetite whatsoever, not because he’s ill.
Love has no stomach.
The supper uneaten, they keep close, she sitting cross-legged beside the pallet of his bed, he lying. After a while he suggests, “You could read it to me.”
“What?”
“The two-hundred-page letter.”
“Oh,” she says, and again: “Oh.” The light in the cavern is just enough to read by, but it won’t remain that way long. She’ll have to get up and light the kerosene lantern after a time. “Well.” She thinks awhile, then says, warningly, “I’ll blush terribly over parts of it.”
“I’ll like to see ye blush,” he says. “I bet it makes your pale skin look healthy.”
She laughs, but also warns, “I don’t think I could even stand to read parts of it. Parts of it I wrote thinking you’d not even be near me when you read them.”
“If you love me,” he tells her, “you could read it all.”
That’s true. She says, “That’s true, but parts of it are going to make me sound most unladylike.”
“Those will probably be my favorite parts,” he says. “Let’s have it.”
“Promise you’ll never laugh.”
“Aint there no funny parts?”
“Not deliberately funny,” she says.
“Well, I won’t laugh unless I hear ye laughin first.”
She could always, she realizes, skip some of the parts. She could always censor part of it, and he’d never know…until the time came that he might want to read it over to himself, and then if he found the parts she’d censored and wondered why, maybe he would understand. Nail Chism, she honestly believes, will always understand.
The Choiring Of The Trees Page 47
