The Sound of the Trees

by Robert Payne Gatewood

  Back upon the thoroughfare he stopped the horse. He quartered her around and around but neither saw nor heard anything more, the slick black of the paved road stretching out forever and empty and taking her with it.

  * * *

  When he reached the old man’s cabin the boy saw his crooked form below one of the window frames. He was sitting on a tilted tree stump. A candled lantern sat beside him. In his soft mouth he worked a piece of briar root. The old man stood and squinted as the boy came on. You’re back, he called.

  He spat black onto the ground and put his hands on the small of his back.

  Hungry?

  No.

  You wantin to sleep then?

  Yes sir. I do.

  Still want to stay out here?

  Yes sir. For a while at least. I’d like to.

  Mmm. What cause you got to be in town in the first place?

  The boy looked off toward where the stream was running crisply down the slope. I got some things to take care of there, he said.

  Well I ain’t got no Lincoln bed for ya, but you can sleep on the floor if it suits you.

  The boy made no response but gazed down at the dark water skirting along the bank. I wouldn’t mind sleepin out here, he said. By the water.

  The point of havin the cabin is most of all to sleep in.

  It ain’t too cold out tonight. The boy looked at his feet. Besides, he said, I reckon Zeus will watch over me.

  The old man picked the weed from his mouth, then thrust it in the direction of the water. Go on then, he said. Just know that I rise with the sun and anyone wantin to stay around here best do the same. I don’t want no driftage in my valley.

  No sir.

  Alright then, the old man said, patting his trouser pockets absently and turning toward the door. See you in the mornin.

  The boy shucked the bedroll from his saddlebag as the man bent and hoisted up the lantern and disappeared inside the cabin. He walked down to the river and found level ground, laying out the bedroll with the new cotton sheet. He could hear tin pans ringing from within the cabin. He heard the old man’s feet shuffling on the warped floorboards, the sound of them almost mimicking the water pass and the wind that moved it. The boy laid himself down.

  For a long time he stared up at the sky. Later in the night he rolled over to face the bank so the cool breeze from the river blew on his face. He shifted once more, a thought of the girl, then fell off into a troubled sleep with the moon receding into the clouds and the face of the sky blackening still.

  III

  NINE

  A LOST AND forgotten grove and her hair its black fruits. Standing at dawn in the rocky shoal of the stream, this new vision or delusion or idle journey of the mind had come to him for several mornings running. He kicked at the stones beneath his feet and breathed heavily in the thick air, all about him the smell of wood smoke and untold rains.

  Inside the old man was hunched over the clawfoot tub as the boy had found him every such morning. He turned and glanced at the boy coming in and turned silently back to the tub. The boy stood by the table and drew the fresh pouch of tobacco John Frank had given him from his breast pocket. The old man rose and scuttled over to the worn shelving above the stove. He took down a cup and went back to the tub and filled it. Then he sat by its side with his coverall straps dangling loosely from his hips. He motioned the boy to sit at the table, and the boy did.

  On the table was a bowl of buttermilk and a plate of corn mash. He motioned to the boy again, shaking a tremulous hand at the plate and nodding ambivalently to him. The boy slowly took up one of the dark glazed spoons and made no effort to speak but only lifted the gruel to his mouth and swallowed.

  After eating the boy rose and walked down to the stream, dipping his hands in and squatting with his forearms around his knees. He removed his hat and thrust it in the water until it was soaked through. He placed the hat on his head again, beads of water dripping down his nose and cheeks, and watched the water. The current was slow and beneath the turning glass sheet he could see small fish riding swiftly over the green stones.

  Once upon Triften the boy fixed his shirt collar and rode to the door of the cabin. The old man was still slumped by the tub, his head cocked down into his chest and his hands fumbling around the cup. He looked up when the mare’s shadow peeled away from the floor. He half raised up a hand to the boy’s back.

  Come back, he said.

  * * *

  What false magic or unseen hand led the boy into his quietness he could not name, but he went on for weeks in a slow procession of necessity and no real thing besides. He rose into town in the morning and at the town hall Molly passed him the papers from behind her squat desk and he rode them out to the lawyer’s house, then back through the town and into the foothills. For many nights the old man was unaccounted for and many mornings too, found only occasionally curled and rigid on his shapeless ticking or folded awkwardly on the back of the boy’s mule, scouring the brush for berries at dusk. He saw John Frank few times during those weeks and avoided conversation. When he did agree to meet him one night at the bar, the boy sat and drank sodas for an hour until John Frank pushed back his chair violently and stared down at him. I’m leavin if alls you’re goin to do is sit there. I could have me a better time with a stick and a rock to roll.

  The boy said nothing and did not look up from the bar. You ought to get goin then, he finally said.

  What was in him was virulent beyond his knowledge and he rode the days out with his eyes turned down and squinting as if startled by the light. When he ate at Garrets Miss Jane watched him more than she spoke. She emptied his ashtray and filled his mug with coffee and made his change when he finished eating.

  Some nights upon returning to the old man’s cabin the boy would walk along the streambank, kicking old twigs and snapping leaves from the overhanging trees. The animals of that country fell and rose before him on the landscape and he studied them hunched over with his faded bed linens draped upon his shoulders. To any unlikely onlooker the boy would have seemed as much a part of that place as the beasts who roamed it.

  His hair grew long again and by the close of those weeks it brushed his collarbone when he rode his mare. The staggering sun had browned his face and his stubble goldened with the wisps of hair that cropped out from under his hat brim. He faded thin, the muscles surfacing stark and stunned upon his flesh. Only his eyes remained unchanged, a pale bottomless sealike blue.

  During those days the plaza rocked and swayed with heat and peddler and passersby, the explosion of commerce settling only in the wan hours of dawn. The railroad men had arrived and at night they mulled about the streets and crossed the windows of Abner’s in silhouette, smoking or drawing up their stiff and blackened overalls like custodians of some dark secret. Sometimes riding back from the lawyer’s house the boy could hear music from the outdoor bandstand behind the bar, the soot-faced spike drivers and the hard-helmeted engineers and their haggling and laughing and coming down from the windows of the inn their sharp cries of desire. It was not the world that he had smiled upon with his mother when they sat by the edge of that mountain creek, nor was it the world at home in his bed he had once dreamed of, but what world it was he could not quite say.

  * * *

  THE FIRST MORNING of August brought a heavy heat. The boy woke in a pool of sweat. He rolled up and held his knees. There was no birdcall that morning and he sat listening to the quiet.

  When he came out of the stream he looked over his makeshift camp and his dirty linens and the dusty spot of matted land where he had slept all summer long. A tin cup and his dirk knife lay beside it. His dull silver pistol and his grandfather’s rifle were nearly covered in the fallen leaves of a cottonwood. One saddlebag was unstitched and loose with his extra clothing and wilting beneath them was his mother’s old saddle.

  With his shirt unbuttoned and his eyes boring down without fix on his trousers, he loosed the horse’s headstall and saddled her and mounted. He did
not don his hat or sit and smoke or stop to see after the old man but chucked the heel of his boot against the mare’s flanks and rode on down to the town at a gallop.

  At the town hall he went straight past Molly, who looked up and shifted largely in her seat to regard the boy passing. He walked down the hall buttoning his shirt as he went. When he entered the office John Frank was bending over behind his desk to relace his shoes.

  He looked up for a moment when the boy came in, then leaned down to his feet again. Molly’s got the papers, he said.

  I know it. I was wantin to talk to you.

  Frank looked up at him, his eyes just above the desk. Is that so, he said. He looked toward the floor and finished with his laces and sat up and leaned back in his chair. You in trouble?

  No.

  You wantin to quit the job?

  No. I’m not.

  What you want to talk to me for, then?

  The boy cast a sidelong glance at John Frank then went and stood by the window. Well, he said. I ain’t never been much for words.

  No, you ain’t. But at least in the past you’ve used them where they were needed. I reckon with me they’re not.

  I’m using em now, ain’t I?

  They were both silent.

  You are, John Frank finally said.

  The boy walked to the far corner of the room to where a lone chair stood. He dragged it across the room and sat in front of the desk. He rubbed his head and looked around again, as if something in the room might offer him reprieve. How’s that little peach of yours? he said.

  John Frank watched the boy stone-faced. Then he began to shake his head. She don’t want to see me but sunk six feet underground, he said. He straightened up in his seat. I wasn’t at my best walking skills that night.

  The night I seen you in the plaza.

  I’d say that was the one.

  You ain’t seen her since then, I take it.

  I imagine if I’d seen her I’d be sittin here with a wind-filled skull.

  What happened?

  Well, at first I didn’t have no problems. Then we sat down at the restaurant and I could barely keep her face in one showing. There were about three of her rotatin in front of me like I just stepped off a fair ride. She kept askin me why I was blinkin so much and I told her it was out of nervous habit. By the end of the night I thought I’d taken to feelin better. I asked her if maybe she wanted to take a walk for some ice cream and she said Alright. But when I went to stand, I couldn’t. My legs was heaviern cow shanks. I told her I couldn’t quite walk yet and that it was another of my nervous habits that was probably stirred up on account of bein with her.

  You sweet-talked her, I guess.

  Yeah well, the problem was she went to feelin bad for me and that’s when it all went to hell. She stood and tried to help me up, believin it was all my nervousness, but when I leaned over and unloaded on her there wasn’t nothin I could have said to make her believe it was just another habit of mine.

  The boy’s face grew grave. I don’t see where the humor is in that, he said.

  John Frank’s grin went away. It’s not like I’m tryin to make a habit of it, he said. One of those things, is all.

  Is that what you call it?

  John Frank threw up his arms. Ah hell, he said. At least let me finish the story. Jesus. You’re the one said you wanted to talk.

  The boy shook his head. Go on then, he said. I ain’t stoppin you.

  John Frank rubbed his hands together. He righted the legs of his chair so he sat square behind the desk. Alright, he said. This particular time, I did happen to throw up on her. Heaved a good gourd, too.

  What did you do?

  You see I wanted to help her, so I got up to my feet, but there it came again. I don’t know why she hadn’t stepped back by then. I reckon she was unable to think at all.

  Shit, the boy said.

  You said it.

  And I suppose she did too.

  That and a lot more. I stood there in the middle of the danged restaurant bein laid into by a girl drippin in garbage. The mayor didn’t take too kindly to it neither.

  He was there?

  No. He wasn’t there. John Frank poked a fingertip on the desk three times. But I came to work the next day and puked right here.

  You were still drunk the next day?

  I was drunkern a shithouse pig. Said one more strike and I’m out.

  Shit if I don’t know you from a travelin clown.

  John Frank grinned at him. Hell, he said, even if I was a clown, I don’t believe they’d want me gettin up to travel.

  They sat. John Frank’s mouth turned down. He took up a pencil from his desk and began to tap it and looked out the window. What’s been tyin your fancy in such a knot? he said. You been like a goddamn ghost.

  The boy did not respond. Frank kept tapping his pencil as he watched the boy. They been talkin about you, he said.

  Who has.

  People. Everyone. Damn, you ride around the plaza on that danged horse of yours like you was just waitin to fall off. You don’t even look like you’ve eaten better than grass in the last month. I seen one little girl was cryin over you. Sayin, What’s happened to the pretty cowboy, Mama?

  Ain’t nothin’s happened. The boy stood. He folded his hands behind his back and walked to the window and let them drop. Maybe that’s the problem, he said.

  He came away from the window. He pushed his fingers through his hair then down his sides where he began to rub his hips slowly, as though in speculation of his own form. John Frank held out a cigarette across the desk and the boy took it and walked back over to the window and looked out to where the clouds had come low and ponderous into the valley.

  Who’s been penned lately? he said.

  You mean put in jail? Shit. John Frank cocked his head back. Shit, he said. I don’t know those things. Nobody does unless somethin goes down in broad daylight. That’s the way the mayor’s been runnin this town. Keep all the hell-raisers private. That way nobody’s got to worry about them.

  The boy turned from the window and studied him closely. So you don’t know, he said.

  No. Things around here ain’t the same way maybe you know them to be. Here a man ain’t asked to account for all things that occur around him like he used to. And one of them things is the criminals. So I don’t know. That’s God’s honest truth.

  I don’t want nobody else’s truth. I want yours.

  Shit, then you have it. I don’t know the first or last of any of that business.

  The boy turned up the cigarette he had been holding in his hand and now lit it with a match. Who knows then? he said.

  Somebody I reckon.

  The boy pointed the cigarette at him. You reckon right, he said. Ain’t nothin happens without somebody’s knowledge. I reckon the wind and rain is about all. He walked to the edge of the table. So who is somebody?

  John Frank’s face clouded. He slumped down in his chair and hit the table with an open palm. What the hell is this about? he said. Why you want to know? Is one of your old buds in there? One of them outlaws?

  The boy’s face paled and he looked away from John Frank and out the window again. I ain’t no outlaw, he said, and I don’t got any buds except you and if you’re not wantin to help me I’ll be on my way and not botherin you anymore.

  John Frank leaned back in his chair. He ran his hands down his face. He looked out at the boy through the gaps of his fingers, then lowered his head and linked his hands over the back of his neck. Ah hell, he gasped. The only one I know who knows about the jail is the mayor himself.

  What about the lawmen?

  They’re hired out from the north. The town’s too small yet to have our own peacemakers and we haven’t had that much need for them. When we do, they come down and take care of business and then they leave.

  But the mayor knows.

  Yeah, he knows. And maybe the lawyer too. The lawyer probably for sure. But you’ll never meet him, I doubt. Nobody really has since he
come on.

  The boy looked past him and nodded slowly, as though considering something on the wall behind him. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and went to the door.

  Where you goin?

  To do my job, the boy said. He tried to smile. It’s hottern shit out today, ain’t it?

  It is. What about all this jail business?

  I reckon it’s about time I met the mayor.

  John Frank looked him over. I guess, he said.

  When can I find him?

  He’ll probably be over at the festival tonight.

  What festival?

  In the plaza. It’s for the harvest.

  What harvest they got here?

  Not much anymore. I reckon it’ll be more for the railroad. Either way, it’s tradition.

  Then I’ll come back after supper.

  John Frank snapped his fingers and pointed across the room at the boy. Bring him a bottle. Whiskey or something. He’ll like that.

  The boy put his head back into the threshold of the door. Whiskey, he said.

  When he turned to go again John Frank called out once more.

  Hey Trude.

  What.

  John Frank leaned forward on his desk and took his hands down from behind his head and folded them in front of him and squinted at the boy.

  How many seasons you pass up in them mountains anyway?

  I don’t know.

  You don’t know?

  There weren’t no seasons in them mountains, the boy said. Only weather.

  * * *

  In the plaza there was already excitement for the festival as the boy rode onto the thoroughfare. Lights strung lengthwise across the eaves of the storefronts bobbed rhythmically in the breeze. The old Indian women crouched under the shade of the willow tree and tinkered with their wares. Children burst around the street corners winging wooden ladles of water at one another. The men stood smoking and sweating under the porch fronts. Around the base of the tree where the women sat, small lanterns stood unlit. Their crepe paper casings snapped and glistened brightly in the afternoon sun. A few yards off from the tree the boy watched a group of railroad workers hunched over a spit and cradling its ends to fit an iron post across two cherry branches that were forked into the earth and standing on opposite ends of the pit.