The Sound of the Trees

by Robert Payne Gatewood

  As he turned and walked toward the door he heard another toast float up above the piano and he heard the tumblers smacking wet and hot upon the bar top and the clipped laughter of Thomas Trewitt rising nervously above it all.

  He stepped out into the crisp night air. The door slammed behind him and the piano fell muted and the laughter of Trewitt rang hollow through the walls. He mounted his horse and rode off toward the old man’s cabin with the voice of the woman in the distance going on tirelessly and without answer as if maddened by the night.

  TWELVE

  HE FOUND THE Italian at the old nickelodeon on the south edge of town. Outside hung two posters flanking the blue iron doors which advertised Wallace Beery in Old Ironsides, and though they seemed to have been hanging there for a very long time, when the boy paid his quarter to the old woman behind the wire window and went past the concession of soda pop and black cows and paper cones filled with peanuts and walked through the brass turnstiles and into the screening room it was still the picture being shown.

  A single shaft of light from the projection room came looming down the high darkened ceiling. Beyond its dusty silver glow the room was pitch dark and the boy steadied himself on the low velveteen chair backs as he descended the aisle. The air was hot and the room smelled of sweat, and from the vaulted balcony the boy could hear the dampened exchange of tongues and whispers and the dull whirling of the ceiling fans.

  John Frank was sitting still and low in the fifth row with his arm stiffly placed around the shoulder of a young woman. His hand was raised to the back of her head and he was twirling his fingertips through her hair.

  Hey.

  Both John Frank and the girl jumped upright in their seats. The girl withdrew her hand from Frank’s leg. The boy sat himself down next to them.

  What the hell you doin here? John Frank brought his hand down from the girl’s hair and pulled the lapels of his jacket across his breast as if to suppress some indiscretion beneath it. How’d you find me here?

  Jane told me. At the cantina. Said you was on your way over here.

  Well hell, John Frank whispered sharply, I know my company’s the best thing goin around here but couldn’t it wait until I was back in the office?

  No. It couldn’t.

  Shit.

  John Frank put his arm around the girl again and leaned back and pulled her gently in front of him. This here’s Salva, he said. This is Trude. Apparently he don’t want me to go off and have a good time without him.

  The girl blushed and said a soft Howdy and the boy tipped his hat to her, then turned his eyes back to John Frank. I need to talk to you a minute, he said.

  Well go on then.

  I need to talk to you alone.

  Frank shook his head. Ah hell, he said. Alright. Come on.

  He kissed the girl lightly on the forehead and told her he would be right back. He and the boy rose and ducked their heads under the projector light and walked back up the steep aisle and slid into a side row near the back of the room. From where they sat they could hear the projector ticking out the frames over the actors’ conversation. The light was so dim that all the boy could see of John Frank was his eyes and all Frank could see of the boy was the battered crown of his black Stetson hat.

  What in God’s green earth is this about? First girl I meet who’s taken a genuine liking to me, and you got to come and bust it up.

  Sorry about that but I got to ask you something.

  The boy could see the slow shake of John Frank’s head in the shadows and he saw his teeth shine brightly when he grinned.

  She sure is something though, ain’t she?

  She is at that.

  Damn straight. So what is this about you got to drag me away for?

  The boy put his hands on the back of the chair in front of him and clenched the damp wood in his fingers. Well, he said. Say the mayor asks you to find something for him. Like some record of purchase or law. Where would you find something like that?

  John Frank lowered his head and tried to look at the boy through the backlight. What the hell’s goin on here? he said.

  Just tell me.

  John Frank hunched his shoulders and looked around and leaned toward the boy. Damn it. I want to know what’s goin on first, he said. You come in here all lowdown and harried and asking me about law and papers and the mayor’s business and such. Don’t you reckon if I’m your bud you ought to tell me what it’s about?

  The boy looked off to the movie screen. The heroine was down on the ground with her arms wrapped around her chest and she was speaking into the sky but with what words he could not tell. He thought for a moment of the one and only time he had been to such a place, when his father had tore up the kitchen with a field hoe and his mother had whisked the boy silently into the open road and walked him into the town.

  The feature they had seen pictured Tom Mix and his horse Tony and he remembered how for that long hour he had lost himself in a world as foreign to him as any of the others that he had read about in books, yet there was something in the actor’s determined face and the way he held his elbows tight against his sides when he rode his horse onto the plains and into a gallop that had made the boy feel closer to him than he had ever felt to his own father. He remembered also how they had returned that evening to find the kitchen plates broken on the floor and his father gone and how for many days after when his father would leave the house he would close his eyes and make silent prayer that when he returned he would return on that shiny stallion and with those clear eyes of the hero that seemed to know always and everywhere the purpose of his travel and the treasure that was his long lost home.

  They got a girl in there, he said finally.

  In where?

  In the jailhouse. They got a girl I know in the jailhouse down there.

  John Frank squinted at the screen as though it might make clear for him what the boy was talking about. Some girl you know, he said. More of this jail business? What girl you know up here anyway?

  Just a girl.

  What girl?

  A black girl.

  John Frank turned back to the boy. You mean a Mexican?

  No, I don’t mean a Mexican. I mean a black girl.

  A black girl? Where’s she from that you know her?

  I don’t know.

  Hellfire. You know her but you don’t know her. Which is it?

  I don’t know. I guess it’s both.

  You are one stubborn sumbitch, you know that? And what the hell does some law records have to do with it?

  They don’t. But the jail records do.

  And for what purpose?

  To find out who she is exactly. Where she’s from. The boy paused and looked over to where John Frank’s girlfriend was sitting with her white-gloved hands folded in her lap and her head turned back up the aisles toward them. What her name is, he said.

  Jesus Mary and Joseph. A black girl. John Frank shook his head again. I seen a bunch down by Albuquerque one time, he whispered. Out there workin on a ranch I was drivin by. But they was men. I ain’t never seen a black girl out this way, or a woman for that matter. It’s rough enough around these mountains for a man out here and I don’t care what color he is.

  Well, there’s one here now. At least I think it.

  I still can’t see what you want me to do about it.

  Why don’t you start by telling me where such records could be found. I might be able to find something on her.

  I wouldn’t know nothin about the jailhouse, bud. I told you that. I’m not even allowed to go in. But I reckon if you want to find some papers, only place I know is the old refectory down the alley behind the town hall. That’s where all the records I know about are kept. But that place is all bolted up with locks and drawbars and the like. And it’s just a big old room stacked floor to ceiling with papers. I can’t see how you’d find anything even if you could get in there, which you can’t.

  I reckon I got to try.

  Try what?

 
Get myself in there. Locks are made to be broken, ain’t they?

  John Frank started up from his chair like he meant to unleash some prophecy upon the boy. He pressed the palms of his hands together. Then he sat again and began to speak rapidly through his teeth.

  You can’t do that, goddamn it. It’s crazy. You can’t.

  I got to.

  No. No you don’t. You ain’t goin to be stupid. I won’t let you.

  You won’t let me what? You goin to arrest me yourself?

  Well shit. No. But goddamn it, listen to me. They throw you in jail yourself if you get caught. Or worse even.

  Jail ain’t far off from where I stand now, the boy said, and walkin away ain’t goin to help it. Seems to me all I’ve ever been around to see is endings. And I know that it ain’t supposed to be that way. Not for nobody. I ain’t sayin I deserve better but I’ll be damned if I don’t try for it. This girl. He raised his hands briefly, then let them fall. I’d just like to see the beginning of it, he said. That’s all. I’d like to know how it is that something begins. That it could.

  The boy leaned back in his chair. The movie was reaching its climax and a brooding anthem of heroics rumbled up the aisles. The boy put his head on the wooden chair back in front of him and held it there a moment before he sat up again and faced John Frank. They’re goin to kill her, he said.

  What the hell? Now how do you get to thinkin something like that? They ain’t never killed no one here. That’s downright ridiculous is what it is. And I can tell you as sure as we sit here now, if you try and break into that place in a week’s time you’ll be sitting in that jailhouse yourself.

  I don’t care about any of that. Didn’t you hear what I said? They’re goin to kill her.

  Alright. They’re goin to kill her. Which they ain’t. But what you goin to do about it?

  I don’t know. But somethin. I’ll do somethin.

  The lights began to come up and the girl called out to John Frank. He put up a finger pleadingly and then turned back to the boy. In the white light the boy’s face appeared suddenly very old and featureless and even his eyes seemed to have no fix about them but only a curious glass sheen.

  John Frank put his hand upon the boy’s shoulder, then took it down and looked at him. He raised both hands in apology.

  I can’t be a part of it, bud. I just can’t.

  I know it. I ain’t askin you to. What I wanted to know you told me, and I thank you for it. I don’t need nothin else.

  They looked at each other in the bright and ugly light and at last the boy rose and tipped his hat. You best go on now, he said. Don’t want to leave that peach all alone.

  * * *

  IN THE GENERAL store the boy bought a bag of oats for the horse and the mule and he bought a new razor and a blue cotton washcloth. He bought bread and a pound of cheese and five tins of sardines the old man had asked for. He bought a new pair of cufflinks fashioned from stones and displayed in a cracked fishbowl to replace the pair he had lost by his riverside camp and he bought a soda with his remaining dime. The old woman behind the counter carefully placed all of his purchases in a paper bag. She looked up at him each time she pushed an item into the bag and she offered him a soft smile from the leather jowls of her thin face. She took a very long time and seemed to be trying to place the boy in her memory.

  Finally she tilted the bag upright and folded it over twice and held it out to him.

  Aren’t you the nice boy who came in and bought those sheets? she called out to him.

  The boy, who had taken up the bag and was halfway out the door, stopped and turned back to her. Yes ma’am, he said. I think I am.

  The cotton ones, right?

  Yes ma’am. That’s right.

  Oh, how nice that is.

  Ma’am?

  I just find that to be sweet. Goin out to do the shoppin chores.

  She wagged a long bony finger at him.

  Your mother must be very proud.

  THIRTEEN

  IN THE NIGHT it grew very cold and he woke from a dream of the bears disbanding along a purple ridge and lumbering soundlessly into the knifing snow and after that he could sleep no more. He pushed off the bedroll that had gathered a light dusting of dew and pulled on his boots and rode out upon the foothills in the last hours before dawn. The moon was sickly and disfigured behind the clouds and the light it cast upon the earth was without substance.

  Out on the mesa it was profoundly dark and the boy’s horse lost her footing and went down on her front legs and pitched the boy into a gravel ditch from which he emerged bleeding above his left eye. The mare swung her head around and staggered up and stepped backward, panicking with her nose high in the gusts of wind and her eyes drained white and spooked on the boy.

  The cut was deep and long across his eyebrow and he wiped the blood away from his face and ran a glove along the back of his trousers. He collected the reins and crawled out of the ditch and soothed the mare down and stroked her mane with his gloved hands and told her it wasn’t her fault.

  From where they stood the boy could see off to where the railroad tracks were forming out of the bleak horizon. Below them on the foothills the singed brown conifers were beginning to forest green. Just as he knew there would soon be skeins of dark weather and whorls of blue rain, he knew his own chance for setting out to Colorado would soon pass him by for another season if he did not hurry.

  He went on riding long into the remaining night, up along the mesa above the edge of town and down into the mud slicks and crabgrass. Such sparse trees rose before him he took them to be corpses of trees, and soon he found himself galloping the road that stretched out to the lawyer’s lone and silent home.

  Though he had figured how to pop the lock on the docket with his knife, all he ever found was news about such things as the water table and a new car for the mayor. He had read fragments of a letter addressing the portioning and zoning of the lands and a bill being drafted that would tax the Indian women for using the space around the willow tree to sell their goods. He read about a number of business transactions and the purchase of pressing machines for a new metal company. He read countless figures that calculated earnings and percentages but never in his search did he find even a single word about the girl.

  He slowed the horse at the gate and came down and drew up the latch quietly and stepped into the yard to find the house as he had found it every day. No hand seen through the window nor foot upon the floor. No voice left trailing in the wind, and no words that he could give to beseech it.

  He went up to the window and wiped his sleeve across the hoary frost that had formed upon it and peered into the room. A chair and a standing lamp. A pale brown loveseat. An empty mantle. In the corner of the room a coatrack stood unadorned but for a single white shirt that hung from one of the wooden pegs. Below the collar was a golden chevron. There was an inscription upon it but the boy could not make it out. He ran his hand over his hair and walked around the house to where a cobblestone water well stood with its bucket creaking forlornly on the hook. There were no windows in the rear of the house and after a while he went back to his horse and swung his leg over her and swiped at the fresh blood on his cheekbone and walked out onto the cold hard road.

  * * *

  Traveling back into the foothills he downstepped the backside of the mesa wall and trotted the horse into a gravel pass. In the distance a fire burned fiercely behind the timberline and crudely shaped tents worked themselves out of the firelight like broken fragments of some failed greater contraption.

  He slowed the mare when he came upon the tents. Through the fire he could see to where a great many men sat crosslegged or stood crouching in gray-and-black overalls with gray blankets upon their shoulders. They were about twelve in number and all were talking at intervals and over one another though none raised their heads to any of the voices, as if speech were as trifling as scrubbing their hands.

  The shadow of the mare fell long and dark upon the congregation and some of
the men turned to the boy. He was wearing only his ranch jacket and undershirt and on his legs he wore his burlap-sack pants one leg of which was twisted inside the top of his boot and he wore no hat at all. His hair fell thick and stiff across his face from where he momentarily pushed it aside to better see them with his good eye.

  Howdy.

  The man who spoke out was of mild build and middle age and his own face was cut along the jawline.

  Where you headed to at this hour? he called out.

  He held a bottle of cutthroat whiskey in his hands which were cradled between his crouched haunches. On his left eye he wore a black leather patch and he nodded slightly at the boy as if to make kinship over the common ruination of their eyes.

  The boy looked around at the tents and then at the fire and then at the man who spoke to him. He put his hand up to where his hat should have been, then put both hands down into his trouser pockets. I seen your fire, he said. I wasn’t headed nowhere.

  You look rightly bad off.

  I’m alright.

  None of the other men seemed to pay the boy any mind. The firelight danced upon their faces and spent itself, with the wind guiding it one dumbstruck face to the next. The man drew on his bottle and handed it to a bald man sitting beside him without ever looking at him. That so, he said.

  He motioned the boy to a place across from him where another man had pushed back away from the fire and laid his head down and was now snoring indelicately with his legs curled into his chest.

  I was about to commit myself to story. Set on down.

  The boy did not agree but only let down the horse’s lead rope and came and sat by.

  My ears is too tired to listen to your jawin tonight. We was talkin about Roosevelt.

  The bald man was small and wiry and the hand he held raised in protest had only a thumb and a pinky finger.