The boy took off his hat again and placed it on his lap. The wind went away and the trees behind them stood silent as fence posts and she began to speak more slowly to him. She told him of the first time she had seen him and how crazy she had been and how she had hoped that he was a god come down from above to save her baby. Something in his eyes had told her if she could bring him close enough she would never again need fear or suffer the company of men. She said that she had seen his eyes very clearly even from that great distance and they had appeared like tiny bits of sky held in his face and then she remembered the blood suddenly across his shoulder. She remembered for him with her dark face pressed earnestly to the bars how her heart had sunk so deep and how she had believed he was going to die.
She watched his serious face below her and told him what her father had always said to her. That only the best things and the worst things that happen in the world are the ones you can never explain. She paused at this and smiled, so pure and pretty to him upon her tearstained face, saying finally that it was not, of course, the worst of things she imagined in him.
He listened silently and he waited until she stopped crying and then he told her about his own family. He spoke with an uncommon swiftness and at great lengths, passing his hand across his chest from time to time as if to wipe chalk from the slate of his heart. Telling her about what had been, what was now.
When the first full light came she told him he had to go. He rose slowly and told her once again that he would return. You’re not forgotten, he said. Then he set his hat on his head and looked up at the lightening sky and before he turned away he told her that she would be free yet and he told her quietly, just above the shrill of the returning winds, that he loved her.
By the edge of town he caught up his horse and turned her out toward the upcountry. They stepped into the bramble with the light pooling over the hills. The boy leaned down into the neck of the horse and as they went he told her about the girl. With the mare he used words he never had in the open world, and in the cold quiet of the coming morning he told her the ways of his heart.
IV
SEVENTEEN
WHEN THE BOY opened his eyes he glimpsed a tall luminous shadow clinging to the cabin wall. Out in the frosted dawn the shadow sparkled almost white on the earth. He reached for his pistol and collected it with a slow hand as he watched the door. He could hear a hushed voice from the empty window frames and could see in the bobbing lantern light the shape of his horse in the distance.
The boy eased his chin over carefully to find the old man in the darkness. He had climbed off the mattress and was down on his haunches with his back against the wall and he held the boy’s rifle aloft in his wizened arms. The boy made a quick low hissing sound and the old man peered across the room at him with surprisingly calm eyes. The old man tilted his head minutely, then both turned back to the door.
There was silence for a moment and then they could hear boots shifting in the yard. Then they heard the mule bawling from the darkened trees. When the door came open the boy and the old man set their guns. A lone figure stepped into the cabin and pressed up against the wall. All the boy could see was the man’s belt. He rode the hammer back with his thumb and took aim. Before his finger was around the trigger the warped floorboards whined and creaked and when the lanterns came up from the raised hands both the boy and the old man saw that it was already over. The men at the door numbered six, all slightly crouched with rifles cocked in the pits of their arms, all wearing the distinct mustaches of the Ralstons.
The men found the two hunched figures at the back of the room, their eyes squinted against the flickering lantern light and their hands cupped against their brows. The Ralstons split silently into threes and approached. The old man let down the boy’s rifle like he’d been crestfallen by some distant truth he had long tried to forget. He looked across the room at the boy. The boy set his pistol on one of the chairs and when the Ralstons saw their weapons down they came forward.
The boy was thrown against the moonshine tub. His head hit the porcelain rim and blood ran down his face. He heard voices distantly and his eyes dimmed and relit to find the old man curled up on his tick and calling down the gods. He felt metal upon his wrists and he felt the clamp of handcuffs run tight to the bone. The blood ran over his eyes and upon his lips. He heard cussing and laughing and he heard some remote announcement of his arrest for breaking into the records building.
The hands upon him one by one recoiled and his head slumped against the side of the tub. Then the hands gripped him by the shoulders. As he was lifted to his feet his eyes opened again and through the blood he saw the old man being slapped. He appeared to be unconscious. The boy’s rage came out in no more than a limp flailing of his arms. His head swung down against one of the men’s chests as they dragged him out the door. Next to his eye he saw a blurred golden chevron on the collar of one of the assailant’s jacket.
They walked him to the edge of the river. The voices around him grew silent. One of the brothers was directing the others. He was pointing at the boy’s camp. The men who were carrying him set the boy against the tree trunk from which his horse had fled. He watched as three of the Ralstons kicked through his belongings. One of them held up his dirk knife and laughed and lunged at another. The leader told them to stop fucking around and bring the kid to the river.
He could see the blisters of dawn’s light on the river as they hauled him down the bank, and across the water he could see the trees shivering in the breeze. The same trees he had woken to and slept with he did not recognize now. They seemed strangely thin and small. He tried to raise his hands over his head but one of the men slapped them down and told him not to move.
The leader came around with his arms folded over his jacket and stepped in front of the boy with his back to the river. He smiled at him. The boy closed his eyes. The leader spread his arms out and held them forth. Mornin, he said.
The boy opened his eyes and tried to lift his head from his chest but could not. The man leaned down and took him under the jaw and raised him up.
Better? he said.
He kept smiling. The boy made to spit a clot of blood from his mouth but it only bubbled and dripped down his chin.
Look us here, boys. Got ourselves the lonesome outlaw. Little pisspot he is.
The leader leaned down again and put a hand against the boy’s chest and pushed him backward. His knees buckled and he tumbled back into the shallows of the river.
Cool as the breeze, the leader said.
He regarded the boy a moment longer, still smiling at him, then stepped aside and nodded to his brothers. Then all five came forward and walked the boy out into the water. He could feel the cold currents rushing around his ankles. The chill of it pricked his mind and for an instant his eyes widened to see the river and the grass bending on the opposite bank. The wind moving through them both felt like liquid metal across his face and everything around his eyes thick and heavy.
Suddenly he was on his back again with the water at his chin and the blood unfurling from his head like a flag. He tried to brace himself with his bound hands but they could not manage his weight. The leader followed in behind them and pulled up his trousers disapprovingly and straddled the boy’s chest. He leaned over him and whispered close to his face while the others converged around them.
You broke the mayor’s locks, didn’t ya, boy?
Before he could answer the leader closed a fist around one of the bloody ropes of the boy’s hair and sunk his face into the water. He held him under for several seconds and then jerked him out.
Didn’t ya, ya squirrelly son of a bitch.
He pressed the boy’s head down again. Under the water the boy felt the silt and rocks grinding against the laceration in his skull. When he reemerged his mouth gasped open. He drooled and sucked at the air. The leader held the boy by his shirt collar and leaned his head up to look at his brothers, nodding with a fierce ambivalence.
Boy, he said facing him a
gain, you most lucky the mayor wants you alive. He let go of his shirt and the boy fell back into the water. Now confess.
The boy’s eyes slid open and locked as well as they could upon the leader but he did not speak to him. He watched the man’s teeth move across the bristling mustache.
You think you can stonewall me? You got the saddle on the wrong goddamn horse, kid.
The leader stepped back and booted the boy in the side. Two others stepped forward and did the same. The boy lowered his forearms over his ribs. A rib had cracked and he tried to cover it with his hands.
Confess to huntin the fuckin nigger girl thief. Confess to crossin the mayor in his own goddamn town.
They kicked him again. Then the leader stepped back and commanded the others away with outstretched hands and huffed for his breath. Confess it, he sputtered, wiping his mouth with the back of his jacket sleeve.
The boy looked up at him once again but all he could take in now were the trees and the sky, silent and brightening above him, and the last thing he remembered until they hit the thoroughfare of the town was his own voice lifted out of the last of his consciousness.
It was me, he kept calling. You damn right it was me.
He was led through town the same way in which the girl had been. People stood in small circles in the blousy morning light, watching the Ralstons pull the boy along with fifths of whiskey rocking in their pockets. On the faces of the townspeople they passed there were no clear expressions. Some crossed their hands behind their backs and spat and nodded or merely shook their heads. One of the Ralstons went before them waving his hands vigorously and exclaiming Justice over and over.
When they came into the plaza the boy’s eyes rolled open again. What he saw was what he saw in his dreams. Dark colors and long slow sweeping motions. He could taste the blood in his mouth and each step seemed to further split open his side. He held his ribs as they went. The feet beneath him could only walk a few steps at a time before they could only be dragged on behind him. He saw a wash of faces and upon them he saw the mouths of the townspeople moving vague and deliberate.
In the hallway of the town hall the boy made out the Italian through the trembling slit of his eye, and though the blood now blocked most of his vision he saw clearly the terror laid upon his face. John Frank made to raise a hand but it stopped at his waist and dropped again to his side and he watched as the Ralstons led him away.
When they reached the mayor’s door the men stopped and huddled around him and held him up under the arms. Before the knock was given, the brother who had been chanting Justice slurred out again at the boy, raising a finger to his nose and saying, Damn lucky, and hit him square in the jaw with the black stock of his rifle.
* * *
THE ROOM HE awoke in was cool and bright. A breeze loitered around a half-open window to agitate the pale white drapery from the wall. When he tried to move he found he could not without a tremendous pain in his head. He was sweating and had sweated immensely through the night, the sheets stained yellow and wet upon his legs. The same eye that had been cut in the fall from his mare was now completely shut. He did not know how long he had been lying there, in the quiet of that white room. He stared up at the ceiling for a long time until at last he struggled to his side and looked out the window.
The window gave way to a back alley littered with broken clay pots and baling wire. Strung across the buildings a clothesline sunk under the weight of a blue twill blanket and three woolen stockings. The head of a child’s doll looked back at him from the mud with painted eyes that were washed out and grotesquely still.
He rolled onto his back again and managed himself upright against the headboard and looked around the room. There was a dresser and a bed stand. A small serving table standing in the corner. There was a bathroom to his right with a cotton partition and a light fixture screwed into the ceiling and glowing palely in the noonday sun. On the wall opposite the bed was a portrait of Christ on the cross. His face was near Spanish and those who stood around him were too, all standing against a background of flaming red.
He woke and slept for several days without a clear thought in his head. The clock on the wall ticked with the rhythm of his breath but was of little use to the boy otherwise. He woke both morning and night to find his eye open to the Christ figure’s pegged hands and in his clouded mind he reinvented the torture and loss and the divinity his own mother had long ago spoken to him about, and oftentimes in those formless hours he wished he had been sent to a place where the walls were bare of anything at all.
* * *
Late in the day he woke and sat up to the sound of the window closing. A woman turned to him from across the room and saw the single eye wide upon her. She put her hands to her chest. He studied her for a moment, a girl not much older than he, dressed in a long white coat with her hair brought up behind her head.
Mornin, he said.
The nurse rested a hand on the window ledge and tapped her fingers nervously, then pointed out the darkened window.
Seven in the evening, she said.
A few days later he sat up in the bed and fingered the bandage where it covered his ear and rubbed his eyes. The clock ticked formally from across the room and he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. The light in the bathroom was off and only the first glints of sun caught his bedsheets. There was a plate of sliced apple and a glass of water on the bedside table. He drank the water in one flush and pressed the glass against his forehead. The picture eyes seemed to watch him in the silence of the coming day.
After a while the nurse came in and stopped short at the door. The boy was standing by the window. He turned with the sound of her feet and gazed vacantly upon her.
It was gettin a mite chilly, she said.
What was.
You stopped sweating. It was gettin chilly so I closed the window. The nurse wrung her hands together and stepped timidly into the room. Your head’s healed pretty good since the fever broke, she said. You broke some ribs too, but they’re on their way to whole again.
The boy came away from the window and lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. I don’t know how to ask but I can’t figure it out, he said. Where are we?
Why, we’re in the town hall. The nurse gestured with a closed fist she brought from her chest and lifted toward the door. Mayor’s office is right down the hall. He sleeps here himself some nights.
The boy leaned up again and sat with his bare feet on the polished floorboards. He smiled coldly to himself. The sun began to push its way into the room and the boy closed his eye against it and when he opened his eye again the nurse was gone.
In the evening she returned with two envelopes in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. She placed all three on the bed stand while he watched her from the bed.
These are for you, she said.
She walked to the end of the bed and tucked the loose corner of the blanket under the mattress and did not look up at him again but smiled falsely when she bent to raise the mattress, then went out the door.
The boy moved the pitcher away and took up the envelopes. They were already open. He laid one in his lap and fingered loose the contents of the other. In it he found a photograph of himself that Jane had taken when he first arrived in town. He was sitting shoulders back astride Triften, not quite smiling and not quite at ease, but in his unstudied pose he remained somehow imponderable to himself. On the back of the picture she had written, What have you done? I’m saving a pie for you. Get better. He looked at the picture a few seconds longer, then set it aside and picked up the other envelope.
It was a letter from the doctor. How he had come to find him there he could not imagine. There were forwarding stamps from six towns and two counties, and six times the word Urgent had been scribbled on the envelope. The paper was worn so thin it seemed to have passed through a hundred hands. The ink was faded and drawn down the grain but the precise lettering of the old doctor’s handwriting was still legible to the boy
’s working eye. He held the paper up to the light and leaned into it.
There were a few lines about the town and the goings on there and another about Larry Bowles losing his hand to a renegade bull and something about everyone’s hair grown so long it looked like a town of women. The remainder of the letter was about his father’s death. The boy read the lines over and over until nightfall came. In the middle of the night he woke and stumbled into the bathroom and pulled on the light and read them again and somewhere in between he wept.
Your daddy seemed to fall to pieces after you all left. He cursed your mother endlessly but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it. I think he missed her beyond the possibility of his own words. He was like a can of worms, your daddy was. Wriggling and wriggling inside but nowhere to go but back down to the bottom. He fell off New Bend Bridge second Tuesday of September. Some here say he jumped off of his own accord but I reckon he just fell off drunk. Your daddy was never one to quit. I think you know something about that. But he never did have too much luck succeeding in the end neither. Hope you’re finding it better for you and your mama. Doc.
In the morning there was a knock at the door. A voice called out and the door opened. The boy was sitting upright with the pillows beneath his back. The mayor came in and crossed the room and stood by the foot of the bed. He outstretched his arms and gripped the bedposts.
I am sorry about your father, he said.
He looked at the boy with surprisingly sad eyes. The boy straightened his back against the headboard. I’m sure he appreciates it, he said.
The mayor acquiesced with a bow of his head.
Yes. I hope so.
They looked at each other from across the crumpled bed linens. The swelling in the boy’s eye had gone down, but his eyelid still remained low upon it.
The Sound of the Trees Page 22
