The Sound of the Trees Read online

  TWO

  THERE WAS AN untraceable updraft that struck the boy and his mother as they crested the sand hills north of town. The winds kneeled and shot up again in great whorls. The roads and buildings had swiftly receded, and the country spread vacant and bitter before them. The boy shepherded his mother along the gray ridges of the hills, neither of them able to see but a few feet in front of the horses.

  It’s always hardest in the beginning, he called to her.

  His mother tried to nod but it was difficult to move at all. Her gesture came out stilted and unnoticed. The mule carrying their provisions bayed and staggered on the lead rope.

  Come on old timer, he called out, keep it steady.

  With quick clutchings of his off hand the boy towed his mother’s roan and kept his mother close enough to his shoulder that he could see her hair blustering beside him. He held his hand aloft and squinted out from under his hat brim. The wind groaned and groaned. It seemed to harbor a prejudice against them. And though it strapped the boy into virtual paralysis he turned his burning neck from time to time, surveying the land they had passed. He searched the land for a sign of his father with his eyes so absent of color it seemed he feared the stalking of a ghost.

  Hours passing into the afternoon, they came out of the bottomland and perched over a bluff and there took to a low alcove of volcanic rock.

  Here, the boy called above the din.

  He came down and helped his mother calm her roan and hobbled the horses and mule on a lone acacia tree that was rooted precariously on the slope of the outcropping rocks. A swatch of burned crabgrass garlanded the tree which itself writhed in the gusts of wind. When the horses trod over the crabgrass it did not bend but crackled, and they lowered their long heads as if to sniff out some treachery beneath them.

  The boy took his mother down from her saddle. The last of the thick fall heat blew in her hair. He held her face in his hands but she was looking away, her eyes wet glass. Set here, he yelled at her.

  His mother did not move for a moment, then her eyelids stammered and her eyes settled on the boy’s face. She nodded absently and bent and braced herself on one of the boulders and lowered herself into the belly of the cave.

  The boy held his hat down with his hands and lurched back toward the mule. He uncinched one of the saddlebags they had secretly packed in the dark of the previous night, running his fingers blindly along the leather strap and pulling it loose from the animal’s barrel and then went stumbling and ducking into the cave.

  Tarnation.

  He slapped his pant legs and shook off his hat. In the muted cup of the cave his voice resounded flatly. His mother looked up from her folded hands.

  Damnation, darlin. I believe what you say here at this point is Damnation.

  The last word she uttered slyly, smiling at the boy with a smile it seemed she had retrieved from pure sadness.

  The boy went to wrestling open the sack, shucking his gloves and making fists of his hands to bring the numbness out of them. He drew out a small pouch of cornbread biscuits and wiped away the sweat beading up on his forehead. From his bib overalls he took out his dirk knife and unthreaded the cord and laid the cotton open on a flat slab of volcanic glass.

  He removed a parcel of deer meat folded in wax paper and unfolded it with his raw trembling hands and laid it next to the biscuits and finally from the side pouch he fingered loose a beef bladder corked by bee’s wax which was filled with the last milk from their lost cattle.

  Should be the best dinner we’ve wanted in a long time, he said.

  They ate slowly, looking out at the desolation and the driving winds. The boy swallowed and pointed a finger at the scene before them. You see Mama, he said, that old truck would’ve buried us alive.

  His mother shimmied closer to the boy and put her arm around him, and for a while they sat knotted so.

  Darlin, she said. If we had that truck we wouldn’t be here.

  After some time the sun moved behind the bluff. They watched in silence as wide shadows swept dark and weary across the desert floor. A solitary crow spun down and called out. The boy’s mother withdrew her arm and laid her head back against the rock.

  For as long as he could remember they were never given a choice or a chance of their own in any matter, and all they had been offered in their lives was very much like the soft greasy bills of money that passed through generations of hands. Farmer’s hands and forger’s hands and cobbler’s and merchant’s and the hands of old woodworkers long exhausted in their trade. Many hands laid upon those bills but none who could stake a claim upon them, as if they themselves had been swallowed into the commerce of a void. He wondered if the world would recover. If it could recover. And beyond that, if they could.

  After a while the wind abated. The boy’s mother rose up gingerly and pushed back the straw that had become her hair. The boy flicked away the cigarette he had been smoking and pulled on his gloves. I don’t believe we’ll make it to Silver City tonight, he said.

  His mother pulled on her own gloves. How far is it? she asked.

  It’s a piece yet, he said. When we get there we’ll bunk a night and map out our path. And if it takes till tomorrow, it don’t matter. The boy stopped and gazed out at the clearing stretch of country before them. Beyond the boulders the desert appeared even more desolate, without wind or water, rise or tremor, as though it had fallen into a dream and dreamed of the only thing a desert could imagine, which was itself stretching out forever.

  What we got plenty of is time, he said.

  The boy’s mother leaned against one of the boulders and closed her eyes while the boy collected the animals. When he had them ready he called out to her.

  His mother jerked up awkwardly from her elbows. She squinted across the mouth of the cave at her son. The boy held up his hands in question until she finally got her legs under her and stumbled to the horses.

  What were you doin over there?

  What? Oh, nothin. Thinkin.

  About what?

  Trude. Honey. What do you think?

  * * *

  In the early evening they downstepped the horses into a ravine. The storm passed, only thin blue clouds like old rags slung along the skyline. With the wind gone the boy watched his mother more intensely. She appeared weaker than when they had first set out and the boy wished the sandstorm had not caught hold of them but he pressed on, concerning himself with his mother’s condition and watching for the ghost. Or worse, for the man himself.

  He could not summon what possible deeds would follow if indeed his father was tracking them. He could not imagine his hand or breath anymore. He remembered only that glass stare he and his mother had dreaded each night of the last year during which all reason seemed to have abandoned his father, sitting together on the davenport in the evening and trying not to hear the truck rumble into the yard or anticipate the creak of the door.

  At the dusking hour they came to the confluence of two creeks which joined into a slow-moving river lined with box elder. A small congregation of Russian olive trees and in the near distance a grove of salt cedar. The boy ran a finger across his brow and spat and pushed back his hat. He looked up at the rising moon and then toward the lights of Silver City. He estimated they were still at least three hours away. Then he looked at his mother bow-shouldered on the roan and whoaed the mare.

  Ma, he called. This looks like a place just as good as any to lay for the night. I can catch us some fish.

  His mother said nothing nor did she make any motion of agreement, but came down from her horse and hobbled her in the grove of salt cedars and walked down to the river and sat at its edge.

  The boy watched her thin silhouette against the water while he put his mare and mule up. Her flickering shadow commingled with the shadows of the olive trees and for a moment he could not discern limb from limb, tree from mother, as though the coming night meant to show him that in this world all becomes darkness, equal and without end.

  He took a roll
of cotton twine from his rucksack and cut a piece with his knife. He pried loose a tack nail from one of Triften’s shoes and bent it and tied it upon the string. From another parcel of wax paper he took a slice of roasted chili pepper and slid it upon the nail and finally went down to the river and sat next to his mother.

  He looked at her from the corner of his eye. She dipped her hands in the water and rubbed the base of her neck with one hand, supporting her body upright with the other. The boy turned back to the river and dropped the line into the black water.

  I never meant for him to hurt you like he did.

  The boy did not move at her voice but kept looking straight at his line dipping in and out of sight. Wasn’t any easier for you than it was for me, he said.

  His mother turned away, looking long into the dark rustling grove. But you were his only son, she said.

  Hell Ma, I know it. And it ain’t fair and it ain’t right and God knows it ruined us in that country but we’re loose of him now. Shit, he said.

  She turned to face him now. She wiped her eyes down with the back of her hand. Don’t you cuss like that, Trude.

  Shit Ma, the boy said, meeting her eyes. It ain’t the cussin that’s bad for us.

  The boy came upon luck in the river. He pulled up two killfish and a fat trout all brightly colored and he shucked them from their skin and cleaned them and tossed the severed heads into the fire he had made by the riverbank.

  The boy’s mother moved closer to the fire. By the time the fish were prepared her eyes had lightened and she had stopped shivering. The ash from the piñon branches flavored the fish well and they said how well it tasted and ate everything before them with a hunger neither had noticed before. After a while the boy rose with his tin cup and walked to the river, calling back to his mother as he went.

  Big old place, Silver City. Ain’t it?

  Yes it is.

  The boy returned with a cupful of river water. He sipped at it, then set it down and rolled a cigarette and gazed off at the city lights in the north.

  Your father and me used to go up there in the summer when he was courting me. The boy’s mother spoke into her hands that were gripped together and resting on her crossed ankles. They have this wonderful plaza with open carts and the like, she said. And they feed you and let you drink free on this particular week and the folks are fancy-dressed but nice. Charming, your father used to say. He used to walk around and nod and bow, all the while saying Charming, and that made some people laugh but not everyone.

  Her eyes darkened upon the fire.

  He could never settle on happy. He had somethin in him that said, It ain’t enough, Hatley. It ain’t enough to be happy. I don’t know, she said, her hands going up to her hair.

  Well, Mama. I don’t know either.

  The boy got up and washed out their tinware in the river. When he came back he helped his mother lay out their bedrolls, and soon after they laid themselves down on either side of the fire. No other riders chanced upon them all evening long. Way off in the distance when the breeze was gone the boy thought he could hear trucks motoring in the gravel washes on the outskirts of the city. Every once and again a piñon branch would pop in the fire and the boy would start up with his hand on the Colt revolver he had placed beside him.

  When he was near asleep his mother leaned up on her elbows and whispered across the flames. You think he’ll hunt us?

  The boy rolled onto his shoulder and faced his mother with his eyes still closed. I don’t know. Then he opened his eyes upon her. She was craning her neck out to better see him through the fire. No, he said. He’s gone.

  He paused at her eyes and would have turned back to lie down again but for something moving in the quiet of them. He straightened slightly on his forearms. She held his gaze there for a moment, then lay flat on her back, her eyes wide to the thickening stars.

  Yes, she whispered almost inaudibly, I believe he’s gone.

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING DAY they breached the high country. Climbing upon the sand hills that outlined the city they passed a group of cowpunchers the boy had seen at dawn. All touched their hats as they rode up. They spat tobacco juice over the knobs of their shoulders and spoke nothing of the day or of their business but only nodded solemnly as if further transaction could only cause confusion, and rode on.

  On the other side of the hills the landscape began to bloom like wildfire. Long tufts of buffalo grass rolled into orchards of apple. In a field to the east a woman bent over among the trees, tipping a water bucket at their roots. They came across a diversion dam at the river’s head and they passed over fields of corn and chili and acres of cherry trees. When the boy upstepped the mare to his mother’s side he saw that she was smiling.

  They rode to the head of town on the main avenue where trucks were cranking and moving in and out of the side streets. As they walked the horses toward the general store a truck slipped from an alley and came barreling toward them. The horses reared up and the boy’s mother’s roan stammered back. She rose up on her hind legs and whinnied high and wild. A few women on the street turned, watching with clear amazement this thin bescraggled woman lofted high into the air, her hands on the reins drawn up over her head and her bone-peaked face as chiseled as a knot of walnut.

  The truck squelched its brakes and swerved around them. As it passed the driver shook his head and peered at the boy who was turning Triften down and hepping her to his mother’s side. The driver flung a cigarette butt out the open window, then drove on.

  Whoa, the boy called. Whoa now.

  He came down from Triften and eased his mother’s horse. The horse was sweating and his mother too. She put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to steady herself.

  I sure don’t remember this place movin so fast, she said. I’ll be damned if he didn’t drive like your father.

  Come on down, the boy said.

  They hobbled the horses and mule at the side of the general store and walked out into the road. The city was bustling. Men swayed through the streets in black vests and starched white linen cuffs and women sat in the shade of the storefronts nursing bottles of soda. The boy studied their appearances, the brown briefcases the men carried and the small round hats they wore and the way they tipped them tersely when they passed one another. It seemed to him an altogether other world. The boy’s mother jogged up to his side and took his arm with one hand and with the other leaned into him, clinging tightly to the shirt at his stomach.

  * * *

  The barroom they sat in was dark, and what little light passed through the shutters shone like slatted beams of steel. The waitress who tended them was tall and lean in the manner of the coastal Mexicans with black eyes and a face like a hawk.

  You all just get to town? she asked in a stilted voice.

  Yes, his mother said flatly. She was watching the girl watch the boy.

  From whereabouts, if you don’t mind bein asked?

  The boy’s mother looked at her son. He smiled at her a little, then went to looking out the window at the city street.

  Down by Hurley, she said.

  That’s a tough little stretch from how I understand it, the waitress went on, speaking more like a Texan than a Mexican girl.

  A telephone rang from behind the bar and the waitress put up a finger.

  I’ll be right with you all, she said.

  She brought them huevos rancheros and a pitcher of buttermilk. The boy picked at his eggs and went on squinting and watching the trucks out on the street.

  When his father had saved enough money to buy the truck, the boy remembered how proud he had been to get the first one in town, how he washed it by hand every Wednesday night after the town council meetings when he was still a councilman, his big-knuckled hands plunging into the bucket of hot water and soap and the delight he took in squeezing the sponge over the yellow hood. He remembered also and more vividly the days when the truck had become overworked by the rutted roads and overwhelmed by rust, and how instead of attendi
ng the town meetings and washing the truck under the porch lamp, he took to sitting alone on the front stoop, a bottle between his knees and his knees held close to his chest. How he sat there without expression, without response to his wife calling from the kitchen to come in and eat something, but hauling into his lap a handful of gravel, which he would pick from and launch toward the road anytime a new and fine-looking truck raised up dust in front of the house and passed him by.

  His mother regarded the boy’s averted face, then reached across the table for his hands. He’s gone, right? she said.

  The boy turned to her, his face blank but for the light in his pale blue eyes. Yeah, he said. Yeah, Mama. He is.

  When they’d finished their meal the boy ordered two cups of coffee from the waitress. For a long time the boy’s mother moved a spoon through her coffee, nor did she look up from it. Where do we cross? she finally asked.

  Cross what?

  Cross over to Colorado.

  The boy folded his hands and rested his elbows on the table and thought about it.

  I think by Quemado Lake. Up near Apache Mountain. Thing of it is, I don’t know for sure where the lake is when you come over the mountains. It’s the one thing I can’t yet figure out. But I know for a fact it’s a good place to cross. Easiest country. It’s still a good way from there to Colorado, but once we get there it’s the best track to follow north.

  He sipped from the mug of coffee and set it down and took a cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it and flushed out the match by his side. You know where it is?

  His mother shook her head.

  Shit, he said.

  They drank their coffee. The waitress returned to check on them. The boy asked her if she knew where the lake was but she said she did not. He asked if the proprietor was around. She nodded and went to the back of the room where she yelled out for a man she called Big Heff, jutting a thumb back toward the boy and his mother.