The Sound of the Trees Read online

  When he lowered himself down beneath the overhang of tree branches he heard the sound of a riverbed washing against the rocks. He followed the bark peelings closer to the river. Among the scrub a blackberry bush stood crippled in the dripping weeds. He picked one of the berries and tasted it, pinching it with his teeth like a barterer testing a coin. When he had eaten all he could he leaned back against a pine and closed his eyes.

  Sometime later the boy awoke to the sun still hovering lazily above the mountains and he woke to the rushing river, but what he sensed first were the human sounds that came from the precipice shouldered above the river water. As he leaned up on his elbows there came a scream. It came again. He rose to his haunches. He listened. Again it came, and he knew it was the same voice he had heard coming from the Englishman’s tent days before. It seemed to the boy a pleading, and from her crushed voice came some wild testimonies he could not piece together.

  He rose against the aspen trunk. Through the low branches and creosote bush he made out the figure of the Englishman. He wore a brown frock coat and from the broadcloth at his neck hung a knot of silk. He was belted with an ivory-handled bowie knife and he stood unmoving. The boy crept closer. Against the light that dished off the water he saw in the arms of the Englishman a small package. It was wrapped in white linen and the Englishman held it closely to his chest. The boy squinted hard at the purple stain on its underside. The wailing from the girl would not cease, but the boy could not see her. He waited to see what the Englishman would do.

  At length, the girl’s cries subsided. Then the Englishman hoisted the package above his head very slowly, as if in offering, and held it out over the water. The cloth fluttered gently in the warm breeze. He let it go. It tumbled end over end and hit the frothing water where it bobbed and flowed for a moment, then sunk into the rapids and was gone.

  The girl was suddenly crumpled against the Englishman’s legs. Behind the Englishman all the boy could see of the girl were her raised fists. The man watched her for a few moments, almost with a look of playfulness, then shook her grip loose from his legs and walked out of sight.

  When he saw the Englishman had gone the boy sprang up and went running back for his knife which he’d left beside the tree. The suspender branches of his overalls swung up and snapped against his stomach. He caught the knife up from behind the brush and turned and squinted against the sun and ran until he glimpsed her standing by the river’s edge and stopped all at once.

  In the fading light he saw her. She was dark. Her skin was like ebony afire. Her hair too was dark and it fell past her shoulders like nests of stone. Beneath the paper-thin cotton shift and the blue shawl gathered around her throat she was very thin. For that moment in which he first saw her she did not move at all. She was kneeling up with her hands pressed against her thighs. Then the girl brought her hands to her face and her eyes were terribly dark, like fire-scorched crystal, and she held her thick tangle of hair over them and began quietly to weep.

  The boy’s first thought was one of sadness, yet he thought other things about her in that single moment. He fumbled around the trees. He ran up to the edge of the gorge and looked around for the Englishman. Then he called out for her.

  She did not seem surprised by his voice. She slowly raised her head as though she had only been patiently in waiting. He called out again. Stay there, he called. Stay right there.

  The girl did not move. Even from that distance her beauty seemed a thing inexplicable to him. She was so very dark, and yet all he could see in her aspect was a clean and wheeling light. It was the kind of light he’d seen only once before, when his mother had smiled at him that morning long ago when they’d left the ranch to begin their lives again.

  I’m comin, he called once more. But before he took three steps, as if summoned from the netherworld, a great paw came crashing across his shoulder.

  It came so fast there was no time for thought. The boy fell to the ground and lifted his knife in the air. It crossed in front of the bear pitifully small. He rolled over. His shoulder swept up the earth’s floor with its wet blood. When it rose before him on its hind legs the wake of its shadow brought out its face clearly and the boy saw that it was not the bear at all but the Englishman. The man held his ivory-handled bowie knife in front of his belt. He stood in a crouch, sawing the air with the knife. He said nothing to the boy. The boy climbed to his knees. He took his knife into the hand of his working arm and rose to his feet. The Englishman sneered at the boy just as he had at the girl. The boy lunged for him but the man stepped to the side and took the boy’s arm with his free hand and struck the boy again in the shoulder. The boy fell back to the ground. His knife shook weakly before him. This time the Englishman did not wait for the boy to rise. He came down with the blade aimed at the boy’s stomach, but at the last moment the boy slid from beneath him and sunk the knife in the Englishman’s back.

  The Englishman paused only for a moment. He looked down to where his hat had been dashed. Then he turned his small oiled head toward the path from which he had emerged. As if he was being called to from the receding trees. Then he faced the boy again and smiled. It was a curious look, as though he was uncertain as to what amused him. Finally the man climbed to his feet again, his left side badly slouched and bleeding, and loped off into the trees.

  The boy tried to give chase but his knees would not hold him. He fell back to the ground and lay there on his side. Blood ran off his arm and shoulder. He slumped over to the earth. Sticks and seeds clung to the pulp of his shirt. His vision faltered. For a moment it seemed a great hood had been brought down upon his sight, then all went empty.

  The last thing he saw was the butchered light of the sun spilling into the granite sleeves of the mountain peaks. And the last thing he thought he saw was the girl’s eyes, raised from the lace of her hands, looking at him.

  FIVE

  THE FIREWEED SWEPT across his horse’s chest as the boy descended from the mountains, and with each step he seemed to shed a purple skin then reemerge with the mare snorting and sweating as they went.

  He had lingered in the mountains through the month of March. The Englishman had cut him twice in the same place, high on his right shoulder, but somehow had not severed any muscle and the boy suffered only a dark blue throb which he dabbed and wrapped with his mother’s old scarf. Neither the bear nor the girl appeared to him again, and when the forest had been scoured to where he no longer knew where to look, he redressed himself and packed up his tinware and his bedroll.

  On the first morning of April the boy awoke and tied up his rifle to the fenders of his saddle and climbed abreast the mare and took up the mule’s lead rope, saying, Best get on. He pulled his hat low and rode out with the high mountain winds in his ears. He recalled the Englishman had said he was headed north, to a town beyond the mountains, and he could only believe him and believe that the girl would be with him too.

  From a small lake he passed through cataracts of mist with the sun shining through them as though through bedsheets. He came through a thunder shower and later on the lower ridges the rain cleared. He rode long into the evening, and the boy was forced to stop on several occasions, for his mare had grown terribly weak.

  I’m sorry babe, he kept saying to her. I’m sorry.

  In the full night the boy rode out of the sand hills and into a broad sweep of buffalo plains. In the open land some lights flickered in the distance. The boy stopped the horse and struck up a match against a half-used cigarette, and through the glow he could make out a small village below.

  He rode toward the light. The houses looked like skeletons of houses with their earthen walls bowing under their own weight. He upstepped the mare out of a gulch and into a narrow dirt road. Very little sound came from the houses and the feet of the horse and mule clacking in the silence came out like a clock counting a different time altogether.

  As he came abreast of the houses the lights from inside extinguished into the black. At the end of the row he came to a
house that remained lit. It was a tiny adobe structure in terrible disrepair, with its vigas crooked on the roof gaps and the leather cordings that bound them together looking like sutures that had been stitched through a wound that would not heal.

  He stayed the horse. Through the window he could see a kerosene lantern burning deeply on a low crooked table. A man sat over a large bowl and addressed someone out of his view. He whistled to the mule and walked the horse into the yard and dismounted by the side of the house. Nearby a wheelless truck stood on blocks of cinder with its hood open. A scattering of tin cans and chicken bones was strewn errantly in the yard. He walked along the side of the house where a lone cottonwood stood with bed linens draped over its branches, and there he hobbled his horse.

  He walked up the stone path to the door and took off his hat and held it at his chest and knocked on the door. After a moment a woman appeared. She tilted her head behind the crack in the door. She put a hand to the muslin wrap that secured the long ropes of her dark hair, then stepped back.

  Buenas noches, the boy said.

  The woman’s eyes came to the seam in the door again. She looked him up and down. Finally she opened the door. Yes, she said with a heavy accent. You need something?

  The boy shifted his hat in his hands and looked over his shoulder at the road.

  Well. I just came through the mountains. I was hoping to rest somewhere for the night.

  The woman studied him. His hair was matted against his head and swung out over his eyes. He crossed his free hand in front of his face and tucked it back behind his ears.

  I know I’m dirty but it don’t mean I’m bad.

  He tried to smile at her but it was sorrow on his face and sorrow the woman saw.

  There came some movement behind the woman and she and the boy turned. The man he had seen in the window glass came into the hall and stepped in front of the woman.

  Buenas noches, the boy said again.

  The man was tall and muscled and he wore his white shirt open. His face was hard as well, but in his eyes there was a sallow quality which made him appear almost penitent.

  The man and his wife spoke to each other in Spanish. The man nodded to the boy and told him to come in. The boy lowered his head and stepped into the room behind them. He looked about cautiously in the manner of someone entering a church. He held his battered hat close to his stomach. The man pointed to an empty chair at the table and they all sat down.

  Hungry? the man asked.

  I could eat.

  The woman dished him out a plate of beans and a plate of tortillas. She looked back and forth from the boy to her husband. The man watched the boy and poured him a glass of wine from a thin wooden pitcher set in the middle of the bare wood table. Next to the boy sat two young children who stared at him unflinchingly.

  Where are you coming from?

  The boy started to explain the part of the country where his ranch was but stopped and looked at his plate and then out the window. I come in from over there, he said. He pointed out the window toward the mountains. From the mountains.

  Which mountains? the man asked.

  I don’t know that I could name one different from the rest. All of them, I reckon. I come in from all of them.

  They ate in a silence broken only by the gnashing of the children’s teeth. The woman looked glancingly at the boy. After a while she reached forward with a knife and slid more beans onto his plate. She filled his glass with the warm wine. The boy glanced at her and tilted his head apologetically and leaned back again. Gracias, he said.

  He looked momentarily around the house. The light was feeble. The room in which they sat extended into both kitchen and bedroom. The beds appeared like covered bodies with the white damask sheets slung carelessly upon them. Steam rose from the kitchen basin to cloud the small window above it. There was a strong smell of cowhides in the room, and when they had finished eating the boy inquired after the man’s business. The man turned a spoon in his hand. He told the boy how the hide business was no longer a true business for it was passing under new advances in that country and what his job amounted to was very little in terms of finance, and that like old Mexico itself his work was fading into obscurity.

  Things have changed, you see? he said. Pero, they must. It is not for me to say.

  When they had finished eating, the children rose by their mother’s hand. She led them to the back of the room where the beds were and they slid under the bedclothes. Their mother bent and kissed them on their foreheads and spoke quietly to them and after a moment they rolled onto their sides. She extinguished the candle that was flickering in a pool of wax on the sideboard and came back to the table.

  The man pulled back his wife’s chair and she sat again and the man poured the boy more wine. The woman asked him what it was he was doing in the mountains. The boy remained silent for a long time, looking at his hands which he held folded in the cup of his stomach.

  Livin, he said finally. I was livin there.

  The man glanced over at his wife. She looked as if she might speak but the man stayed her with his eyes. He leaned forward over the table edge.

  Why? he asked. You no go back anymore, will you?

  No. I don’t know.

  The man leaned in again and spoke with his hands pressed together and his forefingers directed at the boy.

  You should not go in the mountains anymore. You get cold and die or go crazy. Pero, one day a man could go in the mountains but that day is no longer. Man no go in the mountains anymore because he has a new place and that is here. Here is the world. The world is no more in the mountains. It is here.

  I know it, the boy said.

  You are a rancher.

  Yes. Well. No, not anymore.

  Why not?

  No ranch.

  Where is your family?

  The boy only shook his head. He asked the man for a cigarette and the man reached into his pocket and handed him one. He lit it with a match from a wooden box the man pushed across the table.

  Where you go now?

  The boy pulled long on the cigarette and turned the burning end inward and watched it. He looked out the window. It was glazed with raindrops that were now coming down and casting a blue warp on the outside world.

  To Colorado, he said. Good country up there I heard, and I reckon it to be true.

  Colorado, the man repeated. You have work there, then?

  No.

  The man and his wife watched him.

  Also, the boy said into his lap, I’m lookin for a girl.

  Yes. You have no work and no family in Colorado?

  No.

  The man leaned back in his chair and undid his hands and set them in his lap.

  Have you seen a man ride through town lately? Sort of a dandy. Had about five horses with him.

  And this girl was with him? the man asked.

  Yeah. That’s him.

  The man shook his head. I have not seen them, he said.

  Would you have seen them if they did come through?

  Yes, I don’t know.

  The man folded his arms across his breast and his wife watched him while she smoothed down the cloth napkin in her lap. His eyes followed the boy’s back and forth from the window to his hands on his thighs. Every once in a while the boy would cough into his hand and say, Excuse me, but he did not raise his head to them. After some time the man looked at his wife and she put her hand upon his and raised her eyebrows. Finally the man straightened up in his chair and made a gentle tap on his wife’s hand, and she took it away and began to clear off the table.

  Is this girl your family? the man asked.

  No sir.

  Is the man she is with?

  Not in the slightest.

  No, of course not.

  He paused briefly and offered the boy another cigarette. He took it. He pinched it in his teeth and lit it and drew on it and set it against the lip of the bowl.

  Pero, I will tell you something, the man said, if I may.r />
  Sure.

  The man leaned up against the table and resumed the posture of his pressed hands and tilted them at the boy. You know how it is said about the dignity of man? It is said a man’s dignity is his free will. Pero, you are very young, no?

  I reckon.

  Yes. In the very young the will is strong. Very strong. Perhaps too much. Perhaps it is no my place to say. Pero, I see in you it is strong past reason.

  It’s what?

  The man’s eyes flickered from the boy, then came back quickly to him. He asked the boy to please let him speak.

  It is strong past the reason of things, he went on. It is a tricky thing, free will.

  With this he wagged his hands at the boy as if to make him believe it.

  It can be very good, but it is no good without reason. With reason it stays some in the mind and not too much in the heart, where it likes most to be. Pero, without reason it is too much in the heart. It makes a flood in the heart, like blood, but it is not blood. It is free will. And it tells the heart that whatever it believes is all there is to believe.

  The boy took up his cigarette and rolled the ash from it into the bowl. He looked down at his lap again. Excuse me sir, he said. But I don’t really care for a sermon right now.

  The man laughed out loud. Though it seemed contrary to his appearance, the laughter came clear and easy.

  I am no preacher, he said. Yes, one day long ago I think about it, but there is a problem with such men. They become too close to God and they forget about men. After a time they no more can speak to men because men are not perfect, like God. They talk only to a perfect being, so they forget how men are. Men are just men. Mira, what I am telling you. It is just a story.

  The boy stayed looking down at his lap.

  A man’s will can no change everything, you see? There would be no dignity to it. It would be very bad like this, only wills fighting against each other and no seeing things outside that will in their hearts. Pero, I do not know if this is you. All I am saying is that I am looking at you and this is what I see.