The Sound of the Trees Read online

  It ain’t all pillows and perfume here yet boy, he said. Watch yourself.

  He handed the boy a key and went back through the door.

  Yes sir, the boy said to the closed door. I’ll try.

  Down the gravel path that wound behind the inn the boy walked his horse and mule to the half-shut barn door. He pushed the door full open with a long creak. A fine hay dust floated in a single layer at the height of the loft. He unsaddled the horse and uncinched the saddlebag from the mule.

  He brought the proprietor’s horse out from her stall and in the weak light examined the ribcage, stark and black on its underbelly. He fed them all greatly and watered them in a cheap tin trough against a wall of shredded tack.

  He walked to a window on the north wall and looked out through the cracked glass. The sun was like a sunken moon, its copper crown barely outlining the distant mountains and coming into the barn to cast his own shadow long and pallid on the dirt floor. The air was cool and fresh coming down from the foothills and the boy thought it was indeed pretty country and he did not stop himself from thinking that it was a sign of the Colorado country to come, and though he tried to, he could not stop from thinking how fine his mother would have found it to be.

  He walked back to Triften and put his face against her neck.

  We could use us a rest, Trift, couldn’t we? he whispered to her. Just for a while.

  A bird called out from the recesses of the night. He listened for more but none came, only the distortions of guitar and fiddle from a dance hall down the lane. Out in the plaza came the flare of gooseneck lanterns that encircled the town to burnish the sky. He touched the mare’s nose when she raised her head at the distant flash of light. Then he led them all back to the stalls and drew the lock across the gate. For a long time he stood and watched the horses in the dark.

  SIX

  THE ROAD WEST was all gravel. For the first time in many months the boy rode his mare without the mule trailing and she bore down on the wind, her hot breath burning in the morning’s dark. They rode for two steady hours, past a dry creekbed where a flurry of deer were foraging the sedge and underbrush and past a procession of farm trucks in which young Mexican boys sat in the flatbeds and held to the tying rails and tilted their hats down over their sleepy eyes.

  When he reached the ranch of Charlie Ford the boy whoaed his horse and looked down upon the great slab of metal and wheel before him. The pickup truck the old men had spoken of was nearly buried beneath the ground. It stood up on its end and high in the air the hood was flung open and flower and wildflower alike spilled from the chassis where the engine had once been.

  The rancher was out in the pastures herding cattle into an empty paddock. Looking out at the rancher moving the cattle like a slow drift of cloud, the boy recalled the times his mother watched him riding the plains from the kitchen window when his father had not come home for days and he was forced to work the horses and cattle long into the evening. Looking out now, he noticed how well the man sat his horse. He cut the cattle with an ease more beautiful than any song or book. The mountains behind the horse and rider seemed as though they had bore those figures up from the bosom of their own dark and soundless souls, bore them up to once again make pretty the world.

  An hour later the rancher rode down from the sun and into the blue shadows that the barn cast upon the boy. He was still squatting by the fence pole and smoking and watching the cattle. When the boy saw the rancher’s horse start into a high trot he raised up and flung the cigarette into the grass. He put up a hand.

  Charlie Ford rode the fence line with the gelding beneath him snapping the sweat from his head. The rancher was long and thick in the shoulders and tall besides and he wore no beard nor mustache but only a red stubble which he wiped with the back of his hand. His blue shirt was stained purple with sweat and as he came upon the boy he declared, What a day, stepping down from the stirrups and into the fresh cold mud.

  He fixed the belt buckle at his waist and struck off a pair of yellow cowhide gloves. Well now, he said. Can I help you with something, son?

  The boy took down his hat and fingered back his hair and held the hat at his hip. I come about my horse, he said. He walked over to the mare and took her by the lead rope and stroked her nose. Her name’s Triften.

  Charlie Ford looked the horse over, slapping the gloves he held bunched in his hand against his pant leg. Good lookin, he said. You aimin to sell her?

  No sir. Hell no.

  Charlie Ford watched the boy’s face tighten and he put up a hand. No offense meant, he said. Just that it’s gotten so that anyone who comes by here seems to want to get rid of somethin they can’t use no more. So what is it you need from me?

  I need some shoes for her, that’s all. And maybe a wash and a brush down.

  Yes, I believe she could use that. She don’t look so hot.

  Yes sir. I know it.

  Well. What’s your name, son?

  Trude.

  Trude? That’s all?

  Trude Mason.

  The rancher swathed his hand across his pant leg and held it out to the boy. I’m Charlie Ford.

  I know it. Some men in town told me to come see you.

  They shook. The rancher lowered his head and rolled it and snorted at the ground.

  Old cigar smokers?

  Yes sir. That’d be them.

  Charlie Ford swiped at his chaps with his hat and snorted again.

  Sons of bitches always gettin in the middle of things to which they don’t belong. I’m tellin you son, stay away from that pair. That is, if you want to keep anything of yours private. That town down there ain’t but seven years old from the time they laid the first brick but those boys will have you believe it’s Rome with all the stories they sling around.

  I guess I figured them for that.

  Then you done some good figurin. That’s a sign of good character. It’s good to have character, specially seein how scarce it is these days. Charlie Ford wiped the side of his face and looked out at the cattle which were plodding unthoughtfully about the paddock mud.

  Well, the boy said. Is there a ferrier about?

  Charlie Ford turned from the cattle and tilted his hat from his eyes as if to witness some improbability. Ain’t enough money in the mayor’s own pocket to rustle up a ferrier these days, he said. Around these parts at least. It’s like everything else nowdays. I do it myself.

  Who stands the horses?

  When I’m puttin on their shoes?

  Yes sir.

  Hell, son. If I couldn’t trust my own horses, there wouldn’t be nothin left at all. I’d just as soon pack my bags and move to China.

  They walked the horses to the barn. The air was crisp and the breath from all four noses rose to wind through the low trees like cotton twine. The rancher’s gelding drew back and slowed and sidled over and sniffed Triften’s backside and Charlie Ford scolded him, telling him not to be like them old men at the cantina and that the only business he needed mindin was his own.

  He showed the boy to an empty stall where he put up his mare. The boy followed him to the back of the barn where they walked through a door into the grain room and then through another door which opened onto a small foldout table and two wooden chairs whose legs were cut to fit the table.

  Damnation, the boy said, looking around, I ain’t never seen a kitchen in a barn.

  Charlie Ford looked around as though he hadn’t seen the room in a long time. No, he said. I don’t suppose you have. There’s a story to it, though. When I was a boy, about the same age as you, I expect, I was constantly wantin to invent something new.

  He walked over to a sink basin and took down two mugs from a cabinet above his head and took up a rag and ran it under the tap and scrubbed out the mugs. Ain’t that a dandy, he said, turning to the boy. Somethin new’s what I always wanted and now it’s the last thing on earth I crave.

  Charlie Ford went to a small oven range and lit up a fresh pile of wood beneath it and filled a p
ot with water and set it atop a metal range plate and covered it with an outsized lid.

  I knew a rancher wasn’t hardly new and that a rancher would always be a rancher, so I figured I’d be the first to feed himself and his horses at the same time. Turns out I think they like it when I eat with em. Eatin a meal together has got its own type of communication, I believe.

  He looked at the boy, who was standing in the middle of the room watching the water heat, then waved his hand in dismissal.

  Make yourself a seat, he said.

  He dredged the coffee into the mugs and brought them to the table and offered the boy a bowl of sugar. The boy stirred a spoonful into his coffee. Charlie Ford held out a cigarette from his shirt pocket and the boy took it. Then Ford turned the other chair around and sat with his elbows on the backrest and they sat smoking and drinking coffee.

  How come that truck’s buried out front of your drive?

  Charlie Ford looked through his coffee, then off behind the boy. Well, he said. I reckon I ought to have gotten used to bein asked about that but somehow I haven’t. He shook his big heavy head at the coffee. It’s a gravestone, he said finally.

  The boy nodded unsurely but did not speak. Ford looked up at him. It seemed he wanted to inspect just what the idea had done to the boy.

  It’s the truck I bought for my wife when we moved up here, he said. She came up with me from Texas when Texas wasn’t worth a damn. We was in Odessa where oil and booze were the only things that moved a man out of bed in the morning, and that wasn’t enough for me. Anne Marie, that was her name. She said she’d come with me if I bought her a truck. Charlie Ford chuckled to himself at that. Boy she was tough-minded, that girl. I didn’t have a dime to spit-shine but somehow I was able to scrape together enough work to buy it for her. I’d of bought her the world, I was so crazy for her.

  He lifted his elbows off the backrest and set them forward on the table.

  One day she set off to town and didn’t come back. I knew what it was before I could even think it. I rode out that night and found the truck overturned in a gravel ditch just outside of town. She was dead long before I found her. The roof had come down so hard on her head I wouldn’t of been able to know it was her unless I smelled her perfume beneath the burning metal.

  The boy looked down at the floor. I’m sorry about that, he said.

  Well. You couldn’t of done nothin for it.

  I mean I’m sorry about askin.

  Charlie Ford looked up at the boy. Then he looked into his coffee. He lifted the mug and held it to his mouth for a few seconds. Hell, he said. That’s the one thing you should never be sorry for. Askin is about the one thing you can count on for gettin somethin in return. No matter if the answer’s good or bad.

  He leaned forward again and stubbed out the cigarette with his swollen fingers in the metal shell of an old curry brush.

  Automobile, he said, drawing the word out slowly. You’ve only got two choices with them things. Either it gets you there a hell of a lot faster or it gets you there dead.

  I ain’t never been much for driving myself, the boy said. I wouldn’t even know how to get it turned on.

  Charlie Ford laughed. Son, he said, believe it or not, I think that may be somethin to be proud of.

  He brought another mug of coffee for the boy and one for himself. In the barn the boy could hear the horses talking to one another between the stalls.

  Now there ain’t another ranch for twenty miles in any direction. So where’d you come in from?

  Down south. Grant County.

  Comin from far off. Making for cattle?

  No sir, just movin away.

  What ranch were you at down there?

  Mason ranch. It was my dad’s. Hatley Mason.

  The name felt odd and cold on his lips and he set down his coffee. Charlie Ford leaned forward and tapped his cigarette ash in the curry brush and pointed a bent finger at the boy.

  Hatley Mason, he said. I heard of you all. That was a hellfire of a ranch, I recollect. Now that was quite a long time ago but it sure was a fine one, I remember.

  It ain’t no more. The boy lifted up his coffee mug and tilted it to his lips. It sure ain’t no more, he said.

  Well. That is a shame.

  Yes sir.

  The smoke clogged the room and spun off in thin spindles where the rancher waved his hand through it. He coughed and waved his hand again. So are you lookin for work now? he said.

  The boy shrugged. Depends on who’s offerin.

  Ford bent a thumb back toward the door.

  You seen that old pile of sticks in town they call the barroom? That’s standin where my first paddock was. Used to run a crazy old colt out there during the wintertime. Back then I had enough money for the talent but not the temperament. Never could break that sumbitch, so when they came and took my land off me I had to let him go. Didn’t figure he’d soften just on account of geography. But there wasn’t no way I was goin to leave him for them town councilmen. They’d of just turned around and put him to the auction pens. That horse’s spirit alone was worth more money than all their characters combined. If I’d of known it would turn this bad though, I’d of held on to him. Tried him one more time.

  Charlie Ford spread a hand out on the table.

  I’d like to help you son, he said, but it can’t be me who’s offerin. I don’t got the head I used to and I don’t got the money to pay you right wages, and I know what it’s like to be shortchanged, so I ain’t goin to even start to do it to you.

  He shook his head and drank from his mug and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand again. Ranchin is chancin, he said.

  Yes sir.

  They drank their coffee quietly for a while. In the stillness of the room the horse’s voices came loud and from outside the boy could hear the cattle shouldering into the crossposts of the paddock. He remembered the day when his own family’s herd was auctioned off, and how he had opened the door at dawn on that Sunday morning to the scarred face of the auctioneer who told him to get everything ready because folks were wanting to make church service after the sale. He recalled how they had sold poorly on account of his father’s constant heckling of the bidders and the threats he unleashed upon the auctioneer who stood on a peach crate by the tree beneath the boy’s bedroom window. He remembered how he had watched the cattle being driven off from the auction pen and en route to a rancher down in Bayard who nodded solemnly after his final bid and went to the auction stand and took down the papers from the auctioneer who had to grapple them loose from his father’s clutch and signed them and folded them up tight and placed them in his breast pocket and turned toward the pastures without ever looking up again.

  I don’t know what to tell you exactly, son. Charlie Ford got up with a groan and cleared the coffee mugs off the table and set them on the sideboard under a mirrored cabinet. The loggers cleared out of here about a year ago, he said. It’s too damn brittle here anyway to get good wood. You want any work that pays money, you got to go look in town these days. I don’t know how you feel about the railroad business, but the way I understand it they’ll be movin in right soon. Other than that, I just don’t know. You got any school under your belt?

  I couldn’t say too much. The boy pushed back from his chair and pulled the corner of his vest up to reveal the dirk knife he had sheathed in his belt. He rolled back his shoulder to drive the old ache out of it. That’s about all, he said.

  Shit, Charlie Ford said. I swear to you we were the same damn person in some time or another, exceptin you’re a mite quieter.

  Well, the boy said. I hope not always to be that way.

  * * *

  The boy helped steady the mare while Charlie Ford set her shoes and they watered her down with the horse stomping on the barn floor. The boy scrubbed her mane and her neck and he scrubbed down her barrel and withers and combed her crest and brushed her thighs and cannons. Charlie Ford wrung a sponge with fly oil over her back and the boy dried her down and in the late
afternoon he led her out of the barn and into the drive.

  She looked like a new animal unshelved from God’s rack with her brushed forearms flexing and the muscles of her shoulders rifling and twitching. The boy walked around her and regarded her with great pride and he thanked the rancher who stood watching them with a rag in his hand. When the boy finally mounted her, Charlie Ford raised the rag up and shook it at them.

  Good luck findin a piece of work, he called out. You need anything else, don’t hesitate to come a callin. I always like the sight of a galloping mare comin down over the hill.

  I’ll do that.

  Charlie Ford lifted his hat and squinted against the sun and smiled curiously upon the boy. He pointed at the horse, her smooth glinting mane. You might want to try the same for yourself, he said.

  Shit, the boy said, shaking his head. I reckon I’ll have to do that too.

  On the way back to town the boy rode the mare at a trot. Triften’s hindquarters swept through the grasses to stir up old dead leaves from the outcropping trees, her shining barrel making her look as if she’d just recovered from some long waged war, or as if in sudden preparation for its coming.

  * * *

  HE STEPPED INTO the barbershop east of the plaza with the barber watching him through the mirror.

  Well look here, he said to the boy without turning. I reckon you’re just in time before you’d have to start wearin ribbons.

  He sat for nearly an hour with the light going away and the barber cutting off his long brown hair and speaking affably to him, turning the chair from time to time to study his work with a grind from the chair’s oilless swivel.

  When he finished he brought forth a thick blue lather and a straight razor with a carved oak handle. The old barber shaved the boy’s soft stubble with a shaking hand but his touch was smooth along his neck, as if he’d willed the trembling out when the blade touched the boy’s skin.

  In the dark of the night he went through the foyer and past the low leather chairs, running his fingers along the broad backboards and gripping the banister rail. Up the stairs he went down the dark hallway, past the low burning lamps and the pale flowers on the sideboard and into his room.