The Boys in the Trees

by Mary Swan

  He must have made a sound, some sound, for she was suddenly very still. She raised her eyes and they looked at each other through a mesh of dead canes, maybe eight feet apart, maybe only six. And he couldn’t move and she didn’t move and it seemed they would be frozen that way forever, not even breathing, locked to each other forever. Until a bird cawed, a door opened, a voice called her name. And he scrambled to his feet and began to run, things snatching at him, running faster, tearing his Sunday shirt on the splintered fence, running as if something was right behind him.

  • • •

  He thought about telling Shiner what he’d seen that day, but something in him was uneasy about saying it out loud. It was one of those things, and there seemed to be more and more of them, that floated around in his head, things he didn’t have a place to put. Every day Rachel went to meet her father coming home and they walked together, her father looking down at her, Rachel looking up. They walked together like that every day, like two people who loved each other more than anything. Eaton had that picture in his head, and he couldn’t get it to fit with what had happened. Shiner’s father, so free with his fists and boots, that would have made some sense, but Shiner was still alive, sitting beside him on the hard wooden step while the daylight opened up the yard, the loose-boarded shed, the leftover stalks of last year’s garden.

  Shiner said his father had told him about a hanging he’d seen when he was a boy, sitting on his own father’s shoulders. He said that in those days a beam jutted from the second floor of the courthouse, that a man just stepped out into the air, spun and danced at the end of a rope while everyone cheered. He’d seen another hanging when he was older, before they built the wall around the jail. Told Shiner how the man was wailing like a woman, had to be dragged up the thirteen steps to the scaffold. But Rachel’s father wouldn’t die like that either. There was a new method, described in the newspaper, involving pulleys and a heavy weight. A scientific method, the newspaper said, and not so cruel. The day before Eaton had walked by the jail after school, heard hammer blows ringing out and thought about Rachel’s father in his dungeon, hearing the same thing. His father had told his mother that Mr. Heath didn’t say a word, those times he went to check him over. Just sat on his cot, looking down at his clasped hands. Eaton thought that might have been in one of his nightmares, the clasped hands with their odd long fingernails. He thought about what it would be like, hearing a normal sound like nails knocking into wood and knowing it was the sound of your death. Wishing, probably wishing that you’d used that last bullet, that you hadn’t been taken alive.

  It was one of Shiner’s brothers who had found him, his brother Mick, up to something in the heart of the wood, in a spot the sun rarely reached. He’d heard the news in town and thought there might be a reward; otherwise he would have just kept going. A man with a gun in the shadows no business of his. But he’d heard the news and so he went for the constable, running when he thought he was far enough away, tripping twice, his hands covered with leaf slime. He had to convince Street, convince the others who promised him a hiding and a night in the cells if he was up to his usual tricks. A thick fist bunched in the neck of his shirt as he led them back, certain that Heath would have fled, that he would be for it.

  But Heath hadn’t fled, was sitting in exactly the same spot, leaning against the rough bark of the oak tree. His hands dangling, one holding the gun, his eyes open but not seeming to look at anything. The big men hunkered down, whispered a plan, and Mick slipped away back to town, quite forgetting why he’d gone there in the first place. He told Luft from the newspaper that he’d exchanged words with Heath, but that they made no sense and he couldn’t remember what they were. A number of people told Luft that they’d seen Heath that day, or in the days before, that his eyes were dark and mad, flecks of foam on his lips. But Mick told Shiner that he’d looked just like always, only maybe a little sadder.

  • • •

  They couldn’t wait any longer for Will, so Shiner ate the last of the cake and then tied the wrapping around his face like an outlaw. Stick ’em up, he said, pointing his finger at Eaton, the white cloth sucking into his mouth and then releasing. Don’t shoot, Eaton said, in a high, squeaky voice. I’ll give you all the gold. Shiner knew everything about cowboys, and he had a plan to light out for the Wild West as soon as his mother was better. They played train robbery and posse all over town, in the empty bandshell, down by the river, or often in Quint’s woods. Once they tied Will to a stripling tree, tied him tight with a piece of rope Shiner had around his waist. He was a captive, about to be tortured, and they would ride to save him in the nick of time. Will got them to scatter bits of twigs and dried grass around in a circle; all his favorite games had fire in them. Joan of Arc at the stake, Shadrach-Meshach-Abednego in the blazing furnace. He called out Help help, save me, as they ran from the clearing, and without even talking about it they kept on running until they were tired and flopped down in the long grass in Badgers’ Field, the sun hot on their upturned faces. Serves him right, Shiner said, after a while. Shiner went to school as often as he had to and he said that the last caning he got was for drawing a rude picture on the teacher’s blotter. He said he knew who had really done it but Will hadn’t said a word, just sat watching like all the rest. Serves him right, Shiner said again. Hear that? And Eaton thought he heard a faint voice still calling, calling their names.

  When they went back later, much later, Will was gone, the rope still looped in loose coils around the tree. That made it a different kind of thing but Will never mentioned it, and neither did they. Eaton flinched from the thought whenever it came to him, burned with shame when he remembered the extra tug he had given, tightening the knot, the glee he had felt, running away.

  • • •

  They knew how to move through the town without being seen. Through back lanes, bent low beneath windows, along the narrow alleyways between stores. Drifter Dan knew an Indian trick, wrapped himself in dusty skins to creep up on something and they tried that once, tugging down a blanket that was airing on a line, but Mrs. Bell came shouting through her back door and they had to run for their lives.

  There was a little round man who got off the train every month or so with cases of ribbons and hair combs that he sold to Becks’, to other places in town. His cases weren’t heavy, but if Shiner carried them right up to his room he gave him a few of the thin-paper novels, stories about Drifter Dan and Buffalo Bill, about detectives like Old King Carter, about the Dane brothers, who were masters of disguise. Shiner could read but he was slow so he gave them to Eaton, sometimes to Will, said they could just tell him what happened. Eaton’s mother threw Whiskey Sam into the fire, and then he had to keep the books under the straw in a corner of Prince’s stall; a horsey, Wild West smell rose when he turned the pages.

  Shiner called the round man Old Filthy, and sometimes when he put the latest novels in Eaton’s hands he said, You still love them, don’t you? In the stories the evildoers had glittering eyes and sallow faces, sometimes a mustache thin as a pen stroke. It was easy to tell them apart from the innocent townsfolk, and they always came to a bad end, even if it took several episodes.

  The three of them didn’t have reversible clothes and wigs but they taught themselves how to follow people just like the Dane brothers did, like Jim Wise, Boy Detective. It wasn’t easy; the first time a man with big hands spun around and grabbed Shiner, gave him a shake and said he’d tan his hide. When they were together it was always Shiner who drew the trouble. It wasn’t fair at all, but no one seemed able to know that it was usually Will who was behind the worst things. Dropping a lit match in the long grass at the edge of the fairgrounds, tipping over a bin of flour in Hatch’s grocery. Once throwing a rock that startled a horse and ended up with two wagons overturned on the road, splintered wood and a man with blood dripping down his face. Before his mother died Will wouldn’t even spit but now he was up to all kinds of things, wild and sneaky things. More and more careless, and Eaton was s
ure that one of these times people who would never have thought it would have to see, and then he would be sorry. He would have to be sorry.

  • • •

  Even from the back lane they could hear sounds of the town awake, and when they came carefully out of the alley beside McAdam’s hardware store it was like a photograph come to life, horses, buggies, a dog or two, and people walking quickly. Right across from them was Marl’s pharmacy, the swirly gold lettering on the deep blue sign, and Eaton looked, like he always did, for the ghostly B that still showed through from when it used to be Barnes’. His father had showed him that once when he was smaller, and it must have been his father who told him that the store belonged to Miss Alice’s father, before he died. That some people thought, his father thought, that Mr. Marl could have waited a little longer before painting over his name. That had something to do with why Eaton went to the Barnes’ school, and not to the new stone building on the hill. Mrs. Barnes was fluttery and strange but Miss Alice had a way of talking, a way of explaining that led you to the answer without even thinking that it was hard to find. She had a way of saying your name that made you feel you were important to her, and when he first went to school he used to wonder what it would be like if she was his mother. He couldn’t imagine her cross, couldn’t imagine her scraping skin with a hard brush, her face all red and dripping from the rising steam. He knew, though, that it wasn’t a right thought to have, so he changed it to an older sister. Someone connected to him who would give him hugs and tease him, who would muss his hair but always look out for him, always take his part. And he thought maybe his older sister would make his mother happier too. Someone who wouldn’t tangle the wool when she held it to wind, someone who wouldn’t mind carrying her basket from store to store on a sunny Saturday. Someone she could talk to, instead of being quiet behind the closed door of her room.

  Miss Sarah was Miss Alice’s older sister, but except for their faces they were nothing alike. Miss Sarah reminded him of the angles they had to draw with a ruler and sharp pencil, all straight, hard lines. Men laughed at her, standing outside Malley’s with a fistful of pamphlets, but she was too fierce to feel sorry for. Sometimes at the Band of Hope she made her voice go soft and kind but that was just a trick, just the way she made her stories work. Starting off with a happy family around a dinner table, beside the fire, a world that made you think nothing bad could ever happen.

  Rachel’s sister was peculiar; he’d heard that even before he saw her swallowing down dirt in the bare yard. But the two of them often sat together on their front porch and he’d heard them talking, heard Rachel talking anyway, nothing in her voice to say she was doing it in a special way, in a way you might talk to a dog or a baby that couldn’t understand. Mostly that was where Rachel was after school, sitting on the porch with her sister Lil, or somewhere inside the house. She wasn’t one of those girls who plaited flowers on the riverbank, sometimes hiking their skirts almost to their knees and shrieking in the cold, green water. The ones he and Will, Shiner too, liked to ambush, bursting out of the trees with fierce war cries, sending them scattering. Once they came whooping and the girls didn’t scream, did nothing at all but carry on talking, placing wreaths on each other’s heads. Until Shiner scooped up a handful of spring mud, threw it with a splat that landed on a white sleeve. Mud flying everywhere, the girls throwing it back, until a stone hit Bella in the nose and made her cry. Running back to the trees they heard her shouting, You filthy boys, you filthy disgusting boys!

  Rachel wasn’t one of those girls but she could have been; everyone liked her, and she was never ignored outside the church on a Sunday morning. But except for the schoolroom Eaton only saw her sitting with her sister Lil, or walking with her mother or her father. Once in a while by herself on the walk in front of their house, bouncing a ball and clapping twice, clapping three times before she caught it. Not long after they came to town she did once call to him from her front porch and they played jackstraws, their heads almost touching as they hunched together, sliding the sticks from the jumbled pile. Rachel was good at it; she looked and looked before she did anything, seemed to know which sticks didn’t matter and which were the important ones, holding everything in place. Not that one, she said, but he eased it out anyway and the whole thing came tumbling down. On her next turn she looked and looked, and then suddenly she said, There’s my papa! Jumped to her feet, the toe of her boot scattering the pile, snapping one thin stick into pieces, and ran down the step, ran to where a dark-dressed shape was just rounding a far corner, and the shape bent forward, maybe touched her forehead with his own, before they came slowly down the street together.

  • • •

  Eaton and Shiner stepped boldly now, enough people around to cover them, and made their way along the sidewalk. Right at McAdam’s, right again at the bank on the next corner, past the market square and toward the high-walled jail. It reminded Eaton of going to the fair, or the time Lucy took him to the revival tent. Something in the way people greeted each other, in the sound of their voices, the way their eyes flicked from face to face. A kind of hum, a sense of everything stretched so tightly it might even snap. Like Drifter Dan in The Wolf on the War-Path, he emptied his mind so that he could take in everything, all his senses honed. The hum was in Shiner’s voice too when he said, Come on, twisting his way through the crowd in the street, turning to see that Eaton was following. He was suddenly glad that Will had funked it, although he was someone he saw almost every day of his life, someone whose house he knew as well as his own. He had once sobbed in Will’s kitchen; he couldn’t remember why, only that Mrs. Toller was still alive, that she had put her arms around him, rocked him back and forth, made a joke while they both dried their eyes.

  Will’s father would have thundered if he knew about the hours spent with Shiner, and that was maybe part of why he’d stayed away. Everyone knew them, knew all three, and someone would be bound to say. It was true that Shiner was good at filching candy, at sliding sweet buns up his sleeve. True that he was often in fights, but only with a reason. There was no reason in the things Will sometimes did, the things that just seemed to burst out of him. He smiled sweetly when the town ladies asked how he did, poor motherless boy, and sometimes he was like he used to be, but even then there was a possibility of wildness just held in, of something that could swirl loose at any moment. That’s how it seemed to Eaton. Like a horse that would stand still and nuzzle your hand, then suddenly kick out a mean, sharp hoof.

  • • •

  From away by the river the church bell rang seven, and he felt each clang to the toes of his dusty boots. A man with a crumpled black hat was arguing in a doorway with two other men, who were shouting with their hands on their hips. One walked away but the other took something from his pocket and the crumpled man moved aside, pointing up the stairway behind him. Looking up, Eaton saw that the low ridge on the rooftop was lined with faces. When he looked back Shiner was gone but he didn’t panic, used his scout sense to scan for the gray shirt and finally found him right by the wall of the jail, talking to his brother. Not Mick but the oldest one, Bash, who had been in jail for cutting a woman with a knife. Shiner was asking for money to get onto the roof and his brother threw a silver coin in the air but caught it just out of his reach, laughed a hard laugh as his hand closed around it. Shiner spat on the ground, but not until Bash was almost across the street. I know a better place anyway, he said, and they followed the wall to the corner, chose the tree with the lowest branches, Shiner’s hard, bare foot pushing off from Eaton’s clasped hands as he boosted him up.

  • • •

  When he was younger, he sometimes went out with his father. Not on his calls in town but on longer rides, along dusty roads, through twisting tracks with overhanging trees. Sometimes they sang songs and sometimes Eaton sat on his father’s lap and held the reins, but he couldn’t really drive because Prince was younger then too, and unpredictable. Once his father told him about a friend he’d had, and how they comp
eted for everything, even the same girl. But you won, Eaton said, and his father smiled. Then he said that one of these times they’d bring fishing poles, see if they could catch a big fish and Lucy would cook it for their supper.

  Sometimes Eaton’s father would bring him inside and the farm women would make a fuss over the Doctor’s boy, sit him at a table with a plate of bread and jam. Sometimes he had to wait outside in the buggy, and the waiting could go on and on. Once they drove up a long lane, and when they came near the square stone house there was a woman standing by the wall, her apron pulled up over her face. She brought her hands down, came to meet them when she heard their turning wheels; her face had more freckles than Eaton had ever seen, and he wondered if that was why she was hiding. That was one of the times his father told him to wait in the buggy and he did, but it was a very long time. He was so thirsty waiting, and he thought that it would be all right if he looked for a pump or a well behind the quiet house. He didn’t find a pump, but he did find a freckle-faced boy about his own size, and they climbed an apple tree, pelted each other with the hard, green fruit, and chased around the barn a few times. The boy said there were kittens inside and they opened a creaking door, climbed a rough wooden ladder up to the hay, and lay on their stomachs looking at the nest the striped cat had circled out for herself, the wet, blind things squeaking around her. Next time you come, you can take one home, the boy said, his face so close that Eaton could feel the breath of his words.

  His father’s calling was angry and his foot slipped going down the ladder; he almost fell, and that made him run faster, back to the waiting buggy. There was a small sack at his father’s feet and when Eaton opened it he saw wizened potatoes, smelled something rotten. They’re no good, he said, and his father told him it didn’t matter, told him that you had to take what people were able to give you, even if it wasn’t what you really wanted.