The Trees

by Conrad Richter

THIS would be a strange summer, Worth gave out. All signs the past winter had been hindforemost. It had black frost early in October that the axe couldn’t chop the ground. And by New Year the little white butterflies ran on their wings through the naked woods. A dogwood bloomed on Old Christmas. Genny wanted to break off some branches and fetch them in the cabin for a nosegay, but Worth said sternly any tree that blossomed on the wrong side of the year had no good in it. Bees and flies that were foolish enough to come out now and suck its honey would die.

  Up on the other side of the world where the North Pole stuck out of the ice like an old chestnut stub, it had plenty of winter. More than one evening they stood outside looking up through the bare branches at the Northern Lights. The Shawanees called them Dancing Ghosts, but any white person knew it was only the midnight sun shining on the ice and snow. Red fingers kept clawing up to the middle of the heavens. One time they were here and one time yonder. Yes, it had plenty winter up in that far place, but by the time it came down here, the snow in the clouds had melted to rain. The trees stood black and dripping when they should have been white and froze stiff as pokers.

  After most every rain the sun came out like April. Snakes crawled from their dens deep down in the red shell, and hoppy toads jumped from under your feet. You couldn’t tell when spring came except for the leaves. Long before the turn of summer the woods were chockful of tiny things that buzzed and flew. Mosquitoes whined around your head like a water sawmill, and millers you didn’t see as a rule till late summer came in clouds out of nowhere. The river was white with them.

  “It was a black winter,” Worth said. “Now we’re a gittin’ a white summer. No human knows how this’ll end up.”

  It looked to Sayward that even years printed in an almanac must have off ones. Gray squirrels sometimes gave black ones. Once in a while you heard of a white crow. Worth had shot a deer one time pale as an ermine weasel. But such meat was tainted and he didn’t fetch any of it home. Some said you could see a white deer running through the woods on the darkest night. The spoiled flesh glowed and glirred in the dark like fox fire.

  Most every day now the white fog smoke lay over the bottoms. It came, Worth said, out of the wet ground and it fetched up with it all the fearsome swamp poisons. When water sinks in the ground it cleans itself of rot and stink, let it be green beforehand as a spotted rattlesnake’s venom. So long as it keeps on sinking, it doesn’t hurt any, not even the eels and slimy things that live in the mud, for the earth is deep and has fires down in the middle to burn out what is foul. That’s how spring water comes out sweet and clear. But once swamp water is drawn back out of the ground, then it fetches all the poisons with it and everything that sucks breath has to watch out.

  “It all comes from these plagued squatters!” Worth stormed. “The trees they burn make smoke. The smoke makes rain. And the rain draws out the fog.”

  The livelong day now you could hear some new squatter’s axe or saw in the forest. Some hailed from Kentucky and came poling up the river with their six-foot rifles sticking out of one end of their boats and a half-wild hog sticking its snout out of the other. A few came off Zane’s trace from the old states, beating what stock they had through the bush. It hadn’t a cabin, Worth said, that didn’t have some body sick in it. The swamp pestilence hung in the air night and day, and most everybody had it. Portius Wheeler, the young Bay State lawyer who bached somewhere beyond the post, gave out calomel pills till he didn’t have any for himself, and now he shook on his bad days like any person who never went to school a day in his life. The Indians came for miles to see George Roebuck shake. When the trader felt a spell coming on, he took off his leather apron and stood in his bare chest and back and shook till the fever stood out on him.

  This was the only time Sayward heard Worth speak Jary’s name in a year. Jary, he said, would know what to do if she were alive. Jary always had her teas and herbs hanging in the cabin to doctor with when one got sick. She’d be piling covers on when they had their chills and dosing them with hot teas to get their fever over with. But Sayward felt glad her mother wasn’t here. She wouldn’t like to see that worn out body with one foot in the grave huddle against the table or log wall and shake till God Almighty would take a little pity and say she had enough.

  She only wished she had had the sense to ask her mother how she used to make her moss and lemon tea. Moss lemonade, Jary would call it. Not a lemon did Jary have or see since she married Worth Luckett, unless it was the time she went back home on a visit, but you’d swear she had cut up a whole yellow fruit that had come across the sea in a frigate from Spain. Leastwise that’s how Sayward and Genny reckoned a lemon would taste. Cold or hot, nothing could cool your fever quicker. And if you set it in the run to chill, it turned into moss jelly for an ailing person to eat with the spoon. Just to think of it made a body’s mouth water. But the only part of the receipt Sayward remembered was that you had to wash the moss through five waters. What moss it was and what you did then was forever buried now under the big white oak.

  Taking all together, Sayward thought they were luckier than most. They had their shakes every other day. Never were they all sick and down at the same time with nobody to tend them or cook their rations. Some were always up and around while the others lay in their beds. Achsa and Wyitt minded their sumach poison worse than their shakes. All night you could hear them squirming and scratching up in the loft. When Sayward found they were raw to their middles, she made Wyitt show himself to Worth and Worth took a mess of sang roots to Roebuck’s to trade for salt. Salt was mighty dear to have on the table but for medicine he reckoned it wasn’t too high. When he came back, Sayward took those two out and made them strip themselves. Then she sopped water that was salty as the sea on their legs and middles.

  She told herself she hadn’t noticed up to now how Achsa had been filling out. If she had to do it again, she’d have taken her out by herself. Not that it mattered for Achsa to see Wyitt, for Achsa had washed him more than once when he was little. A boy was nothing much to look at anyway. Now a girl almost filled out into a woman was different. But Wyitt never even looked at Achsa. He couldn’t hold still long enough for Sayward to sop the rag on a second time. The first touch of that salt on his raw parts and he would run up and down the path for all he was worth, hollering at the top of his lungs, yelling anything that came into his mouth till the pain let up enough for Sayward to get close to him with the rag again.

  But Achsa stood like a brown Shawanee and never let out a screech although she was scratched open the worse. And that, Sayward thought, was how it must have started. If Achsa had run and hollered and let the poison out like Wyitt, she might have been all right. All she did was shut her teeth and drive the poison in. Oh, it fooled them for a while. Sayward blamed herself she didn’t catch on sooner. She might have ciphered it out next day. As a rule a body with the shakes could be down ready to die one time and not long after be up and sassy as a jaybird. But Achsa didn’t get up after her shakes next day. She said she felt tired and expected she’d stay in her bed.

  And that was the last time she ever had the shakes. She lay in her loft bed a spell and by the time Sayward fetched her down to her and Genny’s bed, she was that gaunt her bones stuck out. Sayward boiled May apple tea and made her drink it scalding hot but it never fetched out a lick of sweat.

  Next day she felt a little warmer and the next. She wouldn’t take the tea now. She just lay and shut her teeth and her eyes sulled up at you defiant as a young Indian’s. All she wanted was cold run water and that she couldn’t have.

  “Give her cold water and you’ll kill her,” Worth warned. “I mind when Jary was down with the fever, the Lancaster doctor wouldn’t let her have a drop.”

  Although it was a warm day in the woods, he kept a brisk fire going in the cabin to burn the air clean for the sick. Every time Achsa moaned for water, his lips moved. By evening Achsa was the hottest Sayward had ever felt a body. The heat reared up and struck you in the face when you o
nly came near her. Worth said he couldn’t make out how flesh could get that hot and not fry or burn.

  All through supper Achsa called for water.

  “God Almighty, come down through the roof boards and fetch me some water!” she yelled once.

  It made the young ones thirstier but Worth touched no water for himself this night. At last he pushed back his stool and said that before it got too dark he’d take himself down to Roebuck’s for a speck of tobacco. Sayward knew he had plenty of tobacco in his minkskin pouch. He just couldn’t sit by all night while Achsa bleated like a doe for water and out in the run gallons of it were running to waste.

  When he went he motioned Sayward outside. He told her she better expect the worst. One night last week, he saw corpse candles. Not often had he seen such things in the summer time. Mostly they came in a wet spell in the late fall, for that was just before the winter season when old and young mostly died. These summer lights were over the old beaver gats. It had two of them bobbing up and down like fast to a string. He might have sneaked up close and seen faces in them. But he didn’t want to know beforehand on whom Death had fastened its mark.

  When Sayward came back in the cabin she sent the younger ones up the ladder to bed. Matters crossed her mind now she never let herself think of before. It wasn’t for nothing that the little cheeping birds stayed away from these deep woods. Slimy, clammy things that crawled or hopped you could hear night and day. Bullfrogs bawled and tree frogs screeched. But Sayward couldn’t mind hearing a woods robin all year. Mostly the token bird called. He started in the morning before it was hardly light. Owk-owk-owk-owk-owk he went and then flew to a new place in the woods to tell his bad news. You could hear him making all the rounds. He wasn’t satisfied with the daytime. Sometimes he called like a Death Watch in the night.

  She recollected how Jary used to say Death would take the strongest and let the weakest be. Death was like the pair of black wolves Worth had once watched from some elk rocks in the Seven Mountains. They started a small herd of deer and one of the does was poor. She couldn’t go it with the others and fell behind. Those wolves could have got her without half trying but it wasn’t such a one they were after. They never turned a foot right or left from the main herd till they cut off a strong young buck, ripped his ham strings and fetched him down in the snow.

  Achsa was stout and hearty a young body as you’d want to find and yet here she was fetched down in her bed. It never bothered her to club the life out of a fox or coon caught in a trap. Now Genny had to turn her face some other way. Achsa could throw the young ones down on their backs and hold them with one foot on their breast. But hands and feet were not much good against Death. And if you ran off, Death was waiting for you behind a stump when you got there.

  Once Worth had gone, Achsa didn’t call for run water any more. She might work on her father till he gave her what wasn’t good for her, but she had no such hopes with Sayward. She just lay like a lump of ore melting in a forge. Her cheeks were stained with pokeberry juice and she panted faster than a hound. Mostly she stared up with bright jelled eyes at the loft boards as if her bed up there was mighty far away, farther than she would ever go again. Sometimes she would leer at Sayward with bitter eyes. Oh, she would ask no favor of her oldest sister. Her mouth was shut hard. If die she must, die she would.

  Worth didn’t come home and Sayward woke up that night in his bed. Something was outside. The fire had died down. The cabin was black as charcoal but she could hear this thing crawling over the ground. It sounded heavy and chinked like a musket or kettle. She thought she had barred the door but now it opened and the thing came painfully in. Only when it crawled on the leaves of the other bed did it come over her what it was. If they wouldn’t fetch her any water, Achsa must have reckoned she would take the small kettle and lug it to the run herself.

  Sayward lay in her dark bed and spelled this out. It was no use locking the stable after the ox was stolen. Likely Achsa had already sucked her fill, pressing her hot face down in the cool run. Twice she heard her sucking greedily at the kettle. She thought, let her have her run water now. It was little enough while she lived. Worth could come home now and sleep in his bed. Achsa would not likely plague him for water again.

  Sayward only meant to half-doze after that but when she woke it was late. Gray light came through the oiled-paper window. She saw what had roused her. Genny was backing down from the loft, staring around at the empty kettle beside Achsa’s bed. Her face was mighty sober as if looking on a corpse.

  A splinter in the ladder caught Genny’s skirt and lifted it as she came down.

  “The bound boy’s a thinkin’ of you, Gin!” Achsa jeered in her heavy voice.

  Sayward expected she better get up. It sounded like Achsa would want some breakfast this morning. She wouldn’t be surprised if Achsa overed it now. Only passing the bed you could smell that she was soaked with sweat and still sweating. There was one thing, it looked like, that could stand off Death. If your time hadn’t come yet, it made you slick as an eel and Death couldn’t hold you. Not even if you lay at Death’s door burning up with a fever and swilled yourself with cold water at the run.

  No, Achsa’s time hadn’t come yet. The Lord might have something he had in mind for her to do first.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE CABIN IN THE SHUMACK

  WYITT and Sulie seldom came this way if the cows were willing. They didn’t talk much about it but it had a place on this path they hated to pass. You went down a long, dark hollow. A little run from a spring slimed across the path. Up that run stood a deserted cabin all grown up with sumach. Its logs were black with age and weather. Once there must have been a little clearing around it. One time smoke had pushed out of that chimney and human feet pattered about. Now you could hardly tell humans ever lived here. A pair of hickory saplings had rammed up through the bark roof like it belonged to them.

  “No Injun ever set up that cabin,” Worth told them. “Unless it was a white Injun.”

  “How kin you tell?” Wyitt wanted to know.

  “It has a lilock tree in’ar.”

  “A lilock tree — away back here!” Genny’s voice came out almost like Jary’s.

  “I stopped by today and seed it myself,” Worth nodded. “The Shawanees say it’s Louie Scurrah’s place. You know the one where used to be with Simon Girty.”

  All the young ones stared. When they were back in Pennsylvania, Jary would say, don’t you do this and that or Simon Girty will get you! Every young woodsy knew that Louie Scurrah was mighty near as bad, for hadn’t he been a boy with Girty the time the Indians burned Colonel Crawford at the stake! Hadn’t he used to stand as a little tyke white and naked in the Ohio River and call piteously for arks and keel boats to come to shore and pick him up? And all the time Girty and his Delawares lay behind trees waiting to massacre every one!

  “They say Scurrah had a woman a livin’ with him in that cabin,” Worth went on. “The Shawanees called her the white-faced gal. He fetched her up from Virginny. She died on him one time he was off to the English Lakes. But her lilock tree’s still a livin’.”

  One time Sulie let Wyitt go on with the cows and crawled through the sumach to see the lilac tree. The cabin stood still and dark as if no human had ever walked or talked inside. The door was down and a copper snake lay coiled up on the doorstep looking in, waiting for a deer mouse or some foolish small creature just off the nest. Sulie kept her eyes off its ugly arrow head so that it couldn’t put a spell on her. She knew Wyitt would tell her she had ought to’ve killed that snake. Now she had let her worst enemy get away for a whole year to plague her. She wished she hadn’t come, but she had to see that lilac tree. A stale dank breath came out of the cabin like out of the white-faced girl’s grave.

  Sulie didn’t take a look around for any grave. It got dark early in the woods and she’d heard tell of humans who came out when they couldn’t rest in their bury hole. Not humans that lived good lives and did what was right. No, they
would wait for resurrection morn. Nor folks that had worked hard and were all played out. No, they wanted a good long rest. You never saw Jary no matter how often one of them had to go out at night, and her grave only yonder from the cabin. Jary had been an old woman of thirty-seven and mighty near tuckered out. Now this white-faced girl was young and likely full of life when they put her underground, and such would get plenty tired lying in one place so long.

  In the short time she stayed, Sulie didn’t see any lilac tree. But she found a bush nearly choked back to the ground in front of the cabin. The little that was still green had smooth, tender leaves like none she had seen before. You could tell plain enough this wasn’t a wild thing the way it stooped down and pined away out here. She smelled at the lone, scrawny bunch of flowers and reckoned this was what the white-faced girl had liked to smell. She wanted to break it off and take it along back for the rest to smell at. But the ugly old cabin watched her out of its dark eye. She was glad just to get out of the sumach herself and run after Wyitt and smell again the good stable smell of Mrs. Covenhoven’s cows.

  When she and Wyitt passed the old Scurrah place after that, Sulie’s mind ran right to the lilac tree. She wondered was it still living. But she didn’t go in to see. It was close enough just to pass on the path with Wyitt for company and all the cowbells chiming sociably on the smothery air. Most times when the cows fed up this far, Wyitt drove them home another way. Tonight it hadn’t much daylight left and Sulie could see he was letting them take the short path home by the cabin in the sumach.

  The cows saw it first. The black one with the bent horn stopped dead in the path and right away the bells slacked off and hung mighty still. Cows and young ones all stared. What they saw looked like a Shawanee with his rifle on ahead. The cows didn’t want to go at all now and Wyitt’s shock of sandy hair raised up defiantly at this body who knew no better than stand in the path and scare his cattle.