The Trees

by Conrad Richter

  “Wyitt!” she said when he got close, and you could see the soft pleasure in her face.

  “I fotched back your shawl,” he said, pulling out of his hunting shirt the knit throw she had given Achsa to wear home the last time she was out.

  “Achsa could a kep’ it a while yit,” Genny murmured. “Kain’t you come on in?”

  His eyes took in the bare ash that had blown over a while back and still leaned against the cabin. Maybe Louie was letting it dry out for firewood. Likely he didn’t know what Worth used to say, that “ash cut green is fire for a queen.” Not that Wyitt would ever dare tell him. Nor would he tell Sayward that if the ash had stood a pole further off, it would have fetched down Genny’s roof and Genny, too, if she was inside. What Sayward didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

  He hung the haunch on the meat pin in a cold corner.

  “You’re always a sendin’ out meat,” Genny said in a low voice. “Louie leaves me plenty.” She dropped her eyes. “But now since you fotched it, I’ll keep it and thankee.”

  Wyitt saw a little meal in the bottom of a grain bag, but if Genny had any meat around, his eyes could not find it.

  “It looks like young doe and moughty tender,” she praised. “Kain’t I cook some for your dinner?”

  The faint sweat of pride showed on Wyitt’s face. He went to the door.

  “I’ll chop a speck at your woodpile and git me warm,” he said, grateful.

  Oh, Genny needn’t fret he’d chop too much. Not he! He wouldn’t give Louie the chance to flare up at Genny that her brother reckoned he had to come around and keep Louie Scurrah in firewood. No, he’d only chop so much.

  He fetched in two logs when she called him for dinner. She told him to sit down in Louie’s place. Every now and then he could feel her raise her eyes softly over him across the trencher. You could tell she was glad he came. He was somebody in Genny’s house, as welcome as the flowers in May. Hadn’t Genny cooked for him special? She did no more for Louie when he came home.

  He had meant to go back early to hunt along Black Run, but he couldn’t leave her alone so soon today.

  “I’ll lug in the rest of your wood.”

  “I like something to do my own self, Wyitt,” she murmured. “I’d ruther if you just set a while.”

  Oh, he could tell she was hungry for company, though never would she say it. He took his stool by the fire and watched the little red tongues lick up along the snowy log he had fetched in. All would grow dark in the cabin and you expected the fire was out. Then like wild things sneaking out from under the log, the red flames would lick up over the bark. There they came again quick as a toad’s tongue after a fly.

  Now and then Genny would say something.

  “Saird a keepin’ good?”

  He nodded. He might have been at Black Run by this time. The spicewood was always green there first. He had passed more than one track leading that way.

  “What’s she a doin’?”

  He tried to think. All he could fetch to mind was her making Achsa a new shortgown. Achsa had plagued the life out of her for it. He himself had given her the skins to trade at Roebuck’s for the goods.

  “I wish she’d come out. So I could see it,” Genny said.

  “She ain’t home now. She’s out a helpin’ at Sally Withers’s. Did you know Sally had twin young’uns?”

  Now how should Genny know that when he was the first human she had seen or talked with in four or five days! Her face lighted up with pleasure.

  “Boys or gals? … Ain’t some folks lucky?”

  Wyitt looked at her, for most people had said, wasn’t that just the way — with meat and meal scarce, a woman had to get two to feed at one time!

  When one log burned up, he put on another. He was a fool to have hung around so long. It was too late for him to hunt back by Black Run now.

  “Well, I reckon I got to go, if I want to git home by daylight.”

  He didn’t get up yet. That was just breaking the ground for the time he would have to go. Genny knew it as well as he. She sat as if making the most of every minute now.

  “Well, it’s a gittin’ late,” he said again, and this time he rose. He stood there by the fire fingering his fur cap. After a while he made his way across the dirt floor.

  He put on his cap and opened the door. You could see the day was waning fast. The woods looked mighty different than the time he had first got his rifle. Then they had burned like fire. Now they stood dark and cold and mighty still. He could tell Genny was looking over his shoulder. She couldn’t go home to Sayward’s like he could. No, she had to stay here by herself.

  “I’ll catch you a young gabby bird this summer,” he told her roughly. “You kin learn it to talk. That’ll make you company.”

  “Oh, I ain’t a lonesome,” she said, after a little. “I guess Achsa told you Louie was home a couple days or so back. He seed she got back to your place that day I give her the shawl.”

  Wyitt bent down to tie his moccasin strings. No, Achsa had said nothing about Louie seeing her home. Sayward wouldn’t like that, Genny giving Achsa her shawl to keep her warm while Louie kept her company through the woods. She would raise jesse if she knew that.

  “Well, it’ll be dark if I don’t git off soon,” he said.

  “I’ll go with you a piece,” Genny murmured.

  She put on the shawl, and brother and sister walked wordlessly down the path. When they came to the old chestnut stub, Wyitt stopped.

  “You better go back now,” he told her, stern like Worth.

  Genny’s eyes lingered on him tenderly.

  “Say obliged to Saird for me,” she said and her unwilling feet turned.

  He went on with alacrity now. But when he looked back from the bend, she hadn’t gone. She was still standing there peering after him. Just the way she held her head and stood there in her faded shortgown with the shawl tight around her shoulders, made him turn quickly as if he didn’t want her to know he had spied on her.

  Once out of sight, he stole slowly back and watched till the lone figure picked up a log at the woodpile and went to the cabin. The door closed behind her. He told himself he could go his way. She was safe now. Maybe Louie would come home tonight and surprise her.

  Genny bent over and dropped her log easy on the fire so it wouldn’t dust her clean dirt floor. The cabin looked dark as always when the fire was low, for it had no window. But tonight the dark had a kind of golden light that humans make between them when they visit together. There on that stool her only brother had sat. The cabin still felt warm with him like a river rock feels warm long after the sun has gone. No doubt Wyitt reckoned he had come by himself this day, but he had fetched Sayward along. Worth, Sulie and even her dead mam had come visiting her, too. She could feel them all tonight as plain as if they had just slept in her bed and eaten off her trencher. Even Achsa. Wasn’t that a surprise she was out at Sally Withers’s, rocking two girl babies to sleep and likely trying to sing in her rough man’s voice that could never keep a tune?

  Up she goes,

  Little yaller-haired baby!

  Hi dum a diddle and a heidy O.

  Hold on tight

  Just as long as you’re able,

  Hi dum a diddle and a heidy O.

  Never had Genny laid eyes on more than one baby born the same night to the same mother like two fawns are sometimes born to a doe. What wouldn’t she give to see those babes so much alike that their own mother would have to hang a loop of whang leather around one mite’s neck to tell it from the other!

  It was mortal strange about babies. Some women were favored and tried to stop them before they came. Some let them live unwanted. And some got neither chick nor child though they hunched down on their knees and prayed to God Almighty till the tears dried to salt on their faces. Next time Louie came home she would ask if he’d take her out to Sally Withers’s. He wouldn’t mind going there, for Louie had naught against Achsa.

  Genny thought she would steep herself
some dittany tonight, for this was a big day. She took a lick of Indian meal from the bag, mixed it with water and patted it in her hands. She swept a spot clean on the hearth and laid the johnnycake there. The rich warm smell of baking meal rose through the cabin. This would taste good. Wyitt’s fresh meat had woke up her appetite. She was lucky to have meat and meal off and on this hard winter that hadn’t as yet melted into spring.

  She was up mighty late tonight. As a rule when Louie was off, she went to bed with daylight. She opened the door wide enough to peek out. All was black as Egypt. Through the woods she could hear night dogs howl like the cold weather wasn’t over yet. She hoped Wyitt had got home safe and sound and was sitting there now telling Sayward about his visit. Sayward wouldn’t say much, but Genny could feel her plain as she went to bed.

  She woke up with the chink of dried clay falling down her fireplace. She sat up in her bed leaves. Something was trying to come down her chimney like it was a hollow tree in the woods. Likely it had smelled her fresh meat. She jumped out on the dirt floor in her bed gown. For a spell she couldn’t tell whether those two red spots were the eyes of some beast glaring at her from her fireplace. Then she found herself over there, piling bark and chips on those two red coals and blowing on them till they shot into flame.

  When fire and smoke roared up the flue, the clawing stopped, but she could tell the beast, whatever it was, did not go away. Oh, these wild brutes got mighty bold sometimes when they had young in their dens. Billy Harbison knew a charcoal burner who came home one night and found one of those big black wolves with long dragging tails they called the deil’s dogs inside his cabin. It must have run up a windfall, like the leaning ash ran up her cabin, and jumped down the chimney, but it couldn’t get back out. And Granny MacWhirter told how when she was a babe, a panther had come in her father’s cabin, picked her out of the cradle and ran a good ways with her till they shot it. This was back in Pennsylvania before the MacWhirters went to Kentucky. Granny could still take off her white cap and show you the mark left by the beast’s teeth in her head.

  She could be glad, she told herself, her father had made the roof that was keeping this beast out of her cabin. He had cast away Louie’s old bark roof and fixed up this new one with his axe, frow and augur. Those clapboards he had split thick and stout. The straightest grained butts were none too good for him. He had set the iron blade of his frow in the logs and pounded it with the battered maul he had hacked out of gum. Not many cracks had he left up there for snow or rain to come through.

  Through one of these cracks now she could hear the beast giving long snuffs like a hound. Oh, it could smell well enough there was only a woman down here. It could lay one eye at the hole and see no more than a slip of a girl with neither rifle nor shotgun across her knees. But it couldn’t come down so long as she kept a fire roaring up the chimney.

  She wrenched a clapboard from the pins and stood on a stool and pounded up against the roof till her arms shook like she had the ague. But the beast did not jump down and run off. She could see a place by the chimney where the roof boards gave and shifted with a heavy weight as if a long, tawny, cat thing or a black, shaggy, dog thing lay there to wait.

  Wasn’t it pitiful, she told herself, she hadn’t let Wyitt fetch in all the wood like he wanted! This was her last log and she had a long ways to go till morning.

  For a week off and on Sayward questioned Wyitt about Genny. It gave her comfort to know Genny looked so hearty. But she had nothing for Louie letting her by herself so much this winter.

  She was real glad that afternoon when the bound boy came. He took her mind off things, this lump of a boy little bigger than Wyitt but old as Achsa and with eyes soft and brown as a hound’s. His hands, that looked like fried pieces of bear’s fat, could make anything they turned to — a man doll whittled out of soft wood, a water wheel to turn in some run, or a lady’s box of hickory bark taken off in the spring when bark would run and lapped and sewed neat as a woman. Wyitt said he even made ropes out of linn bark for George Roebuck to tie up his skins when he took them down the river.

  Yes, the bound boy’s hands were mighty quick though the rest of his body was heavy. Along side of him Genny used to seem light as a feather. When Genny ran, it was like a young doe sailing over a log. But the bound boy ran like a fat yearling bear that was furred heavy down to its claws, bending from side to side and puffing at every stride.

  Sayward judged he had been running today. Sweat showed on his face like dew on a gourd. He looked around for Wyitt and when he couldn’t find him, came in and took the bench Sayward bid him. There he sat hardly making a word. A lump of tobacco, stolen likely from George Roebuck, pushed out his cheek. If he had anything on his mind, he did not say it. When Sayward looked up from her work she would find his soft, brown eyes settled painfully on her as if there was something in his thoughts he couldn’t quite make out.

  Dark fell before Wyitt came home. It was ten days since he’d had meat to take out to Genny’s and still he had nothing over his shoulder but his rifle and nothing in his hunting shirt but an empty belly. The three of them supped with hardly a word between them, then Wyitt and the bound boy went off to the half-faced cabin. When Sayward went out before going to bed, she could see their fire red among the trees. But they did not come in that night.

  It wasn’t nearly light yet when she heard somebody open the unbarred door and stand beside her bed.

  “That you, Wyitt?” she said but she knew who it was. Now, she told herself, whatever this was, she would hear about it.

  “It’s me,” Wyitt spoke. “Will said he didn’t tell you.”

  Sayward waited. She could feel him standing there, bracing himself in the dark.

  “Some’un told George Roebuck he seed Louie on the trace to the English Lakes.”

  Still Sayward didn’t say anything. The boy stood silent a good while as if he couldn’t come out with this thing unless Sayward helped him. Then he spoke low.

  “He said some other body was with Louie. I reckoned you ought to know.”

  Sayward pricked up her ears.

  “Some body we know?”

  “Oh, me and you know this body all right.”

  “Were they a comin’ or a goin’?”

  “They were a goin’,” Wyitt said shortly.

  “Not Ginny?”

  “No, it wa’n’t Ginny. You know now.”

  Sayward lay unmoving in the form her body had made in her bed leaves, though a fine sweat rose on her upper lip. She told herself she wouldn’t take this to heart yet. A mess of tittle tattle had she heard in her born days that never held water. Her voice was steady when it came.

  “When did you see Achsa out by Withers’s last?”

  “I ain’t been out thataway a tall,” Wyitt said shortly.

  “Well, I want you to go out this mornin’,” Sayward told him. “You kin give Achsa the flannel patch I give you for her chest. Say no more than I said she’s to wear it. If it should happen she ain’t thar, you kin come back and tell me.”

  She got out on the cold floor with her bare feet and felt her way across the cabin. She heard Wyitt talk low to the bound boy who must have stood listening just outside the door. Then both started off in the early morning blackness, not waiting for something to eat.

  Before it was light right they were back.

  “You wa’n’t out’ar in this time!” Sayward told him.

  “We didn’t have to,” Wyitt had the red flannel patch in his hand. “We seed Adam a comin’ in to Tulls’ to maul rails. He said Achsa never came around his place a tall. They had to git some body else.”

  Sayward stood there on her dirt floor, the faint gray light from the open door on her face. It was true then. Clear as through spring water she could see Achsa that morning she left, they reckoned, for Sally Withers’s. Not many times could you see brier roses in Achsa’s cheeks that were brown as a young squaw’s nor her hard body as sightly as this in her new red shortgown against her coal black hai
r. She would take off her new shortgown when she got there but she said she wanted it to wear out. She had filled out a good deal lately, a little plenty to suit Sayward. Her plunder was down off her pegs and rolled up under her arm. She must have known then to what far parts she was going, but never did she say goodby. No, she played it to the last, tramping on at the bend in the path without a look back, although she might never see this cabin again or her oldest sister standing on the step looking after. That was Achsa all over.

  “You kin eat now,” she told the two boys, her face bitter as boneset. “Then, Will, you better run home before George Roebuck gives you a britchin’. Wyitt, you kin come on out to Ginny’s and help lug in her plunder. I’ll go on a while.”

  Yes, she cast up to herself as she went down the path, she could go out to Genny’s now, for no more could she spoil Genny’s marriage with Louie Scurrah. Many’s the time had she wanted to go when it was still sweet. Now she must go when it was sour. Oh, she would give plenty had she tended Louie when she had the chance, given him what he had such a long time coming. Till she got through, he would have had to hide his face in the bushes when he heard folks coming along the path.

  But then, when this came, she would have blamed it on herself. She would have reckoned that she was the one who had baited him to run off with his own woman’s sister. Maybe this was best, though it spited her what she hadn’t done. Either way, God Almighty knew, the hell gates were open and Genny must go through.

  The sun was rising as she passed the MacWhirter place. It came up red as Shawanee vermilion. It slanted through the half-leafed deep woods like late afternoon. Down here on the dark ground, the tree butts and dead leaves were splotched with a strange coppery glow as if the deil’s candles were lighting the way.

  It was a long piece out to Genny’s. Wyitt caught up to her crossing the footlog over Marsh Run. Oh, he let her keep the lead. He didn’t want to get there first this time. But Sayward would hold back for nothing today. Her cheek bones stuck out like hickory gluts when she laid eyes at last on Louie Scurrah’s cabin. There it stood, choked with brush and black with rain and weather. You had to look sharp to see it wasn’t part of the dark woods. A windfall leaned against the roof and mighty near covered it. Almost the house could have been one of these monster logs laying around it. This was where their Genny had to live.