The Trees

by Conrad Richter

  No smoke came from the chimney. Sayward didn’t like that. But where else could Genny be but here? She might have let her fire burn down to coals or stepped in the bushes. Her latch string hung out. No, she was to home. You could hear her talking in the cabin. Now who could Genny be talking to out here?

  Sayward stood silent at the door till she made out the words.

  The soldier took his sword

  And made for it to rattle.

  And the lady held the horse

  While the soldier fit the battle.

  The soldier took his sword

  And made for it to rattle.

  And the lady held the horse

  While the soldier fit the battle.

  The soldier took his sword —

  Over and over the low voice went with the same words like one of the bound boy’s water wheels, racing now and then when a spurt of water came, running everything together, all the time going on and on without a letup. The short hairs on the back of Sayward’s head wanted to stand on end. You could tell now there was nobody in there listening to Genny. She was talking to herself. Wyitt stood with his fur-capped head forward, stiff as a poker. Sayward raised up and pulled the latch string. Then she went in.

  The cabin was bare as a deaf nut. Stools, trencher, even the clapboard shelves Worth had made were gone. There were only a pile of fresh firewood in the chimney corner and on Genny’s bed a strange gaunt woman sitting with her bed quilts around her. Her hair was down and out of it two eyes stared at them without recognition.

  Sayward’s face grew cruel as death when she saw her.

  “Ginny!” she called out.

  Something in that strong cry stirred life under the wasted skin. Genny fumbled to lay back the quilts and get up. The skirt of her rumpled shortgown was up to her middle showing no more than white bones for haunches before it fell, but Genny, who was always mighty careful about such things even in front of Sayward and Achsa, did not seem to know what she was doing.

  “I didn’t hear nobody,” she apologized to these people who had pushed in her door. She came up, puttering for all the world like Jary, and peered at Sayward.

  “She don’t know you,” Wyitt muttered.

  She came up to Wyitt at that and peered at him as if half blind from living in a dark world.

  “Oh, I know you,” she told him. Then she nodded toward Sayward. “I know her, too. She ain’t been out this way in a long while.”

  He agreed mutely.

  “Oh, I know the both of you,” Genny said triumphantly. “I kain’t mind your names. But I knowed the minute you come in I’d seed you before.”

  She stood there bobbing and smirking. Wyitt’s face was screwed up cruelly. Sayward looked around the cabin to hide her feelings.

  “Whar’s all your house goods?” she asked harshly.

  A frightened look came in Genny’s face.

  “It was up on my roof,” she said. “A tryin’ to come down my chimley.”

  “Was it a painter?” Wyitt asked.

  Genny’s hand shook.

  “It was trees.” She watched them close from one to the other. “Oh, it wa’n’t day trees. It was night trees. When it gits dark you kin hear them come a hissin’ around like a coppersnake and a rappin’ on the door like a human. I went out once and told one to stop and it hit me in the face.”

  Wyitt looked at Sayward.

  “She means it was a blowin’.”

  “Oh, no it wa’n’t a blowin’. Not that night. It was still as death. I could hear it a clawin’ my roof.”

  “It was a painter,” Wyitt said.

  Genny began to whimper though she hadn’t a tear in her eye. Those eyes didn’t look at you now. No, they looked on and beyond and you could see back through them like an open window to a fearsome country you had never laid eyes on before.

  “Let her be,” Sayward said. “She kin tell it her own self.”

  “It wa’n’t my man’s fault,” Genny said anxiously. “You know that don’t you? He’d a never gone off if he’d knowed.”

  Sayward’s face hardened at that. Genny grew alarmed.

  “You wouldn’t tell him what I done?”

  “She don’t know what you done to tell,” Wyitt interposed.

  “I didn’t do nothin’,” Genny whimpered. “I wouldn’t a burned my own stools and trencher!”

  Sayward gave Wyitt a shove to keep him quiet. Genny would tell it her own way if you only let her go. Her bony hands had begun plaiting, unplaiting and tearing at her brown hair. A string of talk was coming from her mouth about her fresh meat and the lady that held the horse while the soldier fought the battle.

  “Would I now!” she begged Sayward. “No, never would I a done such a thing. Not if I didn’t have to. But the thing was a waitin’ up on my roof. It wanted down my chimley. Wa’n’t it pitiful I hadn’t left him fetch in my wood? That was my last log and I had a long ways to go till mornin’. Thar was Ginny all alone and her man too far off to hinder. Did you know I had to burn up my own chinkin’ board shelvin’? I had to stand thar and see the fire eat my own stool and trencher. Never could I burn up my man’s stool, for it wa’n’t mine to burn. I sat down and cried my fill and every tear would turn a mill. Slowly, slowly I rose up. My trencher fit me. It didn’t want to go to the fire. Kin you see them fine quilts on my bed? My sister give them to me after I was married. Wa’n’t it pitiful a havin’ to burn them! I had them at the fire, but the thing jumped down off the roof. I heerd it. I looked out a crack and seed it was daylight, and all the trees were a standin’ back in their places.”

  Sayward heard it through with a granite face.

  “Now we’re a goin’ home,” she said. “And you’re a goin’ with.”

  Genny drew back.

  “Oh, I kain’t leave my house. My man wouldn’t like that when he comes back.”

  “He ain’t a comin’ back. He’s run off with our Achsa,” Sayward said cruelly, for it had to be said some time and might as well be now.

  “Oh, no he ain’t,” Genny told her craftily. “You kain’t fool me. Achsa never could run off with her twin gal babies.”

  “Take what you kin,” Sayward said in a low voice to Wyitt. “I’ll take the rest and we’ll git her out o’ this.”

  Wyitt took the pots and axe with his rifle. Sayward rolled up Genny’s scrimpy bunch of clothes. She took the quilts and clothes in one arm and Genny’s in the other. Then they went out in the dark hollow. When she looked back the lilac was like a little body looking after them. It stood there so pitiful at having to stay behind. Oh, any body could see this wasn’t a wild jit of the woods. No, it was a tame thing and needed the patter of sociable human feet around it to bloom and thrive.

  “Go back and dig that lilock out with the axe,” she told Wyitt. “I’ll plant it for Ginny by our doorsill.”

  All the way home the woods lay dark and dripping. The heavy butts of trees nearest the path moved furtively behind them as they tramped, but the furthest ones stood off watching them go. Oh, those wild trees stood stock still like they hated to see Genny get pulled out of their clutches. They thought they had had her fast like they had little Sulie.

  Not that Genny was clear of them yet. It hadn’t a breath of wind today and yet they heard a tree off in the woods somewhere crack and fall till the ground thundered. More than once Genny would try to stop.

  “What’s that’ar?” she would cry, pointing a gaunt finger. “Up in that tree. It’s a lookin’ at me. Kain’t you see it!”

  Sayward had no time for such, but as she yanked Genny on she would take a look at what her sister saw, a branch or clump shaped up like a kind of beast, a wolf, a bear or even a tame house cat. Oh she knew it was only leaves, that you would see nothing if you stood on the other side. And yet as she stared at the thing it would turn realer and realer here in the dim, green forest light, and over her would come that fearsome feeling her father told about till her hair wanted to raise and her feet to run.

  Never had it
felt so good at last to see a cloud of white shining ahead through the dark trees. That white was sky you could tell long before you came out in the open fields of the MacWhirter improvement. The sky hung free and light overhead. The only thing of the woods left here were the black stumps in the tame wheat patch. The eye could look unhindered now. It could look across to where a log house, barn and shed stood gray and sociable together like a small settlement in the sun. You could smell cows and manure. A guinea hen kept calling through its nose. A door banged and two young MacWhirters came out of the house yonder, quarreling and fighting with each other, a mighty pleasant sound to hear. After the long gloom of the woods, this, Sayward told herself, was as mortal bright and sweet a place as a body could wish for.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  IT CAME A TUESDAY

  LITTLE did Sayward know what she had ahead of her this day. Now who would have expected the strange way things had of working around.

  Life wasn’t easy like it used to be. No, Sayward had hardly anybody to cook or sew, dye or boil soap or chop wood for but herself any more. First to go had been Jary under the white oak, and then little Sulie never came home with the cows. Worth had to track off to the French Settlements. Wyitt took himself out to sleep in his half-faced cabin. Achsa was up somewheres around the English Lakes. And now Genny, who came home a while, was off again, working by the year over at Covenhoven’s. Oh, Genny had got fair to middling since she had humans to live with again. Her arms and haunches had filled out plump and nice for her. Yes, Genny was real good now except she had got out of the way of singing. When folks asked, she said she couldn’t mind how the tune or words went any more.

  By rights, Sayward told herself, she ought to feel she was in clover. Wasn’t it good to have Genny back in her right mind? Didn’t Wyitt keep her kettles in meat when he came home from the woods? Hadn’t she a stout roof over her head, more than one bed to sleep in and a run that never went dry just a piece from her door? What more could a body want? Hadn’t she done the best for her family she knew how? Now why couldn’t she sit down and take it easy?

  By hokey day, she’d do it, too; if it killed her, she told herself. But little did she know what she had ahead of her this day as she went down the trace with Mrs. Covenhoven and Genny. Some might expect that Genny would have enough of hearing a man say how he would cleave to his woman till death did them part. But Sayward guessed that Genny would go as many times as a marrying came around, crying a little in the skirt of her shortgown, wondering to herself where Louie and Achsa were by this time and had Achsa her child? Yes, a wedding was an old story to Genny, though it was new enough to the settlement. This was the first they ever had hereabouts.

  The settlers came a long ways to Flora Greer’s cabin. The men that couldn’t get in stood up to one door, and the women and young ones that came late worked themselves in the other. For a long time Sayward had wanted to see these two doors in one cabin. Jake Tench said Flora had her first man put in the second door so, when she heard Linus coming in the back way, some other man could go out the front. Come to think of it, this was an uncommon cabin all around. Linus Greer hadn’t notched and saddled his logs one against the other but laid them full end on end and pinned, leaving a span of chinking between each log wide as the timber itself. It made a cabin look grand, Sayward thought, with white stripes as broad as the gray.

  The bridegroom had plenty whiskey for the men in one new cedar keg and some that was watered and sweetened for the women and young ones in another. The wooden cups went round and round, but they couldn’t stir up much life, it looked like.

  “It ain’t whiskey makes a weddin’,” Jake Tench said with his black beard at Granny MacWhirter’s ear. He ought to know, for he had emptied half the keg and was still sullen as a bear.

  “Na, na!” she agreed in her deaf, toothless, old voice and bobbing her white-capped head. “What ye need ain’t a halfways old man and woman that’s been a livin’ together since her man made a die of it up in the Western Reserve.”

  “Not so loud, Granny!” Cora MacWhirter tried to hush her.

  “Wha?” Granny raised her voice. “It’s true, hain’t it? They’re only married lawful because the squire got his papers last week. Oh, I’m nothin’ agin it if they want. But if this would a happened most places, some would a fetched along cow horns today to shame ’em.” She nodded triumphantly at Jake. “And if they had hosses, they’d have to use ’em a while with their manes and tails roached.”

  Cora MacWhirter had taken off hastily.

  “You go and talk as loud as you please,” Jake Tench said.

  “Wha? Yeh. Sure I will,” Granny nodded. “When I was a bride, ye could hear ’em carry on over the mountain. Fourteen men raced two mile to be the one to take the black bottle out of my hand. One broke his leg over a log, but he had as good time as anybody.”

  She sat there silent a while in her gray wrapper, alternately shaking and bobbing her head in answer to her own thoughts.

  “Na, na!” she said. “What ye need for a weddin’ is a pair of younger ’uns. Two that’s never been in sin.” She chuckled and nodded to herself in approval. “Turtle doves is best. Many’s the time I seed the gals take the bride up the loft and put on her bedgown and tuck her in. Then the men would fetch up the bridegroom and put him in with her.” Her alive black eyes danced around the group. “That’s a genuwine weddin’. None a these tame ways like some that’s come up since the Revolution. Once in a while ye take meat and drink up to ’em. Oh, ye don’t forget a time like that easy.”

  Jake went over to the keg only to find it empty. He sent it off with the bound boy to Roebuck’s for more. He wasn’t sulling now. His beady black eyes had a secret look in them. He said something to Billy Harbison and they stood a long while side by each. When the bound boy came, the other men mustered around the keg and listened with their heads together.

  “What’s Jake up to now?” Mrs. Covenhoven asked the bound boy.

  “Oh, nothin’ much, I reckon,” he said, wiping his sweaty face with a sleeve. But he wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  “It don’t look like nothin’ to me,” Mrs. Covenhoven told him out of the sharp side of her mouth.

  After a while Mary Harbison came scuttling over.

  “Did you hear the deviltry afoot? Jake’s a hatchin’ out a new match. Two that’s never courted. They say they’re a goin’ out in the bush to fetch in the Solitary and see if Idy’ll have him.”

  The women looked at each other and Idy Tull acted like she would swoon.

  “I could have married more than him if I had wanted to!” she called out to all who would listen.

  Sayward turned her back and stood watching Sally Withers nurse one of her twin babes that already were getting too big for one woman to lug around. The other kicked and screeched to have to wait on the second table. It did Sayward good to hear it drown out Idy, for what was more natural in a cabin than a baby crying. The greedy little shaver. It would have plenty left when its sister got through. A woman’s breasts weren’t the foolish doodad they looked like. No, they had more sense than some humans. If one babe came, that one had plenty and running over. If two came, they still had a dug apiece. And if three came like she heard of already, they could all three take turns without getting starved out. An old maid like Idy Tull might have a hard time filling the hard little bellies of three at one time. But a stout, hearty girl like herself could make out, and some to spare. Never would she have to step down in favor of some old tame mooly or gray moose cow.

  She turned back now and listened to the women. Some reckoned this was going too far but most allowed Jake Tench would go through with it. Flora Greer thought it a sin and a shame. It was making high jack of mighty serious business. Decent women should step in and stop it, that’s what they should. Sayward kept on listening and never said a word, no not a word. If it had a woman here who would stop it, she didn’t know her. There wasn’t one but who could hardly wait to see what would come out of this.

>   Sayward walked herself outside. The Greer improvement was on a hill. With the trees cut, she could look out fine. It was toward evening when the air clears like springwater and she could see down to the post and away out over those lonesome waves of woods that swallowed up the Solitary’s cabin. More than once since Genny was back with humans again, Sayward had thought about Portius Wheeler still living out with the bears and panthers. When first he came, he was a dandy with a whole casson, they said, of shirts and fixings. The last time Sayward saw him, he looked like an old bushnipple. You would never have reckoned this shaggy woodsy in shoe-packs and an old brush-whipped roaram was the young Bay State lawyer.

  Oh, a man might stand it a little longer than a woman out in the woods by his lonesome, seldom seeing a human face save his own staring up at him from some wild run; seldom hearing a human voice save his own croaking back at him from some wild thicket. But sooner or later the woods would get him like they had Genny.

  Hadn’t she seen with her own eyes two solitaries back in Pennsylvania! One, they said, had been cheated by his own brothers. He lived in a house of rails he stole from settlers’ fences. You could wind him like a fox when he passed. He had greasy white hair, was bent nearly double, and never would he lift his eyes at you when he went by with a load of pumpkins on his back and all the young neighborhood hooting after.

  The other lived somewhere in a cave. He had been a fine clerk in a counting house when he was young. His family came and tried to fetch him back to town, but he said he had turned his back on the world too long. To most folks he never returned the time. When he had the notion he would stop and talk to Granpap Powelly in his gunsmith shop. He would take hold of Granpap’s wamus in front with his two hands and all the time a spittle of tobacco juice bubbling between his lips and coming out fine as mist in Granpap’s face so he’d have to wash it off after the Solitary had hunted his cave.