The Language of Trees

by Steve Wiegenstein

  A man on horseback was approaching from the south. As he drew nearer Sarah could see it was Charley Pettibone, outfitted for his job as a deputy, heading toward town, she guessed.

  “Here’s a man who knows what I mean,” Dathan said.

  “Say what?” said Charley as he reined up. He tipped his hat to Sarah.

  “We’ve been talking about the evils of the world. You’re a man of the law, you should know all about that.”

  “I guess so,” Charley said. He scratched his forehead with the back of his gloved hand. “I don’t usually swim in water that deep.”

  “Come on, Mr. Charley,” Dathan said, with an edge in his voice that Sarah had not heard before. “You’ve been a deputy for twenty years, seen the best and the worst. Surely you’re done a little speculating about the world we live in.”

  Charley shifted in his saddle. “I am not a speculating man, and neither are you.”

  “True,” said Dathan. “No speculation then, just your experience. Do we live in a just world or not?”

  “No, sir!” Charley burst out. “Not by a long damn shot.”

  “See,” Dathan said, nodding to Sarah. “We agree.”

  “About the only thing we agree on,” Charley said. “And I’ll tell you something else. The best and the worst ain’t as far apart as they look sometimes. I’ve seen as much hate come out of a man over a property corner as over a grievous harm.”

  “I’m glad to see you so worked up over this,” Dathan said. “It’s nice to know you ain’t just in it for the money.”

  Charley snorted. “If I was in it for the money, I’d be out digging holes in the woods like—” He stopped himself when he realized that he was about to talk about Sarah’s brother-in-law. “Never mind.”

  “It’s all right,” Sarah said.

  “Anyway, if you want to live in a just world, you’ve gotta make it yourself,” Charley said. “One little bitty piece at a time.” He twitched his reins. “Speaking of which, I need to get up to Oak Grove.”

  “What’s the great wrong you have to set right?” Sarah said.

  “Something about a hog,” said Charley. “Neighbors.”

  Charley rode off to the north, slouching in the saddle with the relaxed posture of a man who’d spent many hours on a horse, and the other two resumed their walk south. When they reached the path that led through the fields to the river, Dathan paused.

  “I’m a little hard on Charley sometimes,” he mused. “But he needs it.” “Why?”

  Dathan glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “You’re probably too young to remember this,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “Charley signed up for the South in the war, and when he came back he was a hard young man. I had never met him before, but the way they told it he was a happy-go-lucky fellow as a boy. But when he come back his heart was full of hate. First word he ever spoke to me was ‘nigger.’ Of course, he wouldn’t remember that, but I do.”

  Sarah stood silent, wondering if she had ever used the word in his presence. “And now you’re friends,” she ventured after a moment.

  “We get along. I don’t call anybody friend who’s called me nigger.” He turned to leave. “Anyway, my point is, things change.” He took her hand, engulfing it in his enormous, callused palm. “Your papa’s in a bad way now, and so are you. It’s lonesome. And you don’t have to deny it, but I know you’d like to have that young man with you to help you bear the burden and share the joys.” He raised a finger of his free hand to stop her protests. “If Charley Pettibone can change from a night rider to a defender of the law, Newton Turner could get his head out of the well someday and see what everybody else in Daybreak sees. I ain’t saying it will happen, but I’m saying it could. Now go on and see your sister.”

  “No,” Sarah said, following him down the path. “I want to help you clean your graveyard.”

  “Honey, I ain’t got but one rake,” Dathan said with a smile.

  “Then one will rake the leaves, and one will burn them. And then we’ll trade.”

  “All right,” Dathan said. “But we don’t burn where the spring beauties are blooming. I leave that patch alone. And when we’re done I’ll come back with you and sit with your daddy a spell while you go visiting.”

  Chapter 13

  The day arrived when it was time to air out the house after a long winter and uncertain spring. Josephine started as soon as there was enough light to see that the day would be bright and clear, with enough breeze to carry dust away, but not so much to blow their possessions across the valley. She began with their mattresses, dragging them to the clothesline and throwing them over with a grunt. The bedframes and furniture came next, sitting in front of the house in a ramshackle approximation of their interior placement. Last were the rugs, rolled up and heavy with the accumulated weight of a year’s dirt, slung over the clothesline as well to await their beating.

  Josephine drew bucket after bucket of water from the well to slosh through the house and sweep over the thresholds until it flowed out clear, then threw open the windows and went outside to beat the mattresses and rugs while the floor dried. She didn’t have a proper rug beater, but years ago Mr. Wickman had made her a walking stick out of a maple sapling, four feet long and finely polished, a perfect fit to her hand, and the stick served the purpose admirably.

  The work was slow and laborious, but Josephine had never minded work. In her childhood, work had been a useful distraction from the terrors of life with her stepfather, her only means of staying on what passed for his good side, and she had maintained the habit in adulthood. She swept and scrubbed through lunch, not wanting to stop until the job was complete, while her mother sat in the rocker on the porch and watched the water seep out across the doorframe and through the floorboards.

  After about fifty smacks with her stick on the mattresses and rugs, though, Josephine was ready to rest. She took a spot on the porch at the feet of her mother, resting her chin on the head of the walking stick as she contemplated the afternoon’s work ahead. The reverse of the morning: rugs, furniture, mattresses. She’d leave the mattresses out as long as possible to make the most of the sunshine and air. But first, more dust to be beaten out.

  Of all the people to come riding by as she sat there, her hair matted with sweat and a film of dirt covering her face, the last she would have wanted was J.M. Bridges, but there he came, his seat on the horse still as awkward and uncomfortable-looking as it was when he first arrived. She’d have thought that a few months in the country would have improved his mount, but apparently not.

  Bridges said nothing about her appearance, but swung down off his horse and tied its reins to the porch railing. “Let me have a turn,” he said, taking the maple stick from her and hefting it in his hand. He stepped up to the mattresses on the clothesline and shook them a little to gauge which ones still needed beating.

  “Done this before?” Josephine said.

  “Every spring,” said Bridges. “I was an only child, you know, so I was expected to help out both my father and my mother. She didn’t have any daughters to pitch in on these jobs.” He took a whack at the mattress. “Nice,” he said. “Our old beater was a wire thing, and you couldn’t put much punch to it.” He took another swing, harder.

  Josephine let him finish the job and help her carry everything back inside, a task she wouldn’t ordinarily have allowed him to help with but for her fatigue from the morning. Marie roused herself from whatever state she had been in all day and helped carry in some of the furniture, although it was clear that her mind was somewhere else, or perhaps nowhere at all.

  “I forgot to ask,” Josephine said when the job was completed. “What brings you by today? Surely you didn’t have housecleaning in mind.”

  Bridges jumped up from his chair. “I almost forgot myself,” he said. “I was on my way to the mine and thought I’d bring you a book. Thought you might like it.” They walked outside, where he dug in his saddlebag and pulled out a tattered volume. “It’s
somebody who traveled through here back in the old days, before Missouri was even a state.”

  Josephine turned the book over in her hands. The spine cover was cracked and peeling, but the binding threads still held. “Well, thank you,” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s ever given me a book before.”

  She thought for a moment, then walked inside and took down her grandfather’s copy of Travels to Daybreak from the mantel. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “You can borrow this, but I’ll need it back. It’s not mine to give.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the book our founder wrote, back before the war. It sets out our principles. You’ll understand us better.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’d like that. And your founder is—? “

  “James Turner,” Josephine said. And without thinking, she added, “My father.”

  She could go for years without saying those words; had gone for years without saying them; but once spoken they flowed so effortlessly, like the opening of a tap, that the whole story flowed out in quick succession. How her mother had come to the colony as a young woman. How youthful admiration had bloomed out into a dalliance, more than a dalliance really, a full-blown love affair, with herself as the outcome and breaking point. How Mr. Turner had gone off to the war, writing her letters at every opportunity, letters that she kept in a tightly wrapped bundle in her chest of drawers, and come back a broken man, lost into whatever horrors he had witnessed, while her mother married a hard-knuckled Irishman. How the whole thing had ended badly, with the Irishman beating her mother into insensibility and killing Mr. Turner, whether out of jealousy or simple criminality no one ever knew, and ended up being killed himself by one of the local vigilance committees that sprang up at war’s end.

  “Then you are Mr. Turner’s—”

  “Yes,” she said. “Bastard child.”

  “I was going to say ‘heir,’” Bridges answered.

  Josephine laughed, and her laugh brought such a look of relief onto Bridges’ face that she laughed again just to see it repeated. “No heirs around here,” she said. “We hold all our goods in common, don’t you know. It’s all in the book. Common ownership, common purpose, universal suffrage, with the goal of a community in harmony instead of competition.”

  “Fine ideas,” Bridges said. “But your founder turned out to have feet of clay.”

  “You can’t deny ideals just because people don’t always live up to them,” Josephine retorted. “Just as well deny Christianity because there are sinners.”

  “You’ve got me there,” Bridges said. “I’ll read your book. I wonder if that’s where you came by your power at argument.”

  “I came by that all on my own,” she said.

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “So these Turner boys—”

  “Half brothers. You’d be hard pressed to get them to admit it, though.”

  “I’d bet so,” he said. He tucked the book into his saddlebag. “I’d better be going. It’ll take me another hour to get to the mine.”

  “I hate to see you go,” Josephine said, surprising herself. Whatever had limbered up her tongue so? “I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a conversation as much. Maybe it’s because I did most of the talking.” And without thinking further, she pulled his head down toward hers and kissed him on the cheek. “Don’t take that the wrong way.”

  His face reddened. “What’s the right way to take it?”

  “I wish I knew,” she said. Before she could say anything further to embolden him, or to draw herself in deeper, she darted into the house. She hated a flirt, and here she was acting like one. Bridges stayed in the front yard another moment, then climbed on his horse and rode away.

  A few minutes later came a knock. Josephine felt a moment’s exhilaration—had he returned?—but something about the sound of the knock, and its timing, told her that her visitor was someone else. And indeed, she opened the door to find Newton Turner on the step.

  “I saw that company man hanging around,” he blurted. “What did he want?”

  “To beat my rugs,” said Josephine. “And what were you doing, spying around my house?”

  “I wasn’t spying. I was walking home, like ten dozen other people might have done. And I have to tell you, nothing good will come of that man. If you can’t see it, I can. All he wants is our timber, and all his charm will go off like the fog once he gets it.”

  “I thought you wanted to sell them the timber.” “I might. I only want it to be for the right reasons, for good sense and common advancement. Not because some handsome Johnny paid a call. You should know this better than anyone.”

  “Should I? Why me?”

  Newton’s face froze. “Never mind.”

  “No, really. Why should I know better than anyone.”

  “Because—” His words choked in his throat, and he seemed ready to run off the porch. “Because you are a beautiful woman, and I would imagine you’ve had plenty of men try to sweet-talk you into one thing or another.”

  Josephine stepped back. “That’s what you think of me? That I am some flibbertigibbet who can be romanced into voting against the good of the community?”

  “I—of course not,” he stammered. “I just thought I should do you a favor and caution you. It’s a small pond we swim in, and you’d do well not to give occasion for people to talk.”

  “Thanks for the caution, Your Honor. But the only person I’ve heard do any talking is you.”

  She closed the door, not abrupt but firm enough to let him know she was done with the subject. Then she sat at the kitchen table and tried to unclench her jaw. Mother had been in the front room, of course, and had heard everything. Newton had not said the words, had not needed to, but she knew full well what he meant. Would Josephine end up like Marie? Another woman who would make a foolish decision for a man. Another woman whose actions would threaten the community?

  She knew the answer to that question. Josephine dipped her finger into a bucket of water near the table, left over from her labors of the morning. Fingertip dripping, she wrote on the table as if with ink.

  I Will Never.

  She dipped again.

  Be Made a Fool Of.

  She signed her name with a flourish and watched the water disappear into the grainy pine.

  Chapter 14

  Newton Turner could not stop cussing himself. He’d not meant to come across that way to Josephine, like the neighborhood scold, but her obstinate attitude brought out the worst in him. What made him even angrier was knowing she was right, knowing she wasn’t the sort of person to let her head be clouded. If anything, she would bend the opposite way. She was the sort to put her face to the wind regardless of the direction it was blowing.

  He tried to put the moment behind him and think about the week ahead. The men couldn’t work the bottom fields yet, but the upland slopes had dried out enough to plow. They had always used those slopes for corn, but Newton had a notion that they could be better for something else: an apple orchard, two hundred trees or more, and no more wrestling a plow on those steep hillsides. He’d even picked out the variety, Ben Davis apples, the “mortgage lifter” they called them in American Farmer for their reliable output. Steady producers, none too showy or flavorful, but a good apple for distant markets.

  But that was a decision they all would have to vote on, and even with community approval they would have to wait till fall. So for now, another season of plowing the slopes for corn.

  Newton contemplated the labor ahead of him, trying to bring everyone around to the idea of replacing the cornfields with an orchard. The cautious who foresaw failure in every new endeavor. The miserly who couldn’t conceive of taking land out of production for a few years till the trees started bearing fruit. The quarrelsome who opposed anything that he backed. Such were the principles of the community, discuss until consensus, which in practical terms meant until someone gave up. It dawned on him that some of his resentment of J.M. Bridges stemmed from his ability to
speak his thoughts into action. “Build a dam,” and it was built. “Blast a mine,” and it was blasted.

  He sniffed the air as he walked home. Rain, most likely before midnight. More trouble for plowing, but he could only hope that it didn’t soak the ground too much. He wondered if Adam and his young helper could handle the job; probably so, if Adam came around early enough. The boy could pick up rocks behind him. One certainty in this valley, every spring’s plowing revealed a new crop of rocks.

  Something caught his eye to the south, where the road from Daybreak rejoined the main road. He paused. It looked to be a girl, standing at the fork as if uncertain. A moment later she turned toward the village, and Newton walked to meet her.

  As she drew close, he recognized her as the orphan girl who had been taken in by the preacher and his people down the way. Running away, perhaps? He wouldn’t be surprised. Two months in a strange place, and steady farm work on top of that. But when they met in the road, she didn’t appear frightened.

  “Hello, girl,” he said. She was about thirteen, skinny as a rail, her face pale and her hair so blonde it was nearly white.

  The girl made something that resembled a curtsey, bending one knee and mechanically bobbing down an inch with her body held vertical. “Good afternoon, sir,” she said. She clutched an envelope in her hand. “Could you direct me to the home of a Mister Newton Turner?”

  Now this was a surprise. “I’m Newton Turner.”

  She eyed him suspiciously, as if the coincidence was too great to be real. “You are?”

  “I am indeed, and I can show you my house if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  “No, sir,” she said. “I’m just supposed to bring you a letter.”

  “You’re the orphan girl who just arrived, right?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Wilhelmina.”

  “What’s your last name?”

  “Lindberg, sir.”