The Language of Trees

by Steve Wiegenstein

  Bridges was taken aback. “Surely you don’t think I would let business decisions influence my personal feelings.”

  She gazed at him through narrowed eyes. “I don’t doubt your sincerity, but it’s not that simple. If we find ourselves on opposite sides of a controversy, it may be impossible for you to visit me. Or you may see things in me you don’t like, or vice versa. The only people who can have emotions unclouded by the necessities of their lives are people who can afford to. Let’s not push ourselves into a situation we may have to reverse.”

  “So you might yet love me.”

  She opened the door and stepped half inside. “Don’t try to maneuver me into saying something. If I love you, I will tell you when I think the time is right. Goodbye.” The door shut behind her with a soft click.

  Bridges stood on the steps for a long moment, trying to clear his head. He felt rebuffed, but at the same time she hadn’t said she didn’t love him. She hadn’t said no.

  Chapter 24

  Josephine leaned against the door and heard the familiar click and rattle behind her as the latch fell into its notch. She let her breath out slowly, unaware until this moment that she had been holding it in.

  She walked to the back bedroom. Marie was in her bed, lying on her back, shoes off, eyes closed, her hands folded over her stomach. Josephine stood in the door. “Well, Mr. Bridges says he loves me.”

  “I thought he might,” she said without opening her eyes. “He comes around a lot.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?”

  “I’m going to take a nap. That’s what I do when my head isn’t clear. Maybe you should, too.”

  Josephine turned away. “I might take a walk.” No answer. She looked to see if her mother had gone to sleep, but couldn’t tell. She waited another minute.

  “Do you love him?” Marie said at last.

  “I wish I knew,” Josephine answered. “But I’m not sure.”

  Marie didn’t say anything else. Josephine grew tired of waiting and walked into the front room again. She felt uncertain about what to do with herself. Perhaps that walk wasn’t a bad idea.

  She buttoned up a light coat and stepped outside into the afternoon. With nowhere particular in mind, she set out for the river.

  The sumac and sassafras along the road had turned color, but it would take a frost before the trees would start to add their hues to the palette of the forest. Before she knew it, Josephine found herself at the ford toward town. The ferry rested on her side of the water, but wrestling it across was too much trouble; she pushed one of the light skiffs into the river and paddled across.

  Just up the bank, where the ground leveled off, were the traces of the old lane, where she supposed she had been heading all along without realizing. The underbrush filling it had died down enough that she could see the wagon tracks. She followed them along the riverbank to where they turned toward the old homestead. There she stopped.

  Did she really want to walk down this lane? She had not been over here for years and had nothing but bad memories of this would-be farm on the far side of the river.

  She walked on.

  Josephine only knew the home site by the widening out of the open space where no large trees had yet regrown. She walked toward where she thought the house had been. At first, it seemed that no sign of it remained, but then she bent down and studied the ground more closely. An uneven line of large stones, covered with weeds, marked the front of the foundation.

  She straightened up and looked around. If this was the front of the house, then the barn would be—

  No sign.

  She turned in a slow circle, looking for evidence that she and her mother had ever lived here. A few ranks of the old split-rail fence rotted in the distance.

  A stone grave marker had been under a big cedar tree, placed by a family before they had arrived. She thought she could remember the direction and walked south fifty feet.

  This must be the tree. She scraped around underneath it, feeling with her toe for something hard beneath the duff.

  “Here we go,” she murmured. She kicked away more of the soft needles.

  The chiseled edges of the letters had worn, but they were still clear. Matthew Cunningham. Who had Matthew Cunningham been, and why had he been buried out here, alone in the bottomland?

  Poor little Angus had been so frightened of this grave. Whenever she’d had to take him out in the night to relieve himself, he’d go any direction from the house except this way. What an odd, sad boy. Nothing in the natural world frightened him. He’d pick up snakes, insects, mud puppies from the river. But this grave—

  Although he was Michael Flynn’s son and no kin to her, Angus had taken to her like a sister, following her around, blurting out whatever idle thoughts passed through his mind. She tried to remember how much younger he had been. Five years, four and a half? When she was nine and had moved over here with her mother—

  And he had been out here with his monster of a father, in that rude shanty that Mama had tried to make livable, with not much help from her, she had to admit. She had hated the house, hated Flynn, hated his fat red cattle, hated his Irish way of talking, his lachrymose drunken nights and his mad passion for work. She had not mourned when the river rose and flooded the cabin, although the night had been terrifying, water lapping over the threshold, everyone frantically carrying their belongings up the valley to a high place, soaked to the skin, Flynn cursing even those who came to help, Mama trying to stay cheerful in the face of the disaster. And then Flynn trying to save his damned split rails down at the river’s edge, when it was clear to everyone that they were gone, the river was taking them, no amount of darkness and rain could conceal that truth, but Flynn the pighead labored on, the bastard. Until poor little Angus, trying to help, fearful of his father’s wrath, thigh-deep in the tugging murk, stepped off an unseen edge and disappeared, to be found months later, a mile downstream.

  That she had mourned.

  And she had mourned herself and her mother as they fell under Flynn’s grief-stricken madness alone, with no Angus to moderate his anger or distract his mind. After the flood they had moved right back in, just cleaned up and rechinked the logs, although nothing could ever take away the muddy smell. No wonder the man had lost all sense.

  She walked back down the overgrown lane, pausing where it curved. It had to have been about here where it happened, where the bank dropped down sharply. Strange to think that the spot she stood on today had been three or four feet deep in fast-moving water. Such was the nature of these fast-rising rivers. Flynn, the city-born fool, knew nothing about how to survive in the country. He had built everything too close to the water, had failed to anticipate disaster.

  Had her mother loved him? Had she ever loved that man, the man who broke her? Josephine had never dared to ask.

  If she had, if that was what love meant, enduring beyond all common sense the faults of another, Josephine wanted no part of it. Stupidity and loss. She could do without such things.

  After Flynn’s death, the house and barn were abandoned and later burned. She and Mama lived with Mrs. Turner and her sons until Josephine was old enough for a house of her own, and never had she been more relieved than when she moved out. Sixteen years old, with a damaged mother to care for, but on her own at last. How many nights had she stayed home with Mama while others went off to the dances and fish fries, but that never felt like deprivation. True, Mama was often a burden and sometimes an embarrassment, with her lapses and long silences, but Josephine preferred her company to that of the frivolous young people who seemed to think of nothing beyond who was in love with whom. Who had been spoken to, who had been snubbed, what it all meant. If that was love, they were welcome to it.

  She paused for a last look. A few charred foundation stones and an ancient grave marker. The archaeology of ruination. She would be glad to see them obliterated as well.

  At the bank, as she shoved the skiff into the river, she heard a call from up the road. It wa
s Newton Turner’s red-haired lodger, Mr. Pierce. She waited for him to arrive.

  “What brings you from this direction, Mr. Pierce? I thought you had gotten a job at the mine.”

  “I did. Took off at noon to go into town. Had some errands to run.” He reached for the boat paddle in her hands. “Here, allow me, pretty lady.”

  Josephine held on to the paddle. “Have you ever steered one of these?”

  “It can’t be that hard.”

  “Harder than you think. I’ll not have you seeking experience while I’m in the boat. Drown yourself at your leisure, but for now sit up front and balance out the load.” She worked her way over the middle seats to the stern and sat down. Pierce put one foot into the bow of the skiff and started to push it off the bank with his other. “No, just get in,” Josephine said. “You do that, you’ll end up in the water.”

  Pierce sat down, and Josephine pushed off with the paddle. She let the current pull the bow around before digging for the other side. The added weight made for a slower passage on the return trip, but a few hard strokes aimed the skiff for the opposite bank.

  “They let you take off in the middle of the day to stroll into town?” she asked. “That’s unusual.”

  “Boss wasn’t there, so I let myself off. They pay by the ton anyway, not the hour.”

  Josephine chuckled. “You’re going to stroll yourself right out of a job, friend. That company works people from sunup to sunset, no matter how they pay them.”

  “Maybe so,” Pierce said. “Hope not. I’d like to stick around here for a while.”

  Josephine didn’t bother to ask why. His bulging eyes and near-leer smile told her that he was waiting for the chance to throw out some imagined compliment on her looks or charm. No point in casting out bait.

  “So what brings you out today?” Pierce ventured.

  “Nothing I care to talk about.”

  “Damn. What does it take to get a little conversation out of you?”

  She looked into his impassive face. “Why don’t we start by you telling me what you’re doing here in Daybreak?”

  At this his eyes glazed and he looked at the sky. “I came here to find work. You know that.”

  “All the way from—”

  “Illinois.”

  “To work in a mine.”

  “What’s wrong with that? Lots of people move for jobs.”

  “All right, I won’t pry into your business. But other people will, you can be sure of that.” They had reached the bank. Josephine laid her paddle lengthwise in the boat with the handle on the seat for the next user. “Step straight out the front, and once you get both feet set, pull us in a little.”

  “You’re very particular.”

  “I’ve had wet feet too many times.”

  Pierce obeyed her instructions and helped her out. “What you people need is a bridge.”

  Josephine looked over her shoulder at the river crossing. “I don’t disagree, Mr. Pierce. Even a footbridge would be a help.”

  “Nah,” Pierce said. “Why go to the trouble of building a bridge if you can’t drive a wagon and team across it? Full-sized bridge or nothing.”

  “I can’t fault you for not thinking big,” Josephine said. “People have crossed at this ford for a hundred years, and here you are, not a month in the valley, and planning a bridge. Think we should mount gaslights on it?”

  “I’ll own up to being a big thinker. There ain’t a manmade creation on this earth that couldn’t stand some improvement.” They walked toward the village.

  “When I was little, my stepfather operated the ferry. And if you didn’t have the nickel to cross, you weren’t getting on it, no matter how sad your story. After he died, Daybreak took it over and stopped charging, but it’s still unhandy.”

  “See?” Pierce said. “We’re having a conversation. I knew you could do it.”

  She had to smile at his cheekiness. “I didn’t say I couldn’t.”

  “Stipulated. Anyway—”

  “Anyway, enjoy the rest of your day off. I hope they haven’t replaced you at the mine by tomorrow.” She turned to leave.

  “Wait!” Pierce fished in his coat pocket. “When the man at the post office heard I was from Daybreak, he gave me the mail.” He produced a sheaf of letters. “I don’t know who any of these people are.”

  Josephine took the letters from him. “I’ll take care of them. Thank you.”

  Unwilling to prolong the conversation, she turned away abruptly, sorting through the letters. Something official-looking for Adam Turner. She’d start there.

  Adam wasn’t home, but Penelope took the letter from her, inspecting it with curiosity. “Hm. North American Review. Adam is keeping up quite the correspondence lately.”

  “With good success, I hope.”

  Penelope frowned. “I don’t know. He’s quite secretive about this. I think he prefers to lick his wounds in private if he gets rejected.”

  “I can understand that. Pride.” She was about to head to the next house, but paused. “May I ask you an impertinent question?”

  “You, impertinent?” Penelope said with a chuckle. “Never. Of course you can ask, but I may not answer.”

  “How did you know that he was the one? Adam, I mean. When did you know you really loved him?”

  Penelope’s expression grew thoughtful. “Even in school, I thought of him as my special boy. You know that.”

  “Yes.”

  “But as far as really knowing it—in the way that you know something for sure and forever—” She hesitated. “I’d have to say it was the first night I held him in my arms. You know, in the way a man and a woman are together.”

  Her answer came as a surprise, and Josephine didn’t know what to say. Penelope’s words, or perhaps her trip across the river, brought back an undesired memory: her mother and Michael Flynn, in the dark of the night, their moans and whispers, the creaking of their bed. In a two-room cabin there was no way to hide it.

  “Why, Josephine, I believe you’re blushing!” Penelope cried.

  “I—” She managed a smile. “I believe I am.”

  “Have you got a beau? Has that man Bridges stepped up, that one who’s always finding cause to come by?”

  It was strange to feel so abashed, at her age, and all she wanted to do was get away. “I shouldn’t have asked,” she said. “It was too personal.” She hurried into the street and looked down at the sheaf of letters to see which house was next. But her vision blurred. She stopped to collect herself.

  So that was love’s mark, the longings of the flesh packed into a wrapper of sanctity. She thought of the many nights she had held little Angus close, her hand over his head, until he had fallen asleep, and then she was left alone with the sound of Flynn in the next room snorting like a pig and her mother’s indecipherable hissed words. And in the morning, her mother tending to them in silent haste while Flynn, the bastard, strutted around as if he had singlehandedly stormed the walls of Babylon. She had gotten this far in life without submitting herself to the will of a man and she supposed she could keep it up indefinitely.

  Josephine took a breath. So this man loved her, whatever that meant. So everyone in Daybreak, and the rest of the world as far as she knew, sought to be loved and to find someone to love. So what.

  Chapter 25

  The eagerness with which Charlotte left for Mrs. Bone’s on Sunday embarrassed her a little, but not so much that she didn’t do it. She spoke casually to the Pettibone boy lounging in the barn who helped her saddle a horse: “Find Newton, if you would, and tell him that I’ll be staying late in Annapolis. I’ll be eating supper there, so he shouldn’t look for me before nightfall.”

  She stepped from the mounting stool into the saddle, grateful that the boy turned his head discreetly to avoid seeing her unladylike movements. He handed her the reins and she trotted off, eager to get out of the village before anyone could exercise idle curiosity about her plans.

  Gardner remained subdued through lun
ch, as if uncertain about the affection she had shown him the previous time they had been together. They finished quickly and excused themselves from the table, stepping into the warm afternoon light outside the boardinghouse and pausing by the rail where Charlotte’s horse was tied.

  “Mrs. Bone certainly knows how to fry a chicken,” he said, fiddling with the reins.

  Charlotte was not in the mood for roundabout conversation. “So,” she said. “Let’s see this estate of yours.”

  Gardner stopped twirling the horse’s reins and gazed at her, taken aback. “Are you sure? There’s plenty of free talkers who’d be happy to spoil your reputation if they see you riding off with me.”

  “I’ve tended my reputation long enough,” she said. “I’m in the mood to ride where I please.” She took the reins from his hand and guided the horse into the road. “Which way?”

  He led her across the railroad tracks and a broad, shallow, yellow-tinged creek at the west edge of the town. “This is from your sawdust piles up at the mill,” he said. “Used to run clear.”

  “I’m sure it will again.”

  “Maybe so.” But he didn’t sound optimistic.

  On the other side of the creek was a great hill, which took them half an hour to climb. Charlotte was grateful for her horse, but Gardner showed no sign of tiring as they ascended.

  “Now we’re in my watershed,” he said. “Everything runs off west from here on.”

  Another tall hill, and now they followed a ridge as it twisted this way and that, but ultimately a little more north and west with each turn. Most of the big pines had already been taken out; Charlotte could see the skid trails leading down the slopes.

  Gardner was uncharacteristically quiet as they traveled, his usual stream of observations no more than an occasional remark. Charlotte didn’t mind the silence. She let the sounds of the birds and the rustle of squirrels among the leaves fill the void.

  Their path grew narrower and rockier as they continued, until an even narrower path branched off to the left, which Gardner took. “Are you the end of the road here?” she said.