The Language of Trees

by Steve Wiegenstein

  They sat on the back porch as the sun declined. “Not long until November,” Charlotte murmured. The mere words made her shiver. “I’ve gotten to where I hate the cold.”

  “But you get to experience the glory of autumn,” Gardner said with an expansive wave to the valley below.

  “True,” Charlotte said, pulling her coat closer. She had put on a pair of Gardner’s wool socks while her own stockings dried over the stove; they were scratchy and much too large, but she liked the sensation of inhabiting something of his. George lay at her feet, dozing, his tail in a slow wag. There was a great deal here that she could learn to like.

  “So what do you do with yourself on a typical day?” she said.

  “Anything I choose,” said Gardner. “Once or twice a week, I catch some fish or shoot some squirrels and dress them out. In season, I pick berries or greens. If I feel like reading, I read. Walk to town for the mail and supplies now and then. Range the woods.”

  “Not very industrious.”

  “Most people confuse industry with morality.”

  Charlotte said nothing, since she was one of those people. She never felt right if she wasn’t working, contributing, engaged somehow in making the community function. She’d been that way all her life. But who was she to judge? Ambrose had served his country and earned his reward. If he wanted to spend his days walking the woods, so be it. But such idleness would drive her mad.

  “Speaking of fish,” he said, “I cooked up some beauties last night and made extra for this evening. Would you care to share them with me?”

  In the light of his kerosene lantern, they warmed the fish in a cast-iron skillet rubbed with lard. There were some fried potatoes in a stoneware dish that Gardner tossed into the skillet as well, and they stirred them in until everything was heated through.

  “What shall we call this concoction?” he said.

  “How about ‘bass melange’?”

  “Oh, I like that. I always knew you possessed true elegance.”

  They dined at the kitchen table in the dimming light, and a few minutes later found themselves in the bed again, making up for the lost years. Charlotte’s joints and muscles ached from the unaccustomed use to which she was putting them, but it was an ache she was glad to have.

  As the first stars came out, Gardner murmured, “Are you sleeping here tonight?”

  “Would you have me cross the creek in the dark, you crazy man?”

  He chuckled. “No. Just wanted to make sure before I fetched out some blankets. I’ll make a pallet on the floor beside you. This bed’s too small for two to fit comfortably.” He paused. “I can walk you with a lantern. There will be talk when you go home tomorrow morning, and lots of it. You know how people are. It’s a steep price to pay.”

  “I know. But I don’t care, not tonight. The old women can have their say tomorrow if they want.”

  “All right,” he said, spreading out his bedroll. “Just don’t step on me if you have to get up in the night. I break easier than I look.”

  Charlotte drifted off quickly despite the strange bed, and she had no idea what time it was when she awoke with an unaccountable sense of unease. The stars were bright through the windows of the room, and a faint shaft of light angled away from her, cast by the waning moon.

  She sat up and swung her feet out, feeling tentatively for Gardner’s form. The blankets had been tossed back. He was gone.

  Charlotte stood up. Surely he had stepped outside for a minute. She waited, listening for the creak of his step on the floorboards.

  Her waiting went on too long, and she stood up and walked into the front room. The shadows there were deep, but the moonlight streaming from behind the house cast the ground outside into sharp relief. The air was still, and from far away came the cough-yip of a fox.

  She wondered what had awakened her. Some stirring of Gardner’s? An animal noise, or perhaps the deep awareness of the gossip and condemnation that would await her when she rode home this morning?

  Charlotte walked to a front window and looked out. She could see as far as the lean-to where her horse was stabled; beyond, the shadows of the forest swallowed all. Somewhere off to her right was the pine grove with its aerial abode. Maybe he had gone out there.

  Then she saw movement, to her right but much closer, just off the corner of the house. She watched. It moved again.

  It was the shape of a man, a very large man, and swiftly that shape crossed the yard and came to the door.

  Charlotte stood in the darkness. She wanted to call out, but where was Gardner? To make a sound would alert this man that she stood inside, mere feet away. From her spot at the window, she could just make out the side of his body at the door. The latch lifted, slow and quiet.

  More movement from the side of the house. Into the moonlight stepped Ambrose Gardner, carrying his rifle.

  “Hey,” Gardner said, just loud enough to be heard.

  The man at the door whirled. Gardner’s rifle cracked, appallingly loud in the silence of the night. And as Charlotte pressed her face to the window, the body of Lon Yancey, the man from the company, dropped to the step, and the twelve-inch Bowie knife he had boasted of clattered across the boards to the ground.

  Chapter 31

  Charley Pettibone knew his life was about to become immensely more complicated the minute he saw Charlotte Turner and Ambrose Gardner walking up the road to Daybreak, with what appeared to be a human body slung over the saddle of a horse walking between them. He stepped into the road to meet them, his coffee cup still in his hand.

  “Good morning,” Charley said. He turned to his children, who were tumbling outside to get a look. “Go back inside. Your mama will tell you when you can come out.”

  He bent low to look at the man’s face without having to disturb him and recognized Yancey immediately. A lot of company workmen would be celebrating tonight.

  “Well,” he said, collecting his thoughts. “Where’d you find him?”

  “Didn’t exactly find him,” Gardner said. “He came to find us. Or more rightly, me. I don’t think he was aware that Mrs. Turner was visiting. But anyway, he found me and then I found him.”

  “I see,” Charley said. He glanced sideways at Charlotte, who jutted her chin as if daring him to ask her something. “And where did you find each other?”

  “At my house.”

  “Your house? On the Black River? Good Lord, man, that’s in Reynolds County. And you brought him all the way over here?”

  “Mr. Pettibone, there’s only one lawman I trust in three counties, and that’s you. I came here to turn myself in to you, to make sure I don’t get shot by accident, or shot trying to escape, or some such nonsense.”

  “That’s just storybook talk,” Charley said. “I know Sheriff Carter over in Reynolds. He’s a good man.”

  “When they have to, good men do bad deeds or look the other way. In any event, here I am, surrendering in peace and unarmed.”

  “Don’t you even want to hear what I have to say?” Charlotte said.

  “No, I don’t,” said Charley. “I don’t have any jurisdiction in this. The best I can do is escort the both of you up to Centerville, and you can tell your stories up there. I’ll fetch a wagon.”

  As he walked to the barn to hitch up a team, he saw Jenny come out of the house with a platter of bacon and eggs for the new arrivals. Probably his bacon and eggs, he thought ruefully, but so be it. “Tell Johnny to come out and help me when I get back,” he called to her. “This fella’s going to be heavy.”

  With his oldest son’s help, they loaded Yancey into the wagon, and Charley noted the crisp-edged hole in the center of the man’s chest. One clean shot. He would have expected nothing else. They covered Yancey’s face with a saddle blanket.

  “I don’t want you to talk to me about this while we ride,” he said. “‘Cause if you do, that sheriff’s going to want me to tell him what you said, and if it’s any different from what you tell him later, it’ll just make trouble for yo
u. So let’s talk about the weather or something.”

  They spoke little as they rode, except when they passed through Annapolis and Lesterville, where dozens of idlers flocked to see them as they came through. “You’d think we were the circus wagon,” Gardner said from his perch in back.

  Someone from Lesterville must have ridden ahead, for when they reached Centerville the sheriff was waiting for them in front of the courthouse with three deputies.

  “Benjamin,” Charley said, tipping his hat.

  “Charley, good to see you,” said Carter. “What you got here?” He pulled back the blanket and examined Yancey. “I know this man.”

  “I’m going to let these folks tell the story. I’ve only heard the bare outline.” Carter, a tall, spare man with a gray beard that reached the third button of his shirt, looked at them dubiously. “I guess you’d better come inside, then.”

  The sheriff’s office was a single room in the back of the courthouse with a desk, a few chairs, a coatrack, and a large gun cabinet. Charley and the deputies stood while Charlotte and Gardner sat at the desk to tell their story.

  “So this man Yancey’s been out to your place before?” he asked after they had finished.

  “Yes,” Gardner said. “Twice. The company sent him out, wanting to buy my land for the timber.”

  “So that’s probably what he was out there for.”

  “In the middle of the night?” Charlotte burst out. “With a knife? What kind of buying trip is that?”

  “Take it easy, ma’am,” Carter said. “I’m just trying to get the full picture. Now, how far away were you when you shot him?”

  “Fifteen feet, give or take.”

  “And you saw his knife?”

  “Hm. Good question. It was full dark under the eaves. Not sure I saw his knife, but I did see that he was holding one arm down at his side, like he was carrying something. Turns out it was the knife. Could have been anything.”

  “And you called out to him.”

  “I didn’t say his name, just said ‘hey.’ If that counts as calling out.”

  “You got his attention anyway.”

  “That I did.”

  The sheriff wiped his forehead. “I’m going to have to hold you here until the prosecuting attorney decides whether to charge you with anything,” he said. “It’s a troublesome case. Sounds like self-defense, but he wasn’t exactly attacking you. And you say it happened at your house, but you hauled him all the way to Madison County and back. Could have ambushed him along the road somewhere for all I know.”

  “That’s troublesome, all right,” Gardner said. “Especially with an election next month.”

  “That ain’t got nothing to do with it, and I resent that!” said the sheriff. “Facts are facts, election or none.”

  “All right, I apologize. Didn’t mean to impugn your character. You have a job to do.”

  “Well and good,” said Carter. He stood up from his desk. “We’ll keep you in the jail until next Tuesday, when the judge comes around. And ma’am—”

  Charley saw the look the sheriff gave Charlotte. It was not the look one gives to a community founder, but the look given to a woman who has been caught spending the night at the home of a man not her husband. The sight shook him. He was so accustomed to thinking of Charlotte with deep deference that Carter’s scornful expression felt like an insult, not just to her, but to him and all of Daybreak.

  Carter continued his sentence. “—I’ll need to you be here on Tuesday too, to say your piece.” Charlotte nodded.

  “Stop by and get George,” Gardner added. “He’ll need the company. I don’t want him running off while I’m away.”

  Charlotte stood up and glared at the sheriff. “There’s blood on the step, you know. It’s easy enough to verify where the man died. You can send one of your deputies to check.”

  “Thank you ma’am. We’ll do that. Assuming he didn’t kill a chicken or something.”

  “On his own front step? What kind of nincompoop kills a chicken in front of his own door! I lose my patience. Good day, sir.” She stalked out of the office and stood in the yard in front of the courthouse, fuming, as the deputies led Gardner out the back to the jailhouse, a small log square that stood in a corner of the lot.

  “That gal sure enough fires with both barrels,” Carter said to Charley. “You know her well?”

  “Thirty years,” Charley said. “Most respected woman in our community.”

  “If you say so,” said the sheriff. “Yet here she is chasing around in the night with this man Gardner, who has ‘trouble’ written after his name in two-inch block letters.”

  Charley didn’t want to get into a discussion of comparative morality. “So you think the prosecutor’ll try him?”

  “Hell, yes. He won’t make that kind of decision on his own this close to the election. He’ll let a jury decide. I may not let an election change my way of doing things, but some people do.” Charley nodded. He’d seen his share of election games. “This Yancey have any kinfolk? You expect more trouble?”

  “I don’t think so,” Charley said. “He kept his own company, far as I know.”

  “Bright side to everything. At least you won’t have to worry about people with revenge on their mind.”

  Charley picked up his hat and headed for the door. “Guess I better take the lady home. Sorry to have showed up bearing trouble.”

  “No worries. If I was frightened of trouble, I never would have run for public office.”

  In the wagon, Charlotte’s anger had turned to worry. “They’re going to put him on trial, aren’t they?” she asked as soon as they were out of earshot.

  “I expect so,” Charley said.

  Her lips pressed into the firm line of determination he had seen many times before. They rode in silence for a mile.

  “Don’t worry,” Charley said. “I’m sure they’ll do the right thing.”

  She gave him a glance that he knew would have been more withering had they not been longtime friends. “I’m not worried. Worry is a waste of time. I’m thinking.” She sighed, a long, slow letting-out of breath as if she had been holding it in for hours. “And surely I don’t need to tell you that people will not necessarily do the right thing unless they are led to it, brought face to face with it, and given no other option.” She smiled at him. “So that’s what I plan to do.”

  Chapter 32

  Josephine hadn’t heard from J.M. Bridges in a full week, an uncharacteristic lapse for him. She knew he had been informed of the community vote, so she imagined he was licking his wounds, probably nursing a complaint against her that she hadn’t warned him in advance. So she decided to walk to the mine and talk it through with him. If he loved her as much as he claimed to, he could accept her reasoning.

  But Bridges was not at the mine, nor was Mason. In the headquarters building, Dr. Kessler, the geologist, propped his feet on the stove while he read a book. Outside, crews of men went about their tasks, although from their pace it was easy to tell that the bosses were absent. “Gone to Ironton,” Kessler said. “The big boss man is coming through, and they’ve all been in a great frenzy.”

  “You don’t look too frenzied.”

  Kessler shrugged and stood up, marking his place with a scrap of paper. “I’m done here,” he said. He walked to the window. “Time to go back to civilization.”

  “I’m surprised. I thought this place was rolling along.”

  “It is. But it can roll along without me now. I’ve mapped all the ore-bearing strata from here north, and now that you folks aren’t selling, there’s no point in my staying. If I leave soon, I’ll be back in Chicago in time to resume teaching in the spring.”

  “They’ll be sorry to see you go.”

  “I doubt that,” he said, and she heard an edge of bitterness in his voice. “I think I make them uncomfortable, someone more interested in knowledge than money. I’d be happy to let that silver stay in the ground.”

  “For someone not intere
sted in money, I’d guess you’re taking a fair amount home.”

  “Touché. And enough samples to fuel five years’ worth of scholarship.” He gestured to a stack of wooden crates against the side of the building. “I’ve done well here. That granite is Precambrian. Remarkable specimens.”

  Absentmindedly, he fingered his thin gray hair. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this—”

  “But?”

  “But that vein of silver probably runs through your land. If you people ever change your minds about selling, take that into account.”

  “How can that be? One of our citizens has been hunting all over the mountain for months.”

  “I’ve seen his diggings. He’s up too high. If you have a vein, it’s lower down, around the level where your fields slope upward, I’d guess. You’d have to do a few test digs and look for metalliferous deposits.”

  The gulf between them felt unfathomably wide. “But we need those fields.”

  “Not if you hit a big vein. Then you can live like barons and build yourselves an opera house.”

  The absurdity made her laugh. “Do you go to the opera when you’re in Chicago, Dr. Kessler?”

  “When one comes to town and I can afford a ticket.”

  “And what is it like?”

  His eyes lit up. “Ah, magnificent! Chicago is mad for Wagner. Have you heard Wagner?”

  “I can’t say I have,” Josephine said with a blush. “Who is he?”

  “One of the greats,” Kessler said with a sigh. “Quite radical, though. They say riots break out at his performances sometimes.”

  Josephine felt sad at her lack of sophistication, so provincial that even an eccentric geologist had more culture than she did. Sometimes she felt as though life was not a road, with twists and turns but an eventual destination, but rather more like a fish trap, a set of ever-narrower gates that pulled her onward until she reached a place where she could no longer turn around or even back up. She’d seen it hundreds of times, even the fiercest of gamefish grown still and unresisting in a trap, waiting passively for the fisherman to pluck it out to its doom. “Enjoy your opera, then. I’m glad your time here has been worthwhile.”