The Language of Trees

by Steve Wiegenstein

  “Union men?”

  “No. Just a crank.”

  Mr. Crecelius nodded. “Bad enough.” He looked at the jumble of logs in the yard. “All spiked?”

  “No, but we can’t tell which ones. They’re all mingled.”

  “All right. Here’s what we’ll do. Put out the word that we’ll pay to have these logs hewn square with a broadax. Nobody’ll get killed if they hit a spike. What’s a price where we can get that done?”

  “Twenty cents a log,” Mason said.

  “All right. Put out the word. And you—” Mr. Crecelius turned to Bridges. “I want you to close this place down. The timber’s about played out around here, so shut down and move on. Ever hear of Leesville, Louisiana? Damn fine timber down there and lots of room to operate. Save a crew to load up the equipment and let the rest go.”

  “What about the land?” Mason asked.

  “Sell what you can but don’t drop the price. It’s improved land now, cleared for planting or pasture. Anything we can’t sell, let it go to the county for back taxes. Advertise back East, but don’t waste too much of your time on it. Find a good land agent here. I need you at the mine. Work it for another couple of months until you stop seeing a return, then close it down too. Silver’s dropping and we need to get out before we spend too much on wages.”

  The train whistle blew a quick blast, first warning of departure, and Bridges heard the firebox door slam. Mr. Crecelius pulled a watch from his pocket and nodded in approval. He focused on Bridges again.

  “Finish up here as fast as you can. I need you down in Louisiana before anybody gets wind that we’re moving on.”

  Bridges found his voice just as Mr. Crecelius turned inside. “No.”

  Mr. Crecelius stopped. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean no, I won’t be going to Louisiana. I am leaving your employ.”

  “The hell you say! Somebody around here bought you out?”

  “No. I just don’t want to work for you anymore.”

  “By God, we can accommodate that desire. Mason, make sure this man’s cleared out of here.”

  “I’m already packed,” Bridges said. “So no worries.”

  “Who’s worried? I’ll find myself another Bridges down South. Mason can handle things up here. I just want you out. Ungrateful bastard.” He climbed the steps to his car and slammed the door as the second whistle blew.

  “What are you going to do?” Mason asked as the train inched away, building up steam. “You can’t go back to New York. Crecelius will blacken your name all over town.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll take up my father’s trade.”

  “A man of your abilities, a saddlemaker in the sticks? Now there’s a waste.”

  “It’s honest work.”

  Mason just sniffed, and Bridges didn’t feel like arguing. He saddled a horse for the trip to the mine, eager to put miles between himself and this place. He’d leave the horse at the mine so as not to be beholden.

  Napping in the hay was the boy he had given his letter. “Couldn’t wait, eh?” the boy said with a wink.

  In an earlier day he would have reproved the boy for dawdling. But instead he just silently waved.

  “Do you still want me to deliver this letter?” the boy called. “I want my fifty cents.”

  “Sure. It’s waiting for you up at the store.”

  “That’s the spirit of fair play, mister.”

  Bridges turned his face to the darkening east. With his luck, the rain would start again before he reached any shelter. He thought of the old joke: Where was Moses when the lamp went out? In the dark.

  Where was Bridges when the rain resumed? In the damp.

  Chapter 39

  The day after the meeting felt like a funeral day, except that the funeral was for all of them, and all of them were mourners. Josephine had presided over the meeting for another two hours as they decided about the land, striving for equity among all the families of the community. By the end they had worked out a rough division, sketching out rough maps of the Daybreak property, and in the morning when she went outside she could see men and women in the fields, driving stakes to mark out the ownership lines.

  None of it felt right. They had owned everything in common, made all decisions in common, for decades. None of them were accustomed to acting on their own without regard for the whole community, and even now as they walked about to claim their land, they spoke back and forth so no one felt cheated.

  Josephine and Marie, as early residents, received forty acres of the best bottomland near the ford and a hundred acres of timber on the ridge as their portion. Marie showed no interest in joining the activity, so Josephine left her in her spot by the window and walked out into the fields.

  Dathan had chosen the ground next to theirs, downstream, taking in the old slave cemetery that he cared for so lovingly. But this morning he was stepping off his boundaries with his hand on his chin, meditative.

  “What are we going to do, Dathan?” Josephine said as she approached. “I can’t work forty acres, and Mama won’t be much help.”

  Dathan smiled, and Josephine couldn’t help noticing that he was down to about four teeth. “I was thinking the same thing, honey. I’m too old to wrestle a plow. Maybe I should get me a hired hand. Ain’t that what they do out in the land of the moneychangers?” He grinned.

  “I guess so. I grew up in Daybreak, so I’m no expert in finance.”

  They looked around at the other community members roaming the fields, and the realization dawned on Josephine that they were all inexpert at this kind of individual thinking. They were so accustomed to thinking as a collective that the notion of acting on their own, pursuing only personal interests, had gone out of them. Maybe they had rendered themselves unfit for the rough-and-tumble world they were now entering, all aggression and conflict, like the passenger pigeons of her childhood succumbing to a crueler, infinitely rapacious species. She hadn’t noticed them disappearing until all at once they were gone.

  “We can always grow enough food to keep ourselves alive, anyway,” she said. “This bottomland will grow about anything, as you well know.”

  “Growing is one thing. Cultivating and harvesting is another,” Dathan said. “Cedeh and me, we’re broke down. I figured we were about to the point of living a quiet retirement, eating soup and such, and here we are starting over as dirt farmers. I’m not sure I’m up to it.”

  “You could always sell your timberland. That’s what they want, you know. Break us up, and then buy the land piece by piece when someone has a pressing need or feels tempted. Nobody would fault you for it.”

  He grimaced. “I ain’t that desperate yet. Who knows, maybe we’ll win our case next year and be able to put all those pieces together again.”

  Josephine said nothing, but she couldn’t imagine such a scenario. Maybe Dathan was just trying to cheer her up. And as if she needed so see the embodiment of their plight, here came J.M. Bridges up the road from Daybreak, his horse at a walk and a look of misery on his face.

  “Come to gloat, have you?” said Josephine. She turned away and would have spit on the ground if she knew how to spit properly.

  Bridges’ expression sank further. “I didn’t know anything about this damnable business until I got the lawsuit papers. I swear it.”

  “The oaths of men. Like stars on a summer’s morning. Isn’t that what they say?” She took a closer look. “Pardon my saying, but you look like death eating a cracker.”

  Bridges rubbed his face. “I set out for the mine yesterday, but got too late a start. Had to spend the night in a barn.” He seemed about to say more, but stopped himself. “But I didn’t come here to trade miseries with you,” he said. “All right, I’ll swear no oaths. But I’ll tell you this plain. If there is a way to make this right, I will find it.”

  “Don’t make promises. You’ll just aggravate me. There are some things in this world that can’t be made right. Don’t you know that?”

  He
nodded, saying nothing, and rode off to the north. Josephine felt a bite of remorse, for he had surely not come to gloat but to offer a word of kindness. But she shook it off. She looked at Dathan, who had stood quietly beside her during the conversation. “So maybe he didn’t know. If your company does something like this and you don’t know about it, that just makes you a damn fool or a poor manager.”

  “I can’t speak on that,” Dathan said. “Only thing I’ve ever managed is myself, and I don’t do that very well.”

  She watched Bridges as he turned off the road and into the woods, following the footpath to the mine. She couldn’t sort out all the mixture of feelings she had at that moment—regret at her harshness to Bridges, sorrow over the community’s loss, anger at the greed and stupidity of the world, and unexpectedly, a deep longing for something new, something good, in her life. She didn’t want to be the angry woman any more, the one who battled. What was it that Charlotte Turner had told her once? Never make peace. Never, never, never. But what if she wanted peace? What if it turned out that sometimes, and today more than ever, all she really wanted out of life was plain, simple, blessed peace.

  Chapter 40

  Newton and Adam walked the ridge with stakes and hammers and a borrowed surveyor’s chain to mark out their forest acreage. As legacy members of Daybreak, they’d received choice bottomland for their farm plots, which meant their timberland was in the remotest reach of the property. They found the corner cairn and walked off their allotment using the chain and a compass.

  “Don’t know why we bother,” Newton said. “I don’t know what I’d ever do with this plot anyway.”

  “You never know,” Adam said. “Now that it’s yours, you may want to sell the timber yourself. Or sell it off for the cash sometime.”

  Newton squinted at him through the underbrush. “You certainly turned capitalist in a hurry.”

  “Why not, brother? It’s the spirit of the age. Who knows, maybe I’ll buy it from you if you’re in a mood to sell.”

  He found Adam’s new attitude bothersome but couldn’t tell if it was an act. So he let the remark pass and concentrated on counting out their measurements. Five chains by five chains, twenty-five acres each. Now that Adam had brought it up, what would he do with this plot, anyway? It was too small and rocky to clear and cultivate.

  They hammered their stakes in the ground, marking them with bits of twine they had dipped in red paint. Newton gazed out at the ridgetop expanse of tall pines, a few scattered, leafless hickories, and some scrubby maples in the undergrowth, their papery leaves clinging. “So this is mine and that’s yours,” he said. “Seems odd. All from some stakes and string.”

  “You’re just not used to it yet,” Adam said. “Give it time and it’ll start to feel like the natural order of things.”

  “So says the master of commerce. What will Mother say about your joining the ranks of the moneyed class?” He regretted the words immediately, but out they popped.

  “What has Mother said about your joining the ranks of the wicked?” Adam retorted. “It seems to me that we’ve both fallen short of expectations in our own ways.” He turned abruptly and stalked away, the bundle of surveyor’s chains slung over his shoulder, clanking with every step.

  Newton let him go. Of course Adam was angry. They were all disappointed and angry over different things. But how to reconcile, and with whom to attempt first? These were questions he couldn’t answer.

  A childhood memory came to him. For a long time—a year, maybe? At least several months—his father had lived out in the shed behind their house. At the time, with a child’s minimal understanding, he hadn’t comprehended the reason for it. He had simply accepted it as part of the mysterious ways of adults, and from time to time he had gone out to visit him accompanied by his grandfather, Mother’s father, who he now remembered only from photographs and stories. Then one day Father was back, sitting at the table as before, although Newton remembered awkwardness and tension for a long time after. In later years, he realized that this period had been the time when his father’s transgressions were revealed, the affair with Marie Mercadier, the birth of Josephine. Perhaps he should do the same, build himself a hermitage out here on this hilltop and live for a while, until time passed and feelings settled. Not that his mother would notice, since she was busy roaming the byways with her beau, Mr. Gardner, the killer of the unlamented Yancey.

  Listen to yourself, he thought. Who was the narrow-minded pinchface now? If he was going to stand before the community and ask forgiveness for his transgressions, he thought, he would do well to take a damp rag to his own slate of unforgiven affronts.

  He had been standing still so long that the squirrels started thrashing among the fallen leaves again. But as he stirred, prompted by his reflections, they scattered to their high nests.

  He needed to offer forgiveness, not ask for it. From that would come clarity, and from clarity would come direction.

  Newton started down the mountain, but not in the direction of Daybreak. Instead he descended the western shoulder, where the hollow came out behind Masterson’s farm. He would start his journey to clarity there.

  The forest ended close behind Masterson’s barn—or maybe it wasn’t Master-son’s anymore, but the Lord’s. Newton had never approached the farm from this direction and was a little surprised to see how dilapidated it looked from behind, trash dumped into a smoldering burn pile not twenty feet from the building, odd pieces of machinery abandoned in the very spot where they had broken. But then Masterson had never had much of a reputation as a husbandman.

  Barton Braswell’s wagon was parked in back, with a small pile of boxes and valises in it. As Newton watched from the woods, Lily Breeze came out from the house with a satchel, placed it in the wagon, and went inside. A minute later, Rose Rain came out with another one and did the same. Then Lily Breeze, then Rose Rain again. As soon as Rose Rain turned toward the house, Newton walked up to the wagon and waited.

  When Lily Breeze turned the corner of the barn, a suitcase in her hand, she stopped, considered, and then came forward. “Looking for one last lesson before we go?” she asked.

  “No,” Newton said, his face burning.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Barton won’t like you being here. Let’s walk up into the woods.”

  Newton led her into the underbrush until they were out of sight. “So why are you here, then?” she said.

  “Mainly, I wanted to say that I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve brought you into.”

  Lily Breeze laughed. “Aren’t you the gentleman?” she said. “I thought perhaps you had come out to deliver condemnations or demand satisfaction from someone.”

  “I’m trying to get away from that.” He was uncomfortable alone with her, given their past, but felt a need to complete whatever business was unfinished. “So you’re leaving?”

  “Yes. No reason to stay, lots of reasons to leave. We’ll push west, I think. We hear of a group of kindred spirits out north of Springfield. If not there, maybe Kansas.”

  “No reason to stay? So the idea of joining Daybreak was—?”

  “Instrumental. That’s the word we use in the family for an action you undertake for one reason, when people on the outside may view it in a different light. You don’t labor to correct their misunderstanding, you pursue your common goal even though you understand it differently.”

  “That sounds like simple deceitfulness to me.”

  She dismissed him with a wave. “That’s exactly the response we expect, and that’s the reason we don’t bother with efforts at correction. They’re a waste of time.”

  Newton didn’t want to argue. “Is Mr. Masterson going with you?”

  “That’s up to him,” Lily Breeze said with a shrug. “I doubt it. He wasn’t spiritually advanced at all, not even to your level, so I doubt if his attachment to the family will override his attachment to this sorry piece of ground. Too bad.”

  “And what passed between you and me—was tha
t instrumental, too?”

  She didn’t flinch. “On one level. We wanted to become part of Daybreak, and having you on our side looked like the best avenue. But at the same time, you seemed an open-minded sort who might be receptive to our message. So our interest was sincere.”

  “All this ‘we’ and ‘our.’ There was nothing of you in all this, then.” “Nothing of me? Do I need to remind you who was wallowing in the sheets with you all those times? So I had multiple motives. Didn’t you? Who doesn’t?”

  From the barn they heard Rose Rain’s voice, calling. “I’m over here!” Lily Breeze shouted. “I had to pee. I’ll be there in a minute.” She turned to leave.

  “Well, I wish you the best, wherever you go,” Newton said. “If you ever tire of the gypsy life, come back to Daybreak. We’re accustomed to welcoming those who don’t fit the general pattern.”

  Lily Breeze shook her head. “You still don’t get it, do you? You’re either naïve beyond words or not as bright as I thought. I’m never leaving Barton. We’re a family. He’s my husband.”

  “What?” Newton struggled to understand.

  “Not in the eyes of the state, but in the eyes of the Lord. And that’s what matters in the end.”

  “But what about Mattie?”

  “She’s married to him, too. Don’t you see? We’re all married to him, Mattie, Rose, and me. The world doesn’t see it as moral, but we’re sure of ourselves. We’ve got history and revelation on our side.”

  So that was it. He should have guessed earlier, with their peculiar, tight-knit closeness. His obtuseness didn’t surprise him, given the number of things he’d missed in recent months. ‘At one level,’ indeed. In other words, they thought he was a nice fellow while playing him for the fool that he was. He turned to leave.

  “If it means anything, we had no idea about that tax trick they played on you,” Lily Breeze said. “We were just as surprised as you were.”

  “Surprised that someone else could be as underhanded?”

  She let the remark pass. “We’ll not meet again. Good life to you.”