The Sound of the Trees

by Robert Payne Gatewood

  Ain’t no more to say about Roosevelt, the first man said. The man hunts in his Sundays.

  We ain’t talkin about his Sundays.

  Well, what I’m talkin about is if we goin to waste the last hours before we head back to the tracks, we ain’t goin to waste em on somebody who wears his Sundays to sight a buck.

  Let him go on, someone rasped from outside the firelight. Ain’t a gun in Texas that’ll stop him anyhow.

  It just so happens I got myself such a gun.

  Shut up Franklin, someone else said. You ain’t got no gun.

  Looking around the boy saw a deck of playing cards by one man’s side and he saw the many bottles clenched in their hands. He saw that the fire was girded by spike irons that were toed out and rusted and he saw the sledge handles leaned against the tent posts and he knew the men to be railroaders come to bear witness to the mayor’s new city.

  No one asked him his name nor did they give theirs but only looked at him briefly, then looked back at the fire and drew on the bottles with hands as black as the liquor they drank. His eyes dark and low upon them, the boy himself seemed to be pondering why he had come to sit there and now what to do. He snapped off his gloves and felt around in his jacket pocket and brought forth a crumpled pack of cigarettes. One of the men offered a swig of his bottle in trade. The boy declined the bottle but gave the man a cigarette. He asked the man why they hadn’t put up at the inn. The man only shook his head and said they weren’t never allowed to stay the night but he did not say why.

  Now what was I talkin about?

  The man went down from his haunches and sat with his legs drawn out before the fire and his hands cupping the bottle on his belt buckle.

  Diggin tracks, someone said.

  That’s right. Diggin tracks.

  He turned the bottle down from his belt and tipped the nose of it across the fire at the boy. You ever seen a fire in the desert? he said.

  Not this one again, someone called out. You don’t never tell nothin but this.

  The storyteller looked as though he’d been wounded and he balled his lips up at the man who had called out.

  I ain’t talkin to you no more.

  Go to hell, someone else called.

  I ain’t talkin to you neither. I’m talkin to the boy.

  I’m sure even he’s heard it before.

  For a moment he kept his working eye on the place from where the last slur had come, then turned back and looked across the fire to the boy. He had to tilt his head to ballast his sight which made it seem it was not only his eye he had lost but his equilibrium too.

  You ever seen a fire in the desert, son?

  No sir.

  No. Not likely. Not likely any of you all have.

  He looked around the fire defiantly. None of the men answered except one who was very drunk and all he said was, She ain’t nothin but a two-dollar whore.

  Exceptin William over there. He was with me.

  The man he named William sat with his tattered blue hat pulled over his eyes and he raised his bottle gravely at the sound of his name, though he did not seem to know for what purpose it had been called.

  We was with a crew down on California, the man went on. This was before the Chinamen come and brought the wage down. We’d meant to replace some track line been run thin by the heat but we ended up spendin most days that summer diggin tracks. I’ll tell you that line didn’t run but a fingernail into the desert. And I’ll tell you another thing.

  He stopped and took the bottle to his lips. He looked at the boy across the fire.

  You get yourself a fire goin in the desert, you best send a telegram quick as you can to your next of kin. They talk about these steep-grade trains run up through the mountains bein most dangerous, but let me tell you son, you don’t clear them tracks of sand and the train come on over them, step back. Even if the bumps would ride there’s the hot coals from the furnace can bust open, and that’s what this here story tells.

  The man got up on his haunches again. Some of the men reclined onto their sides like the one whose boot was now pressed against the boy’s back. The others stayed drinking and watching the fire, their shoulders slouched into their chests, their eyes so oblique and tamped they appeared to have been the subject of men’s wrath as equally as the steel tracks they pounded.

  There was a man down on the Pacific line back then by the name of Dupree. Fred Dupree. Was a coal shuttler. Was a friend of mine, too. Worked on that line since the first day they burned the tracks. One day his train was ridin down there by us. Time of year wasn’t much different from what it is now, but down there you near inside of Mexico and this here month is the worst for the sandstorms. Way I remember it we was short on account of some paper mill openin up and takin three boys off the crew. We got put out to clear some track been blown over and they pushed us out there real fast because the 212, that was Dupree’s train, the 212 wasn’t receivin no messages off the line and the tracks was duned up bad.

  Across the fire the boy smoked silently. The man sitting next to him nudged him for another cigarette. He shucked one from the pack and held it out. The storyteller stopped to watch this exchange and waited until it was over, then tilted his head again and went on.

  So we was out there frantic diggin, still couldn’t get no message over the wire to slow em down and that sand seemed to blow back over us two spadefuls for every one we throwed. And sure enough, before long that strand of smoke come spinnin up from the horizon. I always remember that. It was clear blue that day and all besides us men you could see was that pile of smoke come off the land like it meant to set the world afire. Now I ain’t one for omens or witches’ tales but that was the first day it come to me that the world ain’t no more ours than it was that little wire of smoke driftin off to nothin.

  The man held his bottle cupped before him and turned it slowly in his fingers as though considering its weight.

  Well. There wasn’t nothin we could do then but wave our arms, which we knew wouldn’t make a damn, and watch it come on. And sure enough it come without the slightest touch of brake, come on like there weren’t nothin that would stop it even in the span of forever. But it did stop. Made it about halfway up where the joints was laid under, then one of the couplers gave loose. Back end sort of groaned off to a stop, just sat there upright on the line. It was the front end that tipped. It’d slowed a good bit afore it went over and then even when it went over on its side the smoke kept pourin out of the hull like a child’s windup. Didn’t look to be that bad in the end at all. To tell it straight, only one passenger took hurt. Broke his ribs, maybe, I disremember.

  The storyteller looked across the fire to where William sat with his eyes on the flames.

  Broke his ribs?

  Yeah, William whispered into the fire. Was his ribs.

  Right. His ribs. Old Dupree, though.

  The man set the bottle now nearly empty by his side and juggled it to stay upright. He looked after it a moment until he saw it wouldn’t fall over. Then he looked across at the boy.

  Old Dupree was in there loadin up them coals. The way it was said later was that he didn’t break a single bone, but nobody could of rightly knowed that. Engine just went over on its side and Dupree he fell straight back against the engineer door, just alayin on his back. Stunned was all his trouble, I reckon. But that old iron door had broke off at the swing bar and come open. Come down on Dupree a whole armful of red coals. Right on his belly.

  He paused and looked off into the distance. He seemed convinced that the scene he spoke of had been laid out for them on the black hills.

  Time I got there he was lit up like a brush fire, he said. When he finally come crawlin out, he commenced to rollin around in the sand callin for water. Water, water, he was callin. Way a boy calls for his mother. And you couldn’t of stove off the people comin from the rear of the train with their tumblers filled up. Twenty, thirty people, women too, all tippin them thimbles of water upon him. Was a portrait, it was. I’ve not
seen its like since and I don’t guess I ever will. All of us boys, we was froze. Just gawkin down at him. I even recollect stuffin my hands in my pockets. And I knowed that man more than ten year. I come to wonder what he was thinkin when he looked up to see us boys standin there like we was made of wood. Would have made him consider the nature of man, I reckon. Seein we was the only ones who knowed him by name and the only ones who weren’t doin nothin for him. But standin in the middle of the desert there was these people all bent over Dupree, whose clothes had caught and was flamin on and on, and they was blowin on him. Damndest thing I ever did see. Callin at the flames to quit. But it was Dupree who quit first. When he’d finally stopped breathin them flames just went on lickin at his shirt collar where his neck had gone black and bony. Them flames goin on like it didn’t make no difference he was already dead. Finally I looked over at William there and couldn’t think of nothin to do but just come up on his body and put a boot hard on his chest. Time I was done stompin out the flames, Fred Dupree was as flat as the land he lay on.

  The man took up his bottle and seemed he would speak more but he only slung back the dregs of the whiskey. At last he spoke again and as he did he kept his eye pitched down at the ground between his boots.

  Only thing left of Dupree was his brown briefcase. Carried that briefcase to work every day. Strange thing it was. He was the only one. Nobody ever heard of no coal shuttler carryin a briefcase and we was forever ridin him about it. He was always congenial about it, though. Just smiled and didn’t say nothin. When they brought it out of the furnace room it was more likely a snakeskin than anythin else. All burnt up and flaked to pieces. We laid it out on the ground and since I was the one put out the fire it came to pass that I was the one to open it. Them boys I was with were real curious to see about it, seein as we was always laughin and makin bets on what it held. Nobody laughed when they seen what was in it, though. The pictures was all curled around the edges but I knowed right off who it was on account I’d heard him talk about her once. The thing I didn’t know was Fred had himself some kids, too. Three in number, all little ones. Two girls and a baby boy. I never even knowed it. And what was worse was nobody knew who they were or where they was. And I never did find them. I asked around but the man who’d hired him on those years ago had died himself, and there weren’t no papers to show the way. In the end I throwed them pictures in the fire. I don’t know why, but that was the only way it seemed right. Was the only way I could think to tell him we was sorry.

  For a long time after, no one at the fire spoke. It was as if although they didn’t seem be listening to the story, they knew that when it was over the only thing it was to be remarked upon with was their silence. The storyteller looked across the fire at the boy and when someone finally rose and walked off to the tents he asked him what he thought about all that.

  I don’t imagine there was much else you could’ve done for him, the boy said.

  The man nodded his head slowly but said No, he didn’t think there was either. But who could have? he said after a moment. Or what? I reckon there’s a force for everythin. What force could’ve changed such a scene? There was a door and the fire it kept inside. Then that door opens. Just like that. Twenty years Fred Dupree worked that fire like he was feedin his own child. The one thing he’d built his livelihood around had become his death in a single instant. An open door. That’s all it was. I think about that from time to time. And then there were other things could have been different, too. A stronger wind, maybe? A sudden rain? Faster hands? I imagine. I imagine them forces was out there too, could have come just as likely as the fire that did. But that door. That door was his. How does somethin you count on do you like that? Who owns that which you for so long thought had belonged to you? And where does it steal into your life? That’s what I’m always wonderin. Every story got a beginnin and an end, but when you look close, what is it that makes them stories turn one way and not the other? What force is it lies behind that act?

  I don’t know, the boy said. I don’t know that anyone does. I reckon all there is to do is try to make it go the way you see it should.

  The man studied the boy for a long moment. His eye grew circumspect as if for the first time he was curious as to where the boy had come from to find them that night and why. At last he rose with a grunt and steadied himself with his hands on his knees.

  One thing I learned that day, he said. Don’t never bet on a man against nature. It ain’t no fight he could make. The storyteller leaned down and took up his empty bottle and staggered back a few steps and pitched his head back up toward the lightening sky. It’s goin to break soon, he said.

  He pointed the bottle across the fire at the boy.

  You go on and sit here as long as you like. Any of them boys wake up and ask you who you are, you just ask em the same. In the end the difference, well, it just don’t make a damn.

  The man turned from the ruined fire and flung the bottle into the trees and tromped back off through the crushed brown grass. The boy watched his tiny shadow fold into the dark. When the man reached the tent flaps he turned back to the boy who was still watching him.

  Tell em you’re Dupree’s ghost, he called out in a drunken slur. Tell em you come back to put a burn on their souls.

  * * *

  THE FOLLOWING DAY brought a sky filled with threats of rain though none came. By the time the boy arrived at Garrets it was night and the sky had cleared. He went up the porch fingering the stitching where the old man had closed the gash with a hemming needle. His eye was swollen to nearly shut and when the old man had taken down the looking glass from above the sink basin and handed it to the boy, he had looked at it only briefly, but long enough to know that he still did not recognize the darkly creased face nor the glazed eyes he saw looking back at him.

  John Frank was waiting for him in the backmost booth. He was leaning his head against the window frame when the boy walked in. He looked up and watched the boy as he slid into the booth.

  You eat yet? the boy said.

  Nope. Just waitin on you.

  They both laid out their packs of cigarettes on the table. When the boy made to motion the waitress for coffee John Frank told him it was already coming. Miss Jane brought the handles of coffee and set them down on the table. She looked at the boy but he turned his head away from her. She put her hands on her hips. You boys ought to try drinkin some water sometime, she said.

  John Frank ordered eggs and tortillas and a bowl of chili peppers and a plate of fried potatoes. The boy asked for two slices of mincemeat pie. The waitress nodded slowly and scratched it all down. Up in a shake, she said.

  The boy lit a cigarette and blew smoke at the window which was fogging up with the heat from inside. Outside on the rim of the horizon the clouds were gathering up again. Listen bud, he said.

  No. You listen to me.

  John Frank straightened himself full and cleared his throat. It appeared he had suffered long preparation for what he now wanted to say.

  Ever since yesterday I can’t put my finger on what it is you’re after exactly but all I know is that it don’t make no sense. I walked down by the refectory today, bud. I figure you’d be lucky to get five minutes in that place before someone heard you. And that’s if you could get in. There’s people livin right beside it and they’d just as soon believe you was sneaking in their houses as anywhere else. Frank lit his own cigarette and pulled on it and set it down in the ashtray. Besides, he said. It ain’t right.

  The boy pointed across the table with the spoon he had been stirring his coffee with.

  Don’t even, he said. Don’t even try to be sayin what’s right and what ain’t. I heard enough of that. He lowered the spoon and shook his head at his knees. I know I ain’t no authority, he said. I know I ain’t the mayor of this town. But I also know right or wrong ain’t got nothin to do with me finding out about her.

  John Frank glared back at him but said no more. Miss Jane came back and set the heavy blue plates on the table.
The boy set the ashtray on the windowsill.

  Let’s eat, he said.

  He took up his fork and cut into the pie. John Frank looked at him.

  What happened to your eye anyway?

  The boy swallowed. Fell off my horse, he said.

  They remained quiet while they ate, watching out the window to where the night drifted slowly by. Now and again came the jar and clatter of gear shafts working down the road. A bell rang out from the kitchen window and Miss Jane rose from where she sat reading a newspaper and went through the doors. A voice called out in the plaza but there was no reply.

  The boy pushed away his second piece of pie and took the ashtray down from the sill and set it in front of him and shook loose a cigarette and struck up a match. The smoke he exhaled rose blue and unbroken above the table. John Frank stopped picking at his potatoes and set down his fork and looked to where he had set it.

  If it happens to turn bad, he said. If it happens you can’t

  He put his hands flat on the table and stared across at the boy.

  If it happens you go to jail, I don’t know what I can do for you. I mean, if the mayor sets his mind to it, I don’t know my word would carry anything against it. Some things he don’t pay much mind to. But when something grips him, it grips him like a vice. And if that happens then there ain’t no one to change it.

  The boy tried to smile but winced from his broken eye when his cheek went up. Don’t worry about it, he said.

  John Frank’s face darkened. He frowned at the boy.

  You in love with her? Is that what it is?

  The boy’s mouth froze half open. He leaned back and took up his cigarette and held it to his mouth but did not draw. Then he set it back in the ashtray and turned his face to the clouded window. I don’t know, he said.

  John Frank watched him. The lights in the cantina flickered dully from above the counter and fell pale and weak upon the table where they sat.

  Yeah, he said at last. I guess I do.

  But you don’t even know her, John Frank pleaded. Not even her name. How you think you could tell something like that?