The old man screwed up his face. Both, he said. But I don’t put much stock in neither of them. Them’s the easy ways to look at it. I think the river be showin a person the way his mind’s supposed to work.
The boy buttoned his jacket to the neck. The old man watched him and picked at his teeth and straightened up again and bent a finger to the fluid black current behind them.
You ain’t never seen a river stop and think too long about nothin. It don’t never twist and squirrel around what lays in its path, exceptin when the thing is too big to go rightly through it. Then it goes around. Gently. But otherwise it just goes and keeps goin. Over and under and through all things again like there ain’t no need to lay mind to it. Like it knows they’s always to be there at some point. There ain’t no dallyin for the river, you see. No steppin back to observe. Just pure flowin and goin and never thinkin twice.
The old man nodded his head thoughtfully, his face a cave of shadows in the firelight.
That’d be what gets me most about it. Never lookin back and never steppin aside but always comin out changed in some way. But never worried about them changes. Like it knows they’s to come. It may look the same to us. Out here. The first thing a man’s most likely to think lookin on a river is that it don’t never change. But it does. It sure does.
He eyed the boy across the fire purposefully.
Cause you know son, you can’t never step in the same river twice. The old man’s face twisted into a strangely youthful grin. I reckon the river’s got the finest mind there is, he said. The most peaceful at least. You don’t believe me, go on and look for yourself.
The boy eased back and turned so they both regarded the river that was flickering brightly in the new moon glow. The boy watched it dance past. Trying to follow one strain of water all the way to the eye’s end but each time he tried he lost it among all of the other waters. Soon he grew weary and turned back to the fire and stoked it with the cherry branch. The old man watched the boy move the charred stick through the embers.
You know, boy. You don’t got to live like this.
Live like what?
The old man made a gesture with his hands across the campfire. They got easier ways of livin now, he said. Get yourself a nice room. Hot water from the taps stead of haulin it up from the river like we always have to be doin out here. Electrical lamp on your bed stand. Get a nice suit like you see in them papers. Ride the girls around in a pretty car. They don’t make your ass hurt no more than a horse and they go a hell of a lot faster.
You don’t believe that.
Well. The old man paused. He shook his head with a look that seemed to be gathering some grim recognition of an idea long pondered. It’s a new time, boy. It is. Has been for a while now. What I want to know is why you still livin in mine.
The boy looked into the river, then turned back to the fire again. His eyes hovered above the flames like clouds of blue smoke. Not where I come from, he said. What I known. It ain’t what I was born to. Not like this town. Couple ranchers had their trucks to ride to the auction pens. A few bars and a general and a hotel. A post office. Five-and-dime, and that’s it. Rancher named Larry Bowles cut everybody’s hair. Even the missus. Besides. You said it yourself. They got it all wrong down there.
The old man nodded at him. For a moment he seemed he would press on but he did not. They listened to the wind and looked out at the bent timberline on the mesa and the grackles that shot from bush to grass and they listened to the voice of the river beneath it all.
Look at them stars, the old man said after a while.
They look far off, the boy said.
Reminds me of my favorite myth. Bout a girl named Callisto. You got an ear for it, boy?
The boy looked down at the river, then up at the stars again. Yes, he said. I reckon I do.
The old man thrust his head back and breathed deeply in that same manner he always did when about to recite his stories. He pushed away the strands of hair that the wind blew over his gray eyes.
She was the daughter of a king named Lycaon.
They was in plenty back then. Yes. Lycaon weren’t the good man Sisyphus was. But like Sisyphus he ended up bad off in the end.
They always seem to.
But it wasn’t straight him this time. The punishment not only went on him but went down to his daughter, too. Callisto. And that punishment I ain’t even sure how to figure on yet and I thought it around many a time.
The old man scratched his arms beneath the blanket and squeezed them tight against the cold. Lycaon did one of the worst things a man could do in the days of the gods, he said.
Crossed Zeus, I imagine.
The old man grinned at him.
You’re catchin on, boy. Zeus came to dinner with Lycaon one night. No small thing for a mortal. In fact, was about the biggest thing a man could hope for in them days. But what does Lycaon do when the great Zeus is guest at his home? Serves him up a sup of human flesh, that’s what.
So Zeus kills him.
No. No, he doesn’t.
The old man peered through the fire and pointed a finger at the boy.
He turned him into a wolf for his wickedness. Sent him out to roam the world and hunt each day and night for food to fill himself with.
The old man was silent for a moment. He gazed into the fire as though the structure of the story were taking root there.
Later on now, Zeus falls in love with Callisto. Lycaon’s daughter. Not a strange thing, cause that Zeus was a buckshot of love. Loved a good heap of women in his day. But what he does with Callisto didn’t sit well with his old lady. Gets her pregnant is what he does. Course it weren’t too long before Hera found out. That’s Zeus’s wife. Foul woman.
He put a finger to his lips as if to make himself silent.
Still shouldn’t say that, I reckon. He looked around the sky. You never do know. Anyways, after Callisto bears out the child, Hera comes down from the mountain and changes her into a bear. Like her father she’s sent out to wander the world herself. But that weren’t enough for Hera. Havin a man like Zeus stickin his lightnin in all them young beauties got her blood up. So then, again this is later on, Callisto’s son, who’s named Arcas, he becomes the bull’s-eye of her fury. At the time Arcas is growin up in the woods with Artemis. Artemis bein the goddess of huntin. Is this too much for you, boy?
No. I think I got the handle.
Alright. Arcas, he gets up to be a good hunter, but it’s just as Hera had planned it.
The boy set down the cherry branch and watched the old man’s face flicker and wane and rise again in the flames. He held the collar of his jacket up against the wind.
One day when Arcas has grown big and strong, Hera sets his mind to killin the bear. The bear that’s really Callisto. Of course the boy don’t know it’s his mother. Don’t know she’s been watchin out for him even though she can’t say it or tell him or hold him like a mother should. So he goes off ahuntin her. All day and night, Hera’s made him so crazy for it.
The boy sat up and crossed his legs.
He sees the bear and she flees him. He follows her here, then she’s gone to there. Imagine her heart, like that. Runnin from her own son. Well, one day he traps her. Corners her in a big gorge of rock. She tries to climb the damn thing but them rocks is all wet with dew. It’s an early mornin, you see. But just as Arcas raises his bow and sets his arrow, she’s suddenly gone.
The old man’s eyes widened upon the fire. He made fists with both his hands, then opened them as if to release some crucial invisibility into the air.
Gone, he said. Disappeared. Why? Cause Zeus come back to save her. Snatched her right up from the earth and set her in the stars where she’s called Great Bear. Later on, Arcas, he’s raised up too. Called later by the people Lesser Bear.
The old man leaned back and folded his arms under his head and pulled the blanket up to the sagging flesh at his chin.
But one last time Hera sticks her nose in it. All riled up about the ho
nor Zeus bestowed on them. So she sets the only curse she can upon them. She persuades Poseidon, god of the sea, to forbid them two stars from fallin into the ocean like all the others. So them two bears, them stars that is Callisto and Arcas, they’s forever and always the only ones never to be settin below the horizon.
The old man’s voice trailed off on those last words and he coughed and shifted under the blanket. The boy leaned in toward him to better hear what had now become a mere whisper from his sunken chest.
That’s my favorite, he rasped. Cause it ain’t one way or the other. It ain’t good nor bad alone. It’s both. Sometimes I’m rollin that over in my head. When I’m thinkin clear. Did Zeus win or did Hera? Are Callisto and Arcas livin good up there or do they pine for the sea? Do they want to disappear under the horizon and get a rest for a while? Do they miss all the other stars when they’re up there alone?
The old man stopped and breathed long. His mouth opened and closed again and his breath settled into a dim rattle that passed out of his nose. The boy watched him from across the last licks of the fire and he turned his head back and looked up at the stars that were going slowly covered by a host of dark clouds.
What did you decide? he said.
The old man groaned and shifted under the blanket and turned away from the fire. The boy looked back down and over at him.
Who won?
He leaned over the fire and nudged the old man but in the darkness away from the fire he did not move and the night crept over both boy and river as blind and faultless as the old man’s sleep.
* * *
The following day he rode out to Charlie Ford’s ranch to have Triften’s toes clipped. The air was very cold but still. He found the rancher oiling his saddle in the barn. He came down from his horse and rapped the barn door that was cast open and shedding a thin rictus of light onto the dirt floor. Charlie Ford turned with a rag in his hand and his shirtsleeves rolled up on his bulging forearms. Trude Mason from Grant County, he said, his eyebrows raised in genuine surprise. Just the man I was lookin for.
They sat in the tiny kitchen in the barn and the boy made a pot of coffee while the rancher scrubbed the grease from his hands.
What were you lookin for me for, the boy asked.
Charlie Ford turned from the sink basin, shaking off the water that was dripping down his arms.
Like mind, son. On a day like this it’s nice to be around a like mind.
Yes sir, the boy said. I was thinkin the same thing.
He poured out their coffees and both sat. They spoke at great lengths about the rancher’s horses and his sale of twenty head at an auction in Albuquerque. He told the boy that he had done well and cleared up some old debts and that maybe in the winter he would have some work for him if he planned to stay on.
I don’t know if I will. I hope to be on my way.
The winter ain’t the best time to travel in this country, son. Specially where you’re headed.
I know it. But I may have no choice in it.
Charlie Ford sipped at his coffee. Has that office job got you down?
It’s insubstantial for sure, but no. That ain’t it.
What is it then?
The boy looked at the rancher and the rancher handed him a cigarette across the table and said, Go on and tell me, I ain’t goin to judge you for it.
The boy nodded a little into the mug. I would like to tell you about it, he said.
Charlie Ford straightened up in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. Sure, he said. Sure.
I feel like I can talk to you is all.
Alright.
I mean between just us two.
Charlie Ford reached across the table and gave the boy a stiff pat on the shoulder, then recrossed his arms. Only others I seem to talk to these days is my horses, he said. You go on and tell me anything you want.
The boy lit his cigarette and set it in the ashtray and blew on his coffee and told him about it. He told him about the old man he was staying with and John Frank his friend who was trying to help him and he told him about the mayor and at last and into the steam of his coffee he told him about the girl. He gave a brief account of the situation and both shook their heads as the story came forth.
When he finished Charlie Ford rose from the table and poured them more coffee and stood by the sink basin. For a while he studied his mug. Then he told the boy that he shouldn’t be so sure of what the mayor was planning, but that the way the town was now was the way it would always be. He said he wished he knew what to tell him but there was little to say. He told him that he knew little about the mayor and truth be told he had left town when the organizing and expansion began. All the ranchers had, he said. And he said that no wind or wet had ever set them back the way that the mayor and his newfangled town had. They had all gone their separate ways, and the spring roundups that had once been the finest and toughest and sweetest days of their lives were lost and what’s worse was that they were no longer even neighbors. Can’t even sit around and chew the rag no more, he said.
Finally he shook his head and set his mug in the sink and told the boy that he once had a say in the way things went in that country but that those days had changed altogether. That they had changed once, and forever.
So there’s nothin for me to do?
Oh, there’s always things you can do. Charlie Ford smiled evenly at the boy. But right here I think they’re things you got to figure on your own.
In the evening the boy helped the rancher bring in some strays that had drifted out along the fence line and he rode with that old swell in his heart. Both rancher and boy smiled at each other across the misty landscape and late at night when his horse’s toes had been clipped they sat once more at the kitchen table, and in that stable room of Charlie Ford’s in a country far from his home the boy passed into his nineteenth year without mother or father, or even a single candle to blow out.
* * *
When he came to the wall she was already standing there with her fingers wrapped around the iron bars and her eyes dark and swollen. The domed light from the prison wall wafted in the breeze and settled across his boots and after a while she looked down.
She saw him standing there, thin and pale and slightly shivering from the cold. His hands were stuffed deep in his jacket pockets where he was trying to stave off their shaking. Her face turned away almost fearfully. Then she began to cry. The boy stepped back and took his hat down and held it at his chest. He withdrew his other hand from his pocket and raised it up in supplication.
After a few minutes she lowered her face to the bars. She began to shake her head against them, slow and deliberate. One hand came up and pressed the photograph against her throat and still the boy did not call to her nor did she speak. He could see her face more clearly without the rain present and it seemed to him even thinner and more fine than he had remembered.
She went on shaking her head and at last, low and quiet beneath her breath, he heard her voice. No, she was saying. He stepped forward, her hair above him swinging across her face like a flag on the mast of a ship lost under the sea. He could hear her clearly now. No, she said again, but the boy knew she was telling him something else.
The wind stirred up and rustled in the outcropping trees and he felt it acute on his face as he had the first time he had seen her wide soft eyes, and he suddenly sat on the damp ground and put his hands over his face. For a moment his mouth opened wide but no sound came and he lowered his head until he was as still as she. When he rose to his feet again he looked up almost timidly at her. She was smiling down at him, and her smile seemed to the boy wider than all the dark folding sky and deeper than it too.
I’ll be right down, she whispered.
She tried to laugh but for the boy there was no laughter to be had. He knew that when a man is reduced to all but nothing he cannot laugh at it for there is no laughter in worship and worship is all there is when there is but one thing that remains.
They talked past the night an
d into the first hours of morning. This time she did not try to make him go and for a long time she told him about her home in Ansley, Mississippi.
I was born in the water, she told him. She laughed sadly. The ocean ran right up to our house and my mother would take her bath in it. Purest thing in God’s whole world, she’d say. When I started comin out she didn’t have the strength to get back up to the house. My daddy’s brother came running down and brought me swimming into the world. He laughed about that all the time. You came swimming right into life, Delilah, he liked to say. To this day I still love that water. She paused with her eyes down and then she said, I wish you could see it.
I never been to the ocean, the boy said. I don’t even know if I’ve ever seen it. Not even in books. He smiled up at her. Where I come from everything’s dry. Even the rain. He smiled slightly again, then lowered his head and frowned at his boots. But I will, he said. I will see it. And it’ll be you that shows it to me.
The girl made her grip tighter on the bars and pressed her head against her hands. She looked down at him for a long time. Trude, she said.
Then she told him about her mother and the Englishman her family had worked for and whom she named Roland James, and how he had taken their poverty beyond money. How he had raped her mother and then later how he had raped her. How it came to pass that her father found out and one night gone with knife in hand to the main house where Roland lived, and never returned. And she told him how soon after her mother too was gone, the only thing left of her a photograph of the ocean she found in the weeds on the side of the road. She told him how she was then left alone with the man who raped her before she had ever bled down there and who had also probably killed her mother and father. No one stood up for her save a few old women from down the road but their hands were as empty and black as her own.
Later on with the moon high and the boy sitting again she told him of better days, of the ripe fields and the slow summer nights. The way the dirt road warmed her bare feet. How the ocean went on and on for miles and how on days when there weren’t any clouds the whole world ran on like one big sky. She told him about the kindness of her father and how he never took to beating or cussing but was always tender to her. She said for a long time she had asked why others were not the same way but now she did not.
The Sound of the Trees Page 21