The Sound of the Trees

by Robert Payne Gatewood

  TWENTY

  HOURS BEFORE THE girl was to meet the priest the boy showed his face in town once more. When the glass cutter stepped down from his truck the boy got off the porch step and put up a finger in greeting. He was an excessively thin man and he came tugging on a pair of oat sack pants that were held up loosely by a pair of red suspenders, his too-large boots clomping indelicately in the early morning stillness. He stopped short huffing and looked at the boy, then came booting up the steps.

  Been here long?

  The boy stubbed out his cigarette on the porch floor and stood and put his hands in his pockets. Not too long, he said.

  The glass cutter shifted the mug of coffee in his hand and fumbled through his keys. Friday usually finds me slow to start, he said. What time is it?

  Just six, the boy said.

  No wonder you been waitin. Come on in, he said.

  He pushed the door open with a long creak. They stepped into the cool shade of the store. The man walked up to the front and put his keys and coffee on the counter near a polished silver till. He went back up to the front door and tilted open the shudders, the light arriving in a single weak shaft along the floor. Then he came back and stepped behind the counter still wrestling with his pants and took up a pencil and slid it behind his ear and leaned on the counter and looked bemusedly at the boy. There was no sign that he registered who the boy was.

  So what did you need from me that you come so early?

  I’m in need of some plate glass.

  What size?

  I’d estimate it at three by four.

  Big window.

  Yes sir. And I need two of em.

  The man lifted a pair of wire-rim glasses from the undershelving and settled them on his nose. Let me go see what I got in back, he said. You want some coffee? I’m fixin to put a pot on back here.

  I’d appreciate it, the boy said.

  The glass cutter was gone for some time. When he came back he held a mug of coffee in each hand and set both on the counter.

  Here you go. I put some sugar in it. That alright?

  That’s how I take it. Thank you.

  The glass cutter sipped and shook his head at the mug.

  Myself I like a little milk in mine but it ain’t easy to find a fresh bottle these days. Seems they more concerned about other things. Man who used to sell milk and cheese come in here the other day with this catalog on coolers. Stepped right up here, nothin said about the milk I’d asked him for, only this long-winded speech about the two-hundred model. Four compartments in this cooler. Never fail to keep things cold. I told him all I wanted was some milk. How you goin to keep it cold? he said to me.

  The glass cutter shook his head at the boy, but the boy was watching the sun rise out on the road.

  Man’s been bringin me milk for five years, asks me how I’m goin to keep it cold. And he knows I own the very first cooler in this town. Men used to come and sip beer on my porch every Saturday. I reminded him of it but he said it don’t work like this two-hundred model. Don’t keep near as cold or well. So to that I just stood there poker-faced as I could and asked him, asked him, Earl, what you think I’ve been doin all these years? Don’t you know how much I enjoy it warm and spoiled? Earl didn’t much care for that, told me to forget it. Said I’d come aknockin for it right soon. Well, I promised him I’d never be caught callin on a farmer wearin a silly brown suit like he was that day. Looked like somethin one of his calves shot from its ass.

  The glass cutter looked into the black of his coffee and laughed sleepily. Ain’t seen Earl in a while, he said.

  The boy nodded and tried to hide the impatience in his smile and thanked the man again for the coffee. How about them windows? he said.

  Right. I put a good cut on em. They’re ready. And I reckon you’ll need some sealing compound.

  Yes sir.

  Alright. You got a truck out there somewheres?

  No sir. Got my horse.

  The glass cutter took the glasses from his nose and set them back on the undershelving. Well, he said. I can have em drove out later.

  There’s no road to where I’m bringin em.

  The glass cutter sipped thoughtfully at his mug. How you reckon to carry em then?

  Just strap em up good. Can you pack em with some boards and paper?

  I reckon we could put a try to it.

  The glass cutter lit a pipe he brought from beneath the counter and tugged on his pants and brought the glass out and two tins of sealant which he placed in a small paper bag. Let’s see what we can do, he said.

  They wrapped the glass together with some broken tackboard scraps and taped up the glass with heavy brown packaging paper and they each carried a piece outside on their hips. They stitched up the glass on the horse’s rump, tying it under her flanks and around the saddle and up the buttocks. The mare reared up and the boy coaxed her down and told her to be still and finally they had it on tight enough.

  The boy turned to the glass cutter and asked him how much he owed him and he paid fourteen dollars even and the man thanked him and told him to take care with the glass then went back inside drawing on his pipe, a finger hitched around the back of his suspender branches. The boy put the sealant in the saddlebag, climbed on his horse and began to walk her down the road.

  As he was passing under the willow tree he heard a door slam in the near distance. A few seconds later Thomas Trewitt came hustling onto the thoroughfare. When the boy saw him he hopped down from his horse and went swiftly toward him with his hands poised into fists. Trewitt did not turn to run but instead he held up his own hands and waved them at the boy. Only when the boy had him by the collar did the newsman start backstepping and slapping at the boy’s hands.

  Cultivation of the West, the boy hissed.

  Trewitt kept slapping at the boy’s hands. His face was screwed up and then he took the boy equally by the collar. You wait a minute here, he said with a forced hush. I came to tell you I’m sorry.

  Sorry? Sorry for what? That you were full of shit about tryin?

  No. Look here. Trewitt’s breath was hot and fractious on the boy’s face. I have tried, he said. There’s nothing that will persuade him. I’m sorry.

  The boy let down his hands. After he caught his breath Trewitt let go too.

  You’re sorry, the boy said dryly. What about the lawyer? There’s your big story. Why don’t you tell the people about him?

  You mean the rumor about him and the girl.

  Not the rumor. The fact.

  The newsman wrung his hands together and looked down. Hell, he said. There is nothing I can do about it now. He paused a moment, then looked up sharply. It’s not my fault, he said. And no one could do anything about it, even if they did care. It would be too dangerous for me. He looked down again. But I can promise you it will not go unrecorded.

  Oh, the boy said, turning back to his horse who stood nosing the cold ground. Of course not. Great new West will be told for all the world.

  Trewitt put up a hand to the boy’s back. All of it, he called. Not just that. Nothing will be lost. All things will be recorded. All things will be told.

  The boy got up on his horse again and began to walk her down the road. Trewitt started into a jog beside the mare. He was holding up a hand as though he wished the boy would shake it but the boy only frowned down at him then started the horse into a trot. Trewitt tried a few more steps, then pulled up and stood huffing in the middle of the road. He watched the boy stepping the horse into the high grass at the edge of town. You will be recorded too, he called.

  By the time he cleared out into the hamlet it was already ten o’clock. The old man was riding the mule alongside the river and humming to himself. When he saw the boy coming he turned and came up the slope.

  What in the hell, he said.

  It’s your windows.

  I told ya I just needed some wood.

  I told you I’d get some windows. Help me bring em down.

  They undid the cording and
removed the glass from the horse’s back and walked each window to the cabin and leaned the packages under the empty window frames. The boy handed the old man the paper bag. You’ll need this, he said.

  The old man snatched up the bag and flung it to the ground. I can’t do this, he said.

  Why not?

  The old man fumbled with his gnarled hands. He held them up to the boy. Shaking and twitching and thin to nothing but knuckle and bone.

  I’ve got old, boy. It’s still amazin to me I can make coffee.

  Well I ain’t doin it. I got to get on.

  I ain’t either. Told ya I just needed some wood.

  Will you just look it over? He cut em to fit right.

  I just imagine I can’t is all.

  The boy turned away from the old man and looked up at the muddy sun and the torn shreds of cloud before it. Noon was approaching quickly. I got to get on, he said.

  You just got back. Where you off to now? You know they’re bound to catch you.

  The boy lifted his hat and squinted. He seemed at a loss to describe it, his eyes out on the sun as if it too awaited his answer. Goin to see God, he said at last.

  Then he was up on the mare again and going down the hills with the old man watching him the same way he had so many times before. He put his hands on his hips when the boy was out of sight, then turned and hobbled back into the windy dark of the cabin.

  * * *

  THE CHURCH STOOD half toppled just east of town where the old adobe structures of the first settlers there had once stood. Now the church was skeletal, the red clay walls nearly washed out of their flaking white paint and the cross erected at the wooden gate angling down into the dust.

  The boy came riding in the soft cold light. He walked the horse behind the church to the friary. The churchyard was a vast field of cracked red earth. Here and there fissured headstones protruded, offering little more than rubble and weeds. He hobbled the horse and came into the yard and bent by one of the stones, his hands clenched on his knees. There was no name or if there was it had gone away by the elements. He went to another as nameless as the first, then stood and spat and wiped his brow under his hat.

  When he entered the church he took down his hat. He could not remember the last time he had been to church but he remembered going with his father and his father lowering his hat from his head as if in apology and how he had watched him and done the same.

  Inside the air was cool and splayed from the shattered windows and it leaned in across the walls and floor like rivulets of water. The boy bent down and took the dirk knife from his boot and stood stockstill in the doorway. Smells of jasmine and wine and rot lingered. The floor was littered with parched missals and the sunburned husks of palm leaves. When he walked up the nave he could feel the dry clay shift under his boots. Dust billowed up from his tread, then froze and hung suspended in the light.

  In front of the altar rail rose two long steps of Italian marble and behind the altar a basket for the alms. The altar was a thick cut of beech and perhaps the only thing untouched by the years. Upon it stood two chalices of pewter and one of bronze, though the cup had been tarnished green at the base. The boy picked it up and turned it in his hand.

  The blood of Christ. He thought of his father again. Remembering what he always said when he returned from town Sunday nights. Only thing that place is good for is the blood. Then he would go staggering up the stairs with a fifth of bourbon or bootleg gin and pass into the bedroom where he would make no light to see by.

  The boy stepped down from the altar and walked around to the side. Some birds cooed, then spun from the vigas. They went in a flurry out an empty window. He watched them go in the milky light. Down one of the aisles on the far side of the church’s body was an alcove built as a confessional and inside it a pair of small stools and a curtain between. He looked around. The birds that had gone warbled again in the distance. Calling perhaps to welcome his soul or to warn it, or perhaps calling for no reason at all unless their own antique nature. He stood listening, his hands nervous around the rim of his hat, then with a shuffle and tread of dust he went toward the confessional.

  He walked in and placed his hat on one of the stools, drawing the curtain along its ring chain until it unfolded in front of him. He sat in the darkness. He sat motionless in the dark and cold, listening to the wind shrilling through the broken glass of the windows and he sat for a very long time.

  He tried to think of her coming up the road. He imagined her walking in the door long and clean and sad and beautiful. Imagined her hair pulled up and tossed along her shoulders and her shoulders slung back along her smooth neck and only her downcast eyes betraying the majesty of her.

  He wondered what he would say to her when she came. This time he wanted to say nothing but only hold her and take her in his arms and let her fold into him like a blanket wrapped around one who is lost in sleep and then to push her long black hair from his face and kiss her eyes until they once again opened to him with that clear dark light.

  When he heard the wind kick up and sweep through the chapel he raised his head from where it had been resting on his knees. He parted the curtains enough for one eye to see through. He held his breath. Nothing moved. And then she came.

  She was led by the mayor himself. He was dressed grandly and shielding the boy’s vision of her, closing the doors behind them and clearing out some curious townspeople who had come to watch and telling them to go on home. Then he moved aside to let her pass.

  The boy watched her stepping free of chains down the dirt floor of the nave. He could smell her hair. She wore a long white cotton dress with a dipped neck and a white lace shawl and brown sandals with open toes too cold for the weather. Her toes were painted pale pink and her fingers too. Her long hair black as a lake was brushed out fine and brought up behind her head with a white bow that was knotted sadly and falling down along her back. Her lips were dark and red and trembling.

  She held her hands folded in front of her stomach as she came. When she looked up at the altar he could see the glaze of her eyes in the broken slats of sunlight, something in her shadowed aspect that made it so he could scarcely manage to look upon her.

  The mayor followed behind her at a distance. When he pushed back his coat and folded his hands behind his back the boy saw the twin pistols in his turquoise-studded belt. He gripped the knife tighter. He looked back at the girl. She knelt on the first step in front of the altar and bowed her head. The boy could see the skin of her neck stretching along her shoulders and down her back and he had to breathe and think only of his breathing to keep himself from rushing out for her.

  The birds that had flown off came parting the light and dust, fluttering and floating, then perching themselves high above in the apse, but the girl did not move at the sound of them. After a few moments the mayor came forward. He seemed he would put a hand upon her shoulder. He held his hand up behind her but then stopped and looked down at her and at his hand and then he turned and sat himself in the front pew and crossed his legs. For at least an hour he moved his fingers through his beard deliberately and studied her, the boy watching both of them from behind the curtain. In all that time the girl did not move.

  At last the mayor stood and looked back at the closed door and looked at his watch and walked toward the girl. With the dust from his boots smoking up the light between them he spoke to her back.

  Miss. He cut himself off and coughed into his hand. I must go, he said woodenly. Padre Jiminez should have been here by now. I have business to attend to. I will have the men who drove us here come inside and wait with you. Do not—

  He stopped himself again and watched the girl who had not turned to face him and he watched her very seriously and the boy thought sadly also.

  Please do not try and flee them, he went on. I know what tomorrow brings, but if the Ralston men are given any reason to—

  He stopped himself once more. He coughed. When you are finished speaking with the priest they will escort you
out. If he comes. If not …

  The mayor paused when the door opened. He turned around. The boy let the curtain fall and shifted to the other side and peered out. The mayor raised a hand and bowed excessively as the vicar came up the pews.

  The old priest’s white mane of hair was windblown and his cheeks pocked with dirt. One of his arms was slung up in a green rag. In his other hand he held a small leather satchel limply by his side. He raised his satchel and gave the mayor a weary smile.

  Padre, the mayor said, walking rapidly up the nave with one brief look back at the girl. ¿Qué paso?

  El charro choco. Eso fue un accidente.

  The priest gave his shoulders a slight rise and shook his head wistfully, his peaked eyebrows giving him the appearance of being in constant deliberation. The mayor put a hand on the priest’s back.

  ¿Que tu hicistes? ¿Quien te trae aquí?

  Uno de los muchachos de la cuidad. Eso no fue su culpa.

  ¿Tu brazo, esta roto?

  Si. Yo pienso.

  Will you be alright?

  Seguro.

  Eschucha, yo tengo que irme.

  Go my son, the priest said firmly.

  ¿Estas seguro?

  Si. Vayate. Dejame aquí con la muchacha. Vaya con Dios.

  Pero, please bring her out to the men waiting in the car when you are finished. And be quick. He gave a slight nod at the priest’s satchel. And remember, he said. Be careful too.

  The priest frowned at the satchel and nodded.

  The mayor inspected him once more, then bowed his head. Vaya con Dios, Padre.

  Then the mayor was gone out the door. This time he did not look back.

  The priest stepped down the nave, the shuffling of his feet almost obscene in the silence of the ruined church. He came and put a hand on the girl’s shoulder and she turned to where some light came upon her and stayed caught in the hollow of her throat. She looked up at the priest with such a look of grief the boy turned away. Then she rose and stood in front of him. The priest gave a heavy sigh, leaning and setting his bag down and putting his hands on the girl’s shoulders again and taking her soft hands in the wrinkled bags of his own. I’m sorry for you, he said. For you I am very sorry.