The Sound of the Trees (20 page)

Hey, he called out. Another of my friends. I told you I'd see you again. Come on over here, young mister. Hey barkeep. Another for the young mister. That's the one. Oh yes. That's just the one.

The boy stayed his ground and only made a slight gesture of recognition with his lowered head. Thanks the same, he said. Nothin for me.

The boy could tell from Trewitt's eyes that he was drunk, and he looked at the boy and smiled vacantly. He shrugged and drank back the whiskey himself. Ohh, he shuddered. That's just the one.

One of the mustached brothers leaned over and took the tumbler from Trewitt's hand and finished the whiskey where he had not. None of the Ralstons paid the boy any mind, or if they did they made no sign of it. Trewitt turned away from the boy and leaned into the Ralstons' conversation, acting as if the transaction being made among them was of grave consequence.

So this old boy goes down to San Antone, one of the Ralstons was telling. In the middle of the goddamn summer with a fur coat on. Now he's drivin this stoled truck through Dallas with a fur and about two thousand dollars of jewels in the pockets. And expects he's just goin to drop right into town and give them over to this old fur buster and get paid.

The brother telling the story shook his head to suggest the impossibility of it.

Well, I'll tell you all. Them Texas rangers ain't no goddamn yearlings. They seen every scam in the book from the wetbacks tryin to cross the border. This old boy all of a sudden sees one of them rangers come riding out of the desert like he was just borned there. That's right. Comes pounding out onto the road and cuts across the path of the truck and starts after him a horseback. I mean to say he's tearin down the road chasin a goddamn truck. Now don't ask me how, cause I can't say. Alls I know is that he catches him.

Bullshit, one of the other brothers cried.

The one telling the story glanced at the other briefly. Oh he does, he replied with raised eyebrows. Oh hell yes. Catches him on the dead run not ten miles from San Antone. Damn fool even wrestled with the ranger, screamin that he'd bore them jewels out of a coal mine in Silver City. They done locked him up for the better part of his life. The way it came back to me was that by the time he got out he couldn't even remember why he was down in that damn city in the first place.

The boy watched Trewitt who seemed suddenly lucid by the gravity with which he took the story. All three brothers appeared equally stilled, their heads hung and slowly shaking.

After the story had settled Trewitt's eyes grew bright and scattered and he leaned up on the bar ledge. They're going to hang someone here, he said.

The Ralstons and the boy alike turned and faced Trewitt who took a small step back and looked about their faces apprehensively.

What?

Yes. They're going to hang someone right here, he said with resolution now. I heard it. To make an example for those who come to live here. To show that nothing will be tolerated that is outside the confines of the law or in direct opposition to the town's well-being.

Who told you that? one of the brothers said.

Trewitt offered up his chubby hands as if he could give no help. I just heard it, that's all. Someone in jail is going to hang at two months' end.

And who the hell is goin to hang?

That I do not know.

When they saw he had no more to say they turned back among themselves. Trewitt looked after them with a certain desperation in his eyes. And you know what else I heard? he said.

One of the brothers turned back to him.

No. What the hell else you know, fat man?

Trewitt leaned into the bar again. The boy stepped up behind his shoulder to better hear him above the piano which had begun to play again in the back of the room.

They have a Negro in there.

A nigger?

Trewitt nodded.

Here?

Yes sir.

Bullshit. Must be one of them half-breeds. A quadroon or whatever. Naw. That's bullshit.

No sir. Not a quadroon. Not bullshit. A Negro. And do you know what else? It's a girl.

A black girl, you're tellin us now? They don't tip the bottle much back wherever it is you come in from, do they.

Sir. No. It is a truth.

Where the hell is she from then?

I don't know.

They goin to hang her?

Well no. No, I don't imagine they'd do that.

What'd she do?

I believe she may be a thief. But this I am speculating on.

So they goin to hang her?

No. I don't know. I don't believe they do either.

They ought to hang her. Nigger girl stealin.

Naw. They got worse in there, Adel. They got Wingless James in there. I reckon they ought to kill a killer. It ain't reasonable.

I ain't talkin about reasonable, I'm talkin about right. I vote for the nigger girl.

It was the tallest brother who now spoke. He appeared to be the oldest of the three. He pulled at his mustache with his teeth and watched Trewitt.

How bout you, Mister Newspaper?

Thomas Trewitt turned to the boy in hope he might offer himself in relief. The boy stood unmoving with his hands clenched together behind his back and his eyes drained of color. Trewitt turned back to the Ralstons and gripped the collar at his fleshy throat.

Oh, I couldn't say. I don't know the details of it. I vote for the worst criminal, I suppose. The one who has done the worst to society.

So you vote for the nigger, right?

Oh well, yes. Well yes. I suppose.

Alright then. What say we raise em up?

The three brothers lofted their whiskey glasses above their heads and Trewitt watched them and followed.

To the nigger.

To the nigger.

Mister Newspaper?

Oh yes. To the Negro.

Put that glass down.

Thomas Trewitt turned and looked incredulously at the boy. He hesitated, then set the glass on the counter. The boy made to step up to the bar but stopped. Four other men who stood not far off were staring at him as if he were all the barroom held. They wore the same mustaches as the Ralstons, as though they were every one kindred to the same interminable bloodline. All of them, even as they upheld their glasses silently with the others, kept their stares upon him. And what the boy noticed first and above all was the shared rile in their eyes.

As he turned and walked toward the door he heard another toast float up above the piano and he heard the tumblers smacking wet and hot upon the bar top and the clipped laughter of Thomas Trewitt rising nervously above it all.

He stepped out into the crisp night air. The door slammed behind him and the piano fell muted and the laughter of Trewitt rang hollow through the walls. He mounted his horse and rode off toward the old man's cabin with the voice of the woman in the distance going on tirelessly and without answer as if maddened by the night.

T
WELVE

HE FOUND THE Italian at the old nickelodeon on the south edge of town. Outside hung two posters flanking the blue iron doors which advertised Wallace Beery in
Old Ironsides,
and though they seemed to have been hanging there for a very long time, when the boy paid his quarter to the old woman behind the wire window and went past the concession of soda pop and black cows and paper cones filled with peanuts and walked through the brass turnstiles and into the screening room it was still the picture being shown.

A single shaft of light from the projection room came looming down the high darkened ceiling. Beyond its dusty silver glow the room was pitch dark and the boy steadied himself on the low velveteen chair backs as he descended the aisle. The air was hot and the room smelled of sweat, and from the vaulted balcony the boy could hear the dampened exchange of tongues and whispers and the dull whirling of the ceiling fans.

John Frank was sitting still and low in the fifth row with his arm stiffly placed around the shoulder of a young woman. His hand was raised to the back of her head and he was twirling his fingertips through her hair.

Hey.

Both John Frank and the girl jumped upright in their seats. The girl withdrew her hand from Frank's leg. The boy sat himself down next to them.

What the hell you doin here? John Frank brought his hand down from the girl's hair and pulled the lapels of his jacket across his breast as if to suppress some indiscretion beneath it. How'd you find me here?

Jane told me. At the cantina. Said you was on your way over here.

Well hell, John Frank whispered sharply, I know my company's the best thing goin around here but couldn't it wait until I was back in the office?

No. It couldn't.

Shit.

John Frank put his arm around the girl again and leaned back and pulled her gently in front of him. This here's Salva, he said. This is Trude. Apparently he don't want me to go off and have a good time without him.

The girl blushed and said a soft Howdy and the boy tipped his hat to her, then turned his eyes back to John Frank. I need to talk to you a minute, he said.

Well go on then.

I need to talk to you alone.

Frank shook his head. Ah hell, he said. Alright. Come on.

He kissed the girl lightly on the forehead and told her he would be right back. He and the boy rose and ducked their heads under the projector light and walked back up the steep aisle and slid into a side row near the back of the room. From where they sat they could hear the projector ticking out the frames over the actors' conversation. The light was so dim that all the boy could see of John Frank was his eyes and all Frank could see of the boy was the battered crown of his black Stetson hat.

What in God's green earth is this about? First girl I meet who's taken a genuine liking to me, and you got to come and bust it up.

Sorry about that but I got to ask you something.

The boy could see the slow shake of John Frank's head in the shadows and he saw his teeth shine brightly when he grinned.

She sure is something though, ain't she?

She is at that.

Damn straight. So what is this about you got to drag me away for?

The boy put his hands on the back of the chair in front of him and clenched the damp wood in his fingers. Well, he said. Say the mayor asks you to find something for him. Like some record of purchase or law. Where would you find something like that?

John Frank lowered his head and tried to look at the boy through the backlight. What the hell's goin on here? he said.

Just tell me.

John Frank hunched his shoulders and looked around and leaned toward the boy. Damn it. I want to know what's goin on first, he said. You come in here all lowdown and harried and asking me about law and papers and the mayor's business and such. Don't you reckon if I'm your bud you ought to tell me what it's about?

The boy looked off to the movie screen. The heroine was down on the ground with her arms wrapped around her chest and she was speaking into the sky but with what words he could not tell. He thought for a moment of the one and only time he had been to such a place, when his father had tore up the kitchen with a field hoe and his mother had whisked the boy silently into the open road and walked him into the town.

The feature they had seen pictured Tom Mix and his horse Tony and he remembered how for that long hour he had lost himself in a world as foreign to him as any of the others that he had read about in books, yet there was something in the actor's determined face and the way he held his elbows tight against his sides when he rode his horse onto the plains and into a gallop that had made the boy feel closer to him than he had ever felt to his own father. He remembered also how they had returned that evening to find the kitchen plates broken on the floor and his father gone and how for many days after when his father would leave the house he would close his eyes and make silent prayer that when he returned he would return on that shiny stallion and with those clear eyes of the hero that seemed to know always and everywhere the purpose of his travel and the treasure that was his long lost home.

They got a girl in there, he said finally.

In where?

In the jailhouse. They got a girl I know in the jailhouse down there.

John Frank squinted at the screen as though it might make clear for him what the boy was talking about. Some girl you know, he said. More of this jail business? What girl you know up here anyway?

Just a girl.

What girl?

A black girl.

John Frank turned back to the boy. You mean a Mexican?

No, I don't mean a Mexican. I mean a black girl.

A black girl? Where's she from that you know her?

I don't know.

Hellfire. You know her but you don't know her. Which is it?

I don't know. I guess it's both.

You are one stubborn sumbitch, you know that? And what the hell does some law records have to do with it?

They don't. But the jail records do.

And for what purpose?

To find out who she is exactly. Where she's from. The boy paused and looked over to where John Frank's girlfriend was sitting with her white-gloved hands folded in her lap and her head turned back up the aisles toward them. What her name is, he said.

Jesus Mary and Joseph. A black girl. John Frank shook his head again. I seen a bunch down by Albuquerque one time, he whispered. Out there workin on a ranch I was drivin by. But they was men. I ain't never seen a black girl out this way, or a woman for that matter. It's rough enough around these mountains for a man out here and I don't care what color he is.

Well, there's one here now. At least I think it.

I still can't see what you want me to do about it.

Why don't you start by telling me where such records could be found. I might be able to find something on her.

I wouldn't know nothin about the jailhouse, bud. I told you that. I'm not even allowed to go in. But I reckon if you want to find some papers, only place I know is the old refectory down the alley behind the town hall. That's where all the records I know about are kept. But that place is all bolted up with locks and drawbars and the like. And it's just a big old room stacked floor to ceiling with papers. I can't see how you'd find anything even if you could get in there, which you can't.