The Sound of the Trees (35 page)

The priest took the gun from his waist again and motioned the boy back to the altar. He came holding the box and dish. The priest told him to set the dish on the altar, then he made the sign of the cross over it. He told the boy to open the box and place one of the wafers on the dish and the boy did so. He set the box back down while the priest mumbled prayer over the dish. The boy smiled weakly at her as the priest spoke to the ceiling but she did not smile back. When he finished the blessing he labored down to one knee, genuflected, then rose and turned to the boy.

Please, he said. When I finish speaking, place the bread upon her tongue.

The boy gave the priest a sharp look, then moved forward. He tilted back his head and rubbed the base of his neck, looking around the church as if none of what was occurring at that moment in his life was meant to be occurring at all.

Good father, look upon this girl Delilah with your all-seeing eyes and know that she is ready for you in your palace on high. The body of Christ.

The priest nodded at the boy with the pistol flinching in his hand to make its own surrogate command. The boy turned and took up the chalky wafer from the dish on the altar. The girl leaned forward. Ever so slightly she parted her lips. Before she leaned back again the boy whispered to her and his face was very sad and pale.

No god will save you now, he said. All you got left is me.

She looked at the boy and then at the priest to see if he had heard but he had not. Then she began to cry.

The priest motioned the boy to use the cloth on his arm and he dabbed the girl's eyes until they were dry again. Is that it? he said.

That is all we can do for her here. God will take her the rest of the way.

Can I talk to her a minute then, before she goes.

The priest lowered his eyebrows on the boy. Solo un momento, he said grudgingly.

The boy stepped down and took her by the arm. Her eyes turned and came upon him, wet and lost on his face. He led her toward the confessional. Before he shut the curtain around them the priest raised up the pistol and called to the boy. Solo un momento, he said again.

Inside it was all but dark with only a thin film of gray light on the crimson curtains. He took her in his arms.

She was frail, more frail than he had imagined, and she gripped the collar of his shirt and wrung it in her fingers and he felt in her a strength he had not imagined either. He put his nose into the black ribbons of her hair. She kissed his neck. Then he leaned back and studied her face. All things he remembered and all those he had never known but perhaps had seen in his dreams. She remained still and silent and he took a long time with it. Trying to place in his memory the touch of her skin.

He passed his hand over the thin eyelids and across the hollowed cheek and the raised cheekbone. He touched below her lip a moon-shaped scar lighter than her true color. He pushed his hand through her brushed hair and at last he ran the back of his hand along her neck, and when he finally withdrew from her his head was humming and the weight of his own body seemed suddenly much greater and he straightened his knees to better bear himself.

She had her lips against his chest when he finally spoke to her.

It's alright, he said as softly as he could. I'll come for you tomorrow.

Trude.

I'll be there. Tomorrow mornin. Just make sure you're lookin. I'll be there.

He felt himself rocking her in his arms, and when the priest called loudly from the altar he stopped. She put her arms around his neck and let her head fall to his shoulder and he held it there.

Then he reached into his back pocket and took hold of her hand and turned her palm up with his thumb. Take this, he said. This is yours now. He pressed the amulet into the throat of her palm.

The silver chain pooled across her cupped fingers and the girl grasped the amulet and read the name and once more she began to cry. The boy closed it in her hand. He tried to smile at her. Only time you're allowed to take it off is when we go swimmin, he said.

Trude, she said. Her face was still against his shoulder. I can't.

He took her under the chin and raised her head up. You can too, he said. He tried to smile again. Call it collateral, he said. Or call it my promise.

The girl leaned away and placed her fisted hands on her chest. Then she raised her head to his with her eyes still closed and kissed him on the mouth. Your promise, she said.

She let her arms down then, turning and opening the curtain and walking toward the altar with the boy reaching out his hand for her once more. She took it, then let it go. He stood watching her walk away from him with the priest coming down the steps of the altar to lead her out.

The priest held the pistol up with his working hand. You stay right there, he called to the boy. Then he nodded at the girl to walk before him and they passed up toward the door while the boy walked slowly to the altar again with his hat held in both hands against his stomach. Before they had gone by each other entirely, she looked across the pews and through the scattered light. Something appeared in her face that had not been there before, and he saw in her eyes then that she believed him.

T
WENTY-ONE

THE WIND CAME ripping through the valley and he lifted his head from the horse's mane to take its sting upon him. He wanted it with him, wanted to endure everything in her name. Wanted to invoke her presence for all living things who understood what pain was and wanted them to see it in his face only and in no other face besides.

By the time he downtrotted onto the thoroughfare his breath was all but gone and the horse under him heaving too. His face was blotched red by the wind as if he'd been pelted with buckshot. He sprang down from the mare and left her standing in the road and went up the steps and in the door.

He walked past the old woman at the counter with the burnt remnant of a cigarette dangling precariously from his lips. She watched warily as he strode about the store, his eyes here and there, lost among the rows of canned goods and kerosene and firewood. The proprietor came out from behind the counter and she stood against the front of it with her glasses held shakily to her nose. Aren't you the boy, she started.

The boy wheeled around on his heels as if he'd forgotten she was in there with him. The woman gripped the counter behind her. She looked at his face. She looked at his clenched hands. Can I help you find something? she said.

What?

You need me to help you find something? She was almost whispering now.

He looked around again. A hat, he said after a moment. I need a hat.

She motioned to the back of the store. In the back, she said. I'll show you.

He followed her absently to a small hat stand where hung four woven Resistols and two black Stetsons. Let me have one of em, he said. He was already turned away and walking to the front of the store.

Which one, exactly?

Any of em.

She took down one of the Stetsons and checked the size and estimated it to his head, then came back to the counter where he was standing with the bills from his boot heel leafed open in his hands.

Any shirts?

He did not look up from the money he was counting nor did he seem to expect an answer from her. The proprietor set the hat on the counter. Yes, she said.

Pants?

Yes, she said again. They're all in the back.

Ring one up of each.

Well, the old woman fumbled. You want to look at them?

His eyes came up from the money and shifted around her head, settling nowhere. No, he said. You pick em.

She shook her head and went away. When she came back she was holding a black muslin button-up and a pair of denim jeans the color of coal.

Will these do? I don't rightly know without measuring you but I think they're about your size.

Those are fine. He didn't even look up from his hands. And three packs of cigarettes, he said.

She took the cigarettes from under the counter and tallied up his purchases and sacked them in two large paper bags and pushed them toward the boy's lowered hands. Nineteen dollars, she said.

He paid and took the bags in his fist and looked evenly at her. You got any guns back there?

No, the old woman said and in her face was a look that said she wouldn't tell him even if she did.

Outside he stuffed the clothes into the saddlebag, removing a pack of cigarettes beforehand and rising onto his mount and stopping briefly to look upon the willow tree. The wind blew its long cascade of arms down into the dust and high again and he saw once more that the Indian women were absent. He watched the barren arms of the tree twirl and sweep down in the bursts of wind and he watched the sprinkle of their silky catkins being blown down the road, fine and tender and lost on the spinning world.

The hand upon his boot shook twice before the boy noticed it. The rancher came around and stood in front of the boy's horse and waved a hand up at him.

That ain't no place for sleepin, he said. He smiled unsurely up at the boy. You alright?

The boy looked down and saw Charlie Ford standing with his hand on Triften's nose. Yeah, he said. I'm alright. What are you doin here?

A man's got to be in society every now and then. I was fixin to get a steak and a cup of coffee. Why don't you come along.

Well. I ought not to.

Well.

But I'd like to talk a minute, if you can spare it for me.

I can spare a handful. What is it you need?

The boy looked about furtively then motioned to Charlie Ford and walked the horse into a nearby alleyway. The boy tore open the fresh pack of cigarettes and cupped his hand over a match and lit it and looked out at the road.

I wanted to thank you for all you done for me, he said.

Don't think of it.

It was too much, you know.

No, Charlie Ford said. He smiled a little. I don't know it at all.

Well, the boy said, it was. That's why this time I'd like to do some bartering, and I hope to do better for you. He paused and looked into Charlie Ford's eyes. You, he started. I guess you heard about what all's happened down here. Why I needed your help and all.

Charlie Ford stopped smiling and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his ranch coat and peered out at the plaza. Whatever you need, he said. Tell me.

The boy looked down at the unsmoked cigarette in his hand and flung it onto the ground.

I'm assumin you take the part opposed to the mayor, Ford said. And that makes the place where I hang my sympathies automatic.

The boy took up the reins and thanked the rancher and told him he'd be by the ranch as soon as he checked on the old man. To this Charlie Ford said that he'd wait on him and not to worry himself about when he came. The boy lowered his head and said that he'd have to stop doing favors for him or else he'd feel obliged. Charlie Ford came and patted the boy's boot again and told him there wasn't anything wrong with feeling obliged every once in a while. He patted the boy one more time on the leg and before he walked off toward Garrets he said that feeling obliged let you know you still had friends and that there was something you still cared about, and that that was no small thing. The boy held up the reins and spoke a small but fervent agreement under his breath and raised a hand and flicked the reins and went dusting down the road and into the coming storm clouds.

*   *   *

The room was clamorous with smoky light and the damp odor of flesh. The old man was still sitting as the boy had left him in the morning, rocking back slightly in the chair and staring up at the ceiling with slickened gray eyes.

You need to get yourself out more is what you need.

The old man turned at the boy's voice, an awkward heaviness in his motion. I need a drink, he managed.

Drink that water.

I'm sickern shit.

The old man sighed and righted the chair to the table and hunched down and spread his arms across it. The boy came and sat across from him and took his feeble arms in his hands. The old man started up at the boy's touch.

What is it now? he asked.

The boy looked down at the table. That holster you got in the cupboard, he said. You got a pistol to fit it?

What happened to yours?

I reckon the story of it ain't no good. It's gone though.

I can guess it might be, yeah. Look around if you like. He stopped and took his arms away and set them on his belly and began to scratch them. I won't waste a breath on askin what for, he said.

The boy got up and began to look around and paused when he saw where the old man had fixed the glass into the window frames.

I'll be damned, he said.

He turned to the old man who held up his arms and feigned reproach.

Yeah, I done it. Nearly killed me, ya sumbitch.

Hellfire, the boy said.

After a while he found the pistol wedged behind the crate of crickets. He cleaned the barrel with a piece of chicken wire and greased the gate and found also a box of shells scattered in the corner. He upheld them in his fingers and inspected them and loaded the chamber with them, old and fragile as they were in their rusted casings. He put the pistol in his belt and went out and fed the horse and mule and watered them and secured a lead rope on the mule. He paused a long time at the mule and finally took the rope off him. He collected all his belongings in the sidesaddle sacks and put them back on the mare. Then he walked around the mule again, stroking his head and whispering softly to him.

The old man had risen and stood watching by the door. The boy rubbed the mule's nose and stepped back reluctantly, then nodded to himself and came back to where the old man was standing.

I'm leavin the mule with you, he said.

I know it. You always do.

No. I'm leavin him with you. He's yours. I think he's grown a likin for you anyway. Take him down by the river when you get to feelin better. He managed a thin smile. Maybe take him to town one night, he said. Find yourself a woman.