The Sound of the Trees (38 page)

The sun rose higher yet, splitting the clouds and bringing not heat but simply a bright glare that shed everything around him of its shadow. The house stood cold and bare in the white wash of light. The guards winced and pulled their hats low. Nothing moved save those men and the failing limbs of the acacia which whined and clattered in the periodic gales of wind and the boy knew he could not wait any longer.

Just as he began to rise from the tree trunk he heard a door open in the front of the house. He leaned forward into a squat. The Englishman was down in the yard. The Ralstons fell back out of view. He could hear muffled voices and a sharp command upon which the guards reappeared together at the edge of the yard. They sat against a fence pole facing out at the road and went to smoking and shaking their heads.

The Englishman's hands were held loosely behind his back as he strolled toward the back of the house. He wore a dark blue suit with the waistcoat slung over his shoulders. Before he saw if the Englishman was wearing a weapon himself, the boy was up and crossing through the field and into the trees.

He stepped over the husks of bark and twigs, gliding swiftly with his knife raised out of his boot and his pistol resituated in his belt. Halfway to the house he looked up. The guards were still sitting with their backs to him, watching the road. The Englishman was lowering the bucket into the well, standing with one hand in his pocket while the other moved the wheel crank. The boy pressed on. When he was parallel with the Englishman he lightened his steps. At last he stood silent and listened for the guards. There was nothing save the grind of the wheel crank and the creak of the bucket. He waited in hopes that the Englishman would lower his head to watch after the bucket, and a moment later he did.

As the boy came forward a strong wind made the Englishman look up, but before he could turn or speak the boy had his hand clenched over his mouth and the knife poised at his throat. For a moment the Englishman struggled, but when the blade of the knife exacted itself against his powdered skin he withdrew.

The boy spoke only once, saying, Walk out there.

They went slowly at first along the trees and then with the boy's elbow against the Englishman's back they upstepped toward the box elders. The boy looked back and saw the two Ralston brothers facing each other, one holding a lit match and the other cupping his hands around it. They did not see the two figures walking out through the blazing field nor did they look up again until the boy had him well inside the grove.

He lowered the Englishman to the tree stump. The Englishman's hands trembled by his sides but his face appeared unmoved. The boy told him he would kill him right there if he tried to call out. He asked the Englishman if he understood and the Englishman tilted his head and smiled under the boy's hand. The boy took the blade from his neck and took away his hand from his face and came around and stood facing him. He drew the pistol from his belt and tapped it against the Englishman's head.

Here we are again, the Englishman said calmly. Wasting our time on a little black whore.

The boy brought down the chamber of the gun against the side of his face. The Englishman fell back against the trunk and smiled, exposing his bloodstained teeth. Blood also ran from the Englishman's ear, but he only eased himself back on the stump and watched the boy. This will not save her, he said blandly. Or you. What do you think? Do you think you are a revolutionary? Such men no longer exist. Did you truly think that?

No, the boy said. I don't. And this ain't no revolt.

Ah. The Englishman smiled obliquely and shook his head. Then what, young monument of justice, is it?

It's a reckoning.

The Englishman went mute. He was looking into the eyes of the boy now, no longer eyes but shells of eyes.

The boy raised the pistol. The Englishman saw it come up from the boy's waist to his own face. He watched the boy but he was no longer smiling.

The reports from the pistol clipped twice then vanished into the wide empty country. The wind spun up, plunging out of the trees and across the field. The body of the Englishman jerked back with the force of the bullets, then went limp to the ground. The boy leaned down and put a hand upon him and tore off the golden chevron from the dead man's waistcoat.

Then he was going across the field with the nubs of old wheat stalks brushing his knees. Down from the mountains the terraced light raced across the valley. He did not look across the field to see if the Ralstons saw him but went headlong toward the stream with his breath rattling out of his chest. He fumbled with the pin as he went and clamped it across the front of his jacket. He listened to his feet splashing through the water and he held his hat down against the wind.

*   *   *

When he reached the truck nothing had altered except for a new armada of clouds that had once again stolen the light from the sky. He leaned on the hood to catch his wind and looked down the road. He saw dust swirling and the flat red line at which the road slipped from sight. He climbed up in the cab and cranked the engine. The truck sputtered under his heavy foot and his body bounced up and down as he spun the truck out of the ditch and onto the road. Then he shoved the gearshift higher and sped off toward the town.

When the sun came clean he craned his neck out the window and looked up. He knew he had cut it close but there was time yet. It was not much past eleven from all he could tell. He moved the truck into fourth gear, clinging to the wheel as if it alone were the force behind his driving. He fumbled once, knocking the gearshift down to third, and the truck sputtered and died.

When he had the truck moving again he saw the thoroughfare coming into sight. He could make out the assembly already gathered around the tree. People were crowded all the way around the perimeter of the plaza, standing on porch steps, crouched in the road. There were no children to be seen but a few who clung to their fathers' legs and pressed their faces into their pants. He could not see the scaffolding for the tree branches but he saw the mayor standing by and he saw his hand raised decisively and he saw his hand drop.

He slammed hard on the gas pedal. As he came to the plaza rim the boy was met by a maze of cars and trucks parked on the road and the road's edge and in the grass. They offered no clear path through, as though some malevolent metal garrison had been set against him. He swerved the wheel of the truck and braked and wove his way through, clipping bumpers and doors and bumping the pistol off the seat. When he was nearly through the frozen traffic the truck hit the front wheel of a remaining car and jerked back and died again.

It wheezed when he turned the key and he cranked the engine again and more viciously, whatever curses from his lips lost in the engine's surge. When it caught he put the gear forward and drove into the open road. As he came abreast of the willow tree he slowed the truck and leaned across the seat and squinted against the light, reaching blindly to the floor for his gun. Some of the people turned at the sound of his truck but their eyes quickly returned to the tree.

He rode on to the left and steered the truck around. He could see the crowd clearly now. All seemed subject to the same torpid motion. The faces lolling in the cloudlight. The eyes going to slits, then opening wide. Hands of women going to their mouths. The men lowering their hats from their heads. He came around. He saw the mayor standing with a knife at his side. His face seemed drained of any thought at all.

The boy pressed down on the brake and pitched open the door and spilled his body over the hood. When he regained his balance and looked up he saw the wooden platform. There were no shoes on her feet and the first thing he saw was that the child-pink paint upon her toes matched that of her fingers. Then he saw the silver amulet glistening faintly from the caved pool of her throat.

One of her feet kicked briefly. He was yet thirty yards from her. Her color had already blanched and was going paler yet. Nothing could transport him to her side fast enough, and yet there she was.

With one swift motion he leveled the pistol in his hands and cocked back the trigger. Three of the Ralstons came down from the steps of Garrets's porch floor and began walking toward him.

The gun crackled and jogged back in his cupped hands. The men who were coming for him ducked, then began to rush forward but stopped when they saw where the bullet had gone.

The tiny motions of Delilah's body stopped all at once as if summoned into stillness by a command unheard by all but her. The mayor started from the scattered shadows of the tree to find the boy crouching by the truck and holding his head, his hat dashed to the ground and rocking on the pavement in the wind.

All the hushed crowd turned and watched him now. After a while the boy rose again to his feet. The mayor stepped to the front of the gallows where the body of the girl now hung folded in her bloodstained dress with the noose around her neck guiding her eyes to the sky. He put a hand up to the Ralstons and they stepped back. The boy came slowly forward. The crowd so silent only the swish of his trousers and the skidding of his boots could be heard. He held his head low until he came face-to-face with the mayor, then raised both his head and the pistol in unison.

The mayor looked down and gripped his beard. Some of the women in the forefront gasped and the Ralstons came forward again. The mayor held up his hand firmly. Stay there, he said.

The boy looked around. He saw Miss Jane, her eyes covered by her hands. He saw the railroad men still sooted in their work clothes and he recognized the face of the storyteller he had sat with on the mesa wall. He saw Thomas Trewitt standing by with a camera and flashbulb limp in his hands. He saw the old woman from the general store. She was weeping. He looked around for John Frank but did not see him anywhere. Perhaps he had known that the boy would not want him to come, that he would not be able to save her.

He turned back to the mayor. No words occurred from either of them until the mayor spoke to a man dressed in formal black attire on the platform beside them. Cut her down, he said.

The boy raised the pistol to the mayor again. No, he said. You cut her down. He shook his head at the gun in his hand. If you think you're fit to hang her, you're fit to cut her down.

The mayor hesitated, looking up at the body from the platform. Then he looked upon the boy. The boy did not seem to be where he stood. The mayor could have simply ungripped the pistol from his hand but he did not. He stepped up to the scaffolding with his knife and cut the girl down.

He caught her over his left shoulder and dropped the knife and took her slight body in his arms. He shuttled her down his chest, then laid her down on the wooden pallet that had been prepared for her and removed the noose. Someone handed him a blanket and he covered her body, for the first time looking full at her, the face of a child.

He came down and stood before the boy. People began to lean in again but he stayed them with his palm. He seemed he would speak again. He put a hand on his beard.

I imagine there is one more life you would like to take, he said.

The boy's eyes came away from the pallet.

A desert of sadness, he said to his feet. He looked up at the mayor. That's what you called me. And maybe you're right. You, though. He looked at his feet again. You're just a desert.

With that he lowered the pistol away from the mayor's chest. No, he said. There's nothin left here I want.

He stood briefly as before, then unclipped the golden chevron from his jacket and dropped it at the mayor's feet and went up to collect the body. The mayor stared down at the pin for a long time but would not pick it up. Then he stepped away, raising a hand once more to keep off the Ralstons. Before the boy had gone by, the mayor crossed in front of him and put up a hand to the boy's chest. They stood for a few seconds looking at one another.

I don't want no apology, the boy said before the mayor could speak. He pushed past the mayor's raised hand. Whatever you're offerin, I don't want it. And if you aim to kill me too, you just go on and do it now.

He held her around the shoulders and under the knees and once he began walking through the crowd he did not look back. When he pulled the truck door open he turned with her body sagging down in his arms. The mayor watched with his eyes slightly upraised from his canted head but he did not move nor did he make any further motion to the Ralstons. When the boy had placed the girl's body in the passenger seat of the truck he closed the door and walked around and climbed in and was gone.

He held her close as he had waited so long to do, going up the road toward the north. From the fallen strap of her dress the crumpled photograph fell by his feet and he bent and picked it up and pushed it into his shirt pocket. Then he held her against his neck. The road was empty. The sun stayed beneath the clouds, the truck humming through the wind and tearing up the colorless earth beneath them.

*   *   *

THE OLD MAN
was standing at the door when he saw the boy on the far side of the river. Small black-red globes of dirt flung from the shovel the boy had found in his yard. The old man came down from the cabin. He started off toward the river but instead he sat down and watched on. The silver amulet was tight around the boy's neck and it shimmered in the dying sun. The old man watched him dig long into the evening, the boy's body grading deeper into the earth until only his head was above the ground and then only the head of the shovel. After some time the boy climbed out of the pit and stood looking into it.

The grave he dug for Delilah was nearly nine feet deep. He took off his hat and wiped the sweat from his brow and spat to his side. He had not looked at her body since he carried it out here and he would not look at it again.

He wanted only to bury her now. To bury her deep. Deeper into the world than those places where he walked. Deeper than his mother. Deeper than the place he had buried himself that day.