The Sound of the Trees (34 page)

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.

He spoke with heavy Spanish inflections and the girl nodded slowly at his words, then left her head resting on her chest. The priest looked around the church and shook his head at the floor.

You must understand, child, he said facing the girl again. These are no God's ways. These are no the ways of God but the ways of man and they are very different. No worry, though. God will bring you home.

She nodded again, a single band of blue light now riding across her cheek. The priest looked into her glistening eyes and let her hands go and she left them by her side and he leaned and took up his satchel and placed it on the altar.

You are ready to give penance and take holy communion?

She shifted her feet and stood erect before the altar and stepped up to the altar rail and gripped it to steady herself. It was so quiet in the half-light that the boy could hear her dress shift along her arms when she nodded again.

What is your name, child? So I may give it to God to take you in.

She shifted her feet again. She shook her head, her lips tense and fluttering but unable or unwilling to speak.

My dear, the priest said even more gently, you must tell me your name. God must recognize you when you ask forgiveness and come to his glory.

One hand went up to her neck. It paused there, then fell again. She covered her face with both hands with the pink fingertips quivering above her eyes.

Delilah. Her name is Delilah.

Both the girl and the priest were startled by the voice and the priest nearly backed into the altar when the boy shook open the curtain and came walking toward them.

What are you do here? he called. How you get in here? You are no supposed to be here. He held up a bony finger toward the door. You go now. This is sacred exchange. I call the men.

The boy kept coming. As he neared the altar he swung the knife up from his hip. He heard a low gasp from the girl but still he kept coming. The priest saw the blade and turned to his satchel and popped the latch open with his working arm and thrust his hand inside it. When he turned around again the pistol he held rigidly was pointed at the boy's stomach and the raised knife halted above the boy's shoulder. The priest's look was inexplicably placid. He rode back the hammer and pushed the nose of the gun into the boy's stomach. The boy and the priest stared at each other, the pace of their breath equal and loud in the quiet.

Please. Though the words barely escaped her lips, the priest turned and regarded her. Please, she said again and louder. Let him stay.

The priest inspected the girl's face as she let her head back onto her chest. He turned and grimaced at the boy.

I want him to stay.

For why you want him to stay?

The boy set the knife down on the floor and took a step backward. The priest studied him anew, his clothes disheveled and his shorn hair standing on end and his eyes drained white and blinking. Then he picked up the boy's knife and looked at the girl again. Alright, he said. He pitched the knife toward the back of the church. He lowered the gun but did not put it down. Any wrong and I call for the men, he said. Do not think I can no use this either. Now come here, and you do not molest.

No sir.

The boy walked past the girl, touching the tips of her fingers which remained at her side with the palm of his hand but not looking at her yet.

You help me since my arm is gone broken, the priest said. Open this bag, please.

The boy opened the bag and the priest told him what to remove and the boy removed a pewter dish and a round sterling box and a white cloth which the priest told him to lay over his forearm. Then the priest stepped down and told the boy to move back. Keep going, he said. When he felt the boy's distance was far enough away he came down to the girl and placed the pistol in his pant waist and put his hand on her cold forehead and spoke quietly to her.

A breeze came down through the cracked roofing and caused a shiver in the girl's shoulders. The birds above ruffled their feathers. The priest spoke to her of God's everlasting forgiveness and he spoke of His goodness and peaceful home in the heavens and he told her that no sin could not be redeemed by faith and love and then he asked her to speak her sins.

She looked at neither of them and with a rising voice she told the priest about her lost baby and the rake she had stolen and how she should have done more to save her child and perhaps even her own mother and father and the priest's brow grew heavy and he dipped his head down, then up at the ceiling, and finally he took his hand from her forehead where beads of sweat had begun to form.