The Boys in the Trees (12 page)

He slowed Prince to a walk, and could hear the buggy creaking. Some kind of bushes flowered wild by the side of the road, and a sweet rush of feeling filled him up. He wondered if anyone would watch over Heath, by the light of a tall candle, but knew it was unlikely. He was probably already closed in the box, the tap of the hammer, the nails biting cleanly, everything sealed up. Over. The lives he had taken avenged, as they had to be, and people ready to talk about other things. Heath had gone to wherever it was he was expected, although in fact he’d seemed to have left his life months before. When they took him in the woods there was one bullet left in the gun but he made no attempt to use it, on himself
or on the men who knocked him down. Mostly he was silent, the sheriff said, sitting on his cot, staring at his feet on the floor. Heath answered Robinson’s questions, during the monthly examinations, but only with a word or two, and never meeting his eyes. The same with the doctors his young lawyer brought from the city to determine his sanity. In the end Wellman could only argue that Heath must be insane, because only an insane man could do what he had done, but the jury was not convinced. That morning, just that morning, Robinson had thought that he might finally look up, might look him in the eye. He had realized that he was keeping his own eyes fixed on the white shirt beneath the dark gray coat, the loose threads dangling where two buttons were missing, maybe given as souvenirs to the jailers who stood by his side.

•  •  •

That day in September Robinson was tired, so tired, and thinking that it would have been wiser to take the bed that was offered at Radfords’ farm. But once the crisis was past all he wanted was to be gone, to be out of the dark, creaking house, little more than a shack, where the children peeped over the edge of the loft, their eyes just dark smudges in pale faces. All he wanted was to lie down in his own soft bed.

The moon was still high but he was the only thing moving along the country road, the jingle of Prince’s harness the only sound. The night wrapped around the leaves of the brooding trees and the way the moonlight brushed them only made them stranger; even Prince seemed to feel it, straining to go faster. But Robinson held him back, knowing what could happen. A bigger rut in the rutted road, the buggy overturned. Perhaps a broken leg, white bone showing, and lying on the hard-packed dirt for hours. Just before they reached the turn to the Emden road he
sensed something to his left, saw dark shapes moving, close, but not close enough to hear. Horses, dark horses, maybe three, maybe four, moving past at a run, black tails streaming, picked out by the cold moon. Moving past them, and then gone. Silent, but a deeper silence after they’d passed, making him wonder if he
had
heard the sound of thundering hooves, or only expected to hear it. And he thought how odd it was, horses racing in the middle of the night, over unfenced land.

•  •  •

The darkness was loosening as they finally came into town. He settled Prince and climbed the stairs, pulled back the covers, but each time he slid into sleep strange dreams arrived with a thump, and he had to get up again. The day, when it properly came, was blue and crisp and the morning passed, and in the dead part of the afternoon he was dozing in his chair when he heard pounding at the door, the front window rattling. Constable Street with a wild look in his eyes, hurrying him along the walk, up the two steps, through the gaping doorway.
The little girl
, he said.
She made a sound when I turned her over; she’s still alive
. But she wasn’t; later he explained the gasp, the gurgle, though Street didn’t seem to take it in.

He’d never been in Heath’s house, but it was laid out like many others, and even without Street’s broad back in front of him he could have gone straight to Rachel’s room. It was clear what had happened and he thought he could still smell a trace of gunpowder, but that may have been his fancy, looking at the wound. From the way she’d fallen it seemed she might have been kneeling at the side of the bed. He’d seen many things, but nothing as cold and hard as this, and he remembered that a day or two before he had seen her with Eaton, just outside the low gate, her hand stretched out to give
him something, and his stretched out to take it. He remembered that innocent as that moment was it made him think, seeing his son alone with a girl, of all that lay before him. He thought of his own first fumblings, his ignorance and his terror, and thought that it was almost time to explain things to Eaton, to give him facts to ease his way. Maybe they would take fishing poles, just the two of them, to a quiet spot on the river. In the spring, when it was warm enough to roll their shirtsleeves up, and Lucy could pack them a lunch and they would talk, man to man, father to son.

Street led him next to the back room, the one looking over the yard, bare patches picked by the chickens, he supposed, although there were none to be seen. Along one side was a roughly fenced section that looked like it might have been a garden, and he knew there was something about that, something Lucy had heard, but he couldn’t remember what. It felt like he spent a long time noticing these things, while his eyes moved to the shape lying wedged between the end of the bed and the plain wardrobe, and though he knew it already, something lurched when he recognized the faded blue fabric of the dress Lilian usually wore. He felt for her pulse, though it was clear there was no need, thinking of all the times he’d done that. Thinking of the feeling of her fragile life beneath his fingertips, gone now, as if it never had been.
What in God’s name happened?
he said, and Street said,
There’s more
, clearing his throat to get the words out.

Downstairs, Naomi lay by the pantry door, and she looked so small. A bowl had smashed on the floor, maybe fallen, maybe thrown, some kind of batter in hardened blobs and streaks on the wall, on the table and the stove.
Heath?
he said, and Street said,
Gone
.

•  •  •

Later, much later, when Heath had been found and brought back to town, when Eaton had gone, white-faced, to bed, and Marianne’s door had clicked shut, Robinson walked through the rooms of his house, turning down the lamps, and remembered the night horses. Marianne’s mother had told him once, over the soup, of a night when she had woken with a start at the very moment that her own mother had died, something they learned only days later. He thought about his long drive back to town, the way Prince snorted and shook his head, the eerie way the moonlight stroked the trees and the silent horses thundering past. That was hours before the shots, but perhaps the very time Heath lay in the dark with open eyes, planning, deciding what he would do, and how he would do it. Though there was no reason he could think of that he would have slipped into Heath’s world.

•  •  •

Prince slowed as he lifted his tail, and Robinson thought how far he was from the life he’d assumed would be his. The life that would still have been his, at that moment when he lay on his bed with his hand held up before him, reciting the names of the bones.
Lunate, hamate, triquetrum
. That moment just before the tap at the door, when he couldn’t have known how everything would change. He thought, in the days and weeks when he did nothing but think about it, that it had clearly been a test, and that he had failed. Not the test he thought it was, not a test of his compassion, but something else. There was a tap at the door, his landlady saying,
A young lady to see you
, and he picked up his jacket from the chair, smoothed his hair, looking in the crooked mirror. He assumed it would be Marianne, although she had never come to his rooms, but when he walked into the parlor Faith turned
from the window and he was surprised at the sound of his voice, saying her name.
I need your help
, she said, looking past him to the half-open door.

Outside the air was dense with rain that had fallen, would fall again, and in the pearly light she stood out sharp beside him. But at the same time she was all softness, her pale brow, the pink of her cheek, and the beads of moisture that clouded her hair where it showed beneath her brown hat. As he walked beside her there seemed to be time to notice each small detail like that.

I need your help
, Faith said again, and it was the usual story she told him. A young girl taken advantage of, a young girl in trouble. A good girl, a girl who worked hard, who would have a chance to find a good position, to have a decent life.
Can you say that it’s right?
Faith said.
Can you honestly say that it’s right?
This girl’s life ruined, while the man carried on with his own, without even a pause.

He was persuaded, and he told himself it was by what she said, nothing to do with the misty look of her hair, with the fact that he was the one she had chosen to ask. The next day the note came with the address and he could have changed his mind, but he didn’t. Remembering the way Faith had looked when he said yes, said he would help. The girl was thin and frightened, her small white teeth chattering. She held on to Faith’s hand and there was blood, but not so much, not while he was still there. He never knew how the Professor learned of it, but that didn’t really matter. Summoned to his office, Robinson felt like a schoolboy, braced for the whipping to come. The words fell hard, each one a dull thud landing, another piece of the golden path gone, a scatter of faint sparkles in the air, until they too disappeared. No question of the law, the Professor said, providing he left the city, set up somewhere far away and stayed there. A
terrible mistake, the Professor said, with what he had been prepared to offer him. Robinson heard the trembling in his own voice as he made his brief responses, despised it but couldn’t stop it. Even out in the street the blows continued, thudding with each beat of his heart, with the unbearable knowledge that he had only himself to blame.

He didn’t tell Marianne any of it. An adventure, was what he said instead. An opportunity, a new start for their new life together. She thought he was teasing, at first. And when he made it clear that it was not a joke, that they would not be taking the house near the lake, that they would be living in a landlocked small town miles away, she wailed and stamped her pretty foot and told him he was hateful, told him that she never wanted to see him again. But the wedding was in two days’ time, the house filled with flowers and the hem already finished on the dress. He sat on a chair on her front porch until it was nearly dark, and when she came out to him, he held both her hands and told her he would treasure her forever.

•  •  •

He woke to the sound of a shout, a cry, but the horse was standing peacefully, no sound but a distant bird. The reins were looped around the trunk of a sapling by the edge of the road; he must have done that, although he had no memory of it. Only the strange thought of his daughter’s light skull cupped in his hand, nothing in him strong enough to bring her back. He pressed his fingers hard into his temples before he climbed down from the buggy, loosed the reins, stroked the horse’s soft nose and looked into the dark pool of its eye. The sun was still high but its light had softened; he had misplaced his watch and had no idea how long he had slept. No idea if anyone had passed by and seen him
there, what a man might be saying to his wife as he eased off his boots by the kitchen door.

•  •  •

The Marianne he first knew had the bluest eyes and a way of holding her fingers over her mouth when she giggled. She asked his opinion on everything. Once, near the time they first met, she touched the sleeve of his jacket and said,
You must be very brave
. He had been speaking of the surgery he’d observed that morning, trying to describe it without offending, but at the same time enjoying her shivers, as she herself seemed to. There was no reason to think of that now, but he did, and knew that it had never been true. He thought of the wrinkled face of Miss Burns, the first to tap at his office door, and what it must have cost her to unlace, unbutton, to bare herself and show the shameful swelling under her arm. What she must have gone through before he’d even heard her name, alone in her little house, deciding.

And he thought of those times the diphtheria swept through, the parents whose children were carried off, sometimes every one. Watching at bedsides night after night, hardly able to stand, yet wiping at their reddened eyes and thanking him for his trouble, for all he’d tried to do. He remembered the man with the crushed leg, at the factory, conscious until he died and making jokes about the dance he was going to miss. Reverend Toller standing tall in his pulpit, but moving through the laneways at dusk, tapping at back doors to return some glittering object he’d found in one of his wife’s hiding places. Even his own son screaming in his bed, his hair all spiked and the lamp throwing terrible shadows on the wall. Sometimes screaming louder when Robinson stood in the doorway, saying,
Hush, hush. It was only a
dream
. Marianne lost in her powdered sleep, making him wonder how it was those nights he was away from home. Or how it was for Lilian, who could barely speak, barely meet his eye, yet came to him week after week, trusted him. Even Heath in his cell hearing the hammer blows ring out, knowing the exact hour of his death. Robinson knew that even the vows he had made as a ragged boy had nothing to do with bravery.

•  •  •

The music stopped for a moment when he opened the back door, then started again. A piece Marianne liked to play, although he couldn’t just then put a name to it. The slow sad notes wrapped around him and he thought about stepping into the room, sitting down in the armchair, and listening to the end. He thought of touching her hair. Standing in the doorway he saw her rigid back and the way her skirts flowed over the piano stool. He carried on past, up the stairs, poured water into the bowl, dipped his hands and splashed. The slow sad notes still repeating and he dried his face more roughly than he needed to, had to smooth his mustache with the special comb Eaton had given him for Christmas. When he came noisily back down the stairs the music had stopped and the parlor was empty.