The Choiring Of The Trees (59 page)

I reached out and put my hand on his forehead. At the real touch of his skin I knew that I had only imagined touching him down below. Reality is always more touchable than imagination. “You’re real cold,” I said. “Cold as death.”

“Yeah, I’ve been either too cold or too hot or too wet for quite a spell.” His words came out almost like stuttering, because of the chattering of his teeth and the trembling of his body.

I drew a blanket up over him. And then another one. And yet another one. And then a quilt. I draped and tucked more covers over him than I’d ever had myself the coldest winter night of my life, and still he shook so mightily that I thought he’d pop right out of the bed. I couldn’t understand how anybody could be so cold on such a hot morning. Well, it was cooler in the cavern than out in the sunshine, but not all
that
cool. I touched my own brow, and I felt normal; no, I felt a good bit hotter than normal. I considered that his conscience might be giving him a nervous chill: that he had killed a man and now feared the consequences. But nobody ever shook like that simply from guilt or fear. He was, I understood, sick. I wanted to run and fetch not Viridis but Doc Swain, but I was afraid that Nail would shake himself to death and freeze while I was gone.

So, almost without thinking, I did what I did: I climbed beneath the covers with him and held him tight, trying to warm him with the heat, the plenty of it, from my own body. The thick quilts and blankets piled atop us imprisoned my body heat and divided it with him, but that was not enough for both of us: I became cold myself. Together we trembled for a long time. We didn’t have our arms around each other, not all four arms anyhow, but we had our bodies pressed as hard together as they could get, and that big bulge down there in his pants had never gone away, and my mind was filled with wild thoughts and fear and chill and lust and everything.

Then we were not side by side, exactly. In an effort to still his shaking, I had pressed down on him, mashed him to his back, and I lay hard atop him, the whole length of him, mashing down, and then he did have both arms around me, around my back and my waist both, holding me tight to him. We squirmed and shook and squeezed in that position for so long that somehow the bulge in his britches worked itself directly beneath the juncture of my thighs so that our most private places were not just touching but mashing very hard and rubbing harder, and before I knew it I had begun a different kind of shaking, not of nervousness or chill but of fulfillment of the exertion and labor of love. I cried out. Maybe, even, I passed out, because the next thing I was aware of, and it seemed time had gone by, he was no longer trembling at all. He was perfectly still, except for his breathing, and he had thrown the covers off us, and I wondered if the weight of all of me on top of him was mashing him uncomfortably, but he didn’t seem to mind, and I didn’t want to move from that position just yet, because I knew that once I did, I would never find myself like that with him, ever again.

At last I rolled off and lay there beside him, not touching him anymore, giving him up to whoever would claim him that he belonged to. I just looked at him, with love but also with a little wondering: had he maybe just faked his shaking in order to get me to do what I’d done? Because he wasn’t shaking the least bit anymore. He was smiling, and I know it was just a smile of being friendly and maybe a little embarrassed, but it also seemed like a smile of having tricked me into that enjoyment.

Then he said, “You went over the mountain.”

“Yeah,” I said, as if to let him know that I knew what he meant saying that. “I got over the mountain.”

“You’re not Viridis,” he said, as if he’d just noticed.

I had to laugh. “I wish I was,” I said. “I sure truly wish I really was. But don’t you even know me?”

He smiled again. “Some ways, you’re better than Viridis,” he said.

“What ways?” I wanted to know.

“You’re home folks,” he said. “You wrote and told me about this hideaway. And I do honestly misdoubt that she’d have warmed me up the way you jist now did. Or gone over the mountain.”

“Aw, I had to climb that mountain,” I said.

“I know you did,” he said. “I shore appreciate it, what-all you’ve done.”

“You’re not shakin no more,” I observed.

“No, you see, Latha, I’ve got the two-day ague, and the way it works is, I shake like crazy for an hour, and then I’m burnin up, like I am right now, for another little spell, and then I commence to sweat like a stud horse—’scuse me, Latha—I get soppin wet for a time, and then I’m okay for another twenty-four hours, and it hits me again the next day.”

“I’ve never had that,” I declared, “but I’ve heard of it. You’ve done been skeeterbit.”

“Yeah, that’s what causes it,” he said. “Skeeters.”

“You’d best let me run and fetch Doc Swain,” I told him. “And of course Viridis too. She’d be real mad at me if she knew I’d come up here by myself.”

“You don’t have to tell her nothin,” he told me.

“I’ll make up a story,” I said. “I’m pretty good at that, don’t you know?”

“I reckon,” he said.

I stood up and straightened my dress and patted my hair into place. “Can I get you anything ’fore I go? A drink of water? Anything to eat?”

“Just maybe a sip of water is all, right now,” he said, lying there in the pain of his high fever.

“And we’d better hide that .22 before Doc Swain sees it,” I announced, and tried to think of a safe place to hide it.

“How come?” Nail wanted to know.

“
How come
? Well, his dad is still justice of the peace, don’t you know, and they’ve already been up here checkin when they came to get Sull’s body, so naturally Doc would put two and two together and know it was you.” Nail just stared at me as if he hadn’t the faintest idea what I was talking about, and I began to wonder if maybe he really didn’t. “That
is
your rifle yonder, aint it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

“How long have you been here? What day did you get here?”

He shook his head. “I honestly aint got the foggiest notion.” Then he asked, “What did you say about Sull’s body?”

Somehow, the way he asked that, I knew he really didn’t know anything about it. Maybe he had done it in his delirium, but maybe he hadn’t done it at all. “Nail,” I said, “day before yesterday morning, right down the trail yonder, Sull Jerram was shot off his horse with a .22 bullet.”

The way Nail looked, I knew he was, if not innocent, ignorant of the act. “What was he doin up here?” he asked.

“Followin Viridis to find your hidin-place, I reckon,” I said.

“Who shot him? Did she do it?”

“No, I thought it was you, but maybe it wasn’t, if you weren’t even here day before yesterday.”

“Where was he hit?”

“Right yonder, jist beyond that big white ash tree.”

“No, I mean where in his body did the bullet hit him?”

I touched a spot behind my ear. “Right here,” I said.

Nail shook his head. “Was he hurt bad?”

“He’s dead, Nail.”

“No.”

It got awfully quiet up there in that cavern; all you could hear was the sound of the waterfall. Finally I made some conversation: “They buried him this mornin up at the Jasper cemetery, but your sister wasn’t even plannin to go to the funeral, and I don’t reckon nobody else went neither, ’cept the preacher and maybe the sherf.” Nail didn’t comment on that, so I went on: “You never saw such a happy bunch of folks as everbody in Stay More. We threw a big squar dance up to the schoolhouse to celebrate.” Nail managed a smile but didn’t say anything about that either. “The sherf locked up your brother Waymon at the Jasper jail, but Waymon has got a good alibi because he was gone plumb to Harrison at the time it happened, to get some medicine for your dad.”

“How’s my dad?” Nail asked.

“I reckon Doc Swain can tell ye all about that,” I said. “I better go git him right now.” Then I suggested, “Why don’t I jist take that .22 with me and hide it somewheres off from here?”

“No,” Nail said. “Leave it where it is. I want Doc Swain to see it.”

“You’re crazy,” I said.

He smiled. “So are you, Latha. Comin up here like ye done. Takin keer of me. Warmin me up like ye done. Weren’t ye scared there was a danger I could’ve raped ye like they thought I done to Rindy?”

I smiled. “I wush ye
had
done somethin to me. And now I won’t never git me another chance. Good-bye, Nail.” I turned and fled.

I wondered who to tell first: Viridis or Doc Swain. As it turned out, I didn’t have to decide, because when I went into the village looking for one or the other, I found them sitting together out on the porch of Doc Swain’s clinic, enjoying the shade and the afternoon breeze. I don’t know what they’d been talking about as I strolled up, but they’d become pretty good friends and could have been talking about anything under the sun.

“Howdy, Latha,” Doc Swain said.

“Howdy, Doc,” I said.

“Hi, Latha. How are you today?” Viridis said.

“Hi, Viridis. I’m pretty good. How are you?”

“Fine.”

“I wish it would come a rain,” Doc Swain said.

“We could use one,” I allowed.

“I wish it would come a man named Nail,” Viridis said.

“We could use one of them too,” I said. I timed a few beats before adding, “And it looks like we’ve done finally got one, sure enough.”

Doc and Viridis both raised their eyebrows at me. “How’s thet?” Doc asked.

“He’s back,” I said.

Doc looked up and down the main road of Stay More. “Shore,” he said. “On a big fine white horse, in a full suit of steel armor and chain mail.”

“No, he’s flat on his back, with alternate-day malaria,” I said.

Doc said, “Huh?” and Viridis said, “Where?”

“At the waterfall,” I said to her. And then I had my story ready for her: “I thought I’d seen you on Rosabone riding by, heading that way, and I figured you’d looked for me and not found me, so I ran off after you, but I couldn’t catch up, and so I went on to the waterfall by myself, and there he was, in the cavern.”

Viridis jumped up. “Really?” she said.

“Yes, and he’s got a bad case of alternate-day malaria, and this is the alternate day, with chills and fevers and sweats.”

Doc Swain jumped up. “Really?” he said. “That’s shore enough the symptoms. Where is this cavern?”

“Just beyond where you went day before yesterday morning.”

Doc and Viridis exchanged looks, and I knew they were thinking what I had thought, and I said, “But I don’t think it could’ve been him who done it. I don’t think he even got here until sometime last night.”

Viridis was leaving the porch. “I’ll saddle Rosabone,” she said.

Doc was leaving the porch. “Let me get my bag, and then I’ll get my horse too.”

I was not leaving the porch. They hadn’t invited me. I waited to see if either of them would think to invite me. I didn’t have a horse, and I’d slow them down if I rode behind Viridis on Rosabone, and I was prepared to refuse the offer if she made it. But she didn’t. She reappeared very shortly, astride the mare. She hadn’t bothered to stop to change into her jodhpurs but was still wearing her dress and had hiked it up immodestly to get her legs over the mare’s back. Doc Swain appeared on his horse, with his gladstone bag strapped behind the saddle. His dog tried to go with them, but Doc said, “Sit, Galen. Stay,” and the dog obeyed.

At least, both Doc and Viridis thought to wave good-bye to me.

I was hungry, I hadn’t had any dinner, but I just sat there on Doc’s porch. The least I could do, I thought, was act as his receptionist; in case any patients came, I could tell them the doctor was out on a call and would be back shortly. How shortly I didn’t know, but I sat there for a long time on Doc’s porch. Galen slept. No patients came. Some of the men who gathered every afternoon over on the porch of Ingledew’s store drifted into the village and took their places, sitting on crates, nail kegs, and odd chairs, whittling with their pocketknives and spitting, and scarcely throwing me a glance. Doc Plowright, who had his clinic practically right across the road from Doc Swain’s, stepped out on his porch and stared at me for a bit, wondering what a patient of his was doing sitting on the porch of his competitor. Then he went back inside. He didn’t have any patients today either.

The afternoon passed. Rouser showed up from wherever he’d been, following my trail and finding me. Rouser and Galen argued for a while but decided it was too hot for a fracas. They lay together on the porch floor and went to sleep. To entertain myself, I had a few pretty good daydreams, with real people in them, Viridis and Nail, the woods, the trees, the moon and the stars, forever.

By and by Doc Swain returned, stopping his tired horse in the yard of his clinic and getting down. He came up and sat with me on the porch. “Latha,” he said, “I do believe you were absolutely right. It shore enough
is
the two-day ague, or alternate-day malaria, as you call it. But he’s gonna be all right. I gave him some quinine and some advice. He’s gonna be all right. Them two are gonna live happy ever after.”

On

T
he trees are singing. She notices it as soon as they reach the tall white ash beneath which Sull Jerram fell. She hears the ash itself, who starts the chorus. As she and the doctor ride between or beneath them, those last hundred yards, the trees one by one pick up the song until all of them, white ash, oak, hickory, maple, walnut, beech, chinquapin, elm, locust, and even cedar are harmonizing in their serenade of her.

The smaller dogwood, redbud, persimmon, and sassafras try to join in but are almost drowned out.

“Shore is purty way back up around in here,” Doc observes.

“Listen at that waterfall.”

“That’s not the waterfall, Colvin,” she tells him.

He stops his horse, dismounts, listens. A smile of pleasure comes to his face. “I do believe you’re right,” he says. “It’s something else. Angels, maybe.”

The late-afternoon light from the west breaks into long rays through the boughs of the high trees; the black hole of the mouth of the cavern is illuminated as if by spotlights. The singing swells. Doc’s halloo overrides it, cuts into it.