The Trees Read online

  It was dark till Worth got his box and lid boards fixed to suit. They had to dig the hole by shellbark light. It was dug more with the axe than with the shovel Worth had hacked and whittled out of a piece of dead oak. The black ground was all roots. As far as their hands went down, the roots lay atop each other, this way and that, thick and thin, like a great den of snakes froze up for the winter and not knowing it was long spring. Sayward hated having to put her mother in a place like this. Those greedy, flesh-minded roots would slink around that box trying to get in. But what she minded most was Worth pounding the wooden pins through the clapboards on the box after her mother lay inside. He squatted there swinging his battered mallet, and it seemed with every smack he was hitting at Jary. Oh, he never meant it that way. He had worked all day making as good a box for Jary as he knew how. Some of the chinking boards stuck out a little from the others like rib poles over the cabin. But down in the ground it would lay plumb and true. It beat forty ways the split hollow logs some woodsies buried their women and young ones in back from the Juniata.

  “It’s good as a settlement box, Pap,” she told him. “Mam would be proud could she see it.”

  When he was done, they all lent a hand carrying it over to the white oak. Even little Sulie and Wyitt helped, for this was the last thing they could do for their mam. They let it down in the ground with Jary’s feet toward Pennsylvania. Worth had dug the hole east and west like settlement graves were so the sun would shine in the faces of the dead when they sat up on resurrection morn.

  Worth didn’t sleep in his and Jary’s bed that night. Likely he was cold, for he took a blanket to break the hardness of the floor and lay by the fire though it was warm enough for whippoorwills to call. One came so close they could hear it suck the air back in its windpipe. Tonight it kept saying, “Pray for Jary! Pray for Jary! Pray for Jary!” Next morning Worth looked as if he hadn’t slept much. After breakfast he took down his rifle.

  “You be all right here for a spell?” he said.

  “I kain’t see why not,” Sayward told him. “We always have been.”

  She knew well enough he was running off. God Almighty had made a man free that way. When things got out of kilter at home, he could take his gun and go to the woods. Maybe Worth would hunt today and maybe he would make his way to Hough’s post where it had a man or two like himself to play with the Deil’s cards. Should he meet some Shawanee or Delaware hunters on the way, they would swap tobacco and hunting tales all day.

  But a woman had to stay home and mind the big kettle and the little kettle. It wasn’t likely she’d get away far as a whoop and a holler till the littlest one, was he son or brother, got big enough to take off by himself. And by that time she’d have forgot all about that mess of troubles and have plenty new ones.

  “But it’s no use a cryin’ you ain’t a man,” Sayward told herself calmly. “God Almighty done it this way and you kain’t change it.”

  She set to work to keep her mind off what it shouldn’t fret over. She washed Jary’s quilt and yarn blanket till her fingers got water parched. It was mighty hard to get that smell of Death out. It still hung in the cabin though she cleaned what she could. Her mother’s old broom was worn till it wasn’t more than a club, and she cut a green hickory stick, her knife splitting a splint at one end. This she turned back and split another, and another. When she was done and the handle whittled down, she had a fine, new broom. Tomorrow or next day she would have to make a little one just like it for Sulie.

  The young ones did their own forgetting. They had been shut up with sickness and death so long. Now nothing was left of that save a grave, and that they could jump over. Oh, today they would make up for lost time. Back by the old gats each had his own sapling that nobody dared touch but he. They all climbed up at the same time like treed coons, swinging first one side then the other till some would bump and screech. In the afternoon they fixed houses with sticks and made out they were great folks dressing and undressing inside, pinning together with locust thorns the big sapling leaves of their fine, new green gowns and hunting frocks. You could hear them quarreling a long ways off who was pranked out the seemliest or if this small stone was a bed or a whortleberry biscuit.

  Oh, those young ones had as much go as ever they had. But it got worked out in time. For a spell they would rip and tear through the brush, then it would peter out. After while, if Sayward took a kettle out for water, she would see them wandering up and down the run like they might be looking for someone. Sooner or later when she was back in the cabin she could hear them out in front. It was plain they hated to come in, for they would first hang around a long time. Mostly Genny would take the lead. You couldn’t tell anything from her or Achsa. And Wyitt wouldn’t look to the right or left to show what was on his mind. But little Sulie would give it away. Never came she in that door any more without looking hasty from the bed where her mam had died. She would scruch down her shoulders till she passed and then push a stool around so she needn’t look at that bed quilt with the rising sun on it.

  “What you a doin’, Sairdy?” she would fetch out and sit there watching her biggest sister solemn as a hoppy toad.

  No, you couldn’t tell those young ones minded a lick when their mam died. But they could feel that something wasn’t right around here now. It hadn’t so many of them against the woods any more. Never of late had Jary been the lively one and yet it wasn’t so bright around this cabin like it was once on a time. Worth must have felt it, too. He stayed off for longer stretches. Sayward guessed he knew plenty Indian men with sisters whose black eyes would glitter up at this chance to comfort him, for such looked up to a white man.

  He was gone a long while this time. The young ones had looked for him back these two days. Tonight they said they would stay up and Holler Fortunes till he came.

  “This is how you do —” Wyitt began to Genny who had sang out she was the first.

  “Are you a doin’ this or me?” Genny settled him.

  She went outside, but no further from the door than she had to, for the night was black as thunder.

  “Go on, Ginny!” little Sulie prodded her, she being the next.

  “Hesh up!” Achsa told her.

  Genny stood there, a slight, hopeful body in the shaft of firelight from the cabin. After while her voice sang out to the dark silent woods lying all around.

  If I am to die a maid,

  Let me hear my grave box made.

  If I am to wed and sing,

  Let me hear a little bird sing.

  When she got done they all waited with big ears. Even Sayward came to the door. The last few nights the whippoorwills had been loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers around the cabin. This night for some reason had no more whippoorwills than the day. You could hear nothing but the river over yonder talking to the woods. After while an air stirred from somewhere clacking together the leaves a little and fetching with it a faraway sound like Worth made when he fixed up Jary’s box. Four or five fearsome strokes came slow and clear. Then you could hear only the river again.

  Genny’s face was like tallow when she turned back in the cabin. The others followed quick, for none of them reckoned they wanted to holler for their fortune right now.

  “It was just an old woodpecker, Ginny,” Sulie comforted her. “Wa’n’t it, Sairdy?”

  “If a woodpecker ever pecks in the night time, I never heerd him,” Sayward said grimly. “But whatever mortal thing it was, I wouldn’t think no more about it.”

  “It sounded like an axe to me,” Wyitt said.

  They stood mighty still and sober at that. It had no axe nearer than Hough’s post, they all knew, and that was a good day’s tramp. Oh, there was no ripping and tearing around now. They stared at each other, feeling for Genny. Something was hanging over their sister’s head. Any day or night it might come on her, the gripes, the cold plague, the bloody flux or only God knew what. She was the skinniest of the family anyway. Never would she eat enough to keep a lizard alive.
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br />   Genny looked behind the door where at dark Sayward always fetched in the axe. There it stood, its helve smooth and dark from handsweat.

  “If that whacking was a axe,” she marked her words, “it was a makin’ my box.”

  “Maybe then you won’t go racin’ like a white-head through the woods ready to tromp on a copper snake any minute,” Sayward told her calmly. After a while she added, “It mought a been a Injun down the river. He could be a cuttin’ off shellbark to mend his canoe.”

  A little color fell back in Genny’s face, for this was the time of year when bark would run. But Sayward in her heart knew the sound too heavy for a tomahawk. She got them all in bed soon after and lay down herself with her shortgown on.

  When she woke up it was getting daylight and Genny was shaking her.

  “Kin you hear it?” she whispered.

  Sayward lifted her head. Through a crack in the chinking she could make out mighty far off a faint hacking. The sound died out during the middle of the day but came again faintly at nightfall. Early next morning it was loudest of all and Genny looked like it was Granmam Powelly’s clock ticking off the minutes she had left to live. She wouldn’t come in for breakfast. No, she wasn’t hungry she told Achsa. Sayward kept going about her business till the morning chores were done. Then she picked up the axe in her strong quiet hands.

  “Now that’s plagued a body long enough,” she said.

  It was a good thing, she thought, to have an excuse for going off from your cabin. A woman got tired of seeing the same big kettle and little kettle every day, the same gourds and chinking board shelves, feeding the same fire and going down for water to the same run. You wanted to drink water sometimes from some other run. The path down the river was beaten out little more than a deer path but you could tell the way it ran that no wild beasts made this. No, these were human feet. They knew where they were going. A foot path was a pleasing road to travel on, for it came to all things in the woods in time, the rotten log worn through in the middle to let you by, the bed of moss that had brown spots from feet, the sandy runs and cold spring, the narrows where the path clung to the sidehill, the hickory flats, the buck laurel and big whortleberry bushes in the swamp — the path got to all of them in time. Once it even came out at a half open place on the river where the sun on the water blinded you and a big old gandersnipe waded on his stilts in the shallows.

  They couldn’t hear that whacking when they started, only after they went a ways. The closer they got, the plainer it beat through the woods, making little Sulie stick close to her big sister. Now it had almost the ring of blacksmith iron. And now where the path climbed over a hill, the woods and river bluff below began to answer it. The echoes flew every which way till you couldn’t tell if they had passed it or where the real sound came from.

  “I tole you!” Genny said.

  Little Sulie pulled on Sayward’s shortgown.

  “Let’s go back and see if Pappy’s home, Sairdy,” she whined.

  What this thing was, Sayward told herself, she didn’t know. But too long had she lived in the woods to be scared of owls. She had come so far. Her legs had no notion of turning back now. Her naked feet slapped down on the cool path and on the drifted, curled-up leaves of last year’s oak crop. Now they were going downhill. And now they could see something down there on the bottom. It looked yellow and kind of bright through the trees.

  “You young’uns stay here,” Sayward told them. “I want to see that’ar.”

  To herself she said, plagued if it didn’t look like peeled logs. But the young ones wouldn’t stay behind. No, they kept close after her, pulling at her clothes. Something was moving down there, bumping among the tree butts. When it came out, it looked like a forest beast none of them had ever seen before. Then it turned into a gaunt old blue-and-black spotted ox snaking a log, with a boy no bigger than Wyitt jumping that log first on one side then on the other behind it.

  Now who, Sayward thought, would have looked for something like this! The young ones stared like they were beat out, for this was the first white human they had seen since they came in these woods. Oh, they had no notion to turn around and go back home now.

  “Wow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow!” Wyitt greeted that boy defiantly, patting his hand to his mouth like an Indian.

  Like a shot the strange boy dropped his gad and jumped behind the back side of his ox that was glad enough to rest his weary bones. A grown man came running out of the woods with a gun and got behind the crib of peeled logs. One look at that musket and the Luckett young ones scattered like a bunch of squirrels on the far side of the handiest butts. Only Sayward stood calm and half-angered in the path.

  “Don’t draw no bead on us!” she called out. “We’re nothin’ to be afeard of. We’re neighbors to you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MAIDENHEAD

  SO it had white folks living in these woods and they never knew it, Sayward told herself on the way home. A pity Jary couldn’t have lived to see this day. If anything could have made her hang on to breath a while longer, it would have been to lay eyes on neighbors. Never did Jary give a hait about how many paces a panther skin stretched from tip to tip or the points on the rack of a buck. All she cared about were humans. Back in Pennsylvania she would sit quiet on her chair and ask Worth a world of questions about some family he met up with in the woods. Worth would scratch his head and answer the best he could, and all the time Jary would sit there with her mouth rounded a little at what Worth didn’t know. Give her five minutes with those folks, it said, and she would tell you more about them than Worth could take notice of from All Souls’ night to Martinmas.

  The young ones’ tongues were loose enough now. Before they got to the top of the first hill, little Sulie turned her face, smart and sharp as a young coon’s, over her shoulder.

  “We got a winder light at our place!” she yelled back at them.

  But when she had stood down there, she hadn’t opened her mouth, neither she or any of the young ones. You might have thought they never had laid eyes on other white people.

  “Well, kain’t you say something to that boy?” Sayward had complained to Wyitt.

  Not that it did any good. All he and the stranger boy could do was scowl at each other over the ox’s rump. She didn’t know what they’d have done without that ox. She tried to scrape up some talk with the boy’s pappy but with a woman he was froze stiff as steelyards. Most of the time the Lucketts had to just stand there, first on one leg and then on the other, visiting with their eyes, waiting till a proper time had passed before they took their leave, saving their opinions till they got out of earshot. And when it went too long without a word, she or one of the girls would talk to that ox, running their hands down his soft neck. Oh, he was the most sociable one there, reaching out his snout for the fresh sassafras leaves they picked for him and talking a soft “Mmm-mm-mm-mm,” deep in his gullet when they would neglect him. The beast’s eyes were mild and patient as summer but you could see a world of power lay in his thick neck and the wide flare of his horns.

  Now if it had a woman down there, Sayward thought, things might have been different. A woman would have been glad to see girls and young ones out here across the Ohio. Such wouldn’t have lacked for words to talk, bidding them sit down on a log and maybe giving them a bite to eat to show them a hearty welcome. It would have been a comfort to look in a woman’s face today and hear woman’s talk. But it had to be enough just to know a second place in these dark woods was now marked with the sociable, human slashes of the axe. Their own cabin didn’t look so lonesome any more when they came back to it standing by itself under the trees.

  Worth heard about it from the young ones before he got in the house that afternoon. They told him all that had happened and some that hadn’t, quarreling over how it was and wasn’t. Supper done, he looked up at Sayward.

  “Don’t he have a woman?” he wanted to know.

  “I didn’t ast him,” Sayward said shortly.

  Worth
had a look on his face as he pushed back his stool. Most times Sayward could read her father’s face like Jary could a book, but this look she didn’t recollect seeing on him before. Now what, she wondered as she lay in her bed with Genny that night, did he have on his mind?

  One day not long after she heard Sarge bark and after while the bass mumble of men’s talk. When she went to the door, there sat their settler neighbor and Worth on the chopping log together. The ox they must have left down the river, but he and his boy had come up the foot trace mighty soon to see what the Luckett place looked like. And now that he was here his hair stood up curly all over his head like he was astonished with what he saw. It came over Sayward this must be Sunday for his boots had been freshly charcoaled and his linsey shirt was clean, though his neck and tow britches looked like neither had seen water for a long time.

  His boy stood around like a lost sheep. Oh, Sayward told herself she would feed that man and boy well today, for they had no woman folks to look after them like Worth and Wyitt had. She would pick those wild pigeons and bake a deep pigeon pie in the kettle. The four youngest ones could squeeze together on the bench at the trencher. She called Genny to help. Genny told her those freshly blacked boots made her feel half naked and that’s why she had stood off a little ways with her bare legs hid by the bushes.

  After dinner it rained and the young ones had to stay in the cabin. The two men moved their stools back against the logs and filled the place with smoke from Worth’s tobacco, telling where each hailed from in the old state and how he had made his tracks through the woods. The neighbor called himself Mathias Cottle. He was a little fellow who sat up big as one should who owned a cow and a mare back on his brother’s place along the Youghiheny. But he was too full of twist and go to sit still long. His hands like those of a body with more pressing business on his mind kept cutting on the floor little squares out of a stick from his pocket. And all the time Sayward could feel his bright black eyes watching her chore around the cabin as they had watched her bare legs that day down at his improvement.