Free The Sound of the Trees by Robert Payne Gatewood

in his ears. He recalled the Englishman had said he was headed north, to a town beyond the mountains, and he could only believe him and believe that the girl would be with him too.
    From a small lake he passed through cataracts of mist with the sun shining through them as though through bedsheets. He came through a thunder shower and later on the lower ridges the rain cleared. He rode long into the evening, and the boy was forced to stop on several occasions, for his mare had grown terribly weak.
    I’m sorry babe, he kept saying to her. I’m sorry.
    In the full night the boy rode out of the sand hills and into a broad sweep of buffalo plains. In the open land some lights flickered in the distance. The boy stopped the horse and struck up a match against a half-used cigarette, and through the glow he could make out a small village below.
    He rode toward the light. The houses looked like skeletons of houses with their earthen walls bowing under their own weight. He upstepped the mare out of a gulch and into a narrow dirt road. Very little sound came from the houses and the feet of the horse and mule clacking in the silence came out like a clock counting a different time altogether.
    As he came abreast of the houses the lights from inside extinguished into the black. At the end of the row he came to a house that remained lit. It was a tiny adobe structure in terrible disrepair, with its vigas crooked on the roof gaps and the leather cordings that bound them together looking like sutures that had been stitched through a wound that would not heal.
    He stayed the horse. Through the window he could see a kerosene lantern burning deeply on a low crooked table. A man sat over a large bowl and addressed someone out of his view. He whistled to the mule and walked the horse into the yard and dismounted by the side of the house. Nearby a wheelless truck stood on blocks of cinder with its hood open. A scattering of tin cans and chicken bones was strewn errantly in the yard. He walked along the side of the house where a lone cottonwood stood with bed linens draped over its branches, and there he hobbled his horse.
    He walked up the stone path to the door and took off his hat and held it at his chest and knocked on the door. After a moment a woman appeared. She tilted her head behind the crack in the door. She put a hand to the muslin wrap that secured the long ropes of her dark hair, then stepped back.
    Buenas noches, the boy said.
    The woman’s eyes came to the seam in the door again. She looked him up and down. Finally she opened the door. Yes, she said with a heavy accent. You need something?
    The boy shifted his hat in his hands and looked over his shoulder at the road.
    Well. I just came through the mountains. I was hoping to rest somewhere for the night.
    The woman studied him. His hair was matted against his head and swung out over his eyes. He crossed his free hand in front of his face and tucked it back behind his ears.
    I know I’m dirty but it don’t mean I’m bad.
    He tried to smile at her but it was sorrow on his face and sorrow the woman saw.
    There came some movement behind the woman and she and the boy turned. The man he had seen in the window glass came into the hall and stepped in front of the woman.
    Buenas noches, the boy said again.
    The man was tall and muscled and he wore his white shirt open. His face was hard as well, but in his eyes there was a sallow quality which made him appear almost penitent.
    The man and his wife spoke to each other in Spanish. The man nodded to the boy and told him to come in. The boy lowered his head and stepped into the room behind them. He looked about cautiously in the manner of someone entering a church. He held his battered hat close to his stomach. The man pointed to an empty chair at the table and they all sat down.
    Hungry? the man asked.
    I could eat.
    The woman dished him out a plate of beans and a plate of tortillas. She looked back and forth from the boy to