The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [209]
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
The 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.
“HELLO THE CAVE!” he calls. “Nail! It’s us. It’s Colvin Swain and yore ladyfriend.”
The singing of the trees muffles whatever reply comes from within, a feeble acknowledgment or welcome.
She walks behind Doc, partly afraid. If the sight of him is truly awful and causes her to stumble, she can stumble against Doc’s back and he will turn and catch her.
But it is Doc who stumbles, on the scree or talus of the cavern’s lip. She is thoroughly familiar with every step of the way, but he is not, and falls. She helps him up. He is embarrassed. “Kinder pre-carious there,” he remarks. She waits to let him go on ahead