The Choiring of the Trees - Donald Harington [211]
“Who said ye did?” Doc challenges.
“You’re makin hints,” Nail observes. “I jist want ye to know right here and now, I never kilt Sull.”
“How’d ye know he’s been kilt, if ye didn’t do it?” Doc says, almost cocky with the knowledge that he’d tripped him up and caught him.
“Latha tole me,” Nail says.
“Damn that gal!” Doc swears. “Why couldn’t she of waited and let me do it?”
“You couldn’t tell me as nice as she did,” Nail says.
“That’s a .22, aint it?” Doc demands.
“Yeah, but I aint never used it on a person. I swear.”
“How you gonna convince a jury of that?”
“I done already failed to convince one jury,” Nail says. “I hope I don’t never have to try to convince another one.”
“Boy,” Doc says sternly. “If this aint a mess. If this aint the beatenest kettle of fish ever I seed. Damned if I want to be a goldarned accessory, or even accused of one, but I am gonna take that rifle with me, and I am gonna keep it where nobody can find it, and if you’uns have to have you a firearm for keepin off the wolfs and bars at night, I’ll bring ye a different caliber next time I come up here.”
Surely, she thinks, the other two, the two men, can hear what she hears, the rising chorus of the trees. “Colvin Swain,” she says, “you are a very nice man.”
“Heck, shoot,” the doctor grumbles. “I got to git on back to work. I got to drop in on another patient, Nail’s dad, and give him the word. The word is gonna make him well, jist wait and see if it don’t. While I’m at it, do you want me to send yore brother Luther up here with anything you need? No, wait, I aint gonna tell nobody whar yo’re at, not yet anyhow. Not even yore folks. But they’ll be mighty proud to hear the news.” The doctor snaps shut his gladstone bag and lifts it. He stares at Viridis for a moment before finding the words he wants to say to her. “You take good keer of him, now, hear me? See to it he takes his medicine. Keep him off his feet.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
The doctor steps over and takes the rifle in his other hand. “You’uns be good now, hear?”
“Don’t be rushin off, Doc,” Nail says formally, in the code of backwoods politeness. “Stay more and spend the night with us.”
“I’d shore lak to, but I better be gittin on down home. You’uns come go home with me.”
“Better not, I reckon,” Nail says. “Stay and have supper with us.”
“Caint do it, this time,” Doc says.
Viridis listens in wonder as the two men invite and counter-invite each other until finally Nail says, “Wal, come back when ye kin stay longer,” and the doctor is allowed to leave.
She walks him to his horse and thanks him and repeats Nail’s invitation. Then she asks, “When you told us to be good, just how good did you have in mind?”
He grins, and blushes a bit. “I was jist tryin to be silly,” he says. “I didn’t mean nothin by thet.”
“So it wouldn’t hurt him if we…” she begins, but can’t quite find the words.
“Lak I said, don’t let him do nothin that caint be done in bed,” the doctor says. He climbs up on his horse and turns to go. His parting words are spoken down to her. “But I imagine there’s quite a heap of things a body can do in bed, besides sleep.” He starts to ride away. She waves. He stops the horse, reins it, holds it; he sits there listening, looking not at her but off at the forest. “Do you hear that?” he asks. He glances at her for confirmation, and she smiles and nods her head. “What d’ye reckon is makin that purty sound?”
“The trees,” she says. “They’re singing.”
“Is that what it is?” he asks. “Wal, how ’bout that? Don’t that beat all?”
“It surely does beat all,” she agrees, and the good doctor, shaking his head in wonder, rides away.
And as soon as she gets back to Nail’s bedside, she wants to know: “Don’t you hear them?”
“Yeah, but the doc tole me this medicine would cause that.”
“You haven’t taken the medicine yet,” she points out. “But you’re going to, right this minute.” And she fetches a spoon from the implements she hoarded for him and makes him take his quinine.
Some of it dribbles down his chin, and he raises his hand to