The path was steep. His head was nearly level with Omensetter's marching feet — his softly polished shoes. Henry felt abandoned. The blasted fellow understood his luck. He knew. The wind blew strongly and streams of tears protected Henry's eyes.
Perhaps it was the height, perhaps the wind, perhaps he was catching cold after all, but Henry felt his senses blur and merge, then focus again. Something was trying to come up — Omensetter was shouting that the frost was finicky — something was leaping against the sides of his skull. Ah — god — the fox, Henry thought, knuckling his eyes. He'd had the hen in his mouth, life in his teeth, saliva running. Feathers foamed over his nose. And then the earth had groaned. Just a moment ago. He'd never nailed the well shut, though now when he closed his teeth it all latched. Some went early, said Omensetter's shout. The leaves were minnowing. Had he thought they were playing at Adam and Eve? three children and a dog? PARADISE BY RIVERSIDE. Perhaps by Springwater Picturesquely Overrun. Exorbitantly leased from Mr. Henry God, a lesser demon, with insufficient spunk to make a Christ. No. Not Omensetter. He'd always seemed inhuman as a tree. The rest — who visited-ware human. They made him sick inside his sickness. There was Mrs. Henry Pimber, her untidy hair, dull eyes, her fallen breasts and shoulders exclaiming grief and guilt at his demise, while every gesture was a figure in a tableau of desire; there was the Reverend Jethro Furber, a blackening flame, and Mrs. Valient Hatstat, rings spotted on her fingers, a small white scar like an unwiped white of egg lying in the corner of her mouth; there was Doctor Truxton Orcutt of the rotting teeth and juice-stained beard, who looked like a house with a rusting eave; there was Mrs. Rosa Knox, sofa-fleshed and fountain-spoken, with an intermittent titter that shook her breasts, and also Israbestis Tott, together beggar, hurdy-gurdy, cup, chain, monkey; and there was Mrs. Gladys Chamlay, the scratched rod, nose like a jungle-bird's, teeth like a beast's; Miss Samantha Tott, so tall she had to stoop in the sun she thought; and all those others, with their husbands or their brothers, invisible, behind them, making sounds to celebrate the death of tea-weak Henry Pimber; while Mr. Matthew Watson, neither praying, speaking, crying, or exclaiming, uncomfortable in a corner, surreptitiously scratched a rash through his trousers.
They haven't turned… in earnest yet, Omensetter said.
Not Adam but inhuman. Was that why he loved him, Henry wondered. It wasn't for his life — a curse, god knew; it wasn't for the beet-root poultice. It lay somewhere in the chance of being new… of living lucky, and of losing Henry Pimber. He had always crammed humanity in everything. Even the air felt guilty. Once he would have seen each tree along this slope boned humanly and branched with feeling like the black bile tree, the locust, despondent even at the summit of the highest summer. How convenient it had been to find his friends and enemies embarked in tame slow trunks, in this or that bent tree, their aspirations safely in high branches and their fires podded into quiet seed. He could pat their bodies with his hands and carve his name and make up animal emotions for them no fruit could contradict. It was always easier to love great trees than people. Such trees were honest. Their deaths showed.
Come on Henry — what the hell — let's get where we can see.
They were silver in the spring. They were still new green like the river. The sun came to them. The wind turned them. And a dark deep glossy green grew on by the head of summer. It was like the green he sometimes saw when the sun was right and the wind had died cover a stone that was lightly under water. There was hedge green and ivy, slick as slippery elm and cool as myrtle. There was slime green pale with yellow; some that was like moss or grass beneath a rock or the inside of a shuck of corn. There was every shade of green in the world. There was more than the rivers had, more than any meadow.
The wind rushed over the brow of the hill, billowing Henry's coat and flattening Omensetter's hair. Behind them in the valley, the leaves were quiet as if at the hilltop they had sponged the wind. Here the rush covered their ears. mensetter shouted something. Henry's toes curled in his shoes to catch the ground. He sidled awkwardly, his coat lashing his legs until his body seemed to sing like wire.
… the notch.
Henry ledged after him. His coat ballooned. Somehow, in this mad place, he was losing everything. Omensetter vanished. The ground seemed to fall away. He hadn't known the sea had holes but how else did you drown? Then he saw Omensetter's bushy head and he dropped into the notch where the wind roared above them like Niagara Falls.
Henry sat on a rock and pulled his coat round him.
You don't like it, Omensetter said.
Oh no, it's fine.
They had to shout.
The cold stone pressed against him.
Lovely view, they said.
It was a terrifying wind.
I come often, Omensetter said. A boat's out. I wonder whose.
Henry shrugged and held on. He thought of the wild beauty of the trees, his own affection for them, his romantic sentiments, his wretched illness with its lying clarity.
Will you climb here in the winter?
Omensetter made a face.
Too cold. Freeze. Don't you love the noise?
No, Henry thought, I don't love the noise; the wind win wash my wits out.
But in the winter, he reflected, when the sun was in the west, the leafless trees would print the snow. Chamlay's snake fence would lace his south fields. Every bush would blossom, each twig sharply thrown, and every paltry post embark for consciousness as huge. The wind might blow here constantly, it would alter nothing; but this was the season of change, Henry's coat billowed out from him, and Omensetter's countenance escaped into the valley. An immense weariness took hold of Henry now, though the sun in the notch was warming. Of course — he'd been a fool — Omensetter lived by not observing — by joining himself to what he knew. Necessity flew birds as easily as the wind drove these leaves, and they never felt the curvature which drew the arc of their pursuit Nor would a fox cry beauty before he chewed.
Remember?… remember coming, Henry shouted finally, pointing to the western hill.
Omensetter put his head up in the stream where the wind blew away his words.
Ah… uddy… raid it would ray…
You were afraid?
… ott?
Were you afraid of getting wet?
Ah…ur.
You saved my life.
… ott?
I said are you happy in Gilean?
Omensetter left the notch abruptly, and started down. Obedient, Henry followed, and saw between them and the sun a broad-winged hawk like a leaf on the flooding air. The sailor of the wind is loose, he thought; my life is lost down this dead hill. He had raised his arms and now he let them fall. I'm dreadfully sick… stupidly sick. A scientific fact. Quiet giggles shook him. And I've scarcely been alive. Henry Winslow Pimber. Now dead of weak will and dishonest weather. Some such disease. How would that look carved on my stone? He stumbled.". for sweet sakes, Hennie, you'll never have a stone…" I shall be my own stone, then, my dear, my own dumb memorial, just as all along I've been my death and burial, my own dry well — hole, wall, and darkness. I ought to be exposed upon a mountain where the birds can pick my body, for no one could put himself on purpose in this clay. Besides, anyone who's lived so slow and stupidly as I have ought to spend his death up high. His mouth filled. Poor, foolish, stupid bastard, foolish fellow… foolish wards…But I'd have made a worthier Omensetter — all new fat, wild hair, and furry testicles like a tiger's. Henry spat. A scientific fact. The saliva drifted against his coat. And when I arrived in my wagon like a careless western hero, clouds would be swimming in the river. Rain would fall beyond us in the forest, the Ohio like a bright hair ribbon… Gilean — a dream. Lalee. Naa-thing. Lalee.