Giovanni's Gift by Bradford Morrow Page A

he had loved in it—its primitive shadowy floor caped so deep in pine needles that when you walked on it you were buoyed by its sponginess; its trees that died never by the hand of a chainsawer but by lightning or simply felled by rot from old age; its sudden inexplicable meadows paved by thick grasses and decorated with mountain flowers, columbine and tiny rock-blossoms—he now found foreboding, though he would never admit this to Edmé, let alone Noah. He could hardly admit it to himself. For one flickering instant, his imagination connected that earlier tragedy—well, not a tragedy really, was it, but a personal disaster for him, and of course the ultimate personal catacylsm for his oldest friend—with these present disturbances. Less connected them than vaguely considered them at the same time, over the course of a dozen paces up this first rise. The death of Giovanni Trentas and the presence of a masked hangman surely had no connection other than place. And even regarding place, if one were to think about it, the terrain higher up, beyond where he’d encountered the kid last night, up where he had found Trentas, or what remained of Giovanni Trentas, might as well have been on a different world compared to the gracious banks, meadows, knolls down here at the mouth of the gorge, so dissimilar were they. Thus, the twelfth step taken, these discrete ideas proceeded in opposite directions, having never truly formulated as more than physically contiguous. As they dispersed from his thoughts, Henry slowed and turned to see that Noah had paused below him, had hands on hips, and was talking.
    â€”What are you, deaf, man? Couldn’t you hear me?
    Henry said, —What?
    â€”Damn it, Noah said. —I was telling you to hold your horses.
    â€”You’re getting soft, Daiches, Henry said.
    â€”Listen. Who called who for help?
    â€”At least I can walk up a hill, man. You sit too much.
    Neither smiled; it was the genus of humor that involved neither laughs nor smiles and was premised on mild diminishments that were leveled one man at another.
    Henry looked down past Noah and admired the way the morning light was reflected off the roof of the house. Bright as a mirror it glittered, just the converse of this back gable, which was sunk in profound shadow. He liked the many various angles and pitches of the roof, and how the graceful column of blue and gray stones rose from the foundation along the back wall to form the chimney, rising above the peak, and could remember with satisfaction how he managed to build that chimney and the enormous hearth inside, one stone at a time, cut from his own crude quarry on the other side of the creek. He never grew tired of admiring that house, and the other structures, too, which was something he could not say about all the buildings he had designed and seen built here and there in the world. Nor did he tire of what he saw out beyond the collection of buildings, green and gray-brown bluffs and the snaking tangle of trees hugging the creek as it meandered the valley, which widened and gradually flattened out, while spreading downward and on toward the great valley beyond, and the farther range even beyond that, some hundred miles away.
    â€”All right, let’s go, said Noah, who had begun again to climb.
    Within the quarter hour they’d arrived at the clearing that had been the scene of Henry’s encounter. The hasty indentation in the ground, where the trespasser had made his fire, shed flecks of white ash into the air as a faint breeze stirred. Having looked around the circumference of the fire site for prints, Noah walked the perimeter of the clearing, hands in his pockets, eyes on the ground. No prints: whoever it was, was good. Or else it had rained just hard enough to wash away any evidence. Henry dragged a crooked stick through the fire pit, probing for coals, hoping Noah wouldn’t look too carefully at the ashes where minuscule bits of the