The Infinite Onion

by Alice Archer

  Trees don’t have the option to flee.

  If I’d been born a tree, I’d have to deal with whatever came my way—strong winds, lightning, bark disease. I ran my eyes up a towering fir tree and peace rose inside me.

  For the first time in my life, I had a hero to look up to.

  I walked on, head tilted back to commune with the stoic trees. Stable but not static. Grounded but flexible.

  That bored school counselor almost got it right. What she missed was that I didn’t want to tend plants; I wanted to be one. I suddenly couldn’t believe I’d spent my life indoors helping people put ink onto dead trees.

  That was never really me.

  I was made for something else. I was made to breathe fresh air and move heavy objects from one place to another.

  Simple work in nature.

  Maybe I could build a new life on that.

  Chapter 13

  Grant

  Talia didn’t pass me on her bicycle. She’d either turned right at the end of Oliver’s driveway or she hadn’t left until after I was out of sight. I saw no one as I plodded along.

  In my motel room in Seattle, I’d done some internet research about Vashon. The island was part of King County, which included Seattle, so the bus system on Vashon was pretty good. On my walk with Kai, I’d seen a bus stop on Westside Highway, but that was a long way off from Oliver’s.

  The candy-muffin sugar crash slayed me without warning. I sat at the edge of the road and closed my eyes, using the pack I hadn’t removed as a recliner.

  Some time later, light rain and a poke from a can at the small of my back woke me to a workable idea, one I wished I’d thought of sooner. My pack was heavy because it held everything I owned—including food and camping gear.

  As I walked on, I scanned the vegetation at the edge of the road until I found a hint of a path through the thick woods on my left. I dropped the pack into a riot of tall grass and took the narrow path at a jog, airborne without the pack’s weight, hands out to high-five the leaves of my brethren as I floated past.

  Before long, I came to a clearing. No, that was too optimistic. Where the path skirted a scatter of rocks, a touch more light from the sky pushed through the branches above. I bent to feel the sparse grass, dug into the dirt with my fingers. Damp under the thick forest canopy, but not wet. I sprinted back to the road to retrieve my pack and lugged it to my makeshift camping spot.

  It took me five minutes to set up my one-person tent. I shoved the pack into the tent, rolled out my foam pad and sleeping bag. The pack took up most of the space, but it would have to do. I sat in the tent doorway to remove my boots, wedged them between the door and the bottom of the pack, and sat cross-legged on the foot of my sleeping bag to watch the rain.

  Not a soul on earth knows where I am.

  If no one knew where I was, no one could kick me out.

  I zipped the door flap and scooted back to sacrifice that bastard can of beans for dinner. In the cramped space, my elbow whacked the pack every time I lifted the can, but I didn’t mind. Cocooned in the tent, rustic as it was, I felt better than I had in any of the horrible motel rooms I’d lived in, or in Mitch’s sorry shack.

  A final scrape around the can, a swallow of rinse water, and I was done. I tied the empty can and the unwashed spoon into a couple of plastic bags and buried them in my pack to keep the critters at bay, then stretched out, lulled by the sounds of nature.

  My thoughts spiraled up and away, and I slept.

  Chapter 14

  Oliver

  Grant would return to ask me for a ride. I knew he would. He’d slink back within the hour, exuding stink and bad attitude. I made a mental note to keep my smugness to a minimum when he did.

  But he didn’t.

  For a long time after Talia left, I stood on the front porch.

  Day became night, and my driveway remained empty.

  That night, I woke in the darkness to an image of Grant crushed beneath the heavy weight he carried, broken at the side of a lonely road.

  The big sketchbook I kept under the bed took the vision from me. I filled a page with Grant tumbling to his knees. Then another. Brought down by a stack of flat stones. Then asleep in the ditch with Kai. I drew ferns in sunlight, using the drawings on my arms as reference. I drew leaves and grass and closed eyes. I drew relaxed hands and faces, arms that comforted, until sleep took me away again.

  The next morning the sky rang with blue. I pulled on a pair of overalls over a long-sleeved T-shirt and sat on the bench inside the front door to lace up my boots. On the way through the kitchen to the back door, I grabbed a muffin and my phone.

  Worry about Grant evaporated in the dew-dazzled light of day. I leapt off the back porch and whistled across the lawn.

  Face averted, I felt around on the cement floor of the toolshed to find the tool belt I’d left there, grabbed the mallets too, and slid the heavy door closed.

  I’d taken a few steps toward the woods before I remembered the green flag was up at the mailbox. I needed to switch it if I didn’t want to be interrupted until Clementine arrived. She would ignore the red flag since we had a session scheduled.

  I dropped the mallets in the grass and ate the muffin as I walked down the driveway. Red flag up, I retraced my steps to retrieve the mallets and continue across the lawn to the woods.

  I’d begun the carving project in April with a chainsaw. Buzzed an eight-foot stump into the rough shape of a throne with a roof, then started carving designs into the wood. It was a tongue-in-cheek project, a response to Freddie teasing me about being the ruler of my backwoods domain.

  Before the first mallet strike of the day, I tucked in my earbuds and cued up the folk rhythms of the Les Charbonniers de l’enfer. The Quebec group’s Chansons a cappella album focused my mallet strikes and urged me to an altered state where designs bypassed my mind, flowed through my hands into the wood.

  As I worked, I reviewed my plan for the session with Clementine, a strong woman with a deep cavern of guilt. We used her love of theater to chip at the walls, to unearth her. I’d encouraged her to see a therapist, worried I’d inadvertently make things worse for her, but she insisted she wanted to work with me, and I couldn’t say no. She kept coming back for more. I kept hoping she wouldn’t need to come back.

  I tapped the end of the chisel to finish a rabbit balanced on a leaf and moved around to the last uncarved area of the throne’s exterior. As the carving and the music emptied my mind, all thoughts faded and I gave myself over to joy and the suspension of time.

  At some point, Les Charbonniers irritated me and intruded—the other reason I listened to them. Time reasserted itself, delivered me to the world at my feet, the ache in my arms, my empty belly.

  With my palm, I swept curls of shaved wood from the ferns I’d carved. Blank wood beckoned. I held the chisel like a paintbrush and used the tip to scratch in my next moves. One line led to another and I got lost again, until I heard Clementine’s car in the driveway.

  I grabbed the mallets and jogged to the toolshed to toss them and the work belt inside. If I hurried, I could fix us something to eat before we began.

  Chapter 15

  Grant

  My stench cloud developed its own microclimate.

  I woke early the morning after I set up camp, eager to break free of the cramped tent. In a token gesture, I changed my shirt, then paused with a foot half inside a boot to do the math. I hadn’t showered in five days of hard exercise—not since the motel in Seattle after I’d been fired. Suspended. Quit. Fled. Whatever.

  I was alive and I’d slept well. I’d count that as a win.

  When I stuck my head out the tent door, I couldn’t help but laugh. Sunlight slanted in to sparkle on drops of water. I felt the earth breathe and filled my lungs to join in.

  During my high-protein breakfast of a can of pinto beans, I decide
d to explore the neighborhood, so to speak, to see if I’d set up camp too close to someone’s backyard.

  An hour of bushwhacking in concentric circles revealed an expanse of woods, a wider patch of ground for a better campsite, and a backyard water spigot at a vacation home.

  I moved everything to the new campsite then took my empty water bottles on the twenty-minute walk to the water spigot. The home appeared to be unoccupied, but they hadn’t turned off the water. With caution, and apologies to whoever paid the bills, I filled my bottles. I yearned to strip and crouch to wash my body, but didn’t want to steal that much water, or get naked in a stranger’s backyard, even if they weren’t around.

  My next need was a food resupply. If my phone hadn’t died, I could have checked a bus schedule. Instead, I’d have to walk and hitch to town. I assessed my funds and decided I could spend one night in the motel. I’d check in, shower and shave, park at the library for the afternoon, overnight at the motel. The next morning, I’d grocery shop. Maybe I’d buy a plastic ice chest—not to keep things cool, since I didn’t have a feasible source of ice, but as a cache to thwart woodland critters.

  I thought about motel check-in times and decided to head out around noon.

  Which meant I had hours to kill.

  I did a slow spin to review my entertainment options at the campsite. I could retie the tarp that sagged over the kitchen log. Or read one of my paperback novels I’d read six times. Or memorize more of the Vashon map.

  I needed a hobby, a leisure activity to distract my forebrain while I did the deeper mental work of persuading myself to look for a job. Walking was my first choice for a hobby, but I wasn’t eating enough to be able to hike all day.

  I could check on Oliver. That might be entertaining.

  The barely visible track I’d camped on headed in the general direction of Oliver’s house. I followed it and about ten minutes later caught sight of the house’s blue siding through the foliage. I stopped to lift the small pair of binoculars I’d hung around my neck.

  Wait. I lowered the binoculars for an emergency ethics check. Did I condone spying on Oliver? It’s a passing whim, I reasoned. After paying for groceries and the motel, I’d be down to my last few dollars and I’d have to leave Vashon. Even a crap job on Vashon to keep me supplied with beans and weekly overnights at the motel to shower wouldn’t be enough when summer ended and the rain settled in. Plus, I did want something bigger for my life. Rusted-out gears began to turn deep inside at the idea of simple work in nature. The sturdy tree at my back gave me a nudge. I could explore tree planting on the peninsula, or trail maintenance in a national park.

  “Thanks, buddy.” I patted the tree and crept closer to Oliver’s house.

  A cautious crab-walk took me to Oliver’s orange Volkswagen van, parked under a freestanding carport with a bicycle.

  Perhaps Oliver wasn’t awake yet. I turned to lean back against the van in a crouch and examined the tangled greenery I’d emerged from.

  For half an hour or so, whenever I heard a rustle in the vegetation, I played find the source. Birds mostly, chickadees and warblers, busy with their morning tasks. I couldn’t identify an energetic bird foraging low in a bush. I’d look him up in a bird book when I went to the library.

  A metallic scrape and clang startled me enough to make me drop the binoculars and slap a hand over my mouth, I guess to keep myself from crying out, which was considerate of me. I shifted to the edge of the van and raised the binoculars.

  Oliver stood at the door of an outbuilding tucked against the wall of woods across the yard from the back of the house.

  My new hobby had paid off.

  He reached into the outbuilding and pulled out a leather tool belt—by feel, apparently, since he found it without looking. It wasn’t until he bent his head to buckle it on that I registered what he was wearing. Denim overalls. Black work boots. Christ on a crutch, the man was beautiful no matter what he wore. I had a stellar view of lean shoulders and arm muscles as they bunched and shifted under the tight T-shirt. I swallowed hard and adjusted the focus on the binoculars.

  I’d only ever seen Oliver in the gray of a rainy day or by lamplight inside his house. In bright morning sunshine, Oliver glittered. The high gloss of his burnished hair slayed me. Escaped strands from the fat topknot curved around the classic features of his face. I sent out a wish that he would let his hair down, but he didn’t. He swiped at the loose strands to tuck them behind his ears. They came free again when he bent to pick up a couple of mallets.

  At some point, I took a belated breath and asked myself what the hell I thought I was doing. My spying was indefensible. I knew that. But when Oliver walked away from me, I slunk to the edge of the van to prepare for a dash to the cover of the house so I could shadow him.

  My new hobby almost came to an abrupt halt.

  Oliver dropped the mallets and spun toward me.

  I jerked back behind the van. My unprincipled heart banged inside my chest.

  He didn’t seem to have seen me. He passed the carport and continued down the driveway.

  I stayed put, focusing the binoculars on Oliver’s graceful lope and the fit of his overalls. He hadn’t gone for one-size-bigger comfort. His delectable ass under the heavy tool belt made me wonder if he’d found a Vashon tailor who specialized in bespoke overalls. Various chisels hung from loops in his tool belt. They swayed and tapped each other as he walked.

  Quite a while later—it was a long driveway—Oliver loped back and headed straight for the mallets. It wouldn’t have surprised me to discover he had access to a rock quarry and was off to free a block of granite to start a new sculpture.

  I followed and berated myself and continued to watch.

  By the time Oliver was in full swing at the tall tree stump—earbuds in, tools in motion—I no longer cared if I was a bad man who spied. My new hobby had become a vice.

  It was a full ten minutes before I tore my gaze from Oliver’s body to take a look at what he was working on. A high stump had been shaped into a chair. The upper part of the stump remained as a roof over the hollowed-out seat.

  I stole through the underbrush to get a better view of the back of the stump where Oliver worked. From a perch on a low rock behind a rhododendron, I focused the binoculars on what Oliver had carved. The hairs on my arms stood up. Jesus. Elaborate designs of vines, birds, and animals spread over the wood.

  What in God’s name was Oliver doing living on Vashon? He belonged in New York City, or in Italy, fending off paparazzi and knocking the glitterati on their asses. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. As I watched, Oliver’s confident movements with the chisel and mallet transformed a flat expanse of wood into a squirrel so alive I swear its tail twitched.

  When Oliver set down the tools to strip off his T-shirt, I almost passed out from enthralled overstimulation, from the sight of Oliver’s bare shoulders and arms, rendered in pure marble by a master sculptor.

  I lowered the binoculars to hyperventilate, couldn’t bear to miss the show, raised them again.

  A ray of sunlight emerged in the wood. What the serious fuck? From the sharp end of the chisel, Oliver rendered a sunray in brown wood. I felt like I’d stumbled on a peephole to the rarified realm Oliver inhabited, a far-off land where leisure and creativity brought wealth instead of destitution. Must be nice to believe in magic.

  I stared through the binoculars for a long time, watched and wondered and wrestled with myself about the spying.

  I didn’t know what to do with the fact that I wasn’t going to stop.

  At some point, a car door slammed in the distance. Oliver lifted his head and yanked out his earbuds. In a flurry, he gathered his tools and ran to the outbuilding to shove them inside.

  I followed, hid myself behind a salmonberry bush, barely breathed.

  The T-shirt tucked in the back pocket of Oliver’s overalls swung from side t
o side as he hurried across the lawn to the back porch. He banged through the door and out of sight.

  I remained where I was.

  On my knees in the fragrant dirt.

  Chapter 16

  Oliver

  The ham-and-cheese sandwich Clementine ate at my kitchen table didn’t erase the tightness from her face or soften her tense posture.

  She came to me when she got stuck wishing for a different past, when she needed help to reunite with the present. I wondered if we would touch the core of her pain in our session. She didn’t often allow herself to go there, but she’d said that when she did, she experienced the most healing. The session wouldn’t be fun—for either of us—but it might be better than fun if Clementine could put another chunk of old pain to rest.

  After she ate, Clementine excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she came out, she walked across the great room, stepped up the two wide steps onto the stage, and turned her impassive gaze to me.

  I studied her for signs of hesitation. “Are you sure, Clemmy?”

  She unclasped her hands to let them hang at her sides. “Yes. I’m sure.”

  I wished I’d stopped carving sooner, showered off the shavings, changed clothes. I didn’t want Clementine to think I wasn’t ready. I draped a towel over the end of the couch closest to the stage and sat on it.

  Clementine waited, followed my movements.

  “Aza?” I asked, to confirm she wanted to go there.

  Her eyes filled with tears, but she nodded.

  I gave Clementine my deepest focus, to be ready for whatever happened. “We’re going to do two scenes today. Is that okay?” I wanted to try something new—a double whammy.

  Clementine nodded again.

  “The first scene is opening night for Aza’s show in Seattle. You’ve put a lot of thought into your outfit.” I pointed at the freestanding wardrobe by the stage, knowing Clementine would want to dress for the part.