The Forest Prime Evil

by Alan Russell

  “Stuart, I wanted you to meet Doc. Doc, this is Stuart.”

  We shook hands. His hands were out of proportion to his frame, almost as large as mine, and his grip was firm.

  “Doc,” I said. I couldn’t help but wonder whether his nickname was university earned or whether it had come from one of Disney’s dwarfs.

  “Born MacArthur Witt,” he said, as if reading my thoughts or, more likely, having faced the situation many times before. “I was called half-Witt before getting my PhD. I gladly traded in on nicknames.”

  Josh spread his arms to take in the expanse. “Doc is our expert out here.”

  “I like your laboratory,” I said.

  “Depends on where you’re looking,” he said. “My postdoc was a study of the effect of clear-cuts on the environment.”

  “Past tense?”

  He attempted nonchalance, but I detected some professional pique. “The funding ran out earlier this year,” he said, “but my questions didn’t.”

  “When the other side tells their lies,” said Josh, “Doc sets the record straight.”

  Doc bowed and appeared not a little pleased. “I look bigger in print,” he said.

  Josh didn’t stay to chat. He deserted us “to help get things going.”

  “Almost show-and-tell time,” Doc said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s called Circle. I find it one of the few good endorsements for watching television.”

  I gave him a questioning look, and he answered it with a little smile. “You must excuse my outlook,” he said. “Nature assigned me the role of court jester, and I do my best to play the part.”

  He was adept at self-deprecating remarks, but I didn’t sense that he really believed them. He pointed to a circle of rocks. A few people were already seated outside the stones. “Circle is the nightly drama that goes on around the campfire,” he said. “Teller is the Circle master. He weaves tales, and tells stories. Everyone is supposed to leave heartened and renewed. The strange thing is, it usually works.”

  “Do you attend every night?”

  “No. Just often enough to remember why I’m a misanthrope.” The little smile emerged again.

  “How long have you been living in the area?”

  “Eighteen months, the last six unofficially.”

  “Any chance of more funding?”

  “I doubt it. What I’ve been studying wouldn’t benefit anything except the trees. If you’re not feeding the maw of some entity or organization, you’re not likely to get a free ride.

  “But,” he added, tapping the aluminum mess plate he was holding, “I have found a tin lining to my cloud. There’s always this wonderful meal line for spaghetti, or beans, or gruel.”

  “Want to make a hundred bucks?”

  “Who am I supposed to kill?” His smile again.

  “Take me on a tenderfoot tour,” I said. “An hour or two. I need to know about the redwoods.”

  Doc sniffed for a moment, reminding me of a predator testing the scent of another’s kill. “Sure.”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  He nodded.

  “Nine o’clock? At Founders Grove?”

  He nodded again, his head suddenly accented in a beam of light. Stabs from sweeping flashlights crisscrossed the grounds. The lights were turned on and off, the outdoor theater apparently being called to session.

  “Show time,” Doc said. “And the last thing this short fellow needs is another dose of Longfellow.”

  I watched him walk across the clearing. His short legs gave the appearance of awkwardness, not unlike a penguin’s walk, but he still managed to move swiftly. He vaulted onto a motorcycle, an off-trail bike, but his acrobatics weren’t for show. He would have had to climb up the vehicle otherwise. Doc must have known the path well, that or he just liked speed. In a few moments he was lost to sight, and sound, the trees swallowing him up.

  Night is excuse enough for people to move closer, to hunker together against the unknown and the darkness. It’s instinctual, still a part of us despite twenty-four-hour Denny’s. I moved toward the fire, even if its appearance violated my every camping instinct. I expected a bonfire with blazing flames. I expected a cord of wood to be piled high, the stacked logs ready to be tossed into the inferno. I expected man to do what he has always done, to deny the dying of the light in as rebellious a manner as possible. But the campfire for the night was apparently going to revolve around two ersatz logs, the kind that consist of pressed sawdust and wax and copper coloring.

  The wrappered logs were set in the middle of the circle of rocks. I’d endured their kind of fire before. They didn’t give off the sounds or smells of real wood. No sharp pops, no woody perfume. These were logs meant to expire in some sedate suburban condominium fireplace, to burn predictably and uninterestingly; logs for double-income no-kid types to sip white zinfandel in front of. I couldn’t see why, on the border of one of the great forestlands in the world, real wood hadn’t been gathered.

  I took a seat by myself near the so-called fire, but the spots were filling rapidly. A jingle and jangle announced a neighbor, the plump spaghetti server. “My name’s Sasha,” she said, extending her hand toward mine, a movement that caused massive bracelet collisions.

  “Stuart,” I said, shaking out a tune on her arm. Then I pointed to the counterfeit wood. The logs had an unnatural blue glow, looked more like pilot lights than a blazing fire. “Why the fake campfire?”

  “We didn’t want to be hypocrites,” she said. “We keep talking about the benefits of old growth. Since cannibalizing the forest, even its floor, isn’t in keeping with our thinking, we decided Circle should be conducted with the store logs.”

  A neighbor joined me to my left, another young woman. Our circle became complete, and a second formed behind us. There was a town hall atmosphere, but without the tension of taxes and bond issues. When Teller stepped into the center of his rock ring, the conversations hushed.

  “Let the Circle be joined,” he said.

  My neighbors extended their hands toward me. Self-consciously, I accepted them. Some of us work hard to create shells we don’t like breached. Holding hands with strangers was hard for me. I’ve always found it easier to reach out to help than just to reach out. My hand-holding doubts came on fast. Was I holding on to the other hands firmly enough? Or too tight? Was I really perspiring that much? Or were we jointly creating bodily fluids? Were my hands clammy? Odd how I was challenged simply to hold the hands of strangers. More complicated than sex, I thought.

  Teller looked around. His eyes seemed to hold mine, to carry on a silent conversation. Some people have that power. They can look through a crowd and seem to stare at everyone. Teller reminded me of an Old Testament prophet. All he needed was a robe and a voice of grim prediction.

  Then he spoke, and I decided he didn’t need that robe.

  “This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

  Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

  Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

  Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

  Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean

  Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

  This is the forest primeval.”

  Teller knew that wail of the forest. He had a voice that challenged Stentor’s, a presence that erected the dead hairs on the backs of my arms. He was a Druid of eld speaking for his holy forest. After his opening address, there was a quiet to the woods, as if they were listening. The silence added to the expectation. I could hear the echo of Teller’s words in my mind, the loud, mournful syllables working their way through my head. So that was what Doc had meant about Longfellow; Circle’s nightly convocation evidently began with Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” I wondered if he’d conclude with Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.”

  “I don’t have a story tonig
ht,” said Teller, his voice suddenly congenial, airy. His announcement caused clucks of disapproval around the circle. They say storytelling is coming back into vogue, but I’m still dubious. That would mean listening’s making a comeback too.

  Teller smiled, pleased at their disappointment. “But I do have a memory,” he said, “one that many of us share.”

  He had a lot of voices. Now it was soft and gentle, giving off a warmth that the fire didn’t have.

  “Like all of you,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about the Green Man. Everyone has their own memories of him, but what I like to remember most is that first day he came among us.

  “He arrived unannounced, which made his presence all the more exciting. We knew he would be coming sometime in the summer, but he hadn’t told anyone when, for he had many groves to attend to. When he walked into camp, all of us cheered. An impromptu celebration began, but the merriment didn’t last long. Within an hour of his arrival, terrible news came to us. Another virgin grove had been clear-cut.”

  Teller’s face was a map of pain for all to see. “Old and virgin,” he said. “Usually the words don’t go together. But we use them interchangeably. Old growth. Virgin forest. Trans-Mississippi showed no respect for the elderly. They raped a virgin stand.”

  He was trembling, and his voice cracked.

  “We came too late. We gathered at the scene of the desolation, and all of us felt the terrible loss. I think I can almost understand a mother’s pain at losing her child. We experienced that emptiness, that awful void. We stumbled around the man-cut barrens, the victims of a war. I remember some of you counted the tree rings, and cried out for the slaughter of the ancients.

  “We had forgotten about our Green Man. But amidst all our lamentation, his voice was heard, a cry in the vanished wilderness. He called us to a great tree stump, as wide as a kitchen table.

  “When we gathered to him, we heard what the movement now calls the ‘Sermon on the Stump.’ We didn’t call it that then. We gave no title to what he said. I suppose that we knew his words were special, for with them our hopes were renewed. But how many people know when they are a part of a historic moment?

  “Later, we dwelt on what he said. Later, we remembered his words. Now, I think, would be a good time to reflect on them again.

  “From his stump, this is what he said:

  ‘Blessed are the trees, for they provide us air.

  Blessed are the leaves, for they give us shelter.

  Blessed are the roots, for they hold together the earth.

  Blessed are those who plant the trees, for they bring life to the planet.

  Blessed are those who would be stewards, for they tend the gardens of the gods.’ ”

  Teller stopped his recitation, looked solemn. “He had only been with us for a few hours,” he said, “and yet he already had an understanding that surpassed our own. He took away our pain, and gave us hope. He told us to hate neither the ax nor the axman, said we should love our enemies. We found this forgiving hard, but in the days that followed he gave to us a balm: he showed us how to plant redwood seedlings. For every one they took, he told us to plant a dozen. ‘We will win that way,’ he said.”

  Teller’s concluding words were uplifting, but I sensed he believed in that victory about as much as a politician who’s behind a few thousand votes at midnight. When Teller left his stage and walked away, I excused myself from the hand-holding and followed him.

  4

  TWENTY STEPS AWAY from the lanterns and campfire, and I was walking like one blind. There were clouds obscuring the moon and a mist coming up from the Mattole River. I felt along for a path, progressing like a tightrope walker. I took a turn, and it wasn’t long before I figured out I hadn’t found a major trail, or maybe hadn’t found a trail at all. I listened for Teller’s footsteps but only heard the flow of the river, its passage marked by whispers and sighs. It wasn’t with my ears but with my nose that I picked up Teller’s trail. The scent of cannabis, a brimstone beckoning, tugged me along.

  I pushed through scrub. Belatedly, I remembered having seen poison oak all around the area. If the river hadn’t been so close, and the smell of pot so near, I might have ceased forging my own trail. I fought through a final patch of brambles and stumbled into a clearing at the water’s edge.

  “There’s a path, you know.”

  I turned toward the voice, but it was too dark to make out a figure. He revealed himself with the hiss of his pulling lungs, snakelike and hungry, and the flaring ember of his smoke stick. The light from his joint momentarily silhouetted Teller’s white hair and beard.

  “I missed it,” I said.

  I moved closer to him, marking the space by the burning end of his cigarette. When I got close, he extended the light toward me, offering it with the words “Peace pipe?”

  “I didn’t know we were at war,” I said but accepted the joint and made a show of inhaling without doing too much damage to my lungs, then handed it back to him.

  “I’m breaking camp rules again,” Teller explained, “but then I stopped bucking for sainthood a long time ago. The Sequoia Summer movement is supposed to be above reproach: no alcohol, no drugs, no antics. But I’m too old to reprimand. They know I come down to the river every night to smoke my reefer, but they pretend ignorance.”

  He took another long drag, then passed the cigarette my way again. I waved it away. “Eighty-six proof is my vice of choice,” I said.

  “You’re not supporting the local economy,” Teller said. “But don’t feel guilty. Of late I’ve personally helped it along quite a bit.” As if to emphasize his point, and his joint, he inhaled deeply.

  “Why?”

  The words came out in a protracted billow of smoke. “Anesthetizing myself to failure.”

  “If I’m to believe Sequoia Summer’s press releases, you’re on the threshold of victory.”

  “If you believe any press releases, you’re a fool.”

  “What if Proposition One-fifty passes?”

  “I will be very, very happy. But I will still be mindful of the price.”

  “The Green Man?”

  “To quote the government, which I don’t very often, ‘He paid the ultimate price.’ ”

  “Do you think he was murdered?”

  Teller thought about that for a few moments. “He died under suspicious circumstances,” he finally said.

  “Did you like him?”

  “I paved the way for him. Like John the Baptist, I shouted to the world that a messiah was coming along. I was the voice in the wilderness.”

  I wondered which was the more attractive diet for a martyr: locusts and honey or the camp spaghetti.

  “You prepared the way for Shepard to be the savior of this forest?”

  “That was the script.”

  “Did he change his part?”

  “To my way of thinking, yes. To his, probably not.” Teller sucked at his cannabis, and in its glow I caught the thoughtful look on his face. When he spoke, he only used the upper part of his diaphragm, retaining the smoke in his lungs. His words sounded gravelly, constricted.

  “Did you hear my eulogizing tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Since Shepard’s death, I’ve spent many nights thinking about him. He said that victory would be ours if we planted many saplings for every tree that was lost. He believed that, held to that view even after I argued that we could not afford such Pyrrhic victories.

  “He didn’t know the reference, so I explained about King Pyrrhus of Epirus, and how his army had fought the Romans in a bloody, terrible battle.”

  He paused for breath, and I took up the recitation: “And when Pyrrhus was congratulated on his victory, he looked out to the battlefield, and saw all of his dead, and said: ‘One more such victory, and we are lost.’ ”

  It was a favorite story of mine, and apparently of Teller’s. I could hear him nod, hear his long beard rubbing against his shirt. “I told Shepard that whenever any old growth was lost,
I felt like Pyrrhus looking upon his too many dead.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He smiled and nodded, but he didn’t fathom my meaning. He was the Green Man. To him, growth was life. He preferred the role of creator to that of sustainer.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  Teller liked to use his hands when he talked. I watched the ember pathway of his joint. It moved up, and down, and around. I was reminded of a magician’s conjuring and wondered what rabbits were being pulled out of the hat.

  “He was many things, and many people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Shepard wasn’t the first Green Man, just the latest. He knew his history, and tried to live up to it.”

  Teller took a final drag on his joint. It burned down almost to nothing. I listened to him roll the remaining paper between his large fingers.

  “The historic Green Man has been with us for a very long time. You can find him in old paintings and statues. Sculptors and artists often displayed his body in tree trunks and branches, and made much of his leafy smile. Sometimes the Green Man even had antlers. He was depicted with attributes of man, and the woods, and animals. And the gods. I shouldn’t forget the gods.

  “For many centuries he endured, whether as Green George, or Father May, or the Little Leaf Man, or Jack-in-the-Green. Apparently, chlorophyll, and the blood royal, and ichor, ran through the Green Man’s veins. He was revered as the Leaf King, the Grass King, the King of the May, and the King of the Wood. As Pan and Sylvanus, even as the Green Knight and Robin Hood, the Green Man was acknowledged as the ruler of the woods and the forests. That was the legacy that Christopher Shepard knew. That was the background he accepted, and the mantle he wanted to assume.”

  “Did he succeed in becoming that Green Man of legend?”

  “To some degree. But the fit wasn’t perfect. The Green Man disappeared from this world when groves stopped being sacred, when Druids and dryads were forgotten, and when oracles were no longer heard in the rattle of trees. Shepard tried to resurrect a myth.”