Devil Tree

by Vernon, Steve

  So when Duvall and his mother laughed together and went into the cabin to roll in the blankets, he ran for his freedom, just as hard as two young legs could carry him. Now he was as free as this dark valley would allow.

  He sat upon a chunk of granite, cold on his rump but a good place to dangle his legs. He stood, yawned and stretched. He slipped his snake out from his buckskin trousers to make water. The fine yellow stream hissed and splattered his favorite stump.

  The wolf-dog thought that looked just fine. He cocked his leg and sprayed the other side of the stump. Afterwards, bored or hungry, the hound ambled off towards the cabin, leaving Cord alone.

  Cord threw himself down upon his belly beneath a great silver birch tree. He twisted apart the fat green caterpillar blossoms that fell at this time of year. He chewed one, savoring the sharp bitter flavor. He played with his clasp knife, staring into the underbrush, seeing things that could only be seen from this low-bellied, young-eyed perspective.

  There was a forest beneath a forest down here; tiny woody weeds that looked like miniature trees. He wondered if he might stare closer and see a third forest, hidden at the base of the weeds and ferns.

  He rolled onto his back to stare up through the branches to the clouds that hid so much of the sky. There might even be a larger forest, hidden behind the clouds or the sky or whatever watched above that.

  Only today Cord wasn’t in all that much of a wondering mood. Today he felt like watching a small red beetle, bravely making its way up a thin green stalk of grass. He stared at the beetle intently, not daring to breathe lest his breath shake the tiny climber from its perch.

  It was a good time of the year to be in the woods. Late enough into the spring so as to be free of winter’s last spiteful blast, yet early enough so the underbrush hadn’t choked out his favorite trails. The trees were still budding and the leaves hadn’t fleshed out far enough to make his forest such a dark and shadowy place.

  It was a time of promise, a time to dream of future freedoms. He dreamed that one day on such a day as this he’d leave this valley. Maybe rejoin his people or simply wander on his own for a while. It would be good to be truly alone with no one expecting anything of him.

  That was a good dream.

  He knew when he left it would be on his own. Duvall would never leave. He said different but the boy knew better. Duvall wasn’t leaving the valley and Cord’s mother wasn’t leaving Duvall. She’d stay until he’d sucked the last bit of life from her veins, leaving her to rot beneath that tree he worshipped.

  The boy’s eyes darkened. He spat out the birch bud. The taste had soured. He stared bleakly at the beetle who finally reached the stalk’s pinnacle. It wobbled, clinging defiantly. Maybe it was just enjoying the view.

  A devil-horse mantis, locked in silent green prayer and camouflaged by its stillness, struck in a cruel instant. There was nothing but a snapping flicker of green pincered light, and then the mantis fed on the beetle.

  Cord watched, fascinated by the grim drama. Then, in a motion as quick as the striking of the mantis, he brought the point of his clasp knife down into the back of the tiny carnivore, severing it completely in two. The beetle lay on the ground, trapped within the death grip of the mantis, its fragile legs kicking futilely. Everything was dying all at once.

  Cord watched hard, amazed such a drama should play out so silently. He expected to hear a thin high pitched death scream. In the end he heard nothing but the wind tirelessly stirring the trees into whispering life. He brought the knife blade down upon the tiny red beetle.

  And then he stood up.

  3

  Lucas felt pain stab his leg. In his mind he laid buried deep within the belly of the Kronos with Peter close beside him. Their hiding hole was dark and cramped and stank of pine boughs. Although it was winter outside and the vessel was frozen fast within the remorseless Arctic ice, Lucas sweated. His fever burned and tugged at his soul’s wick.

  Far above he heard the ribald sounds of shared laughter. He huddled closer to Peter’s cold, unresponsive form, seeking the forbidden sanctuary of the boy’s youthful embrace. The young boy’s body changed as he held it, seeming to evolve into a woman’s softly rounded contours, slopes, and secret valleys.

  Lucas searched the darkness for watchful eyes. When he was content there were no witnesses, he closed his own eyes and blessed young Peter’s sleeping form with a kiss. Before the kiss was finished, he felt the creep of sharpened stubble sprout like wheat upon the young boy’s barren cheeks. The skin grew rougher, coarsening beneath Lucas’s lips.

  He opened his eyes slowly to gaze at Duvall’s gross laughing visage, his face distorted and shimmering darkly, the man’s mouth opened wider than a serpent’s jaws. The dirty yellowed teeth, broad and flat as millstones, threatening to crush Lucas beneath their hungry champing if he didn’t scream loudly enough to wake himself from his blackest nightmare.

  4

  Lucas roused from slumber, dashing his head against the lodge’s pine bough roof. His gaze darted about the area like a rabbit hearing the baying wolf too close to his comforting den. Tamsen gathered him into her cold embrace, crooning to him and rocking him as she’d earlier comforted Jezebel. He trembled like a leaf gusted by a merciless wind.

  “Shh,” she said.

  It wasn’t easy to calm him. His mind, tangled by dream and swallowed by fever, was unreachable. She kissed his stubbled cheek, passing a hand across his scalp. His hair grew thin as a poorly sown field. He wore it close-cropped from habit. His father wore it the same way, she remembered. In time he’d grow it longer, combing it crossways in a pitiful attempt to camouflage the pits and valleys of his balding skull.

  “Why are you so familiar?” she asked.

  She wished she could remember his name.

  She kissed him, tasting the tangy brine of his crusted sweat. She remembered the grains of salt Jezebel slipped beneath her tongue. And then, like the hark of a will-o-the-wisp on a summer’s evening, she saw a vision of him as a young man robed in the black vestments of his seminary.

  “Lucas,” she said. It was coming back to her. A flood of remembrance washed over her. She whispered his name softly, tasting the memory of the salt upon her lips. She remembered him telling her how he’d sickened like this once before. A fever and cough and a swimming accident nearly took him under. His father was there but she couldn’t remember why. And then the memory slipped away as elusive as a spring trout. He moaned in his sleep. He might have been moaning her name, but she wasn’t certain.

  She touched him.

  He was so hot, like his bones were nothing but kindling and straw. She moved him closer to the cool doorway while she sat by the stones. She held him and rocked him and sang the butter churn song, over and over again, until she could sing no more.

  Time moved slowly and not much changed.

  5

  Jezebel remembered the sweat lodges she and her first husband erected. They always built in the same fashion. A lodge of deerskin mounded in the shape of the turtle that carried the world on his back.

  Frequently her man sweated and prayed alone but there were times when she was allowed to join him in his ceremonies. He would sit in the center of the lodge next to the rocks where the heat was strongest. She sat by the entrance flap, which was cooler. They prayed aloud or sat in silence.

  She had first seen Duvall during one particularly intense sweat, hovering over her husband like a cold gray shadow. She never knew if this vision was real or imagination. Real or not, she felt Duvall touch her in ways that could not be spoken of. Her husband fell into a heavy trance. His eyes rolled back into his skull like he was dying. She’d seen him enter such states before.

  This was different.

  She saw the shadow of the tree hovering over Duvall as his spirit hovered over her. She heard the suggestive rattle of its branches upon the deer hide of the lodge. Duvall’s face grew as large as the moon. She felt his heat taking her while her husband watched mutely, rocking in cold
gray silence.

  Afterwards she and her husband emerged from the sweat lodge. She wouldn’t join him in the ritual cleansing at the river. She sat alone and watched him bathe. She smiled as he whooped at the chill, laughing like a small boy.

  We all marry babies, she thought. We marry babies to make babies.

  Are we so wise ourselves?

  Months later she showed her first sign. He ignored it until she grew too large and swollen for the truth to be denied.

  When the boy was born her husband’s heart broke inside. He began to dream walk, preferring time away in the spirit world to time at his wife’s unfaithful side. He knew the seed was planted by another root. She always wondered how much he knew. How much he’d been afraid to tell her.

  And his name was Black Deer.

  6

  Jezebel was worried.

  Lucas lay dreaming. His smile told her he’d be content to remain dreaming until the fever-devil burned the meat from his bones.

  Sometimes it happened that way.

  Duvall laughed at her fear, placing his faith in the valley. Jezebel knew how dangerous it was for a man to lay too long in the land of dreams.

  “My husband, Black Deer, died asleep and smiling,” she said.

  “He was weak,” Duvall allowed.

  “He gave up,” Jezebel said. “He followed the easy road down the mouth of Grandfather Death. This man will do the same. Placing him in the sweat was wrong.”

  “Why?” Duvall asked, appearing to grow concerned.

  “I thought the heat would lure the fever devil from his bones. I was wrong.”

  “What should we do?”

  “We must take him to the cool river and let the running water wash the devil from his bones. That will kill the devil or banish it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She wasn’t sure, but she had to do something. She wanted time to think but the man’s leg had begun to stink.

  “He will lose his leg,” she said.

  “I don’t need him to stand,” Duvall answered.

  She sat beside Lucas’s body, singing a song like her husband sang when he played at being a shaman. She touched his flesh lightly with a crow feather she’d retrieved from the refuse.

  The crow was a bird of death. It was bad luck of the worst kind to use in healing. Her husband wouldn’t ever use a crow feather but her husband wasn’t here. An eagle feather would have been nice but there were damn few eagles in this valley. They preferred the mountain’s high ground to the shadow of the tree.

  The crow feather would have to do.

  “Will your medicine work?” Duvall asked.

  She shrugged. How the hell should she know?

  “The ceremony won’t help a white man,” she said.

  “A man is a man, no matter what shade.”

  “He isn’t of my people,” she tried to explain.

  “What’s the difference?” Duvall asked.

  “The red man has spirit where white men wear their souls. “

  “What’s the difference?” he repeated. It was a trick he used to win arguments. He would repeat a thing until she grew tired of answering.

  Sometimes she let it work.

  “Spirit is water,” she said. “Water lives forever.”

  “I have seen the godsmen in their pointy houses,” Duvall said. “They worship a holy spirit too.”

  “Perhaps you are right,” she said, not believing it for a moment.

  She waved the feather while she thought. It was something Duvall could see her doing. Besides, the feather had a purpose. The feather showed feeling. As she touched the feather on the white man’s body, he would move, blink, or wriggle his nose.

  When she touched his leg the white man felt nothing.

  His leg was dying.

  He was dying.

  And all she could do was to wave this damn feather and chant, trying to decide which evil would kill the white man first.

  7

  After much ceremony and procrastination, Jezebel announced they would carry Lucas to the river to drown the fever.

  Duvall and Cord used the same stretcher they’d used to carry Lucas from the tree. Tamsen followed close behind but would only approach the river a little ways. She was still afraid of the water.

  “Be careful with him,” Tamsen said.

  It bothered her to see Lucas carried so close to the river’s edge. She was sure he meant something to her. She felt the river might take him away before she figured out how he and she were connected. Still, Jezebel seemed sure of herself and Duvall trusted Jezebel.

  Somebody must know what they were doing.

  “Build a fire, boy,” Duvall said.

  Cord built a fire, which Tamsen gravitated towards. Meanwhile Jezebel dangled Duvall’s axe blade down into the running river.

  “You’ll rust my axe, woman.”

  “You don’t use the axe for much anyways,” Jezebel retorted. She laid the axe down, the blade resting upon a carefully selected river stone so the steel didn’t touch the earth.

  “What are we doing so close to the river?” Tamsen asked. “Why do we need the axe?”

  Duvall spared her a single glance.

  “Sit by the fire and be silent.”

  Cord and Duvall took up the ends of the stretcher, grunting with strain as they carried the unconscious man out into the shallows of the river. Tamsen stared fretfully as the current tugged at their trouser cuffs, fearful it might sweep the three men away.

  “No, no, no,” she keened, rising to her feet and taking one hesitant step towards the river. “No, Lucas. No.”

  Duvall jerked around in a blink of astonishment. He fixed Tamsen with a fearful gaze but she ignored him. She took another step towards the river. Jezebel turned and spoke to her in the smooth-flowing tones of her own language and calmed her, halting her unsteady advance. For a moment the two women’s eyes met.

  “Hurry up, damn you,” Duvall said with a grunt. “This stretcher is heavy.”

  Jezebel said something in her own tongue, gesturing with her palms down towards the river. The man and boy knelt as one, submerging the stretcher and Lucas. Duvall’s temples thudded scarlet with the exertion. His breath hissed out from between his lips in tight, labored wheezes.

  All Tamsen could see was Lucas’s upraised face, propped upon a pillow of firewood. The current dislodged the makeshift headrest. Lucas’s head disappeared below the water. Tamsen screamed in a voice as shrill as a scolding jay bird, before passing out cold.

  8

  Lucas was still dreaming of the Kronos. After the third dunking he coughed, spat and wheezed like a man of ninety.

  “Where am I?” he gasped.

  Duvall, Jezebel and Cord stood around him. He squeezed his right hand shut, looking about in search of Tamsen. Then, just as before, he was airborne.

  “Now I know you were born with the wrong name, damn it.” Duvall said. “You should’ve been the Jonah, not me.”

  Jonah and Cord dragged the stretcher out of the river, the boy going to his knees more than once. The current was strong. The stretcher, soaking wet, grew heavier by the minute. Jezebel gestured them to the fire, rattling off instructions as they approached.

  “Thank God,” Lucas raved.

  Lucas welcomed the inviting warmth, but Jezebel wouldn’t allow him too close to the fire for fear the fever-devil might take the heat as an invitation to return. He laid back, content to bask safely, here on dry land, before catching sight of Tamsen’s prostrate form.

  “Tamsen,” he gasped, trying to sit up.

  He attempted to raise himself up. The strength ran from his body like water from a leaking bucket. Before he could injure himself, Duvall caught hold of his arms and held him down.

  “Lie still,” Duvall commanded. “Your woman is fine. She keeled over. I guess fainting runs in your family’s blood.”

  Lucas smiled wearily. Duvall didn’t return the smile. He cast a glance towards the axe, glad the woman fainted.

&n
bsp; “Let me sit up,” Lucas protested. “I feel fine.”

  Duvall lost patience.

  “Gangrene,” Duvall said, pushing Lucas down. “Do you understand?”

  Lucas didn’t understand or didn’t want to.

  “I feel fine, damn it, aside from being drenched to the bone.”

  “Your leg’s poisoned. The gangrene’s got it. You’ll need to lose it quickly, or else lose your life.”

  Awareness woke up within Lucas’s foggy brain. He felt Jezebel’s cold clever hands tying a tourniquet above his knee. He froze, feeling every muscle stiffen and cramp in protest, save his leg.

  Duvall relaxed his grip, thinking the battle over.

  Lucas struggled in earnest, fear giving him the strength to tear free from Duvall’s grip.

  “Damn it,” Duvall cursed.

  Lucas rammed his good leg up towards Duvall’s crotch. Duvall twisted and blocked the kick with his thigh. Jezebel grabbed the axe, gesturing to Cord to bring a brand from the fire. The boy placed the burning stick within his mother’s reach.

  “No!” Lucas shouted, focused on the cold wet gleam of the axe. He struggled harder.

  Duvall backhanded him, drawing blood from Lucas’s lip and his own knuckles. Jezebel shouted an order Lucas couldn’t understand. He shouted back at her, damning her to burn in the thousand hells she’d sprung from. Lucas felt Cord’s hands drag on his leg, trying to straighten it, holding it still for the axe.

  And all the while Tamsen lay sleeping, still and silent as a nun.

  The axe fell. Lucas twisted to avoid the blow but with Duvall and Cord pinning him, the best he managed was a deflection. The axe blow fell a few inches from Cord’s straining hands, part way down Lucas’s calf. The boy relinquished his grip, freeing the man’s legs. It was a freedom bought at too dear a price. Lucas felt the bright steel bite deeply into his flesh, his own flesh.

  He screamed.

  He continued to scream as the axe fell again, this time biting true, nearly severing the knee.

  His screams died to a ragged keening husk.