Devil Tree

by Vernon, Steve

  He heard rather the quiet snicker of the axe passing through bone, shooting a lance of fresh pain into his unfeeling leg. By then Lucas was on his way to his dream-ship, afloat upon an icebound sea of purest red. Although she didn’t realize it, Jezebel nearly lost him again.

  It was the burning torch applied to cauterize the stump that wrenched Lucas from the sanctuary of his dreams into a pain-filled reality. He lay upon the shore by the fire, gasping in agony, conscious only of the pain and the laughter of the river flowing by the valley.

  Chapter Five

  “God’s wounds,” Lucas swore.

  He leaned on the wooden crutch Duvall fashioned for his use, staring down the river. He envied the river its freedom. It could come and go where it pleased. As for him, this was as close to freedom as he’d get and as far from the valley’s forest and its web of overhanging branches.

  “I’m caught,” he said.

  He was talking to himself. That was a bad sign. His mind wandered to the Kronos and the lonely hours he’d spent with Peter.

  “Damn it.”

  He tore his mind from the past. He had enough gloominess right here and now. Three weeks since the amputation and he’d begun to grudgingly accept his crippling.

  It was necessary.

  They had told him it was necessary.

  He supposed they’d told the truth.

  “Bastards.”

  He was getting the hang of the crutch. It snagged on roots and branches. He still found himself trying to place weight upon something no longer there. And where was his missing leg? Duvall claimed to have buried it somewhere in the valley.

  “The meat was diseased,” Duvall said. “I didn’t want to leave it where some animal might find it.”

  “Dig it up and throw it in the river,” Lucas said. “At least something of me will make it downstream.”

  Duvall had only spit in disgust.

  “The damned thing would have sunk,” Lucas told himself, thinking back on it now.

  He’d talked to himself a lot lately. He supposed it was the leg. For the first few days he hadn’t spoken at all. He had yet to make peace with Tamsen’s part in this affair.

  “How could you sleep through the dismemberment of your husband?” he’d asked her. “I’d think that was something no wife would wish to miss.”

  She’d only stared at him in that cold, stupid way she had of late. Ever since the sinking of the raft she hadn’t been the same.

  He shouldn’t blame her, he supposed.

  He spat into the water. He unloosed his trousers and relieved himself, watching the thin yellow stream mix with the river’s flow. Perhaps something of his would head downstream, after all.

  His thoughts drifted.

  “Peter,” he whispered.

  He straightened his thinking once again.

  He and Tamsen were trapped. Even if he had supplies he couldn’t sail a new raft. How could he steer it? He’d done a piss-poor job with both of his legs.

  “Hopeless,” he decided.

  He twisted the tip of his crutch into the dirty, dark shoreline. Duvall said he’d help build a cabin. The man seemed eager to root Lucas and Tamsen in this valley.

  Wasn’t it sensible?

  So why procrastinate?

  “There’s plenty of time yet,” he told the river.

  He was lying. It was May and summer was around the bend. Tamsen didn’t belong beneath another man’s roof.

  She didn’t belong with Duvall.

  “Bastards.”

  Lucas had begun to grow suspicious with their friendship. The more he knew of Duvall the less he trusted him. He stroked the shaft of his crutch meditatively. The pine’s open grain felt rough and oily against his palm. Duvall should have used a shaft of oak or birch or even the root of a dogwood. The pine pitch refused to dry. It stuck to his palms and stained them until he feared they might darken permanently.

  He turned to make his way back up the trail, not looking forward to the laborious journey. As he turned he saw the two of them, walking together towards him.

  Duvall and Tamsen.

  They made a good couple. She skittering forward, Duvall following boldly, the two moving in casual synchronization like a pair of well-made legs. Lucas kicked a stone into the water and almost tumbled in after it. He cast a look over his shoulder. The two gave no sign of noticing his mishap.

  It was strange how Duvall always spoke of the work he had to do with his crops, yet he always found time to follow Tamsen around like a well trained ape.

  An ape with a stout pair of legs.

  Lucas forced a smile, making the effort to be pleasant.

  “Hello the hermit,” Duvall called. “It’s too fine a day for standing alone.”

  Lucas felt bile rising within his gorge. He wanted to curse or vomit – either or both.

  “Sometimes solitude can be good medicine,” he replied.

  His grip tightened upon the crutch’s shaft until he felt certain the pine would crack it in two. He was surprised at the anger burning in his heart.

  “Hogwash,” Duvall retorted. “A man alone is a man alone.”

  If Lucas had been holding a musket he’d have cheerfully shot the man.

  And cursed.

  And vomited.

  “I guess you’ve no more tongue than your wife this morning.”

  “I am no chatterer.”

  “So I chatter like a squirrel, do I?”

  “I didn’t specifically mention squirrel.”

  “A chipmunk, then?”

  It was hard to ward off the man’s infectious good humor.

  Lucas finally smiled and Duvall laughed in victory.

  “Well I have chattered long enough. There’s work for some men to do.” he looked at Lucas with mock concern. “You got to try and cheer yourself up, Lucas. Your face is as long as a bull’s middle leg.”

  Tamsen smiled at the man’s ribald banter.

  Lucas felt the urge to curse, puke and blow his own brains out.

  “I shall leave you two love birds to enjoy your peace and quiet together. Fare thee well, godsman.” he added a mocking flourish and bow before making his surefooted way up the steep path.

  How easy it was when one had two legs, Lucas ruefully thought. He stared after the man, hoping the intensity of his gaze would send Duvall tumbling to the river below. As if feeling Lucas’s spite ridden gaze, Duvall turned at the crest of the hill and gave another cocky wave.

  Lucas only glowered.

  “How is your leg, husband?”

  “It isn’t,” Lucas answered, in no mood for her mock cheeriness. “My leg is rotting in the dirt, feeding one of Duvall’s accursed trees.”

  Tamsen didn’t know how to react to his bitterness. She said how beautiful a day it was and remarked on the song of a lark. Lucas grunted in reply. The two of them spent the day as Duvall had prophesized, locked in mutual solitude.

  2

  Two days later Lucas asked Duvall to build his cabin and Duvall was glad he had. It was about time, thought Duvall. He’d grown tired of waiting and had begun to work on the land clearance in secret.

  Now at last the planting and building could begin. Duvall looked forward to it. He’d never taken well to lack of conversation, despite, or perhaps because of his solitary life style. Not that he expected much talk from that grim faced old cripple-crow. Damn these black robed Godsmen and thrice damn their close mouthed praying ways. Far better a curse than a muttered grumble.

  “Damn,” he swore, cursing under his breath with every fresh axe swing.

  The initial land clearance was tedious. The felling of trees was a job that called for more than one man to make it bearable. Each swing of the axe, punctuated by the staccato crack of sharpened steel biting into hard green wood gnawed into the base of Duvall’s spine. He wasn’t getting younger, not by any account. He frequently paused to straighten himself, gritting his teeth in assonance to the audible unknotting of each and every vertebra. The old wound at the base
of his spine pained him. The palms of his hands grew sore and blistered and the bitter sweat stung his eyes.

  “Hard work, yes?” Duvall grinned at Lucas.

  Lucas hardly looked up, working furiously to limb and buck the fallen trunks with Duvall’s bucksaw.

  “Your God sure didn’t grow you lazy,” Duvall said.

  Lucas returned the grin. There was a light in the man’s eyes Duvall hadn’t noticed before. The work invigorated him but there was more than that.

  “It would be easier with three,” Lucas noted. “Where is your boy?”

  Duvall shrugged. The boy could be anywhere. This was Duvall’s valley but the boy somehow knew it better.

  “Children are a burden and a joy,” Lucas said.

  Duvall nodded. “He ought to be here, working with me.”

  “He disappoints you?”

  “Cord is a bitter draught to swallow. I’m not his father, but I’m the only man he’s known. I wish I could somehow kindle his respect.”

  Duvall straightened another knot in his back. With each year he wished their path had turned differently. Jezebel had dropped so many offspring. If only they’d been allowed to keep just one. Duvall spat, hawked, and spat again. He worked a balled-up fist deeply into the small of his back in a futile attempt to loosen the growing stiffness.

  “Rusted up?” Lucas asked with a laugh.

  “I confess,” Duvall said, shaking his head. “I am getting old, damn it. The axe is no longer quite as keen as it was. There are few things that live forever, and none of them are good.”

  “This tree will not limb itself,” Lucas said, turning to his labor. His right arm moved like a slow piston and his left hand clenched the offending trunk, propping him up and supporting the cut.

  The coarse teeth of the bucksaw growled steadily into the water-heavy fibers of each new limb. He worked without ceasing, almost feverish in his haste to put down roots in this valley.

  He’s punishing himself, Duvall thought with a shrug. All wood held secrets – a diseased bark, a twistish grain or a warped nature or an undisclosed stress that might cause an axe to bind or a saw to whip. One could never tell before the felling how the wood would grow.

  Duvall had his own secrets; secrets he’d tell to no living man. Lucas carried secrets as well. Duvall could smell them. Dark secrets to whisper and mutter in unblessed graveyards. Perhaps they were brothers in this shame. Perhaps all men were. Working and grubbing in blind darkness, hanging on to secrets like old bark hanging onto lichen and growing what and where they could.

  Duvall opened his mouth to speak. His gaze was drawn to the deeper parts of the valley. He swallowed and his jaw clamped shut upon empty air. He picked up the axe, acutely aware of the weight of the thing. He fell to his labor in resigned silence. He didn’t try to speak for the rest of the day.

  The cabin had to be built.

  The seed had to be planted.

  3

  Within a week the cabin’s foundations had been laid. A home began to grow. Lucas left the felling to Duvall while he notched each log. They winched the wood into position, using a makeshift windlass.

  The boy Cord arrived on the third day. For a time he worked at his father’s side. Duvall’s mood lightened visibly. For this blessing alone, Lucas was pleased by the boy’s appearance each morning, although he’d only work for a few short hours and then vanish as suddenly as a startled deer.

  “I wish he’d stay,” Duvall said.

  “At least he came,” Lucas offered.

  There was a bond built through the sharing of hard labor. Seeing the clearing take shape within the forest Lucas felt a thrill resonate within his soul. This was his land and Tamsen’s. A place they could call their own. As each day went by he worked himself into a state of anticipation. He almost liked Duvall for the part he played in the making of the thing.

  “The cabin will be built soon,” Lucas said.

  “It’d be ready sooner if you had both your legs,” Duvall said as he struggled with the raising of another heavy log.

  Lucas’s face darkened. He pushed against the roughened bark in bitter silence. It wasn’t until the log was firmly in place that Duvall spoke again.

  “I spoke in rudeness, mad at nothing,” he said. “Forgive an aching man his thoughtlessness.”

  Lucas shrugged. He wasn’t ready to let go of his anger but Duvall persisted.

  “We’ve worked hard and long on this damn cabin. God damn it Lucas, I’m old and worn out.” He danced a mad jig of frustration. In spite of his anger Lucas had to grin. “My tongue gets hard when my head gets soft.”

  Duvall gnawed on his whiskers. He didn’t like working so hard over an apology.

  “Damn it, Lucas,” he snapped. “In your so perfect lifespan didn’t you ever bark a word you regretted?”

  Lucas tried to swallow his smile.

  “Maybe as a child,” he allowed. “Maybe three or four times before I learned to speak. I’m not sure of the number. I didn’t learn to count until a few years later.”

  The two of them laughed and fell to their work with renewed vigor.

  “How’d you manage to build your own place alone?”

  “I wasn’t alone, at first. I lived in this valley with old Eli Cooter. Now there was a man what wasn’t afraid of a hard day’s work. Him and me, we trapped for quite a few years until the trade played out.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Old Eli got caught in a blizzard. Froze dead in his tracks. I had to keep him in a snow bank all winter long until the ground thawed enough for burying.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lucas said.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Duvall noted dryly.

  The cabin would be smaller than Duvall’s but it would do for now. There was no time to waste on windows and floors. Duvall left ridges and cross poles for a floor to be laid in the future. Tamsen would have to wait until next summer for a wooden floor.

  Until then the dirt would have to do.

  “Have you had many problems with savages?” Lucas asked.

  “The Indians leave this valley alone.”

  That brought the discussion to a close. They worked in silence, until Lucas broke the stillness with another question.

  “How do crops fare?”

  “As well as seeds in the ground generally fare, I imagine. They sit and they molder unless they grow. There’s a lot needs doing, a lot I’d do if I wasn’t busy helping you. Does that answer your question?”

  “You speak bluntly,” Lucas said. “Still, I’m grateful for your honesty and your help.”

  “It’s my nature to be blunt. A lie bends strangely around my tongue. I’ll catch up on the planting and in time you’ll help me. You’re my investment. I’m tending you like a crop.”

  “I have some seed corn in my supplies that weathered the accident. I’d like to start planting in the stretch of land we’ve cleared.”

  Duvall grunted in assent.

  “Corn will do all right, scattered higgly-piggly between the trees. There’s lots of life in the needles and leaves. Crops grow easy with little tending. There’s life in this valley if you aren’t too fussy.”

  Lucas nodded and the work went on.

  4

  Duvall was hunting again. Tamsen left the cabin to ease herself. Lucas offered to accompany her but she’d coldly declined.

  “I prefer to be alone,” she said as she walked away.

  Lucas wasn’t angry as much as relieved. His missing leg pained him. Several times he reached to massage the pain away only to find the leg no longer there.

  “It pains?” Jezebel asked.

  Lucas smiled his thanks at her.

  “It never goes away,” he shrugged. “I grow used to it.”

  It seemed he could grow used to anything. When he first met Jezebel, she’d seemed a monstrous hag. Now, as she sat by the fire patching his shirt, he felt a kinship. She seemed almost beautiful.

  “It will rain,” she said. “Your leg says so.�
��

  He smiled at that. She was beautiful, Rubenesque in her proportions, her heavy slopes and high arced curves undulating like the sea. He was surprised to feel the secret devil of desire, whispering in his innermost thoughts, letting its tail dangle gently within the darkness of his loins.

  “And the baby?” he asked.

  She patted her child-heavy stomach. “It pains,” she said, with the ghost of a smile.

  “Duvall should be here.”

  “Jo-nah does what he must do.”

  He picked up a small stick and chewed thoughtfully upon one end. After a time he puffed and sucked upon it as if it was his pipe.

  “I know what you need,” Jezebel said.

  She went to her small cache of belongings and withdrew a short stemmed lay pipe. Lucas stared greedily as she brought it along with a deer hide pouch.

  “It was my husband’s.”

  “I cannot,” he protested.

  She smiled.

  “He is not here,” she said, pressing the pipe into his open palm.

  The pipe was small, made for comfort. His hand wrapped easily about its bowl. His fingertips caressed the deer’s head, carved upon its surface.

  “His totem,” she explained. “His sacred animal.”

  He filled the pipe to fill the silence.

  “This is not tobacco,” he noted.

  “No,” she said. “But it will do.”

  She brought him a taper from the fire to light it with. He puffed slowly, savoring the experience. It was a stronger, wilder flavor than he was used to. He wanted to cough but repressed the urge. As she’d said, it would do.

  “It’s good,” he said. “Very good. Thank you.”

  She shrugged and smiled. He tried to repay her with a feeble display of smoke rings but failed miserably.

  “Our cabin will be built soon,” he said, watching her sew.

  “That will be a good thing.”

  “We will have to leave,” he said. “To live on our own.”

  “You will have to leave,” she agreed, as she finished the final stitch.

  Chapter Six

  The cabin took three weeks. There hadn’t been time to raise a properly peaked roof. Duvall and Lucas settled for an extra log in the front to pitch the flat roof at what they hoped would be enough slope for proper drainage, hoisted as high as two men could successfully lift.