Devil Tree

by Vernon, Steve

  His father knew this valley. He’d told him so.

  “I visited this valley in dreams,” his father told him. “It’s a place of darkness and hunger. I fear one day this hunger might swallow the world.”

  A single raindrop, bound high above within the clouds, was released by the wayward whisper of a random breeze. It shattered the surface of the rain pool, distorting the boy’s reflection in a series of echoing ripples.

  Catlike he clambered into the jack pine. His reflection climbed unseen, moving deeper into the mirror world, pelted by a second and a third drop of rain.

  When the sky opened up the boy was gone.

  3

  Duvall stared out the cabin at the downpour.

  “Wet day.”

  “Angel’s piss,” Jezebel amended, using a favorite curse of Duvall’s. They both shared a laugh.

  “Good for the trees,” Duvall said. “If they don’t drown.”

  She grunted noncommittally.

  “I like the sound of rain,” he continued, liking the sound of his voice even more. He worried a bit of loose tissue on his lower lip. “I figure it’s cleaning the earth, washing away all of man’s sins.”

  Jezebel considered this in silence.

  Finally she spoke.

  “Jo-nah,” she said, lapsing into her own tongue. “It would have to rain a long time to wash away your sin.”

  She pronounced the last word in English. There was no word for sin in her people’s tongue but she knew what the word meant.

  “A rainy day like this is a good day for a man and woman to do things together,” Duvall went on, ignoring her taunt.

  He stared down at the other cabin as if his eyes could penetrate the down pour. He thought he saw someone outside Lucas and Tamsen’s cabin “I wonder what they’re doing, right now?”

  Jezebel saw where his thoughts were leading. She placed her hand on her belly. “The child and I are too far along for such doings. The poking of your hard snake might injure the child.”

  “Nonsense. Man-milk’s the best thing for a baby.”

  “You and your tree would swallow my child, as you swallowed the others.”

  Duvall heaved a long slow sigh. The issue had grown from lust into a question of control.

  “Do not fight me woman.”

  She stooped and snatched a chunk of kindling, raising it as a club.

  “Stay back, Jo-nah.”

  Duvall shrugged as if unconcerned. He turned in a slow circle back towards the door, resuming his rainy vigil. He smiled into the darkness as he heard the soft impact of the kindling falling to the dirt floor.

  “Where the hell is that fool boy at?”

  “In hell,” Jezebel quietly answered. “Like us.”

  He whirled, palm outstretched, catching her cheek with a solid slap.

  “Mind your tongue,” Duvall snapped. “And have a care with that salt you’ve been doling out to dear little Tamsen.”

  If she was shocked at his knowledge she didn’t show it. She crouched like an animal ready to pounce. A trickle of slow red crawled along the corner of her mouth, searching down her chin to her neck and deeper. She didn’t bother wiping it away.

  “Keep on your toes, woman, before I find someone else in need of my attention.”

  “You already have,” she said but not so loudly that he might hear.

  4

  Tamsen’s tears dried up. She told herself she would cry no more over this fool of a husband walking in the rain.

  Lucas had not been her first man.

  Her first man was Jacob. She remembered how he would walk beside her, talking in quiet, careful tones as if she were a prize mare ready for the stallion.

  His eyes never left her.

  “You should be home,” Jacob said.

  “I’d rather be here with you.”

  He stared into the darkness like a deer spooked by baying hounds. “If your grandpa catches us, he’ll have my hide.”

  Her grandfather would whip Jacob, most likely to death. He wouldn’t care for his granddaughter sharing pleasure with a Negro slave.

  “He’ll never find out,” she said, not believing her own words.

  They came to the shack in the hollow beyond the fields. The old woman sat out front, sightless and smiling. Old Delta the children called her, sitting there beating away at an empty butter churn. She nodded vacantly when Jacob spoke to her and then she started to sing.

  “Come butter come. Come butter come.”

  “She’ll keep watch,” Jacob said. “If she stops singing then somebody’s coming.”

  They went inside and sat upon the rack of wood that passed for a bed. He seemed hesitant. She would have to lead.

  “Come to me,” she said, leaning to kiss him.

  This initial awkwardness, understandable since their first kiss was now only two days old, was overshadowed by growing desire.

  “Come butter come. Come butter come.”

  They kissed again, caught up in an outpouring floodtide of repressed longing. She loosened his shirt, touching him, allowing her hands to scamper like hot wild things across the field of his work-hardened back, tracing and retracing the scattershot labyrinth of his many scars.

  “Little Peter’s at the gate.”

  She spat in her palm and slickered the so-soft, so-hard manhood sprouting like an angry black snake between his legs. She giggled like a schoolgirl at the velvet bristle of his curly black pubics. He moaned and begged to be allowed to put it in her.

  “Awaiting for his butter cake.”

  Put it in, she said, o please put it in, and she gasped at the pain and passion, he was so damn large and she was so small and she begged him to hurry and do it and don’t stop, but the men at the doorway, first shocked then angry then dragging her black lover from between the sweet white prison of her young legs, him calling her name, o Tammy, o Tam, choking off bitter tears as one of the angry men swung his rifle barrel downwards, falling like an axe to strike squarely across the length of Jacob’s still hardened member, and then they both screamed as one as the sweet creamy whiteness that she was to have taken from him leaked miserably down along his leg.

  They dragged him, kicking and screaming, and staked him to the dirt. They tied him down with the old woman’s laundry line. Then they tied a bag with a rattlesnake in it, around Jacob’s loins. They poked the bag with sticks until Jacob screamed again and again, his voice roughened and hoarse and the men just stood and watched. Their laughter fell like dead autumn leaves.

  And then they asked her why.

  She told them the old woman bewitched her. Her being white, they believed the lie. They dragged Old Delta down to the river leaving Jacob staked with that sack hung between his legs. The last she’d seen of her love was him lying on his back, weeping cold bitter tears as the poison worked slowly through his system.

  5

  Tamsen awoke, not remembering when she’d fallen asleep. She’d been dreaming about Jacob and Delta and the river. She shivered in the darkness, trying to remember but the dream slid away like water through her fingers.

  Lucas sprawled in the opposite corner, asleep. She wondered when he’d come in. She must have been asleep. She draped him in their bedding and covered herself with his heavy sea coat.

  The rain had stopped. She re-laid the fire. She picked up a rotted log; some deadwood Lucas had carelessly placed on the woodpile. The log broke as she laid it on the fire. As it broke, half of the log spilled onto the floor while the other half fell in the fire. There was a colony of ants within the broken log.

  Some of the ants escaped into the mud of the floor. The majority stayed with their burning home. They scurried about in a sort of group madness, dying enmasse as the flames licked the rotted log’s carcass. Those on the other half of the log moved in a sluggish mockery of the burning panic, perhaps sensing the scale of the slaughter, perhaps adopting a state of national mourning.

  She gingerly picked the intact half up. On impulse, she threw what was lef
t of the log squarely into the heart of the flames. She looked down at Lucas. He twitched in his sleep. She barely suppressed an urge to kick him.

  Was that what their marriage had fallen to?

  Did she even love him anymore?

  She lit a torch and walked out into the night where she came upon Duvall and the devil tree.

  Chapter Eight

  It was a blood night.

  The first since the accident.

  Tamsen felt the urge to cleanse herself. She determined to brave the chill of the river’s current to remove all trace of the blood taint. The full moon loomed large enough to illuminate the uneven trail to the river’s brink. Once there, she removed her clothes and stood naked, bathed in a wash of moonlight.

  Lucas offered to accompany her but he seemed so weary she said she’d rather be alone. He’d worked hard and was still growing used to his missing leg. It was easier to hurt his feelings than to see him suffer.

  Duvall and the boy were off in the woods. She was sure they slept outdoors. Perhaps a life in the wilderness gave them a distrust of walls. She envisioned them baying like wolves beneath the moon, bringing down game with their teeth and drinking the blood; perhaps dancing naked before a secret altar. She imagined a stone monolith, a cave, or perhaps some great sacred tree.

  She wondered if they wanted to initiate Lucas into their cult or pack or whatever they called it. She found it hard to picture her husband in a similar light. He wasn’t the man that Duvall was. Even the boy seemed more than a match for her husband – even before the accident.

  She shivered. A noise startled her. She spotted a black masked raccoon. It chittered angrily, scolding and rolling back into the shadows. She chuckled to quiet her fears.

  She raised her arms and spun brazenly along the shore. If they were staring she’d give them something to watch. She laughed at her childish wickedness, turned and stepped boldly into the river’s embrace. It had been days since she’d been truly cold. Now the chill seemed perversely comforting to her. She moved waist deep, feeling the current’s gentle lapping teasing her matted pubic hair.

  An army of goose bumps crawled about her arms and over her blue-veined breasts. Her nipples stiffened. She shivered in excitement, sensing the stringlets of menstrual blood crimsoning the waters about her. She stiffened slightly, wary of leeches, for there was no salt to lift them.

  The lack of salt puzzled her. Duvall’s brusque explanations didn’t satisfy her curiosity. There was salt to be had. Jezebel slipped a few grains beneath her tongue every night. She hadn’t mentioned that to Duvall.

  She tossed water over her exposed flesh. She couldn’t escape the feeling of being watched. The night’s stillness surrounded her like a too-heavy quilt. The murky bottom mud sucked at her feet, drawing them deeper into the muck.

  She felt the whisper of insects flitting about her. She sought shelter by squatting, immersing herself up to her shoulders and wrapping her arms protectively about her chest. She bit back her breath and tried to calm her pounding heart.

  Someone was out there, someone or something and it was watching her.

  She crouched for what seemed a forever, shivering in the chill river water, staring up into the empty woods. Finally, she whispered a single name into the swallow of hungry darkness.

  “Jo-nah?”

  Duvall stepped out of the shadows.

  2

  “You are far from your cabin for so late a night,” she said.

  “As are you.”

  “The demands of nature,” she began, and then faltered with a slight blush she was certain he could see.

  “Are strong indeed,” he finished in a low strange voice.

  “Yes,” she agreed, feeling confused by the whole situation.

  Why didn’t the man leave? Couldn’t he see what she was up to? Had he no discretion? He took a step closer into the light. She was amazed to see his trousers were quite open and his hand rested upon his prominent erection.

  “A guilty pleasure,” he said, almost sheepishly.

  She nodded, still a little uncertain.

  “Until the baby comes,” he explained. “My wife is unwilling.”

  For a wonder, he winked.

  “Our little secret?” he asked, tucking his member back into his trousers.

  She stepped out of the river and slowly dressed. She wasn’t bothered by him watching her adjust her clothing. The whole thing seemed absolutely dreamlike.

  She prayed that it wasn’t a dream.

  “Will you walk with me, woman?” he asked, holding out his hand. “There is something I must show you.”

  But I’ve already seen it all, she thought, as she took his offered hand.

  He scooped her up in his arms and carried her. She struggled at first. Then, thinking of Lucas’s cold embraces, she decided to take the chance. What did she have to lose?

  He carried her easily. She marveled at the power hidden within his small and well-made frame. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder enjoying the reek of honest sweat. It was easy for her to close her eyes and imagine herself with Jacob again.

  She thought of Lucas. What would he say? Duvall had called this a secret but what if he told?

  “Shhh,” Duvall calmed her as she walked.

  What had she to lose? Duvall’s wife certainly wouldn’t care. Not a savage like her. She couldn’t imagine the man who carried her would be even remotely worried about her Lucas.

  She almost laughed at that last thought.

  Her Lucas?

  How could she think of that cold thing lying back in the cabin as something that might belong to her? She swore to herself he would never find out. She’d go on wherever this lead to. Not that she had much of a choice. In the morning she’d tell herself that it had been a dream.

  “We’re almost there.”

  His voice was a wet whisper, close to her ear.

  “I’m not afraid,” she whispered back. She was sure he was taking her to the tree Lucas told her about. And in fact, he was. He set her down before its massive presence and stood back so as not to hinder her view.

  The tree was all she’d imagined it. Never had she seen such a sight. The night’s dark glimmer enhanced the charm. Its roots sank deeply into the forest floor like great talons. Its trunk was thickened and mighty with age. The trunk reared high above them, with a peculiar twist to its shaft that reminded her of the veins about a man’s cock.

  There was a deep scar, knobbing the higher end of the trunk, where lightning once had struck. The sharply defined wound was much like the crevice splitting a man’s glans. For an instant she thought she saw something small and alive wriggling within that wound and then there was nothing but the tree.

  She wanted to touch its bark. She needed to be certain it wasn’t flesh, yet she was afraid to. Instead she touched Duvall or what she thought was Duvall. As she reached out for his reassuring maleness, her hand fell lightly upon his chest. She was surprised to find him naked.

  His skin glowed murkily in the dying flame of the torch. His eyes shone like smoldering coals, black and hot in the cool of the night. She drew back as his bare flesh scalded her. His root was thick and gnarly and hard as a piece of oak jutting like a piercing branch.

  It was strange. Somehow it wasn’t Duvall anymore. It was another man, a darker man. Not Jacob, but like Jacob, short and squatty with vaguely savage features. And yet he had such calmness about his eyes that lulled her into a deceptive calm. He wasn’t real, she thought. He was a figment, a night dream, a fever conjured haunt. But when he touched her his hand felt terribly real.

  She should have run but her limbs would not obey. She opened her lips to speak. Her voice abandoned her. She felt stiff and silent and unused. She wanted him and yet she shook her head.

  A part of her still believed she was dreaming. She reached behind herself, sure she’d find nothing but Lucas’s sleeping form on the other side of the cabin. When her hand touched the bark of the tree, she trembled in true fear.

/>   When the bark moved she nearly screamed.

  “Come here, cold woman,” the man before her opened his arms like an opening door. “Come here and I will warm you.”

  She thought of Lucas one last time, lying back there unable to please her; unable to find a proper release within her. She thought of Jacob, staked to that cold patch of ground, surrendering the last few drops of seed to the serpent’s cold kisses.

  Here was a man who needed her. Here was a man with no one but a bloated, ancient savage to keep his bed warm. She drew closer, drifting into his embrace, telling herself that it was still nothing but a wicked dream.

  Yet as they came together, the night swam before her, the tree loomed large and danced beneath her, whispering in low seductive tones as Duvall pushed himself into her, dark and merciless, and she knew that it was all too frighteningly real.

  She screamed as Duvall had his way and the tree swayed and seemed to undulate behind her.

  3

  High above them Cord watched on in silence, nestled like a bird in the place where the lightning had struck so long ago. In the darkness the tree whispered secrets to him. It told him how his father had come to this valley, steeped in the art of ancient wisdom. He’d tried to destroy the tree, but the tree destroyed him. It had healed itself and in its healing formed a natural hollow where Cord often spent his nights.

  Cord had tacked a deer hide over the opening to shield him from the rough weather. It secretly pleased him when he heard Duvall curse over the hide that had gone missing.

  The tree had grown a little larger since then, forming itself about the nail heads that held the deer hide fast like it was a part of the tree. It wasn’t the most comfortable of resting places but it was positioned in such a way that none who did not know of its existence would ever dream it was there.

  Not even Duvall.