Devil Tree

by Vernon, Steve

  And then a hand stabbed outwards from the flames. He seized it without thinking, much as he’d seized Lucas’s hand in the river so very long ago. The hand seemed cold, strangely chilled, the little flesh that remained upon the blackened fingers seemed oddly cool to the touch.

  Her dead, imploring grip tightened about his. He felt the eager flames lap at his wrist, singeing the skin and fine hair.

  He screamed.

  And then the hand stilled. He dragged her free, her bones no more than coal-blackened sticks twisted into a grotesque mockery of the fetal position. She clutched a single charred bundle, its fire-softened flesh fused into hers. She would cling to her child through the eternity of death.

  She had won.

  He held her closely, never minding the stink and the heat.

  But then a voice spoke. He thought it was Lucas although the godsman was nowhere in sight.

  The voice commanded him.

  He must at all costs save the valley.

  With the last of his strength he beat back the flames, baying the inferno, trapping it into a smothered heap amongst the cabin’s wreckage. It should have been harder to accomplish but the night was damp and the fire seemed bound within the wards of the wooden walls – almost obedient to the forest’s demands.

  Within a half an hour the fire had burnt itself out.

  Duvall turned from the ashes.

  He saw the hound gnawing on Jezebel’s freshly cooked flesh.

  He picked up his musket from where he dropped it. He picked it up slowly and carefully, so as not to disturb the cur’s grim red feast. He sighted along the barrel, strangely heavy in his weariness, thinking how badly he wished he were aiming at the godsman.

  Or perhaps at himself.

  He stood for a moment, recalling the many hunts he and old Satin had gone upon. The hound had been chosen from the bitch Sheba’s last whelping, the only one he allowed himself to save from the devil tree. He remembered how small the pup had been, struggling to get to its mother’s teats. He took the rest of the litter from the mother and methodically shattered their skulls against the trunk of the tree, swinging each pup in turn like a small fleshy axe by their tiny hind legs. The mother had never been the same after that. He shot her three weeks later and buried her in the roots of the devil tree.

  “Here, boy,” he gently called.

  He’d vowed to himself that this one would be different. That he could save one skinny little puppy from the clutches of the devil tree.

  The hound cocked his head, raising his snout from its gory feast. The dog very likely didn’t even realize that it was eating anything more than a lump of charred flesh.

  Duvall whistled, soft and low. When the hound turned towards him he squeezed the trigger. He felt the slide of tears as the hound’s familiar bark blended with the sharp crack of the musket and the beast sank without further sound.

  Duvall carried Jezebel’s carcass back to the second cabin.

  It took him three trips.

  Lucas brought the boy.

  Tamsen followed.

  That night the three survivors slept with the dead.

  When he returned to the ashes of the first cabin he could find no trace of the dog’s remains. He prayed that a coyote, wolf or bear had dragged the meat away but he could not bring himself to search for sign or spoor about the ashes of his tumbled cabin.

  Chapter Ten

  Kerchunk.

  Duvall swung the heavy mattock in a high gentle arc, goring the soil with metronomic regularity.

  Kerchunk.

  Lucas grunted in empathy, leaning upon a shovel, waiting for his chance to dig.

  Kerchunk.

  “Good soil,” Lucas said.

  Duvall only grunted.

  Kerchunk.

  “Full of roots, though. You should have buried him further from the tree.”

  That earned nothing but another grunt.

  Kerchunk.

  “Keep on hacking up those roots and you’re apt to kill the damned thing,” Lucas noted.

  Duvall looked up for the briefest instant as if Lucas had said something absurd.

  Then he returned to his labor.

  Kerchunk.

  “Hard to dig.”

  Kerchunk.

  “Why’d she do it?”

  Duvall paused again.

  “The child was born dead,” he said. “Any fool could see that.”

  He picked the mattock up and swung again.

  Lucas ignored the insult.

  Kerchunk.

  “Do you think that was the only reason?” Lucas asked.

  Kerchunk.

  “I don’t believe it matters,” Duvall said. “Dead is dead. God grant she lie still, because she sure as hell isn’t coming back.”

  Kerchunk.

  “Well you must have an opinion.”

  Kerchunk.

  “Don’t you?”

  Duvall paused a third time. Lucas stood, waiting for an answer. For a moment he swore he saw fear chasing behind the other man’s eyes.

  “Dig,” was all that Duvall said.

  2

  That night Duvall stood alone beneath the tree. His back was turned from the freshly dug graves. His head was bowed. He clenched his fists in tight knots about the haft of his axe.

  His shoulders shook gently in a shuddered sob, the rasping broken rhythm in which strong men cry.

  “Damn you,” he said.

  He raised his eyes up and down like stealing a glance in a too-solemn church.

  “God damn you all to hell.”

  The last words were torn from his throat as he swung the axe with the fullest of his might, burying the blade deep into the trunk. He glanced upward, fearful of the retribution that had fallen on Lucas when he’d first struck the tree.

  The axe handle bent and flexed like an angry snake. Duvall fought it desperately. The handle twisted and heaved him to the dirt. He knelt, staring in cold terror as the bark moved about the axe blade, moiling and pursing like the lips of an old man about to spit.

  Slowly, too slowly for words, the axe oozed from the tree. Handle first, and then the top heavy blade dragged it down to land precisely between Duvall’s outstretched legs, splitting the ground at a grimly cocked angle.

  He stared at the wordless warning. Finally he stood, pulling himself up the bark until he leaned squarely upon the now-healed axe wound. He pounded on the axe mark with his clenched fists, trying to reopen it.

  “This was not how it was to be.”

  After a time he slid to the ground, sobbing and slumped in defeat, clutching at the roots as if at the hem of a woman’s skirt.

  The night passed on and no man heard him weep.

  3

  Tamsen clung to Lucas, rocking him in her arms like a small child. She tried to speak, then turned her head or bit her lip, saying nothing at all. He wouldn’t press her for words. The woman’s grief was too deep for such things. She turned to him with eyes wet with tears, and finally spoke.

  “Lucas,” she said. “I am with child.”

  He nodded quietly and held her throughout the long, ageless night.

  SUMMER

  “As the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”

  Alexander Pope 1688 - 1744

  “Anger is a weed; Hate is the tree.”

  St. Augustine A.D. 354 - 430

  Chapter Eleven

  Two weeks passed. Lucas could still smell the ashes in the wind from the cabin in which Jezebel had burned herself.

  “Do trees breathe?” Tamsen asked.

  It was too hot to work, so he and Tamsen were resting in the shade of a lazy elm, lying on a mattress of dead grass and leaves and staring upwards at the forest’s roof, losing themselves among the patchwork shades of green. Duvall’s hound lay close by in the dirt, nonchalantly lapping its genitals.

  “I believe they do,” Lucas answered. “I think they even talk amongst themselves.”

  A bold crimson cardinal winged over like a spark passing thro
ugh a dry unmown hayfield.

  “Trees don’t talk.” Tamsen said.

  “Sure they do. Just listen.”

  The wind stirred the leaves. It sounded like whispered gossip, the laughter of water, God hushing the angels to sleep.

  For a time they just lay there and listened.

  Finally Tamsen spoke.

  “Why’d she do it?”

  Lucas considered the question. It was good to lay here with his wife. There was a feeling of peace that he hadn’t known for some time. Perhaps Jezebel’s burnt offering had worked its magic after all.

  “I believe it was an accident,” he offered.

  “I don’t. I think she meant to do it.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Perhaps the baby was born dead.”

  Lucas looked down at Tamsen’s stomach, which already bore the signs of pregnancy.

  “Is that what you’re worried about?”

  She touched her belly.

  “No,” she said. “I can feel it moving.”

  He reached down and touched her. Something did twist inside. It felt vaguely eel-like.

  Lucas discretely lifted his hand

  “I don’t feel a thing,” he said.

  “It’s moving,” she assured him.

  “So if it’s moving, what are you worried about?”

  She said nothing.

  He idly stroked the tender pink skin of his amputated stump. He had removed his wooden leg to take his ease. The false leg chafed at the healing flesh. He sometimes found blood soaking into the rough-raised end grain of the wood, despite the soft bit of linen Tamsen bound the stump with.

  Finally Tamsen spoke.

  “We have to leave,” she said.

  Lucas yawned and stretched his arms. He felt good; perhaps better than he had felt in a good long time.

  “There’s no hurry,” he told her. “Let the chores wait for now.”

  She sat up.

  “No, I mean we have to leave this valley.”

  He looked away from her.

  “Why? We’re happy, aren’t we?”

  “Are we? Look about you,” she said. “There’s death all around us.”

  “What happened to Jezebel was an accident.”

  “Was it?”

  Lucas looked at the dog. It lay upon its side, scratching lazily at a wayward flea, as silent as a spirit.

  “Of course it was,” he answered, not really believing his words. He looked about himself. It felt good today. He could grow used to feeling this way. A man could get used to anything, given time. Here he was, a living man, bound to a chunk of dead wood. In a way he was giving life to that chunk that otherwise might have rotted upon the woodpile, only to be later cast into the flames.

  Tamsen didn’t say a word.

  “I wasn’t always this way,” Lucas said.

  “I never said you were.”

  “My life has always been a path that I’ve had to follow. My father nailed me to the cross of Christ and clenched the nails hard. Then I spent two years lost upon the wooden deck of the Kronos.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I don’t like to talk about it. You know that.”

  She looked straight at his eyes.

  “This time. Just once. Tell me.”

  He closed his eyes. He listened to the wind talking to the trees. It sounded like waves lapping the hull of the ship. It was easy to hear the branches creaking and squeaking like a fiddler’s bow. He pictured the masts, high overhead, twisting and flexing in the cold ocean wind.

  Had anything truly changed?

  “It’s good to be warm,” he began. “I’ve never liked the cold or the wet. Cold and wet crawl into my bones and suck my strength away.”

  Tamsen nodded.

  Lucas grew quiet.

  She let him simmer until he spoke.

  “I could never tell any of the crew about my aches. They were hardy men, thick brutes of sinew and oak. They wouldn’t have understood.”

  “It must have been hard,” she said.

  “It was. I made do with extra clothing. They poked fun at me for it, but they poked fun at everyone. You’ve got to learn to laugh through hardship like that. Tears will freeze a lot faster than a grin.”

  He picked up a twig and chewed it.

  “Only Peter understood my plight. He was the cabin boy. Just Peter he’d said. No last name, probably an orphan, passed from workhouse to the captain’s hands.”

  “He was your friend?”

  Lucas took a deep breath, and then let it out all at once.

  “I loved him,” he admitted.

  A crow flew overhead.

  “The captain was a devout man.”

  “A Christian?” she asked.

  “He was something, alright,” Lucas said, with a grin. “He always wore gewgaws and trinkets from several opposing creeds. A crucifix, a star of David, an ankh, and some other ornament of vaguely Oriental appearance.”

  “He sounds more superstitious than religious.”

  Lucas shrugged.

  “Sometimes there just isn’t much of a difference. I think he just liked to cover his bets, is all. He was a careful man. When I heard that I tailored myself a collar and wore a robe I’d stolen from the seminary. That and my father’s great black frockcoat.”

  Tamsen couldn’t resist the urge to ask, “Did you steal that too?”

  “No,” he said. “He gave it to me for the journey. One of the last things the man ever handed me.”

  “And that earned you the position?”

  “It seemed to. The crew wasn’t happy.”

  “Why not?”

  Lucas grinned ruefully.

  “Jesus was the last holy fisherman,” he said. “And look what happened to him. Nailed to a tree and hung for bird bait.”

  “That’s what they believed?”

  “Like you said, sailors are a superstitious lot,” Lucas said. “The captain gave me a private bunk. That’s rare enough on so small a vessel. I shared the bed with Peter.”

  He looked away.

  “That was kind of you,” Tamsen carefully said.

  “Sounds so, doesn’t it?” He tore the twig he was chewing on and spat it into the dirt. “If I didn’t he would have had to sleep in the hold on a coil of rope or maybe in one of the lifeboats. “

  He grew quiet.

  “What work did you do?” Tamsen prodded, trying to keep him talking.

  “My carpenter duties were light,” he admitted. “When winter blew in and our ship lodged in the icepack, Peter and I spent our time beneath the blankets just trying to keep warm. Food grew scarce and sickness spread. I buried more than a few sailors, with my homemade collar and my stolen robe.”

  “You buried them at sea?”

  “The water was frozen. We packed the dead in the snow,” Lucas’s eyes darkened. “After the food ran out several of the grave sites were dug up. The captain turned a blind eye. He didn’t seem any skinnier. He blamed it on the great white bears that shambled over the ice packs.”

  He looked away.

  “We were hungry,” he whispered. “So very hungry.”

  He closed his eyes and would say no more. Tamsen dozed off in his arms. The two of them slept together, there under the trees.

  When Lucas awoke he saw the hound laying there in the shadow of the watching woods, as innocent as a basking shark, licking at its impossibly long penis, sliding like an arrow between its bent furry legs.

  Lucas blinked and the hound was gone. In its place stood a great black buck, its antlers spreading like long heavily laden boughs slung upon its massive shaggy head almost seeming to blot out the very sun itself.

  It must have been a dream, Lucas told himself.

  As he rose to his feet, using the axe as a makeshift crutch, the phantom deer vanished.

  Tamsen slept on through all of it.

  Later that day, when he mentioned seeing the hound to Duvall, the man started and walked away in a pale and troubled silence, li
ke one who had seen a ghost. Lucas was troubled by the man’s reaction and did not think to mention his vision of the great black deer.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Damn!”

  Lucas knelt over the fallen log, rocking on his haunches, cradling his injured thumb.

  He turned his head away, refusing to look at the thing.

  “Damn, damn, damn it all to….”

  His voice choked into a savage knot of pain. He didn’t want to look at the thumb, afraid he’d broken it or flattened it or cut it off.

  “Lucas?”

  Tamsen stood there, framed in the mouth of the cabin doorway, blinking like an owl stepping from the darkness into the light.

  She’s getting bigger, he thought, and so quickly too. This is happening far too quickly.

  “What did you do now?”

  He turned mulishly from her. “I’m fine,” he lied, trying to hide the thumb.

  She came forward all the same. “Let me see that.”

  “I’m all right,” he insisted. “I just dropped this godforsaken log upon my thumb.”

  “Mind your language, Lucas Sawyer. You sound like him,” she said, placing emphasis upon the final pronoun and throwing a nod towards the valley.

  “I wouldn’t have hurt myself if he’d been here helping instead of mooning over his dead.”

  “You know he’s out hunting.”

  “And what has our mighty Nimrod caught as of late? Little or nothing save a string of excuses.”

  “And what have you brought home, as of late?” she asked, fiercely mimicking his words.

  “He’s not hunting. You know he isn’t. He’s right where he usually sulks, camped over his heap of treasured ashes.”

  Tamsen’s eyes hardened. “And you call yourself a godsman.”

  “That’s not your words.”

  “You must try and show compassion, husband,” she suggested. “Just let me see the thumb,” she finished.

  He turned to her like a child determined not to cry, offering up his thumb. She drew a sharpened breath. The thumb was badly swollen. Dirt-blackened blood encircled the nail.

  “You should fell your trees closer to the water,” she said.