Duvall had done it, hadn’t he?
He knew what he should do. He should talk to Duvall. Make peace with the man.
That wasn’t going to happen.
He stirred the seeds restlessly. What had he read in Matthew?
He said it aloud.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed which a man has took and sowed in his field; but when it grows it is the greatest among herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air shall come and lodge in the branches thereof.”
He stared closer into the fistful of silent seeds as if he might see the kingdom of heaven therein. He stared out into the darkness of the forest.
He knew what he had to do.
Duvall was just a man and men could die.
He closed his eyes to contemplate. Tamsen was with child. Within a few months travel would be out of the question. Winter was coming behind the deceitful greening of the trees like a promise of death at a wedding.
He sighed again.
It would be a long and sleepless night.
7
That night Tamsen lay awake, listening to the steady whisper of Lucas’s breathing as he slumbered obliviously beside her. His sleep was dreamless and she supposed she should thank his God for that.
She felt the darkness slipping about her like a cool, heavy wave, despite the hook of the blind moon. She counted her breaths, the rise and the fall, one-two-three, losing track every time.
Duvall was out there somewhere in darkness, prowling the depths of the valley like a homeless spirit. She felt him calling to her, imploring her in his tongueless way to come to him.
She tried not to listen.
In time she slipped into a dream and it drew her under.
In her dream she laid in a field, listening to the evil bleat of the goat and the wind whispering through a distant jack pine.
Chapter Thirteen
Thin black clouds shaded the skyline; dragging slowly over the valley like heavy unmilked cows pregnant with the promise of rain. They threatened at any moment to tear themselves open upon the ragged pine branches that reached out of the valley’s belly.
Lucas watched the clouds.
The sun crouched warily behind the clouds. The wind prowled through the pine tops like a great, raging, sightless beast, until the oily cloying pine scent stuck and caught tarrily within his throat. He dragged a hand across his brow, mopping the perspiration that threatened to blind him. His shirt was dank with sweat. The axe grew heavy.
He leaned upon it and waited for whatever came next.
It was a day of shadflies. The sky was thick with them. He couldn’t open his mouth for fear of swallowing one. He prayed the rain would come so the shadflies might die a little sooner.
And perhaps too, so he might put off his labors for one more day.
At least the fish made the most of the sudden infestation, swarming to the surface to snap at the bits of flying ephemera; bloating themselves until they sank, either sated or dead.
Duvall would be down here today, filling his sack with fish.
He could have them. Lucas preferred a bit of well done beef or in a pinch a joint of mutton. He didn’t care for pork. Once, maybe, but now the taste brought back too many memories.
Duvall would catch fish. He would gloat and clap his hands as if he’d done some mighty deed in snagging a few overfed fish from their waterlogged trencher boards.
More than anything, Lucas wanted to beat the man at his own game. He rolled up his trouser legs and waded in. He didn’t have a net or a line. It didn’t matter. He believed he could catch the slow moving fish within his shirt.
It seemed a simple plan. The fish were preoccupied with their feeding. Lucas floundered and splashed across the slippery riverbed. His wooden leg displayed an alarming flotation that dragged him off balance. He wound up flat on his back, nearly unconscious and drowned in the process.
It was not an auspicious beginning.
He lay upon his back; his leg elevated by the natural buoyancy of the wood, praying Duvall wouldn’t catch him. After a time the fish returned; lured by the irresistible dancing of the shadflies.
Lucas lay as still as possible, save for the gently bobbing wooden leg, allowing the fish to swim about him as if he were a dead fallen tree. He snared a fish that carelessly drifted into his shirt. He lobbed the fish onto the shore and waited for the next to happen into his snare.
It was easy.
Within a short period of time he’d caught a dozen fish. It was only then that he noticed the crows gathered about his catch, eagerly tearing at the scaly flesh. He rose with a curse and more splashing. He threw rocks and hurled curses at the crows the rocks couldn’t reach.
In the end he frightened the fish and amused the crows and fell hard on his ass. He raised himself up. He stood for long minutes debating whether or not to give up.
His trousers bagged slowly with the current.
It’d be easy to walk from this madness. No goodbyes, just walk until the water lapped about his mouth and tickled his nostrils and then walk a little further.
Was this how it had been for his father? Standing before their manor lake? Ashamed of his son? Finding no sanctuary in his familiar church? How long had he stood there before taking that first step?
No.
There was nothing out there in that river but oblivion.
The shadflies flitted mercilessly, annoying in their abundance. He splashed cold water on his face to clear his mind.
More frightened fish.
Then he lay back down to catch more fish.
This time he would keep an eye for greedy crows.
The fish were necessary.
Not for eating, but necessary nonetheless.
2
Lucas’s trousers clung to his legs, heavy and dark from the weight of the river water. The fish lay beneath his shirt on the ground, weighted by several of the rocks he’d thrown at the crows.
The fish were filthy with dirt and vermin. It didn’t matter. Dirt was their final destiny. If Duvall and Tamsen – strange how he’d already begun to couple their names – decided they wanted fish they could come and catch some themselves.
Now for the raft.
He hadn’t done so bad a job. It was crude but serviceable. With a few more days work uninterrupted by fishing excursions he and Tamsen could be on their way.
He smiled and shook his head.
He wasn’t running anymore.
His mind felt clearer than it had in years.
He stepped towards the raft, sore and tired from fishing. The wooden leg dragged like an anchor. He picked up the axe. It felt good in his hand, somehow necessary.
“I’m not running,” he said aloud.
He swung the axe over his head. The blade whistled through the humid air, arcing upwards, caught in the trap of its own momentum. For a split second it hung there, trembling like a tree about to topple, until he let it fall.
As the blade bit into the raft he had worked so long upon, the clouds finally opened up. He finished the destruction beneath the weeping heavens, laughing and capering at each blow, giving into temptation and stripping off his trousers and sporting about in the chilling downpour.
3
The rain hung on for two long days.
Lucas waited another three for the ground to dry.
He hadn’t told either Tamsen or Duvall of his plans.
It surprised them both when they saw him tucking the mattock and the sack of seed corn under his arm.
“Are you going to be able to manage that load?” Duvall asked.
It was not exactly an offer of help, Lucas noticed.
“I will manage,” he said.
“A bit late in the year for planting, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t getting any earlier.”
“But Lucas, the raft, our plans…” Tamsen began.
“Perhaps next year,” he said. “You are with child. You cannot travel.”
“Must it
be my fault?” she asked. “I feel fine.”
“You are with child,” he repeated.
“I feel fine!”
Lucas gently smiled, as if she hadn’t raised her voice at all.
He shook his head softly.
“Perhaps next year.”
Tamsen didn’t know what to say. Duvall spat loudly and turned his back to the two of them.
Lucas turned to leave.
“Lucas?” Tamsen spoke to the man’s back. “Is everything all right with you?”
“Everything will be fine,” he answered, without turning around.
As he walked away he refused to turn back, fearful of what he might see going on behind his back.
“I will not run, I will not run,” he chanted in a silent litany, but once out of sight of the cabin, he broke into a shambling gait that was as near to a run as his wooden leg allowed.
4
“He means to stay, doesn’t he?” Duvall said.
Tamsen threw her arms upwards, flailing as wildly as if she were back in the river again.
“How should I know what he means to do?” she asked. “He asks me nothing and tells me even less.”
“Let me take you from him,” Duvall ventured.
“You have done that all ready, haven’t you?”
Duvall looked down at the dirt on the floor. He tried again. “We could leave.”
“Leave? Leave?” her voice rose in intensity. Duvall cast a nervous glance towards the doorway, fearful that Lucas was still within earshot.
“Leave?” she repeated. “And where would we go? Where would you take me?”
He had no answer.
“You are bound to this valley as surely as he is,” Tamsen went on. “You and he are two sides of the same coin.”
Duvall stepped backed.
“God damn you Jonah Duvall, God damn you, I say,” Tamsen shouted. “Why didn’t you leave us to the river? Why didn’t you leave us drown?”
She fell to her knees and sobbed angrily.
“It was death, but clean. Not like this.”
She looked up, hatred blazing from her eyes. Duvall couldn’t face or comfort her. He backed away. Tamsen buried her face in her arms and wept.
“God damn you Jacob, why did you have to go and die?”
5
Chunk, chunk, chunk.
The mattock rose and fell with tireless regularity, gouging a fertile bed in the unfeeling piney soil. Once Lucas was satisfied with the depth of the hole, he knelt and carefully placed the last three corn seeds within.
“One for the worm, one for the crow, and one for me,” he recited.
He sprinkled a handful of dead ashes and tossed in a dead fish. They stank, but they were good for the corn.
He covered the trench with loose soil and drove a wooden stake carved from a shard of raft to mark the planting. The corn would grow just fine, marked or not, but it was a comfort to him to know the stake was planted.
He stood up to survey his day’s work, a ragtag maze, weaving in and out of the stubborn trees and stumps. Corn didn’t need much room to grow. By next year he planned to clear enough land for a proper field.
He wondered about Duvall’s field. It was messy but fertile. With Duvall gone, who knew what might arise?
“I would give much for your thoughts.”
Lucas turned, startled. It was Duvall. Lucas had no idea how long the man had been standing there.
“It’s kind of late in the year for corn, isn’t it?”
“You asked that before. I’ll ignore you again. Corn grows fast. If it’s too green to eat we can grind it for flour or save it for seed.”
Duvall nodded. Lucas was making sense.
“There’s always a use for seed,” Duvall agreed.
They sank into an uneasy silence.
Out in the darkness a magpie chuckled. Duvall raised his hat and made the sign of the cross, then turned and distinctly spat three times over his left shoulder.
“Magpie,” he explained. “It’s bad luck.”
“Why is that?”
“Might shit on your shoulder.”
Lucas grinned.
“So you don’t really know, do you?”
“Oh I know,” Duvall said. “The magpie was the only animal that refused to enter the ark. It sat perched on the roof by itself, jabbering and scolding over the drowning world, over and over, I told you so. I told you so.”
“I’ve never heard that one before.
“I thought all godsmen knew that one.”
“We godsmen are magpies,” Lucas said. “Jabbering and scolding over the drowning world.”
“Tamsen told me you liked to talk,” Duvall said, and then instantly was sorry that he’d brought her name up. The moment froze. It was the wrong coal to stir, the wrong name to mention.
“Tamsen tells you much, does she not?”
“We talk,” Duvall warily answered. “It is what men and women do.”
Lucas shrugged and looked away.
“You should go,” Duvall said. “There is time yet.”
“Go?”
“From this valley. Go. Leave. Run.”
“I am done with running. I plant corn.”
“Late corn.” Duvall said with a nod. He rose stiffly, and then paused, staring down upon Lucas squatting in the darkness, the mattock resting between his legs like a savage club.
“Can we fix this?” Duvall asked.
“I plant corn,” Lucas repeated.
“You dig holes in the dirt, godsman,” Duvall said. “Dig them deep.”
Without further word he turned and left.
Lucas sat in the shadow of the pine.
He played idly with the mattock between his legs, hacking at the roots and earth about his feet with a savage, determined intent. After a time he walked back to the river. A part of his mind wondered about the possibility of mending the raft he’d already wrecked.
Only the raft wasn’t going anywhere.
In the oncoming darkness Lucas stood there, staring at the green buds sprouting upon the remains of the raft, their tiny green mouths open and puckering. Twisting serpentine roots crawled from under the dirt and binding the broken logs against the dirt.
When one of the roots crawled against his ankle, tangled and soft and wet, Lucas screamed.
Chapter Fourteen
There was a trick with a needle Delta once showed Tamsen. The old woman took a darning needle and a bit of thread and dangled it over a woman’s child-swollen stomach.
“Now if that needle swings with the sun, it’s a boy, and if it swings against, well then it’s a girl,” Delta had said.
Tamsen had laughed at Delta at the time, but now she was deadly serious. She wanted to try the needle trick on herself, yet try as she might she couldn’t get a reliable reading. The needle swung one way and then other, as if it couldn’t make up its mind.
Just a fool trick, she told herself.
“And when that needle starts to circle, well you count those circles,” Old Delta said. “Every apostle means one child.”
Every dozen circles means one child, Tamsen understood.
“Twelve,” the old woman said. “Twelve for the apostles. If it swings twice times twelve, well then you’ve got twins. Three twelves and you’ve got yourself a pack of trouble.”
Tamsen watched the needle swing, counting softly to herself feeling a small chill creeping along the hackles of her neck. By the time Lucas burst in she had counted forty two circles.
And the damnable bit of metal continued to swing.
2
Lucas came running in frantically out of breath.
Tamsen thankfully lost both count and needle, as the tiny charm fell onto the dirt floor and vanished beneath the pine boughs.
“What has happened?” Tamsen blurted. “Has Jonah been hurt?”
His look instantly made her regret her rash words.
“Never fear for that man, not in this valley.”
Lucas panted li
ke a hound at the end of a long run. He snatched up bits and pieces of their meager belongings.
“Hurry now,” he instructed. “Take only what you can carry.”
“What’s going on here? What are you doing?”
“Too many questions. There’s no time for any of them.”
He continued packing.
“Take what you can carry. We’re leaving,” he repeated.
“Leaving? But why?”
“Too many questions! If you had seen what I have seen, you wouldn’t ask questions.”
“But what did you see?”
He paused in his packing and stared at her darkly.
“I saw the dead walk,” he said. “And that which was cut rise again. What was bound moved.”
“Are you mad?” she asked.
“Are you coming?”
“Would you leave without me?”
“Are you coming?”
She looked about her, at the cabin and the trunk full of belongings. All that she had left in the world and this man wanted to abandon it.
“I will not leave my home,” she said.
“This is not your home.”
“And what of the raft?”
“What of it indeed? Should I show you? Ah, if you had only seen…”
“Then show it to me. Let me see what has alarmed you so much.”
“I cannot. It is monstrous.” His eyes darted left and right. “We don’t have time.”
“I won’t leave my home.”
“You will come or I will drag you with me.”
Tamsen backed away, looking warily for a weapon.
“Will you come?”
She darted for the door. He was too quick. He grabbed her, looping a rope about her neck.
“I said I’d drag you if I had to.”
“Let me go,” she protested.
“I am your husband. You will obey.”
“A dog will obey. I am your wife, but you have no right to order me so.”
She kicked him in the leg. He pulled her closer, looping the rope about her. Her resistance was hopeless.
“You’ll come,” he repeated.
“I’m pregnant,” she reminded him. “Have a care for the child.”
Devil Tree Page 12
