Devil Tree

by Vernon, Steve

  Waiting for what?

  4

  In Tamsen’s mind, the water bucket beside the fire spoke to her in Delta’s voice.

  How are you doing white woman?

  Tamsen nodded in acknowledgement. The fire crackled but said nothing.

  Getting cold yet?

  Tamsen shook her head.

  You will, you know?

  Tamsen shrugged.

  Winter’s a’coming. A’coming real soon.

  Another shrug.

  There’ll be snow.

  Ice too, Tamsen thought. Maybe it’ll freeze deep through.

  It don’t freeze that deep.

  “Deep enough.”

  Not half that deep.

  Within the fire a pine knot cracked angrily.

  Snow’s a’coming.

  “You said that,” Tamsen noted.

  You’re a’going to die burning, in snow.

  “I’m ready to burn,” Tamsen said. “Like you said, I’m cold.”

  And then the fire spoke. Three words only, in the voice of the old Indian woman whom Duvall had named Jezebel.

  Leave this valley.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hunter’s moon.

  Harvest moon.

  Lucas heard a sound in the stillness of the night – a tumbled clatter of rock against rock. He sat up before realizing that he’d awoken. Tamsen lay beside him, so still and silent he felt her skin to be certain she wasn’t dead.

  Her flesh was cool.

  He held his breath and listened like an anxious parent, until he heard the rise and fall of her breathing.

  And then that sound again, stone against stone.

  “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties and things that go bump in the night,” he whispered.

  Then he laughed at his own foolishness. It had been years since he’d last heard that ancient prayer quavering upon the seamed out lips of his aging Scottish great-grandmother, who would unfailingly add it as a postscript to her family’s more traditional Christian prayers.

  Fairy folk live in old oaks.

  That had been another of her sayings. She’d had so many of them – a saying for every occasion and a word for every moment.

  There it was again.

  That sound, bone against bone, stiff and dry.

  “It’s nothing,” he whispered. “Nothing but the wind in the branches.”

  He continued to assure himself. It was nothing more than a night owl’s clatter, a rat’s scuttle or perhaps a hungry coyote.

  He didn’t believe it.

  No matter how hard he tried to convince himself, he knew exactly what the sound was. It was a branch or a root pushing its slow remorseless way through the stone wall, moving towards their circled sanctuary.

  He did his best to fall asleep.

  And then, that sound again, creeping stealthily towards the unprotected cabin.

  2

  Hunter’s moon.

  Harvest moon.

  Duvall crouched alone in the darkness, kneeling at the devil tree, staring up at the moon. An owl screeched and Duvall started in surprised fear, casting quick glances to his left and right.

  “Damned old night hag,” he muttered.

  He forced a laugh, resuming his study of the moon.

  He remembered the night he and old Eli took bets on who could peg the moon with a musket ball. They ended up spending the rest of the evening taking pot shots at it, each swearing that the other had missed, each agreeing that it had been a good try all the same, and each rewarding every good try with another swig of whiskey until the two of them were so liquored up they would have been hard put to drop a bullet between their feet.

  Duvall missed old Eli. The trapper was out back of Lucifer’s Pass when he’d been caught in a sudden blizzard. Duvall found him frozen in his footsteps, leaning on his musket like he was figuring out his predicament just as Old Man Death tapped him on the shoulder and caught him by surprise. His eyes were wide and astonished, like someone had said boo right before old Eli went under.

  That was old Eli’s way. Duvall had never met a more watchful man in his life. He had eyes that’d make a hawk lie down and die from pure shame. He never seemed to get tired of watching.

  “There are just so many good things to look at,” he’d told Duvall once.

  “All good?” Duvall had asked.

  “Good, bad, you need a little shadow if you want to find the light.”

  Eli had probably died watching the snow fall. Staring up and smiling at the thing that killed him. It was pretty enough, Duvall supposed, and there hadn’t been much else for the old man to watch.

  Or had there?

  The few tracks Duvall found in the snow showed the old man had died running. Duvall always guessed Eli had been trying to leave the valley. Food was scarce that year and the hunting poor. Might be Eli just got hungry. Might be he got sick and tired of Duvall’s company.

  Cabin fever, it happened often enough in the wilderness. Duvall heard plenty of stories but Eli was used to the lonesome of the woods. He knew just what to look for and for the life of him Duvall couldn’t imagine Eli losing his way.

  “Watch the walls,” Eli always said. “Watch the walls and when they close in on you, leave. When your partner fingers the axe and eyes you like a prize hog, leave. Take to the hills and take your chances with the snow.”

  Had that been it? Had Eli seen something in Duvall’s eyes he hadn’t liked? Something that made him want to flee? Or had it been something else? Had he looked one night, and seen something in the trees moving closer?

  Duvall stood up, shook his head and spat. The tree didn’t belong to him anymore. It wasn’t speaking tonight or perhaps it was speaking to someone else.

  Lucas, perhaps?

  A dark shadow washed across Duvall’s features. His eyes burned with hatred. That bastard should’ve left while he could, he thought. Like Eli, he should’ve taken his chances and run.

  Duvall looked at the moon. It hadn’t moved. It hadn’t changed. It was just like the valley that way. Just like the tree.

  “How long have you stood here?” he asked the tree.

  There wasn’t even a breeze to answer him.

  What had drawn him here? What had pulled him like the needle of a compass or a migrating goose?

  He stared at the tree.

  None of it mattered.

  He was trapped here.

  He and the godsman and the woman, all trapped and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.

  3

  The alders were back.

  Lucas had cut them down this morning but they were back all the same.

  And that little pitch pine, hadn’t he felled that as well?

  Couldn’t he be mistaken?

  A man never truly owns the land. This was a given. He only borrowed it, and in borrowing he becomes a slave who must wrestle his land until it wore him down. The weeds that nestled, the bad seeds that sprouted, all of the daily burdens that a man must carry until he dies and surrenders himself into the land that he had come to conquer, the land that was never truly his.

  But he had cut the alder down.

  Hadn’t he?

  Of course he had.

  He had cut the alder and the grass and the vagrant weed and they all came back.

  They always did. First the grass and then the weed, followed closely by fern and brush that gave way to trees. The forest was a feudal lord, sending out vassals, Sir Root and Lord Vine, constantly claiming and reclaiming new territories, laying siege to those lands that were taken from it.

  But never this fast.

  “Willow do grieve and oak do hate and pine do walk if you travel late,” his great-grandmother used to say. “The path will creep if you’re out in the dark. The path will creep from beneath your feet. The stars will slip away, one by one, and when you look again you’ll be lost.”

  She’d been smarter than she’d ever dreamed, Lucas ruefully thought.

  He should
have listened closer to what she told him.

  He should sow this field with salt, but there was no salt to be had in this godforsaken valley. He had to hack and dig and burn, while the forest continued to creep closer. He’d cut that alder tree, and he’d burned the stump. He was certain of this, yet there they were.

  “Damn you,” he said, staring fiercely into the valley. “I’ll beat you yet.”

  He was so intent upon his hatred he didn’t notice Duvall stride towards the cabin, his eyes feverish and gleaming, like a man seized hard with fever.

  4

  Tamsen stood by the fire, stirring the last bit of rabbit stew. If Duvall did not find some meat soon, it would be a hungry winter. They had plenty of corn, and potatoes from Duvall’s field. Some carrots and dried green beans and turnips. They wouldn’t starve, but neither would they feast.

  – you will not starve –

  Tamsen nodded towards the fire, as one might nod to someone you were not really listening to. It was only the memory of Jezebel talking to her, from out of the fire. Either a memory or a ghost – she wasn’t certain. Either she was haunted or addled. It didn’t matter. She was doomed to remain in this valley, no matter what her men told her.

  “Turn around woman.”

  Tamsen turned slowly.

  It wasn’t the fire or the bucket that commanded her.

  It was Duvall.

  “I’ve come for you,” he said.

  “You have?”

  “I have come to take you from him.”

  “And supposing I do not wish to go?”

  Duvall reached for her arm. She cracked his knuckles with her wooden spoon.

  Duvall took another step towards her.

  Tamsen caught hold of the cauldron full of hot stew, prepared to fling it at him if he came any closer.

  “Leave her be, Duvall,” Lucas said, standing at the doorway, axe in hand.

  “Go away, godsman.”

  “If you don’t leave I’ll bury this axe in your back and see how long it takes you to die,” Lucas said.

  Duvall turned, warily reaching for the musket slung upon his back.

  “I die slowly, godsman. Slower than you might think.”

  Lucas raised his axe and stepped closer. “I’ll split your skull wide open before that musket is halfway into your hands.”

  Duvall stepped towards Lucas.

  Tamsen swung the cauldron with both hands. The cauldron rang like a blacksmith’s hammer upon the barrel of the slung musket. The stew splashed upon Duvall’s clothes and the man dropped like a felled tree.

  Lucas circled the fallen body, around to Tamsen’s side. He could have ended it there with a single axe stroke.

  Perhaps he should have.

  He stared sorrowfully down at the fallen cauldron, and the stew bleeding from its open mouth onto the earthen floor.

  “Did it have to be the stew?” he asked, with a lopsided grin.

  Tamsen just shrugged. “It came to hand.”

  “Oh well. I was getting tired of rabbit stew anyways.”

  And then he kissed her.

  Twice.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lucas must die, Duvall thought.

  He clenched a bear grease-smeared rag and stroked the musket barrel, contemplatively.

  I’ve got to kill him.

  He looked about, startled. Had he spoken the last thought aloud?

  He eyed the musket’s firing mechanism, wary for dirt or sign of damage. That damned bitch had caught him soundly with that cauldron, squarely across the barrel. Lucky she hadn’t dented it.

  He sighted for practice, drawing a bead on a distant trembling branch.

  “Boom,” he whispered, wishing he were aiming at something else.

  He returned to his greasing.

  The piece was thoroughly coated, but he continued to stroke, pleasured and soothed by the motion of his hand. It calmed him, reminding him of what needed to be done.

  Lucas must die.

  2

  Duvall.

  The name guttered like a candle in the darkness of Lucas’s brain.

  Lucas dragged the tip of his crutch across the dirt, tracing the man’s name in large mocking letters.

  D-u-v-a-l-l.

  He was down there, in his valley. He was doubtless laughing, feeling pleased with himself. It was easy for Lucas to close his eyes and conjure up a vision of Duvall’s teeth flashing in the darkness of the forest in mocking laughter.

  Lucas’s fists tightened into white knuckled knots. He studied the ridges and valleys of his closed fist, the contours of his aggression. He thought of Duvall’s mouth again, longing to close it forever with a single well swung blow.

  His one good foot idly muddied the carefully scrawled name.

  I will conjure, Lucas thought. I will carve your name in the dirt and scratch it out a thousand times. You will feel it, the whole night long.

  Lucas beat the ground, wielding the crutch like a club, mangling earth and name until an unearthed root snagged at the crude weapon, tearing it from his grasp. He sat and panted like a winded hound over the damage he’d wrought.

  It was not enough.

  3

  The bucket spoke.

  Do you know where your man is, white woman?

  Tamsen looked towards the door.

  You can’t see him, can you?

  Silence.

  I betcha Duvall can see him.

  Silence.

  I betcha he’s watching your man right now, just a’staring down that musket barrel.

  Silence.

  You’re gonna die, white woman, die in flame, die in snow.

  Tamsen walked towards the fire.

  You’re gonna…

  With deliberate ease Tamsen picked up the bucket and poured its contents onto the floor and then she fed the wooden bucket into the fire, smiling as she did so.

  “I am done with listening,” Tamsen said.

  4

  End over end, round and about, Lucas wound the smaller cord about the neck of the rope.

  He was weaving a noose.

  The hemp felt good in his hand, hard and dry and solid. He’d always admired the simple wizardry of the men who knew knots. On board the Kronos he’d sat night after night, his Bible propped before him, a rope in his hands, practicing the knots he coaxed from the men he saw using them.

  He’d learned this particular knot from an old Russian sailor named Ivanov who had claimed to have been an executioner for the Czar himself. Lucas suspected Ivanov to be guilty of stretching a bit more truth than necks, but he never knew for certain.

  “I remember my first drop just like it was yesterday,” the old Russian once told him. “A youth who stole another man’s horse. Someone else was found knifed to death nearby and through due course the boy was blamed for both. The local magistrate pronounced him guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging and asked me to perform the necessary duty.”

  “At the time I thought of it as a lark,” Ivanov said. “After several trials and errors I fashioned a noose and threw it over a convenient branch, measuring by eye rather than stick.”

  Lucas remembered how grey Ivanov had looked as he told this story.

  “It was too bad the boy was so long in the shanks,” Ivanov said. “He stood higher than most horses. I should have given the matter entirely more thought. It haunts me to this day.”

  Then he looked a long time up towards the masts of the ship before continuing his tale.

  “The branch was too low,” he went on. “Or maybe I just left a little too much slack in the rope. Whatever the reason, when the boy dropped, his toes struck ground.”

  “What happened then?” Lucas asked.

  “He stood there, toe dancing in the dirt, his neck strained painfully backwards, shouting each time his broken toes danced and bent, his wrists still bound, the noose hard and firm about his neck.”

  “What did you do?” Lucas asked.

  “What else do men do? We debated,”
Ivanov explained. “Some said cut him down and try again with a shorter rope. Some said that was too cruel. Some said we should pull the rope higher, but leverage and friction would not allow for it. A few said shoot him and be done with it.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Ivanov shrugged.

  “The magistrate, whose word was our god, said the boy was sentenced to be hung and needed to be hung so that was that.”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “Someone fetched a shovel. We took turns digging beneath the boy’s feet. All the while his legs grew straighter, his feet kicked wildly, until at last the hole was deep enough and the rope bore the strain. The boy’s face turned blackish, his eyes began to pop, and eventually he gave up his ghost to heaven or hell, whichever would hold him.”

  Ivanov shook his head philosophically.

  “Then I had my bright idea.”

  He spat and to Lucas’s ears the spittle had hissed upon the deck like a snake.

  “We would dig his grave where the dirt was softest, where our shovels had already done their work. The man whose property the tree was on didn’t like that idea. So we dragged his carcass out to a swamp. I went through his pockets for my pay and claimed his jacket as my fee. We buried him in the swamp, where the ground was soft and easy to dig. We could have thrown him in the water, I suppose, but we didn’t want to poison it with dead meat.”

  Lucas finished the noose. It slipped easily and the break knot was of the desired thickness. He coiled the rope about his arm and picked up his axe. He honestly didn’t know what help the rope would be but he needed something more than the axe.

  He decided he would find Duvall and hang him. He would hang him from his precious tree and perhaps from a very low branch.

  “Too bad I don’t have a shovel,” he whispered into the darkness.

  5

  The fire was a comfort to her.

  Didn’t the dead deserve comfort? Prayers must be said, hymns must be sung, and above all else there must be comfort in the passage to the grave.

  The fire spoke.

  He thinks he knows.

  Shut up, she thought, and the fire obeyed. At least the winter should afford her a safety of sorts from Duvall. Surely the man would need to find cover, to sleep out the winter like a bear. Or at least, like a deer, he would be too busy finding something to eat.