Beneath the Trees

by Laurel Saville

  Gene’s dogs were hovering and sniffing around the tailgate of her truck. She reached into a cooler and tossed each dog a hunk of moose. Then she went into the dark barn and found a hand truck. She off-loaded the coolers and wheeled them into a nearby shed, with Gene hobbling along behind her. There were two freezers there, wrapped with chains and a lock. Gene removed the chains, and they transferred the meat, hosed off the coolers, and returned them to the truck.

  “Sit a minute?” he asked.

  It was rare for Gene to ask for company. He lived off the grid in a variety of ways, and he didn’t like people nosing around his patch of property or asking questions about how he acquired enough money to keep himself in dry gas for his vehicles and twelve-packs for his spirits. If he was asking her to stay, this meant there was something he needed or wanted to discuss, and it was likely he’d take a circuitous route to get to whatever it was. Colden nodded and joined him on the porch. Gene sat in a battered rocker, and Colden sat on the edge, swinging her legs in the emptiness. They stared up at the blue sky, swept with streaks of wispy clouds.

  “Won’t have many more days like this,” Gene observed.

  “Nope. Sure won’t,” Colden said.

  They listened to the dogs cracking bones.

  “How’s things going out there?” Gene waved his arm vaguely toward the wall of woods that was no more than fifty feet away from any of the walls of his home. “Find your Sasquatch yet?”

  “Nope, not yet,” Colden said. “He break into your shed lately?”

  “Nope. Last time I got a good shot off. Scared him a bit, I ’spect.”

  “Scared Lucy pretty good, too, it seems.” Colden had noticed that the dog would not follow her into the shed like the other dogs did.

  “Something spooked her good, that’s for sure. Weren’t me.”

  “Steal more gas?”

  “Nope,” Gene answered. “Not this time.”

  Last time she’d been here, Gene had claimed that a half-full gas can had gone missing, but she didn’t see how he could possibly keep track of what he did and didn’t have in the chaos of machinery parts, broken-down snowmobiles and ATVs, miscellaneous power tools, and other detritus that littered his outbuildings.

  They sat in the long, low light of early evening, listening to the dogs licking their paws. Colden tried to surreptitiously look around the yard. The woodpile seemed big enough to get Gene through most of the winter. The freezers had plenty of game, even before she added the moose meat. The dogs seemed healthy and well fed. She’d learned to make these discreet observations from watching her father do it. Anytime she visited people with him, she’d noticed his eyes flitting over this and that, assessing what might need fixing, how prepared the people and place were for whatever season was coming next. Then, as they’d leave, she’d listened to him muttering his little concerns: hope they have enough oil because there’s not enough firewood to get them through the season; that dog was scratching an awful lot, needs some flea treatment; corner of the barn going to need a jack . . . These were not complaints or criticisms coming from her father but more of a to-do list. Things he’d keep an eye on and fix if whomever they were visiting didn’t or couldn’t do it themselves. Colden glanced over at Gene’s scrap pile. There were fewer old cars and appliances in it than he’d had in the past. It was getting harder for him to do that kind of repair work. There was also less need for it. Fewer and fewer things could be fixed with a wrench or screwdriver these days. Everything contained and required a computer to run. Gene didn’t even have a phone.

  “How’s the scrap business?” she asked.

  “Good enough.”

  “How are your other business interests?”

  “None of your business interest,” Gene answered. “What I grow is only for personal and medicinal consumption.”

  “OK. Well then, how are you feeling these days?”

  “Also none of your business.”

  Colden glanced over at the band of skin showing between the bottom of Gene’s pants and the flattened heel of his shoes. No swelling. Normal color. Just some reddening from broken veins.

  “Stop it, Colden,” Gene said.

  “Just checking.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You weren’t this spring.”

  She’d found him stuck in a corner of the barn, one of his legs twisted beneath him, unable to get up, with no one near to call for help. She’d come because Buck was running on the main road, barking frantically at every passing car. Of which there were only a few. Finally, someone stopped and called the local police. Who called her father. Who knew the dog and came over with Colden. Because Gene had broken his back when he fell from a roof years ago, he hadn’t even felt the sprain in his leg that had happened when he stumbled off a rickety stool he was using to reach for something on a high shelf that day. He also had diabetes. He wasn’t exactly what the doctors referred to as “compliant” in his treatment.

  “I’m too ornery to die,” Gene said. “God don’t want me.”

  Colden sighed.

  “Chemtrails,” Gene said, gesturing upward with his chin toward a dissipating white line bisecting the sky.

  “Vapor trails,” Colden said, shaking her head.

  “That’s what they want you to believe, girl.

  “They, Gene? Who’s this ‘they’ you’re always referring to?”

  “You know who they are. You go down to Albany. It’s full of politicians and lawyers and executives. Those dudes. They’re seeding the sky with chemicals that thin the atmosphere. They’re doing it bit by bit, and eventually, it will destabilize things so much that those guys in the Middle East can take over.”

  “Where’d you hear that, Gene? Some late-night cable TV guy?”

  Gene shook his head. “I don’t have TV.”

  He used to.

  “Got rid of the damn thing,” Gene continued. “Didn’t want the government spying on me. Radio is good enough. Better.”

  Colden didn’t know if he actually believed these conspiracy theories or just spouted off to try to get a rise out of her. He didn’t get much company. There were a few old coots who stopped by from time to time. Most, or maybe all, of his family was long gone. Generations of them had lived and died out here, scattered in many small towns throughout the Adirondacks. He was the last of a dying breed of mountain man.

  Colden had been inside his cabin only once. She’d poked her face in through the door, looking for him. She was surprised to see the walls lined with shelving and stacked milk crates full of books and journals. She’d asked her dad about it. He’d told her that Gene had gone to college. A good one. Somewhere Ivy League or almost Ivy League. Had gotten a scholarship. Then an internship. People had stepped up to help him because he was smart and capable. But something happened out there. Meaning away from the mountains. Heartbreak or disillusionment or some sort of setback. Maybe he just didn’t want to assimilate to the way the rest of the world worked. He was not a nine-to-five, much less an eight-to-seven, sort of guy. He’d quit whatever job he’d had and taken off, hitchhiking and train jumping. Had a bunch of adventures he used to talk about and several he never discussed. Ended up in Canada, got arrested on a small drug charge, and was sent home.

  Some relative gave him this dank piece of land with nothing but an old hunting camp on it. He kept adding to it, using mostly duct tape and bailing wire, until he got it to basically the shape and size it was now, about eight hundred square feet, with no right angles in the whole place. He was a handyman, hunting guide, scrap dealer, taxidermist. Sold so-called antiques on the roadside. Had a hot-dog stand for a bit. Almost died a couple of times, like in the fall from the roof that broke his back. Just about froze to death in a snowmobile accident that took the tips of a couple of fingers and toes. People dropped off stuff for him to sell, old pallets for him to cut up for his woodstove, an extra deer haunch. He had a big garden. He made moonshine. Grew and sold a little pot. Painkillers, he called the rotgut and weed. People t
ook care of him as he allowed them to, and no one needed to make much mention of it any further.

  Sometimes, Colden wanted to know what he had studied, what his earlier life had been like, what words were on the spines and inside the books piled up indoors. But she would never ask him. There would be embarrassment, maybe even pain in those stories. He had enough physical aches as it was. She would not add others to his burden. It was enough to know that people were not often what they seemed. Or at least had not always been what they were now. She had learned from her parents to accept people for who they were and never underestimate who they might have been.

  “Sasquatch. Chemtrails. Spies. You have an incredible imagination, Gene,” she said fondly. “You should write a damn book. You’d make big money.”

  “What would I want big money for? What when I’ve got paradise right here,” he said, gesturing with an outstretched hand.

  “Impossible to argue that point, Gene,” she conceded.

  “You’re a scientist,” Gene said.

  Colden nodded.

  “You’re getting your Post Hole Digger degree.”

  “Working on it.”

  “Point being, Miss Almost-Got-Three-Letters-after-Her-Last-Name, point being, as you know, as you’re staking your career on, there is much out there yet to be discovered. There are many things we don’t know or understand. Many things yet to be explained.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I like to wonder about things,” Gene said. “I like to think there are still plenty of surprises out there.”

  “Me too,” she said. “Me too.”

  Gene shuffled to his feet, signaling the end of the visit.

  “Tell your father to get his sorry ass out here to see me one of these days,” he said, grabbing for his crutches.

  Colden resisted the urge to stand and get them for him. He’d just wave her away. He’d said what he needed to say, and this was as close as he’d ever get to a direct request for assistance. If he needed a visit from her father, he needed something fixed. He was asking her for help and dismissing her at the same time. The latter took the sting out of the former, for him. She stood, stretched her back, and patted every furry head as she made her way back to her truck. She gave a little wave as she left and looked into her rearview mirror just in time to see the back of his hand pop up over his shoulder before he disappeared inside his book-strewn cabin.

  3.

  Brayden ran. Not to get anywhere, but to get away. To get into the deep quiet of the woods, away from people. Away from mirrors. He hated seeing his own face. The shadows that hung around his eyes, the hangdog set of his jaw. He hated how defeated he’d come to appear. How people’s eyes slid away from him. He felt marked. Like that woman in the book they’d read last year, his junior year, the woman with the A emblazoned on her chest. His mark was nothing so obvious. Nothing with that sort of clarity. Which made it worse. Teachers, people at church—he was convinced they knew something was wrong. They just didn’t know what. And didn’t want to find out, either. They didn’t want to get caught up in something. Or find themselves knowing something they couldn’t do anything about. Didn’t want to do anything about. So he ran until his lungs screamed at him to stop. Like that year he ran track. Then he collapsed and waited for the wilderness to close in around him. For the small sounds of the tiny birds skittering in the leaf litter, the distant call of a loon echoing over a hidden body of water, the harsh hack of a raven splitting the still sky to take up residence inside his own head, and in their improbably insistent way, drown out the other noises that were there, the grunts and coughs, the sighs and moans, the shuffling feet and mumbled apologies.

  4.

  Colden drove into an Albany that was gritty and gray. She had an indistinct and reluctant fondness for this old city, with its odd mash-up of architectural styles, where leafy, tree-lined blocks of Victorian row houses and an ornate, hand-carved stone capitol edifice butted up against a large plaza of brutalist buildings projecting into the empty skies. The highway and its multilayered collection of curving overpasses ran along one side of the Hudson River, brown and stagnant in this in-between season; decrepit factories lined the other shore.

  Colden’s university and nondescript condo were in the vague outskirts of not-quite-suburbia, a few miles from downtown. She didn’t go there. She went directly to the heart of the city, to the State Archives. There was some research she wanted to do. It was not about moose and beaver, her officially sanctioned work—she had a side project, a personal interest, something she had many reasons to keep to herself. She walked down the long, sterile hallway, grateful that she didn’t by chance run into some research colleague who might ask questions about what she was doing there, until she found the room she wanted. It was quiet, the tables and equipment impersonal, the fluorescent lights stark and somehow not particularly illuminating. What she was doing felt illicit, like she was at a cheap motel cheating on a boyfriend. Still, she found and slowly opened the drawers: there they were, canid bones. She carefully removed the skulls of a wolf and a coyote. She spent an hour taking measurements and photos, comparing jaw structure, head shape, teeth patterns. She spent another hour just staring at them, tilting her head and moving around the table to take in every detail, every nuance. She made a mental map of each specimen and tried to sear the image into her brain so that she could call it up later, at will. She was hoping that staring at these skulls would help create concrete connective tissue between the hazy bunch of impressions and inchoate ideas that had nestled in various parts of her brain, like small animals waiting for a warm day to come out and play. She imagined the coyote skull covered in flesh and fur; she did the same for the wolf skull. Then she tried to imagine an in-between creature, something that had some of the raw power of the wolf, along with the lithe adaptability of the coyote. She’d never seen such a hybrid, but she’d heard they might exist, way up north, over the border in Canada. She was wondering—in truth, hoping—they might be migrating south.

  She couldn’t confer with anyone she worked with about her suspicions. If other, more prominent scientists, who were better at getting grants and publications than she was, scented on this trail she was exploring and thought it might lead to interesting places, it could be overrun and thereby destroyed. At least for her.

  The spell of the bones was suddenly broken. They’d given her no answers but plenty of interesting questions. It was thrilling to think about something other than the beaver and moose, which had occupied her mind for the last year or so. It was also thrilling, in a world of collaboration, detailed reporting, and lots of checks and balances, to have a secret line of inquiry all her own. She carefully replaced the materials she’d borrowed, packed up her personal belongings, and wandered her way down the anonymous corridors until she found herself back on the street.

  It was late afternoon, in the middle of an early November week, in the midst of a lull before the holiday storm. It was too early for dinner. Ungraded papers from the online course she was teaching awaited her at the office, as did an empty refrigerator at the condo. She wasn’t expected at the department until tomorrow. She felt restless and unsure of what to do with herself, like a bored teenager with a list of chores from Mom.

  Her enthusiasm for her research was starting to feel drowned in the minutiae of data. She’d hoped for big discoveries, but everything she was finding seemed only incremental, like another small layer of stone on top of a wall already built by others. Another beaver moved from its natal home and dammed another stream a few miles away, then was shot by an irate guy from downstate who didn’t want the back field of his summer home flooded. Another moose was plagued by parasites that compromised his health and biting insects that made him run himself ragged in the summer so he couldn’t put on the necessary weight to get through the winter. There was nothing she could do about any of it, except keep collecting more repetitive information. She had to keep going, see the project through, and hope for more, for something sexy and exci
ting that could eventually influence policy, something she increasingly thought would never happen. City people didn’t care about beaver or moose—they were nuisances to be harassed into moving off your own property and something to be avoided on the road. Long hours in the field left her feeling estranged from her department, but she had no desire to spend more time in the office than was absolutely necessary.

  And there was this new guy. Larry. Ick. A full professor who worked long hours and had a creepy vibe. Being around him left her feeling like there was a film of oil on her hands that she couldn’t wash away. Unfortunately, he’d taken an interest in her work—it was well funded and relatively high profile in the department if nowhere else—and she’d need his support to defend her thesis. He was unavoidable. It all felt oppressive.

  But today, he could be dodged. Today, she’d take a walk instead of getting back in her car. She headed up the hill toward the stretch of blocks that held a cluster of boutiques, restaurants, and galleries. She felt a bit clumsy, as if her shoes, accustomed to dirt, were protesting the concrete underfoot. Everything around her seemed a bit shabby. Which was just how she felt—as if she’d forgotten to brush her teeth this morning. She thought back to those dark, predawn hours in her cottage. No, yes, of course, she’d brushed them. Her hair? Probably not, but her teeth, certainly. Colden tried to focus on the Victorian architecture, the intricate details, the wrought-iron gates and fences. But the early commuting cars, the belching buses, the bumping of shoulders when she passed people, the heaved pieces of concrete on the sidewalk, all made her feel awkward and distracted. She thought she’d duck into a gift shop and leave the street behind, but there were two people sitting on the stoop out front, scowling and smoking, and she didn’t want to squeeze past them. Just ahead, at the next corner, was a very busy intersection, with clusters of people padded and invisible behind layers of winter clothing, hanging around the bus shelter, bodega, Indian food restaurant, and ATMs. It seemed vaguely sinister, full of dark potential. She didn’t want to navigate all that, either. Then she saw a sandwich board advertising a coffee shop. That would work. She could use a caffeine hit.