The Memory Tree

by John R. Little

  The surprise must have shown on my face, since I knew Julie was fictitious. “Go on.”

  “She never said anything about the father. She was only seventeen. Mrs. Williamson was horrified. These things didn’t happen back then. This was 1954, remember.

  “Claire was sent to visit her aunt in Great Falls. Stayed with her till the baby was born. As the time grew near, Mrs. Williamson wrestled with herself and decided she wanted the baby here in Nelson. She asked me and Jimmy to adopt the baby.”

  My parents adopted Claire’s daughter? I was getting more confused, not less.

  “What happened?”

  “We did take him.”

  “Him?”

  “Sammy.” She put out the remains of her cigarette. “My Sammy is Claire’s son. Claire’s bastard son from that monster. Mrs. Williamson would never have allowed us to adopt him if she knew.”

  My whole world had been turned upside down with just a couple of sentences. I felt dizzy, light-headed.

  I was adopted, and my biological parents were Bob and Claire.

  How could that be?

  But of course I knew exactly how it could be. My mother had just told me.

  The beer I got this time was for me. I faced away from Marie to hide the shock that must have been written all over my face.

  Finally, I turned back to her. She was talking, and I had missed part of what she had said. “ -- name him.”

  “What? What did you say?”

  “I said that Claire wanted to name him. I thought that would be too awkward, so we compromised. I named him Samuel after my father, but Claire gave him his middle name, Julian.”

  Julian. Julie.

  I was Julie.

  “Why did you adopt Sam?” Somehow, this still didn’t make as much sense as I wanted it to. “You already had a son. Marty.”

  “Yes, yes, we had a son. And I guess some would wonder why we took Sammy. I fought Jimmy about it. He didn’t want Sammy. Not one bit.” She laughed. “Hell, he didn’t want Marty, either. Just wanted to poke me and screw the consequences.” She fidgeted with the frill on her dress. “That was a very long time ago.

  “But, I wanted Sammy. I guess it was just knowing what Claire and I shared, the terrible horrors we had both experienced. It was a kinship that went beyond family. I just had to help her.”

  I no longer felt anger for my mother. All I felt was pity. “Marie, I think maybe you should leave now.”

  She quickly took me up on my offer, glanced out the window of the door and then scooted out without another word.

  Chapter 45

  “Bob Collingwood, please,” I said.

  The receptionist looked bored. She had a nest of ratty blonde hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. When I entered the front door of City Hall, she was reading a paperback she hid as I walked toward her. I could see it partially sticking out from under some paper on the side of her desk and recognized it as a Harlequin Romance.

  “Do you have an appointment?” she asked. She picked up a leather-bound notepad and started to scan it.

  “No, but I need to see him.”

  She glanced down the hall to her right, and that was enough for me. I started to walk in that direction.

  “Hey, you can’t do that.”

  “Sure I can. Go back to your book.”

  She didn’t follow, not that I cared one way or the other. There was no way she could have stopped me.

  Several offices lined one side of the corridor. Each had a bronze-colored nameplate.

  Bob Collingwood was the third door down. I looked in and saw him. It felt weird because the last time I had seen him, he was dead, his throat slit from the carving knife in my hand.

  Weird. But then it was only one more weird thing in a summer long festival of the weird.

  He was leaning back in a swivel chair, one leg crossing the other, holding a black telephone up to one ear. I took a moment to collect my thoughts. I hadn’t really had a close look at him earlier, and now I looked to see the face of the monster from my youth.

  He was obese, at least 300 pounds, maybe a lot more. It was hard to tell when he was sitting down. His hair was light brown, just like mine, and he had it slicked back with some kind of goop. He wore a three-piece black suit with a red tie. The vest wasn’t buttoned.

  In my time, if Bob had wandered down Pike Street in Seattle, everybody would laugh at the old fool. He just looked like a faded businessman from the forties, and even here in 1968 he looked like a failed anachronism. A relic, lost in time.

  “Get off the phone,” I said.

  He finally noticed me, and I saw a frown form. He hesitated a minute and then said into the phone, “I’ll have to call you back, love. Give me a few minutes. Right. Bye.”

  He took his time hanging up the phone and then snapped his head up.

  “Who are you? You can’t just come in here without an appointment.”

  “I can.” I moved closer, leaning on his desk. He smelled like he hadn’t showered for a week. “My name is Sam Johnson. I live next door to Jimmy and Marie Ellis.”

  Those names got his attention, and he waited for me to continue.

  “Let’s get one thing straight,” I said. “I am not here to negotiate. You are going to do three things for me.”

  This got him to smirk. “Listen, Mister. I don’t know who you are, but if you got any complaints about the way the City is being run, I suggest you put it in writing and send copies to the Mayor and all Councilmen. You don’t just barge in and think I’m going to do something.”

  He stood up to face me. He was shorter than I remembered. Three or four inches shorter than me. He started to button up his vest.

  “Listen, you fucker,” I said. “This has nothing to do with the City. This is about you fucking little boys and girls. This is about your fucking miserable life. If you care about living past the end of today, you’d better goddamn well listen. And you’d better goddamn follow through on my three demands.”

  He moved around the desk and went to shut his door. This was not a conversation he wanted the dumb receptionist to overhear.

  Bob shook his head. His eyes pierced into me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Johnson, but you’re way off base here. I’d appreciate it if you left my office right now.”

  I had a large brown paper bag with me that I put on his desk. I opened it and took out a sheath of paper, tossing it at him.

  “I have two other copies of this,” I said. “This one is your own personal version.”

  He reluctantly looked at the notes I had written out. It started with him raping Marie, then Claire. The comments I had gleaned from my father about the others. But most of the eight pages of notes covered what he had done to Little Sam that summer. Details of the barbaric acts he had performed on me and had me perform on him.

  His face drained of color as he read my notes. “How the hell . . . ?”

  I didn’t say anything, just wanting to be sure he understood everything I had written. It had been hard to write it all down, but I had forced myself the night before. There were details in there nobody could mistake, including the running sore on Bob’s penis. When he got to that part, he snapped the papers down to his desk.

  “What do you think you’re doing here?”

  “I told you. You’re going to do three things for me. If you don’t, one copy of that is going to the Times-Record for them to publish, and the other one is going to the State Police. Not the local cronies you have in your back pocket.”

  He moved around the desk and sat back down in his chair.

  “What do you want?”

  I held out three fingers. “One. You will never touch another child. You will stay away from Sam forever. You will never, ever be alone with another kid. If I see you just once, I’ll fucking well kill you. You understand?”

  “Go on.”

  “Two. You will send ten thousand dollars to this address by the close of business today.” I handed him a s
heet of paper. It had Marty’s address in Canada.

  “Who’s this going to?”

  “None of your fucking business. Send it in cash.” I leaned over the desk again. “You have no power here anymore, you asshole. The game is over. If you don’t follow through on my rules, your life is over. Do you fucking understand?”

  He didn’t answer. I walked around the desk and grabbed his tie, pulling him up from his chair. “Do you fucking well understand I am going to ruin your life if you do not follow my rules to the letter?”

  He nodded and I pushed him back to his seat.

  “What’s the third thing?”

  I told him the third thing he had to do. It was the easiest of the three, so I knew he’d agree to it immediately. When he did, I handed him the last item from my paper bag. Claire’s Remembrance Diary.

  “I will be watching you the rest of your life. You’ll never know where I am. But, I swear to you if you don’t follow through on these orders, you are a dead man.”

  I marched out of his office.

  Chapter 46

  The baseball diamond was empty, and I knew Little Sam wasn’t at his house, since I had seen him leave earlier in the day. The best shot was the library, and my hunch paid off when I saw him sitting alone at a long wooden table in the science section. He always sat alone.

  “Whatcha reading?”

  He looked up at me, a bit startled after being engrossed in the book. He carefully marked his page and closed it, then held it up to show me. “It’s about Mars.”

  “Any good?”

  He looked back at the cover. It showed an artist’s conception of Mars, a reddish brown planet with white ice caps and a network of dark lines joining various parts of the surface.

  Canals. Flowing water. Maybe something still living there. Faint memories of the book flashed through my mind.

  “It’s okay,” Little Sam said. “Seems a bit out of date, though, I think.”

  “Ah, well, you’ll still learn a lot from it.”

  “You read books like this?”

  “All the time. I love to read. Hey, remember that first time I met you in Crippling Park and you were reading 2001?”

  “Sure.”

  “Funny thing,” I tried to chuckle to show how much an idiot I thought I was. “You must have thought I was a real weirdo, saying I’d read that when I was a kid. It didn’t hit me till later on how that must have sounded, since it’s a new book.”

  “Yeah, well, how come you said that?”

  “Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001 based on an old short story he wrote a long time ago called ‘The Sentinel.’ That’s what I meant I had read.”

  He smiled at me, and I could see relief crossing his face. “Oh! Now that makes sense.”

  Actually, it didn’t, because the short story was only published in the fifties, still too late for me to have read it as a kid, but he bought it and that’s all that mattered.

  “I’m leaving town today,” I said. “You probably won’t see me again.”

  “Going back to Seattle?”

  “Yes.”

  There was silence between us. I wasn’t sure how to broach the next subject. Finally, I just blurted out, “Things are going to be different now. Bad things come in cycles. Yours is over.” I spoke softly, being careful not to frighten him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I heard about Uncle Bob.” I could see him tense, and I held my hands up to reassure him. “He won’t be bothering you any more. You can go back to the way life was a year ago.”

  I didn’t know if he believed me or not, and ultimately it wouldn’t matter, since he would soon realize Bob was out of his life forever.

  There was more silence and finally I said, “It’s been good knowing you, Sam.”

  He nodded in silence, and I smiled as I left him with his book.

  I walked through downtown, past the beauty shop, the bank, City Hall. Past the coffee shop and Old Man Jones, the grocer who had been the first person I had talked to in 1968. I could see him through the window, leaning on his counter, hoping for a customer to come through the door.

  Main Street was as quiet as I had seen it all summer. A few kids sat on the edge of the sidewalk, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, quietly waiting for any kind of trouble they could find.

  I had one last errand to run. I walked over to Tod Clark’s Pawn Shop. The owner didn’t recognize me at first, but it came back to him quickly enough when I described the ring I had left with him.

  “I hope you still have it,” I said

  “Sure thing. Nobody around here can afford a nice piece like that.” He went to the rear of the store and came back a few minutes later. “Wish I could buy it myself,” he said.

  I slipped the ring onto my finger, feeling it push gently into my flesh, finding its home again. I smiled as I looked at it and paid back the money with a premium of twenty dollars.

  Dark clouds were rolling in from the western horizon. There was a very cool wind blowing, and leaves were pulled off their branches, drawing lazy patterns on the road.

  I walked out of town, past the Welcome to Nelson, population 35,347 sign. Past the last stop light and out into the fields.

  All the corn was harvested. Only rotting stumps remained. It felt like I could see forever above the stalks.

  And finally, I found the sunflowers. The acres and acres of sunflowers where I had originally woken when I had my first dissolving.

  The plants were all dead. The bright yellow flowers were shriveled brown husks that drooped over, fragile corpses. The millions of sunflowers were all now just so many dead scarecrows.

  I found the tree where I had originally awakened, and I sat down beside it. I don’t know how I knew to do this, but it just felt right.

  After an hour or so, I laid down on the ground, and not long after, before the rains hit, I fell asleep.

  Part 9

  Every man’s memory is his private literature.

  Aldous Huxley

  Chapter 47

  The first face I saw when I woke in the hospital was the cranky old nurse who had also been there when I woke from my first dissolving. At first, she didn’t see my eyes open as she stood at the foot of my bed, reading my chart.

  “Can I have some water?” My voice was gravelly and my throat sore. I was well used to the sensation.

  “Well, look who’s come around. Our favorite visitor to these parts.”

  “Water, please.”

  She poured me a glass and put a straw in it, so it would be easier for me to drink. It felt wonderful going down. “Thanks. I want to see Jenny.”

  I could feel my eyes trying to close. I was dead tired and wasn’t going to be able to stay awake for long. Part of that would be the IV. God knows what they were sending through my veins.

  She sat beside me and took my pulse and blood pressure. Then she looked at her watch. “Your wife will be back in about an hour. Daybreak. She’s been here every day and most of every night for you.”

  “Yeah, I knew she would.”

  “Didn’t seem as worried this time, like she knew you’d live through it again. You ask me, I dunno how you do it. This is four now, right?”

  Her tone was softer than the last time I had seen her. She actually looked like she cared. “Yeah. Four. And that’s it.”

  “Guess we’ll be seeing about that.”

  “Guess we will.”

  That’s the last I remember, as I fell back asleep.

  Sunshine flooded the room when I next awoke. Even before I really became fully conscious, I could feel Jenny’s hand holding mine. I squeezed and felt her squeeze back.

  “Sam?”

  I forced my eyes open and looked into her beautiful black face. It seemed like such a long time since I had seen her.

  “I’m back,” I said. “And that was the last time. It’s over.”

  She carefully leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Don’t overdo it,” she said. “We’ll talk when you’re more rested
.”

  “We leave tomorrow,” I said.

  She laughed. “Somehow I knew you’d say that.”

  The following morning, I truly did feel much better. Dr. Kyzer did a once-over on me and admonished me for even considering leaving the hospital, but his words had no effect on me, and with Jenny supporting my decision, he just threw up his hands in frustration and signed my release.

  Jenny helped me dress. I agreed to be taken to the front entrance in a wheelchair, even though I was sure I could walk it on my own.

  My dissolvings were unique as far as I knew. No other patient had anything in common with me, and my recovery was also nothing like a normal recovery. I knew I’d be fine much quicker than made sense, and even the doctors reluctantly agreed I probably knew what I was talking about.

  Jenny drove us home in my Camry. “I’m getting used to driving this,” she said. “Maybe I should buy one for myself.” She looked over at me and laughed. She had always disdained my decision to buy an import.

  “So, tell me the rest of the story.”

  I did. It took the entire drive home and then a couple of hours sitting together on our back deck to get through everything.

  She didn’t say anything more until I was done. “Your parents are Claire and Bob,” she said.

  “My biological parents. Yeah.”

  “Wow.” She poured us each a glass of lemonade. It was a warm, sunny summer afternoon, and the drink was perfect. “Oh, I forgot to tell you! Mel came by.”

  “Mel? What?”

  She smiled and held my hand. “What do you mean ‘What’? Remember Melanie, your best friend? She heard you were in the hospital again. She stayed in your room with me for a while and we got caught up. How long’s it been since we’ve seen her? Couple years?” She seemed to focus on a distant point. I tried to figure out what the hell she was talking about.

  Mel was dead.

  But . . .

  No, she wasn’t. Not any longer.

  I found my newly grown memories. Mel was never killed the summer of ’69. She never went missing, never was found stabbed to death.