by Jon Cohen
Click.
The switchblade snapped open. The force of thirty-five years of pent-up mechanical tension launched it off the bookcase. Ronnie screamed and ducked. The razor-sharp missile flew by his head and pierced the pillow on his cot. From the wound, something feathery poofed into the air.
“I knew it!” cried Ronnie. Another feather message from Dean!
The feather, tiny and pale, floated about the room.
“I’m here for you, Dean!”
The feather floated down onto the enamel surface of the stove.
What did it mean? Ronnie’s eyes went bright with sudden understanding and alarm. The brand-name of the stove was not Kenmore, not Frigidaire. But Amana.
Amana. He saw the message immediately. All you had to do was add a d for danger, because that’s what she’s in. “Amanda!” Ronnie cried.
When he called out her name, his breath gusted the feather. It lifted off the stovetop, traveled three feet to Ronnie’s left and settled again, atop the keys to his truck that lay on the kitchen counter.
Amanda, danger, truck, go!
He pulled on his clothes and grabbed the truck keys. Then he stopped and eyeballed the feather again. Picked it off the keys and held it close. It wasn’t a feather. It was a piece of polyester fluff. He grabbed up the wounded pillow. Read the label. “Synthetic fill. Synthetic?”
Amanda, danger, truck, go!
What should he do? Was it a Dean message or not?
Wait a minute. Dean didn’t know. That’s it! Dean didn’t know it was a new pillow. I threw out my feather pillow last week.
Go, go, go! Ronnie careened out of the cabin into the night. He jumped in his truck, raced six miles south, down Route 11 and veered onto Maple Road.
Eagle-eyed, he spotted a glimmer of lamplight in the deep forest behind Amanda’s house where there should not have been light. He pulled over. The flame flickered, then as he got closer, it went out.
Hunter and guardian angel, Ronnie slid through the trees, entered the tree house, moved like a shadow across the room and touched Uncle Wade’s switchblade to the sleeping stranger’s throat.
“You so much as twitch, I’ll lop off your nose.”
14
Harry’s eyes opened, his first thought: the grum?
In his one minute of sleep, Harry had begun to dream. The dream was overstuffed, like an indie film—short on plot and long on symbolism. Harry was ten years old. He was wearing Oriana’s red jacket and standing beside the sugar maple, the lone tree in a forest of very tall vending machines filled with golden mini Snickers. Instead of leaves, miniature blue nooses dangled from the branches of the maple. The sky above the vending machine forest churned with red-tailed hawks swooping up helpless lottery tickets, tearing them into shreds that snowed down on little Harry and stuck to his red jacket like tiny Post-it notes. The sugar maple shuddered and the blue nooses began to sway. Something approached. Growls, grunts, vending machines toppling. Harry tried to run, but he was up to his neck in shredded lottery tickets.
“I am the grum,” came a voice, rumbly and low. It was just the sort of voice you’d expect from a grum. Harry couldn’t see the creature, but he could smell its beery breath and its potent BO.
When the grum spoke again, its voice had changed into a mountain twang. “You so much as twitch, I’ll lop off your nose.”
Something cold touched Harry’s throat, and his eyes opened to a strange man leaning over him in the moonlit dark. Harry didn’t cry out because he thought he was still dreaming. Dream-like, the grum had entered the tree house. Very undream-like, though, the grum was wearing a scruffy John Deere cap.
Harry snapped fully awake. As commanded, he did not twitch, though he did shift an eyeball. He saw that the intruder was holding a large pot, backward, the tip of the pot handle pressed to Harry’s Adam’s apple.
“Lop off my nose?” Harry whispered, hoping that a whisper didn’t count as a twitch.
Ronnie’s eyes flicked to the pot in his hand. When he’d entered the tree house, weaponless, he had grabbed the first object within reach.
“Supposed to be a knife,” he said.
In his haste to rescue Amanda, Ronnie had forgotten Uncle Wade’s switchblade. As always, Ronnie was lacking.
But wait, that’s not true. Knife or pot, he’d caught himself a forest creeper. The situation we have here, Ronnie decided, was not lacking, but a complete and total success. He unslumped his posture and proclaimed, “I am the Protector. The Guardian. The Hunter.”
“I’m Harry Crane,” Harry said. “And you are scaring the bejesus out of me.”
Ronnie blushed with pleasure and grinned. “I am?” Caught himself. Scowled. “You got reason to be scared, creeper.” He raised the pot high into the air.
“Goddamn it, Ronnie!” came a powerful voice from the woods.
A pounding up the spiral stairs. Amanda burst into the room. Ronnie stood frozen in the glare of her flashlight, pot in the air like Liberty holding her torch.
He put a hand to his eyes and squinted. “Not on me. Shine it on the cot, Amanda!”
He pointed behind himself with the pot. There was a light bony bonk as the pot made contact.
“Ow, shit,” said Harry in the shadows.
Amanda brought the light full onto Harry. He sat up in the cot and rubbed the side of his head.
“Ronnie, you hit him.”
“Didn’t mean to.” Ronnie squinted at Harry. “He’s got Band-Aids all over him.”
“I know, Ronnie. I put them there.” Amanda stepped over to the cot and shined the light on Harry’s scalp, felt for a bump. “You’re okay,” she said. Then added, “Wasn’t sure you’d be coming back.”
“I had a bunch of things to do down in Scranton,” Harry said. “Branch office meetings. Getting supplies.”
Ronnie gawked. Searching her fingers through his hair? Getting supplies down in Scranton? “What the fuck?” he said.
Amanda turned to him. “Ronnie Wilmarth. What if I’d had Oriana here?”
“I never curse in front of Oriana.”
“I cursed in front of Oriana,” said Harry from the cot. “I’m not used to being around kids.”
“He knows Oriana?” Ronnie said.
Naturally, the protective reach of Ronnie’s guardian-angelship extended to Oriana. He raised the pot. The creeper gets bonked again for cursing in front of a child.
Amanda snatched the pot from him. “Go over there and light the lamp, will you, please.”
Ronnie huffily followed orders. A match flared. A thought dawned. “Hey, how’d you know I was here?”
“Your truck. You come down a road like World War III.”
The distinctive sputter and cough of his pickup had awakened her. What gives, Ronnie coming by at midnight? He came late sometimes, to work on the woodpile, but this was way late. When his truck went silent well short of her house, she jumped out of bed. Ronnie was an excellent hunter, and there was no doubt he had somehow detected Harry in the tree house. Why had she not foreseen this possibility?
Ronnie chuckled. “Yeah, need to tend to that muffler. And the alternator. And manifold.”
“You should just shoot it. Be a mercy killing.”
“Or hit it over the head with a big pot,” offered Harry.
Ronnie narrowed his eyes and stepped toward him. “Who is he? What’s going on, Amanda?”
She had been pondering the best way to deflect Ronnie. She decided to appeal to his base instincts. “You know how you’re not a big fan of the government?”
“Got that right.”
“And you know how you feel like you own these woods?”
“’Course I own them. So do you. We been traipsing these woods forever.”
Harry eased his pants off a chair, wiggled into them under the sheets and stood beside Amanda
. “This really the best way to introduce me?” he murmured.
Ronnie looked at him askance.
“Show him your badge,” Amanda said to Harry.
Badge? Ronnie quickly considered his multitude of sins, specifically the ones in the “illegal” column. He flicked his eyes to the tree house door, estimating time and distance.
“It’s an ID, not a badge,” Harry said. He fished it out of his wallet and handed it to Amanda who handed it to Ronnie.
Ronnie held it in the light of the kerosene lamp. “Department of Agriculture. Forest Service. Harold F. Crane.”
Amanda spotted the green-and-white Forest Service cap hanging on a hook on the door. She got it and put it on Harry’s head. Nodded approvingly.
Ronnie glanced from the ID to the cap. His look was less approving.
“Yep. Forest Service,” Amanda said. “Meaning, he’s not an intruder. Meaning, this is his land.”
“Don’t own it, just manage it,” Harry interjected.
“Good as owns, Ronnie,” Amanda said. “He’s here to work the woods. Do tree counts, measure things. Take soil samples. You know, manage.”
Ronnie assessed Harry’s bumps and bruises. “Looks like something managed him.”
“I fell from a tree,” Harry said. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a crinkled golden wrapper. “Saw one of these glittering in a knothole. Didn’t know what it was, so I climbed up to see.”
Ronnie’s face went red and his jaw clenched. “That’s for Dean. That’s sacred candy.” The Department of Agriculture eating a little girl’s candy—governmental intrusion at its most criminal.
Amanda said, “It’s not sacred anymore, Ronnie, it’s trash littering the forest.”
“Trash? Well, just how does Oriana feel about that?”
“She’s been cleaning it up.”
“What? Because why?”
“Because it got a federal employee hurt, because she’s over her candy phase and because he’s doing us a kindness.”
Harry tightened and looked away. Over her candy phase. Well, yes, he thought, that was true. Oriana had left the candy phase, but she had entered the grum phase. Which was a secret Amanda did not know.
“Can you keep a secret?” Amanda said.
Harry looked at her, startled that she had read his mind. He was about to answer, not certain what he would say. But it was Ronnie she had addressed.
“No,” Ronnie said. “Secrets kind of well up inside of me and push to get out.”
“Okay, let’s try this. Are you my guardian angel?”
“Absolutely. And Oriana’s.”
He narrowed his eyes at the Snickers wrapper in Harry’s hand, glittering in the lamplight.
“Okay. Then here’s another way you can be our guardian angel. You know money’s tight, right? And how your venison’s a big help. And the turkey.”
“No big deal. Just a little meat and a few gobblers.”
“Well, you know we appreciate it. But now, Ronnie, let me ask you this,” she said, tossing him the easiest question in the world. “If a sack of money fell at your feet, would you keep it?”
“Hell, yeah.”
“Okay. So, this tree house is against the law. And here’s the kindness Harry’s doing for us. He’s letting us keep it. And here’s the money part. He’s renting it for a month.”
Harry did a double take. “Wait. The deal was three weeks,” he said.
She turned to him with a sweet smile. “A month. I mean, I did just rescue you from a pot-wielding maniac.”
Now Ronnie began to smile, too. He loved this angle, as Amanda was certain he would. Extracting money from the feds. “Knife-wielding maniac,” he said. “You want me to go get Uncle Wade’s switchblade, Amanda?”
She looked to Harry. “Does he need to go get Uncle Wade’s legendary switchblade?”
“Aren’t switchblades illegal?” Harry said.
“Goddamn, is that what everything is to you, legal or illegal?” Ronnie said. “Candy, tree houses, forests and knives. You’re Mr. Rule and Regulation, is what you are.”
“Point taken,” Harry said. “I don’t need to see your knife. And I am more than happy to rent this place for a month.”
“All right, then,” Ronnie said.
“Shake hands, men,” Amanda said.
Ronnie had to think about it. “I never shook the hand of government before.”
“Ronnie,” warned Amanda. “Be civil.”
Harry offered his hand.
Ronnie fidgeted, reached for Harry’s hand, scrunched his face and quickly jerked his hand back. “Soft as a baby’s ass. You don’t have calluses where you come from?”
“I spend a lot of time in front of a computer.”
“Figuring out ways to steal candy from children?”
Off Amanda’s glare, Ronnie reached for Harry’s hand again and shook it properly. “All right, candy man. Forgiven.”
“Good,” Harry said. “And while I’m out here in the forest, I’ll work on toughening up my skin.”
“You work on not falling out of trees,” said Ronnie.
By the time he left, Ronnie felt spiritually lighter. Literally: Dean’s ever-hovering spirit had receded some. Ronnie smiled as he moved through the night trees. He and Amanda had straightened out the forestry guy pretty good. Dean would be especially proud of Amanda. Yeah, she had that Harry Crane under control. Tricking him into paying more rent. Ronnie laughed as he started up his truck. There was not a man in Susquehanna County she could not trounce, even federal ones with fancy IDs.
* * *
Amanda and Harry stood at the triangular window, looking out into the dark of the woods. Among the call of whip-poor-wills and the hoot of owls was the receding congested sputter of Ronnie’s truck.
“He’s quite a protective guy,” Harry said.
“Ronnie can be very Ronnie sometimes. Won’t happen again, he’ll be good.”
“I don’t know that he really meant to kill me.”
“No, he’s not much of a killer, unless you have antlers or you gobble.”
They were standing at the window a foot or two apart. When they spoke, it was to each other’s reflection in the glass. It was an easier way to talk.
She tapped the glass with a finger. “All right, so ask your question.”
“I don’t have a question.”
“Sure you do. Same one I’d be asking: What the heck’s going on? All this crazy nonsense, right?”
He spoke to Amanda’s reflection, cautiously. “I dropped in out of nowhere. Stirred things up.”
“You didn’t stir anything up. You fell from that tree into the middle of a bunch of prestirred nonsense. And let me tell you, I have nonsense-fatigue, big-time,” Amanda said. “I’ve reached my year’s limit for nonsense, sneaky-ass behavior and made-up stories.” Meaning, Ronnie, Cliff and Oriana, in that order.
And what she liked about this guy, this Harry Crane, this bland, levelheaded bureaucrat who understood rules and regulations, was that he was not going to complicate her life. In fact, he would uncomplicate it. Because he was going to straighten out this forest, drain it of every ounce of enchantment. The process had already begun. The sacred candy was sacred no longer. Oriana had filled two trash bags.
Harry felt unsteady, as if the tree house had shifted under him. Amanda Jeffers hated nonsense. She could not have been more clear. And here he stood, the living, breathing embodiment of nonsense, made-up stories and sneaky-ass lies.
His ID badge might as well read: Harold F. Liar, Department of Fabrication and Falsehood, because from the moment he fell from the sugar maple and stood before this woman, he had spouted a steady stream of lies and stories. He was Lord of the Lies. But only because he had to be. Right?
He lied because it would keep him in the woods. And
that was his sole mission. If Amanda had seen the noose, knew the crazy truth, she’d have booted him right out of the forest.
And from that first lie—that he was here working for the Forest Service—the nonsense had escalated to a degree that would make her head explode.
Oriana thinking he was a grum—Harry squinted at the window, his reflection distorted by the flickering flame of the kerosene lamp. He leaned closer. Were his ears pointy? Was that hair sprouting from his face? Did Amanda see the truth of him? He touched his cheek. And when he did—there was a flash of gold.
“Whoa,” Amanda said. The wedding band gleaming on Harry’s hand. She gripped the windowsill, emotion coloring her cheeks. “Sorry. Your ring—kind of caught me off guard.”
She slowly raised her own left hand, looked at its reflection in the window, touched the bare third finger. “It still feels strange, not having a ring there. My finger feels weightless. It sort of floats there on my hand, untethered.”
She glanced at Harry’s reflection. Shook her head, flustered. “Listen to me, spouting like a poet. And all I mean to say is my husband died. Which I’m pretty sure you guessed. A year ago. Phfft, fell over dead in a field. No poetry in that.”
“I’m sorry,” Harry said.
He’d slid his own left hand out of sight behind his back. His thumb traced back and forth over his wedding band. It felt enormously heavy. Because it, too, was one of his lies. A very heavy lie.
“No, hey,” Amanda said. “I wanted to explain things, is all. Ronnie hovering. And Oriana missing her father, full of wild talk, acting out, working through her feelings. Like you say, you dropped into the middle of things, so I wanted you to understand the situation. It can get, you know, a little overwhelming.” Amanda shivered. “Not that I can’t handle it. I’m a nurse, people die. Life’s not fair. All that stuff.” She looked away, embarrassed. “I am talking way too much. And it’s way late. I just wanted to clear the air.”
