Angelina's Oak

by Jesse Reiss

Angelina's Oak

  by

  Jesse F. K. Reiss

  Copyright 2012 by J. F. K. Reiss

  Cover design and layout by Chris Shelton

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used ficticiously.

  For Mom

  Table of Contents

  Mary

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Balfour

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Thomas

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  André

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Tyoo-Rut

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Mary

  Los Angeles: July 14, 1967

  “Paint me like a flower!” Mary Goldman said with a giggle, using her colorful headband to pull her beaded blonde hair back into a ponytail and pin it on top of her head.

  Her friend, Hanie Rosemond, chuckled at the idea. She tipped the lid off from a near empty paint can and stuck her head into it, breathing deep. “Gonna make you sparkle like a rose,” she slurred.

  Rick Carmichael smiled and put down his guitar and beer bottle. This would be fun, he thought. He stumbled over to Hanie to help take the lids off the other paint cans.

  It was early morning and none had slept a wink. Last night they climbed the mountain above the city to the Hollywood sign where they painted bright purple, yellow and red petals on each letter ‘O’ in ‘WOOD’. The tall letters had graffiti covering them from artists and vandals over the years and their work only added to the mess. Before the sun rose to reveal their work for the city to see, they had crossed over the side of Lee Mountain and come up on Hollywood Mountain where they stopped under the canopy of a large oak tree. There they celebrated their work by laying out a blanket, lighting some incense and singing folk songs while Rick strummed his guitar. He had enhanced the mood further with acid and alcohol, hoping one of the two would soon drop into some cannibalistic urge of lust and fall for him.

  Mary gleefully removed her tie-dyed sleeveless shirt and pulled down her cutoffs so she was standing in her underwear, with elation on her face. She had dark rings around her dilated and misty eyes. She was emaciated and her skin was pale and pasty from frequent drug use and malnutrition. Seeing her nearly nude, Rick was into it now. He picked up his brush and just as she removed her bra, he started with her chest, covering each breast in purple and red streaks. On her face, legs and abdomen, Hanie painted red and yellow petals. On her back they painted a sunflower bursting out from the spine.

  The two girls had started their summer vacation from college driving a hand-painted VW bug from San Diego up to Los Angeles. They planned to make it all the way up Highway 1 to San Francisco for the Summer of Love concerts, but showed little urgency in any plan that went further than the next day. Rick had met them at the Santa Monica Pier and convinced them it would be exciting to join him in some mischief and primarily as a means to score with one of them. So far neither had shown a particular sexual interest in him, which was starting to annoy him.

  Mary continued to sip from her beer bottle with a cigarette in the corner of her mouth as the artists stumbled around her. The work was crude and nearly unrecognizable, but Mary was enjoying every minute, laughing and giggling. The drugs and alcohol mixed with the bristles and cold paint had pushed her carnal senses to ecstatic heights. She felt herself floating with the colors gently flowing around her. She was able to conjure up wildly distorted images and emotions from her past. Wonder, excitement and fear flowed through her.

  Her two friends stumbled backwards and viewed their creation. Mary looked down at herself and took the last long drag on her cigarette.

  “You’ve made me into Mother Nature!” she cried with gleeful pleasure. She felt glorious. The crash she had been going through yesterday; the melancholy, the despair and rages of unexplained hatred and grief were all magically gone. She couldn’t remember the last time she slept or the last meal she had, but she now felt invincible.

  “That’s my girl!” Hanie said, nodding approval at Mary.

  Mary pulled her shorts back up and threw her t-shirt back over her head, smearing the paint around. She climbed onto the tree’s bough and lifted herself up to the next one. “Gonna be one with Nature,” she slurred and continued to climb.

  “Be careful,” Rick called to her. “You’re probably not the best climber in your condition.”

  “Me and the tree see each other just fine,” Mary said, not noticing that she had slipped on a branch and scraped her leg, drawing blood. She continued to climb, humming a tune that was playing through her head at full volume. In less than a minute she was thirty feet up and appearing to have enough energy to climb all the way to the top.

  “Mary! You’re stupid to climb up there!” Hanie yelled.

  “You’re stupid for not following me up here!” Mary yelled back. She looked out as the morning sun swept over the Los Angeles basin. “You gotta see this! I can see the whole world from here! There’s our flowers!” she exclaimed, looking back over to the Hollywood sign.

  As she reached out to point, she fell backwards, the tree catching her in its branches as her arms scraped wildly for a grip. She righted herself on the bough again and beamed with pleasure at her friends down below. She didn’t notice the scrapes and blood trickles now running down her arms and back.

  “Mary, you’re bleeding, come down!” Hanie pleaded.

  “Bug off!” Mary said and began to climb further up the tree, singing at full voice.

  “Rick, you gotta go get her,” Hanie said with desperation.

  “You can go get her. I ain’t going up there. I’ll probably fall,” Rick said, his words a slur. His mind was preoccupied with how incompetent he had been at seducing either of them and that he might have to resort to raping one to get any action.

  Then Mary screamed. A loud horrifying scream that echoed off the mountainside and out into the valley below.

  Hanie and Rick looked up. Mary was forty feet up now and standing on a bough, looking at the tree trunk with horror on her face. Two large glistening eyes were staring straight at her.

  Mary began to shake wildly. This was the creature from her night-mares — the cause of her fears and despairs. She had to get away. She looked down at her hands and saw they were covered in blood. The animal had already attacked her! It was killing her now!

  An owl stepped out from a hole, looking at her with its head cocked to one side. It made a friendly cooing sound.

  Sharp, stinging pain from the scrapes on her arms and legs shot up through Mary’s body and she released her grip on the branch, flinging herself off the bough.

  Hanie watched Mary fall headfirst about twenty feet until her head impacted with a large bough, snapping her neck with a crack into an unnatural position. Her body went limp and flipped over, lodging it
self into the branches, like a kite stuck in a tree. She was silent.

  From the point where she had fallen, the owl hopped forward along the bough. It leaned over and looked down at the odd sight of a painted girl dangling lifelessly in the tree.

  “Oh my God!” Hanie screamed, staring up and putting her hands to her mouth as she circled under the tree.

  Blood began to steadily drip down from Mary’s gaping mouth to the ground.

  “I think she’s dead,” Rick said with a frown.

  “Go get help,” Hanie ordered.

  “I’m not going to be the one to get help,” Rick said stubbornly. “They’ll arrest me again.”

  “We can’t leave her in the tree!” Hanie screamed.

  “Then go up and get her.”

  “Yeah, and fall and kill myself like she did!”

  “What the Hell do you wanna do then?”

  “I don’t know!” Hanie screamed back.

  If they went to get help, they’d be arrested for drugs, vandalism and possibly involuntary murder, of which evidence was all over the place. She couldn’t leave her friend in the tree and couldn’t climb up and get her and couldn’t leave to get help. Her head spun and she felt a migraine coming on. She began to cry uncontrollably. She pulled at her hair and wished her thinking wasn’t so clouded.

  Rick was the target! He had convinced them this would be a night of fun and had brought along the alcohol and the drugs. And here he was now, sitting on the ground chugging a beer, oblivious to any responsibility for the chaos he had caused.

  Her anger boiled to a rage and she leapt at him in hysterics, clawing and screaming. She scraped her nails over his face and hands as his deadened mind got over the shock of the attack and fought her back. She was much smaller and in no time he had her pushed back and on the ground.

  “Okay! I’ll get the bitch down!” he yelled and stumbled over to the bough to climb up. He looked up at where Mary was and then looked again. He rubbed his eyes and stumbled around the tree, staring up at the spot. He looked all around the foliage, confused.

  Hanie crawled over to where blood droplets had landed and looked directly up from there.

  She saw only branches.

  ◊

  Mary opened her eyes and again saw eyes staring back at her. These were human eyes though and they were upside down. The face was smiling at her.

  “Hello,” the face said in a strange accent.

  She realized it was her that was upside down and she struggled to right herself. She felt a strong arm lift her up and place her down on her feet on a steady surface. She looked into the stranger’s face — it was an Indian and he was staring at her with wide eyes.

  “You are beautiful!” he said in English.