Forests of the Heart

by Charles de Lint

  Straightening up from the paperwork scattered across the counter, Hunter winced at the sudden pain in his side. There’d been no blood in his urine this morning, but he knew his kidney was swollen from the way it pressed up against his ribs. The whole area was bruised and sore, his back stiff. Every breath hurt unless it was shallow. He closed his eyes for a moment and the hard man’s features leapt into his mind. The smell of him—tobacco smoke and something feral, a wild dog scent. The cold eyes. The flat voice.

  You don’t want to fuck with us, you little shite.

  What had that been all about anyway?

  The Dar Williams EP came to an end and for a long moment he let the silence hang. The store was empty. He’d only had three customers this morning and one had been returning a defective CD. Between the other two, they hadn’t even put thirty dollars in the till. It made him wonder, and not for the first time, why he even bothered opening on Sundays, though of course he had to. Even if the customers weren’t coming in, he had to be as available for business as the big chain stores were.

  Hunter didn’t really mind being in the store on a Sunday—especially not now, when his only other option was an empty apartment—but today it just made him feel depressed all over again. One of his staff had to go. There was just no way around it. That salary was just taking too big a chunk of his working capital.

  This week he’d been cut off by one of his main distributors because he was late paying his bills. He knew he’d have it covered in a couple of weeks— hell, they knew it, too—but in the meantime, they’d cut him off and he could forget carrying any of their back catalog for a while. New releases he could get from Contact Distributors, a rack-jobber who serviced most of the smaller accounts in town, but that meant at least another dollar cost per unit. And since he couldn’t raise his selling price and stay competitive, he’d be losing a dollar on every CD of theirs he sold. Which didn’t help the money crunch he was feeling now.

  This was the part of owning your own business that he’d dreaded the most. But someone had to go, and they’d all have to work longer hours, if he was going to keep his doors open. The question was who. It couldn’t be Titus. With his lack of social skills and graces, how would he ever survive? Adam wasn’t much better. Miki had seniority—next to him, she’d been working here the longest.

  That left Fiona.

  Sighing, he turned to take the EP out of the CD player, moving carefully when pain shot up from his side. A few moments later Dar Williams’s sweet soprano was replaced by the high lonesome sound of Gillian Welch. Though Welch had grown up in California, you’d swear she’d just come down from the Appalachian Mountains by way of the Stanley Brothers to make this recording. He loved the raw, emotional narrative of the songs and her unadorned delivery. By the third cut he was in a bit of a better mood, the store’s poor business and the pain in his side notwithstanding, and returned to finish up the last of his paperwork. It was only when the CD ended and he was back thinking about how he was going to tell Fiona that she was being laid off that his melancholy returned.

  He considered his figures again, wondering if he could make it just a temporary thing. A few weeks, no more than a couple of months. Only until business started to pick up again with the warmer weather. He was still worrying at it when Miki came in a little later, wrinkling her nose at the Dan Bern CD he had playing on the store’s sound system.

  “Okay,” she said as she offered Hunter one of the coffees she’d brought with her. “I realize that someone up there has decided that every generation needs its Bob Dylan, but really. Doesn’t this guy sound like an exact clone to you?”

  Hunter shook his head. “It’s just a style of songwriting. You know, talking blues. Anecdotal.”

  “And it doesn’t bother you, the way he’s got Dylan down so well it might as well be Dylan? I mean, hello tribute city. Look at me, I’m pathetic.”

  “I don’t hear it that way.”

  Miki raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “Besides,” Hunter went on. “I hear he’s really into Coltrane.”

  “Really?”

  Hunter nodded, having no idea what Dan Bern’s tastes in music really were. What he did know was Miki’s inclination to forgive a great deal if your taste was what she considered to be good. Classic sax players were right up there at the top of the list.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “ ‘Trane. Bird. Wayne Shorter. Lester Young.”

  “You’re making this up.”

  “No, I’m sure I read it an interview somewhere.”

  Miki cocked her head, giving the CD another listen.

  “Well, maybe he’s not so bad,” she said. “There is a kind of improvisational flavor to what he’s doing, isn’t there?”

  Hunter managed to keep a straight face until she went to hang up her coat in the back room, only just wiping the grin from his face before she stepped back out into the store. Miki made her way slowly back to the front counter, straightening CD cases in their bins as she came.

  “You’re looking rather well,” she said when she was standing on the other side of the counter. “Considering the state you were in last night.”

  “The—oh, right.”

  She leaned over the counter for a closer look. “You’re not hungover at all, are you?”

  “Quick recovery.”

  “Umhmm. Very quick. Now I’m wondering if you were even drunk in the first place.”

  “Very. Could barely stand up on my own.”

  “Which brings us to the question, why would you be pretending to be drunk?”

  “Could barely see straight. Sick as a dog. Trust me on this one.”

  But Miki wasn’t buying it. “You weren’t just trying to avoid me, were you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Don’t lie now. That’d hurt my feelings worse than if I thought you didn’t fancy me.”

  “I’m not…” Hunter began, but he couldn’t do it. This was Miki, after all. “It’s just that Donal…” He broke off again.

  “Oh, Christ. What did he tell you this time?”

  “It’s just…”

  There didn’t seem to be an out—not and be honest at the same time. So he told her all of it. Miki was quiet for a long moment when he was done. She regarded him thoughtfully from under long lashes.

  “You and Ellie, eh?” she said finally. “I could see it.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Not yet.”

  Hunter sighed, then gave her a slow nod. “Not yet,” he conceded. “Maybe not at all. Who knows?”

  “You’re thinking I’m mad at you,” she said.

  Hunter shrugged.

  “Don’t be. I won’t deny I was wondering a bit if things could go somewhere with us, but it was only wondering.” She smiled. “Idle conjecture. The fleeting stuff of dreams.”

  “You are mad.”

  “Only at Donal. What was he thinking? First this business of trying to set us up in the pub the other night, and now this. You know he and Ellie used to be an item?”

  Hunter nodded.

  “He was quite desperate for her, but she didn’t feel the same, which is why they broke up.”

  “So what are you saying? That all of this was planned?”

  “Well, not the business at the pub. How could he even know you’d be meeting Ellie last night?”

  Hunter laid a hand gingerly against his kidney. “And the hard man—”

  Miki cut him off. “Donal’s moody, and a tease, but he’s not that mean. He’d never put someone up to that. But what’s he driving at with this business of not telling Ellie?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “And what would the hard men be wanting with Ellie?”

  “He didn’t tell me that either,” Hunter said.

  “Well, it can’t be good. That lot aren’t exactly renowned for their charity and goodwill towards others.”

  “Someone should tell Ellie.”

  Miki nodded. “But first I’ll have a wor
d with Donal. I’ll ask him when I get home tonight and see what he’s got to say for himself.”

  “Sure,” Hunter said. “He must have had a good reason to want to keep it from her.”

  “He’d better. Or I’ll give him such a rap across the head he won’t see straight for at least a week. Ellie doesn’t need this sort of thing, and neither do you.”

  “I forget how fierce you can be,” Hunter said, laughing.

  Miki gave him her most innocent look. “Why don’t you come along after we close up tonight and be reminded?”

  “Dinner afterwards at the Dear Mouse?”

  “Done.”

  Miki took a swig of her coffee, then picked up the stack of inventory cards from beside the cash register and swaggered off to restock the items that had been sold yesterday.

  “Stop smirking,” she told Hunter who was hard put to stop from laughing at her antics. “I’m trying to be a manly man,”

  “It’s not working.”

  She rolled up the sleeve of her T-shirt and flexed her muscles. “How can you say that? Just look at these biceps.”

  Hunter dutifully admired them. “Donal will be shaking in his boots,” he assured her.

  “If he’s involved in any of this, he’ll be doing more than shaking. And that’s a promise.”

  They closed the store a half-hour early. Along with freebie promotional copies of new releases—or better yet, pre-releases—making a judgment call about closing early was one of the few perks of actually owning the store. It hadn’t been a hard one to make today. Except for a brief flurry of business in the midafternoon, they’d only had a half-dozen customers for the rest of the afternoon, and none at all for the last half-hour. Miki had wanted to hang a GONE FISHING sign in the door, just in case some diehard showed up at the door before the official closing time, but Hunter—using the power of ownership once again—vetoed that idea.

  “Too frivolous,” he explained.

  Miki grinned. “As if. You need some frivolity in your life. An extra helping, in fact.”

  They took the subway across town to the market, and then walked the ten blocks or so up Lee Street to the Rosses and the apartment that Miki shared with her brother near the Kelly Street Bridge, going at a slow pace because of the steady ache in Hunter’s side. It was still cold, and the temperature was dropping, but after being cooped up inside the store all day and then the crowded subway ride, they enjoyed being outside, never mind the chill.

  “You’ve never been here before, have you?” Miki said as she ushered Hunter inside her building.

  “Not since you and Judy had your house-warming.”

  “That’s right. I forgot you’d come. But you didn’t stay long.”

  Hunter nodded. “Ria got bored.”

  “I thought you said you were going to a gallery opening.”

  Hunter shrugged. “It sounded better than Ria being bored.”

  The building didn’t look like much from the outside—just another ratty downtown brownstone—but once Hunter stepped into the foyer he realized that its tenants still took pride in the old war-horse. He’d forgotten how well maintained it was. There were still a few of these places left in the downtown area, buildings where the tenants refused to be intimidated by the steady exodus from the inner-city core and the subsequent arrival of those with less than a personal pride in keeping up the neighborhood. The tile floors of the foyer were clean, the walls freshly painted, all the overhead lights were in working order. The brass bank of mailboxes by the door was polished and gleaming.

  “This place is in great shape,” he said as they walked down the hall to Miki’s ground-floor apartment.

  “I know. Everyone puts the time in to keep it that way. Mind you, we do it for ourselves. The landlord couldn’t give a shite.”

  “You’d think he’d be happy.”

  “I doubt he’s ever set foot in this building,” Miki said. She turned the key, unlocking the door. “Hey, Donal!” she called when the door was open. “Put on your trousers—we’ve company.”

  There was no response.

  “I guess he’s still out,” Miki said.

  Hunter followed her inside to find things no more familiar here than the foyer had been. No surprise, he supposed, considering how brief that earlier visit had been. The front hall was also part of the living room which boasted a pair of club chairs, an old stuffed sofa with a flower print that didn’t quite match the Oriental rug under it, and a handmade shelf running along one wall that held Miki’s stereo and a haphazard collection of vinyl albums, CDs, cassettes, books, and magazines.

  From where they stood removing their boots and jackets, Hunter could see the kitchen at the end of the hall, and part of the dining room. The latter had been turned into a bedroom—Miki’s, Hunter realized after a moment, noting a poster of John Coltrane and another advertising Italian-made Castagnari melodeons on the walls. Miki was always raving about their tone and the beautiful wood finishes on the Castagnaris, though she herself played a bright red Paolo Soprani that she’d had for ages, replacing her old Hohner that had wheezed more than offered up musical notes towards the end.

  “You gave up your bedroom?” he asked as they walked past the dining room towards the kitchen.

  Miki shrugged. “Donal needed the space for his studio. I didn’t want him sleeping in the same room as all those noxious turps and the like. Bad enough he works with them.”

  “But it’s your apartment,” Hunter said. “It doesn’t seem right that you don’t even get your own space.”

  Miki glanced at him. “There were times when we didn’t have anyplace to live and if it hadn’t been for Donal, I’d have been taken in by social services and put into some foster home. I’d give up a lot more than a bit of personal space for him.”

  “You’re right,” Hunter said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “I know he can be a right little shite, but he is my brother and he really does mean well.”

  On the other side of the hall they passed an open door which was obviously Donal’s bedroom. Sparsely furnished, clothes draped everywhere. Miki paused at the closed door a little farther down the hall.

  “Donal?” she called, rapping on the wood with a knuckle.

  When there was no answer, she opened the door.

  “Sometimes when he’s really involved in his work,” she told Hunter, “he doesn’t even hear…”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “What is it?” Hunter asked.

  He stepped around her and then he saw what had stolen away her voice. The room was dominated by a large canvas that had to be at least six foot by nine. Though obviously incomplete, the image caught in the paint was riveting. A naked man wearing a mask of leaves hung Christ-like from an enormous oak. His body was clothed in a nimbus of gold light that was picked up again in the leaves of his mask and the trunk of the tree behind him. Green blood poured from his mouth, the palms of his hands where they were nailed to the tree, and a gaping wound in his abdomen. No, Hunter realized as he stepped closer. Not blood. What poured out of the wounds was a liquid spill of finely detailed leaves and spiraling vines.

  The rendering was so perfect that, at a first glance, you thought there really was a man hanging there. No wonder Miki had been so startled.

  “Well, it’s an amazing painting,” Hunter said, “but I sure wouldn’t want it hanging on my wall.”

  When Miki didn’t respond, he turned to look at her. Her usually cheerful features were pulled into an unfamiliar scowl. Lurking in her eyes was an old sorrow that Hunter had never seen before.

  “Oh, Donal,” she said.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  She pointed at the painting. “That’s the dying Summer King.”

  A feeling went pinpricking up Hunter’s spine as she spoke. For a moment he found himself thinking of the hard men, of deep woods and the smell of cigarette smoke and wolves, of a sullen anger that ran so deep and wild that he could barely comprehend its surface, neve
r mind empathize with its depth. Then the sensation faded.

  He blinked and regarded the canvas again, trying to recapture what he’d just felt, but the immediacy was gone, leaving in its wake only a pale, ragged memory.

  “The Summer King?” he asked.

  Miki nodded. “Just look at the way he hangs there, a last gleam of goodness and light before the end of things.”

  “What do you mean? The end of what things?”

  “The summer. The way we are … who we are …”

  Hunter regarded her, confused by the depth of her concern.

  “But it’s just a painting,” he said.

  “For now,” Miki said, her voice so soft he was unsure he’d heard her correctly until she said it again. “For now.”

  “Miki, what’s so upsetting about—?”

  But she didn’t want to talk about it. Taking his arm, she steered him out of the room, firmly closing the door behind them. She gave him a bright smile.

  “So,” she said. “What was that you were saying earlier about dinner at the Dear Mouse Diner?”

  Hunter wanted to know what it was about the painting that had so shaken her, but knew he had to let it go for now. Miki could be one of the most stubborn people he knew when she put her mind to it. When she was in headstrong mode, you might as well try arguing with a stone. So he let her change the subject, let her change the mood, and tried to go along with it. But where in the past few days an out-of-place sexual tension had lain uncomfortably between them, now there was something darker. Hunter had no idea what it was. All he knew was that he liked it even less.

  15

  Tommy Raven woke from a deep sleep to find his Aunt Sunday sitting patiently on the end of his bed, waiting for him to wake up. He got the sense that she’d been sitting there for hours. Knowing her, she probably had.

  Like her sixteen sisters, Sunday Creek was a tall, big-boned woman with a broad, serene face and long crow-black hair, tamed today into a pair of braids that hung halfway to her waist. She was dressed for practicality rather than fashion: jeans, flannel shirt, a beaded deerskin vest. Had it been anyone else, Tommy would have wondered how she’d been able to get into his apartment and sit down here on his bed without waking him, but he’d spent the first fourteen years of his life growing up in a household that contained his mother and her sisters, and nothing they did or said surprised him anymore.