Stay Away

by Ike Hamill

  “I’m here to make a trade,” he said even louder.

  While his aunt climbed over the snow bank to wade through the drifts, Eric stood still. His fingers gripping the quarter grew numb. When a car passed, he felt self-conscious and wanted to put down his hand, but he didn’t dare. If they failed, it wasn’t going to be because of him.

  “I’m here to make a trade.”

  His aunt skidded down the snowy slope that had been left by the plow. She brushed the snow from her pants.

  “Forget it, he’s not here.”

  She turned her back on him and began to march up the hill in the direction of the house.

  “Wait, what about leaving footprints in the cemetery?”

  She dismissed the idea with a wave and continued walking. Eric put his glove back on and ran after her. When he drew alongside her, she said, “What did you mean when you said that you made a trade?”

  Eric glanced over his shoulder, back towards the tree, to make sure that the man wasn’t there watching. The two memories had merged in his head now. He remembered the man who had given him advice and the man who had stalked his mom in Ohio. It was so clear that they were the same person, he couldn’t imagine why he had ever thought otherwise.

  “Eric?”

  “Before I left to go live with my mom, I went to see him. I knew about the Trading Tree because of Nicky’s brother. He said that his friend Steve went there for advice. I thought that the tree would give me the advice, but the man was the one who told me to go back to her.”

  “The Trader.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. But by the time I got back to Ohio, it was like I had forgotten all about him. When he came for my mom, it didn’t even occur to me that he was the same person. Even when I was telling you the other day.”

  “Maybe that’s how he gets away with it,” she said. “Maybe he has a way of giving people a kind of amnesia so they don’t remember him.”

  Eric glanced back again, sure that he would be there. He could almost see him, standing in the snow in his Sunday suit, close enough to lean on the tree but keeping a tiny, modest distance from it anyway.

  “So you traded for advice,” she said.

  “No, I never did,” Eric said. “I went to, but before I could I talked to the man. He was the one who gave me the advice. I just thought he was some weird guy.”

  “What did you trade?”

  “Nothing,” Eric said. “I didn’t give him anything in return.”

  “I bet you did,” she said.

  She picked up the pace and he had to rush to keep up.

  # # #

  Back in the kitchen, she stated the facts back to him as they took off their boots and coats.

  “So, you went to ask if you should go back to your mom, he said yes, and you didn’t give him anything?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then, you forget, he shows up to collect, and he takes Rose.”

  Eric sighed and nodded. Like they were in a courtroom, her stare required that he state his answer aloud.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Okay. Okay,” she said. “Maybe I’m figuring something out here.”

  His aunt started to pace. Eric backed up out of the way and settled into one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

  “Maybe he won’t come out to trade because you already have an open trade with him. In fact, maybe I do, too. We might need someone completely fresh—someone who has never had a transaction. Or—and I’m just guessing here—there might be a seasonal component to this. In my experience, I don’t know of anyone who has gotten him to appear in the winter. If he’s connected to the tree, and it sure seems like he is, then perhaps he goes dormant, just like the tree does. It could be that we have to wait until…”

  She stopped at the sound of the knock at the side door.

  Eric stood to go answer it, but his aunt was faster.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “That’s my…” Eric started to say.

  Nicky cut him off, introducing herself.

  “I’m Nicky… Baker? Friend of Eric’s? I live around the corner.”

  “Come on in,” Eric tried to say over his aunt’s shoulder.

  “Can we help you with something?” his aunt asked.

  Nicky said, “I stopped by to see if I could help you with something. I saw you guys out on the road? When I drove by you guys didn’t even seem to see me.”

  “Thank you, we’re fine. Thanks,” Zinnia said as she started to close the door.

  “Wait, Aunt Zinnia,” Eric said. Nicky was already reaching forward to block the door. “She knows about the tree as well. She might be able to help.”

  “This is family business,” his aunt said. Eric lost his grip on the door as his aunt began to press it shut.

  “I know why he won’t trade with you,” Nicky said, just before the closed.

  Zinnia opened the door once more and looked Nicky up and down.

  “Come in.”

  # # #

  Eric set a cup of tea in front of Nicky and a glass of water in front of his aunt.

  “It’s one per customer,” Nicky said. “You must have traded before.”

  “That’s precisely what I was speculating,” Zinnia said. “Where did you get this information?”

  “Mrs. Bisson confirmed it,” Nicky said. “I mean, I hear everything up at Dottie’s when people come in, they just keep talking like I’m not even there. If I pretend like I’m reading a magazine, they’ll say absolutely anything in front of me.”

  “Mrs. Bisson? Used to live on Frost Avenue?”

  “Yes. She lived in the little apartment under the yarn store.”

  Eric sat down and watched his aunt’s face as she considered this. Her demeanor towards Nicky had changed completely since she had started talking about the seasons of the Trading Tree.

  “Tell me exactly what she said,” Zinnia said.

  Nicky reached in a pocket and her hand came back with her pack of cigarettes.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked, gesturing towards the ashtray.

  “We don’t smoke in the house,” Zinnia said.

  Nicky glanced at Eric, eyebrow slightly raised at the obvious lie. What Zinnia should have said was that they had given up smoking in the house years before. The habit had only returned when Wendell had disappeared. The nighttime smoking usually started about the time that Wendell would have gone to bed. Zinnia and Reynold had replaced tucking him in with peeling the wrapper from a fresh pack of darts. By morning, they would have thrown away the pack, swearing to stop indulging.

  “My brother is the one who told me about the Trading Tree,” Nicky said, “and he eventually let on that it was Mrs. Bisson who told him. Our family takes her food once a week. When Alex left town, I took over the deliveries.”

  “Alex?” Zinnia asked.

  “Her brother,” Eric said.

  It used to drive Lily crazy that her mother never bothered to learn the names of any of her friends. Eric understood—his aunt only cared about the kids under her roof. She would do anything to protect them. Their friends, as long as they didn’t bring trouble to the house, were inconsequential.

  “Of course,” Zinnia said.

  “She liked to talk, but she would tell the same stories over and over again. So, one day I asked her what she knew about the Trading Tree because of what Alex said. I thought she was making it all up, like a fairy tale, you know?”

  “Honey, what did she say?” Zinnia asked. She seemed to be growing impatient.

  Nicky looked down at the cigarettes that were still in her hand. When she looked up, she dove in.

  “The tree dates back to the earliest people in the area. Not the white people—I mean the natives. Most of the time, they would migrate inland in the winter because of the wind, but sometimes they would be caught by an early storm and have to stay. Game wasn’t easy to catch around here, and by spring they could be close to starving.”

  Zinnia leaned in, absorbing every wordr />
  “Of course, they wanted to trade with other people. There was a path they would take across the rocks if the ice wasn’t sturdy enough. But some winters, the people on the other side of the river didn’t have any food either. That’s when they would be forced to trade with him. According to Mrs. Bisson, he didn’t have a name. The Indians would have a ceremony to choose a person, and that person would take anything they could spare—skins, gems, flint, and jewelry and they would set up a camp near the tree and wait. He would never come before the first buds appeared on the tree, so sometimes the wait was long.”

  Zinnia narrowed her eyes at a stray thought.

  “What did he look like back then? Surely if he had been wearing a European suit it would have been unfathomable to them.”

  “They had drawings, at least according to Mrs. Bisson, that showed him as an animal. They said that it was an animal spirit, dressed in one of their furs—something traded to him in the past. Once the trade was made, the chosen person would bring all the food back to the camp. Sometimes, she said that it would take a dozen trips or more to bring everything back and then it would be purified before anyone would touch it.”

  “Purified how?”

  Nicky frowned. She put aside her pack of cigarettes and picked up the tea instead. She took a sip.

  “Maybe Mrs. Bisson was making this part up—I don’t know. She used to get this wicked smile and then it seemed like she would say stuff just to try to scare me. I don’t scare easily.”

  They waited for her to continue.

  “She said that they would bleed the chosen person and cook all the food in their blood.”

  “What?” Zinnia asked, pushing back from the table. “How bizarre.”

  Nicky nodded.

  “Like I said, maybe she was making it up. Anyway, she said that once the Europeans came to the area, back when they were still sharing the land, the Indians gave up on trading with the man at the tree because the Europeans were better at storing food to make it last. All they had to do was collect the things that the Europeans liked, and they could trade with them for food. In fact, they said that the Indians even stopped migrating after that. They would still go down to the tree, but they would trade with the bear hunters who would go up north on expeditions and then come back through to get to their ships, or just the men on the ships. The Europeans wanted skins and seeds—things they could store easily. It changed the way that they dealt with winter completely. Then, when the wars with the Indians started, the Indians were driven out. The colonists began to trade with the tree man because there were no Indians left.”

  Nicky took another sip of tea.

  “The Indians had taught the colonists how to trade with the man at the tree, but they never told them about the blood. The chosen person—the one who traded—had to clean anything they received with blood or else it would come with a curse. And, if the thing they traded for was going to bring life to someone, like if it was food or medicine, then the blood cleansing had to replace the vitality that was received.”

  “Replace the vitality?” Zinnia said. The wrinkles on her forehead deepened.

  “When I was saying that they would bleed the chosen person to cook the food in their blood, I meant bleed them all the way,” Nicky said. “Because that food was going to bring life to the whole tribe, it had to take the life of the chosen trader.”

  Zinnia reached across the table and grabbed Nicky’s pack of smokes.

  “May I?” she asked, shaking one out.

  # # #

  “Mrs. Bisson said that over time, people learned that it wasn’t a good idea to trade with the man. By the eighteen-hundreds, they said that only fools or desperate folks would trade. And, she said that fools included children. Every decade or so, a kid would get so in debt that they would disappear. Then, there would usually be a mob that would go down there intent on destroying the tree. Sometimes, they were even successful. The tree would be gone for a year or two and then a new oak would spring up. By then, everyone would have forgotten or told themselves that it couldn’t possibly have happened the way that they had thought. Soon enough, the man would be back to trade with a new generation.”

  Nicky took out her own cigarette, now that Zinnia had already polluted the kitchen with smoke.

  “The whole cycle would start again. Mrs. Bisson said that when the church took over this house, the pastor took it upon himself to convert the man. I guess he thought that he was just a bum or something, living in the woods. The pastor was the one who dressed him up like a butler—that’s what Mrs. Bisson said, at least. She said that he changed after that. Once he got all ‘churched up’ he would never trade with the same person more than once. And, she said that blood wasn’t good enough.”

  Zinnia put up a finger.

  “Blood wasn’t good enough—what does that mean?”

  Nicky could only shrug. “I don’t know. Honestly, I was only listening to pass the time. I never thought that any of it was even remotely true. By the time I believed in it, Mrs. Bisson was gone and I couldn’t ask her anything more.”

  “What changed your mind?” Zinnia asked.

  “My trade,” Nicky said.

  Zinnia motioned for her to go on.

  “Summer of seventy-three, I started hanging out down near the cemetery. There were assholes down at the River Walk, and I wasn’t getting along with my mom. The first few times I saw him there, I didn’t even put it together. I just thought he was some creep. After Mrs. Bisson’s funeral, it finally occurred to me that the stories and the man were the same. There wasn’t anything that I particularly needed, so I felt safe approaching him.”

  “What do you mean?” Eric asked.

  “I always got the sense from Mrs. Bisson that the dangerous part about trading with him was that the people who entered into the trade were always against the wall, you know? Like those Indians… They would only go to him when it was down to that or starving to death. If you’re that desperate, you’re going to do something stupid. Since I didn’t really want anything, I felt like it didn’t matter too much. I saw him one afternoon and I walked up. He didn’t ask me what I wanted, he only asked me what I had to trade. I got the distinct feeling that he needed me much more than I needed him. It was good—I felt powerful because of that.”

  Nicky offered Zinnia another cigarette and she took it without really looking.

  “I told him that I had coins. That’s what all the kids used to say that he wanted. They would say that you put a coin in the…”

  “Knothole,” Eric said. “Yeah, didn’t your brother tell us that?”

  “Maybe,” Nicky said. “Yeah, probably. Anyway, I said I had a coin and he made a face. I could tell that it wasn’t what he wanted. I thought about Mrs. Bisson and how she said that he had changed over the years. I figured maybe he didn’t need coins anymore so I asked him what he wanted.”

  Nicky drew a hand down her face and glanced at the door before she continued.

  “A weird look came into his eyes when I asked him that. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like the way he looked at me. All of a sudden, I thought that I was right the first time—he was just some creep who was hanging out near the cemetery, eyeballing me. Then, he straightened himself up and smoothed his jacket. His bottom button wouldn’t stay buttoned, even after he redid it. He got really serious and said, I require a pizza.”

  Nicky smiled, but it faded fast.

  She said it again, this time with an English accent. “I require a pizza. I thought that was the funniest thing, but I didn’t want to laugh at him, so I quickly asked him what kind. At the store, sometimes I get the giggles when someone comes to the counter to order. I learned a long time ago that people get really pissed off if you laugh at them while they’re ordering food, so I’m pretty good at hiding my smile and getting down to business. He said he just wanted cheese and olives.”

  “Psycho pizza,” Eric said.

  “That’s right,” Nicky said, pointing. “Anyone who orders che
ese and olives is always a psycho. I told him that I could get him a pizza later that night. He was so excited that I guess he forgot to ask me what I wanted in trade. I didn’t tell him what time I got off work. I figured that it would be like a test. If he really lived there at the tree, then it wouldn’t matter to him what time. Sure enough, he didn’t ask me, but he was right there when I walked down the hill with that pizza. I realized what a huge mistake I had made. It was the middle of the night and I was walking down past the cemetery and away from the lights of the River Walk. He could have jumped out and dragged me off or something. Instead, he was the perfect gentleman. He stood right by the tree, holding his hands out and waiting for the pizza.” “So he hadn’t asked you what you wanted in trade?” Zinnia asked.

  “No,” Nicky said. “He seemed to realize that as I started to hand him the pizza. He pulled his hands back at the last moment and tucked them into the pockets of his jacket. I could tell that he wanted to take the pizza, but instead he asked me what I wanted for it.”

  She looked down at her mug and swirled what was left of the tea.

  “I thought for a long moment what I wanted. I could tell that he was getting impatient. There were a couple of things that crossed my mind, but there was no way that I was going to tell him something that I actually wanted or needed. I had the feeling that he would have agreed to anything, but, I don’t know…”

  “You didn’t want him to have that power over you?” Zinnia asked.

  “Yes—exactly. That’s it. I knew that if I asked him for something that I really, truly desired, he would have some sort of power over me. I finally just said the first thing that popped into my mind. I told him I wanted a Dr Pepper. I wasn’t a huge fan and I figured that if something weird happened and I could never drink the stuff again, no big deal. When he smiled at me, I thought I had made a huge mistake. It was the smile of someone who knows that he has you over the barrel. My knees went a little weak when he reached behind the tree and his hand came back with a bottle of Dr Pepper. For a second, I really believed that he was magic and then I rationalized it all away. We traded—the pizza for the soda—and I watched him open the box.”