Scot on the Rocks

by Catriona McPherson

  But, when Todd, Devin and I set off to discover if Blaike had rocked up there and I actually saw the place, I couldn’t help but be enchanted. We were only half a mile from First Street but it was half a mile of campus and playing fields and there was a hush as if we’d been transported to another realm. Or Yosemite anyway. I saw it first as just a glow up ahead but as we kept walking I saw that the glow was made of fairy lights strung in the trees, candles burning in the windows of little wooden houses perched high up above us, and a bonfire crackling away in the cleared central area I think served as their town square.

  ‘Good,’ Devin said. ‘I thought we might be too late, but there’s plenty of folks still sitting around.’

  He had told us that the permanent residents of the trees cooked a big meal every night to share amongst themselves and with anyone who turned up and needed food.

  ‘Free?’ I had asked.

  ‘If you’ve got money, they’ll take it,’ said Devin. ‘But if you don’t, they won’t starve you.’

  ‘Why did you ever leave?’ I whispered now, as we stood in the darkness just outside the warmth of the bonfire.

  ‘You’ll see,’ Devin said softly, then stepped forward. ‘Hey!’

  ‘Dev!’ came the cry from around the fire. ‘Long time no see, my dude! You home again?’

  ‘Welcome,’ said a woman, the only one who had got to her feet. I recognized her. She quite often sat and drank coffee outside my second-favourite Cuento coffee shop after the Swiss Sisters drive-through, and she did a lot of ostentatious yoga poses right there on the pavement, as if she was in danger of seizing up if she left her limbs unknotted for half an hour. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Sit. Eat.’

  ‘Good to see you, man,’ said a child who looked no more than twelve to my eyes, but then it was firelight. ‘Who’s this you’re bringing us?’ He gave me a sleepy smile as we squeezed ourselves into the ring of people. Some of them were strumming musical instruments – mostly ukuleles, it has to be said – and some of them were texting on their phones, the blue from their screens uplighting their faces and turning them eerie.

  ‘Lexy and Todd,’ Devin said.

  ‘You hungry?’ said another woman. ‘The stew’s finished but we got some banana curry pizza.’

  ‘That’s why I left,’ said Devin, under his breath, to me.

  I giggled. ‘I’m OK,’ I said. ‘I’ve eaten already.’

  ‘You freelance freeganning?’ said the twelve-year-old.

  ‘Uhhh …’ I said.

  ‘Freegans,’ said Devin. ‘They eat the food that gets thrown away from stores and restaurants.’

  ‘And hey,’ said the woman who had greeted us, ‘you do you, yeah? But share, don’t waste, yeah?’

  ‘In other words,’ said Devin, under his breath, ‘how dare you gorge yourself on the food you found in a garbage can, when you could have brought it here and added another topping to the banana curry pizza.’

  ‘I see why you had to go,’ I said, taking a joint from the twelve-year-old and passing it on without smoking any. ‘Are any of them ever going to play anything, or do they just keep plinking away?’

  ‘Is Baloo still here?’ Devin asked the general company, instead of answering.

  ‘Baloo packed his pipes and went to Portland,’ a voice informed us from the other side of the bonfire.

  ‘Bagpipes?’ I whispered. ‘Or pan pipes? Actually, it doesn’t matter. Yeah, I take your point: it could be a lot worse.’ I cleared my throat and spoke up. ‘We’re looking for someone. A runaway. He was supposed to be in Cuento today and we were going to look after him, but he didn’t arrive and we’re getting worried.’

  ‘If he came here, he came here,’ said the woman who had welcomed us.

  ‘Did someone come?’ I said.

  The joint had got as far round as her now. She took a deep puff that made the lit end glow fiercely. Maybe it had illuminated Todd, bouncing off his diamond earrings. For whatever reason, he suddenly attracted her attention. ‘Are those blood gems?’ she said, pointing the joint at him.

  Todd was sitting with both knees to one side like the little mermaid, instead of cross-legged like everyone else, and, as he turned to answer her, the curve of his neck and the elegant twist of his spine was swanlike. She scowled at him. I saw it. She already hated him; it was nothing to do with what followed.

  ‘Do you grow your own weed?’ said Todd. ‘Or use an ethical supplier? Worker conditions in the field are so very upsetting unless you’re careful, aren’t they?’

  ‘Our marijuana is all produced in California,’ she said.

  ‘Please don’t use that racist term,’ said Todd. ‘I find it offensive to my Mexican heritage.’

  ‘This is my home!’ she said. ‘You are not the boss of my talk in my home.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ said Todd. ‘If you feel you own this patch of my native land I would be wasting my time to fight you. So many of my ancestors died fighting the conquerors. I choose peace, now.’

  ‘Not cool, Devin,’ said the twelve-year-old. ‘Who is this anyway? And who’s this one?’

  ‘I’m just a lowly immigrant,’ I said, catching Todd’s wave. ‘I’m used to people who’ve been here longer not wanting to share the bounty. I get it. There are only so many slices of pie.’

  ‘Seriously, Devin, dude?’ someone else piped up. ‘Who are these assholes?’

  ‘Oh, you’re homophobes, are you?’ said Todd. ‘I can’t believe you reduced me to an orifice to shame my sexuality.’

  Personally, I thought he had gone too far. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve called Todd an arse, I’d be able to hire an assistant to call him it for me. But the now-not-the-least-bit-welcoming woman surprised me.

  ‘I find your rejection of woman power personally insulting,’ she said.

  ‘Wait, what?’ said Devin.

  ‘Did you just say a gay man is an insult to you?’ I asked her.

  ‘To turn away from the eternal truth of the world—’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘I’m a marriage and family therapist by day, so I have heard some codswallop in my time. But that takes the biscuit, crushes it with butter and uses it as a base for a double-chocolate cheesecake. You need a smack on the back of the legs, missus. Seriously.’

  ‘Uh, Devin?’ said the twelve-year-old. ‘I’m not sure this is gonna work out, my dude.’

  ‘Maybe we should just …’ I murmured.

  ‘Is the “eternal truth of the world” really that bathing is optional and hairbrushes are the devil’s work?’ Todd was saying. ‘Is the power of woman to knock a guy down with her halitosis from twenty paces?’

  ‘I think we might just slip away now,’ I said softly to the girl who was sitting on my other side.

  ‘But you came for Blaike, right?’ she said, softly too. ‘Don’t you want to see him?’

  I felt my mouth drop open. ‘He’s really here?’

  She shuffled back from the firelight on her bum and got to her feet in the darkness, with me scrambling after her.

  ‘Tourmaline gets kinda dick-ish on weed,’ the girl said as we edged further away. ‘But she gets really dick-ish on booze and she’s a nightmare straight, so what can we do? She’s been through a lot and she’s a great carpenter.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve had some bad neighbours too. I didn’t have to share banana curry pizza with them, mind you.’

  We were right out in the dark now, out of sight of the firelight and out of earshot too, although we could still hear Tourmaline and Todd going at it hammer and tongs. They were on to Big Pharma now; she must have found out he was an anaesthetist. I hoped he’d find out she was a carpenter and get her on the genocide of trees.

  After a moment of picking our way along in the dark, the girl switched on her head torch and leaned back, lighting up the underside of a gnarled and misshapen tree. It had a set of things that looked like mammoth nails – but which I now knew, after a trip to the Railway Museum in Old Sacramento, were railroad spikes – dri
ven into its bark to make a staircase. About fifteen feet up, there was a wooden platform snugly lodged into the tree’s crown. I could see a small hole in it that I guessed must serve as the entrance. It looked an acrobatically long way away from the topmost nail.

  ‘Uhhhh, you go first and I’ll watch,’ I said.

  She handed me her head torch and was off up the spike stairs before I had managed to fumble the damn thing into position. I got the beam trained on her just in time to see her disappear through the hatch as easily as a rabbit popping down its hole in the middle of a field. Briefly, I remembered the man in black sliding into the truck cab through its open window.

  I put my hands on a spike as high as I could reach and pulled myself up until my feet were balanced by the instep on a pair of lower ones. No wonder she moved fast; it was excruciating, the way the metal dug into the flesh on my feet. I had to climb just to relieve the weight. And then, at the top, I had the choice of: stop climbing and let the shafts of the spikes destroy my insteps again; bash my head against the underneath of the platform; go back down; or do what I chose to do – swear under my breath, sure I was about to die if I was lucky or spend the rest of my life in a recumbent wheelchair if I wasn’t. I let go with one hand and grabbed the edge of the hatch. Then I moved the other hand. Then I climbed up the last few steps with my feet, while shunting my top half into the hole and along the floor. Then I let go with my feet and dangled half in and half out of the tree house, bent at the waist, then lolloped forward again, like a walrus galumphing up a beach and finally got one knee inside and pushed myself up to all fours, panting.

  The girl was watching me and trying really hard not to laugh. I acknowledged her kindness and straightened my clothes, blowing upwards into my sweaty hair. Then I got distracted. I’d never been in a tree house before and I didn’t know if this one was typical, but looking around – I was still wearing the head torch – it felt like I had wandered into Enid Blyton. It was tiny, like a caravan or a narrowboat – much smaller than my place – and there was no bed as such, just a hammock swinging diagonally across the entire space. But there was a little pot-bellied stove with a bent tin pipe going up through the roof and there was a window with shutters, and a lot of shelves, all full of books. The laptop lent a bum note but the fact that it was sitting on a little ledge made out of the tree trunk itself helped.

  ‘I can’t believe he didn’t wake up when you were climbing,’ the girl said. She was standing up in the middle of the floor, looking down into the hammock. I got to my feet and joined her. It was awkward to look at him and not shine the torch right at him, so I took it off and turned it away.

  Bathed in the gentle gold light reflected back from the wooden walls, he looked like a child. He was curled up under a patchwork quilt, still in his jacket and with his boots sticking out at the other end.

  ‘What did he say when he turned up?’ I asked.

  ‘Not much,’ said the girl. ‘He was tired and hungry and he looked scared. He didn’t need to say anything. That’s not how it works here.’

  ‘How d’you know it’s not me he was scared of?’ I said. ‘Or Devin? Or Todd and his blood gems?’

  ‘You shouldn’t laugh at people when they’re being good to you,’ she said. ‘He hitchhiked – rough work these days – so his trouble wasn’t local.’

  ‘These days,’ I repeated. She looked about sixteen; these days were the only days she had ever known. ‘And you’re right,’ I said. ‘It is rough. I don’t even know how he managed to hitchhike from … Ohiowado … and get here already.’

  ‘Where?’ said the girl. ‘Nah, he flew to Sacramento and hitchhiked from the airport, but still, you know.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. I put my hand out and touched his shoulder lightly. ‘Blaike?’ I shook him, just a little. ‘Blaike? Sorry to wake you.’

  He opened his eyes and blinked. Then he tried to turn – he had forgotten he was in a hammock, I think – and flipped himself right out, landing at our feet on the hard floor.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said, laughing in spite of my worry. ‘That was perfect. I bet you couldn’t do that again if we paid you. Are you OK?’

  ‘How did you find me?’ he said.

  ‘I’m a witch,’ I told him. ‘Look, I’m sorry I was so by the book and freaked you out. I know you’re seventeen but we’re not going to report you to your stepdad or call social workers or anything. We just want to take care of you and work out what’s going on.’

  ‘What’s going on with what?’ said Blaike. He was still lying on the floor.

  ‘The belly button,’ I said. ‘Obviously. That’s not nothing. But also Mama Cuento’s toe and then there’s this wooden nose too.’

  ‘This is some trippy shit you’re into,’ the girl said. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘But the main thing is something much more serious than all of that,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to tell you right here and now.’ Because who was this girl? I was asking myself. She took him in, then she grassed him up?

  ‘I’m not going back,’ he said. ‘To White Pine.’

  ‘Honey, I don’t think anyone will be at White Pine much longer, when we go public with what we know,’ I said. I think that’s what finally convinced him. He got to his feet and rubbed his face with his hands. ‘So,’ I said, ‘you can sleep here for the night and we’ll get together in the morning. Or we could just go now.’

  ‘Go where?’ he said. ‘The motel?’

  I took a punt on why he sounded so wistful. ‘The motel,’ I said. ‘King-size bed, power shower, coffee machine, HBO.’

  ‘I don’t drink coffee,’ he said.

  ‘There’s a Coke machine in the car park,’ I told him. ‘And an ice machine too.’

  He turned to the girl. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘for letting me have a nap in your hammock. But I think I’ll go.’

  She didn’t look too happy about it but, even if she had had plans to join him after dinner and even if she found it entertaining to have sex in a hammock, she couldn’t possibly have wanted to share one all night long. She shrugged and slipped down through the hatch, without another word. It was only then, as I watched her go, that I faced the certain fact that there was no way I could get out of this tree house without firefighters helping.

  I put the head torch back on and peered down through the hole in the floor at the spike steps – even further away, I swear to God.

  ‘Shit,’ I said. ‘How are we going to get out?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Blaike. He sat down on the floor, dangled his legs through the hole and disappeared.

  I sat down on the floor as soon as he’d gone. I dangled my legs through the hole too. I told myself it wouldn’t be so bad to live in a tree. I’d be like a swami. Maybe my most hippified clients would still come for counselling. That truly seemed like a more realistic option than launching myself into thin air and not dying.

  When we were back at Todd’s jeep, twenty minutes later, I still thought it was a semi-serious option that I could have explored further. It didn’t help that Blaike wouldn’t stop laughing. He tried. But he obviously kept remembering the sight, sound and smell of me and then his giggles would break out again.

  Yes, smell. Because, as well as wanging around like a string of spit and praying out loud for the first time in years, I farted from sheer terror. And here’s some news: when every muscle is clenched tighter than a Baptist with tetanus and yet you still manage to squeak out a fart, it is not silent. Not at all.

  TWELVE

  ‘That was fun,’ Todd said, when Devin and him got back to the jeep. I had texted, Got Blaike. Let’s roll, and they’d appeared through the trees, minutes later.

  ‘What was?’ I said, carefully reversing along the narrow space between pine trees, ignoring the roots under the jeep wheels and the scrape of needles on the paintwork. ‘The pizza? The company? The thick cloud of smoke from unethically sourced pot? The rampant hypocrisy?’

  ‘Locking horns with Tourmaline,’
said Todd. ‘Do you want me to drive by the way? I don’t meet many targets so easy. Made a nice change.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Blaike said. ‘What target?’

  ‘I’m Todd. I’m one of the private detectives your stepdad has employed to … talk to you.’

  ‘Yeah, about that—’ Blaike said.

  ‘Now’s not the time,’ I said. I was weaving through the quiet roads of the UCC campus now – empty, for the most part. Except that there were always some pretty girls, apparently on photo shoots. I didn’t understand why the multistorey car park was the most popular of all backdrops. Right now, as we passed, I saw a little band heading in there, carrying lights and reflector screens and wheeling a rack of costumes. A girl in a towelling dressing gown, with her hair in big rollers, came along behind, texting and smoking.

  ‘Blaike,’ I went on, ‘why did you get sent to White Pine?’

  ‘Arson,’ he said.

  That shut us all up.

  ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘But there was no way to convince anyone. Once they’d decided.’

  ‘Talk us through it,’ I said. I wasn’t exactly scared of Noleen anymore and I’d never been scared of Kathi, but still I didn’t fancy bringing an arsonist to stay in their motel and them finding out, either because someone told them or because he burned the place to a cinder. It was all right for me. I had a moat.

  ‘I set fire to a buncha stuff,’ Blaike said.

  ‘Go on,’ said Todd. ‘Because I gotta tell you, so far I’m on team Mom and Dad. But I’m ready to be convinced.’

  We were in downtown Cuento now, on First Street. ‘Pizza?’ I said, pulling in at the Brick. ‘It’s a wood-fired oven, if it’s not too indelicate to mention such a thing. But guaranteed no bananas and no curry.’