The Bitching Tree

by Scott Hungerford

  Grabbing three of the plastic ones, Cobb headed back upriver, shoes and socks squishing with every step, buckets banging against his knees. He considered that this hero business was going to be a lot harder than he’d expected, holey buckets and all.

  By the time he reached the clearing across the river from the old man, Cobb felt a little warmer, though his teeth were still chattering. He stripped off his soaked clothes, lay them over a rock to dry, then put on dry clothes. His wallet was fine, but the plastic phone thingy wouldn’t light up at all, as if it were permanently drowned. But more importantly, he had nothing to replace his soaked overshirt and coat. He knew that it was going to be dark in a few hours. Dark and much, much colder.

  “Excuse me,” he shouted from the bank, arms wrapped around himself for warmth. But the old man didn’t come out. No matter how much Cobb called out, shouted, or swore, all he got in return was more radio music and the occasional puff of smoke from the chimney. At one point he saw the old man cross in front of one of the unzipped windows, his coat off, apparently warm and toasty and eating out of a bowl of some kind. Cobb’s own stomach growled at the sight of it.

  Going to his backpack, he looked through it for anything useful. Nothing came to mind, save for chucking the alarm clock at the old man with all of the force he could muster. Looking at the buckets, Cobb pondered their use, how much water they could hold before the liquid drained out the sides. Then he looked at the metal barrel, with its own fleet of rusty holes, and the grill, and the—

  If he could get enough water inside, he reasoned, the three objects in the barrel might float to within arm’s reach, through the square gap like sticks!

  Excited by this rationalization, Cobb went down to the river with one of the buckets, a sturdy-looking pink container. He scooped up a great pail of water and carried it back up to the barrel. Water squirted out the holes and splashed over the lip at every step, but he still had half the water remaining by the time he reached the barrel. Lifting it up, cursing as a drool of cold water squirted right down the front of his dry shirt, Cobb managed to splash most of the contents into the barrel. As suspected, the water began to instantly surge out of the holes, right across his bare toes. But the white tubes inside all rose a little bit, bumping and bonking off one another amid the leaves, needles, and other debris that lay at the bottom of the container.

  He went to the bank, filled all three buckets, then lost most of their contents on the way back to the barrel. He poured in what he could—and was pleased to see the tubes rise a little higher this time before they settled back down on the bottom again. He did this for a while, racing the outflow from the holes in the buckets until his arms started to shake and his flesh was scratched from trying to reach through the metal grill to grab the tubes floating just out of reach.

  Pondering the puzzle once again, Cobb then took one plastic bucket and stuffed it in the second one, turning it so as few holes lined up as possible. This time when he carried a load of river water back, he kept more of the contents, splashed himself less, and filled up the barrel more. But even with this burst of ingenuity, he still couldn’t reach the tubes, and had no good sticks anywhere in sight that would allow him to make a hook tool.

  Getting frustrated, he abandoned the buckets and struggled on his wet socks and boots again. Partly for time, partly to keep warm, he jogged back downriver, back to where buckets grew on trees, and gathered up every last one of them. Clanking like a tin soldier, Cobb came back up to the camp a while later, a wide, manic grin on his face. Now he stuck bucket inside bucket, plastic inside metal, until he had exactly six of each type. Going to the river’s edge, he filled and carried the full buckets one at a time, drenching his pants below the knee from the dribbles of water that still squirted out of the holes—but he was too excited to care. When he had all six buckets lined up, he poured them inside the barrel, one at a time, as fast as he could, and raised the water level far higher than he had before.

  Struggling, he reached into the barrel, reaching for the bobbing plastic fish, striving for a handle or a surface he could grasp as his fingers danced over the objects. But the draining water was too fast for him and the objects soon sank beyond his reach. Feeling closer to success now, he went back to the bank and filled up his six buckets again and poured them all in—but his arms were too short to grasp the tubes floating inside.

  Turning, he saw that the old man was sitting in his chair again, this time with a blanket over his lap instead of the shotgun, drinking a cup of steaming coffee. He was clearly enjoying the show.

  “Fucker,” Cobb muttered under his breath, then sat down on a rock and thought about the problem. He needed one more bucket of water in order to reach his prizes. He thought about the hot, steaming water that Hawna had poured over the stones, and about the tides of Puget Sound back home, the way the water flowed in over the rocks, and then back out again hours later.

  Remembering how Hawna put the rock in the pail the night before, Cobb got to work carrying heavy stones from the bank, carefully choosing the ones that would fit through the hole in the grate. Doing his best not to break or crack the tubes in the bottom of the barrel, he dropped two or three buckets worth of stones in, hoping it would be enough. Then he gathered his brigade of water buckets again and poured them in quick succession, rising the water level further and further, until—

  He grabbed the first thermos! Then the second! He even managed to get his slippery, clinging fingers around the third one before the water drained away.

  From the tent came a rhythmic sound. Cobb turned to see the old man still sitting in his chair, slowly clapping his hands. He was doing this in a way that was somehow rewarding, but somehow sarcastic at the same time. Cobb just stared back, shivering and cold, as the man reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out something small and black, then pressed it with his thumb.

  With a high-pitched shriek the firepit next to Cobb exploded into a ten-foot pyre of flame and light, causing the crow to backpedal away as a great cloud of smoke rose up into the trees. The artificial shrieking stopped after about five seconds, at which point the flames shrank down to a normal, waist-high level. But Cobb was too afraid to approach. He wasn’t sure what had made the terrible noise. He knew that the old man was fucking with him again, but his bird-self was too freaked out by the unknown to approach the warming flames.

  Cobb closed his eyes, understanding that this was his moment. One set of instincts told him to get closer, to get warm, to dry off, to find out what was in the bottles. His other set of instincts told him to fly, to get away from the loud noises and the bright lights, away from the sticks and the bones and the cold water and the aggravation of it all. To find somewhere dark and safe away from the madness.

  Cobb forced himself to move forward, right up to the fire, and strip. He arranged his clothing so it would hopefully dry out. He was astonished to find that some of the clothes he’d put down earlier had been nearly dried out by the great burst of fire and heat. He wondered what other great magics the old man was capable of.

  Hunkering down as close as he dared to the flames, he saw that the old man had gone back inside. Overhead, earlier than he had expected, the sun was already starting to go down. Opening up the wide-necked tubes, one after the other, Cobb revealed his three prizes, dumping out their contents onto the ground at his feet.

  The first tube contained a small, thin bottle of something called Jack Daniels. He opened the bottle’s cap, cracking the seal, but didn’t like the smell of it at all.

  The second skinny tube held a pencil-thin flashlight, one that turned on by a flick of a switch. It was very bright and cast a line of light through the fire’s smoke.

  The third battered tube held a small black mechanical gadget, a kind of tiny, palm-size phone box. A rubber-coated antenna stuck up out of the top.

  Cobb sat back on his butt, dismayed. He didn’t know what he was hoping for in the tubes, but this wasn’t it. While he sat there, wishing for food and a coat and shoe
s that weren’t soaked through, he wondered how long the firewood was going to last against the chill of the coming night. In Hawna’s fireplace, logs only burned for a few hours before they turned to ash. He recognized that he might have a problem.

  The phone box at his feet crackled once, spitting out static. Cobb, confused, reached down and picked it up.

  “You there?” the old man said from the box, his voice strange and tinny.

  “Yeah,” Cobb said. “I’m here.”

  “Press the button if you want to talk. If you want me to hear you speak.”

  Cobb did so, hearing a crack of static from across the water, from where the man sat in his chair. “Yeah,” Cobb said again. “I’m here.”

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “My name is Cobb. Cobb Edison.”

  “That’s a good name. My name’s Torvo.”

  “Hello, Torvo,” Cobb replied. “That thing with the gun was a pretty shitty thing to do.”

  Torvo laughed. “I had to teach you a lesson.”

  “What lesson was that?”

  “Men don’t fly. Crows don’t swim.”

  Cobb nodded. “I think I got that now. Can I come over?”

  “Sure. But you still have to figure out how.”

  Cobb stared at the little box in his hand with shock. “We’re not done?”

  “Get onto my island and then we’ll start. But not a moment before. The rocks in the barrel was pretty good, though. Nobody else has done that before.”

  “What else did they try?”

  “One of the ones that made it stuffed his shirt into a bucket, and his pants into another, giving himself eight buckets of water to work with instead of only six. One of the ones that didn’t make it tried to piss into the barrel when it was nearly full. I thought I was going to shit myself for laughing so hard.”

  Cobb didn’t feel like laughing. “Well, I’ll be over there in a bit.”

  “Well, either do that or freeze to death.”

  Cobb blinked and hit the talking switch. “You’d let me die out here?”

  “Probably,” Torvo said back, his voice marked with finality.

  “I could find enough wood to keep the fire going all night.”

  “You could do that,” Torvo said. “But it’s supposed to start raining tomorrow morning.”

  “And my fire will die.”

  “Yep.” Same tone, same grim finality.

  “Well, I’d better figure it out then,” Cobb said. He heard nothing in response. After a minute, Torvo got up and went into his tent once again, this time closing the zipper door to keep out the cold.

  When Cobb’s coat was dry, he put it on to keep warmer as he hunkered by the fading fire. It was almost dark and his fire had diminished by half, making him wish he’d done this earlier. In the heart of the fire he could see a metal object, some kind of armored contraption that he assumed was the whistling fire-starter that Torvo had triggered with his magic button. In time, when the fire was out, he might investigate it, to see what made it tick. But for now, after holding his shoes up to the flames for half an hour in an attempt to dry out the insides, Cobb felt baked and chilled all at the same time. He was in no mood for tinkering. He wanted onto the island more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.

  When considering his options, he knew that Torvo’s boat wasn’t one of them, as it was tied up and secured in a way that he could never reach, even if he jumped in the water upstream and tried to ride the current down to the island without drowning. The sticks and bones above him in the trees offered no help, as the few he managed to knock down with thrown rocks revealed they were fragile, ragged things that easily frayed and broke. He investigated the barrel again and again, and thought about making floating water-shoes out of the buckets. He thought about making a rudimentary bridge, or finding a fallen sapling from the steep hillside above and dragging it over to make a passage. But none of it seemed like it was going to work.

  So he studied the tubes again and the contents he’d been given. The Jack Daniels tasted foul, even in small sips, but it warmed him up inside. The radio allowed him to talk to Torvo, but only if the old man was in a mood to talk. That left the flashlight, a clickable pinpoint of light amid the descending darkness. The first stars were showing now, glimmering above the trees and the distant mountaintops—a marker of just how little time Cobb had left, rather than a source for inspiration.

  The flashlight. He played with it, shining it up into the trees. He unscrewed the housing and took the magical little batteries out, wondering all the while if the device concealed some hidden tool or key. But in the end, as it became fully dark, Cobb decided it was just a way to allow him to see.

  But to see what?

  Going down to the river, he shone the light up on Torvo’s tent house, its windows lit up by the glow of the warm, flickering firelight within. Walking along the bank, he looked for tracks that weren’t his own, reasoning that Torvo would have to come across sometime. That he couldn’t use his boat for everything. He pondered whether the water would freeze in the winter, or diminish in the summer. When he thought about diverting the stream, he saw no way he could pile enough rocks into the mouth of the channel to change its course. Playing his flashlight along the bank, around in the trees, and across the front of the house again, he saw nothing useful. Just shadows and darkness.

  “Crows can’t swim,” he told himself again, muttering the words for the hundredth time. “And men can’t fly.” It had to be the water, had to be in the water. There was no boat upstream. He hadn’t seen anything else of note downstream when he’d collected his buckets earlier in the day.

  Shining his light, Cobb walked along the bank, noting the play of rippling shadow and stone at the bottom of the channel. It looked so shallow at times, like he could reach right down and touch the bottom. But he knew that was an illusion, as the torrent was likely deeper than he was tall. He kept looking anyway, walking from the bottom of the island all the way upstream to where the waters parted violently against the rock. He trudged every step, scanning the water with the flashlight’s directed radiance.

  At the very top, at the edge where the island was furthest from the shore, he saw something with the flashlight. A disturbance, a ripple in the continuity of the flow. Eyebrows furrowed, Cobb got down on his hands and knees and aimed the flashlight right into the water. He could see it now, a flat, reflective pane, unmoving, a thing refusing to be distorted by the river’s passage. Reaching his hand down into the water, he felt down two inches, three inches, four inches, until his cuff was wet—and then his fingers came to rest against a pitted plastic surface, thick and anchored, heavy and weight-supporting and as clear as winter ice.

  Excited, he picked up a handful of gravel and mud from the bank beside him and tossed it into the water, noting with glee that the heavier pieces stayed for a few seconds on top of wide plastic sheeting before the current took them away. He guessed that the makeshift, invisible bridge was about three feet wide, but he could only hope that it went all the way to the far side. Panning the light forward, he saw something now that he hadn’t noticed before on the island—shadowy recesses where crude steps and handholds led up onto the rock. Like a stairway, but hard to see and find.

  Standing up, Cobb clenched the flashlight in his teeth and spread his arms for balance. He assumed it was going to be slippery; he assumed that he might fall. But this was his best way across before the fire died, before the rains of morning came. At his first booted step into the ice-cold water, his heart raced into his throat and his pulse began to pound behind his ears. But the ledge held, and he managed to keep his balance without slipping. Another step, and a third, and a fourth got him halfway across. Then a fifth, and a sixth—including one that nearly sent him slipping and banging into the drink—got him within a few feet of the island’s edge. Now he was out of the deeps, and the water level was over his ankles, almost to midcalf.

  Two more steps, shivering with excitement and cold, an
d he was at the edge of the rock, fingers touching the porous surface with wonder. When he looked up, ready to make his first attempt at a handhold, he saw a shape looming over him, a silhouette among the stars. A silhouette that smelled like pipe tobacco and coffee, coat sleeves rustling as he extended a hand to help Cobb up.

  “Come on, Cobb. I don’t got all night.”

  Cobb reached out, in trust and in friendship—and let the old man take him by the hand and haul him up onto the rock face. Atop, taking the little flashlight out of his mouth, Cobb was shocked by the view from up here, by the vantage of the little makeshift camp down by the bank. Now he knew that he had never had any chance to make that jump. It was certainly too far, and the island was much too high.

  “You want to come inside and get some coffee?” Torvo asked him with a smile, gesturing toward the tent. The old man’s eyes were warm and mirthful, with just a touch of mischief besides.

  “I would love that,” Cobb replied, knowing that he had passed his first test.

  [Phive.]

  The sudden change from the cold outdoors to the interior of the large tent was a pleasant shock, as the space was heated by a battered old woodstove crammed to the gullet with split wood. Two low sleeping cots, one eating table, two fabric camp chairs and two wooden ones—one rocking chair, one not—dominated the space.

  By the woodstove was a tall plastic folding bench covered with boxes, bags, cans and resealable containers filled with all kinds of food. The floor of the tent, covered with layers of plastic tarp, also had a number of worn, mouse-eaten throw rugs tossed on top to keep the chill from the stone beneath at bay. An electric lantern glowed over each one of the cots, showing the crisp edges and tucked corners of the sleeping pallets, each precisely made. Down at the other end of the room, a folding flap revealed a small space beyond piled with all kinds of equipment and tools, weapons and supplies that Torvo used to survive out here in the wild.