Blackbirch Woods

by Meredith Anne DeVoe

  “Yes, yes, as far as I can go. Let’s get you up. Let me take some of these things, first.” He left his own few possessions, a quiver and a simple bow, leaning against a tree. He took the rucksack and the twelve-gauge on his shoulder. Then he helped the minister up, the bad leg between them. He was a tall, lanky man and his arm went easily over Willis’s shoulder.

  They hobbled along for some time, then switched sides so that Reverend Peterson’s hurt leg would not keep hitting Willis’s. Willis guided him by the most level, open way back to the path by the river. Still, the journey was arduous. Willis seemed to want to keep the minister talking. Reverend wasn’t sure if it was for his sake—to take his mind off of the pain—or because the young man himself craved conversation. The longer they talked and endured their forced physical closeness, the more alive the young man seemed.

  Until they came to the edge of the trees. Then a change came over the young man. Unexpectedly, he grew weak and staggered. He let Reverend Peterson down to a sitting position and stood, swaying unsteadily. “I can’t go any farther, I don’t think,” he panted.

  The minister could see the single light, high in a window of the bell tower, that was always burning. It was still an eighth of a mile away. Might as well be a hundred miles. He was perplexed by the sudden change in Willis’s condition. He thought about suggesting that they rest a while, and then the boy could walk to the church. His wife would be waking soon, maybe he could send Willis to fetch her. “Are you all right, man? I didn’t mean for you to overdo it.”

  Willis was straightening. “I’ll soon be fine, Reverend. If I cut you a crutch, do you think you can manage? Maybe you should wait for the dawn, it cannot be far off. Then you can follow the path at your own pace.”

  “My hunting knife is in that pack.”

  “I have my own, here.” Reverend Peterson saw a vague flash in the darkness.

  Willis unslung the minister’s burdens from his shoulder and handed the pack to him. Reverend Peterson rummaged through it with the flashlight until he found the vacuum bottle. “Coffee?”

  Willis smiled at the drink. “Just a wee.” He took a few gulps from the screw-on plastic mug, looking at the mug as though it were the best coffee he had had in a hundred years. He smiled and handed the cup back. “I’ll soon be back,” he said and faded into the night.

  When he returned, he had found a strong sapling with a knuckled root and had cut it by digging around it with a rock and using the hefty knife as a hatchet to cut off the roots. The sapling was strong and straight, so that when he stood and leaned on it, he thought he would probably make it. But Willis was right, it would be better to wait until dawn. They sat back down. Willis chose to rest against a maple tree, carving the root ball of the makeshift crutch and shortening the stick by just an inch or so. He seemed to want to stay near the minister.

  “Willis, I’ve only been in Wentham since about new year’s. Are you one of the Woods that has the farm up toward East Wentham? The big one on the hill?”

  “I am, Reverend. But I don’t live there anymore.” He squirmed. “I can’t get there anymore. They’ve cut too many trees down.” Unaware that the statement made no sense to his listener, he looked thoughtful. “A lot of the old farms are going back to woods. In a few summers, maybe I can cross the creek over there and work my way up the back side of the hill.”

  “I don’t understand. Why not take the road?” Reverend Peterson was blunt; the pain was beginning to wear him down. He wanted a nice ambulance to get him to the medical center in Groton and give him a nice, strong pain killer.

  Willis looked at him then. He was at a loss. His mouth moved silently. Then he changed the subject. “Not many people come through here. Not at night, anyway.” He hesitated again. Then he blurted, “I haven’t talked to a soul in years.”

  Now it was the minister’s turn to falter. Finally he managed to say, “I’m a minister. That’s what we do. Talk to people. Or rather, people talk to us. So if you need to talk, talk. I’m here.” Even if you’ve lost your mind, he mused.

  Willis sighed deeply. And while he carved the crutch he wove a story that was captivating, and entirely unbelievable. Finally he seemed talked out. He looked straight at Reverend Peterson. The light of the flashlight which lay on the ground was yellowing as the batteries ran low, but the minister could see in his eyes that whatever the truth was, the young man evidently believed his story wholeheartedly.

  For something to say, the minister said, “So that’s why you can’t leave these woods?”

  Willis gazed at him a moment more, then his eyes dropped to the wood in his hand. “I imagine you think me mad, sir. But I soon have to leave, before the dawn.” He rose to his feet, handing the finished crutch to Reverend Peterson.

  “What happens at dawn?”

  Willis shrugged vaguely. “I cease to be, till night comes again.”

  “Willis, I admit don’t know what to think… I’m very glad you are here now, or God knows how long I would have lain there in those woods, or been in agony crawling on my hands and knees. Willis, I hope to see you again and we’ll talk more. For now, I’d like to pray for you.”

  “Yes sir, I would appreciate that very much.” Willis stood expectantly, bowing his head.

  Reverend Peterson prayed for a long time for the young man. When he concluded, he opened his eyes. The boy was gone. A few birds called their soft, late autumn calls as the overcast sky began to lighten, and soft rain began to fall. He pried himself upright on the crutch, and leaving his things for someone to get for him later, he hobbled the grueling eighth of a mile to the church, where his wife went to start the car while he sat in the easy chair with his long leg propped on a pillow on the coffee table, and dozed off. In a short while, his wife woke him to tell him that the car was warm and waiting by the parsonage door.

  It was full light now and he noticed the crutch he had leaned on all the way from the forest. He realized with a shock that he couldn’t put a face or a name to the person who had helped him in the woods. It must have been the pain, he thought, he was out of his mind with it and he hadn’t paid attention, and here some guy had helped him out and he couldn’t even say thanks. He couldn’t recall the first thing about him. A blank. The Wentham Ghost, he thought, and would have chuckled if it weren’t for the pain.

  He looked at the crutch and was astonished to see that with minimal change to the root ball of the sapling, its carver had turned the knuckle of burled wood into a deer’s head. The bent forelegs under the muzzle resolved back into the stem. The design was streamlined enough to have tucked comfortably under his arm and bear his weight. The minister ran his fingers over the silky wood. From the smooth gray of the bark the deer seemed to be leaping, emerging into life.

  PERILOUS

  2008

  Willis and Violet hiked some distance one clear, warm night. Far downstream from the campsite, he picked a thread of path through sprawling blackberry bushes and dark stands of fir trees. On the other side, the woods gave way to wetland. Scrawny pines and poplars and staghorn sumac thinned to Joe-Pye weed and steeplebush, turtleheads, foxglove, chokecherry, horsetail, sedge and bunchgrass. Between a grove of white birch and balsam fir, an almost invisible deer trail led into the tall grasses and cattails beyond. Willis motioned Violet to sit on a dry hummock a few feet from the trail, while he squatted nearby. He whispered to be very still and quiet.

  Violet listened hard. She had sometimes been near this marsh in the daytime—she and her Dad had walked this far, but the main trail skirted the marsh and returned to the river farther down. During the day, redwing blackbirds called to each other incessantly, but now they were asleep. A few plaintive spring peepers and bullfrogs called out.

  “When I was little,” Violet whispered in Willis’s ear, “my sister Greta told me the bullfrogs were breaking their guitar strings. It always made me laugh.”

  Willis chuckled under his breath. A few moments later, he laid a hand on her arm, and put a finger to his lips. S
he could hear what sounded like footsteps approaching. After a few moments, she saw movement through the brush. A doe was approaching cautiously. She stopped, sniffing the air and cocking her head. Her white tail flashed in the dark.

  Violet’s heart pounded with excitement and she tried to be as still as possible. The doe flicked its tail again and continued to move toward the marsh. Two fawns followed close behind her, then a yearling. Violet wanted to cry, they were lovely and so timid. The yearling stopped to sniff the air again, and looked suddenly toward them. Violet hardly breathed. After what seemed like a long time, the deer moved on quickly, switching its tail, clearly uncomfortable with something.

  After a short time they quietly left the wetland area and made their way back to the river trail. Willis talked while they walked. “You know I used to hunt deer. I also got a bobcat, and a few coyotes that were plaguing the calves at the farm. Turkeys used to be hard to get, but now there are plenty. Anyway, one night after I was, uh… trapped here for a time, I shot a deer. I built a fire and ate some of the venison. I don’t really need to eat, you understand, I just wanted the enjoyment. I hung the carcass and for a night or two I enjoyed the meat, but most of it spoiled. I felt bad about that. I had tried to smoke some, but the fires went out in the day and crows and things ruined it. So after that I would stalk deer for fun, but not shoot them. I even made some blunts—arrows with a wooden knob at the tip, that is— and I would shoot them just for the challenge of sneaking up. But I tired of that after a few years as well. Now I do without the arrows and try to sneak up just to touch them. It doesn’t often happen, but you should see how surprised they are!

  “One night I found a fawn curled up in the brush near the guts of a doe someone had taken that day. This was a very long time ago and hungry folk still killed deer year-round. Anyway it was too young to be on its own, too young to recognize me as its enemy.

  “There was a lady whose husband was dead, on the other side of these hills, east of here. She lived alone for decades and much of the farm went back to trees, trees went right up to the house and outbuildings, and because of that I was able to enter the buildings. She kept a number of sheep for wool. I carried that little fawn to her place. It was just past lambing time. One of the ewes was penned by itself, its head tied to the wall because it had an ulcer on its leg. Its own lamb was there and I put the fawn to the sheep’s teat and it nursed. I came back for several nights and saw that the lady had left the fawn with the ewe, who forgot it wasn’t her own after a while.

  “That fawn and I were friends after that. While it still had spots it would sport like a puppy dog with me sometimes.” Willis paused and Violet actually saw him wipe his eyes. Then he went on. “It grew up and got spikes on its head, and left the farm after a while. Because it accepted me when we met, the other deer in these woods began to accept my presence as well.

  “I guess that made it over-friendly toward people, and eventually it disappeared, still a spike buck. It probably walked up to a hunter, thinking him a friend. But the other deer had come to allow me as part of the woods, and they walked by, barely acknowledging me.”

  “They don’t forget you in the day time? That’s really interesting.”

  “You remember me when you hear my name. To a deer, your scent is your name.”

  Violet thought about that. “But why can’t I remember you, even if I write your name down? Because I tried that once or twice. Something always kept me from finding what I wrote, or being able to read it.”

  Willis looked away. Violet persisted.

  “It’s like there is a big blank in my mind where you should be. So I always think I was dreaming, because dreams just seem to slip away like that. You remember them one minute, and the next, they’re just gone. I might remember that I was up in the night, and even that maybe there was someone else with me, Will, but I remember nothing about you. Like you weren’t there to begin with.”

  “Maybe I’m not,” he murmured.

  Violet heard a tone in his voice that made her stop. She grabbed the cloth of his sleeve. “What are you talking about?”

  “I should have been dead a hundred and fifty years ago. So maybe I am dead. Maybe that’s why the deer ignore me.” His voice had an edge to it, and he wasn’t looking at her.

  Violet stepped close to him. Her fingers closed around his arm above the elbow, squeezing the muscle and bone. Abruptly she placed her ear against his chest and held it there a moment. Then she stood back, smiling slightly.

  “Willis, I don’t believe in people’s souls hanging around when life is over. ‘It is appointed to man once to die, and then the judgment.’ Jesus told the thief on the cross, ‘even today you will be with me in Paradise.’ And you can’t be dead. You are warm, and solid, and breathing, and have a strong, beating heart, my friend.”

  Willis regarded the dark-haired, beautiful girl before him, his heart pounding from the pleasant shock of her touch.

  It was as though he heard his own heart saying, You are warmth, you are breath, you are my heartbeat, you are my soul, you are my life.

  With vast and exquisite effort, he swallowed those words several times, and searched for others to say. But she wasn’t done.

  “And even in the day, I feel something. I don’t know anything, but—but my heart knows something. Knows there is someone. My heart knows you. So you are.”

  My heart knows you…

  “You’re right. Thank you,” he said simply, with a slight bow, when he found his tongue.

  She smiled at him sadly, biting her lip. I wish I had better answers than that, she thought. Answers that would solve your problem, not just describe it. What can I ever do for him?

  They continued down the trail. “Do you ever hunt anymore?”

  “It’s been a long time. Maybe some night I can roast you a partridge. Have you tried it?”

  “No.”

  “Rabbit? Squirrel? Squab?”

  “Squab?”

  “Young pigeons. We used to have a dovecote in the gable end of the barn.”

  “A dove coat?” She was smiling.

  He was also amused. “A coop for the pigeons. They could fly in and out, like a regular birdhouse, but there was a little door inside the barn where one could reach in and take the birds at night, while they roosted. Or collect their eggs. Which we did often, when I was a naughty little boy.”

  “You were a naughty little boy?”

  “The worst.” They smiled.

  Violet shook her head. “None of those. I ate goat meat once. My friend’s granddad is Italian and he made some. It was actually good—like lamb, but leaner. Are ‘squabs’, or any of those any good, or are you just teasing me? trying to get me to eat skunk, or something?”

  “They’re all good if you prepare them right. Although I’ll not vouch for the skunk. You have to know the right herbs, and how to cook them neither too hot nor too slowly, so’s they won’t be tough. I haven’t actually cooked any in a long time, though. I don’t need to eat, and there is less pleasure when eating alone. As you would say, it’s no fun.”

  He regretted the words, and searched for something lighter to talk about, but Violet interrupted his thoughts.

  “Why don’t you need to eat?”

  Willis sighed heavily and although he tried to mask it, Violet heard. “Every night when I awaken, it’s as though no time at all has passed. My clothing is as it was, I have my bow and quiver, and the good supper I ate that night in 1817 is still keeping me going. Thank God, at least the rum had time to wear off by the time they took me.”

  Violet frowned thoughtfully as they walked. He tried again to lighten the mood.

  “There is a good place for swimming where I go sometimes. There are cliffs and trees that hang over the water, and it’s deep enough you can climb one of the stones and jump in. Some time, you should wear your swimming clothes.”

  “We’re staying two more days. Tomorrow night, let’s do that,” she smiled in response.

  The followin
g night, Willis made good on his suggestion. But when they arrived at the swimming hole, he realized his mistake. For what passed for swimming clothes in this century left little to a young man’s imagination. He moved well away while she disrobed and put on her swimsuit behind a bush, while he stripped to his breeches. He didn’t wait for her, but jumped from a boulder into the dark water. He kept his eyes averted until she called his name.

  “Where is it safe to jump in?” she called.

  “From the top of that rock, the water is fathoms deep.” He turned away again quickly, ashamed to be gazing on her bathing suit and legs. “What were you thinking, you great lout?” he murmured to himself.

  “What’d’you say?”

  “The water is cold,” he dissembled.

  Violet stood atop the boulder. The jump was at least twelve feet, just high enough to give her stomach a flutter.

  He had said it was safe. She leapt into the void.

  He heard the splash and turned back. Violet did not surface immediately. He looked around and then felt the tug on his foot. She broke water right next to him.

  “Whoo! The water is great!” She lay back in the water and backstroked around the pool. He swam to shallow water and sat on a submerged boulder, looking at the stars that shone bright through the tree branches that arched over the river. Sharing the swimming place with her had not seemed perilous, but suddenly he knew it was. Being alone with her was not ever going to be the same as when she was a little girl. Her womanhood was very apparent. His loneliness, as well as his natural desire, combined with her loveliness, friendship and trust, could become a volatile mixture. No, they were a volatile mixture. Already his mind was running in directions it had no business going. “Fool,” he muttered to himself. If he violated the trust and friendship they had, he would wish to die more than ever before.