Raintree County

by Ross Lockridge Jr.

  Come, o, come to Lake Paradise, the oldest scar upon the earth of Raintree County. See how the soft green hair of life blurs the old scar that is in the very center of Raintree County!. . .

  She had a hard time finding a place on the opposite shore where she could run the boat in easily, but she finally tied the boat up to a tree branch and climbed ashore. The hotel looked impossibly small on the far side of the lake. She began to push eastward, finding herself immediately involved with nettles, rushes, berry bushes. But she was not at all afraid. From the moment she set her foot on this side of the lake, she had felt a wild excitement as if she were about to discover something hidden to everyone else. She was a strong walker and had often boasted that she never tired out, and she didn’t intend now to turn back.

  All along this side of the lake, the ground was lower. It seemed to her that the leaves were greater, greener, thicker. She found several new plants and placed leaf, bloom, and bits of stalk in a little wooden box with a hooked lid, which she carried for her specimens. She saw big butterflies, amazing dragonflies, and again and again turtles and frogs that slipped from bank to water as she approached. Her luck with leaves was so great that she began to dream of herself as the discoverer of the Raintree, which she pictured as an incredible trunk whose fanshaped burst of foliage towered in isolation above the other trees.

  Come, o, come to Raintree County and to the central gardenground thereof, where hills slope circularly to form the ancient scar. Here was an old uprooting. Here grew perhaps the Tree that flowered above the garden in ancient days. O, little transplant from the Asian homeland and heartland of the race! O, Biblical tree! O, mysterious seedling, lost and only vaguely remembered!

  She pushed on toward the eastern end of the lake, finding her way ever more difficult. She was obliged to make wide detours to avoid swampy places and thickets; and as she tried to make her way back toward the lake, the water had somehow passed beyond the seeming shoreline and deep into the region where she was hunting. She finally took off her shoes and stockings, and holding up her dress, she waded on, feeling more and more determined to reach the place where the river emptied into the lake. She began to lose her bearings. Great waterbirds sprang shrieking into flight, the sunlight poured a furious brightness into open pools, frogs slithered away in troops of hundreds, green bugs buzzed by her, blind as bullets. She began to be afraid. She had come too far. She didn’t know where she was. Her white dress was stained with the green blood of life, her bonnet was being continually knocked off her head, her feet were stung and bruised by stones and stalks. O dear, she thought, I’ll have to go back. I’ll have to give up. But then she saw not a hundred yards farther on, across bunches of horseweeds and rushes, a clump of trees, cleanroofed and stately as if rising from an island of firm ground.

  Halfway there, she began to fear for her life. There was something sinister about this place. Savage and endless variety of forms, each form endlessly and savagely repeated, smote her with the frail uniqueness of her own form. A slender, sallowskinned girl with black hair, she felt foolish, lost, helpless in her white dress and bonnet, but she clutched her shoes and stockings and her specimen box and pushed on.

  Then it was that she stepped on the snake, a long lewd fellow, writhing under her very feet and slithering away in the water with a gay fury. She had touched this green and yellow monster with her naked foot, and here she was now helpless in his domain, in the very sink and center of it. She began to run blindly through the water toward the high ground where the trees were.

  Just then she saw something that shocked her almost as much as the snake had. It was a man sitting on a wide, flat rock beneath the trees.

  Involuntarily, she called his name in a voice mingling surprise and relief.

  —Mr. Shawnessy!

  He turned and watched her, as, feeling very faint and foolish, she stood motionless, wishing she were miles away.

  —Come on up here, child, he said. What in the world are you doing in this swamp, Esther?

  It was the first time that week he had called her by her first name. She came up obediently and laid her belongings on the rock.

  —I was hunting specimens, she said.

  He shook his head and laughed.

  —Have you found any?

  —Some, she said.

  —Well, you can add me to the collection.

  He smiled, but Esther had always been of a humorless turn of mind like her Pa and made literal interpretations. She blushed violently and tried to think what Mr. Shawnessy might mean.

  —How in the world did you get through the swamp there? What way did you come?

  She told him, and again he shook his head and laughed.

  —There’s a path, he said, that you might have followed to this point. It curves wide around and comes out on the north shore about where you tied your boat. We can go back that way. My boat is tied along there too. Well, I suppose you’re wondering what I’m doing here.

  Strangely, she had not wondered, having immediately accepted his presence on the wild side of the lake as inevitable and right.

  —No, Mr. Shawnessy.

  —Why don’t you call me by my first name? After all, we’re fellow teachers now. People call me John.

  —O, no, Mr. Shawnessy, she said. No, I wouldn’t want to do that.

  She knew that she could never under any circumstances call him by his first name.

  —As you wish, he said, a little sadly. I forget how young you are.

  —Not so young either, she hastened to say.

  He looked at the surrounding tangle of grass, reeds, swamptrees, padded pools; mucky places, lost arms of river and lake, mudbars, thickets, flowers, weeds, all bathed in light and heat and stridulous with sound.

  —A good place to get lost in, he said, and never found again.

  —You seem to know your way.

  —This isn’t the first time I’ve been here, but I don’t know my way. Few people have ever been through this place. It’s a strange earth here. From here on to the river, it’s even worse than where you were.

  —You’ve been there?

  —Once—long ago. I never came back until I came back today hunting for someone.

  —Someone? she said, surprised.

  —Yes, he said. A boy. A boy twenty years old, a joyous youth. He swam over here eighteen years ago and found his way into this region and never came out again.

  He looked at her curiously to see what she was thinking. Later when she repeated this conversation over and over in her mind, she was amazed at what he had said. Now, in the savage light and beauty of the place, as they sat together on the rock, she with her bare feet chastely drawn up under her dress, she was curious to know his meaning but not shocked.

  —He’s lost here somewhere, this boy, Mr. Shawnessy went on in a low, pleasant voice that she thought was thrillingly sad and sweet. He’s still here, I suppose, wandering around trying to find his way out. He was a very remarkable boy, you know—perhaps the Hero of the County. Do you know why?

  She kept her face turned up to his and shook her head.

  —Because, if I’m not mistaken, he’s almost the only person who has seen the Raintree.

  —O! she said. You think it’s here then?

  —I think it was here, he said. I think the boy found it but didn’t know it at the time.

  —Why not?

  —He had drunk too much cider. He had swum too far. He was occupied with other things. Only later did he realize that he had seen the Raintree. It was then a slender tree with a rooty base, and it dropped its pollen on the boy’s naked arms and shoulders and into his hair, for that was the season of its blooming.

  —But if it was here then, it’s still here.

  —Maybe so, he said. But of course, everything changes here. Islands of solid earth dissolve, trees are rotted out and crowded away by others.

  —Did—did he find it on firm ground?

  —I think he found it on a little island of firm ground closer
to the river. There were two stones for markers at the base with rude letters chipped on them—perhaps the initials of the man who planted the tree.

  —This boy, she said, watching him intently, he came back?

  He shrugged his shoulders again and smiled in a way that showed sadness rather than joy, and then he turned and looked at her a moment as if studying her face.

  —I’ll tell you about this boy, he said, if you won’t think it foolish.

  —I’d love to hear.

  —I’d tell you his name if I could, but in fact he had no name. He left his name on the cultivated side of the lake. It was a hot, bright afternoon like this. He was a good swimmer, and he entered the water somewhere on the southern rim of the lake and began to swim across. This was in a time when few people came to the lake and there were no buildings around it. He swam for a while and landed here, but he found that there was no definable shore here where the Shawmucky flows into the lake. There was someone with him. A girl.

  He turned and looked at her, and there seemed to be a gentle question in his eyes. He waited.

  —Go on, Mr. Shawnessy, she said. What did he do?

  —He didn’t know precisely what he was doing, but at the time this youth believed that he had found the source and secret of all life, beauty, and desire. He thought that he had found all wisdom and had become superior to good and evil. He thought that he was about to pluck the fruit of the tree of everlasting life. Do you understand?

  —Maybe, she said.

  —He was perhaps a beautiful young man—beautiful because he was young—his hair was thick and tawny and caught the sunlight, he was like a young god, and he had the living present in his hands. The girl was naked like himself and very beautiful. These two slept and awakened beneath a tree. They lay for an incalculable time between the two stones. They ate of a forbidden fruit.

  He waited for a while.

  —Yes? she said.

  Her voice trembled a little, and she felt that for some foolish reason she was going to cry.

  —That was when the boy was lost, he said. He never came back. He was nameless anyway, and it didn’t matter if he was lost. But in the evening, a young man who had a name swam back across the lake with a girl and put on clothes and with them shame and a sense of guilt.

  She felt a great anguish, because of the thrilling sadness of Mr. Shawnessy’s voice. She understood that he was referring to something in his own life that had happened long ago and had changed everything for him.

  —But it was long ago, she said. And it’s all right now, isn’t it?

  —Nearly twenty years ago, he said. I wonder if the tree the boy found is still there.

  —Let’s go and see, she said.

  He looked at her curiously again, and she turned her face away because it seemed to her that she simply couldn’t bear to let him see her eyes. After all this was her teacher, Mr. Shawnessy, whose wisdom and passion were greater than anything else in Raintree County.

  —We’d better not, he said. It’s a perilous business, and we’re not dressed for it. Besides, I don’t know that it would do any good to find it. It’s funny, but I’ve made a myth out of that tree, and I don’t want to destroy the myth. Somehow, that tree embodies the secret of life, the riddle of Raintree County, and yet I know it’s not the physical tree itself that embodies it, and I don’t want to disillusion myself. If I found the tree, I should remind myself that in the principle of its growth it’s no more nor less miraculous than any other tree—and all trees are miraculous. I should see that the two stones were like all the other deposits of the glacier—having mass and form, and that the initials on the stones were just chipped letters, no more nor less remarkable than any of the billions of letters that mankind has strewn upon the earth. No, the tree is not the secret, but is itself, like the letters chipped on the stones, part of the secret only. There are secret places in the earth. Every county in America has its secret place and every American life its Delphic cave.

  Esther sat very quiet now in the still, bright air, wishing that this time would never change. She felt certain that Mr. Shawnessy had just confided something to her that no one else knew.

  —You’ve always lived in the County, haven’t you, Esther?

  —Yes, my father’s father was one of the first settlers in the County. And then you know, they used to say that there was Indian blood in our family, but I don’t think it’s true.

  —You don’t say! Mr. Shawnessy said.

  He studied her face.

  —It might very well be, he said.

  —I don’t know why I told you, she exclaimed, shocked at herself. It probably isn’t so. I was always ashamed of it. I don’t know what got into me to tell you.

  —You should be proud of it, he said. Perhaps that’s the unique quality of your beauty.

  —My beauty! she said, surprised. O, Mr. Shawnessy, I never thought——O, pshaw, you don’t really think I’m pretty! Why, I never——

  —Pretty! Why, my dear child, he said, of course you’re pretty. Didn’t you know that?

  Esther had known that she was prettier than most girls, but she had never supposed that Mr. Shawnessy would notice it. It was not a usual type of prettiness, what with her sallow skin, her high cheekbones, her dark round, haunting eyes, and her austere, almost stern expression.

  —Why, yes, he said, speaking with surprising energy. You’re very beautiful. I always thought so. I should think many a young man would have told you that.

  —I’ve not been courted much, she said. Pa doesn’t favor it.

  They talked for a long time, and after a while they took the long path around, leaving the solitude of the wild side. Esther had put her shoes and stockings back on and had brushed off her dress. But she was still dizzy from the strange things that had happened to her across the lake. She kept thinking of the young man who had been lost there beneath the Raintree and had never come back. She knew who this young man was, he was just her own age, twenty years old, and to be pursued by this young man and to lie with him unclothed beneath the Raintree would be to . . .

  Come to Lake Paradise, o, wandering one, come in the summertime and cross the lake to the wild side. Here you will lose the name and garments that you had in Raintree County. Come and seek the place where, amorous and young beneath the tree, the young god waited for you. For you, a long time there he waited, and only you can find him and restore him to himself. O, little wanderer from a dark earth, o, little vesselbearer from the Asiatic heartland and homeland of the race!

  After their afternoon together on the wild side of the lake, Mr. Shawnessy was often in Esther’s company. He went walking with her and sometimes boating with her. He sought out any party of young people which included her. He seemed to like to talk with her, though he didn’t speak again of the daring young man who had been lost on the wild side of the lake, nor did either of them say anything about their afternoon there. He spoke, however, of many things—old days in Raintree County and his experiences in the Civil War. He now always called Esther by her first name, and she of course continued to call him Mr. Shawnessy. Gradually he seemed to recover from the remoteness and gloom of his first days at the Institute, and some of the sadness went out of his handsome eyes. He smiled and joked more frequently.

  There were hours of fun at Paradise Lake such as Esther had never known in the world of Pa, who had little laughter and lightness in him. Esther herself didn’t often participate in the funmaking, being by nature stoical and humorless, but she was excited by it and by the part which little by little Mr. Shawnessy took in it.

  Some of the best sport was the swimming. The girls wore yards of frilled stuff designed to conceal the shape of their bodies. The lake and the surrounding hills echoed squeals and screams as the young men and women frolicked in the water, splashing and ducking each other. Mr. Shawnessy avoided the more boisterous fun and undertook to show Esther how to swim. She learned to make patient, rhythmical gestures with her arms under the water, pointing her han
ds as if in prayer and stroking out from her breast like the figurehead of a ship cleaving the water. But her bathing costume was so heavy that these motions never served to keep her afloat, and she went down beneath the water again and again, still stroking stoically as Mr. Shawnessy had shown her. Each time, he would reach down and pull her out.

  —Esther, my word, child, you’ll drown! You don’t have to go on doing it after you sink.

  —I was doing it all right, wasn’t I?

  —Perfectly, he said. Only you always sink. If it weren’t for your suit, you could swim.

  He blushed.

  —After all, he said, a fish couldn’t swim dressed like that.

  One night, the girls went to a remote part of the lake in boats and took off their clothes and bathed and soaped themselves. While they were giggling and dipping their pale forms in the water, they heard a shout from across the lake and a lantern flashed. Some men were rowing in a boat toward them. The lantern palely illumined the white bodies of the young women beside the lake, and they all screamed shrilly and put their hands over their breasts and the dark mound hair.

  There was a loud chorus of song, a confused shouting of male voices, the boat drifted slowly farther out on the lake, and the girls spoke in loud voices indignantly as they dried themselves and dressed.

  The next day there was much speculation as to what men had made up the party.

  —From what I hear, John Shawnessy got the whole thing up, Carl Foster said, winking.

  —Mr. Shawnessy is too much of a gentleman to do any such thing, Ivy said. It sounds like some of your doing, Carl Foster!