The Hunting Tree

by Ike Hamill

  Don blushed and started to roll his bike into the garage.

  “Hey,” his father said. “Do you remember how to adjust these valves?”

  “Sure,” Don said. He laid his bike down on the driveway. His dad adjusted the valves every year. How could he forget how to do it? “You just back out the set screw, turn the nut until the gap is right, and then tighten it down.”

  “That’s what I thought, but it keeps getting too tight,” Wes said.

  Don picked up the wrench and sat next to his father. As he worked, his dad handed him the tools, like his assistant.

  “Hey, since you’re home, maybe you can help me put in the window units after I get the tractor back together.”

  “I can do it on my own while you’re finishing up. It’s a little early for AC though, isn’t it?” Don asked as he handed the wrench back to his father.

  “It’s supposed to be ninety-five tomorrow,” Wes said. He tightened the bolts on the right valve cover. “And I don’t want to take any chances with your mom.”

  “She upstairs now?”

  “Yeah. That’s why I’m home. I had to take your sister to practice so I just decided to call it a day.”

  “Okay. I’ll hold off on the unit for your window then.”

  “Thanks, Donny. Hey—you didn’t say—did you get the job?”

  “Yup. I should start at Bloom on Monday.”

  “Excellent. Good for you. I don’t see what it has to do with statistical analysis, but congrats.”

  “Thanks,” Don said. He dusted himself off and picked up his bike. The bike had a spot, hanging on the wall from hooks mounted over the garbage cans. Don lifted his bike and glanced down at the cans. His father must have brought them in when he got home from taking Chelsea to practice. One can’s lid had clear shiny trails criss-crossing over the top, like slugs had been at work spreading their slime all night. The other two lids looked relatively clean.

  Don went inside to change his clothes before wrestling with the air conditioners. Even though they spent the winter in the attic over the garage, they always seemed to hold standing water which would leak on his pants as soon as he tried to move them.

  # # # # #

  “What are you doing?” Chelsea asked.

  What was he doing? Don was just standing there, looking at the cork board hanging on his sister’s wall. She had pinned concert tickets, movie tickets, photos of friends, photos of singers, and tons of letters, postcards, and mementos to the board. It was personal. It was private.

  “I was making sure the AC is working,” he said.

  He’d entered her room without permission—a sin punishable by death—and he’d expected to be finished by the time she got home. She would find the air conditioner installed and just assume an anonymous, nameless forces had completed the installation in her absence, and she wouldn’t be mad. At least that’s what Don figured. This was the oldest unit, a hand-me-down from Don’s room, and he wasn’t sure it was working properly when they’d taken it in last fall. So he had turned it on and stood in front of the air, hoping it would get colder. Then he zoned out, looking at her private mementos pinned to the board. Then she caught him standing here.

  She strode to her open closet and tossed her cleats inside before shutting it tight, shutting out his prying eyes.

  “Well, is it?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

  “Hey,” Don said, looking for any way to change the subject away from his intrusion, “I wanted to talk to you about… Dad.” God help him, he had almost said, “Mom.” Chelsea held their mother in contempt, but she practically worshipped their father.

  She sighed, but he saw her eyes soften. She pulled out her desk chair and flopped down.

  “He’d be fine if she wasn’t so needy,” Chelsea said.

  “I know. But she can’t help it,” Don said.

  “Can’t she? She doesn’t take her pills half the time, and there are other things the doctor said that she’s not doing at all. It’s like we’re all held hostage here. I can’t even listen to music after nine—did you know that? She said that it vibrates through the floor. Through the floor! I just sit in here, trying not to move because I don’t know what’s going to vibrate.”

  Don sat down on the corner of her bed and just let her talk. Chelsea was a beautiful, sweet, sister, but she was a lousy daughter to her mom. She expected their mother to be perfect. She didn’t understand that her mom was a real person with real problems of her own.

  The medication did work, and Don understood why their mom didn’t always take it. It swept away the headaches and the nausea, but it left her tired, forgetful, and distant. She couldn’t afford to be distant when she saw her patients. Distant might mean glossing over a symptom and missing a diagnosis. So she took the meds in the afternoon and tried to get a good night’s sleep. In the morning she had a few hours of feeling good and sharp, so that’s when she saw her patients. She sacrificed her own comfort to care for her patients. How could Chelsea be complaining about that?

  Chelsea was looking to Don to answer her question, but he hadn’t been listening.

  “Pardon?” Don asked.

  “God. You’re not even listening.”

  “No, I was. I’m sorry—I just didn’t get the last part. What did you ask?”

  “I said... Oh, forget it.”

  “She’s going to get better, Chelse. Maybe it’s just early menopause or something. Didn’t Ms. Schumer have migraines for a while?”

  “Who cares. If it’s not that it will just be something else.”

  “What do you mean?” Don asked.

  “Don’t you get it? She’s always choosing her clients over us, and she always will. She only takes her pills when she gets home then she sleeps all evening so she can get up and be healthy for her clients. How come we never get the good Gwen? We always have to suffer through the sick Gwen so other people can have the good one?”

  “It’s for the patients. It’s for the kids.”

  “I’m a kid.”

  “You’re not sick.”

  “I could be. How would anyone know?”

  “Dad would know.”

  “Yeah. Exactly. If I only get one parent, I don’t know why we all have to suffer and live with mom. Why can’t she just go off and get an apartment close to her office. We’d all be happier. I know she drives Dad crazy too.”

  “Chelsea, come on. We’re a family. This is not one-sided. We all take care of each other.”

  “It’s been a long time since she took care of anyone in this house. She just takes. She’s a taker. She’s like a leech or something. Dad spends so much time taking care of her that sometimes he doesn’t even know what’s going on either. Does he even suspect how unhappy you are?” Chelsea asked.

  “What? I’m not unhappy,” Don said. He hadn’t talked with his sister about his plans.

  “Oh, come on. I have eyes. I know you don’t like school anymore. I heard you talking to your advisor on the phone the other night. He wanted you to take an internship, didn’t he?”

  “It’s just what a lot of people do,” Don said. His sister was sweet. She was a sweet bulldog who was enormously perceptive.

  “And why aren’t you doing it? You wanted to get all that really important summer experience making copies?”

  Don didn’t want to have this conversation. He couldn’t afford to verify any of Chelsea’s inferences. She might turn around and leak her ideas to their father, and Don wasn’t ready to have that conversation yet.

  “Just help me think of something we can do to make life easier on Dad, okay?” Don asked as he rose to his feet. “And let me know if this thing ever blows cold air.”

  “I know what we could do for Dad. It’s called D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” she said, spelling it out as she’d first heard it, years before. They’d made it through that rough patch. Everyone had been healthy back then.

  “Whatever,” Don said. He left his sister’s room and closed the door behind him.

  #
# # # #

  Don lay sprawled on his bed with his head propped up on a stack of pillows. The volume on his stereo was low, but he didn’t need to worry about noise. His room was in the basement and he could scream at the top of his lungs and not bother his mother’s sleep.

  His room was nice, but a little plain. Last fall, when he was off at school, his dad had swapped his childhood room—at the top of the stairs, on the right—with this basement room. For a while, they thought maybe the damp basement air was contributing to his mom’s migraines, so they’d put her exercise equipment up in Don’s old room and moved him down here. He didn’t mind; he just hoped it would help. It didn’t. And his mom didn’t even use the exercise equipment anymore. She was always too sick or too tired when she was home.

  So Don’s room was in the basement, and it didn’t have any of his posters or pictures up on the wall. He had a bed, a desk, and a bookshelf. It was plain. Don didn’t plan on living there too long. His father would kick him out at the end of the summer at the latest.

  When he heard the ding, Don put down his book and opened his computer.

  It was a video chat with Kyle.

  “DonCo!” Kyle said. His blurry face was way too close to the camera.

  “Where are you?” Don asked. Around Kyle’s face there was only darkness.

  “I’m out in the woods,” Kyle said.

  “For Frank’s sake, why?” Another DonCo/Kyle vocabulary word. They weren’t supposed to say “Christ’s” or “fuck’s.”

  “I’m looking for monsters,” Kyle said.

  A few years earlier, when Kyle and Don had still been in high school, several people had been attacked in a neighbor’s yard. The story on the news pinned the attack on a serial killer who had worked his way across New Hampshire and Maine, but the local story was different. In the halls of their high school, the kids whispered about a monster—twelve feet tall and naked—who had chased a little boy because of his blood.

  Don had heard something in the woods that night, years before. In fact, he’d seen something. The woods still scared him.

  “Seriously,” Don said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to figure out why all the nocturnal animals around here are suddenly not so nocturnal. I figure there might be something around at night that’s driving them underground or whatever. Maybe a sick animal or something. Why don’t you come help me?”

  “It’s Friday night. Why aren’t you out at the Fluke or something?”

  “That was last night. I’m still hungover. I’m out near Raven Rock. Grab your headlamp and come out here.”

  “No.”

  “Seriously. I need your help. What if something is sick and it infects Barney and he gets sick? You know he’s been slumping around lately.”

  Barney was old—twelve was about as old as German Shepherds got—and he’d been slumping around for years, but Kyle knew Don’s soft spot. He loved that old dog. He loved him as much as Kyle loved him. The three—Don, Kyle, and Barney, had shared a lot of fun over the years.

  “Okay, but stay there. And don’t try to sneak up on me.”

  “Roger. Out,” Kyle said. His face disappeared from Don’s screen.

  Don put on his shoes and grabbed his headlamp and phone. He set the lamp to a red, so it wouldn’t completely mess with his night vision, and closed the door to his room. Down the hall, Don opened the sliding door and stepped out into the night.

  The warm air hit his face like a sponge. The basement was humid, but this was incredible. Tonight the air was soupy and even the croaking frogs sounded weary. Above him, on the second floor of the house, both air conditioners hummed as their compressors squeezed the hot moisture out of the air. The one in his sister’s window dripped on Don’s head. He stepped away from the house.

  As he crossed the yard, he strapped on the red headlamp and saw the world through its dim light. The grass was trim—his father had mowed with the tractor after adjusting the valves—except for around the legs of the old swing set. Don ducked under the swing and turned to slide past the chain. The forest was just a few paces away. Don paused. When he was a teenager, Don used to walk through these woods at night all the time. He would stay at Kyle’s house late—watching movies, or doing homework, or just visiting—and cut through the woods to come home. It was much faster, if you knew the right path.

  A few years earlier, on a nice summer night just like this, Don had been over at Kyle’s house until after dark. They’d been sitting around the table, relaxing after a nice dinner and talking about work and school and girls…

  …The light over the kitchen table drew a tight circle of conspiracy between the young men. They toned down the conversation every time Kyle’s mom came in the room. That night, Kyle had a new theory about arms. “Those guys use the fork truck for everything. If we just park it a few feet away, and lift the cans up to the platform, then we’ll be able to work our shoulders and biceps at the same time.”

  “But Ray uses the fork truck, and he’s got biceps like a buffalo,” Don had said.

  “A buffalo? Buffalos have arms?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  They laughed.

  Don was the one who initially came up with the idea of building their muscles while at work, but Kyle had embraced the idea wholeheartedly. Since they were always too tired for exercise when they got home, Kyle was always looking for ways to use their job as a strength workout.

  The reporter cut into the show playing on the counter TV and drew their attention.

  “Breaking news from a Qwik-n-Go in Cumberland county this evening. Shots were fired and a local man is injured. Police have just arrived on the scene,” she said.

  “I know that one. It’s off the highway, up near Freeport,” Kyle said.

  “That could be any Qwik-n-Go. They all look the same.”

  Back at the news desk, the anchor cut in as the reporter was re-hashing the scant details of her story.

  “We go now to a report from action reporter Mike Franco in Kingston Depot. Mike, we understand you’re on the scene of another strange report,” the anchor said.

  “That’s right, Sam. Earlier this evening, neighbors reported a disturbance at the house of Doctor Ken Stuart. The authorities have yet to comment on the nature of the disturbance, but here from the road you can see the destruction to the front of the doctor’s house,” the report said. He looked past the camera with a question wrinkled into his brow and then turned around. “Sam, we’re now seeing a body being removed from the house. The victim has not yet been identified.”

  Kyle turned his chair towards the television. “Whoa, crazy sh-stuff going on out there. It’s like end times or something.”

  “Shut up,” Don said.

  Barney clicked his feet across the tile floor and looked out the window to the deck.

  “You have to go out?” Kyle asked the dog.

  As if he understood the question, Barney turned to Kyle made a tiny sound at the back of his throat.

  “Come on,” Kyle said. He pushed his chair back from the table and Don rose too. The young men escorted the dog out to the deck. Barney stopped at the top of the steps and just stood there, looking down into the yard.

  “Looks like a party going on at the red man’s.”

  “That’s not cool,” Don said. Behind Kyle’s yard, through the woods, the closest property belonged to a family of Native Americans. Even though it was pretty far away, the young men saw lights filtering through the woods from that direction.

  “Come on, DonCo. As far as racial slurs go, that one’s pretty soft core for me. You have to admit.”

  “My mom has some Abenaki in her. Are you going to say that to her face?” Don asked.

  “How much does she have in her?”

  “I don’t know—a thirty-second, I guess.”

  “Well ask her if she wants a seven-shot of white boy in her, would ya?”

  “Shut up,” Don said. He pushed Kyle into the deck’s railing.

>   Barney kept his spot and stared out into the night as he barked three times.

  The boys stopped laughing and looked into the darkness.

  “What do you think it is?” Don asked.

  “Probably just another one of their hoedowns, you know? You remember they used to have those parties every Saturday? Been quieter since the old man died.”

  Barney barked once more and then trailed off into a low growl.

  “Jesus, Barney. Go pee or we’re going back inside,” Kyle said.

  Barney wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even go down the steps to the yard. The German Shepherd normally wasn’t afraid of anything. Kyle dragged him back by his leather collar and took the dog inside.

  Don and Kyle sat back down at the kitchen table and watched the news with the volume turned down. The picture switched regularly from the news desk to each of the two field reporters.

  Kyle’s mom came in after a few minutes.

  “Do you boys want me to make you some popcorn?” she asked.

  “No thanks,” Don said. “I should get home.”

  Don stood and walked over to the door. Barney joined him and stood at his side as he looked into the night. From the kitchen, you couldn’t really see the lights from the neighbors, but Don looked anyway. Barney whined.

  “You want to take Barney with you? He could hold your hand through the woods,” Kyle said.

  “I don’t think he’d go.”

  Kyle laughed…

  It was the same kind of laugh—no humor, just nerves—that Don heard from deep in the woods. He adjusted the red headlamp and stepped over a blueberry bush to the path. If wanted to go to Kyle’s house, he probably wouldn’t need the lamp at all. He knew that path well enough to find it in the starlight. But Kyle had called from Raven Rock. It was the biggest rock in the woods. They’d named when they were just kids. And that’s the direction his laugh came from now. Don tried to pick up the subtle clues of the neglected path and then just settled for heading in the approximate direction. He’d be able to find the rock if he got close enough.

  Don moved as quiet as he could, but it wasn’t easy. The forest here was mostly pine trees and their brittle branches littered the ground. Every third or fourth step resulted in the echoing snap of a branch.