The Language of Trees

by Ilie Ruby

  “Kiddo, kiddo, kiddo, I’m fine, okay,” he says, peeling her off of him. “Let me look at you. What a surprise. What are you doing here?”

  “Surprising you.”

  “What happened to your lip, honey? You’re bleeding. Let me get some ice.”

  “I almost hit a wolf. I hit a tree instead. I’m fine, really.”

  He touches her face, looks into her eyes. “Should we call a doctor, honey?”

  “No, no, of course not,” she tells him. “Really. What are you doing here, Charlie?” she asks, turning to face the detective, whose presence has always meant bad news.

  “I’m fine, and you?” he says, with a grin.

  “Sorry, Charlie,” Echo says, pulling Grant’s jacket tight around her. “I apologize. I saw the police car and I got worried—”

  “She’s worried about me,” says Joseph. “And look at her with a busted lip.”

  “What’s going on? Why are you here at Joseph’s?” she asks Charlie.

  “Melanie Ellis. You tell her the rest, Joe,” says Charlie. “I have to be going. You know to call if you see or hear anything from Melanie, which I reckon you won’t. And don’t pay any mind to those white stones out back there. It’s a trick by some wise-ass kids, but we’ll get them.”

  Joseph pulls Echo close. “Honey, I am so grateful that you’re home.”

  THAT NIGHT, ECHO WATCHES Joseph carefully as he sips the burnt coffee she has just made. She is standing behind the counter, watching him label jars of juneberry jelly. Joseph says he doesn’t know how much longer he can keep up his business since the new Wildman’s Grocery has opened up down the street. His store is still the only place in town where you can buy Famous Naples grape pies all year round, but he can’t compete with the big guys, he tells her.

  Now he’s putting oranges into bags for the town’s homeless couple, Dee Dee and Papa Paul.

  “You sending them pies, too, Pop?”

  “We sold the last two this morning,” he says, scratching a note to himself on the small pad. He casually admits that he’s having trouble remembering things, like ordering more Eden’s black raspberry celery-seed dressing. It took top honors last year, while Steve’s blueberry poppy-seed dressing and NY Dijon mustard both placed third at Food Distribution magazine’s 1997 Superior Product Competition. He says the big guys are selling it, too. Things keep changing, getting bigger and faster. At the turn of the century there were only 160 cottages on the lake. Now, that number hovers around 1,400.

  Well, nothing much matters except having good people around you, he tells her. Loving, hardworking folks are the ones who you keep around. Part of getting through life happy is keeping around the good ones and letting go of the bad ones.

  “I wish you’d known her all grown up,” he says, remembering Melanie was just a child when Echo left for college. “You’d have done a lot for Melanie, and I think she’d have done the same for you, too. Yes, you would have been a fine big sister. You have a lot in common, you know. You both have your books. See there,” he says, pointing to the box under the counter.

  She takes out the first book she sees, Magnificent Addiction. She reads the inscription in the front, For Melanie. With faith, Lion.

  “Lion?” Echo asks.

  “Her boyfriend. Father of her child.”

  “Nice name.”

  “He couldn’t pronounce the name Lionel when he was little, Melanie said. Anyway, I just feel so helpless here,” Joseph says, putting away the last of the jars. “Wish there was something I could do.” He reaches up to smooth his tousled white hair.

  “Try to relax.” Echo touches his back, trying not to become preoccupied with his worry.

  She thumbs through the pages of the book, stopping to read some of the passages underlined with red ink. Her eyes water up. In an instant, she feels like she is trespassing on Melanie’s thoughts. She puts the book back.

  She had bumped into Melanie once during a short visit home. Melanie had been painting the windows of the Feed & Grain for a Halloween display. She’d asked Echo about Boston and if she liked the Yankees or the Red Sox. When Echo answered Yankees, Melanie had smiled and said, “That’s loyal of you.” Then Melanie had gone outside to sit on the porch, giving Echo and Joseph time alone together. She seemed lost in thought, her blue eyes focused on the lake. Echo wonders if perhaps she might have said something in that brief interchange that could have made a difference to Melanie. If a few words said in passing could change a person’s life.

  “I remember when Two Bears disappeared, it was the same feeling, this helplessness,” Joseph says, scratching his chin. “I miss the talk, you know, after all these years? Night was our time. We’d sit out here late. Two Bears and me were like two trees growing next to each other, one a willow, the other pine, both claiming the same space but needing different things from it. When the sun came up, we were always surprised because as different as we were, neither of us wore a watch. Probably the only thing we had in common.”

  “It’s sad what happened to him.”

  Joseph nods. “Some folks cling hard to what they love. That’s how they do it. Other folks have to walk away. Two Bears was the kind to walk away. But not until after he had fought the battle. I don’t claim to understand it, but I respect his decision because I respected him. I know he had his reasons.”

  “What do you mean, ‘walk away’? He was murdered, Pop.”

  Joseph starts to cough. Echo runs over and offers him a towel. He straightens up after a moment, his eyes watering. She looks down, noticing for the first time the holes in the knees of his pants. Embarrassed, he shakes his head. “I had meant to patch them up but my hands shake too much to thread a needle,” he says.

  LATER THAT NIGHT, ECHO takes off her tattered blue bathrobe and lies down on the soft mattress. Unable to sleep, she is wondering how the unexpected events of the past few days could lead her back toward the man she may in fact still love. She follows the cracks in the ceiling with her eyes, trying to meditate, to let her muscles reacquaint themselves with the old mattress’s dips and curves. Has she any right to be thinking about her own feelings when there is so much else going on?

  Sleepless, disturbed nights like these were not uncommon when she and Grant were together. She’d lie in bed dreaming of the wreck of the Onnalinda, a ship that is still caught in the depths off Otetiana Point, waiting for the waves to push its bones back together. The ship took her name from a book-length poem about an Iroquois princess who fell in love with an English captain. Years ago, Echo would wake up after dreaming about the ship, only to stare at the phone. Within minutes, Grant would call. This became almost commonplace.

  What is it that Joseph always says? Faith is made up of one part belief, two parts courage. Life has taught her that a gift always arrives on the heels of despair. That’s just the way it has always been for her, one of the better patterns of her life. Echo shuts her eyes, only long enough to hear an ear-splitting whine outside. Is it a baby crying? There is scratching at the window. Must be that the branches of the big oak need to be cut again. Shielding her eyes from the floodlight on the roof, she opens the window.

  Lit up like a ball of fire, a huge orange cat is staring at her from the crevice of a branch. Its large yellow eyes blink twice, its gaze, almost mournful, as though it is she who has been crying out for the world to hear. She reaches out her hands. The cat doesn’t budge. It is content to sit and meow now, as though rousing her were its only goal. As she clicks her teeth, the wind kicks up, brushing the long white sleeveless undershirt against her nipples, making them hard under the lamplight.

  “Here fat cat,” she calls, shivering. The cat reminds her of the ones she once delivered to the doorstep of Clarisse Mellon. This one is so round it must be pregnant. “Come on,” she calls, reaching further. She could climb out onto the branch just as she used to do when she was a teenager. Fifteen years ago impulsivity ruled her life. She wouldn’t have thought twice about using the tree as a ladder. But now, she’s
cold and tired, and not so confident about her balance. She slowly reaches out her cupped hand, making it look as though she has some food for the cat. She has always thought the childhood trick cruel, but these are desperate times.

  The cat is disgusted, and scampers down the trunk of the tree. “Nice talking to you, too,” Echo whispers, pushing the window closed. She sits back in the pocket of cold air. Perhaps this will help her sleep. She closes her eyes and counts down from one hundred.

  At the count of eighty-two, she gets up and grabs some photos out of her drawer. Her graduation picture. She looks squinty, her smile cuffed by thick silver braces. And then there is the hair, wild and uncombed. Her curly hair had resisted the once popular feathered hairstyle, while all the teenage girls carried round brushes in their purses as though they were arrows poisoned with love.

  While other girls were practicing their flirtations during recess, she was reading her beloved autobiographies. Echo always thought herself too awkward to have been anything but studious, absorbed in biographies like the one about Susan B. Anthony, who was put on trial right here in the Canandaigua Courthouse.

  Echo closes her eyes, puts the photos underneath her pillow and presses her back to the wall. It is good to be back in her own room, close to Joseph, so close that even from up here in her bedroom, she can track his movements downstairs if she lies very still. The walls are paper thin and the floors are old and scratched. She can hear the opening and closing of cabinet doors creaking in the kitchen, then the sink faucet, and the tick tick of the gas stove where he is boiling water for tea. She hears him taking out the jam jar and banging the lid on the side of the sink to loosen it. Then the sound of two pieces of bread popping up from the toaster. She knows he eats his breakfast at night. She could go downstairs and join him like she used to when they would sit across from each other at the kitchen table in front of the big picture window and talk for hours as the sun rose, and in that perfect space between night and day, dark and light, she would empty herself of her fears and dreams, pour them all out to Joseph who would listen, unfailingly, hearing every word, and then tell her stories about himself that made her feel better. He was not perfect, but honest about it. He had been foolish and stupid, he told her. He had done things he wasn’t proud of. And he had times when he was afraid, but he did something courageous anyway, like leaving the priesthood for a woman he met climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

  She is glad she made the decision to come home, where people let you talk at whatever time you need to and there is always an ear to listen. She has been walking around with that full feeling for too long, like her thoughts were in a locked box just waiting to be opened. She keeps everything so stored up inside her that she often walks around feeling like she might burst. It causes her to cry at little things, at unexpected moments. She thinks of the dawn rising over the reeds and then the fog dissipating over the gray lake where she and Grant used to skinny-dip at night, alongside the soaring herons that live in pairs. Echo liked to believe that the herons were their angels, their watchdogs, protecting them from intruders. They had done their job well, except for once. One night when Echo was sixteen, Grant’s mother saw something in the lake, something rising off the moonlit water and she had crept across the backyard and down to the shoreline as silently as a ghost. Pale and thin, her arms looked as willowy as the reeds as she pushed her way through the foggy air toward the shoreline. Having spotted Grant and Echo in an instant, Emily stopped halfway to the shoreline, holding their gaze. Echo and Grant froze in place, treading water, staring back. Emily’s mouth opened to say something but she stopped. She put her hands on her hips and stared a moment longer. Then she turned around and walked back up the yard, swinging her arms forcefully until she got to the porch, where she sat down, hands on her knees, staring out in the opposite direction of the lake and chain-smoking cigarettes until after Grant and Echo had shamefully slipped into their clothing. As they passed by, his mother didn’t say a thing, which made Echo even more uncomfortable. Echo smiled quickly at Emily but Emily kept her eyes down, continuing to smoke.

  Afterward, Grant swore to Echo that his mother did not hate her or label her as “loose,” and he told her to forget about it. But Grant never knew that they actually had a conversation about it. More of an announcement, really. Echo had run into Emily a few nights after the incident, while Echo was closing up the Feed & Grain. Emily Shongo waited for her outside. Echo saw her walk to the gravel parking lot, set the grocery bag at her feet and light a cigarette. Echo felt it was only polite to approach her. She had no idea what she would say but she told herself she had to set things straight. She was not a harlot. She was not trying to get pregnant. It was none of that, and of course they hadn’t had sex, not yet. She loved him. She would tell Emily Shongo that, and then maybe the woman would see she was honest and well-intentioned, and would welcome Echo with open arms, becoming the mother she never had.

  But friendship was not Emily Shongo’s goal. It never had been. Instead she put her arm around Echo’s shoulders, pulled her close, and whispered, “I know that you think nothing can match the passion between you two, and that you think none of us old folks know a thing about it. But I can tell you, we’ve all had it. Fire like yours burns itself right out. The hotter the fire, the sooner it dies.” Then, Emily Shongo gave a compassionate smile. She stubbed out her cigarette with her heel, grabbed her grocery bag and headed home. She died two years later with the same type of abruptness, her last wish: no funeral or memorial service, simply the spreading of her ashes across the lake at night.

  Echo hears a plate crash to the floor. “You okay, Pop?” she calls.

  “Just dropped a cup, that’s all. Go back to sleep.” She waits and listens to Joseph sweeping up the broken pottery. Then she hears the TV flick on and the sound of muffled voices. Soon after, she can hear his light snoring. He needs her here, she is certain. She feels empty and afraid when she thinks of how old he looks now, so much older than last time, his ashen complexion, his wrinkled face, the hands that tremble whenever he is at rest, causing him to drop cups and plates. The sounds of his wheezy sleep makes her ache with regret for everything she hasn’t done for him. He is the only person who has always been there for her. He is all she has. As she lies in bed, she clings to the lavender silk pillow stuffed with potpourri. It still smells like roses and soap. She tells herself her mother left it for her, even though she knows this is not true.

  8

  AFTER WATCHING ECHO DRIVE away, Grant races the setting sun on his way back to the cabin. His mind is cluttered with thoughts of her. His heart is racing. The air fills his lungs, cleansing them. The earth is buoyant under his heels. Ahead he can see the day’s last mirage, the silver light spilling over the potholes like molten metal. These battered roads are remnants of the ice storms that do enough damage in three months to keep anyone from ever calling this a good road. An eerie self-consciousness overtakes him.

  He knows he’s being followed.

  He slows, and then whips around. Nothing. He begins running again but after a minute, the same feeling. He spins back. Yes. The scraggly hybrid wolf, the one from Echo’s accident. He’s there watching Grant from under a dogwood tree about twenty feet back, one paw lifted as though Medusa had cast her eyes on him, still as stone.

  “Go home,” Grant orders, trying to harden his voice. “For God’s sake,” Grant says, trying his best to muster up some kind of annoyance. But who is he kidding? He’s a sucker for animals. The more wounded, the better.

  Slowly it limps toward him. It’s an Academy Award performance.

  “All right. Come.”

  He kneels, claps his hands together. The animal begins to prowl back and forth, confused, not quite sure what to do with the kindness. Grant whistles through his teeth, and it comes galloping forward and assaults Grant with kisses that smell like sour eggs. The wolf-like ears don’t fit with the rubbery jowls spilling out of both sides of his mouth. “Hey, easy now,” Grant says, running his fingers over
the matted fur. He touches something that feels like raw fish, and the animal whips backward with a high-pitched yelp. Grant carefully moves the skeletal body around. A flap of skin is hanging off, exposing the pink hamburger flesh that is leaking blood. Grant takes a deep breath and looks around. He is alone. He turns his attention toward the wolf, and holds his hand about two inches above the area, feeling the waves of piercing heat lurching out. Then, an aversive energy makes him pull his hand away. The animal lies down and utters a low whine. Grant hesitates, stares at his hands, which feel as though they’re immersed in warm water.

  He can’t remember feeling so clear.

  He looks around again to make sure he is alone. And then, without any more thought, he places his hand back over the wolf’s body, above the wound. He closes his eyes. He begins to sweat, feeling the heat energy that signifies pain, sensing an orange haze rising above the animal’s wound like a smoke signal reverberating throughout its entire body. Grant begins sweeping his hands in the air from the front of the animal to the back, smoothing the heat that is pulsating from the animal’s wound, and pulling it out into the atmosphere. The animal goes limp, closing its eyes. Grant opens his left palm up to the sky, then positions his right palm about an inch above the animal’s upper back, pulling a golden light from above and down through the bloody fur, into the battered skin and flesh, to muscle, tissue, organ and moving it through the animal’s body. Grant breathes deeply, concentrating, picturing the golden ball of energy and filling the animal’s body with it. The animal growls, opens its eyes, and Grant pulls his hands away. It stands up and shakes off the air as though it had been swimming. Then it stretches and begins to walk, circling Grant. Grant rubs his hands in the dirt until his skin is coated with the grounding earth. He glances up at the wolf. Dodging toward him and back, taunting him with play, the wolf is as good as new. Grant checks over the wolf’s body. The wound is gone.