The Language of Trees

by Ilie Ruby

  Grant opens the door anyway. Lion twists in his seat, looking for what has fallen from his coat pocket. He grabs the flip-open locking knives. Opens one and runs his finger across the blade.

  “What do you think you’re doing with that?”

  “In case I need it. Got one for you, too. Just bought them new.” Lion grabs the other knife and sets both on the dashboard.

  “I’m not taking that thing.”

  “Man, I’m in charge.” Lion spits out the window. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and looks at Grant. The place is over-run with bundles of blood-red sumac. The wind pulls the juice across the windshield. “That’s bad poison,” Lion says, handing Grant the knife. “Those red berries.”

  “Not this type. My mother used to boil it for tea. Good for the body.”

  Grant takes the knife, turns it over in his hands, and hands it back. He doesn’t like how comfortable he feels holding it. “I got your back, okay?”

  “Let’s go,” says Lion, getting out of the car.

  Three high-pitched chirps pierce the air. Grant points the flashlight into the darkness. The bat flaps its wings, dips in front of the car before toggling up the branches of a locust tree.

  “Down,” Lion whispers, motioning to the flashlight in Grant’s hand. Grant does what the kid says and points it at the dirt.

  An uneasy wind rustles the tall grass as Grant begins to walk. He cuts through the woods looking for the Cave, praying he remembers. He tells Lion to listen for the bats. Lion is following, watching the stars through the canopy. As they make their way across the trail, thorny bushes scratch at their arms, pull on their clothing as if trying to hold them back. They can hear the flap of bat wings and the high-pitched squeaks, now suddenly closer. Every so often Lion ducks when a low-flying bat veers near his head. The moon looks like old sheet metal, partly obscured by clouds. The smell of dirt and burning wood is pungent.

  “She’s in the Cave. She must have lit a fire. Smell the smoke.” Lion stops suddenly, staring at the trail of amethyst smoke rising out from the mouth of the Cave. Tall slim locust trees cradle the entrance. The trees stand as poised as ballet dancers, their long arms gracefully bent, their trunks lengthening in gentle curves, revealing stretched white bellies.

  Lion can just make out an abandoned red bike up there in the distance. And a rusted van turned on its side. Grant had better be following as they cut through the grass toward the Cave.

  Lion is imagining what he’ll say to her after he gets Melanie home. He’ll be a lot stronger with her, that’s for sure. He’s not playing around. A relapse is always worse than what preceded it. He’s seen it. When an addiction has been quiet for a time, it gathers up all the evil like some kind of magnet inside the brain. And if you give in, even years later when you think you can handle it, you had better be prepared for the devil to run wild inside you.

  No. No more pushover. Lion’s tired of all of it.

  This is the last time. The last time he’s going to lose her.

  He’ll threaten not to take Melanie back until she’s checked into rehab, nine weeks of inpatient care and follow-up visits after that. They’ve spent enough time living on the edge. He doesn’t even care that she’ll never be Miss Homemaker. She’ll just keep making the same dinners for the rest of their lives: spaghetti, Hamburger Helper, franks and beans. All his life he’s lived on the edge of everything and now, what he really hankers for? A safe little life and the white picket fence he’s always heard of. The same one he had once scoffed at.

  But she’s got her own groove. Her own style.

  She does things her own crazy way, and yet he feels lucky every day.

  Once he came home from work to find the entire apartment filled with candles. It wasn’t his birthday, or even an anniversary. Melanie said she had just felt like celebrating the fact that she was so in love with him. So why waste it? The huge chocolate cake, his favorite, she had made herself. In the thick chocolate frosting, an inch thick, she put seventy tiny candles to represent the number of years she wanted to spend with him. She had layered the bathtub water with silver stars, and papered the floor with them, too. He found her soaking in the claw-foot tub when he got home from work. And he had felt like a king, standing on all of that silver universe.

  When they reach the mouth of the Cave, there is a howling that Grant now recognizes as the hybrid wolves returned to Canandaigua. To Grant, this is a sign that the whole thing with Lion is a bad idea, but his mind and body aren’t connected, because his feet are still moving forward. About thirty feet up, he thinks, pointing his flashlight around the lip of the Cave, illuminating the thin line of smoke coming from a small fire pit, the graffiti covering the walls, the wrinkled bags of potato chips and some old needles. Grant kicks a few empty beer bottles out of the way. This angers him, seeing what has been done to this place, once the home of a medicine man, a place so sacred that few ever saw it when Two Bears was living here. After all this is over, Grant will contact the town’s officials and organize a cleanup. He’ll get this designated as a protected site, just as Squaw Island has been.

  The air inside the Cave is dank, musty. Without a word, Lion takes the flashlight from Grant and walks carefully across the Cave toward the fire pit, which is filled with a pile of old wooden statues, half charred and smoking. Grant follows. Though the wood is still hot, Grant picks up one of the carvings and turns it over in his hands. It looks like a bear. A strangely shaped piece of wood is lying to the left of the fire pit, one that is covered with layers of mud and has not been used for firewood. Grant nicks off some of the mud with his fingers. The mud falls away, revealing the shape of a Seneca warrior, with its wide-planed face and the feathered cap. There is a pile of similar-shaped carved logs against the far end of the Cave wall.

  Lion shines the flashlight across the Cave. He can make out the edges of things, woven baskets and hollowed-out gourds. Shelves of all different sizes are carved into the Cave wall. Grant spies something glistening in the dirt. He reaches into a pile of ash and comes up with a fistful of arrowheads. Silently, he lets the dirt fall through his fingers. Then, there is a howling from the mouth of the Cave. One. Maybe two. No, three shadows fall across the entrance.

  Hedging at the mouth of the Cave, three wolves stand in the darkness, maddened and thin. Their powerful muscles are rippling in the moonlight, forming a white silhouette against the black night. Their yellow eyes are glistening, fixed on Grant. They snarl and paw at the ground, baring their teeth. “Holy shit,” whispers Lion.

  “Turn the light off,” orders Grant.

  Grant walks toward them. They bark and glare at him but he keeps walking. When he is about six feet from them, Grant shouts something Lion doesn’t understand. Then the wolves turn and run off into the dark field.

  “What did you say?” asks Lion, turning his flashlight back on.

  “I told them how to go back to where they came from.”

  Lion shines the light on Grant’s face. He keeps it there, letting Grant squint and then cover his eyes. Then he shifts the light across the cave. “Over there!” he cries. “It’s Melanie. Her hair. I can see it,” whispers Lion, shining the light on a little enclave where an orange sleeping bag is bunched against the wall. Tufts of blond hair stick out.

  “Are you sure?” asks Grant.

  “Definitely. It’s her.” Lion holds up the four-inch blade and pushes his finger onto the tip, watching the drops of blood beading up.

  Grant needs to gain some focus. Needs to clear his mind and focus on what he is here for: Melanie. He is trying to remember her face. He recalls the picture Joseph showed him. His eyes follow the beam of light across the dirt floor. Beaver skins are stacked in the corner near a pile of old woven blankets. A large metal pot sits next to one. Lion spies something else glistening in the dust. A silver ankle bracelet. He picks it up.

  “Is it hers?” asks Grant.

  “It’s hers,” says Lion.

  Walking toward the orange sleeping bag, Lion cal
ls Melanie’s name. He runs over to the orange sleeping bag, tugs the corner of it. “Melanie. Mel, it’s me.”

  A groan rises and he jumps back. An empty bottle of Southern Comfort rolls toward his feet.

  Dee Dee, one half of the town’s homeless couple, sits up. She licks her lips and the sweet permutation of alcohol fills the musty air. “You got a cigarette?”

  Lion frowns. She elbows the bundle next to her. Papa Paul lets out a fierce growl and blinks in the offending haze of the light. Confused, he stares at them. “Gentlemen, is this a board meeting?” he says, his pale gray eyes sunken into folds of turtle-like skin. He rolls back over, burying his face in Dee Dee’s armpit. When a bat crosses the Cave, Dee Dee covers them both with the sleeping bag.

  Lion stands defiantly at their feet.

  He twists away when Grant puts his hand on his shoulder. “Get the fuck off of me, man.”

  “Hey, Lion. Keep it together,” Grant says, although Lion is already making his way out.

  Lion walks out into the cool grass. A light breeze shifts through the trees, but Lion is too angry to be cold. “We’ll look again tomorrow,” Grant says, catching up, but he is wondering if Melanie has been able to change. If it is possible, really, for anyone to change.

  Lion stares at him, his cheeks drawing quick breaths in and out, as though he has heard Grant’s thoughts.

  Lion turns around and cuts across the grassy lawn, where he kicks the rusted red bike, sending the wheel spinning. Then he takes off running.

  The kid can really fly. Grant starts to chase him. He has the feeling of being watched.

  “Go home!” Lion calls back through the night.

  Grant can hardly see the boy now.

  “Stay away from me!” Lion yells, almost completely swallowed into darkness. The moon sloughs off the clouds and brightens. For a second, it looks as if Lion is running right into the sky.

  18

  SINCE THE MOMENT GRANT Shongo dropped her off, Echo’s mind has been racing. Lying in bed, she has been listening to Joseph’s ripping cough and thinking of blackbirds. She is picturing blackbirds so confused by all the secrets spinning in the air, caught in the currents, that they fly in circles, crashing into the windows, breaking their wings, then falling in droves from the sky, symbols of all the hearts that have been shattered. Leila Ellis. Her one bad choice was like a stone thrown into the lake, creating ripples that go on for miles, touching so many lives. And Clarisse Mellon. Standing in that kitchen for years, aching to wrap herself in Joseph’s arms. And Echo. Is she any better? Still afraid of her love for Grant Shongo. But mostly, Echo is worried about losing Joseph. Suddenly, she pictures Grant in his backyard, his muddy hands placed around the bird with the broken wing, and the bird’s glazed eyes staring up at him, waiting.

  She feels desperate. Restless. Every so often she runs to her bedroom window to make sure Grant’s car is still outside where he has left it.

  Near dawn, she and Joseph find each other in the kitchen. He is sitting on a stool, wrapped in his green flannel bathrobe, reading Food Distribution magazine. But he is as far away as Africa, with that distant look in his eyes. He isn’t handling the stress. In the silence, they take turns making pots of coffee. “Do you want more coffee? I’ll make more. Even I can’t drink this,” she tells him. He hardly hears her. He begins to cough. A deep ripping cough that makes her shiver. He doubles over, leaning on the counter. She runs over to him. He is sitting there, his shoulders caved. “I’m okay. My arm is a little stiff,” he says hoarsely. But she can no longer stand by and do nothing.

  “Will you look at this? Old man hands, you see? They shake all the time.” Joseph has a bad feeling about Melanie, he says finally. He wonders out loud if she has been found yet.

  Echo puts her arms around him and rests her head on his shoulder. “Now your hands aren’t shaking,” she says, holding Joseph close. She closes her eyes. “Let me just hug you, okay?” She inhales his scent, aftershave and the damp sweat of age. As she hugs him, all she can feel are bones, his collarbones pressing into her neck, the curve of his spine, the shudder of his rib cage each time he coughs. It feels as though he could break if she squeezes too hard.

  Joseph pats her back. “Only you, kiddo, could ever calm my mind.”

  “That’s why we need each other,” says Echo, not letting go. “That cough. It scares me. I want you to see a doctor.”

  He lets go of her and walks away. “It’s just age, honey,” he says, staring out the porch window. “It crept up on me. You know, one day, I looked down and saw a pair of old hands and I thought, whose hands are these? I’d do more from above,” he says, pointing up.

  Echo shoots him a look. She feels the rip of fear inside her. She walks over to the counter and she stares out the window, noticing how the grass, drenched with dew, looks like white clouds. “I hear that as a threat,” she tells him.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean it that way,” says Joseph.

  “But you always said people on earth could do more for each other than a spirit could. A spirit can’t comfort you or put its arms around you late at night. A spirit can’t share in your happiness or cry with you when you’re sad. It can’t love you so much that it makes you feel you belong somewhere. To someone.”

  Joseph wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “I’ve been here a long time and I’m not sticking around forever. Listen, kiddo. I’m getting restless. I’m a traveler at heart. Always have been.”

  She has never heard him talk like this before. And yet, here they are. The scene she’d run from her whole life is unraveling in front of her. She’d always imagined that something would happen to him, that his death would come suddenly, just like her parents’ deaths had. A car crash. A heart attack. Brain aneurysm. She’s thought of every possible catastrophe, played out every scenario. But never this one. Never that he’d be waiting for it, anticipating it, longing for it. She feels betrayed, remembering that night all those years ago when she put her corn-husk doll in the closet. How she lay there, forcing herself to withstand the ache, teaching herself how to say good-bye. She finally understands. It was for this very moment. All the distancing she had done with men was to prepare her for this. “You have to let me take you to the doctor.”

  “No doctors. Honey,” Joseph says, taking her face in his hands. “I’ve lived a long full life. I’m ready. You must respect my choice.”

  Echo is panicking. “Pop, you saved my life. Please let me do something.”

  “And you saved my life. You never knew that. But you did. I never told you. I tried to be careful not to make you responsible for me.”

  She wipes her eyes. “I can’t just stand by and watch this happen to you. I love you more than anything.”

  Joseph turns to her. “You have already done everything you were supposed to do for me, a million times over. Given me purpose. Given my life direction. A reason to be. Before you came along I was lost. I’m only here because of you.”

  She is sobbing. She is losing him. He is saying good-bye, and talking about it as though she is supposed to just let it happen. They are talking about how he is going to abandon her, leaving her an orphan once more. “It’s not okay. I don’t understand. Not one part of this.” She puts another pot on the stove so that he can’t see her burning eyes. All is silent but for the slight buzzing of the refrigerator. She can’t give up on him yet. All feeling in her body is concentrated in her heart. She shudders, bracing uncontrollable sobs. “Once I lose you, I’ll be alone,” she confesses. He takes her hands.

  “You have Grant now,” Joseph says. She knows he is trying to distract her when he tells her that Grant shouldn’t be going to the Cave. That nothing good will come of that place.

  “Things are so hard with him. I don’t understand him. I found all these statues he’d carved, that he’d hidden in the closet. Then a bird flew right into the window. One minute it had a broken wing. I walked away and when I came back it was fine. I just wanted to leave. To get away.”

 
“What did you see, honey?”

  “Nothing. I came back and the bird flew away. Grant did something. He healed it. I don’t know how.” She takes his hand. “But I love him, Pop. I just don’t think it can work.”

  Joseph turns away and walks to the screen door. Echo watches him wait there, thinking. She pours another cup of coffee. Her hands are shaking so badly, she can hardly hold the cup.

  He turns back to face her. “Let me see your eyes, honey.”

  She stares at him a moment, and her eyes well up again.

  “There is something you need to know. In a box underneath my bed. Some money and my will. I want you to take care of the store.”

  No, no, I can’t hear this, she thinks. “Let’s get you to bed.”

  “No, I want to be outside. I want to see the trees,” he says. “I need to tell you a story. Things I want you to tell Grant. Promise me you will do this? I’m telling you this because the two of you belong together, and I can’t rest until I know that this will be as it should. I don’t want you to be alone, honey. I think the story will help him.”

  “I promise.” She follows him outside onto the porch. She picks up a wool blanket and places it over his shoulders and they sit, shoulder to shoulder on the bench, looking out at the trees shuddering with morning winds. They don’t talk. She waits, and rests her head on his shoulder. They stay like that for about five minutes before Joseph tells her he is cold.

  Finally Joseph clears his throat. “I hope this will make Grant see things clearly, what I’m about to tell you.”

  “Tell me,” she whispers, afraid. “No more secrets.”

  “It began a long time ago. A young man came through these parts in a white VW bus. Darn bus made such a rattle, you couldn’t believe it ran. This man was Seneca. Called Two Bears. Now and again, he’d come in here to buy things from me, tobacco, mostly. Only came around at night. He was only a young man of eighteen.

  “He wasn’t a big talker. But he wanted to help people. He was good with wood, liked to build things. But his real gift was healing. Of course he was just calling the spirits, he said. They were doing the healing. He’d cool a fever, make arthritis better, you just ask Squeaky Loomis. He’s got a story for you. Soon word around town was that there was a healer living in that big old cave on Loomis Hill. But most of the people he helped were Indians. I visited him a few times, watching him grinding his leaves, smoking his pipe. I would go so far as to call him my friend. He’d come here late at night, too. One time, he let me follow him along the trails out near the hills, up near Grant’s cabin. He’d leave a piece of turquoise, a shell, something as thanks wherever he took a plant.” Joseph takes a sip of coffee. “Ah, my arm.” Joseph winces.