by Ian Rogers
“No time,” the Professor said in a low, desperate voice. Then he uttered a shaky, distracted laugh. “What am I talking about?”
I couldn’t answer that question, and it seemed he couldn’t, either.
We walked for a long time. The overcast sky grew darker by slow, almost imperceptible degrees. The smell of the leaves was almost overpowering. To me it was the smell of seasons dying.
The Professor began to speak. I couldn’t hear everything he said, and the things that I could make out didn’t always make sense. He said there were places in the world where it was like summer all the time, and spring, and winter—but not autumn. Oh no, he said, there was no place in the world where it was like autumn all the time. That’s what made it special.
I began to feel afraid. It was getting dark and I was alone in the woods with a strange man who was dragging me God-only-knew where. I could feel the sky pressing down on me. The trees crowded in like co-conspirators in my own abduction. I wanted to leave, I wanted to go back home to my mother.
I was breathing rapidly and I eventually became aware of a smoky smell in the air. Up ahead the trees became less dense and it looked like one of them was on fire. But there was something strange about it. Something I couldn’t pinpoint right away.
We broke into the clearing and stared up at it—an enormous elm with a thick trunk and branches that curved upward like the arms of a candelabrum. It was not like any tree I had ever seen before. It was almost artificial, like a piece of art—a concept that became even more cemented in my mind when I realized the flames which engulfed it weren’t moving.
Something finally clicked in my head. It was like one of those migraine-inducing three-dimensional paintings where you have to sort of cross your eyes to see the hidden image.
There was no smoke because the tree wasn’t on fire.
What I had at first taken to be flames were in fact leaves. The tree hadn’t lost them yet, which was strange in itself, but made even stranger by the intensity of the colours themselves. Starburst yellows, candy-apple reds, and oranges as bright as the vests worn by the hunters who regularly tromped through these woods in search of deer and moose. They were almost too bright to look at.
“How . . .” I began.
The Professor shook his head.
“When,” he corrected me, and placed his hand on the rough, almost ornate, bark. “And the answer, my boy, would be autumn. Forever autumn. Right here. In this spot.”
He was exultant, almost reverent, like a priest who has come upon the very first church ever constructed. I thought he would fall on his knees and pay worship to the tree. For a moment I thought I might, too.
“Can you imagine it?” he breathed, staring up into the conflagration of leaves. “A place where it’s like this all the time?”
I didn’t want to imagine it, not then.
It’s hard to explain why the tree frightened me so. I think it was what it represented. A place where it was always autumn. There was something unnatural about the idea. My fear lay in the root of that concept. Unnatural. Un-nature. The tree was something that shouldn’t be. It was a tree out of time. A living monument that shouldn’t exist, and yet at the same time couldn’t be ignored.
I inched back to the edge of the clearing. The tree wasn’t on fire, but a part of me still thought I would get burned if I stood too close to it. I started to back away, and the Professor turned, holding me in his gaze for a moment. There was something in his eyes. Disappointment, maybe. But then he turned back to the tree. When I realized the Professor had no further interest in me, I simply slipped into the woods and left.
I didn’t think I’d be able to find my way back, but I did. I saw my hat hanging on a branch and grabbed it as I ran past.
I never saw the Professor again. I guess he got another boy to deliver his groceries.
That was many years ago. I’m an old man now, as old as the Professor was then. I have a son, and from time to time I see a look of curiosity on his face that is very familiar. It’s like looking into a mirror to the past. I see that look on his face and I find myself thinking back to the Professor’s final words to me, and the world I was too afraid to imagine.
It doesn’t scare me anymore. In fact, it’s a comfort to me now.
I see it when I close my eyes.
A world where the sky is cloaked in perpetual overcast, the scent of woodsmoke is always in the air, and the trees that burn there burn forever.
CABIN D
I
When the man in the houndstooth jacket stepped through the door, Rachel knew he was going to be trouble. It wasn’t until later, after he had dropped the biggest tip she ever received, that she learned trouble was, in fact, where he was going.
It was a few minutes past eight on a Friday morning and Rachel was nursing a cup of coffee and leafing through the Sutter County Register. The breakfast crowd had come and gone, and she expected things to pick up again, oh, sometime tomorrow morning. The Crescent Diner did a good business in the hours between six and eight AM, but afternoons and evenings were deader than disco.
At the moment, the only sounds in the diner were the low gurgling of the Silex and the whisper of the ceiling fans turning overhead. Reg was out back having a smoke and the jukebox (which contained such golden oldies as “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Mambo No. 5”) was mercifully silent.
The bell over the door jingled, and Rachel was so surprised by the sound that she almost dropped her coffee cup. She looked up from the newspaper and saw a man standing in the doorway.
“Morning,” he said, and gave her a sunny grin. He squinted his eyes in order to read the orange, moon-shaped name-tag pinned to her blue rayon uniform. “Rachel.” He raised a hand in greeting. “I’m Henry.”
The waitress’s first thought was that the man, Henry, had crawled out of a Salvation Army donation bin. In addition to the houndstooth jacket, he wore a paisley shirt, a plaid tie, and a pair of tan slacks so short they looked like flood pants. He was also wearing mismatched socks—one brown, one yellow and covered with a pattern of lobsters. She wondered idly if the circus was in town.
She was about to head out back and tell Reg they had another homeless person in the diner, but something made her wait. She stared at the man a moment longer and realized that, despite his ragged, clownish attire, he clearly wasn’t one of the homeless vags who wandered in from time to time in search of food or money. He was in his late twenties or early thirties. He was thin, clear-eyed, and clean-shaven, and he didn’t give off the stink of either cheap wine or puke.
“Hi Henry,” she said finally.
“I just hitched in.” His jacket opened a bit as he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, and Rachel caught a glimpse of rainbow suspenders. “A trucker named Eddie Ray said if I wanted a good meal I had to stop in at the Crescent.”
“You found it,” Rachel said. “In all its glory.”
“Do you have an extensive menu?”
Rachel blinked. In the five years she had been waitressing, she had never heard that question before. “I’m sorry?”
“Well, I have some time to kill—and an appetite to kill, for that matter—and I was just wondering if your menu has a wide selection. I brought a newspaper—” he patted the rolled up copy of the Register under his arm “—and I plan to bivouac in one of your booths for the day. If that’s all right by you.”
“Bivo-what?”
“Bivouac,” he said. “Camp out.”
Rachel was speechless. She was tempted to look out the wide front window and see if there was a camera crew out there. She felt like she was on one of those reality TV shows where they play practical jokes on unsuspecting people.
“We have a pretty good menu . . . I guess.” She made a vague gesture. “Would you like to see it?”
Henry held up his hand. “No need,” he said, still smiling. “I trust you.”
Rachel watched as he went over and took a seat in a corner boot
h. He put the newspaper on the table and picked up a laminated menu. He began looking it over with the wide-eyed exuberance of a scholar perusing a rare folio edition.
Five minutes later, he summoned Rachel over.
“All set?” she asked.
“Yes. I’d like the Full Moon breakfast—scrambled eggs, sausage, hash browns, toast (white bread, please), melon, and orange juice. I’d also like an extra side of bacon.”
“Coffee?”
“Constantly,” Henry said, and grinned.
Rachel didn’t like that grin. There was something artificial and a little unsettling about it. It stretched too tightly across the skin on his face. Like a skeleton’s grin.
She turned away and went through the swing door to the kitchen. Reg was just coming back in, taking off his coat and hanging it on the wooden peg next to the door.
“We have a customer,” Rachel told him, and recited Henry’s order.
“Really?” Reg said, amused. “Hell must have frozen over.” He slipped his apron on over his head.
“Guy looks kind of weird. Says he hitched in with Eddie Ray.”
Reg dipped his head down so he could see through the partition in the wall. “He looks harmless enough. Although I don’t know many bums who ever used a newspaper for anything other than a blanket.”
“I don’t think he’s a bum,” Rachel said. “He seems kind of . . . strange.”
Reg shrugged. “Strange or not, he’s got an appetite.”
II
Ten minutes later, Rachel emerged from the back with Henry’s order on a large serving tray. As she dished it out, Henry moved each plate around like chips on an oversized bingo card. When he had everything where he wanted, he looked up at Rachel with that same beaming grin.
“This all looks great. Really great.”
Rachel smiled politely, tucked the empty tray under her arm, and returned to the kitchen.
Henry picked up his fork and knife and began to cut up the four sausages on one of the side plates. When he was done, he cut up his eggs, forked some hash browns on top of them, and began to eat.
Rachel watched him through the partition. Henry didn’t seem to be aware of her staring, and that was good because she couldn’t seem to make herself stop. She followed his fork as it scooped up eggs and sausage and hash browns and deposited them into his mouth. He chewed mechanically, as if he were a machine and the food was his fuel.
He seemed to relish the food, closing his eyes and letting out long, satisfied sighs of pleasure between bites. It was like sex. He wasn’t just eating the food; he was savouring it. Like he had never eaten before. Or might never eat again.
Like a death-row inmate, she thought.
Henry took a big gulp of coffee, tilting his head back to get the last drop. Watching from the partition, Rachel noticed dark smudges under his eyes. At first glance Henry had seemed full of buoyant, invigorating energy, but upon closer examination she saw he was quite thin and pallid, almost sickly. The phrase death-row inmate clanged in her head, and Rachel reassessed her initial observation.
No, he looks like death. Or someone close to death.
Regardless, Henry continued to eat steadily throughout the day. After finishing his breakfast, he ordered a tuna-fish sandwich on rye and a glass of milk. Rachel topped up his coffee—almost filling it past the overflow point in her daze—and went back to Reg in the kitchen with his order.
“Maybe he’s one of those food critics,” Reg said, taking an enormous bottle of mayonnaise out of the big, steel-doored walk-in. “Sometimes they travel in disguise.”
“I don’t think so,” Rachel said.
By the time noon rolled around, Rachel had filled Henry’s coffee cup at least a dozen times. He had polished off the tuna-on-rye and ordered a side of French fries with gravy. He told Rachel that you could tell a lot about a restaurant by the quality of their gravy.
At three PM, Josie Sutton pulled up in her lime-green VW bug with the bumper sticker that said TENNE-SEEIN’ IS TENNE-BELIEVIN’! She was wearing her waitress uniform and the magenta hoop earrings that she had bought off eBay because they supposedly once belonged to Tammy Wynette.
She gave Henry a passing look as she strolled through the swing door. She was reaching for her time-card in the slot on the wall when Rachel stopped her.
“What’s wrong?” Josie asked.
“Do you mind if I take your shift today?”
“What? Why?”
Rachel told her about Henry. Josie raised one pencil-drawn eyebrow. “You got a crush or sumthin’?”
“No,” Rachel said, flushing slightly. “I just know that if I go home now I’ll be wondering about it for the rest of the week.”
Josie thought it over for a second—which was about as long as Josie ever thought about anything—and said: “Okay. Sure. Whatever. Matt Damon’s gonna be on Oprah today, anyway.” And she left.
An hour later, Rachel came out of the kitchen to wipe down the counter for about the forty-seventh time that day. Henry was reading his newspaper.
As she moved along the counter, Rachel turned her back to him. When he spoke she dropped her cloth and almost cried out in surprise.
“I’ve been in here for just over five hours and I haven’t seen a single person come in.”
Rachel let out a long, steadying breath as she crouched down and picked up the cloth. “Things fall off pretty quick after the morning crowd leaves,” she said. “You’re really making me earn my minimum wage today.”
“If you don’t have many customers, then why such a big menu?” he asked. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Rachel turned around and leaned against one of the counter stools. “The owner, Reg, is also the cook. He says offering a wide variety of food puts a certain amount of creativity into an otherwise mundane job.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s what he says,” Rachel said, aware that Reg might be listening.
“Well,” Henry said, raising his voice slightly, “he’s an absolute artist in the kitchen.” He folded his newspaper and picked up the menu again.
“More?” Rachel couldn’t quite mask her surprise.
“Shocking, isn’t it?” Henry smiled again; this one was thinner, not as forced as the others.
“It’s just . . .” Rachel contemplated for a moment, then threw caution aside. “You’re eating like a condemned man.”
“Condemned,” Henry repeated, and looked away. “That’s funny.” But the look on his face said it wasn’t funny at all. “I’m not condemned. This is all voluntary. Very, very voluntary.” The look went away and the thousand-watt smile came back on again, like a switch in his head had been flipped. “Could I get the meatloaf? Mashed potatoes, roast carrots, and a tall glass of milk?”
III
As Reg went to work on Henry’s meatloaf, Rachel drifted back to the partition. Henry had taken a single piece of newspaper and was folding it carefully and methodically. Curiosity finally got the better of her and she went back to the booth, under the auspices of refilling Henry’s coffee cup. As she topped him up, he raised his head.
“Do you know what this is?”
On the palm of his hand was a folded-paper animal. A cow, she noticed, complete with tiny paper udders. Its head was lowered as if it were cropping.
“A cow?” Rachel guessed.
“That’s right.” Henry set it on the table. “Origami. The Japanese art of paper-folding.”
“Paper-folding, huh? I thought they just made electronics.”
“This is a much older craft.”
“Secret of the Orient?” Rachel asked.
“Something like that,” Henry conceded. “It can be traced back to the sixteenth century. Can you believe that knowledge of something like that could be kept for so long, passed down from one person to the next?”
“The only thing passed on in my family is insomnia and an old moth-eaten quilt that my great-grandmother made
while she was snowed in one winter.”
Henry chuckled.
Rachel eyed him suspiciously. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask: have you been drinking or something?”
Henry chuckled again, louder this time, then stopped suddenly. “I thought about drinking today,” he said in a solemn, thoughtful tone. “I thought it might be for the best to, I don’t know, sedate myself, before the main event.” He shook his head ruefully. “But I decided not to. It seemed kind of . . . cowardly.”
He is sick, Rachel thought. I knew it. It’s cancer, or something like it.
“The way I see it, nobody dies with a clear conscience, but I plan to go out with a clear mind.” He looked down at the origami cow. “I’m afraid the only thing I planned to get drunk on today was cholesterol. And why not? Long-term health effects are not exactly my concern anymore. Hell, the long-term in general isn’t my concern.”
Rachel gave him a long, considering look. He didn’t sound self-pitying or self-deprecating. He was speaking lucidly, almost clinically, as if he were talking about something he had read in the newspaper spread out before him. He had taken his time eating the food she had served; he hadn’t wolfed it down. He had made it last. He acknowledged each forkful before putting it into his mouth. Like he was counting the bites. Like he knew there were only so many more he was ever going to take.
The sound of Reg dinging the order-up bell almost made Rachel jump. She went over to the partition and retrieved Henry’s meatloaf dinner, delivering it to him without comment. Henry didn’t say anything, either, just smiled that damn smile of his and started eating.
When he was finished it was almost eight o’clock. Like the rest of his meals at the Crescent Diner, Henry had made his dinner last.
After clearing his empty plate, Rachel came back and filled his coffee cup. “Dare I ask?” she said. “Dessert?”
Henry was breathing heavily now. Rachel thought it was a wonder his sides hadn’t split.