Instructions for the End of the World

by Jamie Kain

  I’ve started to worry not about the tree but about the sound of hammering nails, now that we have neighbors. What if the noise of nailing down roofing tiles leads them here, and what if they notice that my little tree house is built on their property?

  My trespassing wasn’t intentional. I chose the spot at first for the tree, a perfect black oak, which easily supports a house. Also it has a clear view through the forest to the east, of the sunrise and the mountains. It was only after I’d built the foundation structure in the tree that I noticed the few rotting fence posts that had once served as demarcation between properties. Sections of an old barbed wire fence still existed in spots along the property line, but so much of it was gone now that it was sometimes hard to tell where Sadhana’s property ended and the neighboring property began.

  Even after realizing my mistake, I figured no one would care, since the property wasn’t occupied. Now I’m forced to finish the house while looking over my shoulder, worrying about who might discover what was meant to be a tiny fortress against the world, a place of complete solitude.

  Foolish are the plans of mice and men, but trees never make foolish plans—or any plans at all.

  I’ve come to think of building this house as a little prayer.

  I’ve included lots of windows, partly because finding abandoned ones to salvage has been easier than finding enough siding to cover the outer walls. And also because I want to let in the forest and the light. But staying warm when it’s cold will be a challenge. Hard to imagine being cold when it’s this hot outside. Maybe this will only be a spring, summer, and fall house. It’s too early to plan for the winter of my discontent.

  I am just about to call it a day when a voice shocks me out of my skin.

  “What are you doing?” I hear from below.

  I spin around and look down to find the new girl, Nicole, standing next to my scrap woodpile, staring up at me.

  “Putting a roof on,” I say.

  She takes in the strange tree house, its oddly placed windows and mishmash of colors. “What is this place?”

  She is the first person to see it—the first person besides me to know of its existence. Now it can never be truly secret again.

  I should feel intruded upon, maybe even angry, but I don’t. I’m actually a little thrilled that she’s here.

  Four

  NICOLE

  When I find the strangest guy I’ve ever met sitting on top of the strangest tree house I’ve ever seen, I get the unsettling sense that I’ve entered a dream. Does this guy ever hang out on solid ground?

  I look around at the woods, confirming the fact that I am indeed awake. These are the woods I’ve been walking through, and I am still just as sweaty and thirsty as I was five minutes ago, looking for the creek my dad aimed me toward a half hour ago.

  I watch as Wolf climbs down a ladder and comes closer. He looks a little wary, not quite like he was the first time I saw him. I get the sense that he doesn’t want me here, though I couldn’t say what gives me that feeling.

  “Hi,” he says. “Where’s your gun?”

  “I’m not hunting.”

  “So you don’t carry it whenever you come into the woods, just to be safe? You might run into a cute animal you want to kill.”

  “I have a knife,” I say, pulling it out of my back pocket to show him. “You know, in case I see Bambi.”

  He can’t tell if I’m being serious, and I don’t smile to give him any clues.

  “What brought you out here?”

  “I heard your hammering.”

  “You were just wandering around the woods alone?”

  “Actually, I was looking for the creek my dad said was out this way.”

  He points in the direction I was already heading.

  “It’s just down the hill, maybe ten minutes, but it’s nearly dry.”

  I will have to see for myself.

  “Okay, well, thanks,” I say, turning to go, ignoring the strange urge I have to linger.

  “Wait,” he says. “If you want, I can show you where the creek has a deeper pool. It’s a little further, but if you want to go for a swim—”

  “No thanks,” I say. “I can find it.”

  I don’t correct his assumption that I’m off for a swim, because there’s no point in explaining my father’s insistence that I know, like the back of my hand, where all local water sources are.

  He says nothing in response, but as I look at him I can’t seem to walk away. Our gazes linger a little too long on each other, until I look away, pretending to survey the forest.

  “Would you like a tour of the tree house?” he finally asks. “It has a great view.”

  “Why are you building it all the way out here?”

  “I guess you could say it’s a temple of solitude.”

  I have no idea what to say to that. I don’t know if he’s serious or joking, so I say nothing. Maybe temples of solitude are a part of his weird religion.

  He starts back up the ladder and motions for me to follow. I can’t resist.

  The interior is all unmatched old windows, unfinished plank floors and walls, a blank space—except for the feeling of forest all around, thanks to the many windows. It looks like someone got drunk and decided to build a tree house almost entirely out of salvaged windows still in their many-colored old wood frames.

  “So what is this place for, really?”

  He shrugs. “I just like to build things is all.”

  “Build things?”

  I try to imagine any of the kids from my old high school going deep into the woods to build a bizarrely funky tree house just for the sheer pleasure of it. I try to imagine any of them standing here next to me now, shirtless and sweaty, hair pulled into a ponytail, wielding a hammer as if they’ve used it a thousand times.

  I can’t.

  Not even the wood shop kids would have done something like this. There’s a sort of mismatched beauty in the little house, like it’s a sculpture in a museum rather than a place that serves a function.

  “So how many tree houses have you built?”

  He frowns. “I think this is the tenth or eleventh? I lost count.”

  “Where are the rest of them?”

  I imagine them scattered throughout the woods, magical little houses waiting to be discovered by almost no one.

  “Mostly on the Sadhana grounds in the main village. When it’s warm enough, people stay in them, when they come for retreats and stuff.”

  “Wow.”

  “But this one I guess is just for me.”

  “All the way out here?”

  “Out here I don’t have to share it.”

  For the first time, I realize the problem. I’m pretty sure I was still on our property when I came across Wolf and his tree house. I’d been loosely following the property line as marked by the old fence, and I can see even now the posts that still mark where the missing section of fence used to be.

  “This is on our property,” I blurt, realizing too late that I’m again accusing him of trespassing, like some cranky, territorial hick.

  All that’s missing is my rifle.

  His eyes widen. “Really?”

  “Yeah, see the fence line down there?” I say as I point through a long, skinny window.

  He looks. “Hmm. Do you think your parents will mind?”

  “Probably.”

  Understatement of the year. My dad is all about property boundaries. He’ll be furious when he sees this place.

  He turns and points out the opposite window. “That view, and the solidness of this tree, are the reasons I chose this spot. I guess I wasn’t thinking about property boundaries at the time.”

  “Maybe my dad won’t find this place,” I say, but I don’t sound very convincing, and I’m not sure I want this guy squatting on our land either.

  We don’t know anything about him. Maybe he wants to grow pot here or something. How should I know?

  “I’m sorry about the property line thing,” he say
s, shrugging like it’s no big deal.

  The way he does it makes me wonder if he knew all along and just didn’t care.

  “Are you, like, planning to live here or something?”

  He shrugs again. “You make it sound so formal. I don’t have real specific plans, honestly.”

  “You’ve gone through a lot of trouble to build it,” I point out.

  For some reason he’s started to irritate me, and I can’t help prodding him.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to start throwing wild parties out here or anything. I guess I just wanted a place far away from everyone else, and hardly anyone has been in these woods besides me for years.”

  The weird intimacy of our aloneness starts to get to me. Kneeling here in this little space next to Wolf, I’m both drawn to him and repelled. He fascinates me, and I know he shouldn’t.

  “I have to go,” I say. “My dad’s going to wonder where I am.”

  I back up toward the ladder, suddenly shocked at myself that I’m here in this place, alone with a guy I don’t know at all.

  “Are you going to tell him about this?”

  I look up at him as I start to descend the ladder. “No,” I say, but I’m not sure if I mean it. “Not right now.”

  One thing is for sure: Dad doesn’t need any more reasons to be stressed out right now.

  I try to imagine where Mom is, what she’s thinking. I don’t know what it means that she’s gone, but I know by the strain on Dad’s face that it doesn’t mean anything good.

  I try to picture her going off on a short visit to her distant cousins in Fresno, then coming back once she’s gotten used to the idea of living in the middle of nowhere. I can’t, though. I just can’t see her getting used to this place. None of us understood before we came here exactly how bad it is.

  I don’t know why it never occurred to Dad that she’d freak out. Maybe we’ve all been taking her for granted too much, though, assuming she’d be there no matter what. But looking back, I think of the distant look in her eyes, her distraction, her researching graduate schools, her rarely seen smile, and I realize we have all been kind of clueless.

  And now that she’s not here? Now what?

  What if she never comes back?

  Dad might be the person driving the car in our family, but Mom is the engine that makes it run, and a car isn’t really a car without an engine.

  I head off to the east, down the gentle slope of the hill, where fallen leaf matter and tree branches cover the earth. I am already getting used to walking through these woods, where so few trails exist except those traveled by deer and other animals. When I reach the bottom of the slope, I can see where a deep creek would run, if this past winter hadn’t been so dry. There is only a shallow flow visible now. I follow it over rough land for a while until I come to the pool Wolf mentioned. It’s maybe a foot or two deep, so I take off my boots, roll up my jeans, and wade in to cool off.

  The water here in the shade is cold. All water in these parts is snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada, Dad made sure to inform me on the drive north. Mostly clean, good for drinking.

  But there’s not much of it to drink, if this is our closest source.

  California gets its rain in the winter, so a dry one means no water for the rest of the year. In the desert, where we’d lived since I was thirteen, we didn’t notice the drought much, since there’s always a drought in the desert. I heard about it on the news, though, and now we have to worry about how we’ll get any water at all.

  I think of the wildfires that have been burning all over California since spring. Dad sees them as a sign of the coming collapse of society, but I think they’re just a sign of drought.

  Everything about our move here feels a little reckless, a little wrong, and Mom’s leaving seems like confirmation of that.

  Dad will come up with a plan, though. He always has a plan.

  * * *

  On day two of my mother being gone, the movers delivering all of our stuff arrived late. Once they were finished unloading everything from the truck, we unpacked, while my father stopped occasionally to stare out a window at the empty driveway. He never said a word about Mom disappearing. If Izzy and I were a different kind of sisters, we might have exchanged worried glances or talked about our missing parent, but instead she avoided my gaze when we passed in the hallway and spent most of the day in her room cleaning and arranging her stuff.

  We have a strict system for unpacking after moves, which I thought would unravel without Mom present to do her part, but somehow Dad redistributes the responsibilities so that we are entirely unpacked and the house is as set up as it can be by ten o’clock that night.

  On day three, Mom still didn’t come back. Our house, its run-down appearance only emphasized by our normal suburban belongings, is depressing to look at. Dad’s expression grew grim, and his silence had a weight to it.

  On day four, he announces to me that we’re making a trip to the grocery store. My sister stays behind while my dad and I get into his truck and ride in the same uncomfortable silence that has hovered between us for the past two days like a bad smell. But in the small space of the truck’s cab, I can’t stand it anymore.

  “Where did Mom go?” I ask, the question barely squeaking out.

  Dad’s grip on the steering wheel tightens, and he stares straight ahead. “I don’t know.”

  It’s exactly what I was hoping he would not say.

  “But didn’t she say anything about where she was going, or when she’s coming back?”

  “No.”

  “What about her cell phone?” I say, but I already know it’s turned off, because I’ve tried calling it from Izzy’s phone.

  “She left it at the house.”

  “Oh.” That was typical Mom. She’d never adapted to the habit of taking her phone with her everywhere, and half the time she let the battery go dead, too, and then never noticed that it wasn’t ringing.

  “Have you tried calling any of her family?”

  “A couple of times, but they haven’t returned my calls.”

  “That seems like where she would go, don’t you think?”

  To this, he says nothing, and again I try to imagine my mom at this moment, where she is and what she’s doing. I come up blank.

  I have only ever imagined her being our mom the second grade teacher, doing mom and teacher things, living to take care of us and her students. Even the idea that she had dreams outside of this world just seemed like a vague concept, no more comprehensible or interesting than a calculus equation.

  “You don’t think she could be, like, hurt or something, do you?”

  Silence again.

  “Dad? This is serious. What if she wrecked her car, or got lost, or…”

  Or what? I don’t know.

  “The police would have called if anything happened to her. She doesn’t want to be found, is what I figure.”

  “But why?” I say stupidly.

  I know exactly why she’s left. I guess I just want to hear him say it.

  “I don’t know,” he answers, his tone flat enough to let me know that this subject is finished.

  My dad never admits he doesn’t know something, and something about my world shifts a little when those words exit his mouth. I understand for the first time just how shaky the ground is beneath my feet. One thing I’ve always been able to count on is my dad’s absolute self-assuredness, and the other is the fact of my parents being together.

  I have no doubt that Dad loves Mom. His way of loving her might not be what she wants, but he still does. I’m sure of it. I’m not so sure, looking back, how she feels about him, though. I come up blank.

  Out the window, pine forest blurs by. We again pass the large redwood sign with copper lettering that reads SADHANA VILLAGE AND SPIRITUAL RETREAT CENTER.

  “What do they do at that Sadhana place?” I ask.

  “They’re a bunch of pagan wacko earth worshippers.”

  I glance over at him, at his jagged pr
ofile as he glares ahead at the road. He still keeps his dark hair in a buzz cut, even though he’s retired now. He hadn’t been planning to retire—it happened all of a sudden, without any explanation—and his haircut always gives me the feeling that he’s going to put on his uniform and go back to work any day now. Then I look away again before he can catch me watching him.

  How do you know who they are? is what I want to ask.

  But what I say is, “Is it like a church or something?”

  “It’s probably a group of hippies using the words spiritual retreat as a front for a pot-growing farm.”

  I think of Wolf, the guy from the woods—not for the first time. He is so unsettling and odd, and no matter how hard my brain tries, there is not a category it can fit him into. He’s the opposite of me that way, I think, because I fit perfectly into the categories I’m supposed to: obedient Asian daughter, straight-A nerd, expert marksman (thanks to my father’s training), boring good girl.

  I know how people see me as I sit obedient and silent in class, rarely raising my hand to give answers, always getting the answers right when asked. I know I am a stereotype to kids I’ve gone to school with, and it hasn’t really bothered me.

  “Let me make something clear,” Dad says. “We’re not on an army post anymore. People come in every shade of crazy out here in the civilian world, and it’s your job to keep yourself separate, keep the outside world from getting in, you understand?”

  “Who am I supposed to be friends with?”

  “You don’t need friends. You’ve got your sister, and that’s plenty.”

  I roll my eyes at the trees outside the passenger window. The idea of Izzy being pals with me is so ridiculous that I wonder if our father has ever actually met my sister. I mean, I know he has, but has he?

  “I’m not really Izzy’s type of person,” I say.

  “Don’t talk back. You and Izzy are family, and there’s no such thing as not being each other’s type of person when you’re talking about your flesh and blood. You hear me?”