Twisted Tree

by Kent Meyers

  It’s not that, she said. That’s not what I—

  He was too consumed by his own self-consciousness to wonder what she meant.

  I just want to get out of here, he said.

  I was nice. Last week. I really was.

  Jesus, he said, in the same tone she’d used.

  He saw his underwear by the car and pulled them on, leaning against the trunk so he wouldn’t stumble, the touch of cold metal making him shiver. Then the ground’s coolness came up through his bare feet and he couldn’t stop shivering, could barely button his shirt. When he finally got his clothes on he started the car and turned the radio down and the heater on full blast. He tried not to look at her out there in the moonlight, but he couldn’t help it, and when she stooped to pick up her shirt and he saw her breasts swing away from her body, so full of soft weight, and then swing so neatly back when she stood, he felt stabbed by loss, convinced he’d never know a woman again.

  Wordless, they rode the car over the jostling prairie to the gravel road. They were going past the lake, past its sedately moving lines of light, when she said: It’s not what you think.

  What do I think?

  That I did this to laugh at you.

  He wished he hadn’t asked.

  So, why don’t you tell me what it is, then.

  She held her left hand in her right, in her lap, and she shook her head. Then she looked him full in the face, and he thought she was going to speak, he waited and waited, the bright lake beyond her out the window, stars, the smell of water, the flinty complaint of stones beneath the tires. But he had to watch the road. He should have stopped the car, but he didn’t think to stop the car, he turned from her to face the world moving toward him.

  I was nice, she repeated. I wasn’t trying—

  He waited. She didn’t go on. He waited longer, then long enough.

  Can you just shut up? he said. All the way home. Every mile? Every yard?

  She bent her head again, then lifted her hand to the radio knob and turned it off, and he briefly stopped to meet the highway. In that silence he heard a constrained, soft suck and catch within her throat. He didn’t want to hear the sounds of her body or believe she had some claim to hurt. He snapped the radio back on, full. She flinched, and the Who cried out.

  Richard had quarantined the memory. He’d grown into his body, and Ally didn’t care that his feet were large. But now, standing before Clay, Richard felt the dismay and amazement of meeting himself on a road he no longer thought he was walking.

  Did Hayjay tell you why she’s not fishing anymore? he managed to ask.

  She didn’t even want to go to the dam.

  What’d you do?

  Just drove. Sat.

  What’d she tell you?

  Nothing.

  She must have told you something.

  She said she’s too old for fishing.

  You’re never too old for fishing. And Hayjay’s—

  And she said she doesn’t want to be called Hayjay anymore. Only Hayley Jo.

  It had to happen eventually, Alysha said that evening. We never expected him to marry her.

  It was a response so pragmatic Richard was taken aback.

  I’m more worried about her, Alysha said.

  This isn’t about fishing, Ally. She dumped him. And they’ve been friends forever.

  Well, why would she do that? I don’t think a girl would just do that.

  The memory of that night with Sophie Lawrence still in his mind, Richard wanted to ask his wife what a girl would just do. He had never told Ally about that night, and it wasn’t mere privacy or discomfort. He was afraid of the words. He was almost sure that in that grappling, in that confusion of breath and body and limbs, Sophie had pulled him down. But he couldn’t even recall how his glasses had ended up on the roof of the car. And he’d been so hurt and enraged, so strong. If he put it into words, he was afraid of what the words might reveal.

  Kris told me she’s spending all her time in her room these days, Alysha said. Or out running, with Laura Morrison.

  Richard remembered the serious look on Hayjay’s face the morning he’d borrowed the horse trailer, and how preoccupied Stanley had been.

  It’s probably just, she’s fourteen, Alysha said. But still.

  Stanley hasn’t said anything to me.

  He’s got a lot going on. Those buffalo are turning into more work than he bargained for. Especially with their getting out like they did.

  That’s true. But still.

  Hayjay quit barrels.

  Quit barrels?

  Kris told me Stanley was pretty upset.

  I bet he was. All that time he spent with her?

  He was awfully proud of her.

  He was.

  Why’d she quit?

  That’s what I’m saying.

  Three weeks later Richard remembered the salt cedar bush and rode Blueboy up to check on it. A green shoot, a foot tall already, had sprung out of the blackened circle where the bush had flamed and collapsed. He leaned on Blueboy’s steering bars and imagined the thick taproot Stanley had described going down twenty or thirty feet, drawing water and salt out of the darkness, turning them into a million seeds: a rising blizzard of salt cedar. He spun Blueboy around so hard the wheels clawed up the shallow-rooted Japanese bromegrass that had invaded this part of the pasture. He drove to the machine shed and grabbed spades and a pickax, then went to the house and found Clay, who had been subdued since the breakup with Hayley Jo.

  That salt cedar’s back, he told Clay. We’re going to dig it out.

  Can’t you spray it?

  It takes a herbicide I don’t have. And a lot of applications. It’s not even our bush.

  Clay, don’t argue.

  Mom doesn’t like you up there.

  Ally and Angela Morrison had gone to Rapid for the day. Richard shrugged and said: She’s a little weirded out by Shane. But she’s not here, is she?

  Clay smiled, pleased with this small male conspiracy. He rose and put on his boots.

  The first thing Clay said when they reached the creek was: Shane’s home.

  Richard glanced at the pickup crouched between the buildings where the creek valley began its rise.

  He’s sleeping, he said.

  How do you know?

  He spends all night poaching. He’s got to sleep sometime. Anyway, if he sees us, fine.

  But we’re on his land.

  He’s our neighbor, Clay.

  Me and—we’d see him sometimes, when we were fishing.

  Yeah? Well, he’s a recluse, but he’s still our neighbor. I’ve lent him equipment. He’s always returned it.

  Richard handed Clay a shovel. It was satisfying to work with his son, to watch the hole steadily deepen, and find the plant’s spreading roots and cut through them, see the white scar, the clean separation. They worked rhythmically, not hurrying, and as Richard’s muscles warmed he fell into that state of contentment that physical work always brought him. But two feet down he kicked the spade into a rock, and the impact went up his leg and into the small of his back like a clubbing. When he tried to dig around the rock he found the earth layered with them, packed so closely together they were like a horizontal wall barely mortared by soil. He and Clay pried them out, grunting and scraping. Richard’s joints began to hurt, his fingers to bleed.

  Three feet down, the dirt in the hole began to darken. Richard was puzzled, then understood: They’d dug below the streambed, and the hole was filling with water. The darkening turned smooth, and the bottom of the hole became a mirror in which he could faintly see his face’s components configured among the stones. He tried to dig faster than the soil could leak, but the wet gravel stuck to his spade, and he had to bang it edgewise on the ground to un-glue it. He worked even harder, fueled by frustration: a panting rhythm of harsh shocks and strikings, all steel and implacable rock against which he felt he could break. Water soaked his boots and pants cuffs and wicked its way to his knees. He slopped around in wet
socks, and his latent arthritis flamed.

  Richard didn’t realize his fury and the frenzied speed at which he was working until Clay’s shovel slipped, and he stumbled and plunged into the water, his kneecap thudding against a stone and mud splashing his face. He grunted but rose without a word and stabbed savagely at the ground again, his jeans ripped, exposing an ugly welt.

  You OK? Richard asked, but Clay wouldn’t look at him. Richard’s anger leaked away, leaving him empty and deflated. His son was trying to keep up, to make him proud, and Richard had been too absorbed in his own emotions to notice. He wanted to bend and attend to the wound but knew better than to make a big deal of it. Instead he worked halfheartedly for a few more moments, then stopped, letting Clay go on for a while.

  Then he said: I don’t know about you, but I’m beat.

  Clay lifted his head. For a tick Richard thought he was going to scream at him. Then gratitude, and pride that he’d outworked his father, rose into his face, and he smiled. Still, above the smile Richard saw his large, starved eyes. Clay looked as if he were made of tissue paper, and the dried mud on his skin were the only thing that structured him, and if Richard were to scrape it off, his son would flake away.

  They sat side by side on Blueboy. Richard wanted to reside with Clay in that mutual state when weariness holds time in abeyance and the moment goes on and on. He thought how he’d almost destroyed this good thing without even knowing it was forming, and then had inadvertently rescued it. Now he just wanted to have it, and his gratitude. He wanted to stare, with Clay, at the hole and the wet earth piled around, and he wanted to drink water, pass the jug, receive it back, and know that it felt as good against Clay’s throat as against his own.

  Finally, though, they had to move again. A foot of water covered the bottom of the hole. The root was still down there; they hadn’t reached its end. But Richard didn’t see how the plant could survive that long journey back to light. And he couldn’t bring himself to care anymore.

  Let’s bury it, he said.

  They began throwing dirt back into the hole, tamping it down hard. They were about half done when Clay stopped working and said: He’s coming, Dad.

  Shane Valen’s pickup was grinding toward them, a grim apparition of neglect: smashed headlights, crazed windshield, Shane’s left arm hanging straight down from the open window, flopping when the pickup bounced.

  Let him come, Richard said.

  Dad!

  Richard spoke quietly: What’s got into you? We’ve always lived next to this guy.

  I don’t like him.

  We’re going to talk to him and have a nice, neighborly chat. OK? Clay—look at me. OK?

  The pickup was snorting in front of them, asthmatic, the valves clacking. Clay nodded. Shane shut off the engine. He sat inside, staring through the cracked star of the windshield, his face a series of shattered pieces, his eyes askew in different quadrants. Then his left arm rose like a pump handle, his wrist curled inward, and his fingers found the outside door latch and lifted. The door swung open. He paused, took his right hand off the steering wheel, and let it rest on the seat, looking down at it. He seemed to be stroking something lying there, too low to see, and his mouth moved, speaking. Then his feet slid to the ground, and the rest of his body poured itself into the shape of his skin until he was standing erect under his green cenex cap with a crescent of grease swabbed across the bill.

  Afternoon, Shane, Richard said.

  The bill of the cap dipped an inch. Shane stayed behind the open door.

  This side the creek’s mine, he said. Suppose you know that, though.

  The words came out so slowly he might have been counting them on his fingers.

  Ordinarily, Shane, I wouldn’t trespass any more than you would, Richard said.

  Everyone in the county knew that Shane, in his poaching, trespassed promiscuously, with no more regard for fences or surveys than the animals he hunted.

  Richard went on: But I’m doing us both a favor here.

  Looks like you’re doing me a big hole.

  Shane reached into his shirt pocket, retrieved a can of chewing tobacco, tapped the lid, twisted the cap off, transferred cap and can to the same hand, pinched up a gleaming wad dark as a horse’s flank, placed it under his lip, replaced the cap, lifted his pocket flap, and stuck the can back. Then he came out from behind the door of his pickup and took a few steps toward them, light-footed, graceful, quiet as an antelope.

  He suddenly grinned, brown-toothed, and lopsided and oddly young, the grin of a man who didn’t imagine himself as seen by others. His whole face was taken. It cracked like a mask of flour paste that nevertheless held together, without reserve or containment other than that of musculature and bone.

  Must be you burying someone, he said in his searching way. Gonna get Ol Greggy up here investigating, am I?

  You know how it is, Richard said. A guy hates to bury his mistakes on his own land.

  Goddamn. Shane chortled. That is the truth.

  He laughed: Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh—a goofy, throat-clearing sound that made Clay laugh, too. Shane glanced at him, then turned back to Richard.

  So, he said. What is it you got doing here? That is favorable to us both? Seems I ought need know.

  You had a weed up here, Richard said. A bush called salt cedar. Real invasive. Figured the neighborly thing was I’d just dig it out for both of us.

  Tamarisk, Shane said.

  Richard gaped. You know it?

  You like digging tamarisk, hell! I can make you happy till the Vikings win the Super Bowl.

  Richard absorbed the meaning of this.

  There’s more of this stuff? he asked.

  South side the county. West. The creek up from the river.

  Shane’s face went soft and distant.

  Makes this country smell some good at night, he said. Come upon it? Wake up under it? Like a garden. All mixed up? With cattails and what-all?

  Richard wondered if Shane curled up in the dark like an animal, whenever he was tired, and fell asleep. There were stories to that effect, and Richard almost pursued the question but decided he didn’t need to know.

  How much of it you found? he asked.

  Ain’t found. Ain’t looking. Just there.

  Shane turned to Clay again.

  You like digging? he asked. Looks like it don’t like you.

  Clay glanced down at his knee.

  Like fishing, Shane stated.

  Clay shook his head, not meeting Shane’s eyes. Some, he said. Shane regarded him with a half-predatory look. Ain’t fished for a while, he said.

  Nah, Clay said. Not much.

  Shane spat. Not much, he said. He looked off at the horizon. Why’s that?

  Clay lifted a shoulder, tipped his head, his eyes on a salt cedar leaf midway between himself and Shane. From the top of Shane’s barn a crow cawed.

  No reason, Clay said. Just ain’t fishing much.

  A grin crept across Shane’s face. No reason, he said. Well.

  He looked into the sky, and the grin got wider. He was suddenly unaware of Richard and Clay, in his own thoughts entirely.

  Hear that? he said to the clouds. No reason.

  Then he came back, and his eyes latched on to Clay again.

  Seen you fishing with that neighbor girl, he said. Name like a bird? Hay Jay? Father owns Valen land? Might be, you ain’t fishing with her anymore, she’d go with me, huh?

  Clay gripped his shovel in his hands like a lance, strangling the shaft, the muscles of his forearms knotted under his smooth, boy’s skin. You stay away from her, he yelled.

  His lips were white, and he looked young and vulnerable, yet danger lay on him like a caul. Shane had started to chuckle but stepped back, though he was several yards from Clay, and held his hands up as if to fend off a blow, his palms dirty, his eyes alarmed.

  Clay! Richard said.

  He stepped between them. Shane dropped his hands. He gazed at Richard, as if assessing something. Then he smi
led briefly, and his mouth began working the tobacco. He spat, driving a grasshopper into the ground. It struggled momentously, as if being birthed from dark froth.

  Didn’t mean nothing, Shane said. Don’t do much fishing. Too much work for what you get. Been watching that girl, though, since about forever.

  You’ve been watching her? Richard asked, alarmed.

  Shane stretched out an unhurried foot and stepped on the sodden grasshopper. Who ain’t? You seen her ride?

  Oh, Richard said. Barrels. Yeah, she’s something.

  Just stay away from her, Clay repeated. He still held the shovel like a weapon, his eyes grim, though Shane now seemed unperturbed.

  Mr. Valen didn’t mean anything, Richard said. He was making a joke.

  Dad says, Shane said, then stopped.

  Rodney? He’s—

  Dead, Shane said. Been sucking roots a while now.

  He glanced up like a child with a secret, then lifted his foot and held it in both hands, twisted toward him at waist level, an enigma of filth and graceful balance. He stared at the crushed grasshopper on the sole of his boot, lost to the world, calm as an egret, and as much contained by his own intensity. The shifting breeze blew his scent to Richard—a knockdown yeastiness, and old blood, creases in his skin harboring communities of fermentation. He let go the boot and dropped it to the ground, scraped his foot backwards. The dismembered corpse of the grasshopper appeared in the bromegrass.

  Then he looked at Clay again. You and me’s a lot alike, he said.

  We got nothing in common.

  Richard hardly recognized the focused young man before him.

  Let’s fill this hole and get off Mr. Valen’s land, he said.

  Land don’t smell like it used to.

  This dirt? Richard asked.

  Said land, not dirt. Don’t smell the same.

  He jerked his head at the wilting shoot Clay and Richard had dug out.

  This stuff, he said. Spurge. Tansy. Wake up sometimes and hardly know where you’re at.

  We best fill this in. You won’t even know it was here.

  Oh, I’ll know.

  He gazed at the hole as if to memorize its contours.

  Guess things’re OK, then, he said. He spat, turned around, ambled to his pickup, got in, his eyes in their different panes perhaps watching them, perhaps not. He looked at the seat beside him, and his hand reached down, and his elbow and shoulder moved as if he were stroking the upholstery. He spoke some words. He turned the key.