What he did, those first few days, was spend his evenings after dinner walking in circles around the great tree, hoping for inspiration. He tried looking at it from various angles. Considered how naked and pale it looked without its dark, rough bark. He lay down next to it, sat on top of it, ran his hands over its surface, once finding a deeply buried nail he himself had put into the tree decades earlier, when he’d built the tree house.
Emma came into the barn to see the great sculptor at work.
“It still looks like just a tree trunk, Dad,” she said, squinting at it, as if she was missing something.
“These things take time,” he told her. “You can’t rush into it. The wood guides the sculpture. The wood alone knows what it wants to become.”
“So, what—you’re waiting for the tree to start talking to you?” she asked.
He nodded. “Exactly.”
Emma shook her head. “Good luck with that,” she said, leaving the barn.
Henry would come stumbling out of his workshop at daybreak and make his way into the kitchen at the main house for coffee and breakfast with Tess and Emma; a semblance of normalcy that Henry clung to but at the same time found rather pathetic. He could pretend all he wanted, but in the end, he’d still have to go slinking off to the barn to shave, shower, and dress. And inevitably, each morning, Tess would gaze at him over her steaming mug of French roast and ask how the sculpture was going.
“Great,” he would tell her.
“So the tree started talking?” Emma asked one morning.
“Blabbing away,” he told her. “Can’t get a word in edgewise.”
“Can I come see?” she asked.
“Let’s wait awhile, huh? Until I get it roughed out. Then you and your mom can come take a look.”
“It must feel good to be working again,” Tess said, and he gave her a little mousy smile.
He was a fraud and he knew it. A poseur. He’d never been a real artist. Real artists didn’t quit.
He took to opening a bottle of wine each night in his barn. He’d tune the radio to a classic-rock station and drink merlot from a coffee mug while he pondered the tree. Great beached whale of a thing. He remembered the sculptures he’d done in college: rough forms carved from tree trunks—humans, wolves, bears, and fish—never finished enough so that you’d forget where they’d come from. He wanted the spirit of the tree to shine through.
The wood guides the sculpture.
The wood alone knows what it wants to become.
These were the things he believed in back in college, this naive notion of ethereal messages that it was up to him to pick up on, to spell out with his mallet and chisels.
“Sometimes I think we’re just conduits,” Tess told him once, years ago, when she sat in his studio space in the corner of the sculpture building at Sexton. “Like the art we make can’t possibly come from us. Do you know what I mean?”
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, cradling a mug of coffee in both hands. A small-framed, compact girl who hardly took up any space at all, yet she’d say these things with such fierce intensity in her eyes that they came out like the words of a giant.
Henry nodded. Yes. He felt that way all the time. He was just a pair of hands—someone, something, else was doing the real work.
Tess wore denim overalls splattered with paint and a charcoal-colored chunky wool cardigan with heavy wooden buttons. Her brown hair was twisted back in an untidy bun, held in place with a pencil.
The painting building was next door to the sculpture building, connected by a tubelike suspended walkway. The Habitrail, they called it. Tess and Henry would often be the only two working there at night. The buildings were supposed to be locked and unoccupied after ten, but every now and then they’d share a joint or a beer with Duane, the security guard, and he’d let them stay as late as they wanted.
There was a kitchenette in the painting building, and Tess had a copper pot for making Turkish coffee. She’d fill a thermos with it, then carry the hot, thick, sweet coffee through the tube to the sculpture building, and call out, “Break time!” Sometimes, Henry was too caught up in what he was doing to stop, and Tess would sit, sipping her coffee, watching him work.
“When I watch you sculpt,” she told him, over a steaming cup, “I feel like there’s three of us in the room: you, me, and the piece. You make the wood come alive, Henry. That’s what I love about your art.”
Sometimes, she’d come right up and caress the wood, running her fingers over whatever sharply angled face he was carving: wolf, bear, old man. He had this strange sense, in those moments, that the sculpture was more real to her than he was.
TESS BEGAN REFERRING TO the north side of the barn as his studio. Going to your studio tonight, Henry? or How’s the light in your studio?
Even Emma started: “When can I come see you in your studio? I want to see if I can hear the tree.”
“Soon,” he promised. “Soon.”
Henry bought more bottles of wine. He sharpened his chisels, knives, and gouges. He walked around the tree. He waited for it to speak to him. On the radio, the Rolling Stones sang about getting no satisfaction, Aerosmith told him to dream on. He poured himself cup after cup of wine and prayed Tess and Emma wouldn’t show up at the door determined to see his progress.
And then, one night, it came to him. Not inspiration exactly, but more a moment of desperation. He had to do something. Anything. So he grabbed a small hatchet and began the long process of bringing one of the ends of the log to a point, like whittling the end of a giant pencil. He worked for four days at this and then he saw it. A canoe. He was going to carve a canoe! He smiled to think how pleased Tess and Emma would be to see him taking sculpture to this whole new, practical level. He was making something they could all climb inside and take out on the water. If the land ever flooded, they’d be safe. They’d have Henry’s canoe, their own private DeForge family ark, to save them.
He was so happy that he did a little canoe-building dance around the log, hatchet in one hand, mug in the other, sloshing wine onto the floor, staining the front of his old work khakis.
“A canoe?” Tess’s brow was furrowed, her lips pursed. The sigh that came out from between them was a low, disappointed whistle. She had, he imagined, expected a person or an animal. A face she could caress. But this was the postcollege Henry, the grownup, fatherly, business-owner Henry. The practical Henry with tiny wrinkles around his eyes.
“But what are you going to do with it?” she asked.
“See if it floats, I guess. Maybe teach Emma to row?”
Emma was dancing around the canoe. “I think it’s so cool, Dad!” she said. “Will you make paddles too?”
“Of course, sweetie.”
“But you’re afraid of the water, Henry,” Tess said.
She had him there. So much for Practical Henry.
But he continued to go through the door in his tiny kitchen and into the workshop each night, to turn on the radio, pour himself some wine, and hack away at the giant log. He used a chain saw to cut a crisscross pattern in the belly of the log, then used an ax, an adze, and chisels to chop out the little pieces, hollowing the canoe. He had been at this for over a year now, and it was finally close to being finished. The inside was hollowed, the ends and bottom shaped. He was just doing the final smoothing, taking away the rough edges.
It was a large canoe, big enough for three or four people. Some nights, when he was done working on it, he’d crawl inside and stretch out, his body perfectly cradled by the scooped sides. More than once, he fell asleep there, only to wake up hours later and make his way stiffly to the daybed on the other side of the barn.
He’s done this again tonight. He wakes and looks at his watch. It’s nearly 1 A.M. He goes to the window, sees Tess still working on the new grotto, a mere shadow in lantern light.
It’s unlike Tess to be this obsessed with a project, to work so many hours. But then again, there’s never been a project quite like this one, has there?
&n
bsp; For ten years, she’s mentioned Suz maybe half a dozen times. Now, suddenly, Tess seems consumed.
Henry’s afraid that if anyone sees the grotto, like the private investigator Spencer’s father is sending, for instance, it could be viewed as evidence. People don’t build shrines for the living, do they? Surely Tess realizes this. He tried talking to her about it earlier this evening when he returned from the grocery store.
“Do you think it’s a good idea? The grotto? I mean, having the photo of Suz stuck in there like that. It’s kind of a red flag, don’t you think?”
“You don’t understand,” she told him.
“What, Tess? What is it I don’t get? Christ, it’s practically a signed confession! And what do you think Emma makes of it?”
“Emma thinks it’s a tribute to a friend. A friend who made the moose she loves so much.”
Henry shook his head. “The photo of Suz needs to go, Tess. The private investigator might show up any day now—”
“I don’t tell you how to carve your ridiculous canoe. And what do you think Emma thinks of that? What will she think when she learns the canoe is never actually going to go anywhere near the water, but just sit gathering dust in the barn?”
He turned and walked away.
Now, as he watches her out the window, he remembers her twenty-year-old self sitting cross-legged in a pile of wood chips on the sculpture-studio floor. The sweet, earthy scent of dark coffee and cardamom a swirling aura around her.
Sometimes I think we’re just conduits.
Shit.
If Tess doesn’t get rid of the photo, he’ll have to. He’s sure she’ll see it as an act of hostility rather than an attempt to protect their family. How is it that whenever Henry tries to do the right thing, he ends up as a villain?
Henry turns from watching Tess at the grotto, looks at his own senseless project, all lit up with halogen spotlights. He doesn’t let himself think about what he’ll do with it once it’s finished. He doesn’t admit to the probability that Tess is right: the landlocked canoe will stay in his workshop, there to forever remind him of his own futility, of how he failed his wife and daughter. The boat will taunt and tease, call out to him, whispering its deepest desire, which happens to be his greatest fear—Water, it will whisper in its low, woody voice; garbled, thick with pitch: Water.
[ PART TWO ]
WE OPPOSE TECHNOLOGY, HIERARCHY, RULES AND LAWS, AND ALL FORMS OF GOVERNMENT
Chapter 8
IT’S A FORTY-MINUTE DRIVE from Henry’s office to Alden. Route 2 all the way, traveling east, toward Maine, following the twists and hairpin turns that take you past Sexton College and then to the turnoff onto Curtis Road ten miles beyond. The blacktop ends shortly, and the woods get thicker, and the houses get fewer, and then the road signs end too. If you know the way—if you can follow the maze of forks and four-corners that look increasingly the same—eventually between the red pines there’s a narrow dirt turnoff that leads up the hill to the cabin. He hasn’t made the trip since Emma was born, but the way feels familiar, as if he just drove it yesterday. He blinks. Looks around at the inside of his Blazer just to remind himself that it’s not the rattling old orange Dodge van he drove in college. The Love Machine, Suz called it.
Sometimes he thinks about how odd it is that the cabin has been so close—only an hour’s drive from their house—all these years. So close and yet universes away. They never come out this way. When Henry, Tess, and Emma used to go to Maine in the summer, they’d loop around, take the interstate, claiming it got them to the beaches and lobster pounds faster. Alden was a big, black hole in the map, a danger zone to be avoided at all costs.
“THINK OF WHAT WE could accomplish—no classes, no jobs, not even a fucking telephone,” Suz said, eyes wide as she surveyed the cabin. “We could devote ourselves to the cause full time. Eat, sleep, and breathe dismantlement.”
It was the week before graduation and Winnie was showing them the hunting camp her grandfather had built back in the late sixties. They’d parked Henry’s van at the foot of the driveway and hiked up the hill, arriving sweaty and winded but exhilarated.
“My grandfather owns it outright,” Winnie explained. “Forty acres. Hasn’t used it since his arthritis got bad. No one’s been here in years.”
The cabin was only a twenty-minute drive from Sexton and was in magnificent shape. Henry, who had worked for his father since his early teens, was used to assessing the condition of buildings—the level of rot, the structural integrity—and was pleased to see the old frame carrying the weight of the cabin perfectly. He got on his belly and slithered under the crawl space: the cement posts the building sat on were straight and true, despite years of frost heaves. Winnie’s grandfather had understood the importance of a good foundation and had dug deep.
“It’s in great shape!” he called to the others. He wiggled out from underneath the building, dusted cobwebs out of his hair, and walked around the outside. “The plywood’s a little buckled here and there, and it could use a new coat of paint, but overall it’s pretty excellent.”
Suz opened the front door and danced through the cabin.
“Right here, in front of this window, this will be our studio space! And Winnie and I can sleep down here, near the kitchen. We’ll hang up some tapestries or something for walls—do the hippie thing. Henry and Tess can have the loft.” Suz was talking a mile a minute, the sleeves of her tunic flapping like frantic wings. The dust in the cabin swirled around her, lit up by the light from the window, making it look as if she had her own excited force field. “We’ve gotta get a camp stove. One of those little propane things. We can bring sleeping bags, clothes, art supplies, a few flashlights and oil lamps. We don’t need much really.”
“We’ll have to haul water from town,” Henry said.
“It’s no biggie,” Suz said. “We can get a bunch of containers and make weekly runs to Sexton if we don’t find a closer source. Shit, we can just take it from people’s hoses at night! Water liberation!”
“What about a bathroom?” Tess asked.
“There’s a lovely outhouse in back,” Winnie said. “Just gotta watch out for the porcupines.”
“Ouch!” said Henry.
Tess gave a little shiver.
“And we can take baths in the lake!” Suz exclaimed. “Oh, Winnie, it’s perfect!” She threw her arms around Winnie and kissed her cheek.
“What do you think?” Henry asked Tess. She was the only one of them who’d applied to grad school, and had been accepted at the Rhode Island School of Design. She was planning to move to Providence after graduation. Tess bit her lip, looked around the cabin, then back at Henry. “Fuck grad school,” she said.
Suz cheered. “Dismantlement equals freedom!”
NOW, AS HENRY ROUNDS the last bend, passing the stand of red pine, straight and tall as telephone poles, he reaches the old logging road that leads a mile or so up the hill to the cabin. He slows, puts on his turn signal.
Does he really want to see it again?
The cabin, where, last time he visited, Tess’s water broke.
Where they found the frogs.
He chews his cheek harder. A dread as thick and green as the ooze from that tank of frogs seeps through him.
Henry thinks of the mayhem. The photos. The ransom note and chair looped with rope. Suz’s things. So many of her things lying around the cabin. Evidence. What if it’s still there? And what happens when that private investigator shows up, starts snooping around and finds the cabin?
Someone’s got to go check it out, clean it up. He promised Tess that someone would be him.
Henry the brave. Henry who makes the bad things go away.
“Tomorrow,” he mumbles, his hands shaking a little as he shuts off the turn signal, does a U-turn in the road because he can’t bring himself to even go take a look. “I’ll come back tomorrow,” he whispers, then he turns the radio up all the way so he won’t have to hear himself think.
Chapter 9
DON’T GO OUT OF sight. Stay where I can see you. See you. See you.
See who?
She has gone out of sight now but her ears are good as a rabbit’s—she listens carefully for the sound of her mother calling her name. Her mother in gardening gloves with purple flowers printed on them, tending bunches of plants that Emma can never remember the names of. She’ll run back when her mother calls her, her legs are fast, it won’t take long.
And it’s stupid, really. Emma is old enough to be on her own in the woods. Something’s gotten into both her parents these past few days. They’re jumpy. Overprotective.
Today, her mom said she couldn’t ride her bike to D.J.’s to meet Mel for a creemee.
“I’ll drive you,” she said.
“But I always ride my bike! It’s ten minutes away.”
“Not today,” her mom said, as if there was some escaped convict on the loose or something.
And her dad, who’s always been a little nutty about the pool, made up some story about how she couldn’t go in it because the chemicals were all out of balance.
“I have to shock it,” he told her.
“But I can go in tomorrow, right?”
He shook his head. “It might take a few days. We’ll see.”
And now she’s supposed to stay in the garden, not go out of her mother’s sight. But her mom is busy with a new flat of flowers she just picked up at Agway. She’s planting the area around the new grotto.
“Who’s that?” Emma asked when she saw the photo of the blond girl with the knife that her mom had put in a plastic frame on a little shelf in the grotto. It was the same girl who was giving the camera the finger in the photo she and Mel had found in her dad’s toolbox.
“Suz,” her mother told her. “The lady who painted Francis.”
“Where is she now?” Emma asked.
Her mother got that glassy, far-off look in her eyes. “Out west, I think. California, maybe. That’s where she was headed last I knew. But that was a long time ago.”
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