A Sudden Light

by Garth Stein

  “We?” he said, clipped.

  “Ben is here. Remember what you said? Spirits can come and visit, but a ghost doesn’t see the door. A ghost is stuck. Ben is stuck; we have to release him.”

  “By turning Riddell House into a park.”

  “Yes,” I said, relieved that my father finally understood. “Exactly. When you put the hand back on the stairs, you said to me, ‘Sometimes you have to set the universe right.’ Remember? You need to set things right, Dad. Developing this land and sucking the money out of it is only going to extend the curse. We’ll just have to do it over and over again until we get it right.”

  “You woke me up for this?” he asked, shaking his head and waving his hand over the evidence I had assembled.

  He reached down and picked up his wedding ring. He slipped it on his finger.

  “It was in the basement,” I said again. “In a cubbyhole.”

  “A place a mouse would stash it. A mouse that was attracted to shiny objects.”

  “Or a spirit who steals things. And do you know what else? Serena gives Grandpa NōDōz.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The Alzheimer’s medication she gives him. It’s not medication; it’s NōDōz. When you guys were out and I was feeding Grandpa, he asked me to get it for him, and the pills in the container had NōDōz stamped on them.”

  “That’s crazy,” he said with a snort.

  “No, Serena is crazy. Think about it. She jacks him up on caffeine before bedtime and then gives him ‘medicine’ to help him sleep. You know about the medicine?”

  “I know about the medicine,” he admitted. “But this is ridiculous and I simply refuse to believe it. You’re suggesting that she’s using a deliberate and systematic method of sleep deprivation in order to make him act erratically? Where did you come up with this idea?”

  “Arthur Koestler,” I said. “Darkness at Noon. Mom made me read it. Sleep deprivation is considered torture and is banned by the Geneva Conventions.”

  “Oh, give me a fucking break, Trevor!”

  “I don’t think Grandpa has Alzheimer’s,” I went on. “I think she’s trying to drive him crazy and make him seem forgetful and disorientated all the time so we’ll push to get him to sign the power of attorney, which she needs to develop the property. See? It’s all part of her plan. I bet if you tried to get him declared incompetent, the doctors would say he isn’t incompetent at all. That’s why it’s so important to Serena that you or I get the power of attorney. She needs the documentation. The paper trail. Add that to the fact that she wants to take you on an around-the-world tour and jump your bones—”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he demanded.

  I hesitated. I wasn’t sure anything productive would come from playing the cruise ticket card at the moment. It was a lot for my father to digest. Adding incest to the mix might not take us in the right direction.

  “Meanwhile,” I said.

  He shrugged and scratched his elbow, thinking. He picked up the cigar box with the syringe and the empty ampoule. He opened it and looked inside. He winced and set it back down on the bed.

  “You have no idea what you’re doing. You have no idea how you’re hurting me with this . . . this oral report. I have to go.”

  He started toward the door, and I knew he hadn’t understood at all. He’d heard, but he’d nullified the evidence.

  “This is all real,” I blurted. “I found all of these things in the house! I’m not making it up.”

  “So you’re not making it up!” he snapped. “So it’s all true? You feel justified using truth as a bludgeon? You feel justified in beating me with this—the tools of my mother’s death? Really? You’ve figured out the big mystery—I hate myself for what I’ve done—and you’re going to trot that out like some sick fifth-grade science project? You think you have the right to judge me? You spend your time digging up evidence to convict me of a crime. Well, let me tell you, I’ve already been convicted of that crime. I’ve already been hanged for that crime. I’m still hanging! Every day I have to dig my fingers into the space between the rope and my neck to make some room so I can breathe. I will never be cut down. I will never be free of this noose. But you want to try me again, and convict me again, and hang me again. What can I say to that, Trevor? That’s double jeopardy, and that’s not allowed in the Geneva Conventions. So keep your judgment to yourself.”

  “That’s not what this is about—”

  “If you think we’re changing our plans because of the deathbed wishes of a man who’s been dead eight decades—a man who gave away everything he had and left his heirs with nothing—you’ve got another thing coming. That man raped the world. Elijah, your new idol. Elijah Riddell was a ruthless privateer, a timber baron, a vicious raider of businesses. He destroyed people’s lives. He destroyed nature. You realize that, right? And to assuage his guilt, he wanted to give it all away before he died. He did it so God would forgive him. And now you’ve decided it’s your mission to fulfill his destiny? Well, that’s really sweet. But you know what, Son? I’ve got bills to pay. I’ve got mouths to feed, including yours. I need to put a roof over our heads. Now you have morally justifiable ideals to throw in my face? Ideals are nice, Trevor, when you’re fourteen years old. But you can’t eat them, you can’t sleep on them, and they sure as hell don’t keep you from getting wet in the rain. So do me a fucking favor and take your Hardy Boys crime-solving skills somewhere else.”

  His face red with fury, he reached for the doorknob.

  “But I thought—”

  “You thought what?”

  “I thought you didn’t care about the money. I thought you only wanted your house back. Your life back.”

  He looked back at me.

  “What led you to believe that?” he asked angrily.

  “I overheard . . . something . . .”

  My father took his hand off the doorknob. He turned to face me.

  “You were eavesdropping?”

  “I couldn’t help it,” I said plaintively. He had no idea of the things I’d overheard. “You were in the kitchen.”

  He snorted and darkened his brow and clenched his fists. He moved swiftly across the room and stood over me. He didn’t strike me, but he exuded the energy of a strike, so I felt as if I had already been hit.

  “You are not to listen in on my private conversations,” he said sternly. Murderously, I would have said, were I writing a novel. He waved his hand toward the bed. “You will put this shit back where you found it. And you will not speak of it again. You will do what Serena instructs you to do, and you will do it quickly and with great resolve. Do we understand each other?”

  “Yes,” I said, cowed.

  “Do we understand each other!” he shouted like he was some psycho military drill sergeant.

  “Yes, sir,” I repeated louder. “We understand each other . . . sir! ”

  I added the extra “sir” because I didn’t like him talking to me like that. I thought that deserved an ass-tag, so I ass-tagged my father with an extra “sir,” and he noticed. Oh, man, did he notice. His lips got all tight and his eyes narrowed on me and he raised his hand to slap me. But he didn’t. He hesitated. And that hesitation was enough to tell me that he and I both knew I was right. He had the resolve to threaten, but he didn’t have the resolve to act. Not like the resolve he must have had to inject a lethal drug into his mother. That was the true measure of commitment.

  He turned his open palm into a pointing finger and stuck it in my face. A waffle move if I’d ever seen one.

  “No more words,” he threatened.

  He wheeled around and marched toward the door; I knew this was it. It was my play, and I had to make it.

  “Dad,” I said forcefully, so he stopped.

  “I said no more—”

  “She’s already gotten the tickets. They’re in your name. I’m pretty sure she got the money from Dickie as an advance against the development of the property. I can s
how you—”

  He didn’t turn around but held up his hand as if to say “Enough.” I stopped speaking.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. “I don’t believe anything you’re saying. I don’t believe it now, and I will never believe it.”

  And then he left the room.

  In that instant, I knew my father was not my ally. And if he was not my ally, even blowing him up with a howitzer loaded with evidence wouldn’t help.

  I gathered my things. Our things. My family’s things. I gathered them because I valued them, and I knew they were important, and I would not let them go easily, as I wouldn’t let go of Elijah’s promise to Ben.

  As I wouldn’t let go of Ben’s promise to Harry.

  – 40 –

  BEN’S TREE

  I had failed. My plan—which really wasn’t much of a plan at all, consisting only of convincing my father to do the right thing—was a miserable disappointment. It didn’t work. So that was it. Ben was gone, stuck forever in the netherworld because I couldn’t help him. Worse. Because I couldn’t change my father’s mind, I had become Ben’s jailer. He had been doing pretty well hanging out with Grandpa Samuel until I came around.

  I felt like an idiot.

  I wished I could talk to Ben. Or at least see him again. I felt trapped by Riddell House. No friends. No strangers. No one.

  I wandered the hallways hoping to see or hear a sign. A creak or a door moving or something. In the kitchen, I ran into Serena, who was cheerfully baking corn bread for dinner as if she were in a movie or a television show about the perfect housewife. Her hair lovely; her makeup divine. She was wearing a light dress, open at the neck and tight around the waist, as was her style. Her toenails had changed color: they were painted orange, which I thought an odd choice. Still, it indicated she had spent time on herself that afternoon, which I saw as a positive sign; she hadn’t noticed the missing power of attorney or cruise tickets yet.

  That’s right! I still had the power of attorney. I could destroy it. That would foil their plans.

  Alas, it would only delay their plans, I knew. For Serena wouldn’t stop until she succeeded, and I knew the only one who could convince her to give up the development plan was Brother Jones. Without my father, I had nothing. I might as well give back the power of attorney.

  Serena quizzed me on my demeanor. To avoid real conversation, I tossed her a bone about my chat with my mother and my mother’s proclamation that divorce might or might not be on the horizon, leaving the conclusion totally ambiguous. Serena greedily snatched up that bit of information and began to salivate, drooling all over the floor.

  “When change is on his horse,” she sang to me, “it is important for us to accept it, rather than struggle against the ineluctability of fate.”

  So I left. I went outside and I knew I had to escape. I had to get out as quickly as possible. Freight-hop, maybe, although leaping onto a train traveling fifty-five miles per hour didn’t seem like a smooth move. Running for it on foot seemed equally foolhardy.

  And then I saw Ben’s tree.

  Ben’s tree.

  I ran down the hill to the barn. I climbed up into the loft, and found the canvas bag behind the footlocker. I opened it. Gaffs and ropes and gloves. Old and worn. Rusty metal. Cracked leather. But still, not entirely unusable. I dug deeper. A length of chain—a flip line—better than rope. When I’d first found the equipment, I didn’t know what it was for. Now I knew. It was tree-climbing equipment.

  I took up the bag and ran off into the woods. Down through the cool ravine, where I heard a train sounding its horn, through the thickest parts of the woods, where the ground was spongy and like a trampoline that I danced across. I knew where to go without thinking, as if someone were guiding me.

  I arrived at the base of the thick tree and sized it up. I placed my hands on the trunk and addressed the tree. I said what Harry and Ben used to say to the trees they climbed: “I would like to climb you now. I thank you for your protection.” I’d seen it in my dream.

  I strapped on the gaffs—heavy metal spikes with thick leather straps that dug into my knees. I dragged the chain around the base of the tree and pulled on the gloves. I had never climbed a tree before. Not with spikes and a flip line, at least. But I had climbed it in my dream, so I knew what to do. I snaked the chain up the tree, and when it was above my shoulders, I kicked a gaff into the bark. I put weight on the spike, but it slipped free and my foot skidded to earth, scraping the inside of my knee. I winced at the pain, but I tried again. I gained purchase with one gaff, then tried the other, then was stuck. I tried to whip the chain up the tree, but when I did, my center of gravity changed, a gaff pulled free, and I skidded back to earth. Another scrape.

  Again. After two successful gaffs, I lost purchase, and, though I tried to hold on to the tree with my arms, I skidded down, shredding my forearms on the rough bark. I tried again, and again, and again. For more than an hour I tried to get at least a few feet off the ground. Ten feet above the forest floor would have been a victory. But I couldn’t do it.

  Exhausted, frustrated, and bloody, I stopped. My thighs and knees were bruised. The gaffs had worn the flesh from my ankles and calves. My arm muscles were spent, and a bark rash ran from armpit to wrist on both arms. Still, I was determined to conquer the great tree.

  “How do I do it?” I asked the tree. “How do I climb you? You let Harry and Ben climb you, but you won’t let me? Why won’t you let me climb you?”

  The tree said nothing.

  “I am a Riddell,” I said to the tree. “I can save you. If you let me climb you, I promise I will save you so that you can live forever. You will be part of the immortal forest.”

  The tree did not answer.

  “Ben,” I said. “Help me.”

  But he did not help. Or did he? For I had a thought in that moment of Harry’s journal, and of his observation that we focus on the contradiction and the separateness between and within ourselves, not on the union. And I thought that perhaps my believing that I had to conquer the tree to climb it wasn’t the point at all. The point was for me to join the tree and be one with it. So I focused on the tree with that thought deeply in mind, and, after a moment, I felt something shift. The energy, or the wind? I didn’t know. But I knew with some great assurance that I should take two fistfuls of slack out of the chain. I knew I should set my weight by pushing my hips into the trunk, that I should arch my back and keep my wrists above my shoulders and take smaller steps and kick harder into the bark and set the gaff with my weight firmly before shifting onto it.

  And so I did. And so I climbed. With sheer determination and grit, I climbed. Two steps, then four, then eight. Whether it was my will or the tree’s acceptance of me, or Ben’s boost, I didn’t know. Because I didn’t think about it. I thought only about climbing: my gaffs in the bark, my hips into the trunk, my back straining to hold me.

  When I had reached the lowest branch, I pulled myself onto it and sat for a moment. The ground was very far below me, seventy feet or more. A fall from this height would surely mean death. And yet, it wasn’t enough.

  “I want to get to the top,” I said out loud. “I want to see.”

  I removed my gaffs, my sneakers and socks, because that was how they climbed in my dream and that was how I would climb. Up I went, and up higher still, into the belly of the tree. Into the place where the tree held me close and my climb was easy, where the tree coaxed me even higher. I didn’t look down. I didn’t question the wisdom of my journey or how long I had been climbing. I simply climbed. Higher. Until I reached the point that the branches grew thin and the trunk tapered. Until I knew I was near the top.

  “How high will I go?” I asked the tree.

  The tree didn’t answer, so higher I went, to the very top. To the place from which Ben had departed. I knew it because I had seen it in my dream.

  The world spread out before me in all directions, and I clung to the swaying spar of tree as the wind circled us and pus
hed us about. The mountains and the water and the city sparkled in the distance. The houses and the people below. I could see the breeze sweep through the branches of the trees around me, the ripples of light reflecting off the leaves and needles. From the tallest of trees on a hill so high, I felt I could see the whole world. I could see all of humanity. It was terrifying, but I was not afraid. It was thrilling, but I was calm. Because everything was in its proper place for that moment. I could feel it—the rightness of my world! I would not fall, because the tree was holding me; the tree would not break, because I was holding it. In the quiet at the top of the tree, I heard the music of the breeze as it drifted past my ears. In a mash of dizzying colors and movement, I found a clarity of sight. In that moment I knew why Ben and Harry had climbed trees to the very top; I knew what they felt; I felt what they felt.

  I’ve tried to explain these things to my mother over the years; she will not be convinced. Maybe it was her upbringing, or maybe her personality. Or maybe just her obstinacy. I don’t know. But I’ve tried to tell her what she may never come to believe: at that moment in Ben’s tree, when I was fourteen years old, my life changed entirely. Before that, I wanted to believe; after that moment, I knew.

  Oh, my faith has flagged at times. It’s easy to fall back into the same routines and paint over the sublime with coat after coat of indifference. But now, in this moment of my telling this story to you, my faith is full. And I promise you something: when you have touched the face of God, you can never unlearn what you have learned. You can never unsee what you have seen.

  As I clung to the top of that tree, a feeling welled up inside me so powerfully that I let go of the tree and reached out to the sky. I reached out and tried to grab the blue. I wanted to be carried away into the ether. I wanted to be all of everything.

  But the sky wouldn’t have me. The sky refused to fall low enough for me. And I heard a call from below. My name. Someone calling my name. From the top of the tree, I could see the meadow before Riddell House, where a small figure—my father—stood by the kitchen door calling for me.