Treeborne

by Caleb Johnson

  She swerved and plowed through a barbed-wire fence, losing grip of the wheel as the truck sped across a pasture. Lightning stretched fingers across the sky. Janie mashed the gas instead of the brake and the truck shot forward. Crusoe fell again. The truck hit a deep dip and she fell off the seat too. She was looking up at the dead owl, its heart-shaped head poking through busted glass, as the truck began to slow. Her elbows and hands stung. When the truck stopped she opened the door and tumbled out. She got tangled in barbed wire. Headlights appeared at a bend in the road, slowed down at the busted fenceline. Janie struggled loose as the lights turned toward her. The Peach was still playing: For those of us who ain’t heard yet, Tammy Ragsdale has been rescued and brought back home safe.

  It was raining hard time Janie and Crusoe got back to the vehicle on the bluff. The fire they’d built had blackened the hood and windshield. Crusoe used the fat and clumsy fingers Janie’d rolled for him to pick glass out of her elbows and hands. Her head hurt so bad. He set the pieces of glass on the dashboard and they sparkled whenever lightning stabbed down from the sky. The rain fell harder. One piece of glass he pulled out kept coming and coming and coming … Janie hit him. It was a piece of the rearview mirror. She wiped away her blood and looked at herself. What she saw reflected she would not of believed had she not been holding the mirror piece in her own two hands.

  Crusoe kept her awake with stories. He was grown all over with tiny yellow mushrooms, like warts. Janie idly picked them off and thumped them in the floorboard. He told how it felt when De Soto walked on him with heavy wood-soled boots, how the warm Elberta Indian blood settled down into him and remained wet for years, how all things forgotten or buried were slowly working their way up, even things the girl did not yet know existed, how Elberta peaches felt when they pushed out from branches budded white, little dangling green orbs that slowly took different shape and color, the plucking of each ripe one like a gong going off inside the dirt boy’s head, which, as he talked, grew bigger and bigger and bigger, as if Crusoe contained all the secrets the girl felt were forever just out of her reach.

  It was sometime before dawn when Crusoe became quiet. The rain had mostly stopped. Janie heard treeroots tearing loose. She climbed up on the seat and looked out. She could feel the ground giving way, yet it didn’t seem real—not even as the rusted-out vehicle gained speed sliding down the bluffline. The newspapers came loose and blew away. One wrapped around Crusoe’s head. Trees and rocks flashed past outside the windows. The vehicle skipped a ledge and they were airborne then. When the vehicle landed Janie bit her tongue, got slung against the steering wheel and knocked out.

  When she next opened her eyes she saw God. No, De Soto. She’d died, maybe. No, no—De Soto’d come down off his pedestal and crossed the river for her. He’d come to bring her back to Elberta. She groped for Crusoe in the darkness. De Soto was saying something, speaking, she thought, Spanish. Awake, Janie somehow understood, got to keep you awake. She tried and she tried, but it was hard to remain conscious. She was being toted. She felt Crusoe on her lap and held on tight to what remained of him. De Soto shook her whenever her eyes fell shut. Maybe, she thought, dying won’t be sleeping forever and ever. Maybe it’s being awake.

  * * *

  She came to on a cot and vomited onto a carpeted floor. Wiped her mouth and rolled back over, facing a white wall. A door opened.

  “Looks like she threw up Daddy.”

  Janie knew this voice. Pud Ward. Big Connie poked his head into the room. Janie tried to sit up, but a lurking coldness kept her from it. She had on a big-old Conquistadors T-shirt. She panicked—where was Crusoe?

  Pud pointed. “It’s right yonder.” He toted the dirt boy to the cot. Crusoe’s head had come off his body.

  “Must of been some ride you had,” Big Connie said. He was wearing his De Soto outfit. It was muddy from the night before.

  Janie ignored him, whispering to Crusoe.

  “Reckon she’s knocked stupid?” Pud asked.

  “Just needs time,” Big Connie said. “Clean up that mess on the carpet then get her washed. Not too much, hear. We’ll swap outfits before y’all head out. I’ll go ahead and dial Aaron though, tell him to head down thisaway.”

  Pud cleaned up the vomit then led Janie to the bathroom. He stood just inside the door and said, “Go on, I ain’t watching.”

  She turned on the faucet. The sight of water jumping out surprised her. She could see Pud in the mirror, his face blushed red. On her face, a black bruise. She put her hands in the water and it ran red-brown down the drain. She splashed her face. It burnt. She rubbed, gasped. Drank. Bruises on her arms and legs the color of ink and honeycomb. She caught a whiff of herself and remembered she didn’t have bloomers on. Quickly, she splashed water down between her legs. She was leaning over to wet her head when Pud stopped her.

  “Daddy says you can’t look too clean when they first see you.”

  They waited in Big Connie’s office. For what, Janie didn’t know. Every flat surface was filled with Conquistadors stuff. Trophies, half-deflated footballs painted with scores, pictures and faded newspapers in black frames. She could tell Pud was trying to come up with something to say. He walked over to a bookcase. “Ain’t this here one of your granddaddy’s doohickies?” The assemblie was made of pebbles and sticks, bent fruit jar rings, and twisted cloth that’d been painted then scorched till it looked like a storm swirling overtop a painted flat Elberta. Down underneath town lay buried bones and peach pits, some half-sprouted and others growing full-on trees that reached up through the layers of earth toward a light in some far-off beyond. “They used to be scattered all down thisaway,” Pud said, holding the assemblie out for her to see. “Daddy found this one in a creek yonder. I know what you think, but he ain’t all bad.”

  Janie kept quiet. She poked a bruise to see if it’d hurt.

  Pud put the assemblie back on the shelf. Before long Big Connie opened the door. He was shirtless, curly black hair covering his pale chest. “Here,” he said, and pitched his muddy outfit to Pud. “Go put it on.”

  Big Connie waited out front for the sheriff while Pud, dressed like De Soto, and Janie headed into the woods behind the used-car lot. She toted a piece of Crusoe under each arm. The sun was fighting its way up a steeped sky. They walked toward the southern end of Bankhead. After a while Pud stopped and said, “I got to carry you now.” Janie let him pick her up. “Sorry,” he told her, stepping out of the woods, “but it’s for looks.” He checked the road both ways then headed up the ditch back toward town.

  When they got there the sheriff’s patrol car was parked by the entrance to the used-car lot. Janie saw Aaron Guthrie and Deputy Polk standing with Big Connie Ward. All three drinking coffee out of little white cups. The pickup Janie had wrecked was parked next to the smashed railing she’d also caused. Folks were standing outside The Bird’s Nest, pretending to smoke cigarettes and not watch what was happening across the road.

  Pud set Janie down.

  “Thank you son,” the sheriff said, shaking the fat boy’s hand.

  “Yep,” Pud said. “I—”

  “What a mess,” Big Connie said. He was now wearing Pud’s clean checkered shirt and blue jeans. “Aaron, the poor thing was too scared to get in my vehicle when Pud found her, so the boy offered to tote her all way back here by hisself.”

  The sheriff waved toward the showroom. The door opened, and out stepped Ren and Nita Treeborne. Janie like to have dropped Crusoe when she saw them. She threw herself into her daddy’s arms and buried her face in his shoulder while her momma stroked her sheared head. Her mind swimmed with the familiar smell of his cologne, cigarettes, riversand. There was his pickup truck. They could leave. She could go home.

  Instead he let go and said, “You got to go with Sheriff Guthrie, Sister.”

  Janie grabbed ahold of him again and he pried loose her fingers one by one. No, she said. She wasn’t going anywhere with them. No. She wanted to go home. Her daddy had her by the
wrists, dragging her toward the patrol car.

  The sheriff opened the back door. “Come on and ride with us.”

  “What about him?” Janie hollered, pointing at Big Connie Ward. “Ask what he did!”

  Ren forced the girl into the vehicle, then the sheriff closed the door. Ren wanted to smash the window with his fist and pull his daughter out. He’d never doubted that she was alive, but he hadn’t considered how broken she might be.

  “Poor thing’s gone wild,” Big Connie said.

  “Looks just like a animal,” Nita said. She turned and walked off, and Big Connie followed with a packet of tissues.

  * * *

  Deputy Polk locked Janie Treeborne in a cell at the head of a long hallway. The girl could hear other prisoners cough and snore, shuffle back and forth across their little private patch of concrete. She wondered who they were, why they were here. She wondered the same thing about herself. Big Connie and Pud had lied about finding her. What else might they of told?

  The day wore itself out into night. Nobody came for her. Janie didn’t fool with sleep. Deputy Polk had let her keep Crusoe. Nothing she could do for him here though. Minutes mounted to hours. She wondered how long she’d be held. She imagined all the things Big Connie Ward had done to Lyle and Goodnight when he’d found them. Janie assumed he had, even though she’d lied to him about their whereabouts that day he cornered her at The Bird’s Nest. Truth of what he’d do would be much more horrible, she’d decided time a slant of daylight fell into the cell, than anything she could imagine.

  Shortly after dawn, Sheriff Guthrie led her over at his office. There was a cot made up against the wall. He asked her to sit down while they waited for Doc Barfield.

  The sheriff left the room while Doc examined the girl. He found seven fat gray ticks on her body. He dabbed many scrapes and cuts with peroxide-soaked cotton balls. She sucked through her teeth, trying to be tough. He checked bruises, felt for breaks. None. He cleaned and bandaged her scabby feet. He shined a light into her eye, said she was lucky. He cleaned the blind one, dousing it with saline, and gave her a new patch to wear. She put it on and fixed what little hair she had over the strap in back. Doc asked her to lie down and put up her feet. After he’d checked down there, they were through.

  Meantime, the sheriff had gone over at Woodrow’s and brought back some ribs and a copy of the Times-Journal, which he kept facedown on the desk. “I never had somebody this young,” he said. He picked up a rib then slid the go-plate toward the girl. “Once I maybe had to keep a little nigger boy from over in The Hills for a spell. Couldn’t of been no younger than you are though. How old are you Sister?”

  “Thirteen.” She picked up a rib and sauce dripped on her leg. The sheriff passed her a napkin. Janie wiped the sauce then gnawed on the end of the rib where the cartilage was. “Where’s my daddy and momma at?”

  “We can call them later if you want to,” the sheriff said, licking his greasy knuckles. “I’m sorry to put you in that cell all night. Polk’s fixed up this bed here though. You’ll be safe till all this gets sorted out.”

  They ate all the ribs then took turns sopping up the leftover sauce with white bread.

  “Whatever on God’s good earth would make poor Ricky Birdsong do something like this is a damn mystery to me,” the sheriff said when he was through.

  Janie could of told him, could of yet spoke the truth. Instead she grabbed another piece of bread, dredged it through sauce, then shoved it in her mouth.

  The Last Last Conquistador

  1958

  Pud Ward got hisself a new haircut and toted a green plastic comb everywhere he went so he could keep each strand put in perfect place. Not many folks in Elberta got the chance to begin again. Pud wasn’t going to mess this up. Even the Birmingham newspaper sent somebody to talk to him and take his picture standing next to the statue of Hernando de Soto. The Times-Journal printed a similar picture on the front page, alongside a story detailing the fat boy’s rescue of the missing girl Janie Treeborne.

  Pedro Hannah, of course, invited Pud on the radio. The whole town listened as Pud dedicated a song to his momma. Made the sheriff cry. Janie wanted to tell the fool to shut up. Pud’s momma had died during childbirth so he’d never even known her. Why cry? Pedro thanked Pud from the bottom of the whole entire town’s heart for what he’d done. “It’s plumb heroic,” he said. A few days later Big Connie Ward had a new Hernando de Soto outfit made for his son. They both dressed up for a big party at the used-car lot, where a cream-colored sedan was raffled off. The winner, who nobody had heard of, was absent so the car remained parked. “A goddamn fix,” Deputy Polk said, tearing up his ticket and dropping it in an old coffee cup on the sheriff’s desk. At school they had to put Pud in a classroom by hisself. All the other kids just couldn’t hear the story enough times: Tell it again Pud, tell how you found her.

  This feting culminated with Pud Ward joining the Elberta County High School Conquistadors football team. He wore 67 just like his daddy. Big as he was and being a senior, Pud was meant to intimidate the other team, which he mostly did from the sideline, sipping water from paper cones and keeping his tight black britches from riding too far up his asscrack. The Conquistadors would experience a down year, Jon De Soto Crews the only bright spot. Despite this Pud Ward never threatened to enter the game till its waning minutes, the outcome long decided. Big Connie Ward would take to his feet, shaking a glass jug filled with acorns, and holler, It’s The Last Last Conquistador! This embarrassed Pud Ward so much he often forgot the playcall, which caused his teammates to hate him more, though not a one of them was fool enough to say so out loud.

  Pud began visiting Janie the day after she was taken to the Elberta County Jail. The sheriff didn’t mind. He was hisself unsure how to act toward the girl and seemed to genuinely like Pud, not just put on because of who his daddy was.

  “It’s broke ain’t he?” Pud said, pointing at Crusoe.

  “I’ll fix him once I go home.”

  Pud took a bite of an oatmeal creme pie he’d got from the vending machine. “I reckon you still don’t know what all happened.”

  Janie didn’t say anything.

  If you shut up, she knew, folks will talk.

  Pud said he’d gone to take care of Tammy in the cave after Janie, Lyle and Goodnight left town. Let her up to pee, fed her peaches or baloney sandwiches, stuff like that. He was afraid she’d recognize him so he wore his daddy’s De Soto outfit as a disguise. When he realized that Tammy would now live or die because of him he panicked and quit going to her. Tried to just burn the cave from his memory. The search party was out every day looking for her. Looking for Janie by then too. Folks figured the disappearances were connected. Nights Pud would get in his pickup truck and push the vehicle to its limit then let go of the wheel. But he didn’t mean it. The boy always grabbed back ahold of the wheel when the pickup veered off course.

  He confessed to his daddy, expecting Big Connie would fly into him. Once he’d hit the boy so hard Pud messed hisself. But Big Connie did not hit him this time. Instead he laughed. He laughed louder than Pud had ever heard him do.

  “Daddy, you okay?” Pud asked.

  “Shit and shineola,” Big Connie said, wiping a tear off his face. “Kidnapped by her own damn family.” When Big Connie sobered up he told Pud to draw a map to the cave. The boy did. “But first,” Big Connie said, “we got to tie up some loose ends.”

  This happened after Janie’d lied to Big Connie about Lyle and Goodnight’s whereabouts. He’d been asking around Bankhead ever since. One morning a hunter said he’d seen the vehicle in question out beyond the coal mines. Big Connie turned Troop loose there. He could hear the drumming of the rattlesnakes before he saw the truck. Troop had Lyle pinned up against a cutbank, barking and lunging at the boy’s calves. Lyle was swinging a limb at the hound and hollering, Get, go on now dog! Big Connie didn’t see the girl Goodnight till she’d chucked a rattlesnake at him though. He kicked out of reflex and the sn
ake flew toward Troop. The snake struck, and the hound yelped and limped off. Big Connie Ward drew his pistol then and threatened to blow Lyle and Goodnight to smithereens if they moved. Time he found Troop, a knot big as a softball had swelled up on the hound’s front left hip. Big Connie lanced the poison then used a rope to tie off circulation above the blackening wound.

  “You best pray this dog don’t die on me,” Big Connie said to Lyle and Goodnight, who rode in back of the truck, on the way into town. “Pray hard.”

  Troop wouldn’t die—not from this snakebite. After that became clear Big Connie Ward had to figure out what to do with the pair. He could, he knew, do anything he pleased. The boy nothing but a river rat, the girl half his blood. Pud was just getting around to telling what his daddy had decided to do with them when the sheriff knocked on the door.

  “Well, I just come by to see how you was,” Pud said, standing up to leave.

  “Nobody asked you to,” Janie told him.

  There were places to put kids like her—so why ain’t they? She’d stolen property, conspired to kidnap, kidnapped her aunt. No one seemed to acknowledge this though. They were keeping her in jail as if she was in danger; not the danger herself.

  She dreamed of Ricky Birdsong those nights. She never had seen him play football, but in her dreams Ricky flew down the grassy field at a gallop. Leg did not limp, eyelid did not droop. Took off his helmet and peaches spill out. The fruit rots quicker than a leaf burns, pits swallowed by the hungry earth. A tree sprouts up just as quick and encases Ricky Birdsong in the heart of its trunk. Everybody rushes down off the bleachers then to pick a peach from this miracle tree. Pick the branches bare, and eat the fruit skin and all. Then somebody takes an ax and swings it into the trunk. Thunk. Again, swing. Thunk, thunk. Pieces fly. Thunkthunkthunkthunk—that’s when Janie’d wake up.

  The day Pud Ward came with schoolwork for her, Janie knew she’d be let out soon. He’d also brought schoolwork of his own. He sat in the sheriff’s chair reading a novel about a string of churches being burnt down and a little baptized boy befriending the town misfit. After a while Janie asked what happened to Lyle and Goodnight.