The Skeleton Tree

by Iain Lawrence

  From his jacket pocket he produced something dark and shiny. But it was his hand that I stared at: his right hand, as white and puffy as a marshmallow.

  “What’s wrong with your hand?” I said.

  He only glanced at it. “That’s salmon slime,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  “But you’re swollen up,” I said.

  He was shouting now. “That’s just the slime! It gets in your cuts. I told you, it’s nothing.” He slammed onto the table the thing that he’d brought from the beach.

  It was a purse. A little pink purse made of shiny plastic, it was a thing a child must have carried.

  “What’s inside it?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s rusted shut.”

  Frank was pouting. He was angry that I’d been more interested in his swollen hand than in the purse that he’d found. It sat between us now, its little brass catch turned brown with rust.

  He could have opened that lock in a moment. I realized that he had wanted to wait until he was with me, to share the excitement of looking inside it. Now he just sighed, sniffed and whistled once more those few little notes.

  “What’s that song?” I asked.

  He growled at me. “I don’t know. It came into my head and I can’t get it out. My mom used to sing it.”

  In a moment he was asleep. His legs were still bent over the edge of the bed, and he was lying in the exact same position in the morning, when Thursday woke him with a raven call.

  The bird’s head appeared in the window. His little eye swiveled toward me, but he wouldn’t come in.

  “What’s wrong with it now?” asked Frank.

  “I think he’s scared of you,” I said.

  “Good.”

  I had to get up and stand guard by the window while Thursday slipped into the cabin. He hopped up to my shoulder and down to the table, where the child’s pink purse lay still unopened. Thursday nudged it with his beak. He was always attracted to things that sparkled.

  “Give me that,” said Frank. “I’ll open it.”

  He struggled to sit up. His legs had gone stiff, and he lurched across the cabin like a robot. From his pocket he took out my knife, then pried at the latch. With a little crackling sound, it broke loose and flicked away across the cabin.

  Frank emptied the purse onto the bed, just as he had shaken out the orange box on our first day in the cabin. On the table, Thursday leaned forward to watch, his black eyes shining. I stood beside Frank as he sorted quickly through the things.

  He sounded disappointed. “Look at that,” he said. “What a stupid bunch of junk.”

  But it wasn’t stupid, and it wasn’t junk. The whole life of a little girl lay scattered across the bed. There was a small stuffed cat and a yellow paper clip, a little toy horse with blue eyes, a silver tiara made of plastic. A blue sucker had turned to a sticky mess, and four tiny worry dolls made of thread and cloth were tangled together, their arms entwined as though they were hugging each other.

  There were other things too. None was any use to us, but to one little girl in Japan they must have been the most important things in the world. It seemed awful that they were disconnected now—and forever—from the memories that had made them valuable. Without those connections, maybe they were only junk. It made me remember when my father died and I kept finding his things where he’d left them: his cuff links and tie clasps, the crumpled wrapper from a candy bar. When I went into the garage a month later, I found a coffee mug balanced on the seat of my old bicycle, and it still had coffee in it.

  But Frank couldn’t see past the junk. “I can’t believe I wasted my time with that!” he shouted. He scattered the little girl’s treasures across the mattress. He hurled the purse against the wall. “It’s junk.”

  “What did you expect?” I asked.

  “Something good. I don’t know: maybe a magnifying glass or a lighter that actually works. Maybe a cell phone. Who knows?”

  A cell phone. So that was what Frank had really been hoping for. That was why he had waited to open the purse—so I could be there as he pulled out the cell phone and dialed 911. Oh, hi, this is Frank….The thought made me feel sorry for him.

  “A cell phone wouldn’t be any good anyway,” I said. “It would be all wet and—”

  “It would still have a battery, moron,” said Frank.

  “So what?”

  He glared at me. “You think you’re so smart? Figure it out.”

  I could think of only one thing. “You mean the cabin guy’s radio?”

  It still sat on the shelf above the bed. Frank even glanced toward it. “Those batteries can last forever if they’re charged.” He sounded angry, as though he thought I wouldn’t believe him. But he was frustrated that his plan had not worked out.

  “I never knew girls carried so much stupid stuff,” he said. Then he grabbed the corner of the mattress and dumped everything onto the floor.

  Without a word, I dropped to my knees and picked it all up. Thursday, thinking it was just a game, rounded up the little horse and the worry dolls. I packed the things carefully into the purse again, knowing I was doing exactly what some little girl must have done in Japan on the morning of the tsunami. Of course Frank laughed at me. “Playing dollies?” he asked.

  He flicked his hair. It was a filthy clump that hung over his eyes now, matted with salt and tree sap. “Give me that,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll throw it away.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  I didn’t want to tell him what I had in mind. He wouldn’t understand; he would say it was stupid. He stood with his hand reaching out, but I wouldn’t give him the purse.

  That made him angry again. He grabbed my wrist; he grabbed the purse. He tried to twist it out of my hands, but I turned away and tightened my arms around it. “Leave me alone,” I said.

  “No!” he shouted. “Give me that.”

  Frank hauled me to my feet. As we reeled across the cabin, Thursday spread his wings. His beak opened wide and his eyes shone darkly.

  I wrestled with Frank for the purse. He kept pulling and pushing until he drove me up against the wall. My shoulders slammed into the wood. I grunted.

  With a shriek, the raven rose from the floor. His wings seemed to fill the whole cabin, and the sound they made was like wind in the forest. He swooped at Frank’s head, beating it with his wings.

  Frank stumbled away, his arms flailing, but Thursday swooped again.

  “Stop it!” I shouted at both of them, worried at first for Thursday, and then for Frank.

  My raven was trying to tear out his eyes.

  Frank covered his head with his arms. The raven clutched on to him, still screaming, wings flapping. “Get him off!” shouted Frank. “Get him off!” He spun around the cabin as though he was on fire. He crashed into the table, toppling the rickety chair.

  I heard the tap! tap! of the raven pecking at his hands. Frank kept shouting. He tried to push the bird away as he staggered across the room. Then he tripped over the firestones and dropped to his knees.

  I grabbed Thursday. I put my hands around his body, closing his wings. Through the tips of my fingers I could feel his heart beating like crazy. I tried to pull him away, but his talons were locked onto Frank’s skin. He was so frantic that he turned his head and tried to peck me. But I held him more tightly, and the pressure of my hands seemed to calm him. He stopped struggling and let go of Frank. As soon as I loosened my hold he burst free. He hurled himself up against the window and burst out through the flap.

  Frank staggered back against the bed. He fell onto the foam pad and crashed against the wall. His hands were cut across the knuckles, scratched all the way from fingers to wrists. The right hand was worse, the one swollen by little cuts and salmon slime. With a grimace, Frank jammed it under his arm.

  “Get rid of that bird or I’ll kill it,” he said.

  “He was trying to help me,” I said. “You shouldn’t have pushed me
like that.”

  In a moment, we were shouting at each other. “I told you,” said Frank. “He’s too wild. He’s dangerous.”

  “He’s just a raven!” I said.

  I felt Frank might hit me. But he only sat on the bed, hunched up like a child. “Get out of here,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

  I thought he was crying. “Frank—” I said.

  “Leave me alone!” he screamed.

  I might have yelled right back, except I realized that Frank wasn’t angry at me. He was angry at the child for not carrying a cell phone in her purse, at the flies and the maggots for spoiling the fish, at my uncle Jack for taking us sailing. I remembered what he’d said about people going crazy, and I thought he was coming close to that himself. I quietly took the child’s purse and went out to the forest.

  •••

  I knew just where to go: to that quiet old forest where the moss was thick and woolly, as soft as whipped cream. I scooped out a hole. But before I laid the purse in it, I took out the four worry dolls and held them in my fist. They were too small to have hands or faces, but somehow they looked wise and somber. My mother had given me three worry dolls after my father’s funeral. “Whisper to them,” she’d told me. “Tell them what scares you, then put them away. They’ll take on your fears and your worries so you won’t have to think about them anymore.” I had stayed awake all night, telling them everything, whispering my fears of my mother dying next, of being left poor and homeless. And now, in the forest of Alaska, it surprised me to see that my fears hadn’t changed. I was afraid of being alone, of being hungry and cold. I held the worry dolls close to my lips and whispered these things.

  As though bringing an answer, Thursday arrived. I saw him falling, wings spread, through the bolts of sunlight to land on the moss nearby. He sang with a quavering call as I put the dolls in the purse, and the purse in the ground.

  He was the witness to a funeral for a girl I’d never met. Grim and black, he sat there until I finished. Then he came with me to the cabin, swooping ahead around the bends in the trail. When I opened the door he hopped right in.

  I was surprised to see Frank reading Kaetil the Raven Hunter, and especially surprised that he seemed to be halfway through it already. I would never have imagined him with a book in his hands, and I told myself that he must have begun in the middle, or was just reading little pieces here and there. Lying flat on the bed, he glared at Thursday, who shouted a warning as he crossed the cabin and settled in the corner. They eyed each other across the small room like a pair of crazy old gold miners.

  “I warned you,” said Frank. “Keep that bird away from me.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said.

  From my place on the floor, I watched Frank turning the pages of the book. His right hand was cut and bleeding, with a little trickle of red running toward his wrist. In our anger and our silence, I was almost happy that Thursday had hurt him. But I felt guilty when Frank tried to be pleasant.

  “Listen to this,” he said. He lifted the book and read aloud.

  Kaetil swung his silver sword. Forged from fire, a wizard’s gift, it shone like the flames of hell. Through the air his sword flashed, and it sang a song of death and vengeance. Like a Valkyrie it sang.

  Frank looked up at me again. “I love this story.”

  “What’s a Valkyrie?” I asked.

  He rolled his eyes. “A lady of the warlord, you moron.”

  The sound comes again, that flat bark like a shot. This time, when I look up, I see a tiny cloud of mist hovering over the sea. A whale is passing.

  In my hands, Kaetil the Raven Hunter is open to the same page that Frank read aloud in the cabin. I remember being surprised—even annoyed—that he knew about Valkyries and warlords. I didn’t like to think that he was smarter than me.

  But now the mystery is solved.

  In his hunt for the man with yellow eyes, Kaetil has come across a group of Skraelings camped by a fjord. In a fury, he slaughters them all.

  Through the air his sword flashed and whistled, and it sang a song of death and vengeance. It sang like a Valkyrie, one of those beautiful ladies of the warlord.

  It makes me laugh to read this. That’s so like Frank to pretend to know something he’d only just learned. It seemed in those early days that he was always competing with me, as though he had to prove to himself—over and over—that he was stronger, smarter, better in every way.

  But when he read, his lips moved and I could hear him, just a little. I saw it as he lay on the bed with the tattered old novel. Expressions appeared on his face for the first time. He smiled; he frowned; he looked proud and disappointed. I decided he was reading aloud so that he could hear the story, the way the words connected.

  •••

  “Hey, Frank,” I said. “When you were little, did your dad read you bedtime stories?”

  He didn’t look away from the book. “Why do you want to know?”

  “Just wondering,” I said.

  “I don’t remember.” He looked at his hand, at the long scratches the raven had made on his knuckles. Then he turned a page and started reading again.

  I grew annoyed as I watched him. “Why can’t you just tell me?” I said at last. “Yes or no?”

  He sighed loudly. “Look, moron, I don’t remember.”

  “Oh, come on,” I said. “How can you forget?”

  He turned to me, dark with anger. “Because I can hardly remember that time at all. I can barely remember my dad back then. But my mom says he did. She says he read to me every night, sometimes for hours. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “Sorry I asked.”

  But that wasn’t the end of it. Frank stared at the ceiling for a minute or two, tried to read for another and then started talking again. “She would hear him downstairs. He would use different voices for the people in the story, and if they were shouting he’d be shouting too. She says it was like listening to a play.”

  That was the most Frank had ever told me about himself. He closed his eyes and let the book fall forward on his chest, his hands folded on top of it. That pose, that peaceful expression, reminded me of my father in his coffin.

  “Sometimes I think I can almost remember,” he said. “I was maybe two years old. But I can sort of hear his voice. I wish I knew what stories he read.”

  “What about when you were older?” I asked. “Did he—”

  “No.” Abruptly, Frank opened the book again. “He found other things to do.”

  He sounded bitter about that. He could have asked about my dad, and what sort of things I had done when I was small. But he just held up the book and blocked me out. I sat, patting the raven. The sound of Frank reading to himself was faint and whispery.

  That night ended our first month in Alaska. When Thursday flew out through the window I made the thirtieth mark on the wall. I dreamed again of zombies.

  They chased me through the same drowned city, through black water and neon lights. But now Uncle Jack was in the dream too, staggering among the zombies in sodden clothes covered with seaweed. He chased me with his arms reaching out, up stairways and over rooftops. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn’t leave him behind. When I woke early in the morning I was out of breath.

  It was a cold and rainy day. Frank was already awake, but sitting glumly by the door. Water had worked through the sheets of plastic on the roof and was dripping onto the bed. Frank just sat there, shivering, watching the drops grow on the ceiling like tiny, shivery wasp nests.

  “I’m not going fishing today,” he said.

  “Okay,” I told him. “We can fix—”

  “But you can go alone.” He glowered up at me. “Unless you’re scared.”

  Well, how could I not go then? I put on capes and leggings and a hood, took the gaff from the table. For the first time, I got to carry the knife. I was a bit nervous about the bear, but proud to be going alone.

  Down on the beach the waves were huge, rolling up beside me in big green curls
. They roared and leapt along the stones, and fingers of surf reached right to the stranded logs.

  There was no sign of Thursday. On windy days he sometimes played his raven games, flinging himself through the air, or clinging for as long as he could to the tips of wildly tossing trees, until the wind sent him spinning away. But on this day he had something else to do, his own wild ways to follow.

  I saw an old refrigerator wallowing in the breakers, and a propane tank slamming on the stones with a sound like a gong. Spray pattered on my capes, but inside them I was dry right down to my feet. I saw myself as Robinson Crusoe in an age of plastic, in shoes that didn’t match, with a belt made of rubber hose, a cone-shaped hood tied with a bit of old rope.

  As soon as I reached the river, my heart began to fall. There were no seagulls squabbling over scraps, and there were very few salmon left in the pool. They swam lazily out in the middle, barely moving their fins and tails, just drifting with the current. They reminded me of the sad old people I’d seen shuffling along on the sidewalks in Vancouver. I crouched at the edge and fished a long time, but the only one that I gaffed was barely alive.

  I saw a salmon tumble backward over the falls and sink into the pool. Then up it rose like a white ghost, its fins and tail nearly rotted away, and started swimming again toward the falls.

  I had to follow it. If I was going to find any fish worth eating, I would have to go up the river, into the territory of the grizzly bear.

  It was not an easy thing to do, and I stood for a long time at the foot of the falls, until I knew that if I waited another minute I would never go. Then I went quickly, as fast as I could, hauling myself up rocks at the very edge of the river.

  At the top I found an old, forgotten road.

  Only four or five feet wide, it pushed straight through the bushes. Hollowed into the ground were enormous potholes, one after the other, stretching away into the dark of the forest. They had filled with old leaves and fir needles. I wondered where the road would take me if I followed it all the way.

  The roar of the falls faded behind me as I walked toward the mountain. The river became a quiet, burbling stream split into three channels that flowed over gravel and sand. It teemed with birds. Gulls crowded so closely together that I could hardly see the water in places.