The Skeleton Tree

by Iain Lawrence

  I waded right into the stream. The water was painfully cold, and clear as glass, and I could see my feet in their stupid sandals, swollen by refraction until they looked like big white sausages.

  All around, salmon were struggling upstream where the water was so shallow they couldn’t even swim. They crawled across the gravel with their backs above the surface, their fins so worn away that they looked like Japanese fans, as thin as paper. They thrashed forward in bursts, then stopped to rest as the current pushed them back again. Along the banks lay dead ones by the hundreds.

  All I had to do was bend down and hook the fish. I looked for those with the fewest wounds and scars and, afraid the bear would come along, I chose two very quickly. I cleaned them on the riverbank, ripping out skeins of scarlet eggs that I tossed among the gulls. My hands trembled as I worked. I wanted to get off the river as soon as I could, but the salmon would be lighter and easy to carry once they were gutted. When something swooped above me I got an awful fright. But it was only Thursday, arriving in a whirl of feathers and wings, with his cry of greeting. He landed beside me, and the gulls gave him room. I tossed him the guts of my second fish, and I carried him back down the river on my shoulder. I liked the press of his talons. I remembered my father reaching down to steady me when I was a little kid, his fingers squeezing in that same way.

  Where the river was shaded by trees, I saw my reflection. It was twisted by the ripples and currents, but I was still shocked by the sight. A boy in plastic rags with a raven on his shoulder, two enormous salmon hanging from his hands. To me, I looked heroic.

  I decided that this was how I wanted to go home. I imagined TV cameras crowding forward as I stepped out of a helicopter—straight from the Alaskan wilderness—my capes fluttering, my dark raven turning his head. I saw my mother crying, the mayor stepping out to greet me.

  All the way to the cabin I thought about this: about getting home, of the things I would do and the food I would eat. I wondered if everything would seem different. I wondered if I would miss Alaska in any way. I actually wondered if I would miss Frank.

  Near the end of the beach I found a roll of orange tape. It had CAUTION written on it, again and again. CAUTION, CAUTION, CAUTION for yard after yard. Thursday played a game of chasing its fluttery end as I walked. But he left me at the edge of the old forest, suddenly flying away without any sort of cry. His wing brushed my face as he flew past. Alone, I went on to the cabin, where I found new sheets of plastic stretched across the roof, weighted down with rocks and branches.

  Inside, Frank was sitting on the edge of the bed. He wasn’t doing anything; he was just sitting and staring. His hair was wet. His capes and boots lay on the floor in a little puddle. On the hand that Thursday had cut he wore a black ski glove tattered by the surf, so big that it made him look like Mickey Mouse.

  “What’s that for?” I asked, laughing.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Well, I got two fish.” I held them up for him to see. But still he said nothing; he didn’t even lift his head. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Leave me alone, will you?”

  “But—

  “Just leave me alone!” He flopped down and rolled his back toward me. I thought, Okay, I’m not going to miss Frank when I get home.

  In the evening the wind began to rise. And it just kept rising. Lightning flashed through the forest, and thunder boomed, far away. The surf became the footfalls of giants, thumping on the land. Though sheltered in the forest, the cabin shook so badly we thought it might break apart. The plastic sheeting flailed and flapped. Raindrops driven sideways by the wind pelted the walls like handfuls of pebbles.

  Water poured through the roof in rivulets. Frank’s repairs had made no difference. In the flashes of lightning we saw the drops falling. And we saw ourselves then too, sitting in plastic and shivering from the cold. We looked up at the creaking of the trees, expecting one to come crashing through the roof and squash us.

  I worried about Thursday and wished he was with me. I hated to think of him hunched in the dark, alone and afraid as he tried to keep warm.

  Then I thought of the skeleton tree and how its branches would toss and bend. I pictured the coffins rising and falling, and the skeletons shaking inside them.

  “This might go on for days,” I said to Frank. “If we can’t go fishing we might starve.”

  “It’ll be calm by morning,” said Frank. In the dark, he was invisible. “The bigger the storm, the sooner it ends.”

  He was right. The ending came well before dawn, with a shriek of wind like a human cry. Then everything fell silent, except for the booming of the waves. We heard the little plops of water dripping from the roof.

  For once, Thursday didn’t wait until daylight. He cried out with a crow-like caw as he came through the window. It was so dark that he might have been a phantom. But his talons clicked on the floor as he landed beside me.

  “Chase it out,” said Frank.

  “No.” The raven shook himself, splattering beads of cold water. “He’s freezing.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t want that thing inside.”

  “Why?”

  “It gives me the willies. Okay?”

  The willies. That sounded funny coming from Frank. “Oh, the bad-omen thing,” I said.

  To my surprise, Frank agreed. “That’s right,” he said. “It thinks I’m dying.”

  “Why would he think that?” I asked.

  “Just get rid of it,” said Frank. “If you don’t do it, I will.”

  I couldn’t see a thing in the cabin: not the raven beside me, not Frank across the room. From Thursday’s throat came little gargles and mutters. He could see Frank; I was sure of that. I heard his feathers rustling, and I was afraid he was going to fly up at Frank and attack again.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll put him out.”

  I groped across the floor, trying to find Thursday. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “You just can’t stay.”

  “Now!” shouted Frank.

  “Wait a minute!” The raven was twitching. I wished he would suddenly start speaking real words. Oh, please let me stay. But he only made his sad sounds, which to me meant exactly the same thing. When I closed my hands around him, he took my fingers gently in his talons and pried them apart. It made me sad that he didn’t want to be held. But then he twisted his neck, opened his beak, and dropped something hard into my palm. It was made of metal, cold and wet.

  I stood by the window, trying to find even a tiny gleam of light.

  “What are you doing?” asked Frank.

  I couldn’t quite see the thing the raven had given me. It felt like a hollow tube, a little smaller than a lighter, with a wire ring to hold it by. Something rattled inside it when I turned my hand. I suddenly knew just what it was.

  “I think he brought matches,” I said.

  “What?” said Frank.

  I fumbled the cylinder open. Wooden matches came sliding out. They fell through my fingers and onto the floor. I knelt down to find them, groping through the old, wet ashes.

  Clever bird, said Thursday.

  But there was no reward for the raven. Frank leapt up to drive him away. He staggered over the stones in the fire circle, shouting that he would kill that bird. Poor Thursday battered at the window, then vanished through the plastic pane. Frank stood, panting, in the ashes. I pushed at his leg, yelling at him to move. “Your foot’s on the matches,” I cried. “You’re breaking them, Frank.”

  There were nine matches trampled on the floor, all broken and useless. But minutes later we sat in blazing light. Smoke rose to the roof and streamed through the little hole, and wood crackled and split, flinging embers. We sat very close the fire, Frank holding the cylinder in that ridiculous big glove.

  “Six matches,” he said. “That’s not very many.”

  “Don’t blame me,” I told him.

  “It’s your fault,” said Frank. “You fumbled the radio when J
ack threw it to you. Now you fumbled the matches.”

  He added wood to the fire, until I had to back away to escape the heat. But he stayed where he was, so close to the flames that steam rose from the fingers of his black glove.

  As I lounged in the corner, Thursday appeared again in the window. His little eyes looked down at us, reflecting orange and yellow.

  “He’s not afraid of the fire,” I said, hoping Frank would invite him down. “He must have sat right here with the cabin guy. He must have learned that matches start fires, and he just wanted to be warm. He wanted us to be warm.”

  Frank stared into the flames. The firelight made his eyes look black and hollow. “So where do you think it got them from?” he asked.

  “I guess they used to be the cabin guy’s,” I said. “Thursday likes shiny stuff. He probably took them and stashed them in his nest.”

  “Or another raven did,” said Frank, nodding. He had it all figured out already. “That’s why the guy killed one. So he could hang it up as a warning.” He put a stick onto the fire. “But there’s another possibility.”

  “What?”

  “Figure it out, Einstein.”

  I thought for a moment, then looked toward the door. “You think the guy’s still out there?”

  Frank only shrugged.

  “No, that’s too weird,” I said. “He’d have to be a crazy old hermit to be hanging around like that.”

  I wasn’t sure if Frank really believed the man was out there. He just stared into the fire.

  That day we ate our first hot food in Alaska: seaweed boiled in water in the cabin guy’s old pot, and fish that tasted smoky and warm. Thursday came so slowly down to the floor that even Frank didn’t notice until the raven was right there beside me. Then he laughed. “Oh, let him stay,” he said. “Who cares?” I fed Thursday scraps of fish, and he joined in the conversation with his strange little mutters and head tilts and shuffles.

  I wanted to try out the cabin guy’s stove, but Frank said I’d be wasting fuel. “We’ll need the gas later,” he said. “We can build a beacon. And when an airplane comes we can pour the gas all over it and make a huge fire.”

  He may have invented that idea right on the spot, just as a reason to stop me from lighting the stove. But it became his new scheme, and he talked about it as we basked by the fire, like lizards on sun-heated stones. His last great idea—to climb the mountain—had been forgotten, and that was fine with me. We drank tea made of hot water and fir needles, and I thought it was the best tea I’d ever had.

  Before the sun went down I learned that having a fire meant a lot of work. We had already burned up the wood the cabin guy had left, and it would be a steady job to gather more. It would become my job, and I would forage a little farther every day, learning what would burn well and what would not, that old bark from the beach would smolder like charcoal, keeping us warm all night.

  •••

  I got up early in the morning, eager to see what had washed ashore. Thursday came with me.

  The surf was high and roaring, the waves flinging spindrift as they stormed across the sand. I saw the dashboard from a car, a Lego brick, a doorknob on a chunk of wood. The plastic head of a garden gnome rolled in the surf, its beard a tangle of barnacles.

  The only thing I picked up was a tiny shoe that a baby had worn.

  It was sitting upright on the sand, a little brown shoe with a white lace still threaded through the eyelets, still tied in a careful bow. Of all the things I’d seen, this was the saddest, and I couldn’t leave it behind. The sole was not even scratched, because the shoe had been worn by a boy too young to walk. I pictured him smiling at those shoes as his mother tied the laces. I could see him trying to touch them, bending up his little legs and stretching out his arms. His mother laughing. But it was my own mother I saw, her hair and eyes all shiny, her smile making wrinkles around her eyes.

  Thursday pecked at tiny crabs and sand fleas trapped in rolls of kelp. But he stayed nearby, and he came right to me when I called.

  It was a comforting sight to see smoke wafting from the forest when I turned to go back. I could see Frank out on the point below the skeleton tree, where the waves were bursting into high, white plumes. He was standing at the edge of the rocks, wrapped up in the plastic capes. He looked like an ancient sailor longing for the sea.

  I took the brown shoe to the church-like meadow, up the path and past the cabin. The spot where I’d buried the purse was already healed over, and I couldn’t find it exactly. The moss had stitched itself together, hiding my secrets so well that I wondered if anyone would ever find them. I liked the idea that they would vanish. As I buried the shoe nearby, I felt as though I was starting a cemetery for children who would always be lost.

  The quiet forest reminded me again of my father’s funeral. I remembered how men in dark suits had lowered his coffin a little way into the ground, and then let it hang from straps as everyone wandered off. My mother put her hands on my shoulders. She was wearing long black gloves with blue buttons. “We have to go, Christopher,” she said, starting to pull me back. I shook away from her, determined to stay with my father. I wanted to wait until he was properly buried, and then to wait some more because it didn’t seem right for everyone to go and leave him alone. Uncle Jack tried to lead us away. “The car’s waiting,” he said. The men in dark suits looked at their watches. Over by the cemetery wall, two men in overalls were leaning against a yellow excavator, waiting to fill in the grave. One of them was smoking a cigarette. Uncle Jack said, “It’s time to go. We have to leave.” My mother sighed sadly. “Oh, Christopher, please don’t do this.” I looked up and saw she was crying. So I took her hand, and Uncle Jack rushed us away. He bundled us into the car, then told the driver, “Okay, let’s go.” At the gate we stopped to let a taxi pass, and the only sound was Uncle Jack tapping his fingers nervously. In the taxi sat a woman with a veil, with a boy beside her, and they looked terribly sad. I couldn’t stop thinking about my father. For days and nights I kept seeing him lying on his back in that dark box under the ground, his hands crossed over his chest, that strange smile stuck on his face.

  These memories flashed in my mind as I crouched in the forest. It was Frank shouting my name that snapped me out of them. I hurried to meet him before he could see my little cemetery. He had brought the gaff, and we went together toward the river.

  We heard the waterfall from half a mile away. It rumbled like an enormous engine, and plumes of spray drifted high above the trees. Swollen by rain, dirtied by silt, the river blasted over the lip in a curl of foam, like a wave on the ocean.

  Though right beside me, Frank had to shout. “We can’t get up the river!”

  I nodded, and pointed to the side of the falls. “You climb the rocks. There’s an old road at the top.”

  “A road?” he yelled.

  I nodded again and showed him the way. The river spread right over the rocks and the roots where I’d climbed before, but we found our way up at the edge of the forest. When we reached the old road Frank’s eyes became huge. He dropped to one knee and pressed his gloved hand into a pothole. He said something I couldn’t hear, then stood up and grabbed my shoulder in that big glove, pulling me close. “Footprints!” he shouted.

  I didn’t understand. Frank looked at the trees that stood beside the road. He walked to one, reached up as far as he could and plucked from the bark a little clump of animal hair.

  I didn’t hear what he said as he jabbered away. But I could see for myself what he was trying to tell me. My road was not a road at all. It was a bear trail—a bear highway—where generations of grizzlies had worn hollows into the ground. They had stood up to scratch their backs on the trees more than seven feet above the ground.

  •••

  The river had climbed from its banks to surge among the trees. Dead salmon tumbled past in endless numbers. They went headfirst and tailfirst, somersaulting by. But others still fought their way up the edge of the river, resting in li
ttle pools behind tree roots and stones.

  We pulled out eleven fish. We threaded them into bundles and hoisted them onto our backs, and for the first time I carried more than Frank. That made me proud, but a little frightened too. Though I was getting stronger, Frank was getting weaker. At the Reepicheep he had to stop and rest, and he actually fell asleep on the cold stones with his injured hand shoved into his jacket.

  I watched the waves roll onto the beach, their tops streaming foam as they curled and broke. There was line after line of breakers, and out in the middle I saw a man swimming. I couldn’t believe it at first. He rose on a wave, then disappeared, and I stared out for a long time before I saw him again. Now a little closer, he tumbled in the foam.

  It was a man—but a man made of wood. His arm reached through the air, then sank into the sea again. He tilted on a wave and fell back down. He floated on his back; he floated on his stomach.

  I could almost imagine that he was alive, struggling to reach the shore. I stood up to watch, and I saw his face, calm and peaceful, his head ringed by an oily sheen that looked like a halo. Then the breakers tossed him high in the air. They rolled him toward me and pulled him away. I wanted to wade out and grab him, but the surf was too high, and I was scared of the undertow, of being sucked out to sea.

  The wooden man surfed feetfirst down a wave, on his back. His heels grounded in the shallows, and the wave lifted him up till he stood in the sea. For a moment he balanced there, standing in front of me with the surf at his feet, holding out his hand as though to lead me away. Then he fell slowly back and swam out to sea again. And I was left standing on the beach, looking sadly after him.

  I went back and woke Frank. I sat right beside him, still watching for the wooden man. Frank yawned and rubbed his eyes. He scratched himself like a chimpanzee, yawned again and gazed around. “Hey, look who’s coming,” he said.

  On the beach to the north, the grizzly bear was plodding toward us.