The Green Man

by Michael Bedard

  Tucked in among the leaves of the vines that encircled his head were two small carved birds. All her fear had vanished. She felt as secure on her high perch as the birds that sheltered in the branches. When she looked into the Green Man’s eyes, he looked back. The sign gently swayed. And she swayed with it.

  He had always seemed ancient to her, his face fissured with wrinkles. But now she saw that the wrinkles were only cracks from the weathering of the wood. Face-to-face like this, he looked ageless.

  O stood transfixed. Suddenly, it seemed to her that something sparked deep in his eyes – a flame. She looked deeper, and the flame flared into a fire. She saw dense smoke and, in the midst of the smoke, two figures entwined in one another’s arms.

  The vision faded, and she found herself perched on top of the ladder again. The sign creaked as it swayed back and forth, and a word sounded clearly from the Green Man’s mouth. “Be-ware,” said the voice. “Be-ware.”

  She sprang back in shock, letting go of the sign. For a moment she teetered, trying to gain her balance. Then, suddenly, she was falling. But as the ground rushed up to meet her, her fall was broken.

  Rimbaud had caught her. “Are you all right?” he asked as he cradled her in his arms.

  “I think so. I lost my balance.” She looked into those dark fathomless eyes, and she had the feeling he was about to kiss her.

  There was a sudden sharp rap on the window of the shop. She jerked back, and Rimbaud set her down on her feet. Emily was standing in the window with an armful of books, staring at them. Without a word, she turned and disappeared into the shadows of the shop.

  O stood in the poetry section, looking at the book Rimbaud had brought back earlier that day. It was the last of the “borrowed” books – a volume of poems by his namesake, Arthur Rimbaud. A photo of the boy poet was on the cover. He bore a striking resemblance to her Rimbaud – something in the eyes, the set of the mouth; something in the regal way he held his head, the deliberately disheveled look of his hair. As she studied the grainy old photo, the memory of her fall from the ladder two days before flooded back.

  She opened the book and flipped through it, hoping against hope another poem might fall out. There was no poem, but something else fluttered to the floor – an odd fan-shaped leaf, still green and pliant, as though it had just been plucked. It wasn’t the first time she’d found a leaf in one of the books he returned. He used leaves to mark his place.

  She brought it to her nose. It had a pungent smell. It was certainly no leaf she recognized. There was nothing remarkably odd about it being there, she supposed. People marked their places in books with all sorts of strange things. But as she held the leaf in her hand and thought of the boy who’d put it there, she sensed it was the hallmark of some mystery at the heart of him.

  With Rimbaud becoming more of a presence around the shop recently, Emily’s anxiety level had risen dramatically. Last night, she’d taken O aside.

  “Listen, O. When your father sent you to stay here, I know he had ulterior motives. He was looking out for me. I appreciate that – and I appreciate everything you’ve done. You’ve taken very good care of me – even when I didn’t want you to. And you’ve transformed this place.

  “But he also expected me to look out for you. I’m inexperienced at watching over teenage girls, but I was once one myself. I know you like this boy, O. But think about it. What do you know about him? You don’t know his real name. You don’t know where he comes from. You don’t know where he lives. He makes me nervous. I want you to be careful. Very careful.”

  It was pure craziness, of course, but Emily was so unremittingly intense about it that it got O going as well. Finding the leaf in the book had decided it. The next time she saw Rimbaud, she was determined to follow him to find out where he lived.

  28

  On the last day of July, Emily asked O if she would mind changing the window display. She normally put up a new display at the beginning of each month and took it down at the end. Any longer than that, and the sunlight began to bleach the dust jackets of the books.

  While Emily gathered together the items she had set aside for the next display, O climbed into the window area to take down the current one. It had been a sunny month, and she noticed that some of the dust jackets had already begun to fade. Each book was accompanied by a handwritten card on which Emily had noted the price, along with any interesting information about the book. O removed the cards as she piled the books in front of her.

  The window area was in need of a good cleaning. The green felt was dingy with age and covered in dust. The brittle corpses of flies and wasps lay scattered over it. She decided this would be an ideal time to clean up the area. She fetched the whisk and dustpan from the back of the shop and, crawling on hands and knees in the narrow space, started sweeping up the dust and dead insects.

  In the midst of it, she happened to glance out the window and saw Rimbaud standing outside the fruit and vegetable store across the street. He stood there a long time, and she was afraid he was about to take something. But, instead, he picked up one of the cellophane packages of discounted fruit they’d put there and went into the store. He came out carrying a bag and began walking in the direction he always took whenever he left the bookshop. On the spur of the moment, O decided to follow him.

  Clambering out of the window, she called to Emily: “I’m thinking of changing the felt in the window. I’m just going to see if I can find anything. I’ll be back in a bit.” Without waiting for a reply, she darted out the door.

  Rimbaud was already out of sight by the time she hit the street. She walked four blocks with no sign of him. She was about to give up and go looking for a fabric store, when she spotted the familiar lean, loping figure two blocks ahead, on the opposite side of the street. Breaking into a trot, she narrowed the distance between them to a block. She shadowed along behind him, ready to duck into a shop doorway if he should happen to look back.

  She had trailed him for twenty minutes, when he suddenly turned off the main drag, crossed a set of tracks, and entered a sketchy neighborhood she would normally never have ventured into. People hanging out on the porch steps of the low-rise apartments that lined the street eyed her as she went by.

  Now that there were fewer people around, it was harder to keep hidden. She hung back farther than she wanted, afraid of being spotted. She had totally lost her bearings and wasn’t sure how she would find her way home. The street dipped and rose like a rollercoaster. In no time at all, she lost sight of him as he disappeared over the crest of a hill. She broke into a trot, but as she came to the top of the hill, there was no trace of him up ahead. It was as if the ground had opened under him.

  To her right, a short side street of modest bungalows shaded by tall maples ended abruptly before a low white fence with a DEAD END sign posted on it. She turned down the street, taking in the houses that lined it on either side. He might have gone into any one of them, but she didn’t think so. She felt sure he’d gone over the fence.

  As she approached it, she saw that, on the other side, the ground fell away into a deep ravine. She scrambled over the fence and along a crude path tramped through the weeds, leading to the rim of the ravine. From there, it launched down the steep hillside and disappeared from view. The hillside was thick with bushes, saplings, and stunted trees. The floor of the ravine was invisible through the dense canopy of trees that rose to almost street level.

  She peered down into the green shadows, looking for signs of movement. All was still. It seemed to her the stillness of something holding its breath, and she was suddenly afraid. She sensed she had come to the world’s end. Beyond lay an uncharted realm.

  Grabbing on to branches to slow herself, she took a few tentative steps down the hill. The green canopy closed over her like a lid. In the sudden silence, she could hear the hammering of her heart.

  Now that she was below the canopy, she could see all the way down to the dappled floor of the ravine, where a path ran alongside a stre
am. She had no experience of such a wilderness at the very heart of a city. Nothing like this existed in the flat country she called home.

  She ventured a little farther down, but her feet kept sliding out from under her, as if the hill were made of glass. It was only by making desperate stabs for branches that she was able to stop herself from hurtling down to the bottom.

  Her legs were scratched, and the light flats she was wearing were full of dirt. She wasn’t dressed for this. Besides, Emily would be wondering where she was. She decided to head back. The ravine could wait for another day, when she was better prepared to meet it.

  It was more difficult getting up the hillside than going down. She wedged her feet at the base of saplings to gain footing on the slick ground. By the time she reached the top, she was panting. Brushing herself off, she climbed back over the fence. A little girl, her face pressed to the window of the last house on the street, looked at her as if she were some creature spawned in the shadows below.

  When she got to the head of the street, she glanced back at the white fence and the diamond-shaped DEAD END sign. She hurried home, feeling that she had narrowly escaped some great danger.

  Emily was in the back room of the shop when she returned.

  “Where on earth have you been, Ophelia?” The dreaded name. “Running off like that with hardly a word. I was worried sick.”

  “I’m sorry. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I thought we could freshen up the front window with a new piece of material, so I went to look for some while the window was empty.”

  Fortunately, on the way home she had come across a fabric shop and found a suitable piece of green felt. She took it out of the bag to show Emily.

  Emily glanced at it, but you could tell she wasn’t buying the story. O could feel her aunt’s shrewd eyes taking in the scratches on her legs, the state of her shoes, the something in her eyes that even the walk home had not erased.

  She reached out and took a lock of O’s hair in her hand. With a quick tug, she pulled something away and held it in the palm of her hand for O to see. It was a burr. O had picked several of the stubborn things off her clothes on the way home, but hadn’t noticed the one in her hair.

  “It must have been quite a shop,” said her aunt.

  29

  It was a quiet neighborhood. The road meandered through it as if it had all the time in the world. Emily took the same path she always did. She knew the neighbors by name and greeted each one with a quiet nod as she walked by – Louise Labranche, Octavia Talbot, Wallace Root. The houses were small but ample enough for their narrow needs.

  Here, someone had planted a little garden; there, another had set a picket fence to mark the bounds of their scant estate. Someone had called on Annie Wray and left a small bouquet of roses at her door, wound with a twist of foil.

  The wind tousled the leaves on the trees that arched over the path. The shade trembled, as if the ground beneath her were not as solid as it seemed.

  The groundskeepers came and went in their motorized carts, with mowers, rakes, and slack coils of hose, like sleepy green snakes, loaded in back. They fanned out over the grounds and were soon busy cutting and watering the grass. The occasional car crept by.

  Emily found her favorite bench, tucked against the trunk of a tall pine. She took her cigarettes from her purse, lit one, and took a long drag. So it had come to this – sneaking cigarettes on the sly. Ah, well. She removed her hat and set it down on the bench beside her. How wonderful the feel of the breeze against her skin, the scent of blossoms in the air, the play of sun and shade on the emerald grass.…

  “Ah, here you are,” said a voice behind her, and a hand alighted on her shoulder. It was Miss Potts.

  “I was hoping you might be here,” said Emily.

  “I’m rarely anywhere else these days,” said Miss Potts as she sat down beside her. She looked very prim in her dark flowered dress, with a little lace at the cuffs and collar, her silver hair drawn back into a bun.

  Emily noted with quiet concern that her friend’s shoes were caked with mud and the laces had snapped in several places.

  “I’ve brought you these,” she said, taking a bouquet of daisies from her bag and handing them to her. She also took out a pair of scissors she’d brought from her sewing basket and set them on the bench beside her.

  “Lovely,” said Miss Potts, admiring the flowers. “Are they from your garden?”

  “No, I’m afraid I’ve let my garden lapse. I haven’t felt quite up to it since – oh, never mind.”

  “No, do tell me.”

  “It’s nothing, really. A mild heart problem. One expects such things at my age.” It was too sobering a thought for such a pleasant day. Emily tucked it quietly away. “Shall I get some water for those?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes. Would you, my dear?”

  A little brass vase was set in a hollow in the ground close by the bench. She pulled it out, put the flowers in, and filled it at a nearby spigot. She took the scissors and tidied up the grass a little, and then put them back in the bag as she sat down.

  “There. That’s got things looking a little more Protestant, as my dear grandmother used to say.” A runner panted by along the path, raising a hand in greeting. “Ah, to be young again,” said Emily.

  “Yes, indeed,” mused Miss Potts.

  “My niece has come to stay with me for the summer.”

  “How nice.” Miss Potts reached up and pulled away a blade of dead grass that had caught in the hinge of her glasses.

  “Yes, but I fear for her.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Because this is the year it’s due to come round again.”

  “I see. And have you told her?”

  “Yes, everything. She thinks I’m mad, of course. How could she think otherwise? I am.”

  “Nonsense. You are a poet – a very good poet. You see more than most.”

  “I’m afraid for her. I shouldn’t have allowed her to come. It was foolhardy. After the last time, I deliberately destroyed everything that had any connection with the show. I hoped that might end it.”

  “There is no end. You must know that. It will come around again at the appointed time. Have you been dreaming it? That’s a sure sign.”

  “Yes, but it’s different this time. He is the same, but the show is different. She found a playbill in the shop,” she said, reaching into her purse to take it out. She had worried the old thing into tatters. Unfolding it, she showed it to Miss Potts. “I’ve dreamt the entire show as it’s laid out there, all except the last three illusions. What can it mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And there’s something else. A strange boy has appeared from out of nowhere. She has befriended him.”

  “You know the magician can assume any shape he chooses.”

  “I know.”

  “And he has taken the shape of a boy before.”

  “I know, but what should I do?”

  “The only thing you can do, my dear: watch and wait – and be ready.”

  “I’m not as strong as I once was. I’m not sure I’m equal to this.”

  “Have faith. Strength will come from somewhere you least expect.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  They sat together quietly for a time. Then Emily gathered up her belongings and put them in her bag. “I should be going now,” she said.

  But when she turned to say good-bye, Miss Potts was gone.

  Delicate plumes of water fanned back and forth across the grass as she made her way back along the cemetery path. Near the front gates, she passed the Linton memorial, a large granite obelisk with the family name carved on its side and, below, the list of the Linton dead.

  Had she paused to look, she would have noticed a new name added to the list, the letters cut sharp and clean in the stone, still untouched by weather and time.

  O grabbed a corner of the felt and gave it a yank. Several of the tacks holding it in place popped free. One pinged off the wind
ow, narrowly missing her head. A cloud of dust rose from the old material and filled the confined space. She gave another yank – more flying tacks, more dust. This time the material tore, and she suddenly remembered what Emily had said about the fabric of time tearing in places, allowing things to pass through.

  By the time she’d pulled up all the material, she was coughing like a maniac. She bundled it up, careful to avoid the bristling tacks, then climbed out of the display area and waited for the dust to settle.

  She wondered exactly how long the old felt had been in the window. The wood underneath looked ancient. She got a plastic bag from behind the desk and dumped the old material in. Climbing back into the window, she pried up the remaining tacks with a claw hammer and swept the area thoroughly.

  She fetched the new fabric she’d bought, a large pair of scissors from the desk drawer, and a staple gun from the battered tool chest on the back porch.

  It would have been nice to have another pair of hands to help, but Emily had vanished shortly after breakfast, saying there was someone she had to see. The woman was as high-strung as Psycho, wary of everyone and everything. She was constantly looking over her shoulder as if someone was following her.

  The condition was contagious. Just being in the shop alone now was making O nervous. The shop ghosts were growing bolder. She kept seeing figures flitting in the shadows, kept hearing furtive little noises in the far room. Switching on the radio, she hoped a good dose of jazz might frighten them off.

  She climbed back into the window and unfolded the new piece of fabric. As she draped it loosely over the two shallow tiers that descended to the display area, she was reminded of the steep slope of the ravine where she had followed Rimbaud the other day. It had been a totally crazy thing to do. And what had she gained by it, other than to deepen the mystery surrounding him?