The Elephant Tree

by R. D. Ronald

  The owner of the Post Office was called Maurice. A sixtyish-year-old with a large red nose that was pebble-dashed with broken capillaries, and a smooth bald head with a fuzz of grey hair around the side like the tide mark on a dirty bath. He had a gruff manner, distrusting eyes and a cough like kicked gravel.

  Angela turned on her phone and managed to get a weak signal, so dialled home for any news on Steph. Scott busied himself retrieving items off the list from the uncluttered shelves and put them on the counter in front of Maurice.

  ‘Still here then,’ he observed with a nod, as if confirming something he’d suspected all along.

  ‘Yeah, for now anyway.’ Scott replied.

  ‘Winters up here are bleak once the snow starts to settle in. Been clear enough so far but once the roads get covered you may have to bed in for weeks. No ploughs come along this way I can tell you. That vehicle you got there will be no more use for getting you about in than a pair of flippers.’

  ‘Thanks for the warning,’ Scott said and stretched his mouth into a smile.

  ‘It wasn’t a warning, is a fact,’ he said peering at Scott through bristled brows. ‘You still up there with that bearded fella?’

  ‘Jeff, yeah we’re staying in the cabin,’ Scott said, and distractedly looked at his watch. Time had little relevance up here, he’d noticed. Days could slide by unnoticed like water in a brook, but the momentum would gather up and impregnate moments like this making them seem almost endless in comparison.

  He tapped the face of his watch with a forefinger in a gesture to check if it was still working.

  The bell at the entrance danced and jingled as the door of the shop swung open. Scott was pleased to see Angela walk in, the tension that had been building in the air began to melt and Maurice returned to reading his newspaper.

  ‘Dad says just wait it out, that Jeff’ll be fine.’

  ‘OK then. What about Steph?’

  ‘No word on her at all, but dad said there’s a detective been asking questions about Twinkle and he’s been looking for you. Did you know he’d gone missing?’

  Scott felt as if the distance between them and home had just grown a lot smaller and that even up in the mountains he still hadn’t gone far enough to escape his troubles.

  ‘No. How long has he been missing for?’

  ‘Dunno, dad didn’t say. The detective has already spoken to Neil though, and he’s been around all the bars asking questions there too.’

  ‘Come on, let’s pay for this lot and get back,’ Scott said, and as he turned to walk back to the counter, discovered Maurice’s attention had gravitated from his newspaper to their conversation.

  As they brought the box of groceries into the house, they were welcomed by the mouth-watering aroma of one of Jeff’s culinary creations drifting through from the kitchen.

  ‘I’m making chilli and plenty of it, so I hope you’re hungry,’ Jeff announced as they carried in the supplies.

  ‘Definitely,’ Angela said, ‘and dad says hi, by the way.’

  Jeff nodded and kept stirring the pot on the stove, Boris sitting dutifully by his side.

  ‘You mind watching this for a bit Angela?’ he said, ‘Scott you can give me a hand to chop some wood out back.’

  For someone who used words like they were in finite supply, this was relatively a full conversation for Jeff, and Angela and Scott exchanged glances before Scott followed him outside.

  Jeff led the way around the house to where a stack of logs lay beside an axe and chopping block. Scott took a firm grip on the handle and yanked it free from the stump it was embedded in.

  Jeff sat down on an old wooden bench and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, took one out and lit it.

  ‘I didn’t realise you smoked tobacco,’ Scott said, levelling the first log up on the stump to take a swing at.

  ‘Only sometimes, everything in moderation, so they say anyway.’

  ‘Does that go for company as well?’ Scott asked, and brought the axe down, easily splitting the log in half.

  Jeff chuckled as he exhaled a cloud of smoke. ‘You starting to feel like you’ve outstayed your welcome, young Scott?’

  ‘Well, despite being a great host, you tend not to be overly vocal, so me and Angela were thinking maybe it was time we moved on,’ he said, selecting another log from the pile to be chopped.

  ‘No, it’s not time for you to go yet. We have things to discuss before that happens.’

  ‘Does this have something to do with the letter Putty sent up for you?’

  ‘What makes you say that then?’ Jeff asked, peering quizzically at Scott through a wisp of smoke.

  ‘You just seemed to be focusing as much on me as you were the letter when you were reading it,’ he said, and brought the axe down again. A brief flash to the night Twinkle died startled him, the hammer falling onto his still warm body. Scott shook his head.

  ‘You’ve got an eye for detail,’ Jeff said, flicking loose ash from the cigarette. ‘I’m sure that’s served you well being a drug dealer.’

  ‘I guess it has, from time to time.’

  ‘So that’s your career path then?’ Jeff asked.

  Scott got the impression that Jeff only asked questions he already knew the answers to, like a lawyer, and despite the feeling of being cross examined he still wanted to know where the questioning was leading, so he obliged with the answers.

  ‘No, not a career – maybe not anything anymore.’

  ‘Things change, you have to adapt,’ Jeff said and looked wistfully out over the tops of the trees that grew down the receding slope to the side of the house.

  ‘Is that what you’re doing out here then Jeff, adapting?’ Scott said. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand and picked up another log.

  ‘Nope, not anymore. I’m already as adapted as I’m ever likely to get,’ Jeff said, and Scott saw his beard shift as he grinned. ‘So what’s your next move, Scott?’

  ‘Well, I thought I had some stuff lined up back home but now I’m not so sure. I guess maybe I thought I had what it took to go the extra mile to get what I wanted from life, but then I see people who really do go that extra mile, and I know for sure I don’t want to be like them.’

  Scott put down the axe for a moment and glanced at Jeff to see him peering intently back, as if Scott were a riddle he was trying to work out the solution to. Scott waited, thinking he was about to say something, but Jeff just continued to stare.

  ‘You alright?’ Scott asked, perplexed by the sudden silence.

  ‘What are you like with confined spaces?’ Jeff asked him suddenly, ignoring Scott’s question.

  ‘What like elevators and stuff? OK I suppose, why?’

  Jeff stood up from the bench and walked to the outbuilding Scott had presumed to be a garage or workshop behind his parked pickup. Turning a key to release the padlock, Jeff slid back the door. They both went inside and then he closed the door after them and bolted it from the inside. The smooth concrete floor was large enough to accommodate two, possibly three parked cars, but at the moment stood empty other than some building materials scattered around, and two large wooden workbenches with clamps and vices fixed to them. Various other tools hung from brackets along the walls.

  ‘I wouldn’t exactly call this an enclosed space, Jeff.’

  Jeff shook his head and walked to what looked like a manhole cover behind one of the benches in the corner of the room. He opened a drawer and took out a metal tool with which to open up the hatch. Inserting the tool into the slot he twisted it ninety degrees and then heaved the metal covering off leaving a circular black hole where it had been. Jeff reached into the darkness and clicked a switch illuminating a roughly circular tube which descended around fifteen feet, a steel ladder bolted to one side with which to climb down.

  ‘OK, well that’s more of a confined space,’ Scott said.

  Jeff grunted as he knelt down and swung his body around onto the ladder and began to climb down. Although he hadn�
�t been instructed to, Scott thought it best he should follow. The room below was around ten feet square with whitewashed walls. Large electrical boxes were mounted on one wall with cables protruding from them as thick as Scott’s wrist. Another wall was dominated by a sealed airtight door that Scott thought looked something between the door from a giant fridge and that of a bank vault.

  ‘This is the reason you’re up here Scott,’ Jeff said, looking at him earnestly. ‘Putty spoke up for you as someone I should consider but I made up my own mind while you’ve been here.’

  Scott still had no idea what was going on, so he remained silent as Jeff unlocked the huge metal door with a key he took from his pocket, and then opened it.

  The door swung inwards revealing rough limestone walls forming an oval tunnel behind it. A blue –white illumination shimmered around the walls from a light source around a corner further ahead.

  ‘What is this place?’ Scott asked, running his fingers along the surface of the slightly damp limestone on either side of him.

  ‘Caves. Been here for hundreds of years, thousands maybe,’ Jeff said, striding ahead.

  Scott followed him a few steps behind, becoming conscious now of a low pitched electrical hum, like the type always superimposed aboard the ships on sci-fi shows he’d watched on TV as a kid. The light got brighter and the hum louder as he followed Jeff further down the cave as it veered to the right.

  Rounding the corner Scott saw the cave open out on either side of them to a width of around thirty feet; the ceiling rose and the floor dropped away to a height of he reckoned maybe twenty feet. A plasterboard wall had been installed a little way ahead with a closed door in it, but what had really got Scott’s attention were the rows of tiny cannabis plants on shelves below long fluorescent tubes.

  ‘Jesus, did you do all this?’ Scott said.

  ‘Yeah, all my own work.’ Scott could see the pride on Jeff’s face at the accomplishment of what he’d built.

  ‘Does Angela know?’

  ‘No, no-one does. You’re the first one to see it. Putty knows I’m up to something but doesn’t know what, and he knows better than to ask,’ Jeff said. ‘This way.’

  He led Scott to the door in the plasterboard wall and turned the handle. As the door opened light flooded out, so bright it was like receiving a piece of the sun as a gift that you had just removed the wrapping from. Scott held up a hand to shield his eyes until they adjusted to the brightness, Jeff had already strode inside.

  Beyond the doorway stood row after row of bushy cannabis plants in formation like Roman soldiers. Thin plastic tubes ran to each of the plants from huge water containers positioned along one side of the cave. The illumination came from high intensity lights that hung down over the plants at intervals of every four or five feet.

  ‘Fuck me, I think I just entered the Twilight Zone,’ Scott said, looking around him at the complexity and precision of the equipment, ‘this must have taken you forever.’

  ‘It’s been a long time coming,’ Jeff said, stroking his beard as he looked thoughtfully along the rows of plants.

  Scott felt his hair blow in a draft and looked up to see one of many oscillating fans attached along the cave walls behind him; interspersed below them were a number of bright red fire extinguishers. Large ducts were attached to the ceiling, Scott presumed to vent in and out fresh air.

  Having apparently been happy with what he’d observed from the plants, Jeff walked further down the cave to another floor to ceiling plasterboard wall, this one smaller as the cave here tapered in, narrowing from all sides. This time, beyond the door were three small partitioned rooms: a living quarters with two armchairs and a small TV, a kitchen area complete with a small stove and cupboards overflowing with various tinned goods, a refrigerator and a sink, and a small sleeping quarters with a bunk bed and two mattresses.

  ‘Are you expecting a nuclear war?’

  ‘Hardly, no, but I like to be prepared. One more thing,’ Jeff motioned towards a small hatch in the roof above the living quarters.

  Opening the hatch revealed another corrugated tube leading up with a ladder attached; this time the tube was longer, perhaps thirty feet.

  ‘That’s an escape hatch to the surface, just in case. It leads out into the woods a way behind the house.’

  ‘Because you like to be prepared?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Around the dinner table later that night Jeff explained to Angela where he and Scott had been that afternoon.

  ‘So that’s where you keep disappearing to,’ she said, ‘we thought you were off hiking around on the mountain foraging for strange looking mushrooms or something.’

  Jeff chuckled.

  ‘So you said that was why I was here,’ Scott said, ‘what do you mean by that then Jeff?’

  Jeff ate another forkful of the steaming home-made chilli, considering his words carefully before answering.

  ‘When I first took this place on I knew about a small cave on the land, that’s why I wanted it. I had planned to run a small cannabis farm and just live off the proceeds, hopefully put a little away for retirement, but when I was removing some of the stone for ventilation, part of where I was digging fell through.’

  ‘So the giant cave had always been there and no-one ever discovered it?’ Scott asked.

  ‘No. There are plenty of legends about the caves and their previous uses back through history. Old Maurice down at the Post office will happily chew your ear off all day long if you get him started about them, and Amos the landlord at the pub is just as bad, although I’d rather you didn’t speak about them when you do go down to Bloody Bush, in fact not to anyone.’

  ‘So if the cave had been discovered previously, how did it get undiscovered?’ Angela asked.

  ‘The caves, from what I can gather, were generally used for hiding. Rich landowners would apparently hide in them during times of war from invading forces; also bandits would use the caves to stow away after committing robberies, hiding away from the authorities seeking them out. When I rediscovered this one, I found the remains of three people who’d been sealed up inside.’

  ‘Three bodies?’ Angela asked.

  ‘No, just bones and scraps of cloth. Likely they’d been there for hundreds of years.’

  ‘So what did you do with them?’

  ‘Chucked them away in the woods, what do I care? They were probably just muggers and thieves who the authorities tracked down and just decided to seal up the entrance and leave them inside to die. Whatever, the fact remains that it’s mine now and that’s what we’re here about,’ Jeff said, prodding the table with a forefinger.

  Angela refilled their wine glasses and Scott clicked his lighter open and snapped it shut several times while waiting for Jeff to start speaking again.

  ‘When I took the place on, like I say, I had anticipated a modest size project that I could comfortably manage on my own. Opportunity knocked when I found the big cave so now I have something bigger than planned that unfortunately I can’t run single handed. I talked to Putty a while ago when I’d decided to expand out, about the possibility of either him or someone he knew moving out here to work as part of a lucrative project. You see where I’m going with this?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Scott said.

  ‘He said you were the one I should see.’

  * * *

  ‘So you’re faced with a dilemma,’ Angela said, when they were back in bed together at the cabin. ‘Do you want to take Jeff up on the offer?’

  ‘I don’t have many other options and it seems like a pretty great deal.’

  ‘You gonna talk to Jeff tomorrow, tell him you’ll do it?’ ‘I think so, yeah.’

  * * *

  The next eight weeks passed pretty quickly. Jeff proved to be a patient teacher but would accept no lack of effort or commitment from Scott as far as the plants or any of his other duties were concerned. Scott was pleased with the workload though, and didn’t mind the increased hours as the crop came to fruition. His days f
or the most part were spent in the cave tending to the plants, nutrient tanks and ensuring that the equipment was all operating correctly. Jeff’s mobility, especially on cold mornings during the winter, could sometimes be a problem; but as Scott’s knowledge of the operation grew, and Jeff’s confidence in Scott’s ability along with it, he was happy to take over the reins as head gardener.

  Once their first crop was harvested Scott still hadn’t made any longer term plans, and until Angela pointed out to him that he was still in fact living out of his suitcase, it hadn’t even occurred to him to do otherwise. Her clothes and personal effects had long since found their way into the closet and drawer space in the cabin, and she seemed completely at home there now.

  Angela’s walks to the village to check on news about Steph were still a regular part of her week, but as time had gone by they had become less anxious events and were now more routine. Nobody had heard anything and Angela had begun to think maybe Steph had just taken refuge with a different friend as she had previously done with her.

  Angela had already left the cabin when Scott woke the next day. He hadn’t had much sleep, his thoughts as ever returning to Twinkle. He’d had no news regarding the investigation to bring Twinkle in for the shooting outside Aura for a while, but Scott doubted it had just blown over.

  The suitcase he’d brought had largely remained packed. Cycling through the clothes like a conveyor belt, take them off the top, put them clean back on the bottom. It sat at the foot of the wardrobe in the bedroom as he’d initially been unsure of their length of stay. But after Angela had teased him about living like a hobo, claiming he wasn’t living up at the cabin but squatting there, he’d decided to take out all of his stuff and make more of an effort for it to feel like a home.