Mr. Tall (16 page)

The night he had sneaked away from the king's daughter and stiffed the Well boys he had simply walked off down the road. Why hadn't he at least taken the boat? If he was going to set out anyway wouldn't that have made more sense? He could have sailed through the rest of the tales, Jack and His Flying Boat! The miles liquid in his wake! Oh, the giants he could have killed! The sacks of gold he could have snagged! And the maidens—well, the maidens, he thought shamefully—who knew what pleasures he could've made with a maiden in a flying boat? Instead he had left the boat moored in the king's yard when he sneaked away. It must have flown off on its own, pilotless, adrift in the sky, searching for him, its lost Captain Jack, before marooning itself who knew how many years ago in this damnable field. When he mumbled “Sail, Boat, Sail” he already knew it wasn't going to work.

A breeze bearing the salted singe of ozone puffed onto Jack's cheek. Above him the oak leaves had begun to curl against coming weather, their pale undersides furled in warning. In the direction from which Jack had run a great dark cloud hoisted above the far horizon, its roiling mass black as blindness, its towering edges limned with mercurial silver. Detonations of lightning flared inside the cloud, followed by broadsides of thunder. Between the cloud's trailing edge and the ground lay a sickly stripe of greenish sky, and silhouetted against the sky galloped a solitary figure.

Jack, cursing himself for his interlude of aeronautical nostalgia, leapt to his feet preparatory to lighting out, but saw that the figure running toward him was a man, not the black dog. Jack skimmed through the possibilities of who the man might be: the farmer whose whoring wife he had attempted to mount the evening before had seemed content to run him off, not run him down; it had been so long since he had defiled a maiden that he couldn't imagine an avenging daddy would still be on his trail; and surely all the millers and kings and robbers and giants he had tricked out of their gold would have given up all hope of restitution and retribution by now. Maybe, Jack thought, just maybe it was the old man, bearing magic words and implements, come to save him. Howdy, Daddy, Jack would say, come on up in my boat and sit a spell. Why thank you, the old man would answer, I believe I will. Jack would do the old man a small kindness—maybe give him a dollar—and by the time the old man had taken leave of the tale, he would have either repaired Jack's boat, or given Jack the wherewithal to kill the dog. Jack eased back onto the bench, fighting the urge to head for the woods, reminding himself that he had never feared a regular man.

The man stopped about fifty yards away and stared in the direction of Jack and his boat, his head cocked thoughtfully to one side. “Jack?” the man asked as he edged closer a slow step at a time. “Is that you?”

“Why, Tom Dooley,” Jack said. “I wouldn't have thought about you for a hundred dollars.”

For coming up on a hundred and fifty years, the fans of Jack and the fans of Tom Dooley had fought over which man was rightful heir of the high kingship of Appalachian folklore. Jack's proponents denounced Tom Dooley with his lone ballad as a one-hit wonder, while the Dooleyists maintained that the
real
Jack was Jack's English forebear, famous climber of the bean
stalk,
and not this Jack here, stalker of the southern highlands, climber of the dialectical bean
tree.
Although neither Jack nor Tom Dooley would ever admit it, each of the assertions hit a nerve with one or the other: Jack was secretly sensitive that his renown, while considerable, was almost entirely regional; Tom Dooley silently suffered because, despite his greater success farther afield, he was summoned in only a solitary song. They had never been formally introduced, but had often glared at each other across auditoriums and coffeehouses. Both their crowds, oddly enough, seemed to run in the same pack.

Tom Dooley hung down his head. “Look here, Jack, to be honest with you, I don't feel much like feuding today. Can we put it in a poke for now?”

Jack exhaled, relieved. “That seems fair enough.”

Tom Dooley scratched his chin and considered the tree spread over Jack's boat. “Jack, ain't that tree you're sitting under a
Quercus alba?
”

Jack picked up a leaf and studied it. “Yep.
Quercus alba.
”

“Shoot, I was hoping it was a
Quercus rubra.
Ordinarily I try to avoid white oaks.”

“I don't blame you,” Jack said, “but since this one ain't down in some lonesome valley, it's probably all right.”

Tom Dooley considered some more. “That boat you're sitting in, ain't it the flying boat where you picked up Hardy Hardhead and the Well boys and went and beat the witch out of all her gold and broke the enchantment the witch put on the king's daughter?”

“It is, but I don't think it flies no more.”

“I always liked that story,” Tom Dooley said. Then he winced and swallowed and looked at the ground, so painful the admission that he admired anything having to do with Jack.

Jack stared up into the leaves of the tree and drew a deep breath. “And I always liked that knife/life couplet in your ballad. The word ‘knife' sounds sharp, like it'd cut you if you drew your finger across it. It makes sense you could use a knife to take a life.”

“Why, thank you, Jack. I always thought that rhyme made the song.”

Neither man spoke for a stiff moment.

“You doing any good with the song?” Jack finally asked.

“Oh, just middlin',” Tom Dooley said. “A little Girl Scout action, that's about it. Occasional old hippie frailing a banjo. To be honest, I ain't done much good since Burl Ives died. Jack tales doing all right?”

Jack made a face. “Ah, storytelling festivals, mostly. Appalachian Studies scholar every once in a while, but the pointy-heads have done drunk that well about dry.”

“Law, law,” Tom Dooley sighed. “What a world.”

“I know it,” Jack said. “Don't I know it.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I get up in that magic boat with you and sit a spell?”

“I don't think it's magic anymore, but you're welcome.”

All the benches other than the one on which Jack sat had rotted into collapse or been shoved askew by the growing tree. Jack scooted to one side and Tom Dooley sat down beside him. Jack cast a weather eye on the approaching cloud. It had grown so tall he had to tilt his head back to see its anvil top. Shreds of updraft steamed continuously along its black sides. He hated to leave his boat again after all these years but figured that it would soon be in his best interest to head for the woods. Whatever mayhem that storm was packing, Jack didn't want to be caught out in it. In the forest he might find suitable shelter. A robbers' cabin would be good. The robbers were never at home in the stories, but the wife of the leader always was. The wife tended to be lonely and he often talked her out of a little slice before she hid him in her hope chest when they heard the gang coming back with their spoils.

“Jack?” Tom Dooley said. “I need to ask you something else. Is today tomorrow?”

“Hmm,” Jack said. “It was yesterday.”

“I was afraid of that. See, my song's always been mostly in the future present tense. You know how it goes, “Come this time
tomorrow,
that's when I'm supposed to be hanging from the white oak tree down in the lonesome valley.”

“So? If today is today, then tomorrow's still going to be tomorrow, so you're all right.”

“But I took off running
yesterday,
Jack, and I run all night, which I have never done before because it ain't in the song, and when it got first light this morning I said, Oh shit, Tom Dooley, you just run plumb out of yesterday and into tomorrow and now you're in a world of trouble.”

“That's an interesting temporal conundrum,” Jack said.

“Tell me about it. You ain't going to believe this, Jack, but I'm being pursued by a talking dog that maintains he's going to kill me because I've lost cultural currency.”

“We're in the same boat, there,” Jack said.

“He's after you, too?”

“Got after me last night.”

“I'll be damned,” Tom Dooley said.

In the far distance the wheat began to thrash away from Jack and Tom Dooley, almost parallel to the ground, sucked toward the cloud by some virulent rip, while the leaves clinging to the topmost branches of the white oak still shivered away from them on a high breeze Jack could not feel in the boat.

“Tom Dooley, we better move on out,” Jack said. “I fear this gathering cumulonimbus bears us ill will.”

“How about you try the boat again?”

“Sail, Boat, Sail!”

Nothing.

“Maybe if we got out and rocked it back and forth a little bit,” Tom Dooley said, “tried to prize it loose from the dirt.”

“Alas, the boat I fear / Shall fly no more / Its magic run aground / In this landlock of grain,” spoke an ancient voice whose component parts seemed to flutter down around them.

“Day Lord have mercy, Jack!” Tom Dooley said. “It's a talking tree! It liked to have started me to death.” He craned his neck and squinted into the canopy. “Why does it talk like that?”

“In the sacred timbre / Of my ancestors / I speak,” the tree said.

“Oh, cut it out,” Jack said. “This is North Carolina. We're prose people.”

“Ah, sweet Carolina! / With your virgin soil / Grasp me by my taproot.”

“Was that dirty?” Tom Dooley asked.

“Come on,” Jack said. “This pretentious prosody weighs heavy on my person. We need to move on out of here before the storm or the black dog one gets us.” He stood and started to step out of the boat.

“Wait!” the tree cried in panicked prose. “You're Jack,
that
Jack. I'm the last of the talking trees, and the black dog has promised to raise its leg against me! What should I do? Where should I fly?”

“What did you just say?” Tom Dooley said.

The tree didn't answer, but a flail of leaves rattled down among them.

“Jack, the damn tree's holding out on us!” Tom Dooley cried. “Your boat can still fly!” He stood and from somewhere in his overalls produced a bloodstained butcher knife of priapic length. “You listen here, stovewood. I swear on Laurie Foster's lonesome grave that if you don't make this boat fly I will carve hearts and obscenities all over your worthless trunk.”

“All right, all right!” the tree said. “Put that thing away before somebody gets whittled. The truth is, once I took root I began to absorb the magic that leached out of the boat as it rotted away. I don't know if I can make it fly or not. I've never tried. Trees are naturally averse to flying.”

“Why you deciduous son of a bitch,” Jack said. “You broke my boat.”

“The boat was rotten when the squirrel buried my nut! You can't blame me for your toxic waste!”

“If I still had my silver ax…”

“Hey, Jack?” Tom Dooley said.

“I wonder how many two by tens I can get out of you?” Jack snarled.

“Jack—” Tom Dooley interrupted.

“What?”

“There's a posse coming yonder.”

From beneath the storm cloud a countless multitude of men on horseback pounded toward the boat, guns drawn, long dusters flapping out behind them like black wings. Bright whips of lightning cracked all around them. Hounds whose stiff tails cut periscopic wakes through the wheat loped among the horses; their trailing bays melded into a single cyclonic moan.

“Why so many of 'em?” Tom Dooley marveled.

“Every time someone sings that song of yours a lawman sets out on your trail with a brace of hounds,” the tree said.

“God Almighty,” Tom Dooley said. “Look how famous I am!”

“Look how famous I am,”
Jack simpered. “Well, you ought to have seen the crowd of maidens I diddled run through here this morning.”

The hoofbeats of the horses thrummed faintly into earshot, intermittently drowned out by fusillades of thunder. The sounding of the hounds rose in pitch and ardor and the lawmen raised their weapons. Shreds of gun smoke ghosted silently from the barrels of their pistols, followed moments later by almost inaudible pops. Bullets dropped softly into the wheat between the riders and the boat, along with the first frigid splats of rain. The throbbing of the hooves grew louder. Beneath Jack's feet the ground buzzed with their drumming.

“Okay, I've enjoyed my renown enough for one day,” Tom Dooley said. “We need to head on down the road.”

“Let's see what you got, tree,” Jack said. “Them posse boys are coming for us all.”

The tree cleared its throat, wherever that was. “O ancient gods of earth, wind, and fire, gods of sky and cloud and rain, gods of leaf and blossom and bole, gods of light and dark and season—”

“Oh, good Lord,” Jack said. “We ain't got time for this pseudo-religious New Age nickering.”

“Be respectful, Jack,” Tom Dooley whispered. “The tree's pantheistic.”

“—summon from my reaching roots the magic once contained in this vessel's enchanted planking and lift us into the darkening sky! Save us from the black dog! From the approaching posse! From the lightning and wind and storm! In the name of the sacred buzzing bee, MAKE US FLY!”

Jack and Tom Dooley sat very still.

“Well?” Jack asked.

“Wait a second,” the tree said. “Okay. Try it now.”

“Sail, Boat, Sail,” Jack commanded.

For a moment nothing happened, but then, for yards around the boat, the tree's roots tore themselves free from the ground with a great ripping noise. Clod-spewing waves of root rolled toward the base of the tree and the boat bucked in the ensuing collision.

“Son of a squirrel,” the tree groaned. “That hurt like a woodpecker.”

A handful of bullets from the approaching riders snipped almost delicately through the tree's leaves, and a salvo of thunder ignited above them. Tom Dooley ducked and laced his fingers above his head as he attempted to hide beneath his hat. The tree flopped back and forth with a clatter of branches and leaves as it struggled to pull its anchoring taproot free. “Say it, Jack!” the tree grunted. “Say it again!”