Project Lazarus (4 page)

“Just who the hell do you think you are Dempster?”

“A man you don’t want to mess with Commander Henrid.”

Commander Henrid took a step back and both men silenced for a moment.  It was intense.

“Don’t blame yourself Henrid.  But don’t blame me either,” Professor Dempster warned, “Truth is you’re the best man for the job.  Why do you think I recommended you?  Resurrected your fading career?  You’re the one that can get this done.”

“You’ve got something to hide Dempster and I don’t like your threats,” Commander Henrid hissed.

“I don’t like your guns,” Charlie said pointing to his head, “I prefer my mind.  It always wins every time.”

Commander Henrid was ready to speak or lunge at him, Charlie wasn’t sure which when it happened.

“Shhhh,” Charlie commanded immediately.

The slow soft voice murmuring in the background silenced the two men.  The chanting began slowly and surely, steadily growing louder by the second.

Both men stared in disbelief.  It was the wild man.  The lost man.  The elder from the tribe with the two stripes of blue paint on his forehead. 

He came alone.  As if, he already knew.  It was a manifest destiny. 

He leaned over the dead body, yelling wildly now.  Were the dead man’s eyes fluttering open?  Were his limbs moving?

Charlie Dempster wasn’t so sure.  Within seconds, Commander Henrid seized the opportunity to capture.

His fifteen men subdued the elder with some form of tranquilizer.  They placed him on a stretcher and were carrying him in military like precision slowly with caution out of the furious jungle.

Charlie Dempster looked back. Was the lifeless man from the tribe rising from the dead?   Was he walking?  God, was he?

He looked at the strange being, the elder on the stretcher, how could it be?  Two missing thumbs.  He shook his head in disbelief. This elder allowed it to happen.  He allowed himself to be captured.  Charlie knew it but he didn’t know why.

Whatever the reason, it was done.  Charlie smiled.   Destiny, he concluded. Indeed.

He thought about his son.  He thought about the exchange with Commander Henrid.  He wanted out of the jungle, the Amazon.  He wanted the day to be over.

He tempted fate like so many others in history and he looked back once more.  It was ironically, biblical, as though looking back might turn him to a pillar of salt.  Perhaps, it would but he had to see.  Was the dead man really alive?  He watched him scurry across the bridge. 

He had glanced back when he shouldn’t have.  An omen.  An evil one.  He could feel it in the pit of his stomach.

He looked again at the subdued prisoner on the stretcher.

Good God, what had they done?

Renowned horticulturist, Lydia Harsden, didn’t expect to be called in.  Not this soon.  Not ever.  Botany and horticulture, the study of plants, flowers and her specialty trees, were her entire life’s work.  A life that spanned fifty three years, including those forty three years, since the age of ten, she devoted her life’s work to the study of trees. It was no wonder she had been called to Cotter, Arkansas in such desperate times.

Vivid bright red blood fruits, associated with the magic of life, were a gift of the rowan tree.  The rowan tree embodied a long expansive history and a lure starting with its name. Some believe the name given to the rowan tree mimics that of the word rune, a magical sign.  The word games don’t stop there. Raun, and Old Norse name means “red” or “northern.” This small tree was sturdy and found frequently in large quantity in northern countries, often growing on desolate moors and tundra.

Lydia Harsden, with feathered hardy blonde hair that kept nicely out of her eyes was dressed for work in loose fitting jeans, a bright pink sweater and an equally bright orange polo shirt tucked neatly underneath.  She wore what some might call a fanny pack around her waist.  But she preferred to call it waist purse, as the name carried more distinction and its contents were invaluable to her.  Tools of the trade, small bags for samples, anything she might be able to tuck in on a moment’s notice or dig out of the waist purse to scrape or clean or dig.

Yes, she did a lot of digging. Today would be no different. Except the digging would be slow, the work would be, monotonous, heavy and with purpose.  She examined the tree, hauled out of the truck. It was rough to the touch, her hands mimicked the roughness with leather like texture full of lots of wear and tear from her line of work.  She kept her fingernails short but nicely manicured, her one luxury. 

She fixed her glasses and pulled out a small notebook from her waist purse. She flipped easily to the desired page, a paperclip holding its place.  The page held out a landscape of where the rowans would be planted.

She studied the small tree.  It would grow soon enough.   She couldn’t imagine anyone cutting it down not in this town.  In Scotland and Ireland cutting the sacred rowan tree wasn’t allowed.  It was considered a disgrace.  In Scotland, the trees were only allowed to be cut down to be used as funeral pyres.  This was the rowan tree’s first known association with the dead.

Lydian Harsden examined the landscape, scribbled in her notebook, then drew the trees in elsewhere.  She did this again and again, not because she was a perfectionist but because she knew what was at stake.

She always felt knowledge was of great importance.  She was an expert, graduating at the top of her class of a prestigious school where ironically ivy grew.  She traveled all over the world to study horticulture.  Knowledge was powerful and her peers and superiors were all impressed by her considerable quest for information.  Her library amassed thousands of books, all of which she had read.  Lydia was indeed an intellect and knowledge was something she held in high regard.  It was a way of life and now a matter of life and death.

Sorbus Aucuparia, the Latin name for the rowan tree rolled off her tongue carefully, as she said it under her breath.  Slowly, she started directing men, in work clothes ready for the task at hand.  They had a long week, maybe a few weeks, maybe even more ahead of them.  Who knew?

These men were there to meet a need and fulfill a purpose.  They could dig, they could plant the trees.  Like ants in a colony, she could direct them out and send them about their way, knowing at the time of their return the certain outcome, another rowan tree would be planted in the ground of Cotter, Arkansas.

Interestingly enough, her work force consisted of men from the nearby Baxter County jail. They were loaned out to her.  They certainly didn’t request to be there by choice.  No one would have taken on the job willingly, if they knew the truth.  Lydia Harsden felt a twinge of guilt.

She studied the men.  They were perfect.  They were in no position to ask questions.  They were a part of society no longer able to ask why.  They cared of course.  They whispered.  They wondered why the unusual task.  They were used to cleaning up litter and other such menial jobs.

It was nearing eighty something degrees on that particular Monday.  Every once in a while, Lydia stopped to assess the work at hand.  Moving with precision, everything had to be just so.

Sorbus Aucuparia, rendered the first part of its name from the Latin word Sorbus meaning service tree.  Aucuparia, is from avis “a bird” and capere “to catch”.  Lydia Harsden hoped never to see what the magical tree could catch, although she imagined it wasn’t a bird.

She attempted, on days like this, not to be superstitious or paranoid or both.  But it was difficult.  She stuck with the facts in her mind.  The bright red edible berries were something birds wanted to eat and bird catchers used them as a way to catch birds.  Yes, that sounded reasonable.  Rowan berries as bait.  Nothing more.  The berries were not poisonous, they could be eaten by humans, although very tart, until cooked.

Distinguished British botanist, John Lindley, in his 1828 “Introduction to Botany”, described how fruits like rowan berries, were best eaten when cooked, such as persimmons.

She ran her hand across the bark again and up to the berries.  They looked sweet.  She couldn’t imagine anything so blood red, so vivid in color, being anything sweet.  Dare she try one?  She had never.  She was just about to pluck the berry when one of the men called out to her.

Sweaty, dirty and a bit hunched over, the man in the orange jumpsuit, pointed to the tree, “Are you sure you want it here?” He asked.

“Yes,” she replied, quite certain, “Is there a problem?”

The man motioned her over.  Hesitantly, she headed in his direction.  She tightened onto her waist purse.  She was given a gun for her protection, even though the prisoner’s feet were chained together.

It was indeed a strange.  She could have used a more suitable crew but she understood, these silent men were the only ones available for the job.  If they only knew.

He pointed to the ground, “Can’t dig here,” he said.

The cement object embedded in the ground was something she hadn’t planned for. 

The headstone was old and weathered and had sunk completely into the ground.  She hadn’t planned on that.  She scribbled into her notebook and drew in another rowan tree.

“Don’t dig there.  You understand?”

“Yeah, I got it,” the man answered.

She ran back to the empty truck and instructed the man who brought in the trees.

“We need another,” she told him, “right away get another rowan.”

The rowan tree was also known as mountain ash, because of its pinnate, feathery, leaves.  It grows on high slopes.  It isn’t an ash tree but rather a member of the rose family.  It was once thought to be some kind of pear tree, as its white flowers resembled pear blossoms.

The men continued digging and planting.  The whispers continued too.  They were on lease and uneasy.  They didn’t like the job.  They sure as heck didn’t like the location.  And the one woman that could give those answers was as silent as the trees.

Lydia sympathized with the men.  It was pointless not letting them in on the secret. They deserved to know the reason they were planting the rowan trees on that particular plot of land.  But if she told them, surely pandemonium would break out.  But how much longer could she keep it from them?

She felt compelled to treat all life with human dignity.  Even though she spent the majority of her life with non-human specimens, she held her fellow man in the highest regard.   She was clever and lovely but wore her heart too heavy on her sleeve.  The silence in the open air endangered them all.  Didn’t they have a right to know?  Weren’t they worthy of a choice themselves?  Did what the state have to say about them really matter anymore?  They weren’t killers just felons, white collar criminals.  They were like her, flawed but beyond redemption in the eyes of society.  In their work with her, they would pay their dues.  They would pay without knowing.  She didn’t want them paying with their lives.  She had chosen this life.  They hadn’t.

The rowan tree was growing on her, its knowledge and history, running more obsessively through her mind.  The quicken-tree, yet another name, for the tree meant “life giving”.  Sprigs of rowan, which she now tossed by hand all over the grounds, were once hung on door posts as protection against evil spirits.

Also, known as wiggin-trees, her mind swirled with all the little nicknames she used to find annoying but now necessary referred to Wiccan, meaning witch.

Could such a harmless looking thing really be associated with magic, evil spirits and more?  Was there more to the universe than she could learn in any of her books?

Lydia stared at the sky.  It was so big.  So vast.  Was everything they told her in the past 24 hours really true?  Was everything that brought her to Cotter, Arkansas a reality? She was warned one day something like this could happen.  Had that day finally arrived?

That sky was so big and it went on and on forever.

A nineteenth century horticultural writer Henry Phillips referred to the rowan in his writings as “Sylvia Florifera” in the year 1823, he shrouded the tree in a world of mysticism and magic. In the present, we lived in a world where we chose to see the reality before us and blur it as fantasy through technology, popular culture and television.  But Henry Phillips described a day to day life in which the rowan earned a special place.  This included the rowan trees being planted in churchyards and graveyards to prevent the dead from rising out of their graves and back to the living.

“Mam, hey Mam,” the large sweaty man from before, paused to look at the sun that damned him from above, in another attempt to call out to her.

“There’s another one,” he told her, pointing to the sunken cement object in the ground.

She sighed, frustrated, angry and confused, looking down at her notebook again and jotted.

“Okay,” she mumbled.

“I know we’re not supposed to ask,” the man started with the words that would eventually open up an entire pandora’s box in the town of Cotter, “but why are we out here planting all these trees in the graveyard?”

In the humanity only she could identify with she answered matter of factly, “So no one can raise the dead.”

He looked at her quizzically, “You serious?”

“Yes.”

He stared at her as if she was a crazy lady, a crazy lady obsessed with trees and near heat stroke from the sun.

“The whole town’s going to find out anyway,” she told him, “they’ve raised a man from the dead in Cotter and he’s gotten away.  He’s bound to come for more of the dead.  These trees might be the only thing to stop him.”

“You serious?” He repeated.

“Yes,” she affirmed, “Come on we’ve got ten more cemeteries to get to before night fall.”