Strange Seed (6 page)

After a minute, he moved around the southern edge of the clearing and came upon another clearing. Here, years and years of wind and rain had produced a steep and barren incline. Below it, the land had flooded; the few sparse trees protruding from the ankle-deep algae-covered water, and the thin growths of cattail-like weeds gave the area all the appearances of a swamp, as indeed, Paul knew, it would be, in time. He frowned. How eloquently this place spoke of abandonment and solitude and melancholy. How unlike all he had grown accustomed to in the past twenty-one years.

Abruptly, he turned away and retraced his steps until the archway became visible again—a small patch of glaring white light against a foreground of gray.

He turned, moved north. Eventually, he came upon
 
a small grove of honey locusts. Several of the trees had fallen victim to weather, and to man, but, as a whole, the grove—impossibly—appeared to be thriving. Paul smiled quickly, as if at the birth of a child, or at the too-often-postponed marriage of lovers.

Careful of its numerous long thorns, he sat on the nearby trunk of one of the downed trees.

He realized, after a moment, that what he’d thought to be the sounds of birds and small animals were, in reality, the sounds of the trees responding to the gathering wind—leaves turning over and over again, the varied and dismal moaning of the larger trees being moved an inch, two inches, then, as the wind paused, moaning back, the slight crackling sounds at the tops of the shorter trees, and the wind itself cooing distantly and evenly, like a flock of pigeons stuck on one long note.

He sensed, more than felt, the hesitant, silent movement that originated at the far end of the honey locust. He looked over; the wind, he saw, was pushing the confusion of dead branches about.

He stood and moved a few feet along the trunk. The trillium was in greater abundance here than in any other part of the forest. There was some ivy snaking
 
through the branches closest to earth, and, on the east side of the trunk, just below where the branches started, a large growth of yellow-brown shelf fungus had established itself. In a large, roughly circular area below the fungus—jutting out of the covering of leaves and pine needles—was a growth of puffballs. Paul grinned at the word . Whispered it. And bent over for a close look at the one nearest to him. He saw that its color was lighter than he remembered, that it closely resembled the color of his skin. But it was an illusion. The approaching storm had caused the light to change; his hands, his normally blue coveralls, even the gray trunk of the honey locust bore a slightly orange cast. In an effort to shield it from the sickly, all pervasive alight of the coming storm, he cupped his hands over the puffball. Its color altered slightly. He straightened and, unthinkingly, kicked at it. He realized, as his kick landed, that he’d done that same things years and years before, because the puffballs, bulging with spores, exploded delightfully. This one didn’t. As he watched, it slowly, grotesquely, lost its shape—first the side that he’d kicked, then the rounded top, then the far sides, as if the weight of some invisible animal were upon it. Finally, it lay at his feet like a crumpled piece of thin discolored leather, and the wind blew bits of long-dead leaves over it.

“C’mon boy!” Paul heard. He turned . Henry Lumas, a look of urgency on his heavily lined face, was standing not more than a few yards away.

Paul grinned self-consciously. “I was…” he pointed at the growth of puffballs. “I remember…”

“Never mind that!” There’s a hell of a storm coming.” He indicated the rifle Paul had set, barrel pointing upward, against the base of the honey locust, and the ax beside it. “Get those and get your ass back to the house.”

Paul did as told, feeling—not unpleasantly—like a child again.

*****

I’ve got some squash and meat cooking and have time to add a few more lines to this letter.

I just took a quick look out the back door and was surprised to see that the sky to the west has become threatening. I hope Paul has sense enough to come home soon. It’s not that he’s particularly careless about his own safety, he just seems to become preoccupied. I remember when he and Mr. Lumas were covering the windows. You haven’t been here yet, so you don’t know how this house is laid out. It’s two stories tall, and Paul and Mr. Lumas had to use this old rickety ladder to get at the second-floor windows. In back, because of the cellar wall, the climb is higher in the front, and to get at the second-floor windows Paul had to climb nearly to the top of the ladder, where the rungs are rotted and dangerous. Mr. Lumas told Paul a couple of times to be careful but—I was watching from inside the second-floor back bedroom, ready to hand him the scrap wood—Paul
flew
up that ladder in his enthusiasm to get the work done. Well, one of the rungs broke in his hands and he nearly fell. After that, he was more cautious. I think
that’s
 
Paul’s problem—his enthusiasm. He seems to want so much to put things in order that he temporarily loses track of simple caution.

Rachel put the pen down; the back door had opened, she realized. A moment later, Paul and Lumas appeared in the living room doorway.

“Hi,” Paul said. He was grinning stupidly, as if drunk. Lumas, just behind him, scowling, said, “Wouldn’t let this boy by hisself, if I was you, missus.” It was a joking remark, although, Rachel noted, she would not have been able to tell by his tone.

“Thanks for bringing him home, Hank,” she said.

Lumas nodded, still scowling.

“Paul,” she sent on, “put that thing away. Please.” She indicated the rifle Paul held at an awkward angle in his right hand.

Paul glanced at the weapon. “Oh, sorry,” he said and disappeared into the kitchen.

Lumas stepped into the living room, leaned over Rachel, and said, “He don’t know much about how things happen around here, does he?”

Rachel stared blankly at the man. “What do you mean, Hank?”

The barest hint of a smile appeared on Lumas’s face. “Nothin’,” he said. “Never mind. Nothin’ at all.” He straightened.

Paul reappeared. “Supper almost ready, Rachel?
  
He crossed the room and plopped into his wing-backed chair.

“In a few minutes,” Rachel said. “I put it on about a half hour ago.” She glanced at Lumas, indicated her wicker hair. “Sit down, Hank.”

“No thanks. I got to be goin’.”

“Stay for supper,” Paul offered. “We owe you at least that much for all the work you’ve done.”

“You don’t owe me nothin’.” He paused. “But if you got enough, yeah—I’ll stay.”

“Good,” Paul said. He looked a Rachel. “Did Hank tell you what we saw on the way back?”

“No, he didn’t. What—“

“Nothin’ to tell,” Lumas cut in sharply. “Paul said he seen somethin’—“

“You’ve got that backward, don’t you?” Paul said. “You pointed it—
him
, I mean—out to me.”

“Him? “ Rachel asked.

“Or her,” Paul amended. “A child, maybe. It was hard to tell because of the rain.”

“The rain?”

“Over in those fields.” He gestured to the north. “It was raining there and Hank pointed at this…kid running away to the north, through the fields. I could hardly see him, but Hank said he was naked; didn’t you, Hank?”

Lumas said nothing. He looked as if he felt intimidated.

“If it was a child,” Paul went on, “we should probably go after him, for his own protection. I mean, if he was naked, as you said, Hank, and he’s caught in that storm—“

“Wasn’t nothin’,” Lumas cut in. “Wasn’t nothin’ at all. Forget it.”

“But we did see—“

“Forget it! Storms and such play tricks on ya. I oughta know. And that’s all it was. Just a trick.”

Paul looked incredulously at him, then at Rachel, and grinned stupidly again. “Okay, Hank. Whatever you say.”

“I’ll get the table set,” Rachel said,
 
and stood.
 
“It’s good that you’re staying, Hank.”

Paul couldn’t believe what Lumas was telling him:

“It’s not like they was broke, Paul. I know for a fact they wasn’t. But, like I said, that’s all they wanted.”

Paul leaned over and idly fingered the small, rough-hewn, wooden crosses. “Margaret—1970,” he murmured. “Joseph—1971.” He looked up at Lumas. “Why,” he began incredulously, “didn’t they scratch the birth dates in? And the last name? What kind of people were the Newmans?”

“Can’t say I know the answer to that, Paul. They lived here six or seven years. But I was never what you would call close to ‘em. They let me work for ‘em now and again, but as far as playing cards with ‘em, or just sittin’ in front of the fire and chewin’ the fat—it never happened. They wasn’t much for conversation, you know—just work and sleep. And they was awful religious, which is okay, but not for me.” He pointed stiffly. “For instance, you know what kind of wood those crosses is made of?”

“Some kind of fruitwood, I imagine,” Paul answered.

“Nope. It’s dogwood. I can show the tree they took ‘em from.” He jerked his head backward to indicate the forest.

Paul straightened. “I don’t understand. What’s the significance?”

“Can’t say what’s significant about it. All I know is that the cross they put Christ on was made’a dogwood. That’s what I read, Paul. And I’ll tell you another thing. Those kids was buried in only a sheet, no box, no nothin’. Just a sheet, and one of those crosses you see people wearin’ round their necks…”

“A crucifix?” Paul offered.

“That’s right. A crucifix. Put one each in their little white hands and them wrapped ‘em in the sheet from head to toe, and put ‘em in the earth. Kind of godawful way to say good-bye to their own kids, don’t you think?” Paul started to answer in the affirmative, but Lumas went on. “What might as well have been their own kids, I mean.”

“They were adopted?”

“You never met the Newmans, Paul?”

“No. My uncle rented the house to them—even after I took ownership…”

“That explains it,” Lumas cut in. “The Newmans was about you and your wife’s age, a little younger. And these kids here—“was ten, twelve years old.” He paused meaningfully. “They was adopted. That’s what the Newmans told me. They adopted these kids.”

*****

Paul, at Rachel’s insistence, left the cat curled up on the wing-backed chair and tried to make himself comfortable on the couch. “According to Hank,” he explained, “those children were just…here, one day. And the Newmans told him that an orphanage in Syracuse was very happy to find homes for them because they were older—not, you know infants.”

Rachel, in her wicker chair at the opposite end of the room, looked quizzically at him. “And they died a year or so later, Paul? What of?”

“The girl—her name was Margaret— died of pneumonia, according to what Hank told me. It was very late in the year, there’d been a quick change in the weather—very warm one day, very cold the next.” He stood, went to the back window, peered out. After a moment, he continued, “There was an ice storm, Hank says, and the little girl got caught in it, in this ice storm. A week later, she was dead.”

“How awful,” Rachel said. She averted her eyes briefly, as if remembering. “And the Newmans reacted very…coldly to the whole thing?”

“Hank tells me they did, but who knows? It’s difficult to tell how a person is actually reacting to something like that. He might appear to be taking it very coldly, very impassively, when, in reality, he’s going through hell.”

“I don’t know, Paul. Hank’s very…sensitive, despite his appearance. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“Yes, I have. But it’s hard to square what he’s told me with what my own reactions would have been under the same circumstances, though there are these awful wooden crosses, of course. And the fact
 
that the children were buried wrapped only in a sheet, no coffin.”

Rachel grimaced. “That’s awful.”

Paul nodded grimly. A moment’s uneasy silence followed, then Rachel continued. “And the boy?
 
What did he die of?”

No one knows. They called in Dr. What’s-his-name from town, but he just said something about calling in a specialist and, in the interim, the boy died.”

“The boy’s name was Joseph?”

“That’s what’s on his…marker, though Hank says he never heard the Newmans call him that, or the girl ‘Margaret.’ In fact, all he remembers about the relationship the Newmans had with those children is that it was very quiet. Hardly a word ever passed between them. But that, I think, we can take with a grain of salt. Hank admits not being…socially involved with them. That’s not the way he put it, of course.”

Rachel grinned. “Hank’s a character, isn’t he?”

“Uh-huh. Almost a stereotype of the aged, weather-worn hermit.”

“All I know,” Rachel offered, still grinning, “is that I like him.”

*****

And the last day, the day the Newman woman threw herself from the second-floor window, followed soon afterward by her husband—those small deaths proved what Lumas had contended all along:
 
Some folks can learn to accept what happens here, and some can’t. Some believe that man alone, and his cities, do the creating, and if you told them that man’s creations are pale and insignificant by comparison, they wouldn’t understand. They’d say, “What do you mean? Tell us what you mean.” And you’d know
 
they couldn’t understand. They’d say, “What do you mean? Tell us what you mean.” So you know you couldn’t tell them. You might talk for hours but they wouldn’t understand, or they’d understand and not believe it. Maybe they’d do what the Newmans did. And you’d have to see to it that their bodies were put back where they belonged. Like the bodies of the children were.