The Language of Trees (21 page)

“My dad put his hand on my shoulder. He said, ‘Boy, she didn't want to pass her fear on to you. It was a gift.' I had no idea what the hell he meant. I never understood the things he said. It was like he was talking to me in another language. I thought if only I were smarter, he'd respect me.”

Echo reaches across the table and lets the tips of her fingers touch his. The loss of their parents has forged a new bond. Perhaps she will tell Grant right now. Perhaps she will come right out and say the truth about how she feels. It will be out there, and she won't be able to take it back. And the chips will fall. She is ready. “Where are you going?” she asks. He has gotten up and is standing in the doorway.

He lifts the portrait of Ben Shongo from behind the door. The face looks younger than Echo remembers, without the signature sideburns that almost touched the edges of his mouth. The hair is black. His skin is darker than Grant's and pocked, but the high cheekbones and strong chin are the same.

“I've never seen that painting. Where did it come from?” says Echo.

“Melanie painted it from memory. He used to make house calls for Luke. Leila would call and Dad would drop everything and drive over there.”

Grant starts to clear the table. “Jesus, I can't stop thinking about Melanie.”

“Joseph is a mess. Four days is a long time.”

“The last time I saw her was at Luke's funeral. But I remember going on a house call with my father, back when Luke was sick.” Grant had promised his father that he would be invisible during the house call, that he would be a wallflower. It was rare that he got to see his father at work. He had just wanted some time alone with him. He had stood by quietly, watching as his father eased three-year-old Luke's breathing, and then eased Leila Ellis's mind by telling her she was doing everything right. He had seen the relief on Leila's face when his father placed his hand on her shoulder. If it hadn't been for these the two little blond fairies in their rhinestone tiaras, giggling, waving at him from the doorway, everything would have been perfect. “So
I'm trying to ignore them. My dad says, ‘Why don't you entertain them for a while and let us drink our tea?'”

“Who was ‘us'? Your dad and Leila?” she asks.

“They were pretty close. He was over there so often because of Luke's asthma.”

Echo is listening intently. “And you were a captive audience for the girls,” says Echo.

“A captive, more like it. They tied me up to one of those posts, had me cornered. I'm standing in a playroom watching these little girls dancing and twirling all around me, telling me I'm the prince and asking me which one of them I want to marry. What could I say? I couldn't pick one over the other.”

“So you said you'd marry both of them? How insensitive can you be?” she says, tearing off another piece of bread and throwing it at him.

“Listen. I'm dumber than I look. You should know that by now,” he says. “The girls start arguing over me and the next thing I know, Maya rips off Melanie's tiara and starts an all-out war and all I can think about is how my father is going to blame me for it. Leila comes running downstairs, and both girls are crying now, and I'm like a deer in the headlights tied to this post. My dad is staring at me from the top of the stairs. Last house call I ever went on.”

“Women,” she says, shaking her head. “Here's the thing, we'll wreck your life if you let us. Especially when we're young and beautiful and afraid of ourselves.” She thinks again of Melanie.

Grant takes a deep breath, changes the subject. He tells her about Lion falling into the lake and what came after. About the fact that he couldn't swim. “He says I saved his life. But now I've got this strange feeling that I owe him.”

“You got that from your father, you know.”

“What?”

“The expectation he put on his patients to get well. No one wanted to let him down.” Echo sips her wine, spilling a little into her lap. She must stop now or she's not going to be able to string two words together. She is starting to get dizzy.

“Good health through intimidation. That was my dad's secret,” Grant jokes, getting up. He looks at her plate. “You liked the barbecued turkey? Bet you never had it before. An old army secret.”

“You were never in the army.”

“I know, but I've lived alone for a while now. It was a long slow winter.”

“I was craving ramen noodles soup, if you must know.” She glances at him.

He smiles. “How did you—”

“You've got quite a stock there in the cabinet.”

“You'll have to wait until next time. Suspense,” he says, sipping the last of his drink.

“Well, I'm worried about Joseph.”

“You need to take him to the doctor, Echo. I'm serious about that,” Grant says, clearing off the table.

“I heard you helped him out a bit with that cough.” She meets his eyes.

“No, he was just happy to see my face.”

He tells Echo to relax while he finishes doing the dishes. She slips off her clogs and spills herself onto the couch. She can hardly believe she's here. Every part of her wants to wrap her arms around him. She almost thinks she has no right to feel it. The night has been too perfect, the food too good. But it's more than the food. It's the warmth that fills the space wherever he is. It's his ability to know that he won't understand everything, but he'll still try anyway. She has been away from someone
like this for a long time and has forgotten about a thing like earnestness.

How it makes a person.

He is whistling through his teeth. She closes her eyes and everything starts to spin. Her stomach is comfortably full, more so than it's been in months. She rubs Einstein's head methodically with her fingers as her body relaxes into the soft cushions. She and Grant have talked about everything but her love life and his marriage. She doesn't want to know what happened, not really. Doesn't want to hear that he has cheated or hurt his wife in any way. What would she do with the knowledge anyway? People change. It happens all the time. People do things that are totally out of character. Men make bad choices, too, especially when they're desperate and afraid to be alone, when they feel like they're drowning in their own lives. They grasp at anyone or anything they think will buoy them up. They don't think about the consequences.

“Echo,” Grant whispers.

“I'm awake,” she says, her eyes opening. “I think I just—”

He moves her hair out of her eyes. “Don't think,” he says, with a slow smile. “I defrosted these myself.” He is kneeling, holding out a spoonful of whipped cream with crushed strawberries.

The whipped cream melts onto her tongue. The strawberries are the frozen kind, but nonetheless they create a nice blend of sweet and tart in her mouth. She looks into his eyes. His face is too close. His body, too.

“Good,” she says.

He smiles. “I have to take you home now,” he says.

“Okay,” she murmurs, staring at him.

Their mouths meet. She can feel the heat between them and his hand on her shoulder. Her breasts press against his chest
and she slowly begins to unbutton his shirt. He's plowing his fingers through her hair. Her fingers loosen his braid, the twine falling to the floor. Then his hands slip underneath the rim of her jeans.

“Stop,” she says, out of breath. She moves over and smoothes her hair.

“I'm sorry. Jesus.” He wipes his mouth, sits down next to her on the couch. Shoulder to shoulder, they stare straight ahead like strangers on a bus. It always struck her how two people could be in the heat of the moment one minute and then be talking rationally the next.

Echo gets up. “Go find Lion. Joseph is probably waiting up for me anyway.” She slips her feet into the cool wooden platforms of her leather clogs, and stares at him.

“Okay. You want me to back off,” he tells her, getting up. “You're afraid of me.”

“As you are of me.”

“But that's not stopping me now.” He reaches for her.

“I can't do this with you again,” she says. She gently pushes him away. This was supposed to be an easy night.

“I'll take you home,” says Grant, grabbing his keys.

“Where is my sweater?” she asks. He spies it behind the couch but she is already walking toward the closet.

“It's not in there,” he says, as he watches her hand turn the doorknob. “Hey don't—”

Stacked in the closet are piles of wooden statues. She turns to him, unable to keep a straight face.

“Old dinner guests,” he says.

She picks up one of the statues, rubs the dust off the face, which is crosshatched with tiny lines. The moisture from her hands darkens the wood. She knows Grant's history, his belief
in roots. The statue feels hot and she puts it down quickly. “You carved all of these.”

Just then there's a thud on the window. Einstein barks at the noise. Grant opens the sliding glass door and Echo instinctively grabs his hand as they look down at the bird lying on the wet grass.

“Its wing,” Echo says, as she kneels. As rain mists around them, the dark blue bird lies there in the floodlight, its small eyes stunned, piercing the sky as its chest rapidly pushes in and out.

“Kingfisher,” says Grant, the wind blowing his hair.

“I've never seen one of those here.”

“It hunts for fish.” The right wing is sticking out awkwardly.

“It's going to die.”

“Could you get me a glass of water?” Grant asks, gently petting the bill.

When she returns with the glass, the bird is walking in a circle in front of him. Grant wipes his muddy hands on his jeans.

“What did you do?” Echo asks. The wing looks fine now. Not a trace of anything. The bird is hopping across the grass on its short stubby legs and fluttering its wings. “You did something. You healed it.”

Grant stares at her. The Diamond Trees are swaying in the storm, throwing light on Grant's back as he turns and walks inside to wash his hands.

“Please take me home now,” she says, when he returns.

“Fine,” he tells her. “Don't ask me about the bird.”

As she gets into his car, she is holding a million questions about carved Indians, about marriages that work and fail, about
trees that root a person to a place, and about a man who can make a bird fly after its wing has been broken. About a lake that pulls a person back toward their fate no matter how hard they resist it.

“All this time, you never called,” she says, abruptly.

“You think I didn't want to? You think I didn't dream of you every goddamn night?”

“You would have called,” she says, “if you wanted to.”

“You told me not to call until I figured myself out. You deserved better than what I was prepared to give.”

There are so many ways Echo could answer him, but she knows she invited something she may not have been ready for. He's not the only one who has had to deal with the heartbreak of their relationship. He moved on and actually got married. She's the one who's been searching for him in the eyes of strangers ever since.

“You still haven't figured yourself out.”

“That's why I never called,” he says.

They ride back to her house the rest of the way without speaking, him tapping his fingers annoyingly on the steering wheel of the old Fleetwood. Echo lets her eyes fall from his profile to his chest to his hands. She stretches her neck, feeling the strain between her shoulders. The Fleetwood turns the corner and they can see the Feed & Grain.

As they pull up, the headlights settle on a man on the porch in a big leather jacket, with a head full of dreadlocks that reach to his shoulders.

“That's the guy I told you about, Lion Williams,” Grant says, opening his door.

“Hey Grant,” Lion calls out, his voice thin and embarrassed. He gets up slowly, as though he knows he is a striking figure out here at night. “Hey,” he waves, quickly looking back and
forth between Grant and Echo. “I've been waiting for you. Need to talk to you and Joseph said you'd be back
early
. Joe's getting a birch beer. He's telling stories about Africa.”

“Lion Williams, Echo O'Connell,” says Grant. Echo smiles at Lion.

“I've heard a lot about you,” says Echo. “All good.”

Lion nods, then turns to Grant. “Wondering if you could take a ride.”

Echo knows they are going to look for Melanie. And she is worried. But she forces herself to walk away from him. Tonight, she'll read until her eyes ache so badly she has to turn off the light. Then she will toss and turn for hours until her sheets are hot and she has to sleep on top of them. In her sleep, she'll be telling Grant everything. By morning her throat will ache so fiercely that she'll only be able to whisper.

M
ELANIE HAS BEEN GONE
for four days. If she has truly left Lion for good, he is going to make her say it to his face. If she's in trouble, he has got to find her. More than likely it's both. Lion Williams has been sitting out on the porch of the Feed & Grain in the middle of the night for no reason other than because he knows he needs to trust someone now. Someone has to watch his back, because if he's going to wrestle Melanie out of Two Bears' Cave, he can't go alone, especially if he's going to drag her, kicking and screaming. He's not a fool. He'll ask for help when he needs it.

“What's going on, Lion?” asks Grant, watching Echo as she closes the door behind her. To Lion, Grant looks giant-like, unnaturally tall and broad-shouldered in the silhouette of the headlights. This could work to Lion's advantage. Lion feels better here on dry land where there is no chance of humiliating yourself, of dying a slow death by drowning and being saved by someone who's so perfect it makes you want to drown out of sheer rebellion.

“She looks nice,” says Lion. “You love her?”

“Why?”

“Because you look all messed up.”

“No,” says Grant, dismissively. “She's just an old friend.”

“Okay, be that way.”

“You need something. What is it?” Grant asks, slightly agitated.

“You offered the other day.” Lion's voice thins into a whisper. “You made an offer. Said if I ever needed help—”

“Absolutely.”

“I know where Melanie is.”

Grant looks at him, surprised. “Thank God, Lion. Where is she?”

Lion backs up. “No questions. Not yet. I only want you to sit in the car, just in case something happens to me when I go in to get her. I don't want you doing anything. Just sit there and wait, and do what I tell you to do. Leave your car here. Don't ask any questions.”

Grant agrees, hands in pockets. He's feeling the alcohol in his body. The buzz has become a dull throb. Somehow the events of the evening are dissipating. In the distance a snowy owl calls out through the spray of stars. There are flickering shapes in the water.

“You're scaring me, Lion,” says Grant.

“Why?”

“Because you look scared.”

“Hell no. I held up a 7-Eleven once. Los Angeles riots,” says Lion.

The screen door flies open. “Am I interrupting?” Joseph asks, a beer in both hands. “Yours, Lion. Here's one for you, too, Grant. Did I miss something? You two look like you're conspiring.”

Lion eyes Grant nervously.

Grant shifts his weight, leans on the railing.

A cold wind falls across the porch. Lion looks up. He can just barely see the sky and the cloud of blackbirds that are settling nervously in the trees. Lion can't take his eyes off them.

“Where are you going, boys?”

“To get Melanie,” says Grant.

“Let me get my coat,” says Joseph. “Where is she?”

Lion keeps silent, staring at Grant defiantly. He knows Joseph's eyes are on him.

“What's going on?” Echo asks, at the screen door.

“Two Bears' Cave,” whispers Lion.

“She's not there, Grant. Lion. No,” Joseph says, grabbing the railing, his face reddening, sweat beginning to bead up on his upper lip. Echo comes outside and stands next to him, taking his arm.

“Just come inside, Pop,” she tells him, putting her head on his shoulder.

“Don't let them go,” he says, but Echo leads him back inside. “The spirits, they're restless there. Some alive. Some not.”

As Grant and Lion peel out of the driveway, they don't know that Joseph is watching them from the window, and that a huge weight has suddenly crushed his heart, causing his left arm to go numb, causing him to drop his pipe.

 

L
ION DOESN'T WANT TO
have to owe Grant his life but he has that feeling already. It will take two lifetimes to repay him.

“I'm calling Charlie Cooke,” Grant tells him. “Give me your cell phone.”

“No cops. You don't want to do it my way, then get out…”

“Reverse psychology? You think you can use that on me? I'm a teacher. We invented it.”

Lion doesn't flinch. “Whatever, man. You in or what?”

Grant nods. “You scared?” Grant rolls down the window of Leila's beat-up Bronco and lets the breeze cool his face.

“Maybe you are.” Lion readjusts the rearview mirror. The acid is starting to burn his gut.

“Scared, no,” Grant says. “Stupid, yes.”

Lion stares straight ahead, hunching over the steering wheel. He tries to smile. He hopes Grant doesn't notice that his knuckles have gone white on the wheel.

The stars are whipping by, streaking the windows with light. What am I doing to the guy? Who knows what kind of state Melanie will be in? Lion wonders. Still if Grant didn't want to come, he wouldn't have agreed. It doesn't matter where I'm taking him, Lion tells himself. Grant wants to do this. Even if new stories circulate all the time about the spirit of Two Bears wreaking havoc to frighten people out of his Cave. Right now Lion could swear the bats are following them. Or it could be the fog. He'll just keep driving. He won't look in the rearview mirror.

“So you held up a 7-Eleven. Congratulations. You cleaned them out of Twizzlers and Coke, I hope?”

“Make all the jokes you want. It was cold hard cash. I had a gun. Well, it looked like a gun, but it was a Pepsi bottle. You know like this,” Lion says, pointing his finger in the pocket of his leather coat. “You know who Rodney King is?”

“Sure, I remember the riots, 1992,” says Grant. “I used to own a television. Why, did you know him?”

“I didn't have to. See, the guy, he changed my life. Just by getting beat. I wasn't scared at all. People going crazy. Like war, man. All I wanted was some Genesee beer. Nothing you ever probably drank. Ha. Everyone said Why Genesee? Why not good beer? You can have whatever you want today. Today's
like Christmas. But, I like Genesee, and didn't see why I should like something else just because it was free.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because.”

“You didn't take the beer or the cash.”

“What? You think I'm lying?”

“You're honest. That's why you didn't take anything.”

“I would have. If I hadn't gotten cut,” Lion professes. He steers with his knees and pulls up his shirtsleeve and shows Grant the five-inch pink scar across his tricep.

“Painful?”

“Not so much,” Lion says, pulling his sleeve back down. Lion lets the car begin to veer off the road.

“Jesus.” Grant grabs the wheel. “Keep your goddamn hands on the wheel.” Grant wipes his forehead with his sleeve. “And I thought you said Melanie wasn't using—”

“Don't ask me to say it again.”

“Okay, kid. Okay.”

They drive the three miles to Two Bears' Cave, through back dirt streets so dark it is a miracle that even headlights can light the way. At times tree branches scratch the windshield, and Grant questions whether they are going the right way. Still, the path is slightly worn with downed grass. Others have been here recently.

Lion parks under a sumac tree. He stares at the thick black forest; all the while clumps of red berries are dropping onto the window. The grass is wet with fog but the sky is dry, a sandpaper gray. Cattle clouds trot off behind the leaves, which are flapping in the wind. Above, a dark flock of birds is settling in the branches.

Lion grabs the flashlight and points it at the windshield.
Grant notices the tiny drops of sweat on Lion's forehead. The events of the night are obscured by the darkness. And if ever there was a night when the Flying Heads were going to race through the trees, this would be it. Grant tells Lion about the Seneca legend, which parents on the reservation would tell their children to scare them into coming home on time at night. Yet now the tale is somehow more his.

“Once a spirit monster—all head, no body, with bear claws—swooped down and tried to devour a brave woman as she walked through the forest. Long hair trailing behind it, it chased the woman to her lodge. It peered down the smoke hole and saw the brave woman popping a lit coal into her mouth. The monster, thinking fire was good to eat, gorged up all the hot coals.”

“What happened?” Lion asks.

“Got hot-mouth, flew away screaming. Never bothered the village after.”

“I'm not eating fire,” says Lion.

“I'm goin' in first.”

“No way. This is my game. My rules.”

Grant opens the door anyway. Lion twists in his seat, looking for what has fallen from his coat pocket. He grabs the flip-open locking knives. Opens one and runs his finger across the blade.

“What do you think you're doing with that?”

“In case I need it. Got one for you, too. Just bought them new.” Lion grabs the other knife and sets both on the dashboard.

“I'm not taking that thing.”

“Man, I'm in charge.” Lion spits out the window. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve and looks at Grant. The place is over-
run with bundles of blood-red sumac. The wind pulls the juice across the windshield. “That's bad poison,” Lion says, handing Grant the knife. “Those red berries.”

“Not this type. My mother used to boil it for tea. Good for the body.”

Grant takes the knife, turns it over in his hands, and hands it back. He doesn't like how comfortable he feels holding it. “I got your back, okay?”

“Let's go,” says Lion, getting out of the car.

Three high-pitched chirps pierce the air. Grant points the flashlight into the darkness. The bat flaps its wings, dips in front of the car before toggling up the branches of a locust tree.

“Down,” Lion whispers, motioning to the flashlight in Grant's hand. Grant does what the kid says and points it at the dirt.

An uneasy wind rustles the tall grass as Grant begins to walk. He cuts through the woods looking for the Cave, praying he remembers. He tells Lion to listen for the bats. Lion is following, watching the stars through the canopy. As they make their way across the trail, thorny bushes scratch at their arms, pull on their clothing as if trying to hold them back. They can hear the flap of bat wings and the high-pitched squeaks, now suddenly closer. Every so often Lion ducks when a low-flying bat veers near his head. The moon looks like old sheet metal, partly obscured by clouds. The smell of dirt and burning wood is pungent.

“She's in the Cave. She must have lit a fire. Smell the smoke.” Lion stops suddenly, staring at the trail of amethyst smoke rising out from the mouth of the Cave. Tall slim locust trees cradle the entrance. The trees stand as poised as ballet dancers, their long arms gracefully bent, their trunks lengthening in gentle curves, revealing stretched white bellies.

Lion can just make out an abandoned red bike up there in the distance. And a rusted van turned on its side. Grant had better be following as they cut through the grass toward the Cave.

Lion is imagining what he'll say to her after he gets Melanie home. He'll be a lot stronger with her, that's for sure. He's not playing around. A relapse is always worse than what preceded it. He's seen it. When an addiction has been quiet for a time, it gathers up all the evil like some kind of magnet inside the brain. And if you give in, even years later when you think you can handle it, you had better be prepared for the devil to run wild inside you.

No. No more pushover. Lion's tired of all of it.

This is the last time. The last time he's going to lose her.

He'll threaten not to take Melanie back until she's checked into rehab, nine weeks of inpatient care and follow-up visits after that. They've spent enough time living on the edge. He doesn't even care that she'll never be Miss Homemaker. She'll just keep making the same dinners for the rest of their lives: spaghetti, Hamburger Helper, franks and beans. All his life he's lived on the edge of everything and now, what he really hankers for? A safe little life and the white picket fence he's always heard of. The same one he had once scoffed at.

But she's got her own groove. Her own style.

She does things her own crazy way, and yet he feels lucky every day.

Once he came home from work to find the entire apartment filled with candles. It wasn't his birthday, or even an anniversary. Melanie said she had just felt like celebrating the fact that she was so in love with him. So why waste it? The huge chocolate cake, his favorite, she had made herself. In the thick chocolate frosting, an inch thick, she put seventy tiny candles
to represent the number of years she
wanted
to spend with him. She had layered the bathtub water with silver stars, and papered the floor with them, too. He found her soaking in the claw-foot tub when he got home from work. And he had felt like a king, standing on all of that silver universe.

When they reach the mouth of the Cave, there is a howling that Grant now recognizes as the hybrid wolves returned to Canandaigua. To Grant, this is a sign that the whole thing with Lion is a bad idea, but his mind and body aren't connected, because his feet are still moving forward. About thirty feet up, he thinks, pointing his flashlight around the lip of the Cave, illuminating the thin line of smoke coming from a small fire pit, the graffiti covering the walls, the wrinkled bags of potato chips and some old needles. Grant kicks a few empty beer bottles out of the way. This angers him, seeing what has been done to this place, once the home of a medicine man, a place so sacred that few ever saw it when Two Bears was living here. After all this is over, Grant will contact the town's officials and organize a cleanup. He'll get this designated as a protected site, just as Squaw Island has been.

The air inside the Cave is dank, musty. Without a word, Lion takes the flashlight from Grant and walks carefully across the Cave toward the fire pit, which is filled with a pile of old wooden statues, half charred and smoking. Grant follows. Though the wood is still hot, Grant picks up one of the carvings and turns it over in his hands. It looks like a bear. A strangely shaped piece of wood is lying to the left of the fire pit, one that is covered with layers of mud and has not been used for firewood. Grant nicks off some of the mud with his fingers. The mud falls away, revealing the shape of a Seneca warrior, with its wide-planed face and the feathered cap. There is a pile of similar-shaped carved logs against the far end of the Cave wall.