The Language of Trees (22 page)

Lion shines the flashlight across the Cave. He can make out the edges of things, woven baskets and hollowed-out gourds. Shelves of all different sizes are carved into the Cave wall. Grant spies something glistening in the dirt. He reaches into a pile of ash and comes up with a fistful of arrowheads. Silently, he lets the dirt fall through his fingers. Then, there is a howling from the mouth of the Cave. One. Maybe two. No, three shadows fall across the entrance.

Hedging at the mouth of the Cave, three wolves stand in the darkness, maddened and thin. Their powerful muscles are rippling in the moonlight, forming a white silhouette against the black night. Their yellow eyes are glistening, fixed on Grant. They snarl and paw at the ground, baring their teeth. “Holy shit,” whispers Lion.

“Turn the light off,” orders Grant.

Grant walks toward them. They bark and glare at him but he keeps walking. When he is about six feet from them, Grant shouts something Lion doesn't understand. Then the wolves turn and run off into the dark field.

“What did you say?” asks Lion, turning his flashlight back on.

“I told them how to go back to where they came from.”

Lion shines the light on Grant's face. He keeps it there, letting Grant squint and then cover his eyes. Then he shifts the light across the cave. “Over there!” he cries. “It's Melanie. Her hair. I can see it,” whispers Lion, shining the light on a little enclave where an orange sleeping bag is bunched against the wall. Tufts of blond hair stick out.

“Are you sure?” asks Grant.

“Definitely. It's her.” Lion holds up the four-inch blade and pushes his finger onto the tip, watching the drops of blood beading up.

Grant needs to gain some focus. Needs to clear his mind and focus on what he is here for: Melanie. He is trying to remember her face. He recalls the picture Joseph showed him. His eyes follow the beam of light across the dirt floor. Beaver skins are stacked in the corner near a pile of old woven blankets. A large metal pot sits next to one. Lion spies something else glistening in the dust. A silver ankle bracelet. He picks it up.

“Is it hers?” asks Grant.

“It's hers,” says Lion.

Walking toward the orange sleeping bag, Lion calls Melanie's name. He runs over to the orange sleeping bag, tugs the corner of it. “Melanie. Mel, it's me.”

A groan rises and he jumps back. An empty bottle of Southern Comfort rolls toward his feet.

Dee Dee, one half of the town's homeless couple, sits up. She licks her lips and the sweet permutation of alcohol fills the musty air. “You got a cigarette?”

Lion frowns. She elbows the bundle next to her. Papa Paul lets out a fierce growl and blinks in the offending haze of the light. Confused, he stares at them. “Gentlemen, is this a board meeting?” he says, his pale gray eyes sunken into folds of turtle-like skin. He rolls back over, burying his face in Dee Dee's armpit. When a bat crosses the Cave, Dee Dee covers them both with the sleeping bag.

Lion stands defiantly at their feet.

He twists away when Grant puts his hand on his shoulder. “Get the fuck off of me, man.”

“Hey, Lion. Keep it together,” Grant says, although Lion is already making his way out.

Lion walks out into the cool grass. A light breeze shifts through the trees, but Lion is too angry to be cold. “We'll look again tomorrow,” Grant says, catching up, but he is wondering
if Melanie has been able to change. If it is possible, really, for anyone to change.

Lion stares at him, his cheeks drawing quick breaths in and out, as though he has heard Grant's thoughts.

Lion turns around and cuts across the grassy lawn, where he kicks the rusted red bike, sending the wheel spinning. Then he takes off running.

The kid can really fly. Grant starts to chase him. He has the feeling of being watched.

“Go home!” Lion calls back through the night.

Grant can hardly see the boy now.

“Stay away from me!” Lion yells, almost completely swallowed into darkness. The moon sloughs off the clouds and brightens. For a second, it looks as if Lion is running right into the sky.

S
INCE THE MOMENT
G
RANT
Shongo dropped her off, Echo's mind has been racing. Lying in bed, she has been listening to Joseph's ripping cough and thinking of blackbirds. She is picturing blackbirds so confused by all the secrets spinning in the air, caught in the currents, that they fly in circles, crashing into the windows, breaking their wings, then falling in droves from the sky, symbols of all the hearts that have been shattered. Leila Ellis. Her one bad choice was like a stone thrown into the lake, creating ripples that go on for miles, touching so many lives. And Clarisse Mellon. Standing in that kitchen for years, aching to wrap herself in Joseph's arms. And Echo. Is she any better? Still afraid of her love for Grant Shongo. But mostly, Echo is worried about losing Joseph. Suddenly, she pictures Grant in his backyard, his muddy hands placed around the bird with the broken wing, and the bird's glazed eyes staring up at him, waiting.

She feels desperate. Restless. Every so often she runs to her bedroom window to make sure Grant's car is still outside where he has left it.

Near dawn, she and Joseph find each other in the kitchen.
He is sitting on a stool, wrapped in his green flannel bathrobe, reading
Food Distribution
magazine. But he is as far away as Africa, with that distant look in his eyes. He isn't handling the stress. In the silence, they take turns making pots of coffee. “Do you want more coffee? I'll make more. Even I can't drink this,” she tells him. He hardly hears her. He begins to cough. A deep ripping cough that makes her shiver. He doubles over, leaning on the counter. She runs over to him. He is sitting there, his shoulders caved. “I'm okay. My arm is a little stiff,” he says hoarsely. But she can no longer stand by and do nothing.

“Will you look at this? Old man hands, you see? They shake all the time.” Joseph has a bad feeling about Melanie, he says finally. He wonders out loud if she has been found yet.

Echo puts her arms around him and rests her head on his shoulder. “Now your hands aren't shaking,” she says, holding Joseph close. She closes her eyes. “Let me just hug you, okay?” She inhales his scent, aftershave and the damp sweat of age. As she hugs him, all she can feel are bones, his collarbones pressing into her neck, the curve of his spine, the shudder of his rib cage each time he coughs. It feels as though he could break if she squeezes too hard.

Joseph pats her back. “Only you, kiddo, could ever calm my mind.”

“That's why we need each other,” says Echo, not letting go. “That cough. It scares me. I want you to see a doctor.”

He lets go of her and walks away. “It's just age, honey,” he says, staring out the porch window. “It crept up on me. You know, one day, I looked down and saw a pair of old hands and I thought, whose hands are these? I'd do more from above,” he says, pointing up.

Echo shoots him a look. She feels the rip of fear inside her. She walks over to the counter and she stares out the window,
noticing how the grass, drenched with dew, looks like white clouds. “I hear that as a threat,” she tells him.

“I'm sorry. I don't mean it that way,” says Joseph.

“But you always said people on earth could do more for each other than a spirit could. A spirit can't comfort you or put its arms around you late at night. A spirit can't share in your happiness or cry with you when you're sad. It can't love you so much that it makes you feel you belong somewhere. To someone.”

Joseph wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “I've been here a long time and I'm not sticking around forever. Listen, kiddo. I'm getting restless. I'm a traveler at heart. Always have been.”

She has never heard him talk like this before. And yet, here they are. The scene she'd run from her whole life is unraveling in front of her. She'd always imagined that something would happen to him, that his death would come suddenly, just like her parents' deaths had. A car crash. A heart attack. Brain aneurysm. She's thought of every possible catastrophe, played out every scenario. But never this one. Never that he'd be waiting for it, anticipating it, longing for it. She feels betrayed, remembering that night all those years ago when she put her corn-husk doll in the closet. How she lay there, forcing herself to withstand the ache, teaching herself how to say good-bye. She finally understands. It was for this very moment. All the distancing she had done with men was to prepare her for this. “You have to let me take you to the doctor.”

“No doctors. Honey,” Joseph says, taking her face in his hands. “I've lived a long full life. I'm ready. You must respect my choice.”

Echo is panicking. “Pop, you saved my life. Please let me do something.”

“And you saved my life. You never knew that. But you did. I
never told you. I tried to be careful not to make you responsible for me.”

She wipes her eyes. “I can't just stand by and watch this happen to you. I love you more than anything.”

Joseph turns to her. “You have already done everything you were supposed to do for me, a million times over. Given me purpose. Given my life direction. A reason to be. Before you came along I was lost. I'm only here because of you.”

She is sobbing. She is losing him. He is saying good-bye, and talking about it as though she is supposed to just let it happen. They are talking about how he is going to abandon her, leaving her an orphan once more. “It's not okay. I don't understand. Not one part of this.” She puts another pot on the stove so that he can't see her burning eyes. All is silent but for the slight buzzing of the refrigerator. She can't give up on him yet. All feeling in her body is concentrated in her heart. She shudders, bracing uncontrollable sobs. “Once I lose you, I'll be alone,” she confesses. He takes her hands.

“You have Grant now,” Joseph says. She knows he is trying to distract her when he tells her that Grant shouldn't be going to the Cave. That nothing good will come of that place.

“Things are so hard with him. I don't understand him. I found all these statues he'd carved, that he'd hidden in the closet. Then a bird flew right into the window. One minute it had a broken wing. I walked away and when I came back it was fine. I just wanted to leave. To get away.”

“What did you see, honey?”

“Nothing. I came back and the bird flew away. Grant did something. He healed it. I don't know how.” She takes his hand. “But I love him, Pop. I just don't think it can work.”

Joseph turns away and walks to the screen door. Echo
watches him wait there, thinking. She pours another cup of coffee. Her hands are shaking so badly, she can hardly hold the cup.

He turns back to face her. “Let me see your eyes, honey.”

She stares at him a moment, and her eyes well up again.

“There is something you need to know. In a box underneath my bed. Some money and my will. I want you to take care of the store.”

No, no, I can't hear this
, she thinks. “Let's get you to bed.”

“No, I want to be outside. I want to see the trees,” he says. “I need to tell you a story. Things I want you to tell Grant. Promise me you will do this? I'm telling you this because the two of you belong together, and I can't rest until I know that this will be as it should. I don't want you to be alone, honey. I think the story will help him.”

“I promise.” She follows him outside onto the porch. She picks up a wool blanket and places it over his shoulders and they sit, shoulder to shoulder on the bench, looking out at the trees shuddering with morning winds. They don't talk. She waits, and rests her head on his shoulder. They stay like that for about five minutes before Joseph tells her he is cold.

Finally Joseph clears his throat. “I hope this will make Grant see things clearly, what I'm about to tell you.”

“Tell me,” she whispers, afraid. “No more secrets.”

“It began a long time ago. A young man came through these parts in a white VW bus. Darn bus made such a rattle, you couldn't believe it ran. This man was Seneca. Called Two Bears. Now and again, he'd come in here to buy things from me, tobacco, mostly. Only came around at night. He was only a young man of eighteen.

“He wasn't a big talker. But he wanted to help people. He was good with wood, liked to build things. But his real gift was
healing. Of course he was just calling the spirits, he said. They were doing the healing. He'd cool a fever, make arthritis better, you just ask Squeaky Loomis. He's got a story for you. Soon word around town was that there was a healer living in that big old cave on Loomis Hill. But most of the people he helped were Indians. I visited him a few times, watching him grinding his leaves, smoking his pipe. I would go so far as to call him my friend. He'd come here late at night, too. One time, he let me follow him along the trails out near the hills, up near Grant's cabin. He'd leave a piece of turquoise, a shell, something as thanks wherever he took a plant.” Joseph takes a sip of coffee. “Ah, my arm.” Joseph winces.

She takes the cup from him so he doesn't have to hold anything.

“Just a little stiff, that's all. Anyway, his hands.” Joseph holds his hand up and points across the palm. “He was a big man. Tall. So tall that it looked like the clouds rested on his shoulders. Even though he worked with fire and wood all his life, his hands were soft. Most amazing thing, no cracks in the skin, no calluses, nothing. Never lost his sensitivity, you know? Never lost a human being, either, even the stubborn ones wanting to hold on to their illness.”

Echo, listening silently, takes Joseph's hand.

“One day a couple arrived with their daughter, traveled all the way from Niagara Falls to see him. The daughter wouldn't eat, was too sick. Her people said her heart was black.”

Suddenly, a flurry of blackbirds erupts in the trees, creating a loud twitter. “Do you hear those birds out there?” asks Echo. “They're going crazy.”

“They feel the spirits. Don't pay them attention and they'll be quiet. Anyhow, my friend wouldn't believe he could fail, that his spirits could fail. Didn't believe that sometimes you
can't fight the river. That the river is bigger than you. But he took that girl into his cave. Sat with that girl for six days, lighting his fires, grinding his herbs. A few mornings I woke up early and came out here on the porch. I swear I could hear his voice through the trees, saying sacred prayers. He was tangling with the spirits in there. Squeaky Loomis and me had to pull him out of the cave, and the body of the girl. Could hardly tell which one was alive. She was gone. It was a hard lesson. Two Bears had never lost anyone before.

“He couldn't take the failure. He turned his back on the native medicine, lost faith in the spirits, in his tradition. Disappeared. People said it was because of the fight over land at Loomis Hill. But they didn't know it was because when he lost that child, he lost his faith. He moved away. Changed his name. Cut off his long hair. He tried to forget all he knew. But he didn't give up. He was determined to find another way to heal. He became a doctor of Western medicine. A great doctor in this area. He took a wife and he had a son. But he looked different. He fulfilled the prophecy of his name, Two Bears. He lived two lives. No one knew who he had been.”

“I know,” says Echo. She gets up and walks to the railing. She looks out at the shadows climbing from the trees. She is putting it all together. “Ben Shongo,” she whispers, as all of these strange things about Grant start to make sense to her. The time that he sat with her after her bike accident and her face healed. Just last night with the bird.

“It was many years later,” continues Joseph. “I wouldn't have said it was the same man. Even the look in his eyes was different. We never talked about the past. Actually, only once. He asked me never to tell Grant. I had to respect it.”

Echo can't believe what Joseph is telling her. “Why wouldn't
he tell his own son? If he was such a great doctor, why couldn't he help his own wife?” She is confused, agitated. She is thinking about how Grant suffered under the discipline of his father, the rejection he felt. Ben Shongo had too many secrets. She is thinking about Emily Shongo sitting on the porch smoking, imagining the loneliness that woman felt. Everything in her life added up to waiting and patience. How much did Emily know? She wonders. Maybe she was punishing him. Maybe she had given up and the illness was all she had. “Do you think Emily didn't want his help?” she says.

“Don't know for sure. I think of it like this. Illness is like a knot in a tree. How can you just go ripping out that knot? The tree could die. You take away the sickness, you have to fill the hole with something else. You see? But some people are afraid of emptiness.

She thinks about if this knowledge will change Grant. How knowing who he is will make him different. How it will affect him once he knows who his father is.

She wonders if knowing this will hurt him. If this will make him angry at his father, make things worse. Or whether it will release him from all that has kept him walled off from her.

Echo is finally getting answers to her questions about what she has seen all these years. She feels overwhelmed. Tired. Her eyes burn. She wonders how she is going to bring this up to Grant.

“Grant and the birds, Pop? Does this mean that what I thought I saw was real?”

“Honey. This is a sacred place. Certain people can do things.” The birds twitter around them. She can smell lilacs in the air. She leans back against the railing. Joseph gets up, holding his arms a few inches from his sides. For a second, the blackbirds
that have gathered in the nearby trees stop singing. The waves stop lapping at the shoreline and for a moment, there is quiet. “Picture it, honey,” Joseph says, his head tilted back. All lit up in the lamplight, Joseph closes his eyes. “Birds are easy. They don't see illness. They don't know about limits. They assume the currents will carry them. They trust. They jump. They fly. In human terms, it's called blind faith. Blind faith makes you see the world as complete perfection. They're one of the few living creatures that can see the world in this way.” She looks up at the sky, noticing the temperature change. “And that, my dear, is why they can fly.”