The Language of Trees (3 page)

Night after night, the boy tugs him out the door, barely leaving him enough time to pull on a shirt. When Grant is with the boy, he can fly. Luke is weightless, floating effortlessly through the air. Together, they travel the entire lake from south to north, skipping over the creek bed that runs through the gorge of Clark's Gully, then darting in and out of two cascading waterfalls dropping over sixty feet, and down through Vine Valley. Then to the top of Bare Hill where they can see the whole lake for miles. Afterward they climb among the forgotten vineyards, where Luke likes to blow the dew off the clusters of grapes peeking out from the broken wire trellises. Sometimes they hover over the dusky blue road that leads north to town, floating in and out of old barns, half-charred from a fire that seared the woods one summer, leaving everything thirsty. Luke likes mischief, likes to race to the northern end of the lake to pull hay from stacks that dot the farmlands, to tickle the udders of cows, his blue eyes dancing as they rise above Ganondagan State Historic Site, 10 miles north of the city of Canandaigua, where a replica longhouse now stands.

With Luke leading the way, they zigzag through the city of Canandaigua, stopping at Scoops Ice Cream Stand near the marina, and then to a place on the shore, where they can see Squaw Island.

From there, they drift near the people who still long for Luke. It is because their thoughts call to him; they are sweet, like the sugar “rock” candy he used to get from the Feed & Grain. They go into the backyard of Luke's mother, Leila, where Luke likes to rest in the branches of her overgrown lilac bush, so full with blossoms in May that it dwarfs the headstone that bears his name; then across the rooftop and along the leaf-swollen
gutters of her next-door neighbor, Clarisse Mellon; and finally to his sister Melanie's new apartment in town on Highland Avenue, with its fire red door and purple trim, before careening back to the place where the deep pink bloom of wild peas meets the highway. On their way back to the cabin, Luke is trying to lead Grant to O'Connell's Feed & Grain, but Grant is not ready yet. He isn't ready.

 

G
RANT CAN STILL REMEMBER
the months in Rochester after Susanna left. The weeks of bad winter storms. The darkness of dense, ceaseless snow. The three errant blackbirds, wings coated in ice, that circled above the house, landing each night on the telephone wires like glistening upside-down icicles. The wet spot on the doormat where he left his boots that never seemed to dry. He vaguely recalls digging a neighbor's car out of the driveway. Other than that, nothing. He's sure he taught his English classes at Hallandale Arts Academy, an alternative school for underachieving boys. Positive his students thought he was losing it, coming in day after day with bruisy eyes and an absentmindedness they'd whisper to be the effects of alcohol, or pot. He was a favorite teacher, but even a wry sense of humor couldn't hide his ineptitude after a while. These boys weren't the types to suffer with a teacher that just showed up to hand out, God forbid, worksheets.

Still, that's exactly what Grant had done for months, until Dean Stiles called him into his office to say he was letting him go a few months early to “get himself together.” Arrangements had already been made for someone else to handle final exams even though Grant's contract was being renewed for another year.

“I deserve a lot less,” Grant said, as sunlight bleared in through the shades. His fingers traced cracks in the leather
arms of a chair that had supported hundreds of young boys with dignity, whether they knew it or not.

“It's time to deal with it. You've got to address this thing.”

The dean removed his glasses and pointed to a paperweight in the corner of his desk. The egg-shaped crystal was a gift from the parents of a failing student named Alden James whom Grant had turned around.

“You did this,” the dean said, holding the crystal in both hands. At the start of his popular ninth-grade “Not Nice Novels” class, Grant had created an entirely new curriculum for Alden, tailored to his only interest—horror. All the after-school hours of tutoring paid off. No one could believe that the gaunt-faced delinquent had scored 750 on his SATs. Grant had become a school hero, and Alden, Hallandale's greatest success story.

“You saved that kid. And others. Good teachers are worth fighting for, just like good kids,” the dean said.

Sunlight rushed through the crystal and into Grant's eyes, causing them to water. He felt unable to locate an ounce of faith in his body. Grant had argued, the words shooting out with force. He felt unable to tolerate positive feedback for fear it would rip into his delicate armor. He had become more like his students than he realized.

“Look,” said the dean. “You need to figure out how much of the stuff you have going on is out there, and how much is in here.” The dean held his hand over his own shirt pocket. “Come August, I'll fire you if that's what you want, all right? But a few months of introspection won't kill you.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Grant told him as the dean walked out, leaving him alone in the leather chair.

That night Grant packed a bag and drove 35 miles down the New York State Thruway to exit 44, for the first time in five years.

 

I
N THE LIVING ROOM
, Grant eyes a patch of sunlight that has spilled all around the broken glass. He kicks apart the circle, displacing the pieces of glass. Grant grabs his mother's old gardening gloves and a plastic garbage bag. He could take off the gloves. He could clear the rough edges of the window frame with his bare hands until they are cut up and bloody. But he opens the screen door to let the air wash his face clean of these thoughts. At once, he's caught by the hiss of wind sweeping over leaves as it rushes in from the head of Canandaigua Lake.

 

O
UTSIDE, THE EARTH IS
cold and wet under his bare feet. The sun is beginning to spray hints of lacquer across the lake. Ahead, an old birch has fallen into the water. Grant steps carefully onto the smooth trunk, pacing farther and farther as though the lake were pulling him toward its center. He has always felt things in his body first, his mind taking longer to catch up. Sometimes the intensity of the feeling has propelled him into action. Other times, it has paralyzed him.

Grant can feel the soul of the old tree beneath his feet, ceaseless and forgiving, knowing it has only itself to blame, never having settled its roots deep enough into the rocky ground. He moves forward as waves crash against the breakwall, their frothing crest swelling back as the water underneath rushes forward. Does he have a right to anything more than a few moments of clarity?

If he can just get out there near the fallen tree. There, a bit farther, where the trout are dancing.

Grant is suddenly aware of the scent of a dying bonfire trickling in from up shore. He looks up. A heron is standing on the dock a few feet away, its narrow head tucked between its
shoulders. Its ember eyes are motionless. This bird's meditative quiet reminds him of something he has lost. Every morning after carving, Grant walks out to the dock to join the herons in their perfect stillness. Years ago, the heron's lightning speed awed him as it speared its prey. Now it's the bird's patience that impresses him.

He glances back at the screened-in porch in the front of the cabin, which looks small and dark, with its rough graying wood, wide broken window, and slatted sunken roof that may not withstand another winter. It looks safe somehow, huddled under the trees.

He'll throw himself into fixing up the cabin. Hadn't his father rebuilt his mother's kitchen four times in the years after she died? That was the way his father dealt with loss. It was then that Grant saw how human beings needed a way to put their hands on grief, to hold it as though it were the lost loved one. Grant was twenty-three when his mother passed, and after years, he still hadn't gotten over his breakup with Echo O'Connell.

He had listened outside his parents' bedroom door to his father's muffled sobs over the loss of his mother, to the footsteps pacing back and forth, sometimes until dawn.

Each day Grant stood motionless as his father wore his grief deep into the wooden floorboards. As Grant placed his hands on the door, he could actually feel them going numb. Later, Grant would creep downstairs into his father's dark study, where light slithered through the blinds and across the shelves lined with animal carvings, and across the dust-heavy desk, circling the stethoscope, and the pencil case, which always held freshly sharpened pencils, tips up, along with one tall feather, and then around the mahogany-framed photograph of his mother smiling sideways at someone Grant had always imagined was him
self, though he did not remember it. Grant sat in his father's high-backed chair, just as he had done as a child, trying to position his head so that it fit into the impression of his father's head. He would stare at his father's black doctor's bag on the floor in the corner. Then, he'd close his eyes and wait for the scene to become clearer, that of his mother waving from way out in the water, and his father's six-foot, six-inch giant frame walking toward her right into the lake until only the back of his head could be seen. Panicked, Grant had rubbed the worn velvet over the arms just as he had seen his father do after his mother became ill, to hold on to every piece of her, even the skin and the prints.

His father strongly believed the words of his Seneca ancestors. That when a man left this lifetime without repenting for his sins, the Punisher would take him in his hands and turn him into ash. Then he'd spread him into earth to do everything all over again.

Two years later, when Dr. Ben Shongo died in his sleep, they couldn't find a thing wrong with him. Even though a man of his height was prone to heart trouble, they hadn't found one medical irregularity. But even Grant knew about his father's broken heart. And he still hasn't forgiven himself for his cowardice, for not going into his father's bedroom and trying to help way back then. Too afraid of what he might have seen.

Coming back to Canandaigua is about making something new.

When he actually thinks about it, the list is manageable. Repairing the phone can wait. There's no one he wishes to talk to. But both the window and the linoleum that's peeling up from the kitchen floor are another story.

The wooden entryway is scuffed from hiking boots and could use a good sanding. Scattered embers from the fireplace
have singed the yellow shag carpeting. It's not all a throwaway, though. The canary yellow walls are actually not as dismal as he'd remembered. Perhaps he'll buy a watercolor from one of those galleries in town. Maybe one with autumn trees. He could even plant tomatoes if he wanted, the kind that grow so furiously and impatiently, they'll split themselves open right on the vine.

Thankfully, there's work to be done. This is why he is about to walk to O'Connell's Feed & Grain. It's eight miles down the road but it's the best place he knows for supplies. He has to get his mind off the tracks of coal footprints now zigzagging all across the room, leading right to the basement door that has suddenly been thrown open. The spirit of Luke Ellis will get what he wanted after all.

O
NE DAY OUT OF
the year, the mayflies swarm Canandaigua Lake. Their lifespan of twenty-four hours is entirely consumed by the search for a mate. In that time, they are so frenzied, so drunk with love, that the faintest wind blows them into cobwebs and porch screens. Their sail-like wings stand perpendicular from their thin bodies as they tumble and collide, mating in the air. There are so many of them that they coat the docks, landing on everything in sight. After mating and just before dying, the females fly over the water, dropping thousands of eggs back into the lake, their children sinking to the muddy bottom.

Grant pulls up his collar to keep the flies away. He takes off, running down East Lake Road to O'Connell's Feed & Grain, halfway between the lake's north and south ends. He can see that a hazy light has begun to spill through the downed leaves, turning the water into a smooth sheet of glass. It is just a matter of a few hours before the mayflies are in their glory. The swallows are already having a feast, darting back and forth an inch above the lustrous lake.

Up on the road, the phone lines are down, but Grant's not
even angry about the inconvenience or the mess. The storm has forced him to leave the cabin for the first time in three weeks. It's time to set his eyes on another human being, if only to prove that one exists. He passes a row of identical small clapboards. Clarisse Mellon is one of the few people out. Kneeling in her garden, she waves a muddy-gloved hand. “The swarm's coming! Tough day to be out!” she calls, holding up a very large smooth white stone. He waves, wondering whether she'll actually wait until he is out of sight before she runs to a neighbor's house to spread the news of his emergence. Still, the rest of the place is fairly quiet but for the birds. All the pets in the neighborhood have been brought inside because of the may-flies.

The Feed & Grain is hedged in on either side by an eighty-foot fence of Northern red oak. Grant stops. He's near enough now to see Joseph O'Connell's shock of white hair. The old man is standing on the porch steps, scratching his ruddy face and puffing on his pipe. The chalky smoke from his tobacco curls in tendrils over the roof.

Behind him, Squeaky Loomis is seated on an old wooden soapbox, near a card table where he and Joseph usually play yukor. They do this to pass the time in grizzly to fair weather, telling stories, sharing bits of news. Joseph is a man of tradition, and the fact that men gather here to talk for hours, just as they did in the twenties, when this was the original Farmers Co-op, is thanks to him. On cold mornings, men still wake before sunrise to crowd around the potbellied stove. Embraces are still common. Grant has seen many, for this is one of the few places on earth where men will tell their secrets.

On the morning of his twelfth birthday, Grant's father brought him to O'Connell's to have coffee with the men before they put out the docks. It had been a frozen morning, but
Grant was thrilled, feeling the trill of happiness for the first time in years. The distance and rejection he felt from his father had left him with a terrible stutter that all but choked his voice. He hadn't felt comfortable anywhere on earth. But sipping that bitter black coffee had strengthened him. It meant that his father considered him a worthy human being, capable of being in this place, with these men, who seemed as much a part of this land as the trees, the memory keepers of a secret history. Grant had loved every minute of it, listening, taking it all in. They didn't care that he could hardly manage a hello. Because he was with his father, they had accepted him unconditionally as one of them. Grant sat in front of the lit stove that morning listening to Joseph talk about his missionary work in Kenya, about the Wataita people, and about the spirits of the Seneca ancestors here in Canandaigua that whispered across the lake. Years later, when Grant had come back with Susanna, there was a new ghost story—that of little Luke Ellis, who had drowned in the lake twelve years earlier. Squeaky Loomis claimed to have seen his ghost hovering in the branches of Leila Ellis's huge lilac bush when he was ambling by on his early-morning walk. He had reported that he was suddenly met by Clarisse Mellon, who lived next door and had seen Luke several times, she whispered, usually just before a rainstorm.

Joseph O'Connell is making his way down the steps, waving his cane. “For Pete's sake, boy, where have you been?” Joseph bellows. The old man is like a grandfather, a bit of a folk hero, mainly due to his belief in the goodness of the human spirit, which he'd remind anyone of in the event they forgot. Grant doesn't even need to inhale the scent of the cherry tobacco to know that Joseph's pipe is filled with it.

When Joseph embraces him, Grant's body becomes a sponge,
absorbing all the warmth it can. Why an embrace should make him feel sad, he's not sure. He's worried he won't know when to let go, or that he won't be able to.

Joseph gives Grant a customary pat on the back, a hugger's traffic signal. “Sorry,” Grant whispers, letting go so Joseph can breathe again. Seeing Joseph again is completely disarming and Grant can't believe the relief he feels.

“No apologies. Just glad you're here,” Joseph says, swatting at the flies with his cane. “Now come up and say hello. Folks have missed you.”

“Window's broken,” Grant explains to no one in particular as he follows Joseph up the steps. He finds himself staring at a spider web stretched under the porch light. It's marked with the first of its victims: A mayfly's forked tail twitches slightly, caught in the threads.

“So, the silence getting to you, finally?” Squeaky asks as he pulls his fishing hat down over his pink whiskey face, forcing tufts of white hair over his ears. He smiles quickly at Grant, and then fastens his yellowed eyes on the game of cards. The fact is he can recognize desperation on a man's face as easily as he can spot lichens on a sugar maple and it makes him uncomfortable.

“We've been wondering how you're doing,” Joseph explains.

“Oh, can't complain.” Grant shrugs and looks away.

He doesn't want to have to tell the story of Susanna. Anyhow, there's a good likelihood Joseph already knows enough of it. For the first time ever, Grant Shongo is thankful for gossip.

“Complaining's one of life's little pleasures.” Squeaky laughs. Joseph closes his eyes and nods, as though this was the most covetous secret they share. Both complaining and remembering provide a reason for breathing. They talk about the legendary Canandaigua snake monster that was said to coil the seaweed
in Canandaigua Lake. That mysterious giant on Squaw Island kept the serpent as a pet, folks said, and he buried the heads of lost swimmers in the sand until it was the serpent's feeding time.

“Pride's an enemy, boy,” Joseph says, his emerald eyes splashing up, knowing Grant won't discuss his failed marriage.

Speech is difficult under the tidal wave of emotion. Grant hedges, looks down. He's lost weight. The old Syracuse University sweatshirt hangs off him in tatters. At thirty-three, it is only by the grace of good genes that his muscles have any definition at all. He could be the ramen noodles poster man. He's lived on it. He could write a jingle about the wonders of ramen noodles soup.

“You'll be okay, you hear?”

“Sure, Joe, I'm doing fine.”

“You know we got a snowy owl around here now?” asks Joseph. “Come all the way from the Arctic, got lost up this way. Only seen him once up there in the trees. Real big, fat white thing. Folks say he fell in love with the snow and hasn't gone back. Thinks he's home.”

“That so?” asks Grant.

“Caught up by the quiet, I imagine. But not too wise for an owl,” says Squeaky, who is trying not to stare. The truth is, people have been waiting for Grant to show up for weeks, if only to have something new to report. No one wants to be that openly nosy, but any kind of change is news around here. It doesn't take much in a town where some of the men have donned the same flannel shirt every winter for twenty years. These men will tell you that at a certain age there is no need for new things. Almost always, what a man had in the beginning would've served him. The need for newness can make him wreck his life if he doesn't grow wise to it.

“Well, one thing's certain,” Joseph says, cracking the silence. “There's not much left of you. Skin and bones.”

Grant puts his hands in his pockets and turns away. “Your place needs painting,” he says.

“Grant, folks tell me things. Remember where you are. Word travels faster than a runaway train 'round here. Now I don't pry. You know I don't have a need to. But when old friends are concerned—”

“I could paint it,” Grant interrupts, looking around.

Squeaky has the feeling that he is fading off into the background. It happens naturally these days. It's a product of being old and male, of sitting in khaki gabardines for too long with aching joints, in his daughter-in-law's house, in his doctor's office, or on the peeling steps of this old porch. Everyone thinks an old man's face is a puzzle. People try to squeeze wisdom from him as though it were juice from an orange, convinced his wrinkles speak of troubles, even though this belies the way he feels. In reality, he has never felt better, his biggest worry these days, where and what he will have for his supper.

Grant looks at Joseph. “I should get that duct tape. Tornado broke the window.”

“Biggest tornado in years,” says Squeaky, trying to hold his attention. “Heck, now you got a reason to fix it up. You might think about renting your place after that. Scout Point's prime real estate. Property's skyrocketed. Cottages are renting for six thousand dollars a month. We'd all be rich if we'd sell. They just want to knock down what we got and build fancy mansions anyway.”

The lake has become a favorite spot for boating, fishing, scuba and the best summer living. This land has always been invaluable to somebody. Humphrey Bogart spent his summers on Canandaigua Lake, along with many a wealthy landowner.
Before that, local fishermen posted their shacks along the lake. Hundreds of years before the first white settlers arrived, in the 1700s, the Seneca lived along these banks. But Grant is certain his ancestors wouldn't like the activity, even if this is now one of the most expensive lakefront properties in the nation.

“You hear about Squaw Island? Not bigger than the size of two tennis courts now. State won't maintain it anymore. Doris headed up a citizen action committee to take over its protection.” Grant looks out at the lake. He can see Squaw Island in the distance, now walled off with heavy granite boulders that protect it from the wind, ice, and changing water currents from boat wakes that have altered the lake's wave patterns. The island, an eroding sandbar, had been deemed New York State's smallest state park, and was forbidden to visitors, due to its fragility. Once two acres, now it was one quarter the size.

“Don't worry, I won't ever sell,” Grant says, and starts inside.

“Just like your father, zipping off like a mystery.” Joseph shakes his head in the silence, puffs hard on his pipe. “You're not the only one who's had troubles. We've all been there. Every one of us has walked across the bottom of this lake, boy, at least once.”

Grant stops and turns around. There are a million things Grant could say to the old man right now, but not a one would be the thought of a sane man. He could tell Joseph he has whittled twenty-one statues, one for every day he has been back at the lake. That he thought about impaling himself on the barbecue fork at least three times. And at night, well, that's the ultimate in lucid dreaming. You see, he could explain, the goddamn ghost of Luke Ellis has been taking me flying for almost a month now.

“I know what you're thinking. It's all over your face,” says
Joseph. “Listen, you'll be okay. You're a good man. Don't forget it.”

Grant looks down, examining the frayed cuffs of his sweatshirt. If you only knew how I have wrecked my life, he thinks.

Joseph, holding up his hand, starts to speak. “When you were this high? You'd be standing there wearing your father's coat, wearing his stethoscope around your neck, and your yellow high-water boots up to your knees. Watching me like a hawk, making sure I wasn't cheating your mother out of her groceries. You were a pain, you know. Corrected my math more times than I can count. Then, of course, you and Echo. Boy, one wrong move and I'd have tracked you down myself.”

Grant startles at hearing her name. He smiles, despite himself.

“I suppose I should confess that I cheated you out of a few loaves of bread,” Grant says, trying to change the subject, swatting a few more flies that get right into his face.

“I don't buy it. You didn't have the heart,” Joseph tells him.

Squeaky gets up. Waving bugs away is too distracting and it's aggravating his arthritis. “Let's all go in then,” Joseph suggests, but Grant doesn't hear. He's looking at the moving trees. He recalls Echo was like that, restless like the trees.

 

E
ACH SUMMER, WHEN THE
Naples vineyards were thick with sweet June air that inflated the clouds for miles, Grant and Echo would bicycle through Vine Valley. They would pass crowds of sheep and dairy cattle, and the old farms where equipment had been left to rust like skeletons in the hay. Old-timers would stop work to tell them about the days when wild grape vines, bees, and rattlesnakes festered on the Valley floor, and it was common to see a neighbor covered with welts as he passed on
the street, or stood in the scorching sun as he cleared the space for planting.

Inside abandoned barns, Grant and Echo climbed over reams of old carpets, amidst spider webs sagging in the heat. Echo would sift through countless antique hope chests in pursuit of the mystical crazy quilts. Within these patternless cloths, she explained, you could sense the quilter's personality. You could read her entire life in those zigzag seams, faded prints and discordant shapes, for these spoke of the secret stories, the ones the quilter never talked about but instead sewed into her memory: the scraps of shirts of the men she never thought she would fall in love with, and the hems of skirts worn by the daughters she never thought would leave her. The cloth worn over a lifetime held threads of the deepest truth, Echo said. She'd once uncovered a century-old quilt that had handprints of several family members embroidered in its center, along with the dates of their births and deaths. Echo had buried her face in the soft threadbare material, as though trying to inhale the family ancestry. Being orphaned had robbed her of her own stories.