The Man in the Tree (19 page)

"All we can do is go back the way we came, and just head for Elvis. We'll
get there late."
"Yeah. Well -- " Larry put the truck into gear and drove around the curve
of the loop. Where the road straightened again, it led under the bulk
of a tall structure on posts that straddled the road. "What's that?" the
giant asked.
"A hopper. Where they load coal, I guess." As they drove under it, something
white flashed toward them, a leaping figure, arms waving. Larry hit the
brakes; the engine died. He had just time to see that the pale figure
was a dummy, a scarecrow with a face, jerking and swinging in front of
the windshield. Then the cab shook to an insane roar; the figure was gone
behind a tumbling stream of darkness that cascaded past the windshield.
"Back up!" the giant said sharply.
The roar continued, like nothing Larry had ever heard. His arms were
trembling, and he couldn't feel the gearshift lever. He got it into
neutral somehow, turned on the engine, then shifted into reverse. When
he let out the clutch, nothing seemed to happen. The cab rocked a little,
but the roar continued and the dark cascade kept on falling.
"You're just spinning the wheels," the giant shouted in his ear. "Try
forward. Hurry up!"
Larry slammed the gearshift lever into first. It was a moment before he
realized that he had killed the engine again. He felt dizzy, and it was
hard to focus his eyes: he was trembling all over. He got the engine
started, let the clutch out and stepped on the gas. Nothing happened,
except that the cab shuddered and slewed a little.
"Oh, God!" said Larry. His voice was stifled inside his head by the
unending, maddening roar. He jammed the gas pedal down, again and
again. The idiot lights went on; he had killed the engine once more. He
reached for the start button, but the giant's hand covered his. "Don't,"
said the voice in his ear. "The exhaust stacks must be covered by
now. Leave it off."
"What?" he said. "I don't -- Oh, God, oh, God!" He wrenched his hand away,
grabbed the steering wheel and tried to shake it, then thought of the door
handle and reached for it, but it would not move. The giant's arm came
around him, pinning him to the seat. "Easy," said the voice. "Easy. Take
it easy."
The roar went on echoing unbearably in the cab, like an avalanche,
a river of stone; darkness hurried past the windshield, the side
windows."Easy!" Larry said. "Oh, God!" His mouth wouldn't work right,
and when he wiped it with his sleeve, he found that his face was wet
with tears.
Bits of the solid darkness were bounding upward from the hood. Larry
stared uncomprehendingly; then he saw the edge of the black mass
creeping up from the bottom of the windshield. It was rising all around
them. Coal! They were being buried in coal! He screamed and fought,
but the giant would not let him go.
Remorseless as sand in an hourglass, the darkness rose over the windshield.
Now there was only a narrow stripe at the top where the black torrent was
still falling. Now even that was gone. In the yellow dome light, the
windshield and side windows were masked by a solid layer of tiny
gray-glistening bits of coal. The sound had changed; it was more furious
than ever on the roof, but muffled all around.
Then there was another change: the roar of the falling coal was receding
above their heads, dwindling, distant. At last it stopped. Larry could
hear nothing but the painful ringing in his ears. The giant held
him firmly. "Listen," he said. "Listen. We're going to get out. You
understand me?"
"Get out," said Larry. He heard how weak his voice was, but he couldn't
help it. "How we going to get out?"
"I'll show you after a while. Right now we have to wait."
"Wait, why?"
"Because the man who did this is still out there." He let go of
Larry. "Okay now?"
Larry wiped his face with his sleeve. "You know who did it?"
"I think so. It's a man who wants to kill me."
Larry looked at him in wonder. The giant's mouth was set in an expression
he could not read: it was not anger or sadness, but something else.
He could feel his body still trembling; he was cold all the way through,
as cold as if he were already dead. Through the ringing in his ears he
could feel the silence. There was nothing out there, nothing but stillness;
it was like being entombed in the heart of a mountain. After a moment
he fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.
"Better not," said the giant. "The air."
"Oh. How long can we -- ?"
"I don't know. Long enough, but it won't help if we fill the cab with
smoke."
They listened to the silence. The giant said, "You remember that thing
that jumped at us? What did it look like?"
"I dunno. It happened so quick. A dummy, I guess, like a scarecrow."
"The face? Did you see the face?"
"Yeah."
"Was it a kid's face?"
"Maybe. Yeah, I guess so. Listen, couldn't we break a window -- "
"The coal would come in."
"Yeah, but we could pull the coal in and then get out the window.'"
"Unless there's too much coal. Even if there isn't, I told you, the man
who did this is still out there. We've got to wait."
"How long?"
"Till he goes away."
"Okay, if you say so." Larry fidgeted. "I gotta piss," he said, and
clamped his knees together. "Oh, Jesus."
"Is there a bottle or something?"
He remembered the Coke bottle, reached for it, and unzipped his pants. It
was hard to direct the stream through the narrow neck of the bottle; some
of it ran down outside and some sprayed. He offered the half-full bottle
to the giant. "Do you want -- ?"
"No, I'll wait." Suddenly the giant raised his head. "He's gone."
"You sure?"
"Yes."
"What do we do now?"
"Wait awhile, just to make sure he doesn't come back."
After a moment Larry heard himself saying, "There was a story we read
in school, the cask of something -- "
"'The Cask of Amontillado'?"
"Yeah, that was it. Where they wall up this guy in the cellar?"
"'For the love of God, Montresor.' I remember."
"Yeah, when he put in the last brick. That scared the hell out of me."
"Try not to think about it."
"Some kids locked me in a closet once, when I was little."
"Where was that, in Cleveland?"
"Yeah. I can remember how it smelled in there. Kind of dead air. Ever
since then -- "
"What did your folks do?"
"My old man's an engineer with the power company. He was sore when I
dropped out of school Then he wanted me to volunteer for the army. Listen,
it's getting real hard to breathe in here. Can you really do it, because
if you can for God's sake will you do it?"
"All right." The giant turned away and put his hands on the window.
"That's jammed," Larry said.
"I know it. Shut up a minute."
Larry waited. After a few moments he heard a curious rustling sound. He
leaned to look past the giant's body, and saw with disbelief that the
particles of coal were sliding down past the window.
The giant let his head hang for a moment, took a deep breath, and
straightened again. The rustling sound resumed. Suddenly a shaft of pale
light came in at the top of the window. It was the most beautiful and
unexpected thing Larry had ever seen. It widened into a wedge-shape,
expanding slowly and steadily. "What are you doing?" he whispered.
"Getting rid of the coal," said the giant. He lowered his. head for a
moment, raised it again. The wedge of daylight steadily widened; Larry
could see now that a funnel was forming in the coal beyond the door,
particles pouring down the sides as if they were falling into a hole
somewhere.
The giant opened the door and stepped out. Larry followed him. They
were in a semicircular hollow space; beyond it the coal was still heaped
chest-high. The buildings around them were silent and almost shadowless
in the morning light; the sky was a pale greenish blue, and the air
was scented with moisture. Larry filled his lungs again and again,
experiencing the incredible fact that he was alive.
The giant was climbing the slope. Larry scrambled up after him on hands
and knees, got over the top and down the other side.
The giant was a few yards away, staring at the front of the mound. After
a moment Larry saw what he was looking at: a thin copper wire hung from
a stairway on the hopper almost to the mound of coal. Another piece,
not attached to anything, lay in loops on the road. "That's where he
hung the dummy," the giant said. "He must have taken it away again. I
was hoping it was still here."
He turned, and they walked around to the back. The mound of coal covered
all but the last five feet of the trailer. The giant turned long enough
to say, "See if you can find a shovel. They must have some around for
cleanup."
When he came back with the shovel, the giant was standing at the side
of the mound. Directly in front of him, Larry could see that a little
funnel-shaped space had formed high on the slope, exposing the top of
the door. As he watched, the funnel deepened abruptly. There was a pause,
and it deepened again.
The giant looked around and saw him. "Dig," he said.
"It'll take me all day to shovel this. Why can't you -- "
"I can't do much at a time. Shut up and dig."
By the time they had cleared the door, it was full daylight. Sweat was
dripping from Larry's chin; the giant looked haggard and ill. Inside,
the lighted interior of the trailer was like a room in a cave. The
giant climbed in slowly, took off his robe and began to dress. When he
was finished, he wandered around the trailer and put a few things in
his pockets, then took a suitcase out of the storage space under the
bed. "Let's go."
"Aren't you going to put anything in that?"
"No, it doesn't matter."
Out in the road, the giant put the suitcase down. "This had better be
good-bye. I can't go back to the carnival, and I wish you wouldn't either,
because that's the first place he'll look. It would be easy enough for
him to find out you were my driver. You understand?" He took some bills
out of his pocket and handed them to Larry. "Take this and buy yourself
a car, or get on the train and go wherever you want. And by the way,
if there's anything in the trailer you want, help yourself."
"What are you going to do?"
The giant smiled faintly. "I'm going to find a place in the woods to
sleep for about eight hours. After that -- it's better if you don't
know. Good luck to you, Larry." He turned and walked away.
Larry looked at the money in his hand. The first bill was a hundred
dollars, and so was the next, and the next . . . there were thirty of
them. When he looked up, the giant was already out of sight around the
curve of the road.
Chapter Sixteen
In October of that year Gene Anderson landed in Le Havre, where he joined
Le Cirque Tripp, a small traveling circus and sideshow. During the next
few years he moved often from one circus or carnival to another; by the
time he was twenty-six he had visited every country in Europe. He changed
his professional name many times. in Great Britain he was John Livingston;
in France, Belgium, and Holland, Peter Owen, le géant gallois; in Italy
and Greece, Robert Lee. In his twenty-sixth year he grew only half an
inch: he was then eight feet four inches tall.
On a post at the side of his booth Anderson always taped a little card
with the names of his childhood pen-pals on it: Gerd Heilbrunner,
Claudina Neri, Yves Morand. One day in Paris, a woman said to him,
"Why do you have my name on your card?"
He looked at her intently. She was blond, slender, erect, with a thin
aristocratic nose: not pretty but handsome. "Are you Claudina Neri?"
"I was. Who are you?."
"Gene Anderson. We used to correspond. I'm very glad to meet you."
She put her hand in his and withdrew it. "My God!" she said. "I had
forgotten, I was a girl at school. Let me think, you lived in -- what
was it, Washington?"
"Oregon."
"You never told me you were a giant."
"I wasn't one then."
Two people were holding up photographs for him to sign. Claudina Neri
wrote something on a card and handed it to him. "This is where I am
staying. Come and see me."
They met the next morning at her hotel. Her name was Faure now. Her
husband was Belgian; she had married when she was eighteen. They lived in
Antwerp; she came to Paris once or twice a year for the shopping. There
was also a villa in Nice, and she spoke of frequent trips to Rome,
Florence, Athens. Her father was Italian, her mother German; she spoke
French, English, Italian, German, Spanish.
"You are an extraordinary person," she told him at breakfast. "It is
wrong of you to be so ignorant."
"I didn't have your advantages," Anderson said.
"If you mean the convent school, it was purgatory for me. I tried twice
to commit suicide before I was sixteen. I was educated by force. You
must educate yourself. Read, learn, think."
She made him speak French and corrected his mistakes; she also criticized
his table manners. "A polite person does not use his fork like a shovel,
to scoop food into his mouth, nor use his fingers to push food onto
his fork."
They spent three mornings together before the circus left for Orléans,
and after that Anderson saw her nearly every year. She seldom spoke
of her husband, and Anderson met him only once, in the summer of 1968:
a dark-haired man with pomaded hair, whose manners were almost too
exquisite. She took him to the Louvre, which he disliked, and to the
Jeu de Paume and the Orangerie, where he found all the Impressionists
whose work was still excluded from the Louvre. He discovered, however,
that very good postcard reproductions of Monet and van Gogh were for sale
in the gift shop of the Louvre; he bought stacks of these and carried
them with him for years.
They went to Notre Dame de Paris, in whose vast shadowy vault the rose
windows stared down like celestial mandalas. Anderson was moved beyond
speech. A woman near them was talking loudly and angrily in German.
"Everyone hates the Germans," Claudina remarked afterward, when they
were sitting in the sunlight at a brasserie across the street from
the cathedral.
"Because they invaded France?"
"No, just because they are Germans."
Once when she protested that he was paying too much at a restaurant,
he said, "Don't worry about the money; I have plenty."