Hystopia: A Novel (12 page)

I’d just as soon be out here amid them than with just about anybody.

He turned and looked at her with eyes intense and icy blue. At any moment he’d put his big hands on her, she thought. But it was good to be out in the forest. The trees—a second regrowth after the great scalping harvest of the last century, when the small-gauge lines fed the logs down into the mills, and in turn onto the steamers, and in turn to Chicago, where they went to market. The rails were gone but you could still find traces of their tie work, trails in the deep woods, and you still stumbled upon old encampments that were now nothing more than stone foundations and, when you dug with your trench shovel, the charcoal remains of sawdust fires.

He questioned her. What was it like when you were released into the Grid after being treated, and how the hell did Rake lure you out? What was his technique? Do you think you had something to do with Rake, some connection in the past? Did he grab you and force-feed one of his fucking concoctions into your mouth? She yielded up nothing more than a few grunts. (
Make a story up if you have to give a story, if someone asks you for one, a nurse in the Grid had said, his voice soothing. If it comes down to it, you just have to dig deep and put two and two together and spin something out. It won’t be hard unless you let it be hard. If all else fails, remain silent. If that fails, give the enfolded sign. When you’re done with your rehab in the Grid area, you’ll feel strong enough to take the questions. Here in the Grid, you’ll find a mutual understanding. They won’t ask. The enfolded respect the enfolded, that kind of thing
.)

Deep inside a grove of pines, he got the tent poles in place and unfolded the canvas and pegged it down.

We’ll camp here, he said.

She sat down and watched as he gathered kindling and used his hatchet to sliver bark and carefully built a cone formation, sprinkled dry needles on it and lit it with a match and then blew lightly and then harder as the fire burst, threading a dark trail of smoke up into the higher reaches of the trees where there was still sunlight, and then he stretched out, with his legs tight together, and patted the ground and told her to come up close, to sit.

Thanks, she said, and she went to him and sat. Whatever trust she had once had was gone, but she could imagine a time when she could trust. A guy would introduce her to a guy on a Harley-Davidson, who would offer her a ride upstate, and she’d get on and go.

She had a fragment memory of a hippie encampment surrounded by a biker gang, the leather on their chaps squeaking. The memory had the quality of being dreamed, a false creation. That’s what they said. You’ll make stuff up, drawing from images you’ve seen recently. The rest was in the so-called terminal confusion, the faint memories of the reenactment, residual aspects that formed a shell around the central trauma, the real trauma, that was buried and gone in her memory. A nurse had explained that. His voice was deep. He was gentle
.

A mother lode tree, Hank was saying. The queen of the forest. You feel the lure of a giant tree. Catch the sound of needles singing in Canadian wind. I mean even toothpicks have tripled in price. Those lovely dispensers you see behind the cash register at your mom-and-pop. They’ve been moved behind the counter.

He lit a cigarette and dug through his pack and came out with a can of beer.

Do you think I could go with you? she said. Do you think you could take me up there?

He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and stared into the flames and waited a moment.

We’re in a weird moment in history. I know that’s not an answer to your question, but that’s what came to my mind when you asked.

But you’d take me with you?

I’ve promised not to touch you. I gave Rake my word. It might sound strange to say, but it’s a matter of honor. Mine, not his. If he has a sense of honor, and my gut says he still does, it’s linked with the past. I like to think he still has it.

That’s not an answer, she said, standing up.

You’re getting your lucidity back.

If you heard that queen pine somewhere. If you picked up the sound of it, or the feeling, would you take me with you?

He stared at the fire some more and then went to his pack and took out a pan, a can of beans, some potatoes, and he began to prepare a meal, taking his time, working carefully, opening up the can and then peeling the potatoes with his knife while the sun set and the wind picked up. He was still talking about trees as he worked. His fingers were long and nimble and the care he took made him look less heavy. From time to time he stopped and rubbed his beard and looked at her and shook his head and then returned to his work, stirring the pot with a spoon, adjusting it on the fire.

Would you take me along? she said.

I suppose if I got a sense that the tree was anywhere near here, and I’m talking a proximity of about a hundred miles, because that’s what I think my range is for picking up a scent, then yeah, I’d take you along, but only because I’m governed by larger impulses.

When the potatoes were almost done he took the pan off, holding the handle with a stick, and put it to the side. Then he put a smaller pot on and poured the beans in and began to stir.

When I was a kid my old man took me up here a couple of times a year and we fished and hiked. A couple of weeks in the woods and the rest of the time up on the bridge welding, or out in New York with his Iroquois buddies. He worked high steel until he signed up as a deckhand on a ship. He slipped and almost died on a project in New York, and he used to say, “I almost slipped and went to the ship.” That’s what he used to say. Maybe that’s what he still says. I wouldn’t know because the truth is I don’t see him much, not really at all, and I’m not even sure where he is out there, except to say he’s on the water, I’m sure of that, from spring thaw to winter freeze, and when he’s not on a ship he’s living somewhere down in Toledo or up in Duluth. He’s in Duluth when he’s not in Toledo, but I’d guess he favors Duluth because like me—and I’m guessing here, again—he’s a man who likes the glimmer of northern light and the solitude and—guessing even more—a proximity to good forest of the sort you only get up here, or farther north.

He chewed his food and stared across the fire. The tin plate in her hands felt soft and smooth on the edges. The food was simple and good. She could smell the way the pine sap and smoke mixed in the air, and taste the way the butter melted into the potatoes and then, when she sipped, the whiskey on her tongue.

My taste is coming back, she said.

That’s a good sign. That’s the first step, he said, and then he began to clean his plate with dead leaves. She watched the muscle on his arms and the care he took. She removed her socks, put her feet close to the fire, and enjoyed the feeling of the cold night behind her, against her back.

At one time, he said. At one time the forest could’ve gone on forever, struggling to find light, the small saplings dying off so that the mighty could prevail—over time. That’s what I love about the forest, man, he said.

The bones of his face looked fine in the firelight. He continued talking about lumber barons. He talked about how there were men who went into old houses and took core samples from main beams and dated them and how they could read history from an old stump and see back to the age of Christ, the plagues of bark rot and forest fires, the dry years and the flood years that the tree had survived while humans in their fucking folly marched off to one war and then another and saw their supposedly eternal civilizations fall. He spoke of his time out west, learning a trade, studying the western species, and how one night he had slept in the crook of a beastly old tree, not far from Santa Cruz. He spoke of how it took three men to properly run a cut from one end to the other, taking a beautiful thing, a trunk, and turning it into something even more beautiful—good board feet that could be used to build the west, man—and then he talked about the wastage, the way mills used to dump it until they began to use it to fuel the steam engines themselves, so that the whole thing became cyclical, and the trees were shorn into lumber while they fed the fire with their own sawdust.

The trees might’ve understood what was happening. I might sound crazy saying that, but I’m saying it. You see, if I want to understand something I eventually have to talk about trees. If I don’t talk trees, I don’t really hear the words. If you know what I mean, Meg, he said. The thing is, the stuff I enfolded when I treated myself with the Trip must include a lot of what I once knew about Rake, or maybe I should say know, I can’t remember all the bad shit he did to me and I did with him as his sidekick, the real trauma, and so I have to make a guess that a lot of it was war trauma and not just the shit we did when we got back, because I know we were in the same unit together, he mentioned that, and I think it’s connected somehow with the way I feel about trees, which I can admit have become an obsession, do you get me?

She remained silent for a few minutes—listening to the hiss of wind through pine needles—and then, finally, said, I think so.

If I talk enough I can figure out how to think about something, and if I can think about it, then I can begin finding the right way to talk about it, like the sawdust feeding the mill saws, he said, and then he laughed and took another sip of beer.

A steady breeze was coming in from the lake. He was another male fury of verbiage, and all she could do was listen, to really, really listen, using what seemed to be a newfound ability, because she was starting to hear what this man said, keying into the words, his musical voice, and before she knew it he was onto the subject of Rake.

You know how I think he got his name? He got his name when he took a garden rake and raked this kid’s face. I didn’t see it because I wasn’t with him. This was when he was running with a cluster of vets who had formed a coalition, the one that became the Black Flag gang, and were doing reenactments of battles up at Isle Royal, that island in the middle of Superior. Some kid crossed him the wrong way and he took what was at hand, an old hay rake, and struck him across the face with it. No, not
struck
, that’s not the word—is there another word? He cut three deep paths in the guy’s face, taking out his eyes, is what I was told, and that’s how he got the name Rake.

He dug around for the bottle, found it, held it up to the light, and tipped back a long slug.

She moved around the fire, closer to him, and asked for another drink.

Easy now, he said, passing the bottle.

Why did you enfold yourself? she finally asked. The bottle had gone back and forth a few times and she had taken small sips. It felt good to ask an honest question. She watched as he stared into the fire and thought.

Well, of course I can’t remember. An educated guess would be that I took a lot of drugs and Tripizoid. Let me say it was an unorthodox thing to do, but then whatever they do to you is pretty unorthodox, too, I guess from what I’ve heard. I only know the theories from hearsay. I can only imagine I did it the old-fashioned way. I just reached this point. MomMom, bless her heart, did the tying up. She got a couple of the old man’s belts from the dresser and secured me that way, I think. I told her to tie me up with more rope. Then I told her to prop me in the old barn shed we’ve got at the back of the property and to leave me there for a few days. I knew I’d have to go through the raving bullshit. With all the old hay and nothing much else I wasn’t likely to hurt myself. So after a couple of days in that hell I had the guys come in and we painted our faces—or someone else painted mine, I should say—and I guess they took me out into the field and shot at me, live rounds, and made me dog-crawl my ass for hours: tracer rounds and one of them popped an old claymore—all this ammo left over from the Isle Royale reenactment, he said, and then he paused to catch his breath and to see if she was listening, waiting for an indication, and she nodded and said, Then what, and he said, I like to imagine the fuckers shot each other up they were so into it, and I imagine they came back in Vietcong gear they’d captured, or bartered, and they captured me, or pretended to, and gave me a light torture, nothing too bad, because that’s what might’ve happened to me over there, I guess. On the other hand, for all I know, it was just me and MomMom. For all I know, it was MomMom’s idea in the first place. Right now, I’m not even sure I was in Nam. Not sure at all. If I once knew, I no longer know. The bliss of the Tripizoid high and all that. The mystery of treatment. I had a passion for nature, for trees and for fishing, for the feel of water against my waders and all of that, long before I had a passion for killing, or for being mean. At least I think I did, he said, and then he stopped talking and began to sob, and she went and put her arm around him as he rocked, and then, later, they found themselves going into the tent to sleep, lying foot to head in their blankets until he said, Meg, Meg, are you awake, and shifted around so she could feel his breath as he spoke, and he said, I wasn’t entirely truthful back there, and you were good to listen to me ramble on like that, and when she asked, When weren’t you truthful? He said: Not the stuff about enfolding, but before that, when I told you about Rake and how he got his name, because I imagine, of course it’s enfolded so I don’t really know, that I was there with him and I was the one who gave him the nickname, and I was the one who laughed at the kid with his bleeding face. That’s the kind of guy I was before I had the treatment.

*   *   *

The next morning Hank was up the trail, moving in his swayback motion against the weight of the pack.

She watched as he scraped a trunk with his hatchet and brought her a long sliver of bark with a pale scab of disease, and he held it to her and said, This here is the white pine blister rust. It’ll kill that branch and maybe most of the good lumber in the tree if I don’t amputate. I’ll get the saw out and amputate that limb and maybe, a hundred years from now, somebody will come along and thank me for it. They won’t know who they’re thanking, but they’ll thank me anyway. If there is a future, that is, he said. He went on to explain how easy it was to damage a tree forever. You scrape the bark off a tree with your car. The tree sits there for twenty years slowly dying. Insects bore in, blight, beetles, and then it gives in and dies. The guy with the car died years before that. He went to his grave without knowing what he did, but he did it. That’s what bothers me. It doesn’t bother him because he don’t know about it, but it bothers something. It has to bother something.