The Boys in the Trees (25 page)

•  •  •

From where they were they could see the apparatus, the raw new wood that had been sliced from a tree growing tall and straight, maybe somewhere not far away. A tree that, growing, looked just like all the other ones around it, the ones that would make kitchen tables or a little boy’s sled, the house that he lived in. The crossbeam was high, and sun flashed now and then on the pulley the rope ran through. One end of the rope canted over to the upright, ran down the side and merged into a tangle of other ropes, some of them holding the weight the newspaper had described, hanging ten feet off the ground. The other end was the noose, dangling down in the middle at a man’s height. It looked just like the picture of the noose that had been around Drifter Dan’s neck on the cover of
Fiends of the Wild West
and
that gave Eaton a start, like something that was just a story had come to life.

Shiner said the Hangman would have come on the midnight train, his hat pulled low so no one could see his face. A shiny black case carrying his own coiled rope, the one that they now saw hanging, completely still. He said that the Hangman traveled from place to place, as he was needed. That no one knew what his real name was, that he was notified by a coded message in the newspaper, the same way King Carter got in touch with the Boy Detective. Between times he lived alone in a tall dark house, and who knew what he did? Counted his piles of gold or cracked small animals’ bones, or strung up unlucky strangers for practice.

•  •  •

Eaton decided it was more like a fair than a revival after all. Loud voices and laughter and the men lower down in their tree trying to make each other fall. But they must have been listening hard all the same; the squeak of the door hinge was not very loud but they all fell silent as a group of men filed out of the jail, crossed the yard and stood near the scaffold. Maybe ten or twelve of them, most in dark coats, most with familiar faces.

There was still a low rumble from the crowd outside the front gate, but then someone gave one shrill whistle and that stopped too. The eight o’clock bell began to toll and while the last stroke still shivered, Reverend Toller appeared in his long white robes, a book open in his hands, and there was a hiss of indrawn breath that seemed to come from everywhere. Rachel’s father was behind him, his neck looking strange, no collar on his shirt. His arms were bound behind his back, the same way he held them when he paced in the Sunday school, listening to them recite
their verses. The sheriff was a little behind and to the side, one hand out as if to steady, but although Heath walked slowly, he didn’t stumble. Behind the sheriff, two jailers in their uniforms, and between them a man with short, carroty hair, wrists hanging out of a too-small jacket. Then Eaton’s father and that gave him a start, like seeing the noose. He must have known his father would be there but he hadn’t really thought about it and he watched him now, keeping pace with the procession, and remembered him reading in his chair the night before, remembered him saying good night, just like any other time.

It was not a long walk but it seemed to go on and on, each moment filled with things he noticed, spilling into the next, into each other. There was a call from the rooftop across, cut off, and Heath’s head jerked up, then bowed down again. Reverend Toller was reading aloud and Eaton realized that he’d been reading since the door squealed open, the murmur of the words now beginning to separate and stand clear.
Man that is born … full of misery … fleeth as it were a shadow …

Reverend Toller stepped to one side and continued to read, his eyes on the page, although he must have known the words by heart. Heath stopped beneath the dangling noose, and the red-haired man stepped forward, a thick strap in his hand.
That’s never the Hangman
, Eaton heard Shiner say, but even as he did the strap was wrapped around Heath’s pin-striped legs, drawn tight; he was facing the wall but the man turned him, carefully, to face the jail yard, the silent, black-suited men.
In the midst of life …

The sheriff stepped up and spoke close to Heath’s ear, but Heath shook his head once, and he stepped back again. The Hangman placed a black hood over his head—where had that come from? He reached and looped the noose over it, and even
from where they were they could see it shake in his hand.
O holy and merciful Savior …

The red-haired man stepped back and stood by the hanging weight, and like in a dream, in a nightmare, something sharp suddenly glinted in his raised hand.
Our father …
and Eaton wasn’t even breathing, wasn’t thinking.
Thy will be done …
and the sharp thing flashed again, the weight fell with a heavy thud, a puff of dust. Heath jerked up but only a little way, just as quickly down again, his pointing feet a breath away from the ground.

•  •  •

His toes were a ragged breath from the ground and they were moving, and their movement caused him to turn a little, at the end of the rope. His hands were moving too, clenching and opening. At first, Eaton thought it was an escape he was seeing, what a horse might do, having blown out its belly while the cinch was tightened. What King Carter did, craftily turning his hands so the palms faced out while the villains bound them, able to slip free the first time they were distracted. But he thought that only for a moment; the silent world was filled with a terrible groaning sound and it was clear that there was no escape, even though the feet were still moving, the fingers of the bound hands twitching and flicking, frantic.

Someone in the tree said,
Jesus
, in a whisper that rasped like the noises coming from the black hood. The black hood that moved, part of it did, the cloth sucking in and out with the groaning. The red-haired man bolted back toward the jail; the sheriff lifted a hand as if to stop him, but let it fall again. Some of the dark-coated men turned their backs, some still faced straight ahead, and all had their hands clenched tight at their sides.

And it went on and on and on, the jerking and the straining and the black cloth sucking in and out, longer than any buggy wait, longer than any thundering sermon in the stifling summer church, longer than the longest dream-torn night. It went on and on, and then Eaton’s father stepped forward and touched the bound man’s hands.
He’s going to cut him loose
, Shiner breathed, and Eaton flicked his eyes, Shiner’s face as pale as cream, maybe his own was too; he said,
No, he’s going to check his pulse
, though he didn’t know how he knew that. But his father didn’t do either of those things, not then. Instead he slipped his hands between Heath’s, clasped them tight and they clasped back; Eaton could see it from the tree. Thought he could. And the terrible dancing feet slowed, stopped, the groans lower and longer until they stopped too, and everything was very quiet. Only the tumbling thoughts in Eaton’s head, spinning and making their own kind of noise and telling him that he’d been wrong, all wrong about the plan, that nothing was over. He had worked it all out, like Drifter Dan would have, but high in the tree he knew that the success of his plan had only thrown him into another kind of nightmare, that it was the farthest thing from what he really wanted. He tried to take deep breaths, the way he did when he woke in his own bed in the dark, and down in the jail yard his father shifted his hands, one now holding Heath’s black-sleeved arm, two fingers of the other pressed inside the rope, the way he’d shown Eaton how to count pulse beats. But there were no beats to count; the sheriff took out his watch, said
Eight fifteen
, and one of the watching men wrote in a notebook. Then they filed back across the yard toward the invisible door, two jailers remaining beside the hanging man, his hooded head drooping forward, the black body stark as a carefully drawn comma.
Eaton’s father looked up as he neared the wall, seemed to look straight at him. And Eaton didn’t duck, didn’t move; he held his father’s gaze for what seemed like a long time, thinking that if he could only understand what it was telling him, it would be a thing he would know for the rest of his life.

THERE ARE TREES
in the old world, trees in the new world, some so deep in the heart of things that they’ve never been seen but still living, changing, touched by wind and rain and the skittering of tiny claws. Others closer to the world of men, and even trapped within it. Some have been started by design, but most are completely random, a seed blown by a breeze or a gale, or passed through the belly of a songbird. Parts can be named—crown, trunk, root—but each one grows in its own way, and some are twisted and stunted by the ones that surround them, while others burst up and through. Even the unseen trees are marked, by disease, by accident, by the paths of gnawing insects, and they grow around their wounds, and are changed by them. Others are marked by climbing children, notches cut and twigs broken off, and the thoughts of small boys are caught in the web of their branches. Some
falling with the leaves, some slipping through in the tossing wind, but enough remain to whisper, when everything else is still.

WITH THANKS TO
my agent Dorian Karchmar, my editor Jack Macrae, and assistant editor Supurna Banerjee; it’s all been a pleasure. Everyone else—if you think your name should be here, I’m sure you’re right.

Q&A with Mary Swan

1. Where did you get the idea for this story? What about the time period and subject matter appealed to you? Did you set out to write a novel?

The first spark came from something I happened upon several years ago—an account in a publication of a local historical society, of a man who had been tried and executed in the late nineteenth century for killing his family. I can't really explain why that story caught me, but I did know immediately that I would do something with it. Some time later, I started to write a short story about a young boy who had witnessed this execution, and for some reason he watched it from a tree overlooking the jail yard. But of course this boy had a home, and a family and friends, and I began to see that there were many other people connected to the story, and many different ways to tell it.

2. Naomi suffers the loss of her first three children to diphtheria, and thereafter moves from England to Canada, where her husband's troubles drive their small family from town to town. Mrs. Robinson, the doctor's wife, likewise finds herself living a life she would not choose for herself. What did you hope to convey about the condition of women, either in general or in this particular situation?

When writing about the past, it's important for me to really have a sense of what it was like to experience the world as an
individual living in a particular time, and that means recognizing limitations as well as the thoughts and feelings and situations that are constant. Historically, women's lives have been particularly restricted by their biology, economic dependence, and lack of political power. I don't write to convey a message, but I did have that fact very much in mind when thinking about and creating the female characters in
The Boys in the Trees
.