The Green Man (19 page)

She coaxed her feet up one more rung. Pushing the paint scraper down securely into her back pocket, she glanced up. If she stood on the second rung from the top, she should be able to reach the sign.

The ladder shook a little, and she let out a scream. Not a big scream, but still a scream.

“Sorry,” he called up.

“Don’t … do … that!”

“Sorry,” he said again. “The sidewalk’s a little uneven.”

She detected a giggle. “Are you laughing? I heard a little laugh at the end there.”

“No, I’m not laughing. I swear.”

“Well, you’d better not, or if I fall, I’ll be sure to fall on your head.”

She scrambled up two more steps. There. Well, not quite. Her feet were planted on the second rung from the top all right, but she was bent over double, her hands fused to the small wooden platform at the top of the ladder.

People who work heights for a living say you should never look down. In the position she was in now, she had no choice. The sidewalk looked about a hundred feet away, though it was probably no more than ten. Her fear seeped through the soles of her shoes, and the ladder began to tremble. She said a silent prayer, then let go of
the ladder and stood up straight. Grabbing hold of the sign, she held on for dear life.

Suddenly she found herself face-to-face with the Green Man. He seemed as surprised to see her up close as she was him. He made that little creaky noise in the back of his throat that he made when he swayed in the wind. It was his way of talking, and she imagined she could do no better herself with two great stalks of vines growing from her mouth.

They had spent so long studying one another from a distance that she felt they were already acquainted. She had long since gone from trying to puzzle out his creaks and groans to imagining what he might be saying.

When she’d first caught sight of him, suitcase in hand, that early morning two months back, he had struck her as grotesque and frightening. Later, the vines that grew from his mouth seemed like some horrible punishment he had been condemned to bear, and her fear had turned to pity. But the longer she was near him, the more he became the guardian presence Emily felt him to be. And there was a strange nobility about him.

Now, face-to-face, she saw more. Features that had been indistinct from the ground were suddenly sharp and clear. What looked like worry from a distance proved up close to be concentration. What seemed a grimace from the ground became up close almost a smile. And suddenly
she realized the vines that grew from his mouth, far from being a punishment, were a sort of blessing he bore. For what he bore was life – and in that there was joy.

Tucked in among the leaves of the vines that encircled his head were two small carved birds. All her fear had vanished. She felt as secure on her high perch as the birds that sheltered in the branches. When she looked into the Green Man’s eyes, he looked back. The sign gently swayed. And she swayed with it.

He had always seemed ancient to her, his face fissured with wrinkles. But now she saw that the wrinkles were only cracks from the weathering of the wood. Face-to-face like this, he looked ageless.

O stood transfixed. Suddenly, it seemed to her that something sparked deep in his eyes – a flame. She looked deeper, and the flame flared into a fire. She saw dense smoke and, in the midst of the smoke, two figures entwined in one another’s arms.

The vision faded, and she found herself perched on top of the ladder again. The sign creaked as it swayed back and forth, and a word sounded clearly from the Green Man’s mouth. “Be-ware,” said the voice. “Be-ware.”

She sprang back in shock, letting go of the sign. For a moment she teetered, trying to gain her balance. Then, suddenly, she was falling. But as the ground rushed up to meet her, her fall was broken.

Rimbaud had caught her. “Are you all right?” he asked as he cradled her in his arms.

“I think so. I lost my balance.” She looked into those dark fathomless eyes, and she had the feeling he was about to kiss her.

There was a sudden sharp rap on the window of the shop. She jerked back, and Rimbaud set her down on her feet. Emily was standing in the window with an armful of books, staring at them. Without a word, she turned and disappeared into the shadows of the shop.

O stood in the poetry section, looking at the book Rimbaud had brought back earlier that day. It was the last of the “borrowed” books – a volume of poems by his namesake, Arthur Rimbaud. A photo of the boy poet was on the cover. He bore a striking resemblance to her Rimbaud – something in the eyes, the set of the mouth; something in the regal way he held his head, the deliberately disheveled look of his hair. As she studied the grainy old photo, the memory of her fall from the ladder two days before flooded back.

She opened the book and flipped through it, hoping against hope another poem might fall out. There was no poem, but something else fluttered to the floor – an odd fan-shaped leaf, still green and pliant, as though it had just been plucked. It wasn’t the first time she’d found a
leaf in one of the books he returned. He used leaves to mark his place.

She brought it to her nose. It had a pungent smell. It was certainly no leaf she recognized. There was nothing remarkably odd about it being there, she supposed. People marked their places in books with all sorts of strange things. But as she held the leaf in her hand and thought of the boy who’d put it there, she sensed it was the hallmark of some mystery at the heart of him.

With Rimbaud becoming more of a presence around the shop recently, Emily’s anxiety level had risen dramatically. Last night, she’d taken O aside.

“Listen, O. When your father sent you to stay here, I know he had ulterior motives. He was looking out for me. I appreciate that – and I appreciate everything you’ve done. You’ve taken very good care of me – even when I didn’t want you to. And you’ve transformed this place.

“But he also expected me to look out for you. I’m inexperienced at watching over teenage girls, but I was once one myself. I know you like this boy, O. But think about it. What do you know about him? You don’t know his real name. You don’t know where he comes from. You don’t know where he lives. He makes me nervous. I want you to be careful. Very careful.”

It was pure craziness, of course, but Emily was so
unremittingly intense about it that it got O going as well. Finding the leaf in the book had decided it. The next time she saw Rimbaud, she was determined to follow him to find out where he lived.

O
n the last day of July, Emily asked O if she would mind changing the window display. She normally put up a new display at the beginning of each month and took it down at the end. Any longer than that, and the sunlight began to bleach the dust jackets of the books.

While Emily gathered together the items she had set aside for the next display, O climbed into the window area to take down the current one. It had been a sunny month, and she noticed that some of the dust jackets had already begun to fade. Each book was accompanied by a handwritten card on which Emily had noted the price, along with any interesting information about the book. O removed the cards as she piled the books in front of her.

The window area was in need of a good cleaning. The green felt was dingy with age and covered in dust. The brittle corpses of flies and wasps lay scattered over it. She decided this would be an ideal time to clean up the
area. She fetched the whisk and dustpan from the back of the shop and, crawling on hands and knees in the narrow space, started sweeping up the dust and dead insects.

In the midst of it, she happened to glance out the window and saw Rimbaud standing outside the fruit and vegetable store across the street. He stood there a long time, and she was afraid he was about to take something. But, instead, he picked up one of the cellophane packages of discounted fruit they’d put there and went into the store. He came out carrying a bag and began walking in the direction he always took whenever he left the bookshop. On the spur of the moment, O decided to follow him.

Clambering out of the window, she called to Emily: “I’m thinking of changing the felt in the window. I’m just going to see if I can find anything. I’ll be back in a bit.” Without waiting for a reply, she darted out the door.

Rimbaud was already out of sight by the time she hit the street. She walked four blocks with no sign of him. She was about to give up and go looking for a fabric store, when she spotted the familiar lean, loping figure two blocks ahead, on the opposite side of the street. Breaking into a trot, she narrowed the distance between them to a block. She shadowed along behind him, ready to duck into a shop doorway if he should happen to look back.

She had trailed him for twenty minutes, when he suddenly turned off the main drag, crossed a set of tracks, and entered a sketchy neighborhood she would normally never have ventured into. People hanging out on the porch steps of the low-rise apartments that lined the street eyed her as she went by.

Now that there were fewer people around, it was harder to keep hidden. She hung back farther than she wanted, afraid of being spotted. She had totally lost her bearings and wasn’t sure how she would find her way home. The street dipped and rose like a rollercoaster. In no time at all, she lost sight of him as he disappeared over the crest of a hill. She broke into a trot, but as she came to the top of the hill, there was no trace of him up ahead. It was as if the ground had opened under him.

To her right, a short side street of modest bungalows shaded by tall maples ended abruptly before a low white fence with a
DEAD END
sign posted on it. She turned down the street, taking in the houses that lined it on either side. He might have gone into any one of them, but she didn’t think so. She felt sure he’d gone over the fence.

As she approached it, she saw that, on the other side, the ground fell away into a deep ravine. She scrambled over the fence and along a crude path tramped through the weeds, leading to the rim of the ravine. From there, it launched down the steep hillside and disappeared
from view. The hillside was thick with bushes, saplings, and stunted trees. The floor of the ravine was invisible through the dense canopy of trees that rose to almost street level.

She peered down into the green shadows, looking for signs of movement. All was still. It seemed to her the stillness of something holding its breath, and she was suddenly afraid. She sensed she had come to the world’s end. Beyond lay an uncharted realm.

Grabbing on to branches to slow herself, she took a few tentative steps down the hill. The green canopy closed over her like a lid. In the sudden silence, she could hear the hammering of her heart.

Now that she was below the canopy, she could see all the way down to the dappled floor of the ravine, where a path ran alongside a stream. She had no experience of such a wilderness at the very heart of a city. Nothing like this existed in the flat country she called home.

She ventured a little farther down, but her feet kept sliding out from under her, as if the hill were made of glass. It was only by making desperate stabs for branches that she was able to stop herself from hurtling down to the bottom.

Her legs were scratched, and the light flats she was wearing were full of dirt. She wasn’t dressed for this. Besides, Emily would be wondering where she was. She
decided to head back. The ravine could wait for another day, when she was better prepared to meet it.

It was more difficult getting up the hillside than going down. She wedged her feet at the base of saplings to gain footing on the slick ground. By the time she reached the top, she was panting. Brushing herself off, she climbed back over the fence. A little girl, her face pressed to the window of the last house on the street, looked at her as if she were some creature spawned in the shadows below.

When she got to the head of the street, she glanced back at the white fence and the diamond-shaped
DEAD END
sign. She hurried home, feeling that she had narrowly escaped some great danger.

Emily was in the back room of the shop when she returned.

“Where on earth have you been, Ophelia?” The dreaded name. “Running off like that with hardly a word. I was worried sick.”

“I’m sorry. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I thought we could freshen up the front window with a new piece of material, so I went to look for some while the window was empty.”

Fortunately, on the way home she had come across a fabric shop and found a suitable piece of green felt. She took it out of the bag to show Emily.

Emily glanced at it, but you could tell she wasn’t buying
the story. O could feel her aunt’s shrewd eyes taking in the scratches on her legs, the state of her shoes, the something in her eyes that even the walk home had not erased.

She reached out and took a lock of O’s hair in her hand. With a quick tug, she pulled something away and held it in the palm of her hand for O to see. It was a burr. O had picked several of the stubborn things off her clothes on the way home, but hadn’t noticed the one in her hair.

“It must have been quite a shop,” said her aunt.

I
t was a quiet neighborhood. The road meandered through it as if it had all the time in the world. Emily took the same path she always did. She knew the neighbors by name and greeted each one with a quiet nod as she walked by – Louise Labranche, Octavia Talbot, Wallace Root. The houses were small but ample enough for their narrow needs.

Here, someone had planted a little garden; there, another had set a picket fence to mark the bounds of their scant estate. Someone had called on Annie Wray and left a small bouquet of roses at her door, wound with a twist of foil.

The wind tousled the leaves on the trees that arched over the path. The shade trembled, as if the ground beneath her were not as solid as it seemed.

The groundskeepers came and went in their motorized carts, with mowers, rakes, and slack coils of hose, like sleepy green snakes, loaded in back. They fanned out over the grounds and were soon busy cutting and watering the grass. The occasional car crept by.