Read The Man in the Tree Online
Authors: Damon Knight
The Man in the Tree (5 page)
"You say this isn't up to date. You got some subscriptions you haven't
filed yet?"
Miss Knippel glanced at Pike; he nodded, and she went to the filing
cabinet for a folder. Inside were a few letters, each with its envelope
attached by a paper clip. Cooley looked through them, got out his notebook
and wrote slowly. "California," he said. "You get many from there?"
"Folks move away, like to keep up with the hometown paper."
Cooley put the file down and began to turn over the cards at the back of
the box. "Canada," he said. "Wyoming. Utah. What about back issues? Any
call for them?"
"Once in a while."
"You keep a record of those?"
"Depends. If it's just for a back issue, there wouldn't be any record. But
suppose somebody orders a subscription and asks for some back issues at
the same time, then you could tell by the card -- the amount would be
different." She came around the desk and looked over his shoulder. "Like
here, two fifty, that's just a year's subscription. But if it was two
sixty-five, say, that'd mean they got an extra paper."
Cooley went through the cards again and made more notes. "Much obliged,"
he said finally, and stood up.
"Any time, Chief."
"Might take you up on that," Cooley said.
In the spring of his second year in the woods, Gene explored farther
north than he had ever done before. At last he came to open fields, saw
houses and a line of trees in the distance. It was a disappointment at
first to find that his domain was so small; then he began thinking about
those houses on the county road. He knew that the "Dog River Gazette"
was published on Fridays and mailed to subscribers, and he wanted a copy
so badly that he made up his mind to take a risk.
Early one morning he hid in the brush across the road from a cluster of
mailboxes. The mail truck arrived about an hour after noon. When it was
gone again, he walked across the road. No one was in sight. He found
a copy of the newspaper in the first box he opened, along with some
letters and a magazine in a paper wrapper. He copied the newspaper and
the magazine as well, put the copies in his jacket and hurried home.
There was nothing in the paper about him, or his parents or Chief Cooley,
or in fact about anybody he knew. He was tormented by the thought that
there might have been something important to him in the issues he had
missed, or indeed that there might be something next week or the week
after. He made up his mind that he would go back for another paper next
week, but the moment he had decided this he became frightened. He had
done it once, but how many times more could he do it without being seen?
That night he dreamed that he had his own mailbox in a tree, where
every day letters and packages were delivered. He woke up very happy,
and his disappointment was acute when he realized that the dream was
not real. It was so vivid that in his mind he could see the very tree,
an oak like his own but much smaller, and the mailbox, nailed to a plank
between two branches, with his name on it in red letters. That much was
wrong, he knew; it would have to be some other name.
He remembered the cluster of mailboxes on the county road; they were
on a long plank supported by three uprights, and there was room on the
plank for several more boxes. Why should he not put his there?
Late that afternoon, carrying tools in a gunny sack, he went to the county
road again. Each mailbox was nailed at the sides to a plank which in turn
was nailed to the crosspieces. Gene pried one up with a screwdriver, plank
and all, put it in his gunny sack and carried it home. In his house, by
lantern light, he pried out all the nails and copied both the mailbox
and the plank. In the mailbox he found two stamped letters; he copied
them too. He carried the original mailbox back through the woods and
nailed it up again before dawn.
At home again, he painted in red enamel on the side of his mailbox the
name he had chosen, "J. Hawkins." He enlarged. all the nail holes in
the plank so that the nails could be tapped in easily. When the paint
was dry, he took the mailbox back to the county road and set it up beside
the others. His was on the end, and the name was plainly visible.
It was common knowledge around Dog River that Chief Cooley "had it in
for" Don Anderson and his wife. At the annual spaghetti feed at the
Grange Hall in April, Cooley sat next to Fred Moss and talked to him in
an undertone for half an hour. Later that month, when Anderson went out
to sign a contract for some remodeling, Moss informed him that he had
changed his mind. The same thing happened with another customer in May.
Mr. Beumeler, the Lutheran minister, preached a sermon on forgiveness
on the first Sunday in June, taking as his text Matthew 18:21-35, the
story of the unjust servant, ending with the verse: "So likewise shall
my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not
every one his brother their trespasses."
As the congregation filed out after the service, Chief Cooley shook the
pastor's hand and smiled. "Nice sermon, Reverend," he said.
Early in July, the Ander~ons put their house up for sale and moved to
Chehalis, Washington, where Anderson went to work for a builder named
Keegan.
Urged by an instinct he could not explain or suppress, Cooley cruised
the back roads on weekends and slow afternoons, visiting hunting lodges
and remote farms and filling stations uP and down the river. He talked
to the rural mail carriers in Dog River, Mosier, Odell, and Dalles City;
not much happened out in the country that they did not know.
In August he got a call from Steve Logan, the Route 1 carrier in Dog
River. "Say, Tom, you remember yon asked me to keep an eye out for
anything peculiar out on my route?"
"Sure do."
"Well, this may not be what you want, but there's something really
funny out on Dyer Road. Somebody moved in out there, put up a box,
name of Hawkins. Been getting mail regular for three-four months."
"What's funny about that, Steve?"
"Why, nobody out there knows him. I talked to Clyde McFarland and Bill
Funsch and old Miz Gambrell, they all live on that road, and they say they
never heard of this Hawkins, and there's no place for him to be. Nobody's
moved in out there, or built a new house, or a trailer, or nothing."
Cooley put down his cigar carefully. "Tell me whereabouts that is exactly,
would you, Steve?" He took down directions on the back of an envelope,
nodding. "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'll check into that, Steve, many thanks."
Cooley parked his car on the farm road, just below the crest of the rise,
looking down on the county road and the cluster of mailboxes. He watched
through binoculars when the mail truck came by, stopped briefly and drove
on again. The day was clear and still. An hour passed. Cooley got out and
went behind the car to take a piss. When he got back in and raised the
binoculars, he saw a flicker of movement back in the trees on the other
side of the county road. He stopped breathing. There it came again;
now a figure was crossing the road. It was the kid, all right. He went
straight to the mailbox at the end of the row, took something out, turned,
and walked back. Cooley watched him until he disappeared into the trees.
He knew better than to try to follow the boy's tracks; he would leave
footprints of his own and the kid might see them next time. Instead,
early the following afternoon, he entered the woods a hundred yards
away, climbed a ridge, and followed it back about a quarter of a mile
to a basalt outcrop where the trees were thin. He stayed there, drinking
coffee laced with rye whisky out of a thermos, until he saw the kid moving
through the underbrush. He marked the direction he had come from; when
the boy was out of sight, he moved down the ridge another few hundred
yards and waited. In ten minutes the boy was back; Cooley watched him
out of sight through the trees and then went home.
The next day he took up his station farther away from the road, and the
next day farther still, extending his observation points little by little,
until on the fourth day he was rewarded: he saw the boy climb the opposite
slope and disappear into a thick stand of fir. He watched the ridge-line,
visible through the trees, and did not see him emerge.
The next day he was watching when the boy came down from the hillside. As
soon as he was out of sight Cooley scrambled down the slope, jumped
over the little stream, and climbed the opposite ridge fifty yards away
from the point where he had seen the boy appear. Halfway up the hill,
he worked back through the trees in the other direction. There it was:
a house built of scrap lumber in an old oak tree. In the shadowless light
he could see the footholds nailed to the tree-trunk in a zigzag line:
they were made of sawed-off pieces of oak branches, most of them with
the bark still on; their color and texture was so close to that of the
trunk that from a few feet away they would have been unnoticeable.
Cooley drove out to his cousin Jerry's place a few miles outside
Odell. Jerry was three years younger than Cooley, a lank; hollow-checked
man. They talked on the front porch; it was late in the evening, and
Jerry's wife was yelling at the kids in the kitchen.
"Here's the way it looks to me," Cooley said. "When he goes out to
get his mail, we move in. When he comes back, I'm up in the tree house
waiting for him, and you're behind the bushes. That sound all right?"
"Sure, but why not just be there when he comes out and then nail him? Easy
as pie."
"Because if anything goes wrong, either he ducks back into the house
and we have to go in after him, or else he's out of the tree and off
into the damn woods. If you don't want to do it, tell me."
"No, I'm in."
"Got a gun?"
"Sure -- same old Police Special."
"I don't mean that. A rifle -- what kind?"
"Remington .30-30, sweet little scope. Last year, doe season, I got one
right behind the ear at two hundred yards."
"No good." A scope would just get in the way. Wait a minute." Cooley
went out to his car and came back with a short-barreled rifle.
"This here is an Enfield carbine, for jungle fighting. War surplus, I got
it from a place in Corvallis four years ago. The ammo is .303 British,
ten in the clip and one in the chamber. Plink some tin cans with it
tomorrow, get used to the feel. Monday morning, I pick you up and we
go. That a deal?"
"Okay, Tom."
They parked their cars on the country road, out of sight of the mailboxes,
and went into the woods. Jerry had the carbine and his Police Special,
"just in case," and Cooley was armed with his usual Colt .45. They
followed the ridge down to the observation point Cooley had used before.
Shortly after noon they saw the boy come down from the hillside. When
he was out of sight, they crossed the valley and climbed the slope to
the treehouse. Jerry clucked his tongue admiringly. "Imagine him doing
that," he said.
"It's just a damn treehouse, Jerry."
"Sure, but way out here? Pretty slick kid."
Cooley spat. "We've got about an hour before he gets back. Pick yourself
a good spot right over there in the brush and just take it easy. No smoking,
he might see it or smell it. Soon as he starts to climb the tree, you get
a bead on him, but don't pull the trigger unless he starts down again.
Chances are you won't have to do a thing."
"You sure you want to do it this way? I mean, be's just a kid."
"Jerry, that's the
reason
. Suppose I haul him in, what will the law
do? They'll put him in the juvenile detention house for a year, maybe,
and then he's walking around, and my kid is dead."
Jerry nodded. "Guess I'd feel the same way."
Cooley climbed the footholds, eased the door up and looked in. He saw
wooden shelves, a canvas camp chair, a bucket. When he eased himself
inside and let the door swing shut behind him, it was black dark. He
turned on his flashlight. From the walls, painted figures looked back
at him. They were angular, outlined in black paint and filled in with
blue, red, and yellow; they looked more like Indian designs than what
a kid would draw.
Shirts and pants were piled on the shelves, cans of food, tools. There
was a shelf of books, including catalogues from Sears and Montgomery
Ward. Cooley looked at the titles. "Grimm's Fairy Tales." "Wild Life
of the Pacific Northwest." "Camping and Woodcraft."
On the broad shelf behind the camp chair there was a kerosene lamp,
a half-finished wood carving, a stack of papers. Cooley picked up
the top sheet and looked at it in the beam of the flashlight. It was
an airletter with a foreign stamp, addressed to "J. Hawkins, Route 1,
Dog City, Oregon, U.S.A." He turned it over. "Dear Pen Pal! I am well,
how are you? Here in Lucerne the weather is fine. Soon I will to go on
my vacation trip in Austria."
Cooley put the letter down. He moved the camp chair to the side of the
room, took out his revolver and pushed the safety off, turned off the
flashlight and sat down to wait.
Jerry was sitting behind a cluster of vine maple stems with his back
against a tree and the Enfield in his lap. His butt was cold, and there
was a rock or a root under him whichever way he shifted. He looked at
his wristwatch; he had been here almost an hour.
Brush crackled a few yards away, and when he looked up he saw the kid
climbing the tree with some kind of parcel in his hand. Jerry rolled
over to one knee and stood up, but a twig cracked under his foot and the
kid looked around. He was just hanging there, one leg and one arm up,
looking down over his shoulder with a frightened expression. Jerry had
to make up his mind in a hurry, because in another second it might be
too late. He got the bead in the notch of the peep-sight, centered on
the kid's back just under the shoulderblade, squeezed the trigger. He
saw the kid go over, arms and legs flying, and heard him hit with a
solid thump at the base of the tree. He scrambled over there. The kid
was lying on his back, blood all over the front of his shirt, but his
eyes were open and focused; he was alive. Hell! said Jerry to himself,
but there was no other way on God's earth now, and he aimed the rifle
again. A piercing pain struck him in the chest, and he felt himself
floating away light as a leaf on a dark wind.
filed yet?"
Miss Knippel glanced at Pike; he nodded, and she went to the filing
cabinet for a folder. Inside were a few letters, each with its envelope
attached by a paper clip. Cooley looked through them, got out his notebook
and wrote slowly. "California," he said. "You get many from there?"
"Folks move away, like to keep up with the hometown paper."
Cooley put the file down and began to turn over the cards at the back of
the box. "Canada," he said. "Wyoming. Utah. What about back issues? Any
call for them?"
"Once in a while."
"You keep a record of those?"
"Depends. If it's just for a back issue, there wouldn't be any record. But
suppose somebody orders a subscription and asks for some back issues at
the same time, then you could tell by the card -- the amount would be
different." She came around the desk and looked over his shoulder. "Like
here, two fifty, that's just a year's subscription. But if it was two
sixty-five, say, that'd mean they got an extra paper."
Cooley went through the cards again and made more notes. "Much obliged,"
he said finally, and stood up.
"Any time, Chief."
"Might take you up on that," Cooley said.
In the spring of his second year in the woods, Gene explored farther
north than he had ever done before. At last he came to open fields, saw
houses and a line of trees in the distance. It was a disappointment at
first to find that his domain was so small; then he began thinking about
those houses on the county road. He knew that the "Dog River Gazette"
was published on Fridays and mailed to subscribers, and he wanted a copy
so badly that he made up his mind to take a risk.
Early one morning he hid in the brush across the road from a cluster of
mailboxes. The mail truck arrived about an hour after noon. When it was
gone again, he walked across the road. No one was in sight. He found
a copy of the newspaper in the first box he opened, along with some
letters and a magazine in a paper wrapper. He copied the newspaper and
the magazine as well, put the copies in his jacket and hurried home.
There was nothing in the paper about him, or his parents or Chief Cooley,
or in fact about anybody he knew. He was tormented by the thought that
there might have been something important to him in the issues he had
missed, or indeed that there might be something next week or the week
after. He made up his mind that he would go back for another paper next
week, but the moment he had decided this he became frightened. He had
done it once, but how many times more could he do it without being seen?
That night he dreamed that he had his own mailbox in a tree, where
every day letters and packages were delivered. He woke up very happy,
and his disappointment was acute when he realized that the dream was
not real. It was so vivid that in his mind he could see the very tree,
an oak like his own but much smaller, and the mailbox, nailed to a plank
between two branches, with his name on it in red letters. That much was
wrong, he knew; it would have to be some other name.
He remembered the cluster of mailboxes on the county road; they were
on a long plank supported by three uprights, and there was room on the
plank for several more boxes. Why should he not put his there?
Late that afternoon, carrying tools in a gunny sack, he went to the county
road again. Each mailbox was nailed at the sides to a plank which in turn
was nailed to the crosspieces. Gene pried one up with a screwdriver, plank
and all, put it in his gunny sack and carried it home. In his house, by
lantern light, he pried out all the nails and copied both the mailbox
and the plank. In the mailbox he found two stamped letters; he copied
them too. He carried the original mailbox back through the woods and
nailed it up again before dawn.
At home again, he painted in red enamel on the side of his mailbox the
name he had chosen, "J. Hawkins." He enlarged. all the nail holes in
the plank so that the nails could be tapped in easily. When the paint
was dry, he took the mailbox back to the county road and set it up beside
the others. His was on the end, and the name was plainly visible.
It was common knowledge around Dog River that Chief Cooley "had it in
for" Don Anderson and his wife. At the annual spaghetti feed at the
Grange Hall in April, Cooley sat next to Fred Moss and talked to him in
an undertone for half an hour. Later that month, when Anderson went out
to sign a contract for some remodeling, Moss informed him that he had
changed his mind. The same thing happened with another customer in May.
Mr. Beumeler, the Lutheran minister, preached a sermon on forgiveness
on the first Sunday in June, taking as his text Matthew 18:21-35, the
story of the unjust servant, ending with the verse: "So likewise shall
my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not
every one his brother their trespasses."
As the congregation filed out after the service, Chief Cooley shook the
pastor's hand and smiled. "Nice sermon, Reverend," he said.
Early in July, the Ander~ons put their house up for sale and moved to
Chehalis, Washington, where Anderson went to work for a builder named
Keegan.
Urged by an instinct he could not explain or suppress, Cooley cruised
the back roads on weekends and slow afternoons, visiting hunting lodges
and remote farms and filling stations uP and down the river. He talked
to the rural mail carriers in Dog River, Mosier, Odell, and Dalles City;
not much happened out in the country that they did not know.
In August he got a call from Steve Logan, the Route 1 carrier in Dog
River. "Say, Tom, you remember yon asked me to keep an eye out for
anything peculiar out on my route?"
"Sure do."
"Well, this may not be what you want, but there's something really
funny out on Dyer Road. Somebody moved in out there, put up a box,
name of Hawkins. Been getting mail regular for three-four months."
"What's funny about that, Steve?"
"Why, nobody out there knows him. I talked to Clyde McFarland and Bill
Funsch and old Miz Gambrell, they all live on that road, and they say they
never heard of this Hawkins, and there's no place for him to be. Nobody's
moved in out there, or built a new house, or a trailer, or nothing."
Cooley put down his cigar carefully. "Tell me whereabouts that is exactly,
would you, Steve?" He took down directions on the back of an envelope,
nodding. "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'll check into that, Steve, many thanks."
Cooley parked his car on the farm road, just below the crest of the rise,
looking down on the county road and the cluster of mailboxes. He watched
through binoculars when the mail truck came by, stopped briefly and drove
on again. The day was clear and still. An hour passed. Cooley got out and
went behind the car to take a piss. When he got back in and raised the
binoculars, he saw a flicker of movement back in the trees on the other
side of the county road. He stopped breathing. There it came again;
now a figure was crossing the road. It was the kid, all right. He went
straight to the mailbox at the end of the row, took something out, turned,
and walked back. Cooley watched him until he disappeared into the trees.
He knew better than to try to follow the boy's tracks; he would leave
footprints of his own and the kid might see them next time. Instead,
early the following afternoon, he entered the woods a hundred yards
away, climbed a ridge, and followed it back about a quarter of a mile
to a basalt outcrop where the trees were thin. He stayed there, drinking
coffee laced with rye whisky out of a thermos, until he saw the kid moving
through the underbrush. He marked the direction he had come from; when
the boy was out of sight, he moved down the ridge another few hundred
yards and waited. In ten minutes the boy was back; Cooley watched him
out of sight through the trees and then went home.
The next day he took up his station farther away from the road, and the
next day farther still, extending his observation points little by little,
until on the fourth day he was rewarded: he saw the boy climb the opposite
slope and disappear into a thick stand of fir. He watched the ridge-line,
visible through the trees, and did not see him emerge.
The next day he was watching when the boy came down from the hillside. As
soon as he was out of sight Cooley scrambled down the slope, jumped
over the little stream, and climbed the opposite ridge fifty yards away
from the point where he had seen the boy appear. Halfway up the hill,
he worked back through the trees in the other direction. There it was:
a house built of scrap lumber in an old oak tree. In the shadowless light
he could see the footholds nailed to the tree-trunk in a zigzag line:
they were made of sawed-off pieces of oak branches, most of them with
the bark still on; their color and texture was so close to that of the
trunk that from a few feet away they would have been unnoticeable.
Cooley drove out to his cousin Jerry's place a few miles outside
Odell. Jerry was three years younger than Cooley, a lank; hollow-checked
man. They talked on the front porch; it was late in the evening, and
Jerry's wife was yelling at the kids in the kitchen.
"Here's the way it looks to me," Cooley said. "When he goes out to
get his mail, we move in. When he comes back, I'm up in the tree house
waiting for him, and you're behind the bushes. That sound all right?"
"Sure, but why not just be there when he comes out and then nail him? Easy
as pie."
"Because if anything goes wrong, either he ducks back into the house
and we have to go in after him, or else he's out of the tree and off
into the damn woods. If you don't want to do it, tell me."
"No, I'm in."
"Got a gun?"
"Sure -- same old Police Special."
"I don't mean that. A rifle -- what kind?"
"Remington .30-30, sweet little scope. Last year, doe season, I got one
right behind the ear at two hundred yards."
"No good." A scope would just get in the way. Wait a minute." Cooley
went out to his car and came back with a short-barreled rifle.
"This here is an Enfield carbine, for jungle fighting. War surplus, I got
it from a place in Corvallis four years ago. The ammo is .303 British,
ten in the clip and one in the chamber. Plink some tin cans with it
tomorrow, get used to the feel. Monday morning, I pick you up and we
go. That a deal?"
"Okay, Tom."
They parked their cars on the country road, out of sight of the mailboxes,
and went into the woods. Jerry had the carbine and his Police Special,
"just in case," and Cooley was armed with his usual Colt .45. They
followed the ridge down to the observation point Cooley had used before.
Shortly after noon they saw the boy come down from the hillside. When
he was out of sight, they crossed the valley and climbed the slope to
the treehouse. Jerry clucked his tongue admiringly. "Imagine him doing
that," he said.
"It's just a damn treehouse, Jerry."
"Sure, but way out here? Pretty slick kid."
Cooley spat. "We've got about an hour before he gets back. Pick yourself
a good spot right over there in the brush and just take it easy. No smoking,
he might see it or smell it. Soon as he starts to climb the tree, you get
a bead on him, but don't pull the trigger unless he starts down again.
Chances are you won't have to do a thing."
"You sure you want to do it this way? I mean, be's just a kid."
"Jerry, that's the
reason
. Suppose I haul him in, what will the law
do? They'll put him in the juvenile detention house for a year, maybe,
and then he's walking around, and my kid is dead."
Jerry nodded. "Guess I'd feel the same way."
Cooley climbed the footholds, eased the door up and looked in. He saw
wooden shelves, a canvas camp chair, a bucket. When he eased himself
inside and let the door swing shut behind him, it was black dark. He
turned on his flashlight. From the walls, painted figures looked back
at him. They were angular, outlined in black paint and filled in with
blue, red, and yellow; they looked more like Indian designs than what
a kid would draw.
Shirts and pants were piled on the shelves, cans of food, tools. There
was a shelf of books, including catalogues from Sears and Montgomery
Ward. Cooley looked at the titles. "Grimm's Fairy Tales." "Wild Life
of the Pacific Northwest." "Camping and Woodcraft."
On the broad shelf behind the camp chair there was a kerosene lamp,
a half-finished wood carving, a stack of papers. Cooley picked up
the top sheet and looked at it in the beam of the flashlight. It was
an airletter with a foreign stamp, addressed to "J. Hawkins, Route 1,
Dog City, Oregon, U.S.A." He turned it over. "Dear Pen Pal! I am well,
how are you? Here in Lucerne the weather is fine. Soon I will to go on
my vacation trip in Austria."
Cooley put the letter down. He moved the camp chair to the side of the
room, took out his revolver and pushed the safety off, turned off the
flashlight and sat down to wait.
Jerry was sitting behind a cluster of vine maple stems with his back
against a tree and the Enfield in his lap. His butt was cold, and there
was a rock or a root under him whichever way he shifted. He looked at
his wristwatch; he had been here almost an hour.
Brush crackled a few yards away, and when he looked up he saw the kid
climbing the tree with some kind of parcel in his hand. Jerry rolled
over to one knee and stood up, but a twig cracked under his foot and the
kid looked around. He was just hanging there, one leg and one arm up,
looking down over his shoulder with a frightened expression. Jerry had
to make up his mind in a hurry, because in another second it might be
too late. He got the bead in the notch of the peep-sight, centered on
the kid's back just under the shoulderblade, squeezed the trigger. He
saw the kid go over, arms and legs flying, and heard him hit with a
solid thump at the base of the tree. He scrambled over there. The kid
was lying on his back, blood all over the front of his shirt, but his
eyes were open and focused; he was alive. Hell! said Jerry to himself,
but there was no other way on God's earth now, and he aimed the rifle
again. A piercing pain struck him in the chest, and he felt himself
floating away light as a leaf on a dark wind.
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