Ariel Gore: Santa Fe Noir

They found her body during the most beautiful time of year. In the fall, the aspen leaves turn bright yellow. The forest is gold and the paths seem littered with coins. Who says money doesn’t grow on trees? But I would hardly call the aspens trees now; they watch with their eyes like people.

The last time we went up there began like any other. It was the end of summer. We veered off the main path to sneak away into a section of forest littered with huts. We’d come here with a blanket to make love or get high. The aspens are so skinny that with a little help you can pile the dead trunks into conical teepees. Who knows who started these things. College kids, or witches — it’s all the same in this city. Among armies of trees and green grass, these huts inhabit the side of the mountain. The deeper you go into the woods, the more impressive the huts become, like real homes with thick walls and nearby campfires.

“This one is my house!” Callie gestured to a hut with a beautiful view of the opposing peak — a sea of pines and aspens, the wind swimming through them like an invisible entity.

“It’s a fine one, babe.” I cracked open a beer, handed it to her, and sat on a log in front of the hut’s opening, an imaginary porch.

“Can’t you see waking up to this view every morning?” Her smile was like the sunrise — sacred and intangible.

“Say the word, and we’ll be bums, babe. I’ve got a cold sleeping bag and warm beer. Let’s be homeless together.”

I joked about hopping trains or living out of a car, but I never meant it. And anyway, our parents had put too much into our college tuitions for us to throw it all away and quit our paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyles. Callie leaned in to kiss me. Most days she was round-freckled cheeks and optimism. Other days she was tired. Not tired like I’ve ever been exhausted — from a long day of making coffee for strangers. Tired in the way that buildings and cars and a life that circles without a destination makes you tired.

“It would be so much simpler — if we just lived in the woods. It’s all wrong, Danny. This idea of civilization is wrong. The cities and the minimum wage and the technology, it’s not how we’re meant to live. They think it’s progress, their organized governments and electricity, but we never should have left the woods.” Callie stood and grabbed the white trunk of an aspen in her palm. “This... this is what’s real. The woods are the real world.”

I could see her eyes glistening with tears. She looked away and hugged the aspen, its black eyes rubbing against her belly. When Callie got tired she cried often. And I couldn’t fix it, not with beer, or weed, or my love. I stared out at the sea of pines and aspens, my hand over my mouth, as Callie sobbed into the nearby tree.

Sometimes I’d think, Why do I have to love this crazy bitch so much?

Later, when they found her body, littered with leaves like gold coins inside the farthest hut, I thought, Why didn’t I stay with her?

Twenty minutes passed and Callie was still crying against that same damn tree.

I got up, walked off to have a smoke. When I came back, I pulled at her arm, said, “Callie, let’s go. Let’s go back to my place, I’ll make you spaghetti. Come on.”

Without saying anything, she bundled up the blanket we’d brought, and followed me through the forest to the main path. We stepped over fallen trees, and walked passed trunks with carved names and dates. The aspens followed us with their numerous eyes. Their green leaves fluttered, waving after us. The sun began to set and the curtain of trees looked like a veil. A shadowy golden world, so separate from the homes and businesses at the bottom of the mountain.

Halfway to the main path, Callie stopped.

“Come on, babe. The sun is going down.” I always had a feeling about those woods at night. Like we shouldn’t be there past dark, like it wasn’t wise. “Callie, come on!”

But she just stood, looking behind us at the trees we’d left.

“They want me to stay, Danny. They said it’s okay.”

“Who, babe?”

“The aspens, Danny. I can see it in their eyes.”

“Honey, you know that sounds crazy, right?”

“It’s the spirits of the woods. Every forest has them. They said it’s okay if I sleep here tonight.”

“I’m not letting you sleep out here alone.” I stepped toward her.

“Then don’t. Stay with us.”

I looked to my left, at a tree with a face. Under two of the aspen eyes, someone had carved a jagged smile.

“Neither of us are staying here. You don’t even have a tent, or food. Let’s go home, and we’ll plan to go camping soon, I promise.”

“I don’t want to go camping, Danny. I want to stay.”

“Babe...”

“Do you ever think that if you stand in the same place long enough, the trees will believe you’re one of them?”

I grabbed Callie by her arm, my fingers digging into her tighter than I’d ever gripped anyone. I dragged her behind me like a child, both of us tripping over dead trunks, and slipping on loose granite. She obeyed, fussing, for a few steps, before shoving me with her whole body, toppling me over. I smacked the side of my face on the base of an aspen, and the bark of its eye scraped my cheek. My face hot, and in pain, I yelled at her, “Fine, you want be a fucking tree! Grow roots and live here! I’m going back to town where people live and breathe!”

“The trees breathe—”

“You crazy bitch, look at me, I’m bleeding!”

Callie looked at my cheek with eyes like round leaves. She pointed to the tree I’d fallen against. Red sap leaked from the center of its eyes. “The trees bleed too.”

The calls only came at night.

“Danny? I lost the trail. I thought I knew where it was, but I got turned around somehow. Danny, I need you to come get me, please.” I never said anything back. Your parents don’t teach you as a kid not to talk to ghosts, but somehow you know it’s just something not to do.

Of course I went back for her after our fight. But after I left her in the woods that night, I let her be for a week or two. Then I started getting worried. I assumed she just needed to be up there. She’d be resourceful. Maybe she hitched a ride back home the next day and didn’t want to talk to me. I figured we shouldn’t talk for a while, and truth be told, I didn’t want to talk to her. Yet after two weeks, with no word, I tried to call her, just to make sure she was okay. But her phone was dead, kept going to voice mail. After checking in with her parents and other close friends to no avail, I went back to the woods.

I found the blanket. That’s when I filed the missing person report. A search party was sent out. They say the first forty-eight hours after a person goes missing are the most important. And if she went missing that night, or the day after, then I’d left her missing for a good 336 hours.

I could have walked that whole section of the woods before calling the authorities, but something in me knew. I didn’t want to find her body, not alone, so I filed the report, let the rangers find it for me in the last hut at the end of the peak. This one was built with special care. Most of the huts lean against a living pine, which acts as a center beam, but this one was built so well it didn’t need a pine on which to lean. The dead aspens crisscrossed each other, like a perfect thatched teepee. The walls were so thick you couldn’t see through them. A perfect home.

The dogs smelled her first. The rangers called me over. Wind blew through the trees, and gold leaves fell on my head. Someone had built a tunnel out of small dead trunks to form an extended entrance to this hut. I watched a ranger get on his hands and knees, and disappear into the wooden tunnel. Indistinguishable runes were etched into the small dead sticks at the threshold.