Caitlin R. Kiernan - The Red Tree

I very briefly considered breaking it down. I’m pretty sure that I could have, but then I admitted to myself that Constance was not behind the door. That she was not in the attic, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the house. Standing there on the narrow landing at the top of the stairs, in the darkness and the heat, I admitted to myself that the only place I would find her was at the other end of the length of green fishing line tied to the back porch. For a minute or two, I permitted myself the luxury of pretending that there was no way on earth I was going after her. It was only seventy-five yards, after all, from the house to the tree, and she’d taken precautions, done her little Hansel and-Gretel trick with the nylon line. If she’d wanted me along, she would have asked me. Constance Hopkins is a grown woman, and she can damn well look after herself. I thought each of these things, in turn, and then I retraced my steps and stared at the fishing line stretching away into the weeds and underbrush. I called her name a few more times, shouting loudly enough that people probably heard me all the way up in Moosup. And then, suddenly, the whole thing felt absurdly like a replay of the episode in the basement, and I stopped calling for her.

It was cloudy, and we haven’t had much of that this summer. Even so, the air was very still, oppressive, and I could tell the day was only going to get hotter. Even if it rains, I thought, the heat will only get worse.

I hesitated, lingering there on the porch, and then I took what I prefer to think was, realistically, the only course of action left open to me. I could hardly have called Blanchard or the police, could I? Even now, I don’t know what else I could have done, except maybe go inside and wait to see if she eventually found her way home. And I couldn’t do that, even though that’s what I wanted to do. I’ve known Constance less than a month now, but, in that time, we’ve shared a bed, and we’ve shared the experience of living in this house on this godforsaken plot of land. I’d gone into the basement and brought her back. I’d washed the filth from her skin and hair, and she’d played nursemaid after my last fit and read Bradbury to me. More importantly, perhaps, we’d tried together to reach the tree, and together we’d become lost, when getting lost was all but impossible. All this went through my head, I know, in only a matter of seconds, and then I left the porch and followed the trail of fishing line leading away from the house. I didn’t call her name again, and I didn’t look at the tree first. I just went.

I walked fast, and it took me hardly any time at all to reach the deadfall marking the halfway point between the house and the red oak. I discovered that the fishing line had been looped several times around one of the sturdier of the fallen pine branches, one that’s not so rotten. From there, it turned west, towards the fieldstone wall and the creek, just as I’d expected it to do. I stopped only long enough to catch my breath and wipe some of the sweat from my face. There was a tick crawling on my pants leg, and I flicked it away. Somewhere nearby, a catbird mewled and warbled, its voice sounding hoarse and angry. I looked up and spotted it, perched fairly high in the limbs of a small maple, and it occurred to me that from that vantage, the bird would likely be able to see both me and Constance. So, it could be fussing at either one of us, or both.

I followed the line through the wide breach in the stone wall, and then down the bank to the creek. Here, the nylon had been looped securely round and round the base of yet another tree, before continuing north again, following the stream a little ways. I disturbed a huge bullfrog hiding in a patch of ferns and skunk cabbages at the edge of the stream, and it jumped high into the air and landed with a splash, darting away into the tea-colored water. The ground is pretty soft down there, quite muddy in places, and my shoes left very distinct prints in the mossy soil. But mine were the only prints I saw. The only human prints (I think I also saw a raccoon’s). Somehow, Constance had walked over the very same ground as me and managed to leave none at all. Sure, she might weigh a few pounds less, but not enough that she wouldn’t have left behind footprints. Anyway, I soon found the next tree that had been used to anchor the fishing line; it turned east, heading straight back up the steep bank on the far side of the deadfall. I decided that I’d find Constance first; she had to be close now. I could worry about the missing tracks later on.

The bank was more difficult to climb than I remembered it being, or I was more careless, and twice I slipped and almost tumbled backwards into the stream below. The second time, I scraped my left elbow pretty badly. In the confusion, I briefly lost sight of the fishing line, but immediately spotted it again at the top of the bank. It had been wound about the base of another white pine, and now resumed its path north, leading me directly to the red tree.

Whatever distorting force or trick of distance had prevented Constance and me from reaching it on the sixth of July did not repeat itself. Other than my growing sense of dread, and the fact that I couldn’t find her footprints at the creek, there was nothing even the least bit disquieting or out of the ordinary about the walk from the back porch to the oak. And I suspect maybe I was beginning to let my guard down. I found the end of Constance’s lifeline tied to a sapling maybe ten feet away from the red tree. The plastic spool that had held the fishing line was lying nearby, and I picked it up. It’s lying here on the kitchen table as I type this. McCoy “Mean Green” Super Spectra Braid, thirty-pound test, eight-pound monofilament diameter, 150 yards. I suppose she picked it up on one of her trips into Moosup or Coventry or Foster. It hardly matters. The label on the spool reads, “Soft as Silk, Strong as Steel.” Part of the price tag has been pulled away, but I can still see that the spool cost $14.95.

These details mean nothing, I know. I know that. I am only trying to put off what came next. That is, I’m only putting off writing it down. Consecrating it in words. But it is so simple. I’d bent over to retrieve the spool, and that was when I saw the spatters of blood dappling the dead leaves, and also dappling the living leaves of creeper vines and ferns and whatever else grows so near the base of the oak. The blood was thick and dark, and had clearly begun to coagulate, but was not yet dry. And what still seems very strange to me — seeing it, I didn’t get hysterical. I didn’t freak out. In fact, I felt as though some weight had been lifted from my mind, a weight I’d carried for a long, long while. Maybe, it was only relief, relief that, seeing the blood, I no longer had to wonder if something was amiss. I can’t say. But I looked up, towards the gnarled, knotted roots of the enormous tree, its bole so big around that three large men could embrace the trunk and still have trouble touching fingertips. And spread out above me, its heavy, whispering boughs, raised against the cloudy sky. And, even though I’d seen it up close once before, and dozed in ignorance beneath its limbs, I looked upon it now as though I was seeing the red oak for the first time. And I wondered how I ever could have mistaken it for anything so uncomplicated and inconsequential as a mere tree .

There’s a passage from Joseph Conrad that says what I felt in that moment far better than I can possibly hope to articulate on my own. Maybe it’s cheating, cadging the words of another author because I find myself wanting, inadequate to the task at hand. I just don’t care anymore. We could not understand, because we were too far and could not remember, because we were traveling in the night of first ages, of those ages that are gone, leaving hardly a sign — and no memories. Or, again, Thoreau’s “Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night.” Or, finally, in my own faltering language, here, before me, was all time given substance, given form, and the face of a god, or at least a face that men, being only men, would mistake for the countenance of a god.