The Language of Trees (27 page)

Echo stares at him, surprised. “I don't want you to change you.”

“You want me to wear my heart on my sleeve and bleed all over the place like I used to?”

“No, I—”

“You should go back to Boston.”

Stunned, she feels like she has been punched in the gut. “I am trying to help you. Finally, I can help you. The hiding, the carvings, the birds. Everything doesn't need to be hidden anymore, don't you see that?”

She closes her eyes, letting the tears fall. She can't catch her breath. She feels like she is struggling to the surface of the water, the moment just before coming up for air, when she can hear the rumble of the water underneath and the sound of the birds above, even though their voices are muffled.

“Come with me.” He takes her hand. They cut across the street and take an old backyard path that curls into the deep part of a wooded area, one they both remember well. His gaze is tense on the russet sky where the trees become bloody at dusk and stain the hills a deep red, moments before the sun fully sets. They walk over a trail covered with moss and pine needles, stepping over scattered bones, gun locks, and pieces of brass kettles. They pass a hollowed-out tree that once hid gun barrels. Above, the oak leaves turn a shade of vermillion, as if drawing blood from the earth.

They make their way into smoky blue forgotten vineyards where broken trellises sag among the weeds, dwarfed by the oak and hickory. Branches are filling out. Lavender buds are flowering. Newly formed shoots from the vines protrude above the grass. In the distance, Echo notices broken posts along the hillside, some overtaken with branches. She can almost make out the purple clusters of wild grapes beginning to bloom, the vines shooting off in spirals. The air is heavy and sweet. They walk until they're standing at the edge of the marsh. Cattails rise among the reeds. There are red-winged blackbirds flitting in and out.

Grant thinks about his dreams, flying with Luke, about the fact that the boy seems to be pushing him toward something. He thinks about his broken window. About glass shattering the night sky. About the soot tracks in his living room, whether they've reappeared. About a hybrid wolf sitting in the middle of the highway, still as a statue, as though something led him to that exact spot for that exact moment.

He feels confused, angry, and bitter about what this knowledge could have meant for him, how this could have saved him years of self-doubt, years of feeling rejected, years of hiding, and feeling as though he was not a whole person. Maybe he had
always known. It had always haunted him in some way, causing him to sneak around, carrying out his healings in secret, his father's scolding him for it but never providing a reason, which caused him to make up his own reasons: that his father hated him, that his father believed Grant was not good enough, that this ability meant there was something wrong with him. And then his inability to help his mother, something he just now realizes that he and his father had probably shared. Could they have consoled each other? Maybe their relationship was too far-gone at that point. And yet it brings Grant some shred of consolation: he understands now his connection to the ancestors, to the earth here. The connection to his father, and to his father's sense of failure. A legacy that his father had passed down to him.

“I could always heal the birds,” he admits, focusing on the burst of blackbirds erupting from the trees in front of him. He watches them, and imagines they are carrying away years of self-doubt.

Echo takes his hand. “Joseph says that birds are the only creatures that have blind faith. That is why they are able to fly.”

 

I
T'S ALL WHIRLING AROUND
Echo now—the acrid scent of elephant-eared weeds, the brassy sound of Stephen's words on the phone when she'd said good-bye, the feel of Grant's sandpaper skin against her cheek. And although she wants to run away from him, she can't quite let go of the back of his shirt.

“I'm sorry I got angry at you,” he says. “You're the only one I could have heard this from. The only one I ever listened to.”

He grips her hand tighter. They are in step. He stops to pinch off a piece of a plant as though suddenly someone is directing him. “Something I might need,” he says, putting it in his pocket. He kneels and places a rock there. She waits, watching
him. And when he gets up, she drops her hand near his and lets his fingers find hers again.

Just then she looks up. Something catches her eye, a flash of red in the cattail swamp. “Look at that red-wing up there. Did you see that? It just drew a circle in the air?”

“Where?”

“There,” she says, pointing toward a nearby oak.

He follows the line of her fingers. The small dark bird with the red painted wings slices through the air again. It finally settles on a low branch.

“That's as close as I get to magic,” she remarks.

“Not true.” He lets his lips touch hers. He kisses both her cheeks, then brushes her hair out of the way, and kisses her neck. He squeezes her hand. She feels herself falling into him. She lifts off his sweater. Echo unbuttons her white gauze shirt. “Don't run away again,” he says.

“I swear I won't,” she says. He slips her shirt off one shoulder.

She takes his hand, places it underneath the soft fabric and over her breast. She is braless, unabashed. Not a little girl. A woman. Unafraid. How had it all circled back to this exact moment? After fifteen years apart. After the last time they saw each other, the first time they made love. She remembers unhooking her bra and standing before him, letting him see her in all of her vulnerability. How brave I was, she thinks. How dangerous. But now, all the time and distance no longer matter. He is here, with warm skin pressed against her. The same man she has loved for half of her lifetime. His fingers are warm as they brush her nipples and circle her breasts. “Echo,” he says. And he kneels and he begins tasting her skin with his mouth, moving over and over her stomach, then pulling down her jeans and letting them hold her at the knees as he places his hand between her legs, parts her thighs, and begins to kiss
her there. “Let me,” he says, and she relaxes. There are colors swirling in the air all around them, all passion and anger, pinks and oranges and swirls of gold. She closes her eyes and breathes deeply as the waves of energy overtake her. Then he pulls her down, and moves her on top of his body, holding his hands on her hips, moving them back and forth, faster and faster. He is swollen hard inside her, and she takes him with every ounce of strength she has. Their lovemaking is not gentle. Rather, forceful and unfamiliar as though demanding an answer neither of them can give. She opens her eyes as he finishes inside her and moans, as though all the questions of the last several years have drifted to the surface and are scattered like the pine needles now circulating underneath what is left of their bodies.

 

O
N THE WAY BACK
to Grant's cabin, it begins to rain. Grant grabs Echo's hand and they run as fast as they can until they get to the porch. They fling open the door. Out of breath, flushed, they look around. Something inside has changed. There is a hum of frenetic energy, they can feel it. The temperature inside is too warm, almost hot, for such a cool time of day. The basement door is hanging wide open even though Grant had bolted it shut from the outside. One straight line of soot prints has reappeared, darker than before, leading from the basement door to the living-room window.

Echo grabs Grant's hand. “What is going on?” She hooks her arm through his, afraid. Clearly, he is not. “You know who did this, don't you?” she asks.

He closes the door to the basement, bolting it shut. “I know,” he says, leaning against it.
It's time for you to leave, Luke
, he thinks, just as Leila Ellis's car is racing up his driveway.

H
UGE THUNDEROUS STORMS WRACK
the sky. Lightning flashes for miles across the black lake. It is raining again, a needling rain so sharp it can turn skin bright red, or roil the water, causing the waves to wrestle a paddle from the hands of a young girl as it did on the last night Luke Ellis was alive.

The rain beats down on the large black umbrella that Lion is holding over Maya and Leila, who are all huddled together on Grant's porch, their faces wet, arms around each other's waists. Maya is clutching her mother's coat as the sound of the muffled rain becomes deafening. When Grant opens the door, Leila is the first to look up at him from under the dark umbrella, her face streaked with mascara, her eyes red with sadness. Her body is ricocheting sobs from the car ride here. There is a dead body in her kitchen, that of a man whom she once loved. A good man, despite his faults. She has dried blood on her hands. There is blood in her kitchen, on her dog. Blood has streaked the kitchen walls, the very same kitchen where Charlie once ate meals she had cooked for him when she was trying to make him feel like the king of the family. It is her fault. It is her fault that she chose Victor all those years ago and now he is
back to make her pay for her mistake. She can't escape it, this trail of tragedy streaming from her one bad choice. She pictures Charlie's body lying there in all that blood. Alone. So alone. And Maya finding him. She shudders, clutching baby Lucas to her breast underneath her long tan raincoat, his lips just peeking out. As Grant ushers them inside, Leila looks sadly at her daughter, choking back the tears. Maya is soaked in a red dress, her blond hair stuck to her face, her cheeks flushed as she clutches one end of Leila's coat, a gesture not of an adult but of a child. Maya is holding on to her so tightly, as though to anchor her for fear that she will drift away.

“Christ, you're all soaked,” says Grant. “Come in, come in. What's happened?”

Leila hands the baby to Echo. “May I wash my hands?” Leila asks, holding up her bloodstained hands. Then she breaks down in tears and tells Grant about finding Charlie in all that blood. “My daughter has blood on her shoes,” Leila says, gesturing at Maya, who looks down at her bloodstained sneakers as though she hadn't noticed them before. “I think Charlie's dead,” Leila blurts out. Leila excuses herself and rushes into the bathroom to splash water on her face and wash her hands. Choking sobs are coming from the bathroom. Maya stands there silently, biting her nails. No one knows that she has blood on her shins underneath her dress. Leila returns a moment later, still tearing up, just as Lion is telling Grant and Echo what happened to Charlie, and that Victor has Melanie on Squaw Island.

“He's a goddamn murderer,” Lion is saying. “Charlie's dead and Melanie's next. We are out of fucking time. I took his gun. I'm taking it with me,” he says, removing the bloody gun from his pocket. He wipes off Charlie's blood with his shirt. “We've got to get her back now,” Lion tells Grant, and then looks quickly at Leila. “You stay here at the cabin.”

“No. She's my daughter. I want to come. I'm not afraid of him,” says Leila, suddenly. “Do you hear me, I will never again be afraid of that man!”

“Leila, please stay with the baby and Maya,” says Echo, leading Leila to the couch, where she sits, trembling. Maya looks away just then, making a dangerous wish, trying to pretend she is disappearing, that she is anywhere else but here with these strangers, with blood on her legs that no one can see, standing in a cabin that she once played in with her sister and her dead brother, a place she hasn't seen in years. She has not left Cheever in months, and she hasn't been in a house other than her mother's in a very long time, and now her mother is falling apart as Maya stares at the angry lake, imagining the feeling of the canoe, that rocking motion overtaking her, and the coldness of the waves numbing her hands and feet. She finds herself aching for the protective loneliness of her room at Cheever. All this unwanted activity. All this blood. And thoughts of Charlie's body keep flitting in and out of her head, each time, the sensation of cold steel biting at her legs and her hands.

“I'm waiting in the car,” Maya says to her mother.

“It's safe here, Maya, really, and my dog will protect you,” says Grant, waving at the sliding glass door at Einstein, who is standing on the porch, soaked, barking to high heaven.

“It's a wolf, not a dog,” says Maya, noticing the soot prints on the carpeting. Her eyes follow the prints across the room to the basement door, which is open. Only Maya knows what this means. She folds her arms defiantly, not believing Grant. Not believing anything that anyone tells her. This much she has learned in her life. “I'll wait in the car. No one can stop me,” she announces.

Grant and Lion grab the old canoe that hangs on the wall in the garage. Why had his father kept it all these years? Why
hadn't it ever bothered Grant before? Who would keep something like this, a memory of a tragedy? Who else but someone who wanted to be reminded of his failings each and every day. Together, he and Lion drag the canoe, the spiderwebs, and layers of dust falling off of it as they push the canoe across the white septaria that have washed up on the shoreline. “My God, this thunder,” says Echo, as she steps into the canoe. The wind is picking up, rifling the branches of the Diamond Trees.

“Get in!” Grant tells Lion. The wind is whipping up little tornados across the tinfoil lake. Lion is eyeing the water nastily, trying to communicate his hatred. If this is the last time he ever looks at the lake, it won't be soon enough.

“Shit, I can't,” Lion is saying. “The fucking water.”

“Get in the boat!” Grant yells but Lion won't budge. He is trembling, standing with his feet a few inches in water, and he can hardly breathe. Lion's shoes are sinking into the mud. He feels like he's already falling into the dark water. He knows that when he drowns he won't see a thing. All that darkness, swallowing him up, flooding his nostrils, his throat, until he passes out. He can already feel his lungs bursting, his cells exploding.

Now tiny lights scrape the surface of the lake.
Flying Heads. They used to only come out at night. Not anymore
. Lion is staring at the water, trying to make a deal with the lake. Melanie once mentioned something about those trees on Grant's property spreading out diamonds across the water, filling it with lights.

Echo holds out her hand to him. Her eyes are clear and encouraging. There is something about her that feels safe and true. Lion takes her hand and climbs into the canoe. He's got a gun slung in his pocket, and clumsily drops two knives onto the floor of the canoe. When Grant gets in, Lion hands him a knife. This time Grant doesn't argue.

Squaw Island shimmers in the distance. It reappears from the haze, and then vanishes in the sweep of rain and peaking waves. Grant is paddling furiously through the storm, wrestling the waves as the boat sails north toward the island. The canoe lurches from side to side. At one point it tips and freezing water splashes up, numbing Echo's hands and feet. Lion watches the wind twisting in the trees, dropping branches over the water like little toothpicks. The rain clouds look like huge gray wolves running across the sky.

Grant is forcing the paddle into the water, trying to steer as the island gets closer. Now Lion's eyes are straining, searching desperately through the fog, but the water and sky are black.

Lion leans over, shouting to Grant. “I can't picture her face!”

“Just keep it together!” calls Grant.

“Almost there!” cries Echo. “Try to hold on!”

As Lion watches the sky, he thinks about when Lucas was born, how Melanie had reached for the baby before he was out of her body, and how she cried when they'd whisked him away, before Lion even had a chance to touch him.
Matrina, Matrina, Matrina
, he whispers to himself, just as he did that night Melanie led him to the dock on City Pier and then abandoned him for the water. He had watched her dive in, angry and thrilled at the same time, as she kicked at the silvery fish that'd arc remarkably close, their tails caught in the moonlight. That night, listening to the crickets, she'd dried off and cuddled up next to him on the dock just in time to see a singular snowy owl sneaking out to admire its own reflection in the water, its white feathers shuddering in the moonlight. It was the first time he'd heard Melanie sing, just some tune that she had running through her head, and this had made it easier for him to swallow his fear. He knew he was crazy enough to risk his life for her. As Lion held Melanie on the sunset dock, he lost
all sense of boundaries as the sky reached down and the waves looped up, and the earth slipped underneath, all at once.

Moonlight gathers in the leaves. Gulls circle above the roof. When Melanie is this close, she can almost reach into the center of her memory. Water. Miles and miles of beautiful water.

A voice is calling. She must remind herself to breathe. A man kneels, his knees pressing on her arms. His scent is so strong, she can taste it. He smells of everything wounded, just as he always had. He removes her blindfold and stares at her. “Look at me,” he tells her. “Your mother lied to me just like all of you lied to me.”

Was Charlie Cooke the only one Leila had an affair with or were there others? Victor wants to know.

The winds are wrestling with the waves. Melanie hears the voices of all those ancestors rising in a shrieking chorus. Or is it the birds? Gray wolves are darting in and around her body. She can feel Luke nearby, watches the little blue lights circling at her feet, then three little lights forming triangles on the ceiling and then, more spinning, circling down again, surrounding her. She stares at the dusty yellow dirge of her father's eyes when he tries to move her. Victor unties her. Her wrists are bleeding. He tries to pull her up but she can hardly stand.

“I have a boat,” he is saying. “Stand up.”

Melanie hears the moan escaping from deep inside her. A static sound, cut by the burn in her throat. He tries to get her to stand, but she falls. She has hardly eaten in five days.

As the canoe approaches the shoreline, the small Boy Scout cabin can be seen through the trees. The branches look menacing, as though trying to hide the broken concrete walls and tin corrugated roof so rusted with holes that tree branches have burrowed through it as though it was part of the earth already. Far off to the left, under a shell of willow leaves, an old mo
torboat is anchored near the shore, bobbing in the waves. As Grant guides his canoe toward the island, it scrapes the rocks and Grant jumps out into the frozen water, stabs his paddle into the mud, and pulls the canoe to shore as he slugs through the large white stones that are moving up and down in the waves. He helps Echo out of the canoe and then Lion grabs his arm, and without hesitation, Lion, too, jumps out of the canoe, his eyes fixed on the cabin, his heart pounding. He turns to Grant. “That's all I needed you for. Stay here and wait. I'm going in for her alone.”

“Don't be a hero, Lion,” says Echo, shivering.

“Wait,” Grant says, eyeing the boy's face, noticing the steely glare, the hint of adrenaline making his eyes wide and glassy.

Lion is so lit up with rage right now, Grant is worried he could kill.

The rain is coming stronger now, slicing through the water. Echo is standing on the shore listening to the thunder, letting the flinty rain cut at her skin, vowing not to be afraid, and watching the lightning illuminate the golden snake slithering across the dark water. She reaches down and picks up a large white stone. Septaria of all sizes litter the muddy sand around the building. Their white glow is unearthly, making the island look as though it was a planet, or floating on a mountain of clouds.

Grant runs after Lion as he pushes his way into the old cabin and is hit by a shock of putrid air, the stench so rancid he can hardly breathe. Rain spills through the roof, flooding the dirt floor. Unopened boxes of cereal litter the area, along with an old coffee thermos. Inside there is nothing but bare gray concrete walls, the smell of mold, what looks to be an old steel sink hedged against the wall with a rusted faucet. There is no
glass in the window above the sink. Instead, branches that have broken into it are growing through the building, biting through the walls, slowly breaking it into bits. Then, in the center of the room, a small mattress. Sprawled across it, Victor and Melanie are lying in a puddle of moonlight. Victor has his arms wrapped around Melanie, whose eyes are closed. Melanie lies across Victor's lap in a soiled brown dress, her hands and face bone white. Grant sees the look of surprise on Victor's face. Victor pulls Melanie's small body against his chest, clinging to her.

“You goddamn sonofabitch!” yells Lion.

“Go away!” Victor yells, pointing his gun. Melanie's limp arm falls across his leg. “Don't move. Don't come any closer,” says Victor.

“Get the fuck off her!” Lion yells.

Victor stands up, aiming his gun at them. “I was going to bring her home. All I wanted was the truth about Luke. But I found out for myself.” Lion takes a step closer and Victor points the gun at Lion. “All I ever wanted was my family. But the things that that little boy could do. The birds. Fixing the birds. He was a freak. He wasn't mine. Do you know how many fucking times she cheated? Charlie Cooke. I showed him. I had to come back for my family. All I ever wanted was my wife and my girls, and to know the truth about the kid's father. Leila wouldn't tell. Tell me, goddamn it. Say it! It was Charlie Cooke, wasn't it?” he shouts at Melanie.

Melanie's eyes flutter open. “Please, Dad. Let me go. I have a son.”

A hush falls over the room, but for the rain. “Luke wasn't my son,” Victor sobs, shouting at Grant, his soiled T-shirt wet with sweat. “If he was mine, none of this would have happened!” he cries. “I followed those kids that night. I could see
the canoe. I stood in the rain, watching. I could have saved him. If he were mine I would have. Did I hate him? I did. I hated him!” Victor yells.