Strange Seed (5 page)

Rachel pushed her chair away from the desk and glanced at the dozen crumpled sheets in the wastebasket to her left, all abortive attempts at a letter to her mother.

“Damn,” she whispered.

Each sheet bore at least a few paragraphs, but they were inadequate—either too subtle (her mother would think she was hiding something) or too full of small talk (which her mother disliked) or too enmeshed in weighty philosophizing about her “new life” (her mother would believe she was being pretentious or, which was worse, idealistic).

But this last one came close, didn’t it? She picked it up from the desk.

Dear Mom,

   
I’m sorry about that depressing phone call. Expect better from this. The house has changed, so my mood has changed. Not that I’m “comfortable” here yet, but I’m getting there.

   
The work we’ve done has helped. The mess we found the house in three weeks ago shocked us both—it was like a slap in the face, especially for Paul and all the plans he’d made. We actually thought about going back.
 
Even now I don’t know why we didn’t. Laziness, maybe.

   
I can’t say I’m hopeful, but at least I’m not as darkly pessimistic as I was. My mistake, I believe, was in looking for parallels between life here and life in the city. There are no parallels. New York and this place are two different worlds. I’m learning to appreciate that, and to accept it. Not that I’ve totally succeeded. Some mornings I wake up expecting to hear sounds of the city awakening around me but, instead, there’s silence (though if you only listen hard you realize it’s not silence at all). At such times, I find that I’ve momentarily lost track of where I am.

   
There are other things. For instance, yesterday Paul and Mr. Lumas (did I mention him in my last letter?) found the remains of a deer, a “six-point buck,” according to Mr. Lumas. He says that maybe there’s a wolf in the area, although Paul says that the last wolf around here was killed decades and decades ago. He does admit that no other animal, except a mountain lion (and there are supposed to be none of those here, either), could have done what was done to this animal (all its internal organs were ripped out—lungs, liver, and heart, etc.
 
Pretty disgusting, the way Paul describes it). Let me correct that:
 
A
man
could have done it, Lumas says. A man could have shot the animal and left it to rot. Both he and Paul examined the animal and came to the conclusion that it had to have been attacked by a wolf, or maybe by a very large dog, which to me seems much more likely, though I haven’t seen any dogs around.

   
At any rate, Paul bought a rifle. I’ve told him how much I hate those things, but he’s got his mind made up and there’s no way
 
I’m
going to change it. He’s in the forest with the gun now. He took a hatchet, too—to cut firewood, he says, but since the idea of a wolf has got him very excited, I think he’s gone into the woods after it rather than to cut firewood, which we have enough of anyway.

Yes, it came close. It was good enough. Damn, if only the phone were in…

She looked up, toward the kitchen; certain there had been a knock at the back door.
 
She set the unfinished letter down, listened, heard nothing.

“Who is it?” she called.

“Lumas, Mrs. Griffin,” came the barely audible reply. “Henry Lumas.”

*****

The narrow path that skirted the northern edge of the fields—from the road in front of the house to the forest—ended at a swiftly moving stream. A few yards west of the stream, the land angled slightly upward; the irregular perimeter of the forest lay several yards beyond.

Paul stepped gingerly across the stream and hesitated. The land here, on the slope before the forest, was not as heavily clotted with weeds as were his fields—just scatterings of horsetail, like tiny, freakish pine trees, and patches of stunted quack grass. About fifty feet to the south, close to the forest’s perimeter, were two flowering dogwoods—they seemed strangely out of place, Paul thought—and just beyond, lying at a right angle to him down the slope, the mottled gray trunk of a long-dead conifer, stripped bare of branches by insects and time.

It was the darkness that struck Paul most forcibly as he looked north and south, studying the forest’s perimeter. The sun’s light reached only a few yards into the forest and seemed to assume a distinctly paler color, as if some curious entry fee had been taken from it.

Paul moved up the slope, cautious of how he carried the ax and the rifle—both strange burdens. He stopped. To his left, the full and overhanging branches of two beech-trees side by side formed a perfect natural archway. He studied the trees a moment, aware that they beckoned to him in a nostalgic and oddly comforting way. Then he saw two figures moving up the slope and he remembered. They were his father and himself, two decades before.

The image vanished. Paul smiled. He gripped the axe tightly and passed beneath the archway, into the forest.

All around, small white, three-petaled flowers—trillium—had pushed through the brownish covering of leaves and pine needles. But they were as inadequate a relief to the abrupt, nearly palpable aura of melancholy as the random and anemic shafts of daylight that slanted to earth through open spaces left by slaughtered trees.

There was, Paul thought grimly, ample evidence of man here. Although the forest was centuries upon centuries old, and many of its trees has long since succumbed to disease and weather and insects, man had picked his way through and selected only its finest and strongest specimens. Man hadn’t destroyed the forest, his selective cutting had merely thinned it, but the results—the insect-hollowed stumps, the anemic shafts of daylight—spoke harshly of mortality.

Here and there new growth had started; sapling hemlock—it could proliferate in the cool darkness—spruce, smatterings of ivy, climbing dodder, shelf fungus. It wasn’t enough. Twenty years before, the forest had seemed so vast and incorruptible and eternal. Now it was involved in the incredibly slow, but inexorable, process of decay.

Trying to shake the mood that had settled over him, Paul glanced around at the beech-trees. He saw that he’d made an irregular path for himself by shuffling through the damp covering of leaves and pine needles. He’d already crossed other paths—the paths of grouse and deer—but they were narrower, more sporadic. There was no chance, he told himself, that he’d become confused upon his return.

He remembered, suddenly, that there was a clearing of sorts—several acres of smaller, more easily managed trees. The idea of felling and stripping of the towering, wide-girthed white pines did not appeal to him, for several reasons. Most importantly—Lumas had told him, and Lumas knew what he was talking about, didn’t he?—although the forest housed several hundred of the trees, it was also one of the few remaining accessible stands in the country. A butternut-tree or a birch or an oak—Lumas had also told him—would serve his needs handsomely. Or at least, he amended, the needs he had told Rachel must be met:
 
“We can’t have enough firewood, darling.”
 
It had been a transparent deception, he knew.

“Hello,” he called suddenly. The word echoed and reechoed for a few seconds and the forest’s discomforting, portentous silence returned.

He realized, suddenly, his apprehension, realized that ever since he and Lumas had found the ravaged buck he’d been apprehensive, that his casual manner with Rachel had merely been a show of bravado, an act. What did he know about wolves and how to hunt them? He asked himself. How could he be expected to? And if he knew nothing, then what was he doing here? It was a question for which he had no answer.

*****

Lumas, Rachel had decided weeks before, was one of those easy-to-be-with people who, unselfconsciously, allowed no lapses in the conversation; his face—regardless of what else could be said about it—was wonderfully animated, as expressive as his words. Indeed, she had often found herself more intrigued by him—the man, the character—than by his words. She very much hoped he hadn’t noticed.

She glanced furtively at her watch:
 
four o’clock—Paul would

be home within an hour and would expect dinner to be ready. She’d have to excuse herself soon. Building a fire in the wood-burning stove was no easy chore. She hoped they’d be able to replace the stove with something a bit more modern before long. That is, if their experiment—Paul’s word for their move to the house—didn’t prove to be a failure. As yet, she considered, there was no indication either way. It was too soon…

Lumas, raising his voice slightly, broke into her reverie:

“So, Mrs. Griffin—“

“Rachel,” she interrupted, smiling. “Please call me Rachel.” She wondered why she hadn’t said that to him long before. Perhaps, she decided, she was too enamored of the name—“Mrs. Griffin”—loved the sound of it, the good feeling it gave her.

“Rachel,” Lumas went on, and paused briefly, as if tasting the name; a quick smile lit up his face—it was replaced by a deep frown, like the caricature of a frown. “That’s why I say New York City ain’t no place for no one, not even the people that live there and say they like it. They’re just kidding themselves.” He paused expectantly.

“Yes of course,” Rachel said. She cursed herself for not having listened well enough. “Of course,” she repeated. “I fully agree.”

“Do ya?” A vaguely condescending grin—ludicrous on the normally gentle face.

“Yes, yes, I do.”

“With what?” His grin strengthened, became a sneer. He’d trapped her. And, oddly, he was reveling in it.

Rachel thought of admitting she hadn’t listened—it was no big thing. Lumas would merely forgive her and that would be the end of it. “With what you said, Mr. Lumas.”

“ ‘Hank,’” he said.

She nodded.
 
“Yes, sorry.
 
Hank.”

“That’s better. Now, what was we talking about? Oh yeah:
 
You like it here, Rachel? You like this house?”

He was letting her off the hook, Rachel realized. His innate kindness had prevailed. “Yes,” she sighed. “And no, I don’t like being without a phone. And no windows.” She gestured at the boarded-up window at the back of the living room. “It’d be nice to get some light in here. This darkness depresses me.” She paused briefly.
 
“And I guess I’ve grown used to the city—the confusion, the noise, you know. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? But I grew up in cities, and this”—she gestured—“is too new an experience for me.”

Lumas nodded once, meaningfully. “And a good one, take my word for it.
 
Not that you won’t find out and agree soon enough. Cities is unnatural. Unnatural.

“Maybe, But you grow used to them in a hurry. Sometimes I think confusion is a part of…”

Lumas, anticipating her, chuckled gurglingly, as if something were caught in his throat.

“I know,” Rachel continued, annoyed but trying not to show it, “that you don’t agree with me, Mr. Lumas. Hank. And I understand your feelings. I really do. But—“ She stopped, uncertain of where to go from there.

“Paul speak to the sheriff about those vandals?” Lumas asked.

Rachel hesitated, not sure that she liked the abrupt way he’d changed the subject.

“You said he was gonna talk to him about it,” Lumas went on.

“Yes. He did. Not to anybody’s satisfaction, I’m afraid—ours especially. The sheriff said he’d look into it when he got the chance. He seemed to feel it was only some ‘neighbor kids.’ ” She shook her head slowly. “ ’Neighbor kids,’ can you believe that?”

“So he ain’t gonna do nothin’? That’s a shame. Catch the bastards that done it you could make ‘em pay”

“I suppose. It doesn’t matter, really. All that’s left is the windows, and those will be in soon enough. And the re-shingling”—on the outside of the house. “But that’s nearly finished, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh,” Lumas said. He glanced around the refurbished room as if for the first time. “Yeah, he said. “We done good work, didn’t we?”

Rachel smiled self-consciously:
 
We
, indeed. The man was being kind again. Or perhaps ‘We’ referred to Paul and himself, and left her out entirely. If so, it was unfair.

“Yes,” she ventured “we did.”

Lumas gave her a broad, toothy smile. It vanished abruptly. “Where’s that husband of yours?” he asked. “I saw your car out front.”

“Oh yes. He’s in the woods. He got himself rifle and he’s gone looking for that wolf, or whatever. He took an ax, too.”

“Wolf?” Lumas said. He fell silent for a moment. Rachel looked confusedly at him.

“Yes,” she said. “Remember…that deer you and Paul found—“

“Oh yeah, right,” Lumas stammered. He stood. “I got to be going, Mrs. Griffin. Thanks for your hospitality.” He made for the back door. Halfway through the kitchen he yelled, “Thanks again,” and,
 
seconds later, he was gone.

*****

Paul took a dozen long steps to the south. Before him lay a clearing filled with skunk cabbage. The huge, tapering oval, pale-veined, almost luminescent green leaves fanning obliquely outward from the center of each plant allowed nothing to grow beneath it. Where there was not skunk cabbage, there was only moist, dark soil.