The Skeleton Tree (18 page)

I picked up the watch, surprised to see the second hand moving.

Clever bird,
said Thursday, in a desperate little voice.

It made me sad that he was trying so hard to please me. I wanted to hold him again, to stroke his feathers. But in my mind was that image of him looming like a vulture over Frank.

If I cared at all about Frank, I had to chase away Thursday. By the way he tipped his head, I could tell he knew what I was thinking. He forced out three words in a croaky voice.
Want some fish.

I remembered offering him a scrap of salmon with those same words—and Frank getting angry about it. That was the first thing I'd ever said to him. He rocked his head and muttered.

Terrified I would send him away, he was trying as hard as he could to make friends again. I knew what
that
was like, all right. To have a friend one moment, and not the next, was horrible.

He was no longer a wild animal. His only companions were people. He loved to be held, to have his feathers preened and tickled. All he wanted was to be loved. “Oh, Thursday,” I said.

But inside him was a tiny part that could never be tamed. And that made me afraid of him. I could never be sure what he was thinking, never know what he might do. I shouted, “Get away!” I swung my foot and tried to kick him, but he was already rising from the ground in a whirl of wind and feathers. I hated myself for driving him off, but I had no choice. “Go on. Get out of here!” I shouted. Inside, I felt like crying.

He didn't quite clear the bushes. In a panic he went crashing through their tops, turning in the air as he tucked his feet into flying position. Then he merged into the shadows of the forest, and in a moment he was gone.

For the rest of the day I sat with Frank. He seemed to teeter between life and death, and I tried to hold him on the side of the living. I told him stories, every little thing I could remember about Uncle Jack.

In the evening the wind picked up. The trees whispered and groaned. Heavy drops of rain splattered on the roof. I thought automatically of Thursday. Then I remembered his mouth full of green strands. I couldn't get it out of my mind that he had been eating Frank's flesh.

Sometime in the night, Frank's fever broke. In the early morning he came awake, asking for water and food. When I brought him soup he lifted his hand from under his jacket.

I squinted and turned away, not wanting to see his wounds. But Frank said, “Hey. Chris, look at this.”

The long, livid streaks on his wrist had faded. The wounds still looked raw and sore, but they were healing now, their edges knitting together. Frank touched them, unbelieving, and his fingers came away coated with the green paste. “What the hell is that?” he asked.

It looked like vomit, like mushrooms and moss. Frank wiped his fingers desperately on the mattress. He put on the glove again, hiding the wounds from himself and from me.

He took the soup, and I moved away to stoke the fire. He smacked his lips as he ate. “How long have I been sleeping?” he asked.

“At least two days,” I said. “I'm not sure.”

Frank didn't say a word. Maybe he didn't believe me.

“This isn't an island,” I told him. “There's no one around. I stayed on the mountain all night to make sure.”

He slurped the soup.

“I started thinking about things up there,” I said. “I figured everything out, Frank. I know all about you now.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“You're my cousin,” I told him. “Uncle Jack's your dad.”

A little smile came to his face as he chewed on a chunk of fish. He swallowed. He wiped his lips. “You moron,” he said, not unkindly. “I'm your brother.”

Frank's voice drones on. He's still reading that stupid book, but I've barely heard a word. When I look at him I see his lips moving, his teeth flashing between them, his eyebrows going up and down with the rhythm of the story.

In the valley roamed a pack of wolves. On a wintry day Kaetil set off alone to find them. He had learned the ravens' way of hunting with the wolves and found them eager to help. In exchange for his eyes, they gave him their claws and teeth. What a raven could not kill on his own, a pack of wolves could slay in a moment. They would travel wherever he led them if there was a chance of a meal at the end.

Looking up at the mountains and seeing Storm circling in the sky, Kaetil knew where the wolves could be found. With his ebony hair flowing behind him, he began to climb the mountain.

Frank turns the page, his hands fumbling with anticipation. “This is
so
good,” he says.

I look over the sea and across the sky, searching for the glint of light from a ship's window or an airplane wing. It must be noon by now. The people must arrive in the next twelve hours.

“There's another note here,” says Frank. He tilts the book to let me see the pages. A big red circle has been drawn around the part about wolves.

All true. A symbiotic relationship.

“What's symbiotic?” asks Frank.

“I don't know,” I tell him.

“It must be something special,” says Frank. He bends the pages back and begins to read again. His voice changes as Kaetil shouts to the wolves. Now Frank is shouting too, quoting from the book. “ ‘You'll run with me tonight, you white-fanged devils!' ”

I smile and settle back. He really is a lot like my father. Or like
our
father, really.

When Frank told me the truth I was stunned.

At first I didn't believe him. I thought it was just one of his stupid games meant to annoy me. “You're my
brother
?” I asked.

He nodded. “Well, your half brother, I guess.”

I was barely used to the thought that Frank was my cousin. That had been great; I thought one day we might even be friends. But to learn that he was my brother made me angry.

“How do you know?” I said.

“Because it's true.” He spread his hands in a shrug, as though he thought I was stupid for not understanding. “I came to Alaska to go sailing with Jack and my brother.”

“But how did you know you had a brother?” I asked. “Who told you?”

“I don't remember,” said Frank. “I didn't know your name or anything. But I knew Dad had another family, because that's where he went when he left.”

I glared at him. “So why didn't you tell me?”

“Because I hated you!”

“Why?”

“Why do you think? Don't be so stupid.” With that he got up and stormed from the cabin in bare feet.

I followed him. He tried to slam the door in my face, but I fended it off. The rain had turned to drizzle, and we were soaked in a moment, but we went down the trail to the sandy beach, Frank far ahead and me shouting after him. “I never did anything to you!”

His voice was muffled by the rain and the forest. “You stole my dad!”

I ran to catch up. Frank dragged back the branches along the trail, pulling them so far that they sprang back four feet and hit me. He screamed like a toddler having a tantrum. “He was my dad first! And you stole him. He left my mom to be with yours.”

A branch whacked me in the face. I shoved it away. “What? Like when I was
born
?”

“Before that, moron.”

It didn't make sense that Frank would blame me for something that happened before I was born. But in his place, I might have felt the same.

Frank leapt down the bank at the end of the trail. He stepped over the log that lay there, where I had found the first footprint. “I never had a dad when I was little because of you,” he said. “I was three when he left; I can't even remember him.”

I clambered over the same log. “Wait up!” I shouted.

Frank made a rude gesture as he ducked under the branches of the cedar tree. I fell on my knees, got up, kept going.

“Well, guess what?” I said. “He wasn't around much for me either. He was always going on business trips.”

Frank laughed. “Those weren't business trips, moron.”

I stopped there, in the tent of the half-fallen tree. I wondered for only a moment what my dad was really doing if he wasn't away on business. Then I understood.

All those times he'd said he was going to faraway places, he had never left the city. He was only a few miles from home, living with Frank instead of me.

I crawled under the branches, shouting, “So you stole him back!”

“No!” Frank dropped onto sand as dark as water, collapsing straight on his back as though he'd been shot.

I walked right up to him, until my castaway shoes nearly touched his bare toes. “Did you know about me all along?” I asked. “Did Dad tell you he had another family? Another kid?”

Frank gazed up at me with no expression. I yelled at him, “Did you
know
?”

He still didn't answer. So I kicked sand in his face. I kicked a big, thick clod of sand that splattered all over chest, his face, his precious hair. My shoe flew off as well, cartwheeling over his head. Like a snake, he squirmed around and grabbed my legs. He dragged me down with him onto the cold beach and knelt on my chest. With that big black glove he shoved wet sand into my mouth. I felt it grinding against my teeth, coating my tongue. It tasted of salt and seaweed, and then of blood. Frank had cracked my lip.

I tried to push him off. I punched uselessly at his shoulders.

Frank kept pressing with his knees, pinning me down until he was satisfied that he had proved who was bigger and stronger. Then he rolled aside and lay on his back. I spat sand from my mouth, and little clots of blood.

“I knew
everything,
” said Frank. “Dad used to tell me stories that made me laugh. He hated you.”

“He did not,” I said.

But I wasn't so sure. I had even asked my mother once, “Does Dad hate me?” She had pulled me close and asked why I would think such a thing. “Because he's away all the time,” I'd said.

Ten years later, he came into my bedroom one night and said, “Hey, listen, little buddy.” My heart sank. Whenever he called me “little buddy,” he had something bad to tell me. He said, “There are big changes coming.”

He picked up my teddy bear and moved its little arms. “Things happen to people,” he said. “We don't plan them, buddy. They just happen.” He wasn't making sense. He sighed and said, “From now on things will be different. I promise.” And the next time I saw my father, he was lying in a coffin. I had seen that awful half smile painted on his face and known in my heart it was all my fault. I never told anyone, but it was my wishing that had killed my father.

The memories made me tearful. I coughed again, retching up sand and blood.

Frank tossed a bit of kelp at my back. It slapped against me. “He didn't really hate you.”

I turned my head to look at him.

“Dad never told me that. I made it up.” Frank pitched my shoe to me. “I was the one he hated. You were his favorite.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. I didn't believe
that
for a minute.

“He talked about you all the time,” said Frank. “About how smart you were and everything. Mom would get mad, 'cause she was jealous. And you want to know the last thing he said? The very last thing he said to me?”

“I don't know,” I said. “Maybe not.” But Frank told me anyway.

“It was Sunday morning,” he said. “It was the first time Dad ever got up early on a Sunday. When I went downstairs he was eating breakfast. He had his briefcase on a chair, and he was standing in his suit, trying to finish his coffee. Like he was hoping to leave without talking to me. He said, ‘Oh, hi, little buddy.' ”

Didn't
that
give me a sting. So I was not my father's only “little buddy.”

“I asked Dad, ‘Where are you going?' ” said Frank. “ ‘Can I go with you?' ‘No,' he said. ‘I have to go home now.' ” Frank tossed his hair. “That's what he said.
Home.
Like this wasn't his home, where he was with me.”

“Okay,” I said. I'd heard enough. “You don't have to tell me the rest.”

But Frank wouldn't stop. “Dad picked up his briefcase. He said, ‘I don't know when I'll be back. It might be a while.' Then he left. He didn't even finish his coffee. He walked out with the cup in his hand.”

Another little piece of the puzzle fell into place. “That cup,” I asked. “Did it say, ‘Don't fence me in'?”

Frank sat up. “How do you know that?”

“I found it in the garage,” I said. “Way after the funeral.”

“I gave him that cup for Christmas,” said Frank.

We both sat silently as we tried to sort it out. So Dad had come home to me with a little part of his other son. He had parked his car in the garage, got out, and then—for some reason—had put the cup on the seat of my bike and driven away again. He got about five miles—maybe ten minutes' driving—before a dump truck T-boned his car at an intersection.

But why had he driven off? Had he forgotten something, maybe something as stupid as a loaf of bread, and that was why he died? Or did he decide, after all, that he would rather be with Frank than with me, and in his hurry to get back he forgot the cup? Or did he come to the house just to leave it there, to connect the two parts of his life in some strange way that somehow made sense to
him
? I didn't think I would ever know.

“Jack thought Dad might have killed himself,” said Frank.

I shook my head, hard. I didn't want to think about that.

“He was so sad. All the time,” said Frank. “He was—”

“Don't,” I said. “Please.”

We sat on the beach, in the rain, right beside each other. The sea was flat and gray, and a lonely seagull pecked along the sand.

“You could have told me a long time ago,” I said. “So you ‘kind of hated me' at first. Okay. But why didn't you tell me later?”

Frank looked away, embarrassed. “Because then I kind of liked you.”

That was not an answer I had expected. So Frank had kept his secret in case it hurt my feelings?

He said, “I'm going for a walk.” Then he got up and went along the beach. He took off the glove and threw it away. I saw his hand swinging at his side, the wound still wide open, but no longer black and rotten. Just ahead of him, the seagull flew off, flapping out across the sea. I thought of a father who suddenly didn't seem so great.

My dad had led two lives, but he wasn't happy with either one.

It was strange that the father I'd envied so much, the one I had wanted so badly, had been my father all along. He had taught Frank exciting things: how to fish, what plants he could eat in the forest. But he had left me to learn on my own. So Frank had grown up to be a boy who did things, while I became a boy who read about them. It didn't seem fair.

My mother must have guessed about Dad's secret life. And good old Uncle Jack had definitely known both sides of my father. He had tried to be a friend to Frank as well as to me. Maybe he felt sorry for us both.

I heard Frank yelling at me from far along the beach. He seemed excited about something. I yelled back, “What do you want?”

His answer was faint. I had to cup my hands to my ear to hear him. “There's a man over here.”

Of course I thought right away of my dream, of my dead father telling me,
Watch for a man.
I stood up. I saw them together, halfway down the beach. The man was not much taller than the boy, and stood absolutely still as Frank walked in circles around him. I ran only a few yards toward them before I understood why.