The whole of our woods, five miles in any direction from Treaty, was deeply touched by Thrombone’s hand. He was the tri-light, as different from his brethren as Gray Man or Winch Fargo.
“I am the forest warden,” he once said. “I tend to the trees and sleep next to First Light.”
Among the half-lights men and women were divided. The four men spent four days out of every fortnight planting trees, drinking stone liquor, and having one another’s dreams. The women worked together also, making tree cloth and cooking, following the recipes given them by Juan Thrombone. About twice a year Addy, Preeta, and Trini would go off with Nesta to perform some ritual in the woods. I don’t know what they did or where they went.
In the hierarchy of the Blues, Bones came first. He was the most powerful (with the possible exception of Gray Man) and knew the most. Not that Juan saw himself as a leader or king.
Everyone loved Juan. He was our patron and protector. After that we looked to Nesta, who seemed to know anything worth knowing. Nesta was concerned and cautious, and her effect on Alacrity calmed many a situation that might have otherwise led to bloodshed.
Winch Fargo, as I said before, had deficient awareness, having seen only the last second of the divine message. Alacrity had not seen the light but had been born of a witness’s blood. And even those that witnessed a single shaft of blue were as different from one another as anyone else in the world. Wanita lived in dreams, Nesta in ideas, and Reggie looked for signs and portents of things that are hidden.
No one actually liked Winch Fargo. He was profane and obnoxious. His nickname for me was Big Nigger with the Woodbook. He called Trini and Preeta Cunt Number 1 and Cunt Number 2. He didn’t have a name for Addy because his respect for Bones was actually fear.
The Blues didn’t like Fargo but did pity him. For them his deformity was not the loss of an arm but a deficiency of light. They allowed his company because of his pain.
But they were all Blues, even Winch Fargo. They convened from time to time to discuss their nature or the nature of the universe or Grey Redstar and the ultimate clash of life and death. I tried to eavesdrop on those meetings but I could never take it for very long. The Blues communed with words and also the power of their minds or souls. I could listen for a few minutes, but soon my head would start to ache. If I weathered the pain, a buzz would start in my ears and then my vision would begin to blur. Finally I’d be forced to run from their presence. After that I’d sleep sometimes for a whole day.
Such was Treaty. A congress of outcasts sitting on the precipice of infinity, under the threat of death and living each day more primitively and more magically than the last.
Thirty-one
The years passed like so many moments. Nothing changed much among us. Preeta was the only woman to bear a child — they called him Woolly because he had thick hair like his father. Every seven days Gerin Reed would give a talk on whatever it was that he’d been looking at that week. His sermons covered ants and rocks, the rhythm of the singing white firs, or the bellowing of the puppy sequoias. We’d meet in the clearing, outside of Number Twelve, in the early morning as the sun rose. Warden Reed’s wisdom grew in the forest. Bones said that Reed heard the songs of the trees more clearly than even the Blues did because they took the music for granted but Gerin listened with all his heart. Bones was almost always present at these talks, but other than that, you never knew when he’d be around. He was off minding his forest most of the time. Sometimes he was gone for days.
Alacrity also took to leaving Treaty for long stints. She had a boyfriend; she said his name was Eric Beauvais. Eric lived in a cabin sixty or seventy miles distant. She’d found him with a broken leg in the deep winter and nursed him back to health. They became lovers, and so she went to him every spring, when the sap began to flow.
Wanita remained a child, but that didn’t keep her from becoming our counsel and guide in most things. She interpreted dreams and told of important events. She settled disputes on the strength of her wisdom. Even Juan Thrombone came to Wanita for advice now and then.
I divided my time between the four days it took us to cultivate a crop of fifteen singing trees and ten days of solitude. The hard days of working and imbibing the stone liquor made me strong, stronger than any normal man. And the friendships I forged with my fellow half-light workers were worth all the pain and loneliness of my childhood. But I still craved the peace and privacy of the deep woods. Walking the hills and valleys around Treaty, I was in a daze most of the time, high on the vision granted me by the blood of my teacher. We all had different abilities. Mine was like a drug. Over the years my hallucinations became more vivid. The visions that came to me I could not describe in words. I did not understand their purpose or origin. Some days the sunlight would speak in colors and sound. The texture of trees and earth had their own tales, meandering and unfocused.
Whenever I could, I slept with Nesta. She made time for me when she wasn’t teaching or off with Alacrity. We spent a lot of time together in the spring when Alacrity was off with her woodsman lover. Sometimes after a whole evening of passionate lovemaking I’d realize that Nesta and I hadn’t said five full sentences to each other.
But I wasn’t sad. I caught fish and slept in the shadow of Number Twelve. I hummed the song of the singing trees and plotted out the day that I would end my life by sitting in the hollow of the great tree that grew in the bellowing grove.
How can I explain to you what it felt like over the months and years? Looking back on it now from my cell, there seems to be very little to say. We cultivated more than eleven thousand firs to protect, with their songs, and the twenty-four bellowing sequoias that were also gods. We grew the saplings and they moved away. I never recognized a tree after it had gone from our gardening place.
Nothing happened in the way that events of a life usually occur in the modern world. No heartbreaks, job promotions, goals met. Only one child was born.
There’s no way for me to impress upon you the passage of time in the ordinary sense. It was just one long day and one long night passed in the presence, if not the concern, of God. Not the God of organized religion, but the amazing vitality of existence.
It was like sitting before a simple granite boulder every day, seeing in that plain surface more variation than is possible to comprehend. Every night is spent dreaming of that stone, wondering what amazing differences lay beneath the small surface that you have failed to perceive.
Now and then, while contemplating that boulder, comes a magic moment when you catch a glimpse of an image or phrase that increases the smallest possible increment of not only your knowledge but also the sum total of possibility in the universe.
Looking back on it now, I am unutterably sad with the loss.
The years passed. Woolly, who aged at a normal rate as far as I could tell, was about fifteen.
And then one night I had a dream:
Gray Man was sleeping fitfully in a dark cave blocked by a huge boulder. He groaned and there was the smell of redwood in his nostrils. In my dream he dreamed that he was in a wide wood dressed formally and swinging an ax against the greatest, tallest sequoia that I had ever seen. I knew that this towering giant was the parent of the Bellowing Trees. I understood then why Bones had called them puppies.