Zomboid’s real name was Steve Williams.
She remembered his downy lip and his smooth hairless chest.
His fingers along the waistband of her jeans.
A pulse between her legs.
Williams rocking gently. His boy body against her girl body.
His body back from Nam, washboard stomach, wiry arms.
Getting up to make her father breakfast. Her hair in curlers.
Her father’s black lunchbox on the counter, ready to go.
TREE HUNTING
Lumber runners raced to put their claims in. Still do. It was said there were men who could hear a queen pine from a mile away and identify it by the sound of the wind through its needles. I’m one of them, he said.
The man’s name was Hank. He spoke of races to the land office through virgin forest. Tracts so brambly that men came out bleeding. The hardships of the lumber business, the corruption and the glory, stripping an entire state from top to bottom in a few years.
I’d just as soon be out here amid them than with just about anybody.
He turned and looked at her with eyes intense and icy blue. At any moment he’d put his big hands on her, she thought. But it was good to be out in the forest. The trees — a second regrowth after the great scalping harvest of the last century, when the small-gauge lines fed the logs down into the mills, and in turn onto the steamers, and in turn to Chicago, where they went to market. The rails were gone but you could still find traces of their tie work, trails in the deep woods, and you still stumbled upon old encampments that were now nothing more than stone foundations and, when you dug with your trench shovel, the charcoal remains of sawdust fires.
He questioned her. What was it like when you were released into the Grid after being treated, and how the hell did Rake lure you out? What was his technique? Do you think you had something to do with Rake, some connection in the past? Did he grab you and force-feed one of his fucking concoctions into your mouth? She yielded up nothing more than a few grunts. (Make a story up if you have to give a story, if someone asks you for one, a nurse in the Grid had said, his voice soothing. If it comes down to it, you just have to dig deep and put two and two together and spin something out. It won’t be hard unless you let it be hard. If all else fails, remain silent. If that fails, give the enfolded sign. When you’re done with your rehab in the Grid area, you’ll feel strong enough to take the questions. Here in the Grid, you’ll find a mutual understanding. They won’t ask. The enfolded respect the enfolded, that kind of thing.)
Deep inside a grove of pines, he got the tent poles in place and unfolded the canvas and pegged it down.
We’ll camp here, he said.
She sat down and watched as he gathered kindling and used his hatchet to sliver bark and carefully built a cone formation, sprinkled dry needles on it and lit it with a match and then blew lightly and then harder as the fire burst, threading a dark trail of smoke up into the higher reaches of the trees where there was still sunlight, and then he stretched out, with his legs tight together, and patted the ground and told her to come up close, to sit.
Thanks, she said, and she went to him and sat. Whatever trust she had once had was gone, but she could imagine a time when she could trust. A guy would introduce her to a guy on a Harley-Davidson, who would offer her a ride upstate, and she’d get on and go.
She had a fragment memory of a hippie encampment surrounded by a biker gang, the leather on their chaps squeaking. The memory had the quality of being dreamed, a false creation. That’s what they said. You’ll make stuff up, drawing from images you’ve seen recently. The rest was in the so-called terminal confusion, the faint memories of the reenactment, residual aspects that formed a shell around the central trauma, the real trauma, that was buried and gone in her memory. A nurse had explained that. His voice was deep. He was gentle.
A mother lode tree, Hank was saying. The queen of the forest. You feel the lure of a giant tree. Catch the sound of needles singing in Canadian wind. I mean even toothpicks have tripled in price. Those lovely dispensers you see behind the cash register at your mom-and-pop. They’ve been moved behind the counter.
He lit a cigarette and dug through his pack and came out with a can of beer.
Do you think I could go with you? she said. Do you think you could take me up there?
He wiped his lips on the back of his hand and stared into the flames and waited a moment.
We’re in a weird moment in history. I know that’s not an answer to your question, but that’s what came to my mind when you asked.
But you’d take me with you?
I’ve promised not to touch you. I gave Rake my word. It might sound strange to say, but it’s a matter of honor. Mine, not his. If he has a sense of honor, and my gut says he still does, it’s linked with the past. I like to think he still has it.
That’s not an answer, she said, standing up.
You’re getting your lucidity back.
If you heard that queen pine somewhere. If you picked up the sound of it, or the feeling, would you take me with you?
He stared at the fire some more and then went to his pack and took out a pan, a can of beans, some potatoes, and he began to prepare a meal, taking his time, working carefully, opening up the can and then peeling the potatoes with his knife while the sun set and the wind picked up. He was still talking about trees as he worked. His fingers were long and nimble and the care he took made him look less heavy. From time to time he stopped and rubbed his beard and looked at her and shook his head and then returned to his work, stirring the pot with a spoon, adjusting it on the fire.
Would you take me along? she said.
I suppose if I got a sense that the tree was anywhere near here, and I’m talking a proximity of about a hundred miles, because that’s what I think my range is for picking up a scent, then yeah, I’d take you along, but only because I’m governed by larger impulses.
When the potatoes were almost done he took the pan off, holding the handle with a stick, and put it to the side. Then he put a smaller pot on and poured the beans in and began to stir.
When I was a kid my old man took me up here a couple of times a year and we fished and hiked. A couple of weeks in the woods and the rest of the time up on the bridge welding, or out in New York with his Iroquois buddies. He worked high steel until he signed up as a deckhand on a ship. He slipped and almost died on a project in New York, and he used to say, “I almost slipped and went to the ship.” That’s what he used to say. Maybe that’s what he still says. I wouldn’t know because the truth is I don’t see him much, not really at all, and I’m not even sure where he is out there, except to say he’s on the water, I’m sure of that, from spring thaw to winter freeze, and when he’s not on a ship he’s living somewhere down in Toledo or up in Duluth. He’s in Duluth when he’s not in Toledo, but I’d guess he favors Duluth because like me — and I’m guessing here, again — he’s a man who likes the glimmer of northern light and the solitude and — guessing even more — a proximity to good forest of the sort you only get up here, or farther north.