I think we’d walked for about ten minutes, when Constance noted how odd it was that the tree did not seem to be getting any closer. Or rather, that we didn’t appear to be getting any nearer to it. I laughed it off, said something about optical illusions or mirages, and we kept going, slogging more or less northwards towards the tree, which was still clearly visible. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, there was no longer any denying the fact that, somehow, the red tree had become a fixed point, there to the northeast of us, and that we should have already long since passed it and reached the edge of the pond. By then, it should have become necessary to turn 180° and look south to see the tree, but it remained more or less precisely where it had been, relative to our position, when we’d climbed down from the path to the nameless little stream.
“This is sort of fucked-up,” Constance said, not exactly whispering, but speaking very softly, as though she might be afraid someone would overhear.
“No,” I replied. “This is bullshit,” and I turned right, sloshing back across the tannin-stained water, getting wet to my knees and hardly caring. I scrambled up the bank, and over the fieldstone wall, and there was the path, and there was the far side of the deadfall, standing between me and the house, even though the pile of branches is, at most, only ten feet wide, and we would have passed it immediately,as soon as we began following the stream towards the tree. I stood there, out of breath, a stitch in my side, tasting my own sweat, and I shouted for Constance to get her ass up there.
After she’d seen it for herself, she shook her head and said, “It’s a different one, that’s all.” But the uncertainty in her eyes didn’t even begin to match the intended conviction of her words.
“Constance, I was here less than a weekago. Trust me. There was only one deadfall.”
“Well, then this one’s new,” she said, her voice taking on a frustrated, insistent edge. “ Theselimbs fell later, afteryou came through here, okay?”
I took the bandanna from around my neck and watched her while I wiped at my face with it. The stream water had long since evaporated, and the only moisture on the yellow cotton was my own perspiration.
“Fine,” I said, because I could see she was scared, and I know I was getting scared, and nothing was going to be accomplished by arguing about the hurdle of vines and rotting white pine blocking our route back to the house. “But how long have we been walking, Constance? How long have we been following that creek, with the tree not getting any closer?”
She looked at her wristwatch, and then looked towards the oak, and then looked back to me.
“I’m guessing at least half an hour, right?” I said, and, before she could reply, I continued, because I really did not need or want to hear the answer to my question. “And even if you take into account the time needed for us to climb down to the stream and back up here again, and the few minutes we spent by the water, talking about salamanders and tadpoles and shit, even if you take allthat into account, why aren’t we at the tree? How the hell does it take half an hour to walk three quarters the length of a football field?”
“We’ll clear it up later, I’m sure,” Constance said, turning away from the deadfall and towards the tree. But the wayshe said it, I was left with little doubt that she’d prefer I never even mentionthe matter again, much less try, at that safely unspecified, but later,point in time, to puzzle out what we’d just experienced.
She started walking along the narrow path, and because I had no idea what else to do, I followed her. All around us, the trees were alive with fussing birds and maybe a chattering squirrel or two. I still have a lot of trouble telling angry birds and angry squirrels apart. There was a warm breeze, and, overhead, the branches rustled and the leaves whispered among themselves. Constance walked fast, and so I had to move fast to keep pace. Before long, she was almost sprinting, her footfalls seeming oddly loud against the bare, packed earth of the trail.
Five or ten minutes later I was breathless and sweating like a pig, and I shouted for her to please stop before I had a goddamn coronary. And she didstop, but when she looked back at me, there was an angry, desperate cast in those brick-red eyes of hers. Those irises not unlike the tannin-colored water of the stream.
“ Lookat it,” I gasped, leaning forward, hands on knees, gasping for air and hoping to hell I could get through the next couple of minutes without being sick. “Jesus Christ, Constance, just stop and fucking lookat it.”
And she did. She stood there in the muttering woods, while I struggled to catch my breath, while my sweat dripped and spattered the dirt. She stared at the red tree, and then she asked, “Why doesn’t it want me to reach it? It let you, but it won’t even allow me to get near.” I am moderately sure these were her precise words, and I managed a strangled sort of laugh and spat on the ground.
“Let’s go back,” I said, doing my best to conceal my own confusion and fear. “Like you said, I’m sure it will all make sense later. But I don’t think either of us is in any shape to keep this up.”
“What if it’s me, Sarah?” she asked. “What if doesn’t want me getting close?”
I stood up, my back popping loudly, painfully, and I took her arm. “Let’s go back,” I said again. “It’s just a tree. It doesn’t want anything, Constance. We’re hot and confused and scared, that’s all.”
She nodded slowly, and didn’t argue. I held her arm and softly urged her back the way we’d come. She took a bottle of water from the canvas tote bag, twisted the cap off, and when she was finished, passed it to me. The water was warm and tasted like plastic, but it made me feel just a little better. I remembered the sandwiches and apples and all the damned granola bars she’d packed; if we werelost, at least we wouldn’t starve right away.
“Come on,” she said, returning the water bottle to the tote. “I don’t want to be out here anymore. I need to be home now.”
“That makes two of us. But, please, do me a favor, and let’s not try to make a footrace of it, alright?”
“Fine. You go first,” she replied, and the tone of her voice, her voice and the circumstances combined, there was no way I could not think of some adolescent dare. An abandoned house, maybe, a door left ajar, hanging loose on rusted hinges, opening onto musty shadows and half light. You go first. I dare you. No, I double-dog dare you.I was always a sucker for dares.
“If you keep your head, when everyone about you is busy losing theirs,” I said, and began walking south again, following the trail back to the house.
“Who said that?” she asked, and pulled her arm free.
“I’m paraphrasing,” I replied.
“So who are you paraphrasing?”
“Rudyard Kipling,” I told her, though, at the time I was only half sure it wasKipling and not Disraeli.
“The same guy that wrote The Jungle Book?” she asked, and I knew Constance was talking merely to hear her own voice, to keep metalking, that she was busy trying to occupy her mind with anything mundane. “Mowgli and Baloo and Bagheera, right?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “But my favorite was always ‘Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. ’ My favorite story by Kipling, I mean. You know, the one about the mongoose and the two cobras—”
“I never read it,” she said. “But I saw the Disney movie when I was a kid. I don’t remember a mongoose.”
“Rikki-Tikki-Tavi wasn’t in the Disney film.”
“I never read it,” she said again.
And the conversation went on like that for a while, I don’t know exactly how long. Kipling and Disney and what the hell ever, until she stopped and checked her watch, and I stopped and waited on her.