The Man in the Tree

Chapter Eight

Later Gene Anderson remembered two things about his trip across the country: the Grand Canyon, and a carnival in Columbus, Ohio. The carnival was a sort of traveling amusement park, set up in a vacant lot near the railroad station. He rode the Ferris wheel and the loop-the-loop, ate hot dogs, corn on the cob, and pink cotton candy. Then the cries of a sideshow barker drew him, and he went in.

First they saw the Lizard Man. He was about thirty, partly bald, with expressionless eyes. When he took off his red robe, they saw that his body was covered with shiny scales that looked like a snake's molted skin. "His mother was frightened by a boa constrictor before he was born, ladies and gentlemen. Scientists said it couldn't happen, but here he is, before your very eyes, ladies and gentlemen, one of the Eight Wonders of the World, the Lizard Man, condemned to go through life with the skin of a reptile."

Next was the Fat Lady, and after her the Human Pincushion, who put long needles through his cheeks and tongue, then lay down on a bed of nails with a fifty-pound weight on his chest.

After him was the Bearded Lady, who was bearded all over her face (not just on one half, as in the painting outside). Then came the giant. He sat in a thronelike chair on a little platform, a pale man in a business suit, with wispy dark hair and spectacles. His shoes were like anybody else's, black leather, a little scuffed around the toes, but they were twice as big as any shoes Gene had ever seen before. He took off the gold ring on his finger and the barker showed them that two of his own fingers would fit into it. As he was buying a brass copy of this ring for fifty cents, Gene saw the giant looking at him with a curious expression: he smiled faintly, then closed his eyes and turned his head away.

Out in the midway, Gene was stopped by a man who wore tan denims, with riding boots and a baseball cap. "Hey, kid, how old are you?"

"Twelve," said Gene before he thought.

"Yeah?" The man looked him over. "Well, if you grow another two feet, come and see me." He handed Gene a card and walked away.

Then he was in New York, and it was like coming home to a paradise he had only dreamed of. There were miles of shops, bookstores, galleries; even San Francisco was nothing to this. He rented an apartment in Chelsea. For weeks he saw a different movie every day. He bought books, art supplies, a record player, a television set; he bought Oriental rugs of incredible shimmering colors.

At first it did not bother him that he had no friends or even acquaintances in New York; he liked the feeling of anonymity, invisibility. As long as the golden summer lasted, the city was cheerful; in the autumn it turned melancholy. The first snowfall exhilarated him, but its brilliant whiteness turned overnight to brown freezing slush.

He bought galoshes, a hat, gloves, an overcoat, and a muffler. The overcoat was an absurd garment that could not be closed at the neck, and the muffler did not keep out the bitter wind. Darkness flowed down the streets, and the raw-nosed people walked bending against it, holding their lapels together at the neck. Indoors, in restaurants and theaters, the yellow light made people look feverish. This was not winter as he had known it; it was a nordic underworld.

In a bookstore he found a copy of Sigmund Freud's "Totem and Taboo," and his world was turned around. He discovered that religion was the delusion of people afraid to face the fact that they must die. The universe became a vast indifference, not a screen with God's baleful eye peering through it. When he saw people coming out of a church, he looked at them with amused contempt.

In December he saw an ad for a private detective agency in a newspaper: "Confidential, reasonable rates." He wrote to them, paid the deposit they required, and six weeks later received a letter on their stationery.

Dear Sir: Our operative went to Dog River, Oregon on January 13, 1958 as per your request and consulted the current telephone directory for the names Cooley, Tom or Thomas, Anderson, Donald R. and Anderson, Mildred. No listings were found for these names; however, listings were found for Cooley, Ernest, Anderson, B. Walter, Anderson, Billy, Anderson, D.W., Andersen, Sylvia, and Andersen, Olaf. Consulting previous telephone directories at the public library, no listings were found for Cooley, Tom or Thomas, or Anderson, Donald R. later than the year 1955. The operative then proceeded to the Dog River Post Office and inquired as to Donald R. Anderson. The postmaster informed him that said Donald R. Anderson and wife Mildred moved to Chehalis, Washington in 1955. The operative also inquired as to the present whereabouts of Thomas Cooley,,and was informed that said Cooley left the state in 1957 and his whereabouts were unknown. The operative then contacted the pastor of the Riverside Church, Rev. Floyd Metcalfe Williams, who stated that Mr. and Mrs. Donald R. Anderson were members of his congregation from 1940-1955, when they moved to Chehalis, Washington, and further stated that he believed said Mr. and Mrs. Anderson lost their lives in a fire in 1956. The operative then proceeded to Chehalis, Washington and confirmed...

Gene put the letter down. There were two more paragraphs: " . . . house fire of undetermined origin . . . bill for services enclosed . . . your esteemed favor . . . "

He remembered, as if it were something he had read in a book, the house in Dog River and the yard around it, the smells of crushed grass and earth, the cracked sidewalk, his father's tired face, his mother setting the table. He remembered himself in that house, the wrong size, the wrong age, and yet it was not himself, it was a boy who did not exist anymore, who had died and been reborn outside the tree house in the woods. All those bright pictures belonged to another life; they were gone now; it didn't matter.

That night he dreamed about his parents, but it was not a true dream like the one he had had in the tree house; his mother and father were in some dark piaee and they were trying to talk to him, to tell him something, but when their lips moved there was no sound.

He had other dreams in which Paul Cooley was alive, although he was dead at the same time, in the way that opposites often existed together in dreams; Paul was confronting him with his bulging eyes and slobbery lip, saying, "You pushed me out the window!" And Gene was trying to explain that he really hadn't, or hadn't meant to, and all the time he knew he was lying. Then sometimes he woke up, and sometimes he drifted down from the window and touched Paul's body with his hands; and then Paul was alive, and he rose and walked away. And for some reason, these were the most terrible dreams of all.

One day, in a gallery on Fifth Avenue, he saw an astonishing thing -- a quasi-human figure made up of blocky forms that seemed to be melting from crystals of metal into metal flesh. The face was a mask, the limbs bulged like an insect's. It was dark bronze, about fourteen inches high. It stood in a dancer's posture, speaking of power under intense control. The card on the pedestal said, "Hierophant, Manuel Avila."

"How much is that?" he asked.

The attendant, a bony young man whose suit and tie were gray, gave him an appraising glance. "That," he said, "is three thousand dollars."

"Three thousand?" Gene looked at the figure again. After a moment he said, "I'll take it."

The young man's eyebrows went up. "Very well, sir, will you step this way?"

At the little desk in the back he produced a sales slip and began to fill it in. "Do you have some identification, Mr. Davis?"

"Not with me, no, but I'd like to leave you a deposit now and I'll bring you a certified check later."

"That will be perfectly fine."

"I'd like to meet Mr. Avila sometime. Does he live here in town?"

"Yes, sir. He's in the phone book, actually, but let me write it down for you."