The Man in the Tree

Chapter Fifteen

Early the next morning Cooley drove out of town on the state highway. Forty miles out of East Anglia he came to an underpass; it was marked, "Clearance 11 feet 10 inches." Cooley turned off at the next exit, drove east until he came to the secondary route, then turned back toward East Anglia. The road was winding and hilly, with second-growth forests on either side.

After a few miles he came to a feeder road that connected the two highways. He drove down it to the state highway, and saw a sign, "Truck Route," that he hadn't noticed before. The carnival caravan would turn off here, it would have to -- eleven feet ten was not high enough for the semis. He turned the wagon around, went back to the secondary road and headed for Elvis again, driving slowly. He was looking for a place where a truck and semitrailer would be sure to go off the road if you shot out a tire. What he found was something better.

Ten miles up the secondary route, he came to a broad gravel road that went up between cut banks into the hills. On a sudden hunch, he turned up it. Three miles brought him to a T where another road branched off. There was a heavy chain stretched between concrete posts, and a rusted metal sign: "Private. No Trespassing." Cooley parked on the shoulder, got out, and listened. The air was clear and still. He stepped over the chain and began walking up the road. When he had gone only a few hundred yards, he could see the black mounds rising above the treetops; then he knew where he was.

The road made a loop that brought it back under an enormous hopper projecting from a metal building that had once been painted green. Mammoth coal trucks were in a parking area off the road; beyond them was a little green house that looked like it might be a watchman's shack, but it was padlocked and empty.

Cooley went back to his car for a flashlight and a tire iron. He used the iron to prize open the door to the tower. He wanted to make sure that the hopper was full, and it was; it was loaded with pea coal, and that was perfect.

The whole thing, or anyhow the main part of it, had come into his head as soon as he saw the coal station. What he had in mind was complicated, and there were things that could go wrong with it at every stage, but if it worked it would be better than a fire.

He couldn't help thinking how great it would be if Jerry was alive and here to help him. There were a couple of places in his scheme that really needed two people, and there was one place where he couldn't see how to do it alone. He had it all figured out except that one part, where the semi came around the loop. The semi would have to stop in just the right spot, and he had thought about putting something in the road, a sawhorse, or a sign, or maybe a bonfire, but any of those things the driver would see from way back, and you couldn't tell where he would put on the brakes. If somebody jumped out on the road suddenly, that would be perfect, but Cooley couldn't do it because he had to be in the control room. That was where Jerry would have come in. But Jerry was dead, and so was Paul, and they couldn't help, unless maybe one of them came back as a ghost.

That was what gave him the idea, or else it was seeing the scarecrow in the field. The scarecrow was just an old shirt and a pair of pants, and a round head made of two pieces of cloth sewed together, the whole thing stuffed with straw. After Cooley saw it, he drove for half a mile in a sort of trance, then turned around and took the scarecrow off its pole.

In East Anglia that afternoon he bought a hacksaw, a can of medium-weight machine oil, a long-handled screwdriver, a staple gun, a reel of copper wire, some sash weights, a pair of wire cutters, and fresh batteries for his flashlight. At the five and dime down the street, he bought scissors, needles, and carpet thread. Nobody was around when he got back to his cabin. He attached the sash weights to one end of a length of wire, opened the scarecrow's body, and inserted the weights. He threaded the wire up through the top of the scarecrow's head, wishing it had brown hair, and formed the end into a ring. Then he went back to the car for Paul's photograph, the one he had meant to tape on the giant's window. It was an enlargement of an old snapshot; the face was almost life size. He cut the face out with scissors and sewed it onto the scarecrow's face.

At six o'clock he ate a slice of ham with red-eye gravy in the greasy spoon, then drove out of town. It took him a little over an hour to get to the coal station turnoff. The chain across the entrance was heavy; it took him half an hour to cut through one link. When he was finished, he pulled the chain out of the way, got into his wagon, and drove up the road to the coal-station. He went all the way around the loop and parked just behind the hopper.

The next thing was the scarecrow. Cooley fastened the end of his copper wire to the loop at the top of the figure's head. Then he carded the reel up the outside stairway of the hopper, hoisted the figure until it hung a foot or two off the ground, cut the wire and fastened it to a rung of the stairway. The figure hung below, rotating gently. Cooley went down to look at it. He got into his car, turned on the headlights, and drove slowly under the hopper. The figure ahead was ghostly against the twilight. Cooley pictured how it would look if it suddenly appeared ahead of him; he jammed on the brakes, and now, in his mind, he heard the rattle and roar of coal falling from the hopper.

He backed up a few yards and turned off the headlights. He left the car there, climbed the stairway again and hoisted the scarecrow. He fastened another length of wire to the ring in the figure's head, passed the wire through a rung, and went down again, unreeling the wire behind him. He opened a window in the control booth, passed the wire inside, and reeled it in until the figure hung just above the bottom of the hopper. He cut the wire, secured it to a desk-leg. He studied the control board until he was sure he understood it. Then he picked up his tools and the rest of the wire, put them in the wagon, and drove back toward East Anglia on the secondary road. Before long he saw what he was looking for: a piece of white cardboard with a red arrow on it, stapled to a tree. The route man had been through here sometime in the evening, "arrowing the route" for the caravan.

Cooley stopped and got out long enough to pry loose the marker with his screwdriver. Most of these arrows were just for reassurance; there was no place to turn here anyhow. At the turnoff to the feeder road he found a cluster of three red arrows, and took one; at the state road there was another cluster, and he got one there. That made three, and he needed one more. He drove back past the coal station road until be found another one, and took it.

He stapled one of his arrows to a tree half a mile up the gravel road, then two more to indicate the turn between the concrete posts where he had cut the chain. He uprooted the "No Trespassing" sign and threw it into a bush. He put up his last arrow pointing straight ahead where the road looped back to form a Y. Then he drove back to East Anglia, parked on the street in front of the carnival, and waited. Only a few people were on the midway; the white lights of the Ferris wheel were revolving lonely in the darkness.

At midnight he heard the loudspeakers announcing that the carnival was over; half an hour later he saw the workmen swarming over the rides and booths, disassembling them to be loaded into trucks. About three o'clock he saw the caravan forming up. Three semis marked in the carnival's purple and orange pulled out first, then three cars with house trailers, then the semi with the yellow cab, the one that was Gene Anderson's. Cooley started his engine, turned a corner to get off the main street, and headed for the secondary road. He believed he had time enough to get where he was going ahead of the caravan, because it would take a while for them all to get onto the state highway, but he kept the speedometer at seventy and hurtled over the winding road behind the beams of his headlights.

Larry Scanlon unlocked the cab, swung himself up, and closed the door. He took a sip of the Coke he was carrying and set it down in the snack box. The yellow tag was hanging from the mirror, the signal they used to let Larry know that the giant was back in the trailer. He removed it and tossed it into the glove compartment. He had spent the last three hours helping to take down and load the loop-the-loop. A shower would have been good, but he would just get sweaty again, unloading and setting up in Elvis. The house trailer ahead of him was just pulling out; he started the engine, turned on the headlights and followed.

Once they were on the highway there was nothing to do but follow the taillights of the driver ahead. He finished the Coke and lit a cigarette. This was part of what he liked about carnival life -- pulling out of town in the dead of night, heading for somewhere else, being awake and moving when the rest of the world was asleep. Back in Cleveland, the kids he had gone to school with were probably pounding their ears, with alarm clocks beside them to wake them for one more day at their boring jobs; or else they were in Viet Nam getting their butts shot off.

The four-lane was almost deserted at this time of night. Every now and then, when the road curved just enough but not too much, he could see the lights of the caravan strung out in the darkness, but most of the time his view was blocked by the house trailer ahead. After about three-quarters of an hour he saw the trailer's turn signals flash three times. He flicked the lever, passing the signal along, and reduced his speed.

The caravan turned off the highway onto a feeder road that led to a two-lane rising and dipping through the hills. There were so many sharp curves now that he frequently lost sight of the trailer ahead and the car behind him. As he came around one curve, he saw a moving light, and hit the brake. Someone was standing on the shoulder, swinging a flashlight with a red rim, and he saw that the flash was pointing up a steep gravel road. As he slowed to make the turn, he glimpsed the figure in the headlights; it was a short, heavy-set man, but his hat brim shadowed his face and Larry couldn't see who it was.

The semi had lurched a little as he made the turnoff and shifted down. After a minute the intercom hissed and crackled. "Larry?"

"Yeah, Mr. Kimberley. I wake you up?"

"Guess so. Where are we, anyway?"

"Beats me. There was a guy back there with a flashlight, so I turned off."

"With a flashlight? That's funny."

"Yeah." There was nothing in sight in the gravel road ahead, and nothing behind but the cloud of dust they were making. "This doesn't look right," Larry said. "Oh, wait a minute -- " The headlights lit up a tree on his right; a red arrow was stapled to the trunk of the tree. "There's an arrow."

Headlights came up behind. "Guess it's all right," Larry said. "Here comes somebody behind us." The lights kept coming, drew up, and swung out to pass. In the dust cloud as it pulled ahead, Larry could tell only that it was a brown station wagon, not hauling anything, just a car.~

"What about the guy with the light, could you tell who it was?"

"No."

The pale road unwound before them out of the darkness. The taillights of the car that had passed were nowhere to be seen, and there was still no one behind them. "There's another arrow," said Larry, with relief. On a tree ahead, two red arrows marked a turn. Larry swung the wheel. "Maybe this'll take us back to the highway."

Ahead, tall shapes were looming against the sky. The road made a Y; another red arrow showed him which way to go. The other road ran past a cluster of tall buildings with skeletal stairways going up and down; beyond them were black mounds, taller than the buildings. "Coal," said Larry. "This can't be right. Oh, hell." In the headlights, he could see that the road curved into a loop -- it was going to lead them back to the Y again. He stopped the truck. "This is a mine or something," he said. "I don't get it. Some kind of a joke?"

"I'm coming up," the giant's voice said. The hiss from the intercom stopped.

In the side mirror, he saw the trailer door open. The giant came out, wearing his brown and white robe. He walked past the cab, crossed in the glare of the headlights, and after a moment rapped on the window. Larry leaned over to unlock the door for him, and he climbed in, ducking under the ceiling of the cab. He rummaged in the glove compartment, pulled out a road map, and spread it between them in the glow of the dome light.

Larry studied it a moment. "Here's the state road," he said. "This must be where we turned off, and then here's where we went north again on the two-lane. This road doesn't even show on the map." He looked up. "What do you think?"

"All we can do is go back the way we came, and just head for Elvis. We'll get there late."

"Yeah. Well -- " Larry put the truck into gear and drove around the curve of the loop. Where the road straightened again, it led under the bulk of a tall structure on posts that straddled the road. "What's that?" the giant asked.

"A hopper. Where they load coal, I guess." As they drove under it, something white flashed toward them, a leaping figure, arms waving. Larry hit the brakes; the engine died. He had just time to see that the pale figure was a dummy, a scarecrow with a face, jerking and swinging in front of the windshield. Then the cab shook to an insane roar; the figure was gone behind a tumbling stream of darkness that cascaded past the windshield.

"Back up!" the giant said sharply.

The roar continued, like nothing Larry had ever heard. His arms were trembling, and he couldn't feel the gearshift lever. He got it into neutral somehow, turned on the engine, then shifted into reverse. When he let out the clutch, nothing seemed to happen. The cab rocked a little, but the roar continued and the dark cascade kept on falling.

"You're just spinning the wheels," the giant shouted in his ear. "Try forward. Hurry up!"

Larry slammed the gearshift lever into first. It was a moment before he realized that he had killed the engine again. He felt dizzy, and it was hard to focus his eyes: he was trembling all over. He got the engine started, let the clutch out and stepped on the gas. Nothing happened, except that the cab shuddered and slewed a little.

"Oh, God!" said Larry. His voice was stifled inside his head by the unending, maddening roar. He jammed the gas pedal down, again and again. The idiot lights went on; he had killed the engine once more. He reached for the start button, but the giant's hand covered his. "Don't," said the voice in his ear. "The exhaust stacks must be covered by now. Leave it off."

"What?" he said. "I don't -- Oh, God, oh, God!" He wrenched his hand away, grabbed the steering wheel and tried to shake it, then thought of the door handle and reached for it, but it would not move. The giant's arm came around him, pinning him to the seat. "Easy," said the voice. "Easy. Take it easy."

The roar went on echoing unbearably in the cab, like an avalanche, a river of stone; darkness hurried past the windshield, the side windows."Easy!" Larry said. "Oh, God!" His mouth wouldn't work right, and when he wiped it with his sleeve, he found that his face was wet with tears.

Bits of the solid darkness were bounding upward from the hood. Larry stared uncomprehendingly; then he saw the edge of the black mass creeping up from the bottom of the windshield. It was rising all around them. Coal! They were being buried in coal! He screamed and fought, but the giant would not let him go.

Remorseless as sand in an hourglass, the darkness rose over the windshield. Now there was only a narrow stripe at the top where the black torrent was still falling. Now even that was gone. In the yellow dome light, the windshield and side windows were masked by a solid layer of tiny gray-glistening bits of coal. The sound had changed; it was more furious than ever on the roof, but muffled all around.

Then there was another change: the roar of the falling coal was receding above their heads, dwindling, distant. At last it stopped. Larry could hear nothing but the painful ringing in his ears. The giant held him firmly. "Listen," he said. "Listen. We're going to get out. You understand me?"

"Get out," said Larry. He heard how weak his voice was, but he couldn't help it. "How we going to get out?"

"I'll show you after a while. Right now we have to wait."

"Wait, why?"

"Because the man who did this is still out there." He let go of Larry. "Okay now?"

Larry wiped his face with his sleeve. "You know who did it?"

"I think so. It's a man who wants to kill me."

Larry looked at him in wonder. The giant's mouth was set in an expression he could not read: it was not anger or sadness, but something else.

He could feel his body still trembling; he was cold all the way through, as cold as if he were already dead. Through the ringing in his ears he could feel the silence. There was nothing out there, nothing but stillness; it was like being entombed in the heart of a mountain. After a moment he fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.

"Better not," said the giant. "The air."

"Oh. How long can we -- ?"

"I don't know. Long enough, but it won't help if we fill the cab with smoke."

They listened to the silence. The giant said, "You remember that thing that jumped at us? What did it look like?"

"I dunno. It happened so quick. A dummy, I guess, like a scarecrow."

"The face? Did you see the face?"

"Yeah."

"Was it a kid's face?"

"Maybe. Yeah, I guess so. Listen, couldn't we break a window -- "

"The coal would come in."

"Yeah, but we could pull the coal in and then get out the window.'"

"Unless there's too much coal. Even if there isn't, I told you, the man who did this is still out there. We've got to wait."

"How long?"

"Till he goes away."

"Okay, if you say so." Larry fidgeted. "I gotta piss," he said, and clamped his knees together. "Oh, Jesus."

"Is there a bottle or something?"

He remembered the Coke bottle, reached for it, and unzipped his pants. It was hard to direct the stream through the narrow neck of the bottle; some of it ran down outside and some sprayed. He offered the half-full bottle to the giant. "Do you want -- ?"

"No, I'll wait." Suddenly the giant raised his head. "He's gone."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"What do we do now?"

"Wait awhile, just to make sure he doesn't come back."

After a moment Larry heard himself saying, "There was a story we read in school, the cask of something -- "

"'The Cask of Amontillado'?"

"Yeah, that was it. Where they wall up this guy in the cellar?"

"'For the love of God, Montresor.' I remember."

"Yeah, when he put in the last brick. That scared the hell out of me."

"Try not to think about it."

"Some kids locked me in a closet once, when I was little."

"Where was that, in Cleveland?"

"Yeah. I can remember how it smelled in there. Kind of dead air. Ever since then -- "

"What did your folks do?"

"My old man's an engineer with the power company. He was sore when I dropped out of school Then he wanted me to volunteer for the army. Listen, it's getting real hard to breathe in here. Can you really do it, because if you can for God's sake will you do it?"

"All right." The giant turned away and put his hands on the window.

"That's jammed," Larry said.

"I know it. Shut up a minute."

Larry waited. After a few moments he heard a curious rustling sound. He leaned to look past the giant's body, and saw with disbelief that the particles of coal were sliding down past the window.

The giant let his head hang for a moment, took a deep breath, and straightened again. The rustling sound resumed. Suddenly a shaft of pale light came in at the top of the window. It was the most beautiful and unexpected thing Larry had ever seen. It widened into a wedge-shape, expanding slowly and steadily. "What are you doing?" he whispered.

"Getting rid of the coal," said the giant. He lowered his. head for a moment, raised it again. The wedge of daylight steadily widened; Larry could see now that a funnel was forming in the coal beyond the door, particles pouring down the sides as if they were falling into a hole somewhere.

The giant opened the door and stepped out. Larry followed him. They were in a semicircular hollow space; beyond it the coal was still heaped chest-high. The buildings around them were silent and almost shadowless in the morning light; the sky was a pale greenish blue, and the air was scented with moisture. Larry filled his lungs again and again, experiencing the incredible fact that he was alive.

The giant was climbing the slope. Larry scrambled up after him on hands and knees, got over the top and down the other side.

The giant was a few yards away, staring at the front of the mound. After a moment Larry saw what he was looking at: a thin copper wire hung from a stairway on the hopper almost to the mound of coal. Another piece, not attached to anything, lay in loops on the road. "That's where he hung the dummy," the giant said. "He must have taken it away again. I was hoping it was still here."

He turned, and they walked around to the back. The mound of coal covered all but the last five feet of the trailer. The giant turned long enough to say, "See if you can find a shovel. They must have some around for cleanup."

When he came back with the shovel, the giant was standing at the side of the mound. Directly in front of him, Larry could see that a little funnel-shaped space had formed high on the slope, exposing the top of the door. As he watched, the funnel deepened abruptly. There was a pause, and it deepened again.

The giant looked around and saw him. "Dig," he said.

"It'll take me all day to shovel this. Why can't you -- "

"I can't do much at a time. Shut up and dig."

By the time they had cleared the door, it was full daylight. Sweat was dripping from Larry's chin; the giant looked haggard and ill. Inside, the lighted interior of the trailer was like a room in a cave. The giant climbed in slowly, took off his robe and began to dress. When he was finished, he wandered around the trailer and put a few things in his pockets, then took a suitcase out of the storage space under the bed. "Let's go."

"Aren't you going to put anything in that?"

"No, it doesn't matter."

Out in the road, the giant put the suitcase down. "This had better be good-bye. I can't go back to the carnival, and I wish you wouldn't either, because that's the first place he'll look. It would be easy enough for him to find out you were my driver. You understand?" He took some bills out of his pocket and handed them to Larry. "Take this and buy yourself a car, or get on the train and go wherever you want. And by the way, if there's anything in the trailer you want, help yourself."

"What are you going to do?"

The giant smiled faintly. "I'm going to find a place in the woods to sleep for about eight hours. After that -- it's better if you don't know. Good luck to you, Larry." He turned and walked away.

Larry looked at the money in his hand. The first bill was a hundred dollars, and so was the next, and the next . . . there were thirty of them. When he looked up, the giant was already out of sight around the curve of the road.