The Man in the Tree

Chapter Three

Five miles from Dog River, up an old logging road, there was a hunting lodge, formerly the property of Dr. C.B. Landecker, who gave it to the Boy Scouts in 1938. The lodge consisted of a large living room, a primitive kitchen and pantry, and two small bedrooms downstairs; upstairs there was a loft full of camp beds and cots. In the clearing behind the house there were two outbuildings in an advanced state of disrepair, a well, a barbecue pit, a clothesline, and a heap of old lumber, the remains of a third outbuilding, which the Scouts had been using for firewood. There were recent tire-marks in the soft ground when Gene came into the clearing at twilight, but the building was empty and dark. He felt the lock with his fingers, turned it and went in.

Vague shapes of furniture loomed in the darkness; there was a stale smell. Gene felt his way into one of the bedrooms, took two blankets and carried them outside. Under the sagging porch he cleared away a few rocks and tin cans; spread his blankets, and rolled himself up in them for the night.

Out in the deep darkness there were howls, cries of anguish, with long silent intervals between them. Even in his refuge, there were mysterious and alarming sounds -- skitterings of tiny legs, crunches, clicks. The apples he had eaten on his way through the orchards were a hard lump in his stomach. He knew that he would lie awake all night and be tired in the morning; in the middle of this thought, he fell asleep.

In the morning, the clearing was empty and silent. Gene went into the house again and looked around. In the kitchen and pantry he found some useful things, a pot and a skillet, a knife, fork, and spoon, a can-opener, a can of pork and beans, a box of matches, a salt-shaker and half a box of crackers. He copied the pot and skillet, for fear they would be missed; the rest of the things he simply took. He rolled everything up in the blankets and tied them together with a clothesline. Then he slipped out of the house and into the trees, following a little stream.

In the hills above the river, the trees stand shoulder to shoulder, more than a hundred feet tall and five hundred years old: Douglas fir, western hemlock, red cedar, Ponderosa pine, Oregon white oak. Some of them were full-grown in 1579, when Sir Francis Drake sailed up the Pacific coast looking for a northwest passage. Where the land is level, the trees stand by themselves in a brown gloom, but on the slopes and in the narrow valleys they are surrounded by an anarchy of underbrush, hazel and mazzard cherry, bracken fern, trailing blackberry.

Before noon Gene Anderson had found the place he wanted, in a thick stand of fir and oak on a hillside so steep that no one would think of climbing it. Halfway up the hill, entirely screened by tall firs, stood a giant oak. Its trunk was more than two feet across, gray and fissured like an elephant's body; the thick branches curved out knobby and strong to support the crown fifty feet overhead.

Gene ate his pork and beans on the hillside, then rolled everything up in the blankets again and hid them under a log. He went back to the Boy Scout camp; the clearing was deserted except for a few sparrows pecking around the kitchen door.

In one of the outbuildings he found a hammer and some nails, a hatchet, a saw, a pick, and a little shovel. He wrapped these in a tarpaulin and carried them back to his hillside. By that time it was late afternoon, and it was dark under the trees. He ate pork and beans again, spread the tarpaulin under the log and slept there wrapped in his blankets.

The next day he went back to the camp and sorted out pieces of usable lumber from the pile in the clearing; He carried these up to the hillside and went back for more. Exhausted, he slept again under the log.

Early the next morning he climbed to the fork of the old oak, pulled up lumber with the clothesline and began to build his house. He notched the limbs to make the floor level, and braced it underneath with pieces cut from two-by-fours. By nightfall he had the framing up and the floor laid, and he slept there that night, under the tarpaulin, in a cold drizzle of rain.

The house took shape as he had seen it in his mind: eight feet square, eight feet high at one end and seven feet at the other, with a sloping shed roof. He covered the roof with a tarpaulin and nailed it down around the edges. The only opening was a narrow door, hinged at the top with shoe leather. Along one side he made his bed of fir branches; on another wall he put up shelves for his belongings, and on the third wall, the one opposite the door, a wider shelf that could serve as a desk or workbench.

On Monday he went down to the Boy Scout camp again. No one was there, but he saw fresh tire-marks in the road, and that made him uneasy. He determined to get everything he needed in this one trip and not come back again.

Inside, the living room was in some disorder; sofa cushions and scattered newspapers were on the floor. Gene went through into the pantry, found a gunny sack, and began to fill it. He took cans of soup, condensed milk, Spam, beef stew, green beans, corn, and peaches; a tin plate and cup, a candle, and a roll of toilet paper; a flashlight and some batteries, a kerosene !amp, a bar of soap. In one of the closets he found a pair of heavy boots, a sheepskin coat, and a hat with earflaps; they were all too big for him, but he took them anyhow.

The gunny sack was full, and he began on another one. In the tool shed he found a gallon jug, a bucket, a screwdriver and some other tools, a yardstick, a rusty pair of scissors, some brushes and cans of paint. He finished filling up his sack with the books he found over a desk in the living room: a dictionary, a cookbook, the "Boy Scout Handbook for Boys," and four novels in worn cloth bindings. He copied and replaced all the books, because he was afraid their absence would be too conspicuous. He gathered up the newspapers from the floor and put them in too, and an old copy of "The American Boy." A little kerosene heater and a can of kerosene went into a third sack, along with a pillow from one of the beds.

He now had far more than he could carry in one trip, but it was getting late, and he was afraid of being caught in the house if someone should come back. He carried the gunny sacks, and a folding canvas chair that caught his eye at the last moment, a few hundred yards into the woods and left two of the sacks there while he carried the third sack home. By the time he had come back twice, for the other two sacks and the chair, he was too tired to sort out his belongings. He set up the kerosene stove, filled and lit it, and for the first time had a hot meal in his own house: vegetable soup, Spam, pork and beans, with condensed milk to drink and a chocolate bar for dessert.

Afterward he took the folded newspapers out of the sack and put them in order. One was the "Oregonian," the other the "Dog River Gazette." On the first page of the "Gazette" was an article headlined "Missing Boy Sought in Death of Juvenile."

Police are seeking a 9-year-old Dog River boy for questioning in connection with the death of another boy Sunday. The dead youth is Paul Cooley, 12, son of Chief of Police Tom Cooley.

According to witnesses, young Cooley and Gene Anderson, 9, were playing in the upper story of an unfinished house under construction by the Anderson boy's father, Donald R. Anderson. The two quarreled, and young Anderson pushed the Cooley boy out the window.

The witnesses, two youngsters who were also playing in the house, ran for help. An ambulance from the Memorial Hospital was dispatched at 3:50 P.M., but young Cooley was found dead of a broken neck and internal injuries.

Gene Anderson has not been seen since Sunday afternoon. He is tall for his age and gives the appearance of a boy of 12 or 13. When last seen he was wearing a blue sweater and dark pants.

A reward has been offered for any information as to his whereabouts.

Chief Cooley ran into Frank Buston, the carrier who delivered the mail to town, at the Idle Hour Billiard Parlor, where he could usually be found after work. They took their beers to a table in the corner behind the pool tables. Two cowboys from eastern Oregon were playing eight-ball, with loud whoops of triumph or defeat. "Frank," Cooley said, "you know I'm hunting for the boy that killed my kid."

Buston nodded sympathetically. He was a man in his fifties, with gray strands of hair combed sideways over his bald head. "Terrible thing, Tom," he said. "I heard Ellen was all cut up."

"That's right," Cooley said. "Now, Frank, there's a little something you could do for me if you was a mind to."

"What's that, Tom?"

"The Andersons might be getting a letter in a kid's handwriting, or maybe a postcard."

"From their kid," Buston said, nodding.

"Right. Now, all's I'd want you to do is just let me see that letter before you deliver it."

Buston was shaking his head. "Can't do that, Tom, no. That's against the law. Federal law, Tom, can't do that."

"All right, how's this?" Cooley said. "If they get a letter like that, you just write down the return address. Or, say there isn't any return address, then just tell me the postmark. I'll make it worth your while, Frank, and I'd sure appreciate it."

Buston hunched his shoulders. "Well -- guess there's no harm in that. All right, sure."

Cooley had sent out a flyer about Gene Anderson to police departments in seven states. California was his choice; he thought the boy would have hitchhiked down there where it was warm and nobody knew him. Two or three times a month he got a report of some kid picked up for vagrancy, and he would get on the phone and talk to somebody in Modesto or Stockton, but the description never came near matching. Cooley had some friends on the police force in Portland and, Seattle, and one in Austin, Texas, and they were keeping an eye out for him. It was not enough.

Cooley sometimes closed his eyes and tried to imagine where the kid was. He was in a pickup truck rolling through the desert; or he was in a flophouse in San Francisco being hustled by a wino. None of these images satisfied him. A nine-year-old kid traveling alone was too conspicuous, even if he was over five feet tall. It didn't make sense that nobody had seen him;. he must have found a hiding place, or someone to protect him. Maybe even right around here.

The novels Gene had brought from the Boy Scout camp were "David Copperfield," "Treasure Island," "The Count of Monte Cristo" and "The Benson Murder Case," by S.S. Van Dine. He found the murder mystery incomprehensible, but he read it anyhow. The others he read over and over. His favorite parts were David's school days, so much worse than anything he had suffered; Jim Hawkins climbing the mast to get away from the pirate; and Edmond Dantés being thrown into the sea from the Chateau d'If. All these scenes were so vivid to him that he felt he was living them.

There were many words he did not know in these books, but he was satisfied to guess at their meaning. When he did look up a word, as often as not he could not find it. The "Handbook for Boys," for instance, advised him to talk frankly to his doctor about masturbation. "If it has happened, don't let it scare you into being blue and ill. If it's a habit, break it for your own peace of mind." But "masturbation" was not in the dictionary. And in "The Count of Monte Cristo," he was puzzled' by the scene when mysterious veiled women seemed to come into the room where the two men were eating hasheesh. He looked up "hasheesh," and found that it was something that made you drunk; but that did not explain the women.

He read the "Handbook for Boys" with close attention, especially the parts about knots and woodcraft. With his yardstick as a guide, he made a six-foot rule marked off in quarters of an inch, and by using this he was able to fill in the blanks in the section on "Personal Measurements":

My height is 5 feet 2 inches Height of my eyes above ground 4 feet 8-1/2 inches My reach up to tip of outstretched fingers 6 feet 6-3/4 inches My reach across, from outstretched fingertips 5 feet 2-1/4 inches Span of my hand, from thumb to little finger 0 feet 8-1/4 inches Length of my foot 0 feet 11 inches Length of my step 1 feet 6 inches

One afternoon, lying on his bed after lunch with the door-flap open, he fell into a doze and dreamed, or half-dreamed, that he was floating invisible over the treetops, down the hill to his own street, moving easily and weightlessly to the kitchen window and then through it like a sound too faint to hear. His mother was sitting at the table with one hand on an open cookbook and the other holding a red-and-white checked napkin against her chin. He whispered, "Mom, I'm all right." She heard him without knowing it. "It's so hard to hear," she said.

"I can't come back now, but don't worry, I'm okay." She wiped her eyes with the napkin, gave a deep sigh, and put the napkin down. She began to read the cookbook.

He went out as he had come in, and found himself drawn unwillingly up the slope to the unfinished house Where Paul had died. He expected to see Paul's body still on the ground, but even the bloody two-by-four was gone. Gene's father and his father's helper were sitting on the sill of the doorway with their hands hanging over their thighs. The fine sawdust that clung to the hairs on their hands was pale orange in the sunlight.

"Dad, I'm sorry," Gene said.

"Takes the heart out of a man," said his father. His mouth twitched. He rubbed his face for a moment, then let his hand fall again.

"Sure is tough on you and the missus," said the other man. "Maybe he's safe somewheres."

"I'm safe," Gene said. "It's all right, Dad, I'm okay."

His father took a deep breath and stood up. "Well -- this isn't getting the job done." He and the other man turned and walked into the house.

Early one morning in October Gene heard gunshots in the woods, and when they continued through the day he realized that the hunting season had begun. He was afraid of being surprised by a hunter, and he stayed in his house in the daytime except for visits to the latrine.

For the next two weeks, in spite of the rain, he continued to hear occasional gunshots; then they stopped, and since it was now the first week of November, he concluded that the season was over. When he ventured out, he found the woods transformed, all their color gone. Tree trunks and branches were black with moisture, every leaf dripping; the ground squelched underfoot. Down the middle of the valley, the little stream had expanded into a sluggish, muddy river, widening in places into a pool black with fallen leaves and debris.

He kept up his calendar, marking off each day in pencil before he went to bed. On weekends he stayed in his house or close to the tree. One Thursday in November, he was returning from a walk when he heard voices down the valley. He climbed the slope hastily and worked his way diagonally up to his house. When he looked at the calendar, he realized that it must be Thanksgiving; he had forgotten about that.

He celebrated with a special meal of all his favorite things: Spam, beef stew, kernel corn, and canned peaches for dessert.

On Christmas Day he cut a little spruce sapling, made a wooden base for it, and decorated it with painted fir cones and acorns. For tinsel he used the foil wrappings from chewing gum, cut into narrow strips.

While the wind howled outside and the snow pattered against his walls, he sang "Silent Night," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Old Black Joe," "Git Along, Little Dogie," and a tune whose name he did not know, the, one his father had taught him that summer when they went camping in the desert:

I love the flowers, I love the daffodils. I love the mountains, I love the rolling hills. When all the lights are low, I love the picture show, Boomelay, boomelay, boomelay, boom..