The Man in the Tree Page 3

  "Appreciate that," Cooley said. He put his hat on his knee and took out a dog-eared notebook.

  "My husband and I were at your house Tuesday night, but Mrs. Williams told us you were out of town. She said your wife was ill. I hope she's feeling better?"

  "Sure. She'll be all right. Now about your boy -- haven't heard from him, I suppose?"

  "No. Nothing."

  "Any idea where he might of gone?"

  "No. I've racked my brains."

  "Some relative, maybe?"

  She shook her head. "We don't have any family in Oregon. I have a sister in Iowa, and Don's brother lives in Utah."

  "Mind giving me their addresses?"

  After a moment Mrs. Anderson said, "I don't see any point in it. They never met Gene -- he doesn't know where they are."

  "Might help anyway -- you never know."

  When she remained silent, Cooley said, "What about the boy -- what does he like to do? Any hobbies?"

  "He likes to draw. And reading -- he likes to read."

  "Got a recent photo of him?"

  She shook her head slowly. "No."

  "Well, an old one, then -- whatever you got. You must have some pictures."

  "They're put away," she said. "I don't know where they are."

  Chief Cooley closed his notebook. "This ain't the right attitude, Miz Anderson," he said. "I'm just trying to do my job."

  "I'm sorry," she said.

  "Well, thanks a hell of a lot for nothing," Cooley told her, and put on his hat. "I can find my way out."

  When Donald Anderson came home that night, she told him about Cooley's visit.

  "Why didn't you give him the pictures?" Anderson asked. "What are you afraid of?"

  "I don't know. I don't trust that man."

  "Well, I don't like him either, but he's trying to find Gene. What can he do to him? He's just a boy -- it must of been an accident. The worst that could happen, they'd send him to a home for a year."

  Mrs. Anderson closed her eyes. "I hope he's safe," she said. "And I hope Chief Cooley doesn't find him, ever."

  On the Sunday after the funeral, Cooley drove past the Methodist Church and saw Donald Anderson's gray Chevy pickup in the parking lot. He kept on going, drove through the quiet neighborhood where the Andersons lived, and parked in the alley. The air was crisp and cool; threads of blue smoke rose from chimneys toward an overcast sky. There was no sound except for the lonesome barking of a dog up the hill.

  Cooley jimmied open a basement window and let himself down into the musty darkness. He found the stairs, climbed them, opened the door into the kitchen. The pendulum clock on the wall was ticking quietly. There was a rich fragrance in the room; he felt the oven door, and it was warm. A gray cat came from somewhere, looked at him with slitted eyes and made a querulous sound.

  There were two doors in the back of the kitchen; one led to the narrow screened porch. Cooley opened the other and went in, followed by the cat. This room was obviously newer than the rest of the house; the walls and ceiling were covered with Fir-tex, a gray, pulpy material made from wood fibers. The room was cold, and the air had a lifeless smell. There was a narrow metal bed, some bookshelves, a bureau, a wooden desk, an easy chair, and a floor lamp. A model airplane hung from the ceiling. Games and puzzles were stacked on the bookshelves. The bare floor and the woodwork were painted dark blue.

  The cat watched him as he opened desk drawers one by one and sorted through the papers inside. Most of them were drawings in pencil and ink; some were partly ink, partly crayon. There was a clutter of ink bottles, pens, brushes, erasers, rulers; some baseball cards with a rubber band around them; gum wrappers, dice, a stamp album; glue, string, paperclips. He put everything back and closed the drawers.

  In the closet he found a gray windbreaker, a yellow slicker and hood, galoshes, a pair of shoes neatly lined up with the laces tied. In the corner there was a tall stack of magazines, mostly "Boy's Life." Bile rose in Cooley's throat. They had kept the kid's room and all his stuff waiting for him, because they thought he was coming back.

  Cooley thought about Paul's room at home. He had cleaned it all out, the baseball bat and mitt, the piles of dirty socks, trading cards, the clothing, the cigarettes hidden in the back of the drawer. He didn't want anything to remind him. He had closed the door oft the empty room.

  The other two, the girls, were not much good; he had never wanted wanted girls. It was Paul he had counted on, his firstborn, awkward and eager. All that life and energy now was nothing but a lump of meat in a box with dirt shoveled over it.

  The cat followed him out, and he shut the door. Beyond the kitchen was the living-dining room -- a table with an embroidered cloth, an oil space heater emitting a cheerful warmth, a sofa, chairs. The walls were plaster painted with gray calsomine, powdery to the touch. The first of the three doors opened into a room crowded with a brass bed, a desk, a green metal filing cabinet. The room smelled of stale cigars.

  The next was the bathroom. The third was a woman's bedroom, with a flowered quilt on the bed, a dressing table and chiffonier. Cooley went through the drawers, feeling under stacks of stockings, underwear, folded clothing. In the third drawer his fingers struck something hard. He drew out a leather jewel case and a stack of photo albums.

  The cat climbed on the bed to watch him. He turned the pages of the first album: snapshots of the Andersons with their arms around each other in front of what looked like a 1928 Ford sedan. Mrs. Anderson's hair was bobbed, and she wore a cloche hat. The Andersons at the beach, with four other people, waving at the camera. Pictures of houses.

  The next album was baby pictures, all of the same child, fat-cheeked and bright-eyed, patent-leather shoes on his feet and a knitted cap on his head. Under this there was a stack of matted enlargements, and as soon as he felt that one of them was in a metal frame, Cooley knew. He pulled it out: it was a picture of the kid in his first suit, gawky and shy, probably taken not more than a year or two ago.

  Cooley wrapped the picture and the jewel box in a pillowcase, put everything else back where he had found it. On the way home he looked into the jewel box -- a few garnet rings and pendants that looked old, some junk necklaces and earrings, a gold two-and-a-half dollar piece. He kept the coin and threw the rest of the jewelry into a ravine. Let them wonder.

  Chapter Three

  Trees Reach up in darkness Fingers tasting water Secret drinkers

  Light Filters up their trunks Their itchy toes Dabble in the sun --Gene Anderson

  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 som
e 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.