Last Summer Boys(26)

Lonely Sam.

I watch his colorful mailbox drift into the distance for as long as I can, until green trees slide in between us and the little cheerful mailbox is gone. Then I feel Dad hit the brakes as he turns off Hopkins Road and onto a bumpy dirt lane that leads up a hill through dark, lonely trees.





The old white house does not stand at the top of its steep, rocky hill. It leans.

The walls are a dead, chalky white, and cracks run in the plaster along the wind-bitten north face overlooking the valley. They remind me of bone.

The trees don’t get too close; they stay back, making a wide ring around the place, and as our dusty Ford leaves their protection, Butch raises his nose for a sniff, his pointy ears standing up straight.

Black, empty windows stare at us as we climb down—like deep, cold, fishless lakes.

“I like what they’ve done with the place,” Pete says. When he slams his door, the sound is eerily loud, and it echoes off the house.

We follow Dad across the yard to the northwest corner. Coming around the side, we see that this was where the great oak tree stood. It alone had the courage to stand so close to the house, and it stands no more.

The great gray trunk lies across the yard. The top is hidden in a violent plume of green leaves. Branches, broken and blistering white in morning sun, lie trapped under the trunk, pinned by its incredible weight, or curling into the sky like the fingers of a dead hand.

There is a man beside the tree.

Tall. Lean. Black hair twitching in the wind. Mr. Madliner shakes Dad’s hand when we come up.

“Right good of you to come, Gene,” Mr. Madliner says. “Hate to trouble you with this.” There is no feeling in the words.

“No trouble, Arthur,” Dad answers him. “She was a terrific tree. Sorry you had to lose her.”

Mr. Madliner casts coal-fired eyes over the giant that so narrowly missed his house. That’s when a funny thought comes to me: maybe the old tree wanted to come down, not across the yard but on top of the house—just come crashing down with all its old strength. Maybe it knew what evil lurked there and had simply had enough. Watching Mr. Madliner look with such hate at the tree, I can see it being that way.

His eyes drift toward us boys, and my stomach tightens as I wait for it, wait for him to tell Dad what we all guess he knows about last night: Gene, did you know your boys was out late spying on my wife? In a graveyard, no less?

He doesn’t.

“Bring the axes, Caleb,” he says instead.

Like a ghost, Caleb comes out from the side of the house. I did not see him there before, waiting in the house’s shadow. His dark hair falls in greasy swaths, covering most of his angular face. He’s skinny under a faded flannel shirt. He crosses the yard in long, awkward steps, like a fawn fresh on its legs, carrying an armful of frighteningly clean and bright-looking axes. He drops them at his father’s feet, where they lie, gleaming in the grass.

Mr. Madliner draws a breath, and I hear it rattle around inside him. Then, in that same toneless voice, he begins to explain how we’ll cut up the oak. Listening to his odd, unwavering voice, I know it for sure: he don’t know about last night.

“We’ll trim those branches first, cutting each into logs,” Mr. Madliner says. “Those leafy boughs we will dump over the side of the hill, down to the ravine. Then we’ll cut the trunk into pieces. Gene, you and your boys take whatever you can haul. The wood will be good and dry come wintertime. It should burn well.”

He explains a few other things, but I don’t listen. My mind is reeling. I look over to Pete, but he shakes his shaggy head ever so slightly in a wordless warning.

We take up our places along the oak. Looking along the trunk, I try to guess how high it stood, and I figure it must have been at least eighty feet. I lay a hand on the rough, gray bark, warm in the sun.

“It died with a scream.”

I turn and look at Caleb Madliner, who is suddenly standing beside me.

“What do you mean?”

“When it came down, it screamed,” he says simply.

That doesn’t make any sense to me, but I don’t bother asking him again. I don’t want to hear him. Just then, from farther on down, I hear the first sounds of Dad’s ax biting into the bark. Caleb lifts his hatchet to do the same, and as he bends, a piece of his long, greasy hair slides away from his face and I see the dark purply-green bruise around his right eye.

Mr. Madliner may be a wiry willow of a man, but he sure packs a wallop.





We swing the axes all morning.

When the sun climbs directly overhead, we break for lunch: cold sandwiches and a pitcher of milk that tastes funny.

We sit and eat on the steps in silence. With the old oak gone, we can look out over the whole valley. That’s the only nice thing about Madliner House: its view of everyplace else.

I wonder where Mrs. Madliner is inside the walls of cold stone behind me. Is she watching us at this very moment? Does she even remember last night? Or is she lost in her own mind?

I’m halfway through my sandwich when Butch begins barking.

It’s a yelp, really. A high, funny sound. I know most all Butch’s barks, but I don’t recognize this one right off. My dog’s got a different bark for cars, for deer, dinner, even people. Out in the yard, he is giving that strange bark and doing what looks like a funny little dance.