The Janus Tree: And Other Stories Read online

  Where are all your birds, by the way? Didn’t there used to be eagles?

  The Indian hadn’t said a word in quite a while. Way, way below, I heard a truck pass. The loudest sound in half an hour. I was keeping my eyes on the ice, now, and even so, I couldn’t have said when we hit the weeping.

  I realize that’s not a scientific term. It’s what I’ve always called it, though. You know what I’m talking about? How all of a sudden there’s runoff just pouring down the ice? Streaks here, gushes there, not a continuous flow, more like a hundred thousand transparent little ant colonies racing all over the place. Channeling through grooves they’ve made themselves, diving a thousand feet down holes they’ve drilled in the ice, what do they call those, millwells? The flow is silent, all the glacier sounds are coming from underneath, but the movement. And the color. Even in the dark, in almost no moon. That blue, like the blood in your veins you can’t ever see because it turns red in the air. You ever think about being blue inside?

  Finally, it occurred to me that even at the pace we were going, we’d climbed a long way. Not only that, but we’d consistently angled to the right. As if the Indian had a destination in mind after all. And he did, it turns out, just not the one you’re thinking.

  “Hey, Indian,” I called, and was startled to see him fifteen feet ahead, climbing faster and faster. Stepping over rises. Still limping. “Wait up.”

  Instead of slowing, he pointed. At least now I knew what the bags were for.

  “No way,” I told him.

  He turned around, and there was his Indian grin, in all its glory. “Way,” he said.

  He was pointing at this long, flat plain of ice that dropped at a steeper angle than the slope we’d climbed. It skimmed halfway back down to the parking lot and emptied into a jumble of piled moraine. The Indian flipped me a garbage bag. “Put this on.”

  “But…how do you know it’s safe? How do you know there’s not some gaping hole under there that’s going to eat us when we slide by?”

  “Look at the flags.”

  I looked. All the way down the pitch, the park service had planted little green flags.

  “How do you know those aren’t the Keep Off: Ten Thousand Foot Plunge flags?”

  “‘Cause those ones aren’t green,” the Indian said, and grinned even wider.

  Before I could think what else to say, he was on his ass, sliding back and forth on the ice. Testing out the bag. Like he was getting ready to luge, you know? Bending at the waist, bending back. I knew he was right; I remembered the flags from my bus trip. They meant that the rangers had checked this stretch within the last 48 hours, so the buses could let tourists off to walk there.

  One more time, I looked up, and this is almost funny, now, but I was kind of disappointed. We’d gotten, I don’t know, maybe a fifth of the way to the top? I figured it might take us eight seconds to slide down the Indian’s ice patch, then another five minutes of moraine-stomping to return to ordinary old paved land. It seemed like we’d gone farther. Talking to you now, I’d have to say yes, it was blacker than it had been a few moments before. A lot blacker. That moon-slit in the sky had sealed up, for one thing. And yes, I think I even caught the first real gust in my teeth. But I just thought it was the glacier. Or I didn’t think about it at all. I glanced down and saw the Indian knifing away from me across the ice, howling like a timberwolf.

  “You bastard,” I called after him, dropped on my own ass, and kicked off.

  The ice bumped underneath me, because of course it wasn’t anywhere close to flat, and also, it was wet. Even through the bag I could feel it. I started to spin sideways, like I was on one of those flying saucers, so I decided I’d be better off the Indian’s way and started to lie back, and then the Indian said, “Oops.”

  That was it. Oops.

  Obviously, I tried to stop right away, flipped over on my stomach and grabbed the ice, and a whole clod of it came up in my fingers, like I’d raked its face. My own face bobbed up and down with the jouncing I was getting, and I must have hit my forehead at least once, which is how I got the shiner you still haven’t bothered getting me anything for. But I was too panicked to notice. It took forever—as in, probably two seconds, but it felt like forever—to claw myself still.

  When I did, I shook my head to clear it. I was blinking furiously, too, trying to see through the wetness all over my eyes, some of which was tears and some glacier melt.

  All around me, I saw dirty, lumpy blue ice. No Indian.

  By now, my fingers had figured out they were joint-deep in really serious cold, because they started aching so bad that I jerked them out of the ground. That set me skidding again, so I jammed my feet down and pushed hard and stood up.

  “Ind…” I started to yell. But I’d seen him by then.

  Somehow, he’d plummeted down an ice-waterfall that hadn’t been there when we’d started. At least, it hadn’t been visible. A big one, like twelve feet. He was lying on his stomach, completely still, with his head mashed down in the blue wet.

  I thought he’d broken his neck. I think I was chanting, “Shit, oh shit,” as I scrambled sideways toward him. His head came up, and his skin, God, the glacier had already turned it white, white and blue, and there was ice-water just streaming down it.

  “Hold on—” I started to call.

  Then the idiot jammed his face back down. And I realized he wasn’t moving like anyone hurt. He looked like a goddamn snorkeler.

  “Indian…” I murmured, and skidded the rest of the way.

  Without lifting his head or turning toward me, the Indian slapped the ice beside him. Slapped it again. On the third slap, I saw it.

  I know what you’re going to say. I also know it’s true, okay? The glacier moves, I get it. Constantly, all the time. Not just up or down, but side to side, in and out. That’s how mammoths roll out of the earth ten thousand years after they’ve vanished. And why whole skeletons aren’t ever found, even of people who died just a few days or months ago. The glacier rips them to pieces.

  But I’m telling you…this was planted there. And it was whole. And on purpose. The most perfect little inukshuk I’ve ever seen in my life.

  “You know what that means,” the Indian snarled, still without lifting his head. His voice came out hissy and echoey, as though one of those little rivulets had drilled into his throat.

  Ripping the garbage bag off my head, and also aware, finally, of the ache and swelling over my right eye, I dropped to my knees. That little thing. So…pitiful, somehow. Like an abandoned kitten. I almost scooped it up.

  Except I didn’t quite want to touch it, either.

  It wasn’t only the way the stones fit together. Those things always seem so perfectly balanced, you know? As if the top of the earth really were a broken whole, not a bunch of randomly spewed or churned up crusty bits. But this one…the rocks looked almost locked in place, and they formed this totally human shape. Little round legs, little round chest, littler, pinker round head. And two twiggy sticks drooping out of the sides, like miniature snowman arms.

  I just stared at it. It didn’t stare back or anything. It just sat in the ice in its little hole. Ever seen the picture of those English guys that lost the race to the South Pole? After they were dead? That photo with the flags just barely sticking out of the snow? That’s what this thing looked like.

  “It’s so…” I murmured, dazed. And cold. Which I still thought was because I was kneeling on a glacier.

  “It marks places of death,” the Indian said. Without looking at me, he wriggled around and jammed one of his eyes even deeper into the ice.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

  “It also marks places you shouldn’t try to cross.”

  “So it’s either a warning or a tombstone.”

  “Which means that either way,” the Indian said quietly, “he’s here.”

  I was still gaping at him when the sleet hit us.

  I know the glacier makes its own weather. I know
the time of year and the temperature on the rocks right beside it in the regular world has nothing to do with what happens on the ice. But we didn’t even hear this storm coming. It’s like it was hiding up top, peeking over the ridge to see when we had our backs turned. Then it flung itself over.

  Sleet. Hail. Whatever was in that wind banged so hard off my skull that I swear it set off echoes inside me. I ducked, cussing all over the place, and the Indian twitched where he was lying and started to curl into a ball, but he didn’t get up. The wind crashed down next, this gurgling, thrashing wave that boiled over us like whitewater but didn’t suck back. I tried getting a look at the top of the glacier, but I couldn’t even see the rocks fifteen feet to our right anymore. Shivering and swearing, I started to stand, my foot accidentally kicking the inukshuk, which tipped over and vanished, and just as I started straightening out of my crouch, the Indian grabbed my wrist and yanked me face first into the ice beside him.

  “Hey!” I screamed “Get off!”

  Instead, he popped up on his knees and grabbed the back of my head with both hands.

  “What are you…” I started, and he mashed me into the snow.

  “Look,” he snarled.

  I was squirming, flinging one pathetic fist into his ribs, half-thinking he was going to murder me right there. But his tone stopped me. He wasn’t angry, or murderous. He was panicking.

  “Barrett, please. Holy shit.”

  And he pulled me, by my hair, to the lip of the millwell he’d been staring into. It couldn’t have been more than three inches in diameter, but all that water hurtling across the surface of the glacier was plunging into it. So much water. As though the ice were trying to sweep us into itself through that little hole, and not just us. The mountains all around, the lakes at the bottom. The whole world it had carved and made.

  The sleet was driving needles into my back, and the shivers sweeping up my spine were smashing my jaws together. I could feel my bare legs and my ears and my fingers and the tip of my nose screaming. But I hardly noticed. I was too busy jamming my eyes shut, because no matter what, I did not want to look where the Indian was forcing me.

  “Indian,” I whimpered, and he positioned my face directly over the millwell and shoved down, and the shock of it rattled my eyes open. Then I went slack. Staring.

  “Tell me what you see,” he hissed.

  But I couldn’t see anything. Just blue, gushing water. My lids started blinking frantically—can eyes drown?—and I tried lifting my head and the Indian just shoved down harder, and then I saw it. Thought I did. Thought I saw…

  “I see its eye,” I babbled. I can’t even tell you what I meant. I was staring down a thousand year-old channel into the ten-thousand year-old ice that made the world. And seeing an eye. All pupil, totally black. And blinking. The Eskimo’s eye? The glacier’s?

  Rearing back, screaming, I broke free and scrambled away, not even thinking about the flags, the sleet, anything except that blinking whatever below. And the thing is…you’ll say I dreamed it, and maybe I did…but I could feel movement underneath. Not just the streaming water. Something heavy. I shoved off my hands and knees and staggered to my feet and finally, finally whirled around.

  No Indian. No anything, except sheeting, frozen rain, streaming ice, empty space.

  “FUCKER!” I shrieked, and the wind ate my voice, and nothing answered. I started looking around frantically, trying to figure out where the flags were, which way I was facing. And then I just lit out, straight down. I knew I could drop through at any second. I knew how dumb it was. I knew I should have stayed right there at least a little longer. Until the Indian found me, or I could see.

  But I’m telling you, I could still feel it. And when I moved, it moved, too. Just gliding along under there. You ever seen a killer whale stalk a seal from under an ice cap? Also, the glacier was deafening. Even over the wind, I could hear it shushing, gnashing away at itself. Twice I went down flat on my face, which is how I got the rest of the bruises you still haven’t bothered bringing me anything for. Every time I went down, I kept expecting the ice to open up, or something to explode through it. I have no memory whatsoever of the moment I hit moraine. All I do remember is this weird, beady feeling on my arms—like I was falling through a curtain—and just like that, it was a hundred degrees again. And absolutely silent.

  It was a long time before I could make myself turn around. When I did, I saw the storm still raging up there, whirling around on itself. After a few minutes, it just kind of collapsed, like an imploding building. Clouds and sleet and wind and all. And it was just the rocks, the pathetic scrap of glacier. The parked bus. And no one and nothing else.

  And that is exactly as much as I can tell you about what happened to the Indian, and how the Eskimo wandered into the glacier parking lot and right into the arms of your boys in the cruiser.

  As for why he’s just sitting in that chair in the lobby like that, how the hell should I know? Maybe that’s what happens when you’re frozen alive, or swallowed by a dying glacier, or whatever the hell happened to him. As far as I’m concerned, he fits right in, looks pretty much like everyone else around here these days. It’s like when the glacier melted, and all that white, wonderful wildness went out of the world, all that cold had to go somewhere, so it just poured off the rocks into town…

  Into everyone around here and…

  Wait…

  Oh.

  Man, that really sucks…

  Like Lick Em Sticks, Like Tina Fey

  “Under the heat there’s a coldness, and even the coldness can’t be pinned down… His fleeting pleasures and undeniable pain aren’t so much depthless as unfathomable.”

  Robert Christgau on George Jones in Growing Up All Wrong

  “Take the goddamn gun out of your mouth and give me a Juicy Fruit.”

  Sophie leans back her head with the barrel on her tongue and the sea wind whipping through the trees, through the car-window into her bobbing blonde hair. The road rolls on before them through the Georgia pines, and the headlights play across it like stones they’re skipping.

  “You can still taste that?” she says. “You like that taste?”

  “Take the goddamn gun out of your mouth,” says Natalie, and puts a hand to her own windblown hair.

  It looks blacker in this light, Sophie thinks. Or it is blacker. She lowers the gun from her lips. “Better?”

  “Juicy Fruit,” says Natalie.

  Sophie pads her hand around the glove-box until she finds the last stick of gum, shriveled into its foil wrapper like a dead caterpillar. She hands it to Natalie.

  “Ugh. Even touching it gives me the wallies. How can you eat that?”

  “This from the woman last seen sucking a gun barrel.”

  Natalie glances down to unwrap the gum, and the car swerves onto the gravel shoulder before she catches the wheel with her knees and jerks it back toward the road.

  “Watch your driving,” Sophie says.

  “So can I see the nothing when I hit it?”

  “Seriously,” says Sophie. “You’re going to wreck us.”

  Wrenching the wheel to the right, Natalie spins the car onto a dirt trail, and they bump along it until the pines clear and they’re idling in front of three sand dunes that have humped up out of the ground, side by side, like whales surfacing. The moonlight burns their sand-skin white. Natalie shuts off the car.

  “You know,” Sophie says, “a gun is just like a Lick Em Stick someone stuck a trigger on.”

  “What?”

  “A gun is just like—”

  “And there you have it. The single dumbest thing I have ever heard. And I’ve been driving around with you all night, every night, for almost a month.”

  “And sharing Moon Pies and tent-sleepovers and “Gilmore Girls” and at least two boyfriends for a good twenty years before that.”

  “I’m trying to block all that out.”

  “And yet, a gun is like a Lick Em Stick someone—”

 
; “A gun is nothing like a Lick Em Stick anyone stuck anything on. A gun couldn’t be less like a Lick Em Stick if it were a…Guns aren’t even straight. And even if they were. Saying something’s like something else because they have sort of the same shape—or not at all the same shape, in this case—is just stupid. It’s like saying a brain is just like a sponge-blob someone stuck a thought in.”

  “Now, see, that’s just cynical, that’s what that is. It’s worse. It’s nihilistic.”

  “Nihil. Rhymes with bile.”

  “Oh. I thought it was nil. Rhymes with kill.”

  Natalie’s slap rocks Sophie’s head off the seat-rest into the door. “Shit,” she says, “I’m sorry.”

  “Didn’t hurt.” Sophie sits up. Natalie puts her cold hand on her friend’s cold cheek.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  “For what?”

  “Three weeks,” Natalie murmurs.

  “As of tonight,” says Sophie. “I know.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Me, too.”

  They watch the dunes, waiting for them to sink, but they don’t. Unconsciously, Natalie fishes in the pocket of her denim skirt and draws a cigarette from the crumpled pack. The second the cigarette touches her lips, before she has even thought of lighting it, she gags, spits it out the window into the sand.

  “Well, hell,” she says. “I’m cured.”

  “One good thing, anyway,” Sophie says. “Hey, maybe we could open a business. Let them pick us, instead of our picking them.”

  “Shut up, Sophie.”

  “Guaranteed to work. They get their lungs, we get—”

  “Shut up.”

  Reedy sand-grass nuzzles against the sides of the car, and the stars dangle like a mobile. Somewhere not too far, an alligator bellows.

  “Nat?” Sophie half-whispers. “Let’s just go see them. We could just look in the window. Please, let’s—”

  “Sophie, I swear to God, don’t—”

  “Just to see. Just once more. Those little faces. Little feet.”