Her tongue lolled, her bloodied head perched askew; Rust-colored splotches and streaks stained her muted dress and white apron. A crow landed on her shoulder, plucked one eye free, and flew away with it. Whether by the physics of the bird’s departure or something preternatural, her head rolled, and I found myself staring into that gaping socket.
“Hey!”
I started. Josiah burst into delighted guffaws and tumbled back on to his bed.
“Let’s go!” He righted himself and laced his hiking boots. By the time I arrived in the kitchen, he had already but a couple sandwiches and apples in his knapsack. I grabbed an orange and ate it as we tramped down to the woods, a dense stretch of red oak and tulip poplar. Josiah had a fondness for Mary’s Run, a brook that burst from the shale at the lower end of the cornfield. We played there often, following the game trail down to the edge of the Okendaigua Sportsman’s Club.
“Don’t play there,” Dad warned. “It’s a gun club. You could get shot if they mistake you for wildlife.”
So we avoided the Okendaigua, and tried to wear blue, which didn’t occur naturally in our woods. Just to be safe.
We meandered—well, Josiah did, anyway; I didn’t meander, but marched resolutely and with some trepidation—down to a rocky place where the brook picked up speed. We crossed there, and a little further beyond emerged in the clearing where the brook deepened. An occasional fish might find its way this far up, but crayfish, salamanders, toads—they loved the banks here.
Josiah began overturning rocks. Carefully, waiting for the silt to settle, to see swirling cloud of mud or bubbles that might indicate a living think slipping deeper into the earth. This was our place. we searched for little lives there.
“C’mon and help me.”
Not long ago I led the way. I taught him how to turn the rocks slowly, to watch the creek bed. With Dad’s Audubon Guide, we learned to listen for unique chirps—“drink your tea!” said the Eastern Towhee—and watched for killdeer guarding their nests on the rocky ground. A little of me was jealous that he could still play here, so carefree.
The clearing was perfect for filling jugs or buckets. Hers had been left at the base of the tree, the contents tipped, dribbling away.
It was a tulip poplar. The leaves were the giveaway. Four lobes. Not like maples or oaks, which are also pretty distinctive. But this one was distinctive for another reason. While one half kept growing upward, it seemed to wither above the limb where she hung, as if her death had maimed it.
“Help me, James!”
She watched me. I watched her. A plopping noise followed as Josiah turned over another rock.
The shove caught me off guard and I lost my balance. Cold water filled my show and soaked my sock and jeans. I scrambled out of the water.
“What’s wrong with you?” Josiah whined.
“Nothing,” I replied, looking back to the tree. Was she smiling at me?
He followed my gaze.
“Watcha lookin’ at?”
“Nothing,” I repeated, still transfixed.
“Then help me.” He gave my arm a yank and I spun. For the next hour, I helped him search, always keeping a wary eye on the woman in the tree. Finally Josiah grew bored with his search and led us home.
I had long been two minds about the woman in the tree. I never wanted to see her again, of course, but I knew that she would haunt my dreams, my memory for the rest of my life. But Josiah loved the woods; I love the woods. If I let her chase me from there, or if I told him the truth of what I saw, something else would be lost. Trust? Innocence? I had no one to tell, so of course I kept it to myself. But my greatest fear was that Josiah would go down there without me, and that somehow the woman might climb down from that tree…
“Well, I’m glad to see you’re paying attention to reality, rather than reading that horror trash and science fiction garbage.”
Dad had tipped my library book toward me so he could see the cover.
“Where’d you find that? The genealogy section?”
“Local history,” I said, not bothering to look up.
“Good.”
I read the passage of the old book again.
Mary’s Run had been named for Mary Luther, an early 18th century settler who had befriended the local natives. During the French and Indian War, they crossed paths, and she was killed.
That’s all history gave me, but it was enough.
The next time Josiah wanted to play in the woods, I went with him. Mary was there, but she terrified me less. For two hundred fifty years she hung from that tree. And if, in all that time, no one had come to her aid, what could I do with only a dozen years to my lifetime?
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “You can go.”
“Who can go?” Josiah asked. He looked in the tree.
I shrugged.
“You’re weird,” he said. “You act creepy whenever we come down here.”
Josiah never asked me to come to the woods again, and I never went back. Over the years, we’ve gotten more and more distant. Sometimes I think he looks at me like I’m about to break. He leaves his wife and children at home on the rare occasions when he drops by; I think it’s to protect them from me. The fabric of trust that had been frayed a little at a time throughout our childhood seems close to being rent. Maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But I know where it began.
Nicanor Abbott 