The Forest Prime Evil Read online

  “You don’t sound as if you approve.”

  “The legends of one time are difficult to translate to another.”

  “But he tried?”

  “Shepard took his role seriously. He studied. And he cast a shadow that wasn’t only his. If you knew the histories of other renowned tree planters, you’d see how Shepard grafted their characters onto his own.”

  “You mean like Johnny Appleseed?”

  “Not only John Chapman but a number of others.”

  “How did he copy them?”

  “Outlooks. Philosophies. Actions. The mythology of Chapman-Appleseed was that he was slightly touched and went around barefoot planting apple trees. There is something in that image that appeals, something gentle, and harmless, and beautiful. Shepard knew that. So he went around unshod and captured the public’s imagination. But, much like Chapman, he had ulterior motives.”

  I sounded skeptical. “I never imagined apple-tree planting as being fraught with intrigue.”

  “Apples were commerce, especially in a new world which had few apple trees. One scholar documented Chapman’s life through a trail of deeds and records and found out that he either owned or leased more than twenty properties in his lifetime. When he was doing his planting in the early eighteen hundreds, apples weren’t only the fruit of pies. Apple vinegar was the favored pioneer preservative, and apple butter could stand the rigors of winter, and applejack brandy was the drink of the day. Chapman wasn’t some romantic. He was a pragmatist.”

  I thought about that. Something still didn’t ring true. “The Green Man wasn’t selling apples on street corners,” I said.

  “He was selling the philosophy of trees,” said Teller.

  “Which is?”

  “A treeless world is a barren world. He liked to quote Julius Sterling Morton, who said that no vista is complete without a tree in sight.”

  “Morton?”

  “The founder of Arbor Day. When Morton settled in Nebraska, he looked out to the treeless plains and saw an inhospitable country. He planted thousands of trees in the belief that human roots are aided by tree roots. To his way of thinking, trees bring communities.”

  I found myself arguing. “The Green Man was an activist,” I said, “not some Jaycees booster. He planted trees because in them he saw good, and knew how they benefited mankind. He said they are the lungs of the world—”

  Teller interrupted. “A line he borrowed from Richard St. Barbe Baker, another tree planter.”

  “I don’t know the name.”

  “If millions of trees could talk, they would tell you about him. He was the first international tree planter, even had the nickname Man of the Trees. St. Barbe Baker was a philosopher, a writer, and, most of all, a tree planter. He had a daily ritual of hugging a tree, not with some timid embrace, but with wide, sweeping arms, the grasp of one friend to another. St. Barbe Baker said it was his way of gathering energy and recharging his batteries. Shepard adopted that ritual as well, and promoted the practice, although I could never tell if he was charging his batteries or his libido.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Teller rubbed his eyes and sighed. “St. Barbe Baker’s hugging wasn’t a spectacle. Shepard’s was.”

  “Did he hug more than trees?”

  “How am I supposed to answer that question?”

  “Did he have a girlfriend? Anyone sharing his goosepen?”

  “I couldn’t tell you.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “No.”

  “Were you jealous of him? Or should I say green with envy?”

  “Not that I was aware. Do I sound that way?”

  “Not exactly. But you’ve painted an almost Machiavellian picture of him.”

  “That wasn’t my intention. I doubt whether anyone was ever so committed to planting trees. But I always thought of the Green Man as a redwood: great, but lacking in roots. There wasn’t much depth to him.”

  “What do you mean by lacking in roots?”

  “For all their height, redwoods have very shallow root systems. They don’t even have a taproot. Some redwoods stand over three hundred feet high, yet their roots don’t even go six feet into the ground.

  “The Green Man was magnificent like the redwoods. You could stand in awe of his presence. But he wasn’t deep.”

  I listened as Teller stretched out on the ground and found a willow for a backrest. He gently chided me when I tried to press him with yet another question. “Shhh,” he said. “Let’s listen to the river talk for a while.”

  Even the rivers in Humboldt County don’t flow as expected. Most of them travel northward to the ocean, in direct contradiction to the accepted theory that such rivers are supposed to flow south. A few lone crickets sounded, making brave music against the coming cold.

  I did my eavesdropping on the currents and found my thoughts tumbling along with the white water and riffles. What was truth, and what was invention? Supposedly the Green Man had first made his name in southern California, had turned up at one of those housing developments where stucco houses and fast-food franchises appear before the trees. The developers had promised parks and delivered some rectangular lots of sod and sand; they had promised greenery, and their word was ice plant.

  Shoeless, Shepard had arrived upon the urban wasteland. At first he wasn’t noticed. Residents figured him for another gardener seeding ice plant. But then he started showing up with his saplings in backyards where there was only hard pack and clay, and maybe a Weber Barbeque. And when people ran out to him and asked him what he was doing, Shepard told them he was “planting dreams.”

  A few residents called the police. Some expressed disappointment that he wasn’t there planting the palms that the developer had promised. But a surprising number ended up helping him in his labors. He explained to them his vision of what could be, said how “tall oaks from little acorns grow.” I wondered if tall tales grew the same way. As the story went, a community had grown around his plantings. Neighbors shared in his dream, and his trees brought a bonding of individuals and spirits.

  “There was a movie that won an Oscar a few decades back,” I said, breaking the silence, “an animated picture that—”

  “The Man Who Planted Trees,” said Teller.

  The story line revolved around a hermit who brought back a world. It was a modern parable of reforestation. Over the course of forty years the hermit planted trees that healed a despoiled land. It all seemed so simple and yet so wise; the hermit tirelessly and selflessly planting, the world renewing itself.

  “If you believed his PR,” I said, “the Green Man was like the character in that film.” There was biography in my remark and maybe a little plea too. I was beginning to feel self-conscious about my hero worship. And a little betrayed. I wanted reassurance.

  “I know,” said Teller, “and I think that’s how he thought of himself.”

  “Was he a fraud?”

  “No. But he couldn’t see the forest for the trees. He couldn’t even see the redwoods for the giant Leucaena.”

  5

  I ASKED TELLER what he meant, but either he chose not to hear me or he had already drifted into his cannabis dreams. I lingered for a few minutes, feeling oddly content sitting in the dark listening to a stranger snore and the river run, before setting out to find the trail. This time the elusive path didn’t escape me. I went slowly but progressed up the grade in about half the time it had taken me to get down. As I approached the camp I heard voices and realized that circle was still in session.

  I stayed on the outskirts of the campfire and found a place to listen and not be seen. Ashe O’Connor was speaking to a rapt audience. She told the campers how much their presence meant to the cause, said the eyes of the state, no, of the world, were upon them. They were the front line of the movement, the necessary catalyst for change. They were tangible proof to all, a visible commitment that could be seen and felt and remembered.

  Ashe was a good speaker. T
hey drank in her words, had a need for them. She put nobility into their day-to-day drudgery, squared all to their purpose for being there. The formal part of Circle concluded with her talk. Hands broke apart, but most of the campers were not quick to leave. Some guitars were brought out, and the circle grew tighter, bodies moving closer to the still flickering store logs.

  An admiring throng formed around Ashe. I waited for the crowd to break up, but my patience gave out before the well-wishers. Josh was among the pack, and I tapped on his shoulder to get his attention.

  “I’d like to talk with the queen,” I said.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” he said.

  “Tell her that. She suggested it to me earlier.”

  That changed matters. Josh worked his way to her ear, and after their short conference he came back to me with two words: “Big Top.”

  I followed him to a large tent, not big-top-circus large, but giant enough to dwarf the pup tents around it. At first I saw its interior only in glimpses of the flashlight, but then Josh fired up a lantern. The tent could comfortably sleep at least a dozen, but the space wasn’t devoted to any sleeping arrangements. There were two desks, some laptops, a battery-operated printer, and about a dozen boxes stuffed full of papers.

  There was a mustiness pervading the tent. It was an antique model made of canvas that looked to be army surplus. Only generals had ranked tents that large. I wondered what other campaigns had been waged from inside its flaps.

  I started sifting through one of the boxes. There were announcements for marches, some piecemeal press kits, and assorted public awareness literature detailing old-growth deforestation. The more I poked around, the more nervous Josh appeared. After finishing with the box, I took a step over to the nearest desk.

  “What are you doing, Stuart?”

  “Making myself comfortable.”

  “You have a strange way of doing that.”

  I didn’t answer him. A nail had been hammered into the desk and a length of twine secured to it. I pulled up the twine and landed a clipboard that was marked “Methuselah’s Mounties.” At first glance I thought it was just another petition to save the old trees. But there were more than signatures on the page. The week was marked out, with each day divided into three eight-hour blocks and signatures affixed to what looked to be work shifts.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “Methuselah is a magnificent thousand-year-old redwood,” said Josh. “We’re trying to protect him from Trans-Mississippi.”

  “And how are you doing that?”

  “By putting our bodies on the line. We’re tree-sitting. Our sentries protect him twenty-four hours a day. If the loggers want to get to him, they’ll have to go through us first.”

  “George Pope Morris alive and well,” I mused.

  Josh looked to me for an explanation, and I resorted to Morris’s verse:

  “Woodman, spare that tree!

  Touch not a single bough!

  In youth it sheltered me,

  And I’ll protect it now.”

  Josh didn’t ask me to continue, and I didn’t remember the rest of the words anyway. I returned my attention to the clipboard, backtracked through some of its pages to the night of September 2.

  “If I read this correctly,” I said, “B shift is from three to eleven, and C shift would be the graveyard hours.”

  Josh was stiffer than ever. “That’s right.”

  “So on September the second you had Barry somebody working the first shift, Sasha on the second, and Teller closed out on C shift.”

  He nodded, then cautiously asked, “Why your curiosity about those times, and that date?”

  “Because the coroner said that was the night the Green Man died. He figured the time of death to be between eight p.m. and two a.m. I find those hours particularly interesting.”

  Josh didn’t say anything.

  “Do you remember that night?”

  “No.”

  I didn’t like the quickness in his answer. “You should,” I said. “He died the night of the summer storm. It doesn’t rain around here much that time of year. The storm caught a lot of people by surprise. Surely you remember the wind and the thunder?”

  Tersely, he answered, “Vaguely.”

  “I’m told the woods aren’t the best place to walk around in a storm,” I said. “Maybe the Green Man was tempting fate.”

  “Or maybe the lumber companies were waiting for a stormy night to kill him.”

  “I have a report that the Green Man might have been entertaining that night. Did he have a girlfriend?”

  Josh shook his head. “Not that I know of.”

  “No camp romance?”

  “I wasn’t in the habit of doing sleeping-bag checks.”

  “No talk about one of the campers making nocturnal visits to River Grove?”

  “No.”

  Josh’s darkening face was an interesting study in colors, but I turned away from it to study the clipboard once more. The sentry duty for the rest of the week had already been assigned. It must have been Teller’s turn again; he had the seven-to-three shift the next morning. I tapped on the clipboard reflectively. The noise apparently didn’t settle Josh’s nerves.

  “Why are you snooping around here, Stuart? What are you looking for?”

  “Enlightenment,” I said. “Did you know that Buddha became enlightened while sitting under the bodhi tree?”

  “And don’t forget,” said a voice from outside the tent, “that Newton started thinking about gravity while sitting under a tree and watching an apple fall.”

  The tent flap opened, and Ashe stepped inside. I wondered how long she had been listening. “Amazing what thoughts trees inspire,” she said.

  “And deeds,” I added, perhaps a bit darkly.

  “I’m sorry I was delayed,” she said, then touched Josh lightly on the shoulder. “Thanks for helping, Josh.”

  He hesitated at her gentle dismissal, gave me a not altogether charitable look, and conveyed that glance to Ashe. But he did accede to her silent request for him to leave. Then it was Ashe’s turn to look at me.

  “Try reading the fourth line,” I said.

  She had full eyebrows, and they came together almost as one. “What do you mean?”

  “That kind of scrutiny is usually reserved for an eye chart.”

  She didn’t lower her eyes. “I wasn’t happy to hear that you were hired, Mr. Winter. Had I been around during the debate, I would have spoken against your being employed. But, now that you are here, I’m trying to decide whether to trust you.”

  “My Boy Scout oath is a little rusty.”

  She frowned. “I consider this a serious matter.”

  “So do I. It’s jumping through your hoops that I don’t take seriously.”

  She still didn’t give up her staring. “Josh recommended you, but apparently he’s having second thoughts now.”

  “That’s because he’s learned I don’t come with puppet strings.”

  “I hope I don’t have to remind you that we’re in the middle of a political campaign, and the last thing we need is a bull in a china shop.”

  “Understood. But there’s one thing I don’t understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why you’re up here taking time off from that all-important political campaign.”

  Ashe allowed her chin an imperial tilt. “I came back to be in the woods,” she said. “It renews me, helps me to remember what I’m fighting for.”

  Her words sounded noble, but that didn’t make them believable. I wish I could say I stared at her only to discern the truth. It wasn’t polite to keep looking at her, but I found it difficult to refrain. She moved several strands of fallen hair from her forehead. The barrettes couldn’t keep all of her tresses in place. Some locks had escaped and went halfway down her back. A shadow reached out and touched them, moving where I dared not. Ashe started, as if I was the one who had reached for her.

  “A moth,�
� I said.

  She followed its fluttering. “It’s so large.”

  The moth seemed torn between the light and Ashe, flittered around both. “You don’t see as many large moths anymore,” I said. “They’ve declined in numbers.”

  Ashe held her finger out, but the moth didn’t alight. It began to show more interest in the lantern.

  “What’s happened to them?” she asked.

  “Decimated range, ravaged breeding grounds, diminished feeding terrain, and too many bright, attractive lights.”

  It was flying around Ashe’s head again, as interested in her hair as I was. “And probably too many people trying to stick pins in them,” she said.

  I had left that observation to her. The moth flew back toward the lantern. “I don’t want it to get burned,” she said.

  I turned off the lantern, left us in darkness. Ashe didn’t immediately flee, and neither did I.

  “How do you know about moths?”

  “I hang around lampposts.”

  “Really.”

  She didn’t allow me any escape, captured me in one word. Pinned me. In the darkness it was easier to talk. “I’ve read an article or two,” I said. “You know how it is: send a moth-eaten check to a noble cause and your guilt money earns you a subscription to a glossy magazine that demonstrates in wonderful color pictures how the world is going to hell in a handbasket.”

  “Some people don’t read the articles,” Ashe said.

  “I can’t resist picking scabs either.”

  It wasn’t the usual adult show-and-tell time with the lights off, but there was something personal about our being together. We could both feel it. For long seconds we stood in the darkness, almost close enough to touch. Ashe broke the silence. “Maybe we ought to let the moth out.”

  “You lead the way, and I’m sure he’ll follow.”

  She felt along the canvas, found the opening, and stepped outside. Then we propped the tent flap open just to make sure the moth found its freedom. There was still singing going on around the campfire. The clouds weren’t as thick, and the moon was shining through, which made it easier for us to walk back. When we reached the campsite proper, Ashe turned to me and said good night.