The trees, p.23
The Trees, page 23
“I’ve got one bullet and I just barely certified on the pistol range last time. Ready? It’s going to be really loud in here. Cover your ears.” He took a used tissue from his pocket, split it, and plugged his own ears. “Here we go.”
Jim squeezed off the round. He hit the lock and thought he heard the ricochets, but nothing happened. The lock was dented, but the gunpowder remained unimpressed. “So much for that. I’m sorry, Gertrude.”
She said nothing.
“As much as it seems completely inappropriate and unethical, I think we need to share body heat.”
“I think that’s right.”
“What?” Jim asked. “That it’s inappropriate or that we share heat?”
“Both.”
They sat on a crate against the wall and hugged each other.
106
There was a sound at the door. The handle moved slightly, jiggled, and stopped. Then it snapped down with the sound of a hard strike.
Jim held up his empty pistol.
“Jim?” It was Ed.
“Jesus, are you two okay?” Hind asked. She removed her jacket and moved toward Gertrude, put it over her shoulders.
Jim tried to stand straight. Ed helped him. As they exited the freezer behind Hind and Gertrude, Jim grabbed Ed’s arm. “Did you did find anybody here?”
“No one.”
“It’s dark,” Jim said, looking up out the window at the top of the stairs. “I stopped looking at the time a while ago.”
“I couldn’t get through to your phone, so we drove up here. We saw your car outside. If there was anyone here, they’re gone now.”
“Well, someone locked us in there.”
“What’s the deal with Gertrude?” Ed asked.
“I’ll fill you in. What’s been going on out there?”
“Oh, man.”
107
Some called it a throng. A reporter on the scene used the word horde. A minister of an AME church in Jefferson County, Mississippi, called it a congregation. Whatever it was called, it was at least five hundred bodies strong and growing and had abandoned all stealth. The congregation could be seen cresting a ridge then coming down toward town like a tornado. And like a tornado it would destroy one life and leave the one beside it unscathed. It made a noise. A moan that filled the air. Rise, it said, Rise. It left towns torn apart. Families grieved. Families assessed their histories. It was weather. Rise. It was a cloud. It was a front, a front of dead air. Survivors reported that the air felt thick and heavy in its wake, sitting near the ground like the mist of dry ice. There were clouds in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, everywhere it seemed. The clouds merged into bigger clouds, the sounds of their moans growing louder with every step, every death. Rise.
108
Mama Z’s house was completely dark, except for a very small flicker behind the curtain of the records room. Jim and Ed approached the front door. Hind hung back with Gertrude near the cars. The front door was wide open. The men switched on their flashlights and stepped inside. There was clicking, like a very old typewriter coming from another room. They were across the room when Gertrude entered.
Hind was behind her. “She ran away from me.”
“Just hang back,” Jim said.
“Is that a typewriter?” Hind asked.
Jim and Ed moved forward to the records room, pushed it open.
Mama Z was sitting on the other side of the table, a candle burning in front of her. Damon Thruff was sitting beside her, pecking away on a manual typewriter. His eyes would not leave the paper in the machine.
“Please sit,” Mama Z said.
The four of them sat at the table.
“Mama Z?” Gertrude said.
“There’s always more than you see,” the old woman said.
“Damon?”
“He’s busy,” Mama Z said.
“What is he doing?” Hind asked.
Damon snatched a page from the typewriter laid it on a thick stack to the right, rolled in a blank sheet from a pile on the left, and continued to type.
“He’s typing names,” Mama Z said. “One name at a time. One name at a time. Every name.”
“Names,” Ed said.
“Shall I stop him?” Mama Z asked.
Jim looked at Ed, then Hind. Gertrude was clearly confused. They were confused, yet not.
“Shall I stop him?” the old woman asked again.
Outside, in the distance, through the night air, the muffled cry came through, Rise. Rise.
“Shall I stop him?”
PERCIVAL EVERETT is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of over thirty books, including I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Erasure, and Telephone.
The text of The Trees is set in Dante MT Pro.
Book design by Rachel Holscher.
Composition by Bookmobile Design and Digital Publisher
Services, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Manufactured by Versa Press on acid-free,
30 percent postconsumer wastepaper.
Percival Everett, The Trees
