Why the Tree Loves the Axe

I lied. No, I said. Never. Never. Bonnie was out on the floor and he had his hand on my arm, but I shook him off; I didn’t want to have to maintain such a complicated balance, I felt full of food and I didn’t like the song, which had changed to another song that I didn’t like.

I need to go, I said. We were in a cab, Charlie and I. We were in a diner, sitting and drinking coffee. He had taken off his tie and the top button of his shirt was undone. Between us there was an old-fashioned tin bowl of sugar on the table; he opened the lid, raised up a small spoonful of the stuff, and slowly let its contents fall back. I don’t know, he was saying; all of a sudden he’d become very sincere. It was an accident. She forgot her earrings by the side of my bed, and my girlfriend found them when she came home that evening. Boom. That was that.

I laughed. Oh you poor naïve man. Forgot? Like it was an accident? No woman ever does anything by accident, I told him. Unless she’s crazy. Never, never does anything by accident, don’t you know that yet? Didn’t anyone teach you? A girl is a deliberate thing. Some time back, I couldn’t remember when, I had decided that I liked him, and what he wanted from me. From my purse I drew my lipstick; I was going to be casual and reapply it at the table, but when I opened the thing I discovered that the tip was mashed, so I capped it again, excused myself, and took it to the bathroom. Harlot was the name of the color; I blew a kiss at the distant mirror. As I was sitting down at the table again, I saw a flash of green in the window, which I assumed was money, but a minute or so later turned out to be me.

Now, your man Roy was with a woman for a while, said Charlie. And she was crazy.

When was this? I asked quickly.

Maybe about two years ago.

I was in Dallas.

He looked at me curiously. I was in D.C., he replied. He didn’t know anything about me; he didn’t know I stole stories about my ex-husband. He looked around for the waitress.

Finish what you were saying, I insisted.

That’s all there is. I think she wrecked the place they were living in. There was something else, but I can’t remember what it was … He glanced sideways as he tried to think of it; the entire recollection had suddenly become a problem, and it interested him deeply. As for me, I assumed that the answer was going to change the night into winter. A long moment passed while he tried to clear his mind for the missing memory to come home; I was right in there with him.—Anyway, he said abruptly, I can’t remember. We were still in the diner, a beautiful bright red tow truck went by outside. After she left he got strange, he continued. There was a rumor he was drinking a lot, but I don’t know if it was true.

So what happened to him?

He shrugged. I don’t remember. He wasn’t in my department, this is just what I heard, he said. He seemed like a nice enough guy to me. Don’t look so sad.

Don’t tell me what to do, I said shortly, and luckily for him he laughed. Who was she?

Who was who?

The woman.

I don’t know. Someone. Ask someone. I never talked to him about it. Actually, I never really talked to him at all. He was getting bored by the subject; it was life, breath and blood to me. We’re done, he said. We’re going now.

On the street the warm wind was blowing, I had forgotten everything again, and I was in the mood to break faith. I wanted to make the night as complicated as I could. There were no stars, but streetlights: we were south of everyone else. My mouth was very dry. If I could only taste something, I thought, I would feel so, so much better. Later, Charlie held me with his hands grasping me by my hips, his long fingers almost meeting at the base of my spine. He kissed me violently; I kissed him like a butterfly banging against a window, and pressed my hips against his. He was solid all the way through; it was one of those perfect proportions of weight and mass that one wants to keep nearby, like a book, or a good dog. His tie and collar were undone, and the skin at his throat was stippled with tiny red shaving bumps. I left a little kiss there: Tell me another story. He smelled so wonderful, his warm skin, some soap and talcum powder, lust, liquor, and bed. Maybe maybe. Then we were in a taxi, legs entwined as we watched Sugartown turn by outside.

I stood before him as he sat on the edge of the bed in his bland hotel room, so that I wanted to jump up a ways and come down in his arms. I took his feverish head against my stomach and put my mouth on the bitter-tasting crown of his hair; and as I held him he reached up my back for the zipper on my dress and slowly tugged it down. I do think that I was with him only because I wanted to watch him take the thing off of me; nevertheless, I was sorry to see it go. It hit the floor with a slow emerald splash, but I was the only thing that got wet.

Without his suit he had no job, he was just muscle and skin and bone; I tipped him back and put my hand on the slab of his chest, he narrowed his eyes; I took his tiny nipple in my mouth, without waiting I reached down and gently weighed his balls with my fingers, and then dragged up across his bobbing erection and through his pubic hair to his belly. I bit his chest and he drew a short breath. Kiss, on the mouth, is that better? Baby? It was a trick I made up on the spot. I was having a good time.

I was on my back on the bed, his hands were around my ankles, tugging my legs apart. He leaned slowly over me and dragged his lips down my abdomen; they passed across my skin without catching on anything, until his head sank between my thighs and settled there, face to face with my wet sex. He put his hands under my ass, I reached down and touched his head as he began to kiss me, outside and then inside; his wise mouth and my glutted lips, reflecting each other’s damp and shining purpose back and forth and back again, kissing until it was impossible to tell which was the original and which the double, while between them a tiny bright red bud grew, half mine and half his tongue; it was so young and tender that I wanted to weep; and then a fresh shoot burst from its tip and I began to tremble.

He was over me, his mouth glistening and swollen; there was no resistance—and with one exorbitant motion he slid inside me, gently swore, and began to fuck me. Some moments the sensation was so keen that I thought I was going to faint; some moments I could hardly feel a thing. I opened my eyes and saw his face above me, his own eyes tightly closed; just as he opened his, I shut mine again. A few seconds later he abruptly pulled out of me, and I wondered if I’d offended him. There was the soft sound of sex escaping from me as I lay there, borne up by nothing but the bed. I looked down the length of my body at him; he was kneeling between my legs, gazing up at me insistently.

Turn over, he said. Turn over.

If he’d said it again I would have refused, but he just watched me; so I rolled over as if it was a game called Sacrifice. I could smell myself on the sheets, the scent was a welcome thing, impolite. He took my calves in his hands and started to draw me back toward him, until I was up on my knees in the dark like a three-legged stool, my hands clasped behind my neck, my forehead pressed against the mattress. I breathed shallowly to calm a sudden flush of embarrassment that threatened to drive me off of the bed and out of the room; bold, big, I felt a breeze on the back of my thighs; for a moment I thought he was going to spank me, I wondered if he did that to every woman he managed to get naked beside him, I tensed and put my senses behind me. Instead, he gripped my upper thighs: then he took his finger and gently, delicately split me with it: I jerked forward involuntarily, but I didn’t get far: he followed with his hips, at first hesitantly and then smoothly, and all of a sudden, there he was, really, in me all the way—and he stopped. I could hear him breathing heavily, his hand pressing gently on my back, as if he was trying to decide whether to push me down. He didn’t move, so I didn’t move … I was following his lead … balanced like that, but then he left and I began to chase him, to chase myself backward, bang bang bang. I would have done it all night, but I couldn’t get away, and sooner than I expected my whole body gave up, my voice came out, and that great strong gushing thing broke all through me.

I’ll tell you it’s strange and it makes me wonder, how sometimes in that occult forest, when no one is looking, the ax loves the tree: and it’s stranger still that the tree should love the ax.

I woke up the next day in bed with a dead man; he was just lying there on his stomach, sighing deeply, his brain shut down. Bright eleven o’clock: out the window the sun was shining, and I was young and purblind from the pall of my unfamiliar past; it was the first thing I thought about, there like some perfume I’d spilled on the bedclothes the night before. So the sleeping man wasn’t my ex-husband, but he had seen him and spoken to him, and that was close enough to make me wobble on the dull point of my sad remembrance. All that time had passed and still the impression my marriage had made was deep and clear. I got up and put on my dirty dress while Charlie mumbled in his sleep. Well, he was sweet and sexy, but I never should have slept with him. And these rumors; was time, too, going to steal from me? For four years I’d had a reliable Roy fixed in my past, but the memories had become ailing leaves, and when I touched them they fell away, revealing a spray of grotesque and unfamiliar flowers. Had he grown so strangely in the intervening years? Then what was I? Another woman. He had fallen in love with another woman, I couldn’t begin to imagine why. Still, I thought I knew what she looked like: she had brown shoulder-length hair and perfect skin; she wore blue jeans, men’s shirts, and black bras; I couldn’t see her face very clearly, but she was smiling, and she had a mean smile. Charlie didn’t know what he’d done to me; he was still sleeping.

I was just about to slip out the door when he stirred and woke without taking his head from the pillow. Wait, he said sideways. I want to … And then he stopped, too exhausted to continue.

I went to the edge of the bed and stood above him, gazing down on his sprawled frame. I have to go to work, I said softly. A lie, but it would have been impossible for me to stay more than a minute longer.

He was trying to come up with something to say, but I couldn’t help him; I hadn’t been with him in his slumber. I was beginning to think he had fallen asleep again, when he spoke. Sugartown … he murmured. What time is it? My plane leaves at … Stay.

I think it’s around eleven, I said. I have to be at work by twelve. I have to go. He suddenly seemed very dangerous to me and I wanted to distance myself from him as quickly as possible.

… I had a dream about Roy Harrison, he said with a puzzled look. Because you … made me dream about it.

And there I was, cornered by my curiosity all over again. Tell me.

I don’t know, it was nothing. He rolled over onto his back and then slowly raised himself up until he was sitting against the headboard. You’re really going to go. O.K. Will you leave me your number?

I found a sheet of hotel stationery and a pen in the desk drawer and scribbled some numbers on it, not mine; then I crossed the room to kiss him, glanced at him briefly, and started to leave. Good-bye, Caroline, he said tenderly as I was opening the door.—Oh. I turned, with the door open and the hallway behind me. But I remembered, he said. About Roy …

This is your dream?

This is the real … I heard he had a kid with this woman, the one I was telling you about, and they were all set to get married. Then she walked out, just took the baby with her and disappeared. That was the last part of the story. I don’t know. That was the end.

And I stood there for a moment, shocked and nodding stupidly, while something in me sang in pain … Be gone, you devils, you’ve got me, you’ve skinned me … Thank you, I said at last, and then I quickly crossed the threshold and walked away down the silent hall.

It was Sunday morning and I felt dizzy, a column of thick, turning smoke, turning through the lobby of a hotel in which I wasn’t registered. Outside the revolving door the new sun was shining brightly and the walk across the front lawn was lonely, a tour through a sketchy garden suffused with air shot through with exhaust fumes from the road. By the time I reached the sidewalk any pretense of a better realm had ended. The bus stop was a half mile up the street, past the candy store, past the corporate center, past the strip mall. Already the sky was hot as a griddle. I waited on the bench with a newspaper I’d bought on the corner, tasted the yeast on my tongue, and suffered in the sun.

It was a fault of mine always to remember the past, and a twist in my vice to be most nostalgic and sentimental about those times when I’d been most unhappy, to want this season of misery or that month of boredom more sharply by far than any fond moment. God, how unhappy I was then, I’ll say to myself: I wish I was there now.—And that was how it was that day. My marriage had been a mistake, I knew; nothing I had ever done had made me feel so weak; but I missed it badly. In the tree above my head a pair of birds were bickering, and it was all I could do to keep from crying in public, because it seemed to me that they didn’t have anything to complain about. I hated the birds and read the paper, but the paper was just as bad.

Every article was directed at me; each was a parable that had been sent my way, and my task was to find the proper meaning and apply it to the city around me. I knew that my fate depended on discovering what was hidden within the stories, but I couldn’t make sense out of any of them; I was too tired, too simple and stupid.

The police were waiting in the bus and train terminals, but they thought Domino was still in town. He had sent a letter to the newspaper written in neat letters on a sheet of school notebook paper, and they had printed a reproduction of it:

I am a master of the Game, but I didn’t do this. Ask anyone. The bags were evidence that they stole from the House. They called themselves Officer Oregon, Officer Florida, and Officer Ohio. They told me to sell them, and then they tried to take more from me than I got. I told them I had enough, I didn’t want to do any more, and they said Nigger you are going to die. Because my father was a black man they said that. So they framed me, but they won’t ever find me. May God have mercy on you and your families.

Where was my sweet city? On the outskirts of town, a factory full of jobs had shut down; it made engine parts; the owners had disappeared. Four hundred men and women were out of work. Above the article there was a picture that showed a long, low brick building beside an empty parking lot, with a taller building rising behind it. A few men in jeans and work shirts stood outside the fence, staring at the camera with no expression at all.

And there was no nature or high thinking to console them. But what did that mean? What subtle lesson was I meant to learn? To have pity, to be angry? To quit what home I had and run? I thought it was my fault that I didn’t understand.

By the time the bus came there was nothing left to read; I took my seat and stared at the floor. The backs of my thighs were raw in a kindly sort of way, and my tongue was sore and tasted of Charlie’s mouth. The dress was a little bit rumpled and it no longer fit so closely, but it still had its shimmer. When a short bald man in a black silk shirt boarded the bus and sat in the seat next to mine, I was afraid he could smell the night before on me, so I pulled my hem down, shifted away from him, and turned my face to the window. A bright corner went by, and with it a revolving tableau: a car was stopped at an angle to the curb, and next to it I saw a police cruiser with its doors still open and its lights beating lazily against the noontime sun. There were two young black men facedown on the sidewalk with their arms stretched out on the pavement, while two policemen stood above them, one talking into his radio while the other was staring at something in his hand.

Old Station was crowded with Sunday shoppers, strolling in a sun so bright that I couldn’t see. It was a breezy day, and the pennants that hung from the buildings were flapping loudly; a woman went by with one hand clutching her jacket closed, and another woman at my side stopped suddenly, turned around, and grabbed to get a better hold on the bag she was carrying. What had happened the night before was a secret; I wasn’t going to share it with any of them, it would be a mystery to my fans and followers.

After I’d showered and changed I went out to see Bonnie at work. The place was empty and dark, and she was standing behind the bar, sipping a glass of soda water and watching a black-and-white movie on a television that was perched on the ice machine at the end of the bar. When I walked through the door, she stared at me for a moment and then put her hand up to shade her eyes. Who is that?

It’s Caroline, I said.

Oh. She smiled. It’s so dark in here that when you stand in the sun I can’t see anything. Hello, honey. You took that guy home last night, didn’t you? I saw you get into a taxi together.

I put my bag up on the bartop. We went to his hotel room, I said. I don’t remember how it happened.

How was it?

It was strange, said a woman on the television. It was strange, I said. Kind of nice. I can still smell the stuff he puts in his hair.

I thought he was beautiful, said Bonnie. Was he beautiful? Do you want something to drink?

No thanks, I said. No, all right, tequila. She brought a tall glass out, set it before me, and poured a shot from the bottle. He was definitely smart about me. He was very …

Say when, she said as she was stopping. Is that enough?

Fine. My legs are sore. And my neck, for some reason, I have this kind of lump in my throat. She laughed, I went on. The odd part was that he knew my ex-husband in New York, and he started telling me these things about him. Bonnie was gazing at me steadily, the bottle still slightly cocked in her hand; the night before was coming back like an hour of weather. I didn’t let on who he was to me.

What did he say?

He told me a lot of stories, they can’t possibly all be true. That after we got divorced, he was going to marry another woman, but she left him just before the wedding. And she ran off with their baby? She had a baby, and she ran off with it? I don’t know what I should do. I looked away, and without my even thinking, hot tears crept into my eyes.

She put the tequila back on the shelf and came back with a few lime slices on a napkin. What could you do? she said softly.

I shook my head; I stared at my own hands. She started to make herself a vodka and cranberry juice. That’s not funny, said the woman on the television. I can’t understand it, I said.

The drink Bonnie was pouring overflowed its glass, leaving a small puddle beneath. She reached along the bar for a white paper napkin and dropped it on the spill, and together we watched as a dark red stain appeared on it and swiftly spread—then slowed, and finally stopped just before it reached the edges. Maybe it isn’t true, she said as she wiped the counter off and threw the napkin away. Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe he deserves it. Maybe he’s lost his mind. A man will do that, I’ve seen it.

Maybe. The hard part is …

I know, she said. But listen, why don’t you come over and have dinner tonight?

I’m working the night shift, I said. Tomorrow, we said in unison.

I was supposed to be supervising Mrs. Adcock’s eighty-fifth birthday party that evening, but when I went down to the dining room, André was already there, standing in the bright, bright yellow light that was tumbling through the windows from the last of the setting sun. He was giggling about something as the residents filed through the door; the mirth had taken his face and made a comedy mask of it. Oh, come on in, you. Come on, come on. It’s a party. Now, who all of you can guess—can guess, who can guess how old I am? That’s right, he went on, although no one had answered him. I’m thirty-one years old. You can sit there, or you can sit there. We’re going to sing this afternoon. You can sing, or you can just listen. That’s right. He looked over at me and started laughing again. Caroline, are you going to help me keep these people in line? he said. We’ve got games, guess what year it is; we got races, wheelchairs against walkers. No, you go on and get some coffee or something. I’ve got this under control.

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