Big Roots Read online

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  Copyright (C)1994 Pamela Sargent

  First published in Return to the Twilight Zone, ed. Carol Serling, DAW, 1994

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  After Father died, I stayed on at his camp. I had put off leaving for a lot of reasons. One was that I felt at peace there, in a way I hadn't for a long time, and another was the need to settle matters with my sister Evie. Maybe I still would have been there, struggling against a world intruding on my refuge, if my sister hadn't appeared to me in the guise of a False Face and the spirits had not spoken.

  The camp was a cabin with two bedrooms, a kitchen and living room that were on the side facing the lake, and an attic with cots and sleeping bags. We called it a camp because that's what everyone in the Adirondacks called their summer places, whether they were shacks or mansions. Father had sold his house after Mother died, and lived at the camp during the last two years of his life, before my sister put him in the hospital.

  My grandfather had built the camp and cleared the land around the cabin, but the pines were crowding in, and long knotted roots bulged from the ground in tangled masses along the path that led down to the lake. One of the pines, during the year since my father's death, had grown larger, its trunk swelling to nearly the size of a sequoia's.

  I didn't know why this tree was growing so much faster than the others, but its presence comforted me. I would sit under the pine and think of its roots spreading out under the land, burrowing deep into the ground. We had deep roots in these mountains, my family and I, and I had felt them more lately. My grandfather's people had come there early in the nineteenth century, but my grandmother's Mohawks, the Eastern Gatekeepers of the Iroquois, had been there earlier. She had grown up on a reservation in Canada, but my grandfather had met her in Montreal and brought her back here after their marriage. This land had been a Mohawk hunting ground, the forest they had traveled to from their villages to hunt beaver and deer, and where they had sometimes encountered forest spirits, long before white settlers had moved into the mountains. My grandfather had brought his wife back to her roots.

  I had pulled up the canoe and was sitting on the dock, thinking about Grandma's life while watching the loon. The bird had taken up residence in our part of the lake a couple of weeks earlier, and I wondered when more loons would join it. The loon would float on the water, moving its black-feathered head from side to side like an Egyptian belly dancer, then dive. It would stay underwater for three or four minutes, and I could never predict where in the bay it would surface. I had been like a loon underwater myself for the past year, living at the camp, diving below the turbulent surface of my own life. The bit of money I had saved was running out. Pretty soon, I would have to emerge.

  The wind picked up and the trees sighed. Sometimes I heard voices, as if people were chanting and singing elsewhere in the forest. Now I heard the sound of a car in the distance. It would be Evie; I was expecting my sister. Our great-aunt and a couple of cousins lived in the nearest town, but they hadn't called since the funeral, and I wanted nothing to do with them anyway; Aunt Clara had led the family faction that disapproved of my grandfather's marriage. My brothers, who lived in Seattle and Atlanta, had already said they wouldn't be visiting this summer, and I hadn't made any friends in town. So it had to be Evie, along with her husband Steve and her three kids by her first husband, my niece and nephews who couldn't sit in place without a VCR and a boom box for more than two minutes. It would be Evie, because anyone else would have called first to ask for directions, since the only way to the camp was along a narrow dirt road through the woods. It would be Evie, because we had business to discuss. She was here to change my mind.

  I got up and climbed toward the cabin. A winged shape soared overhead; I looked up as an eagle landed in the uppermost branches of the largest pine. Evie's blue Honda was rolling down the rutted dirt driveway that led to the cabin. She would unload a television, a VCR, and a ton of rented cassettes, to keep her kids quiet, and Steve would sit in the kitchen making bad jokes while Evie and I cooked supper. The noise from the TV would be deafening, because all the movies my niece and nephews watched had lots of special effects. I was sure the sounds would frighten the eagle away.

  But when Evie got out of the car, I saw that she was alone. “Got the whole weekend,” she said, “and I'm taking Monday off. Steve's watching the kids, so it'll be a real vacation for me.” She went around to the trunk and opened it. “Brought some food in the cooler, so we won't have to cook tonight.” Evie took after our father, and he had gotten his looks from his mother. My grandmother had looked like Evie when she was young—a tall woman, with coppery skin, thick black hair, and dark brown eyes. I had our mother's blue eyes, and my black hair had gone gray early, so now I colored it reddish-blonde. I didn't look anything like my grandmother, but I had her soul, which was more than you could say for Evie.

  I helped her carry the cooler and her suitcase inside, relieved that the kids and Steve weren't with her, but still wary. Ten years lay between my younger sister and me, and we had never been that close. We had gone for years without even phoning each other while she was having kids and getting a divorce and I was drifting, afraid to come home. She wouldn't have come up here alone just to relax and visit with me.

  The two bedrooms stood on either side of the bathroom, separated by a narrow corridor. I had been using the bedroom our grandmother had slept in during her summer visits, and took Evie's suitcase to the other. A quilt covered the bed that took up most of the small room, and a crucifix hung above the headboard. I never slept in that room, mainly because I didn't like the idea of sleeping under a crucifix, especially one that made Christ look so peaceful hanging there, as if he were only snoozing. I also knew my grandmother had come to hate the sight of the cross, which only reminded her of the nuns who had tried to beat a white soul into her. I could have taken it down, but then Evie would have been whining, “Where's Dad's crucifix?” even though she hadn't been to Mass since her divorce. My father had wanted to die here, in the room he and my mother had shared, but Evie had insisted on the hospital, so an ambulance had come up the long dirt road and driven him the fifty miles to the city. Father had lasted less than a month there, barely enough time for my brothers to realize that he was actually dying and to get to his side to make whatever amends they could.

  “Mother must have hated this place,” Evie said as she opened the suitcase.

  “I never heard her say so.”

  “Well, think of it, Jennie—sitting around here, away from all her friends, taking care of us and waiting for Dad to come up on the weekends.”

  Maybe she had hated it. I wouldn't know, because Mother had been the kind of person who kept her thoughts to herself. The camp had been my father's boyhood summer refuge. Even after all our summers there, Mother had moved around the rooms, occasionally peering into a corner or picking up an object from a table, as if she were a guest exploring unfamiliar surroundings. But maybe Evie was only projecting her own feelings onto our mother. That would be like my sister, imagining that everyone felt exactly the way she did.

  “But I guess you wouldn't understand that,” Evie continued, “being practically a hermit yourself.”

  I would have to put up with t
hree days of this, Evie asking when I was leaving, how I could possibly get through another winter, when I was going to find a job and get on with my life. She would get to the business about the land, too; I was sure of that now. It didn't matter. I was ready for her this time.

  We went to the kitchen. “Hungry yet?” Evie asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Let's have a drink then. Better make mine a ginger ale, or diet soda if you have any.”

  “You sure? I've got some of your bourbon left.”

  “Steve and I are trying for a kid,” she said, “so I'm laying off the booze.”

  “You must be kidding,” I said. “You have three already. How can you afford it? What's going to happen to your job?”

  “Steve wants a kid of his own. Can't blame a man for that, can you?”

  “Go sit on the porch,” I said. “I'll get the drinks.” She wandered toward the porch. Evie had always been big, and she had gained more weight since her last visit; maybe she was already pregnant. I poured her a diet cola, along with gin over ice for myself. Once, I had liked Martinis, but had come to think of them as a drink for rich white Republicans, so now I didn't bother with the vermouth. “Your grandmother drank.” Mother had harped on that, on how much trouble it had caused everyone. “Her Indian blood—that's what it was.” That was Mother's explanation for any behavior she didn't want to blame either on environment or her own genes.

  The screened-in porch faced the lake. Evie was sitting in one of the chairs, smoking a cigarette; apparently she hadn't given that up yet. I sat down near the standing ashtray and took out my own cigarettes. Tobacco was a sacred plant for the Iroquois; I had read that in a book. For my grandmother's Mohawk ancestors, it was a means by which their prayers could reach the spirits, and rise to their Creator. That was, I supposed, a pretty good reason not to quit. My indecision would travel out along the smoky tendrils, to be dispersed as it rose toward heaven; the spirits would answer my prayers. A stream of smoke from my cigarette drifted through the screen, then broke up into uneven strands.

  Evie said, “I have to talk to you.”

  “I figured.”

  “Curt called me last night. I talked to Sam a couple of days ago, about the land. They think selling it off's a good idea. People want lakeside property, and this land's worth more now.”

  Of course my brothers would agree with her about selling. The land Father had left us was his only legacy. We owned everything around this small bay; the closest place, about a mile south, was another cabin overlooking the narrow channel that connected the bay to the rest of the lake. The shallowness of the channel kept large motorboats out of the bay; days could pass without my seeing more than a canoe moving along the shore. It was why the loons came there and blue herons nested in the nearby trees; I thought of the eagle I had seen earlier.

  “Dad didn't leave us this land,” I said, “so that we could sell it.”

  “He must have known we'd consider it. Why didn't he put it in the will if he didn't want us to sell?”

  “Because he was too sick to think about it. Because there wasn't time. I know what he would have wanted.”

  “You know. You always know, Jennie. You always know all this stuff about everyone in the family that nobody else knows.” Or which might not even be true, her voice suggested.

  I knew things because the rest of them never bothered to listen to anybody. I said, “When I knew Dad was dying, I kept waiting for him to tell me to get on with my life. But he never did, and it wasn't until a little while ago that I figured out why. He wanted me to stay here, to protect this land.”

  “That's crazy. He was so doped up toward the end he probably couldn't think straight. He must have figured you'd have enough sense to get back on your feet by now. This land's worth nothing to us this way. If we sell it, we can—”

  “It isn't ours,” I said, “not really. It's like we're the caretakers, that it's a trust. I've been feeling that way the whole time I've been here. It isn't our land, it's our people's—Grandma's people.”

  “Are you on that again?” Evie stubbed out her cigarette. “How can that stuff matter to you? Look, I loved Grandma, but she wasn't all that much use to anybody when she was alive. If Grandpa hadn't had to waste so much money on her, maybe there would have been something left for us.” She took out another cigarette and lit it. “You can afford to be sentimental about these things, but the rest of us have kids. I'd like to be able to do something for them.”

  That was the excuse that explained everything. “I have kids, so that gives me license to be an asshole. I have kids, so I'm entitled to do things I'd shy away from or have doubts about otherwise, because I have to think of them.” At least that's how it sounded to me. Whatever happened to “I have kids, so maybe I should try to pass on some wisdom and principles?” But my sister didn't live in that world. Maybe no one did any more.

  “And Curt's got a son almost ready for college,” Evie went on. “He told me he wants Brian to get somewhere.” That sounded like Curt. My brother would think he was doing the world a big favor if he gave it another lawyer or M.B.A.

  “It isn't as if the state hasn't set aside plenty of undeveloped land already.” Evie gestured with her cigarette. “We're not rich, you know. We can't keep this our little private bay forever.”

  I tried to think of what to say, but the gin was getting to me. Evie wouldn't understand if I told her that I still caught glimpses of deer coming to the bay to drink, that we had to keep the land as it was so that the deer could still come here. I couldn't tell her that having more people around would probably frighten off the turtles that sunned themselves on the logs across from our dock. Evie would be thinking of future college bills and expensive technology for her kids and the new baby with Steve, not deer and turtles.

  “It won't be the same,” I said. “I saw an eagle in that big tree today. He won't stick around if builders start tearing things up. We could leave something behind, Evie, a bit of untouched land people might appreciate having someday.”

  “Listen.” She leaned toward me. “We can still keep some of the land around this camp. You'd hardly notice the difference. We could sell the rest off in large parcels, so there wouldn't be too many places built.” She sounded like a white woman, with her talk of selling the land and carving it up, but that was how Evie thought of herself. It's that Indian blood that caused most of the family troubles; better forget you have any.

  “I'll just bet the developers will listen to you,” I said. “They'll say, Sure, I'll just put one summer home here and make fifty grand instead of building five and pocketing a hell of a lot more.”

  “There are limits,” Evie replied, “what with having to put in septic systems and all. If you ask me, this place could use some development.” She squinted as she stared toward the lake. “For instance, that big tree there is completely out of hand. Somebody should have cut it down a long time ago. If you cleared out some of those trees, you'd have a much better view.”

  “That tree stays.” I was on my feet. “It's Grandma's tree—she planted it herself when Grandpa built this place.” I don't know how I knew that. During the year I had been living at the camp, I had looked out at the tree without ever thinking about it. Why had Grandma planted a pine there, when pines already surrounded us on all sides? Yet somehow I knew she had planted it. Maybe she had told me once, and I had simply forgotten until that moment.

  I went into the kitchen, took some ice out of the refrigerator, and poured myself more gin. The evening wind was picking up when I got back to the porch. The pines sang, the wind rising into a muted cheer and then falling into a sigh, but a deeper moan nearly drowned out the song. I heard a rumble that might have been distant thunder, but the sky was still salmon pink, the clouds fingers of navy blue.

  “It was cruel,” I said then, “what Grandpa did to Grandma.”

  “What do you mean?” Evie asked.

  “Buying all this land and saying he did it for her.”

&nb
sp; “You call that cruel? It showed how much he adored her.”

  “No, it didn't,” I said. “He was saying, Here, I bought this land, this little piece of the mountains that used to belong to your people, because I made a lot of money in lumber. And you can have a little of your land back because a white man got it for you.”

  “You're crazy, Jennie. Grandpa loved that woman. Do you think he would have stayed with her all those years if he hadn't?”

  That was the way the rest of them saw it. Grandpa was the long-suffering saint and Grandma the alcoholic he hadn't been able to help. He had checked her into every expensive hospital he could find, but that had not kept her from going back to drinking when she got home. He had sold his business to stay with her, and at the end of his life, the money was gone. Grandma had outlived him even with the drinking; she tapered off toward the end, spacing out her drinks, but not enough to save either her liver or my father from her medical bills. No wonder the rest of them blamed her for their lives of tract houses, credit card bills, and tedious jobs.

  Maybe I would have blamed her myself, but I had spent too much time as a child sitting with her when my brothers exiled me from their games. To Evie and my brothers, our grandmother was only an old drunk who sat in the corner and mumbled to herself; that was the Grandma they remembered. They didn't have the patience to listen to her, to see that her disjointed musings made sense once you put them together. The Grandpa I had heard about in her words wasn't the loving husband Evie saw, but the man who had forced her to live among people who despised her, who had refused to let her go.

  “The wild Indians'll get you.” That had been Curt's favorite taunt at our camp when he was tormenting our younger brother Sam. “When you're asleep, the wild Indians'll climb in your window and scalp you.” Indians had nothing to do with them. They had never noticed how Grandma closed her eyes when she heard Curt's words, how her hand had tightened around her glass.