Rootless by Chris Howard Read Free Book Online

And there, stretched across his skinny ribs, the black skin had been transformed into something else. Like a sickness or something.
    I stared at the man’s strange skin, bubbled and rough and hard. Zee had recoiled and was up on her feet, backing away.
    “What the hell is that?” I said, kneeling down, trying to get a closer look. But I already had a pretty good idea of what it was, though it was not something I’d ever seen before. And I knew it wasn’t something that should be growing thick on human skin.
    “Little slice of the Tree of Life, sire.” The Rasta grinned at me and tapped at his belly. A solid sound. Not like bones or flesh, but nor was it the sound of plastic, stone, or tin.
    “It’s wood,” I said, staring in his huge eyes, and those eyes just smiled right back at me, as if they might tell a hundred stories between each blink. “It’s bark.”
    “And Jah will free us when we all get back there, sire. When we build a boat that’s big enough.”
    “Holy shit,” I whispered. Then I stared at Zee. “You seeing this?”
    She was just shaking her head, freaking out. Hell, it was a freaky sight. Closest thing to a real tree I’d ever seen, though. Bark. Real bark. Somehow embedded in the old man’s skin. I reached out and touched the knotted chunks and it was wood, all right. Just like in the old stories. Wood you could chop with an axe. Polish up or burn.
    “Where the hell you been, old timer?” I said to him. “How’d this happen to you?”
    “I’m a child of Zion,” he said. “Eaten of the Tree of Life and then turned from the righteous path. But you will lead me back there, for I am fearful no more.”
    I pulled the picture from my back pocket and wiped it clear of dust. Then I held the photo to the old man and his eyes grew glassy.
    “Jah, man,” he wailed, happiness splitting his voice in two.
    “This,” I said, pointing. “This is my father.”
    “Sure it be, sire,” the Rasta whispered. “If he still be alive.”
    “Alive?”
    “But it be winter. Usually spring before there’s killing.”
    “What killing?”
    “Murderers.” Tears beaded up on the old man’s cheeks. “In the spring. Murderers, the lot of them.”
    “Your father?” Zee snatched the picture and shook it at me. “This guy’s your dad?”
    “Yeah,” I said. I stood, wobbled to the wagon and leaned against it, steadying myself as everything spun inside. “It’s Pop.”
    “The King” was all the Rasta would say. “The King.”

We drove in silence. Each one of us in a world alone. I’d fired up some corn for the old dude and he ate sprawled in the back of the wagon, wearing my dad’s old sombrero and drifting off to sleep.
    I’d got nothing more out of him. He’d just babble on about the King and the Promised Land, and look solemn when I mentioned Pop.
    Every now and then, I’d feel Zee stare across at me. She’d go to speak but then drop it. Hell, I don’t know, maybe she could hear my brain overheating, see the smoke coming out of my ears.
    I glanced back at the poor freak in the back of the wagon, his head resting on my nail gun, his stomach made of wood. Something had happened to him. A mutation, maybe. But not like any I’d seen.
    “Do you believe now?” Zee said finally.
    “Believe in what?”
    “Zion. The Promised Land.”
    “I reckon there’s trees out there. Someplace the locusts can’t get ’em. But where?”
    “I don’t know,” Zee said. “But I’ll go anywhere. Trade anything. Whatever it takes.”
    I frowned, thinking. Up there in the distance I could see the edgeof shantytown, the broken shacks blistered in the sun. And beyond those ragged streets was Frost’s house. The whole place would be in alarm by now. Their girl missing. The tree builder nowhere to be seen.
    “You should have told me it was your father,” Zee said.
    “Yeah? Why’s that?”
    “Changes things, don’t you think?”
    I rolled my eyes at her. But she was right. It changed everything. Pop