The Man in the Tree by Damon Knight Read Free Book Online

before dawn.

At home again, he painted in red enamel on the side of his mailbox the

name he had chosen, "J. Hawkins." He enlarged. all the nail holes in

the plank so that the nails could be tapped in easily. When the paint

was dry, he took the mailbox back to the county road and set it up beside

the others. His was on the end, and the name was plainly visible.

It was common knowledge around Dog River that Chief Cooley "had it in

for" Don Anderson and his wife. At the annual spaghetti feed at the

Grange Hall in April, Cooley sat next to Fred Moss and talked to him in

an undertone for half an hour. Later that month, when Anderson went out

to sign a contract for some remodeling, Moss informed him that he had

changed his mind. The same thing happened with another customer in May.

Mr. Beumeler, the Lutheran minister, preached a sermon on forgiveness

on the first Sunday in June, taking as his text Matthew 18:21-35, the

story of the unjust servant, ending with the verse: "So likewise shall

my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not

every one his brother their trespasses."

As the congregation filed out after the service, Chief Cooley shook the

pastor's hand and smiled. "Nice sermon, Reverend," he said.

Early in July, the Ander~ons put their house up for sale and moved to

Chehalis, Washington, where Anderson went to work for a builder named

Keegan.

Urged by an instinct he could not explain or suppress, Cooley cruised

the back roads on weekends and slow afternoons, visiting hunting lodges

and remote farms and filling stations uP and down the river. He talked

to the rural mail carriers in Dog River, Mosier, Odell, and Dalles City;

not much happened out in the country that they did not know.

In August he got a call from Steve Logan, the Route 1 carrier in Dog

River. "Say, Tom, you remember yon asked me to keep an eye out for

anything peculiar out on my route?"

"Sure do."

"Well, this may not be what you want, but there's something really

funny out on Dyer Road. Somebody moved in out there, put up a box,

name of Hawkins. Been getting mail regular for three-four months."

"What's funny about that, Steve?"

"Why, nobody out there knows him. I talked to Clyde McFarland and Bill

Funsch and old Miz Gambrell, they all live on that road, and they say they

never heard of this Hawkins, and there's no place for him to be. Nobody's

moved in out there, or built a new house, or a trailer, or nothing."

Cooley put down his cigar carefully. "Tell me whereabouts that is exactly,

would you, Steve?" He took down directions on the back of an envelope,

nodding. "Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I'll check into that, Steve, many thanks."

Cooley parked his car on the farm road, just below the crest of the rise,

looking down on the county road and the cluster of mailboxes. He watched

through binoculars when the mail truck came by, stopped briefly and drove

on again. The day was clear and still. An hour passed. Cooley got out and

went behind the car to take a piss. When he got back in and raised the

binoculars, he saw a flicker of movement back in the trees on the other

side of the county road. He stopped breathing. There it came again;

now a figure was crossing the road. It was the kid, all right. He went

straight to the mailbox at the end of the row, took something out, turned,

and walked back. Cooley watched him until he disappeared into the trees.

He knew better than to try to follow the boy's tracks; he would leave

footprints of his own and the kid might see them next time. Instead,

early the following afternoon, he entered the woods a hundred yards

away, climbed a ridge, and followed it back about a quarter of a mile

to a basalt outcrop where the trees were thin. He stayed there, drinking

coffee laced with rye whisky out of a thermos, until he saw the kid moving

through the underbrush. He marked the direction he had come from; when

the boy was out of sight, he moved down the ridge another