Where I Belong

  “Can I ask one more question if it’s about something different?” Shea asks.

  The Green Man winks at me. “Ask away, my dear.”

  “Do you sleep here every night?”

  “If you go to the same place often enough, someone’s bound to follow you. I sleep on a park bench in town when the weather’s good. Sometimes I go to a shelter. Sometimes I spend the night under the bridge on Forty-Second Street. When it rains, I come here. And in the winter.”

  He points at a rusty potbelly stove in the corner. “I rigged up a chimney for that, but I only use it when it’s really cold. Somebody might notice the smoke if I light it too often.”

  “Do you have enemies?” Shea asks.

  I don’t say anything, but I know he has three enemies, the same three I have.

  The Green Man shrugs. “Well, for one thing, this is a national forest. People aren’t allowed to live in it. The police would be delighted to dig me out of here and send me elsewhere.”

  He pauses and glances at me. “And then there’s the three louts who think my comrades and me are fair game.”

  “What do you mean?” Shea asks. “What do they do?”

  “Ah, they jeer at us in the park, throw stones at us, threaten us. After dark, of course, when no one’s around to see them.”

  “Sean,” Shea guesses. “And Gene and T.J. That’s who you’re talking about.”

  He nods. “The same brutes that beat Brendan.”

  “They wouldn’t hurt you, though.” Shea chews on her thumbnail and frowns. “Not like they hurt Brendan.”

  He glances at me, a warning to keep my mouth shut. “No, no, Shea, of course not. I might be old, but I’m as smart as a fox. Like a true Green Man, I can slip into the trees and disappear. Don’t you worry about me.”

  Shea leans over and hugs the Green Man. “If I had a grandfather,” she whispers, “he’d be just like you.”

  “Good lord, I hope not—a grandfather living in the woods and drinking with his comrades in the park?” He laughs and then coughs, deep and rumbly.

  “Maybe you could be our adopted grandfather,” Shea suggests. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Brendan?”

  “I’ve always wanted a grandfather,” I say.

  “So will you please please please be our grandfather?” Shea asks. “Say yes!”

  “Do I have to go to court and sign papers?” he asks, looking worried.

  “No,” I say. “It’s just between us.”

  “Well, then I’ll be pleased and honored to be your adopted grandfather.” He shakes our hands solemnly. “Now I’ll take you back to your tree house. It’s almost suppertime.”

  We walk silently down the trail, which was made by deer, the Green Man says. At the tree house, he hugs us both. “This is a very happy day for me,” he tells us. “I gave up hope of being a grandfather many years ago.”

  We watch him disappear into the shadows darkening the woods. He makes no noise. He leaves no trace of himself. Magic still clings to him.

  Shea and I stand together silently. The trees tower over us. They were here before we were born, and they’ll be here after we’re gone, living their secret life, still and watchful.

  “He’s so mysterious,” Shea says in a low voice, almost as if she’s afraid to say it out loud. “There’s so much we don’t know about him. Like who he was before he went to war. Where he lived. If he has a family.”

  I’d never thought of the Green Man as having an ordinary life—I guess because I’d believed he was the true spirit of the forest, an ancient being whose existence went back to almost the beginning of the world.

  “I think he likes being our adopted grandfather,” Shea says.

  “I’m glad you asked him. I’d never have had the nerve. I’m always scared people will say no, so I don’t ask.”

  Shea shakes her head. “You’re so silly, Brendan. You just have to take a chance sometimes.” She spins around on her toes like a ballerina, then darts ahead of me through the trees. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she was an elf queen vanishing into the twilight.

  “Wait!” I run after her. She laughs, but she doesn’t let me catch her until we reach the train tracks.

  SIXTEEN

  ALTHOUGH SHEA AND I GO to the woods after school every day, we don’t see the Green Man. We spend hours looking for his hideaway, but we can’t find it even though we’re sure we’re on the right path.

  On the way back, Shea says, “It’s as if he magicked it away.”

  I swat at the mosquitoes humming around my ears. Without my hair, it must be easier for them to get at my skin. “Let’s go to the park. Maybe he’s there.”

  Shea nods. “And if he’s not, maybe his comrades can tell us where he is.”

  It’s a long hot walk from the woods to the park, but Shea has babysitting money in her pocket and she promises to treat me to a soda. But not at the diner. We don’t want to see that waitress again.

  None of the Green Man’s comrades are there. In fact, the park’s deserted. Near the fountain, we see bright yellow tape circling an area. Two police cars with flashing blue lights are parked on the path.

  “What do you think happened?” I ask Shea.

  “Probably somebody snatched a purse or something.”

  We watch the cops for a while, but they aren’t doing anything more exciting than standing around and talking in low voices. We go on to McDonald’s and get our sodas to go. The air conditioning gives me goose bumps. Shea shivers.

  The next day, Mr. Hailey tells Shea and me he wants to talk to us after class. Shea gives me an Uh-oh, what did we do? look, and I shrug. Can’t be anything too bad. We’re both passing everything.

  After the other kids leave, Mr. Hailey sits on the edge of his desk. His face is serious. “I’m really sorry to tell you this,” he says, “but Edward Calhoun, your Green Man, is in the hospital. He was attacked in the town park and badly beaten.”

  Shea’s face turns pale. Tears run down her cheeks. One leg jiggles like she’s lost control of it.

  I sit there like a lump. Paralyzed or something. If I open my mouth, no sound will come out. It’s not true, not true, not true.

  “Is he going to die?” Shea’s fists clench.

  “My wife checked on him. He’s in stable condition—that’s better than critical condition.”

  “That’s what the yellow tape was,” Shea whispers. “That’s why the police were there. And we didn’t know, we didn’t know! We had no idea it was for him.”

  “How could you know?” Mr. Hailey says.

  “I should have known,” she says. “I should have felt something.”

  Shea is sobbing now, and Mr. Hailey is trying to comfort her. I stand and watch the two of them. I feel cut off. Alone. Why don’t I cry? What’s wrong with me? Numb, that’s what I am. Like my whole body just got a shot of Novocain.

  “Has he said who did it?” I ask Mr. Hailey.

  “According to today’s paper, Mr. Calhoun was unconscious when the police found him. When he came to, he said he couldn’t remember. It was dark, they jumped him from behind.”

  “Cowards!” Shea wipes her eyes with her fists and says, “I hate them, I hate them. First they beat up Brendan, and now the Green Man.”

  Mr. Hailey looks puzzled. “What are you saying, Shea?”

  “Sean Barnes and his friends. They jumped Brendan on the train tracks, and the Green Man said they bug him all the time. Jeer at him. Make fun of him. Threaten him.” She takes a breath. “Who else could it have been?”

  “It might have been anyone, Shea. You mustn’t leap to conclusions. You have no evidence Sean Barnes is behind this. I know he’s a mean kid, but—”

  “But? But?” Shea turns to me. “Tell him, Brendan. You know it was them.”

  I don’t look at her or Mr. Hailey. Why didn’t I let Mrs. Clancy call the police? Why didn’t I tell them who beat me? If I had, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe it’s all my fault the Green Man is in the hos
pital. I stare at the gray linoleum floor, too ashamed to speak.

  “Brendan.” Mr. Hailey bends slightly to look me in the eye. “It’s not your fault. Even if you’d given the police Sean’s name, they wouldn’t have had much of a case. No one saw them beat you up. They would have denied it. Your word against theirs. Without a witness, I doubt they would have been charged with anything.”

  I stare at him. He’s read my mind as if my head is transparent.

  “Come on,” he says. “I’ll drive you home and come back at six thirty to take you to see him. If it’s okay with your parents, that is.”

  Without another word, we follow Mr. Hailey to his car. Shea gets in the front seat. I get in the back. He takes me home first because I live closer.

  Mrs. Clancy is watering her flowers. She stares at the car as if she’s expecting bad news. He’s cutting school again, he’s not doing his homework, he’s failing summer school.

  Shea waits in the car, but Mr. Hailey crosses the lawn to talk to Mrs. Clancy. He tells her about the Green Man. She knows already. She read it in the paper this morning, but she didn’t tell me.

  “Since the man means a lot to Brendan, I’d like to take him and Shea to the hospital after dinner this evening. If that’s all right with you.”

  “No, it’s not all right,” Mrs. Clancy says. She’s gripping the hose as if Mr. Hailey might yank it away from her. “I told Brendan he’s to have no contact with that bum.”

  “He’s not a bum,” I say. “He fought in Vietnam and he has two medals, the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for bravery.”

  “Lots of men in this town have been in a war,” Mrs. Clancy says. “They don’t live in the woods, they don’t sit in the park and drink. They raise families and go to work and live a regular, normal kind of life.”

  She doesn’t get it. Some people can’t live in the world she’s talking about. They aren’t comfortable there, they don’t believe in jobs and houses and cars. They can’t do what you have to do to get them, and if they try, they make themselves miserable. It’s like a train when it switches to another track and goes full throttle down the main line but there’s this rusty little spur line that curves off into the woods. Only a few people ride the train that goes down those tracks.

  “He’s a good person,” I tell her. “He’s hurt, he’s in the hospital. You have to let me see him.”

  Behind me, I hear Shea say, “Please let him go, Mrs. Clancy. Please.”

  “Brendan’s right,” Mr. Hailey says. “Mr. Calhoun is a good man. I wouldn’t take the children to see him if I thought otherwise.”

  Mrs. Clancy knows when she’s defeated. She shrugs and says, “All right, all right. He can go.”

  “I’ll pick him up at six thirty,” Mr. Hailey says.

  Mrs. Clancy turns her attention to the garden. She’s not happy about the situation and she doesn’t want to talk about it. I wave to Shea and Mr. Hailey and start to go inside, but Mrs. Clancy stops me.

  “Give me a hand with the weeding,” she says.

  At six thirty, Mr. Hailey pulls into the driveway. Shea sits beside him. We look at each other but we don’t say anything. We’re both scared, I think, of seeing the Green Man in the hospital.

  Shea’s wearing a denim skirt and a pink T-shirt with a big butterfly on the front, an outfit I’ve never seen before. She looks different, older or something. She must think visiting the hospital is a dressy occasion. Maybe it is. I climb in the back seat and hope my jeans are okay.

  It begins to rain. Taillights shine on the wet road, and the traffic lights blur red, green, and yellow. No one talks. We sit and listen to the music on the radio. It’s an oldies station. I recognize Bob Dylan singing “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” which reminds me of the Green Man’s T-shirt and the years when he was young and a soldier in Vietnam.

  Mr. Hailey parks in the hospital lot. We dash through puddles. The sliding glass doors open as if we’re expected. People hurry inside with dripping umbrellas. Some carry flowers. Others carry balloons with smiley faces. A departing woman says to her husband, “He doesn’t look good.” “He looks better than I expected,” her husband says, and unfurls his umbrella with a snap.

  After we get visitors’ passes at the front desk, Mr. Hailey leads us down the hall to the elevators. While we’re waiting, a nurse comes along. She must be Mrs. Hailey’s friend, because she stops to say hello to Mr. Hailey.

  “What brings you here on a night like this?” she asks. “Your wife’s shift doesn’t start till eleven.”

  Mr. Hailey puts his hands on our shoulders. “Brendan and Shea have come to see Ed Calhoun.”

  The nurse looks puzzled. “I didn’t expect him—”

  Mr. Hailey must have given the nurse a look Shea and I couldn’t see, because she stops in midsentence and says, “I hope you find him feeling better.”

  After the nurse walks away, Shea looks at Mr. Hailey. “What didn’t she expect?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea.”

  She probably didn’t expect him to have any visitors, I think.

  The elevator doors open silently and we get in quietly. Nobody says anything. On the fourth floor, the doors slide open and we step off, still saying nothing.

  We walk down a long hall, past trash cans labeled HAZARDOUS WASTE, a cart stacked with dirty plates, a wheelchair or two draped with blankets, a couple of gurneys, and medical equipment on rolling stands. It smells like medicine and something undefinable. It’s as if the normal air has been used up and we’re breathing something else. Fake air, maybe. Every once in a while someone pages a doctor or calls for a nurse. Things buzz and beep.

  People cough. TVs flicker, but there’s no sound. Nurses pop in and out of rooms. Through an open door, we see bare feet sticking out of the bedcovers. “Gross,” Shea whispers.

  A man comes along hunched over his walker, trailing an IV stand. He’s wearing a skimpy little hospital gown that doesn’t quite cover his skinny backside.

  “Gross,” Shea whispers again.

  I don’t answer. I keep my head down so I won’t see anything. I wish I had earplugs and a nose clip so I wouldn’t hear or smell anything.

  The hospital is the scariest place I’ve ever been, worse than a haunted house, worse than a graveyard. I want to run outside into the rain and dark before someone decides I have to stay here.

  At last, Mr. Hailey stops at Room 412B. Edward Calhoun’s name is on a card under the number. Shea grabs my hand. Hers is small and warm, and I’m afraid to hold it too tightly.

  I stare at the man in the bed, his eyes closed, lying so still, connected to tubes and blinking, beeping machines. His beard is gone. His head is bandaged. One arm is in a cast. His fingernails are clean. He doesn’t look like himself. Maybe we’re in the wrong room.

  “What did they do to him?” Even though Shea whispers, I can tell she’s angry, partly because she’s squeezing my hand so hard it hurts and partly because she has that dangerous look on her face.

  Mr. Hailey shakes his head. “He was badly beaten, Shea. On top of that, he has pneumonia.”

  Shea releases my hand and tiptoes to the Green Man’s side. “Are you awake?” she whispers.

  His eyelids flutter and open. “Lady Shea, my little princess of the woodland.”

  His eyes find me and he beckons me closer. “And here’s Sir Brendan.”

  I look into his eyes, as blue and clear as ever, and I know it’s truly him. “I hope you feel better soon.” It’s such a stupid thing to say. So trite. I might as well have told him to have a good day. But my mind is numb, and I can’t come up with anything else.

  “Will you come home soon?” Shea asks.

  The Green Man gazes into space as if he sees something beyond the walls of the room. “Ah, yes,” he says, “I’m on my way home now. Should be there before dark.”

  His voice turns into a cough, a deep, horrible chest-wrenching cough that leaves him gasping for air. Mr. Hailey bends over him. “Lie back and rest
, Ed.”

  “Don’t worry,” the Green Man says. “I’ll soon have all the rest I need.”

  His eyes begin to close. His chest rattles with every breath as if something inside is choking him.

  Mr. Hailey takes Shea’s and my hands. “We should leave now,” he says softly.

  The Green Man opens his eyes. “Thanks for coming,” he tells us.

  “I love you, Grandfather,” Shea whispers, and kisses his pale cheek.

  He touches her curls and smiles. “Love you too, little maid.”

  He turns to me and takes my hand. “Brendan, my lad.”

  There’s so much I want to say, but his eyes are closing and his grip on my hand loosens.

  Neither Shea nor I want to leave, but a nurse arrives and says we must go. As Mr. Hailey leads us toward the door, Shea and I look back at the Green Man, lying in his pure white hospital bed, surrounded by machines. His eyes are closed, but he raises one hand in farewell.

  In the corridor, Shea begins to cry. “He’s not going to get well, is he?”

  “No,” Mr. Hailey says softly. “He probably won’t make it through tonight.”

  Shea grabs my hand again, and we walk slowly away from Room 412B. My head is a jumble of thoughts and fears and sorrow. I can’t find a way to express how I feel. I can’t cry, either. It’s over. The Green Man is leaving, he’s going home, and the forest will never be the same. Nothing will.

  SEVENTEEN

  WHEN WE LEAVE THE HOSPITAL, the rain pours down. Even though it’s only seven thirty, it’s almost dark. The road is practically deserted. In Price Chopper’s parking lot, streetlights shine on scattered shopping carts. Every now and then the wind gusts and sets them rolling across the asphalt. The traffic lights sway.

  “It’s the hurricane,” Mr. Hailey says. “It swung inland off the North Carolina coast. We’re in for a lot of rain and wind.”

  When Mr. Hailey drops me off at my house, I see Mrs. Clancy at the door. The living room glows with warm light. Buffeted by the wind, I run though the rain and dash inside, wet already.