Where I Belong

  “Get your pajamas on,” Mrs. Clancy says, “and we’ll have a cup of hot chocolate.”

  We sit together at the kitchen table. The rain sluices down the windows, hiding the darkness outside.

  “He’s dying,” I whisper.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Mrs. Clancy says.

  “He’s a good man,” I tell her.

  Mrs. Clancy sips her hot chocolate. She doesn’t look at me or say anything. Outside the wind rises and the rain falls harder. I look at the window and see our reflection in the glass. This is how we’d look to a stranger. A woman and a boy sitting in a cozy kitchen, drinking hot chocolate.

  After I go to bed, I sense the Green Man’s presence in my room, sitting in the shadows, watching over me. I’m afraid he’s died and his ghost has come to say goodbye. I burrow under the covers and press my face into my pillow.

  “Please don’t die,” I whisper to him. “Please, please, please.”

  When I wake up, it’s so dark I can’t believe it’s morning. The sky is black and rain batters the house, the yard, the garden. Trees whip back and forth in the wind, blurred as if I’m looking at them underwater. The side yard is flooded ankle-deep, and branches litter the grass.

  “No power,” Mrs. Clancy tells me. “They don’t know when it will be restored. Lots of trees are down.”

  We eat cold cereal. Mrs. Clancy can’t fix coffee. She drinks a soda instead but complains that it doesn’t have nearly as much caffeine as coffee. After breakfast, we stand at the back door and watch the rain come down. It pours over the eaves like a waterfall. The wind puffs the screen door inward. I smell rust and wet grass and water and mud.

  “My poor flowers,” Mrs. Clancy says. “Just look at them. The rain has flattened them.”

  I wander back to my room and pick up Riddley Walker, a book Mr. Hailey thought I’d like. It takes place way in the future after nuclear bombs practically end the world. Even though the words are sometimes hard to understand, I like the book a lot, probably because I’m always expecting “the one big one” to destroy civilization.

  The phone rings and I jump, startled by the sound. “Lucky we have a landline,” Mrs. Clancy says as she goes to answer it.

  She speaks in a low voice and then calls me. “It’s Mr. Hailey. He has something to tell you.”

  From the way she says it, I know what he’s going to tell me. I don’t want to hear it. I stare at the receiver as if it’s dangerous. Mrs. Clancy moves it closer, her face sad. Slowly I lift it to my ear.

  “I’m so sorry to tell you this, Brendan,” Mr. Hailey says, “but Ed Calhoun died in his sleep early this morning. My wife was with him. She says it was very peaceful. He just slipped away.”

  I hold the phone so tightly it hurts. My old beliefs about him rise in my mind. “He’s the spirit of the forest, the Green Man,” I say. “He can’t be dead. Not him.”

  I hear Mr. Hailey say, “He was a man like everyone else, Brendan. Mortal.” His voice is calm. Accepting.

  I shake my head. Mrs. Clancy puts her arm around me.

  “Are you okay?” Mr. Hailey asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “Thank you for telling me.” Very quietly, I lay the receiver in its cradle. I am not okay. My legs shake. Something is gone from the world. Something is missing.

  Mrs. Clancy hugs me. “I’m sorry, Brendan.”

  I stand stiffly, not used to being this close to her. She smells of soap and perfume. I try to hug her, but I can’t. I stand next to her with my arms at my sides and her arms around me.

  When she releases me, I step back. “He died in his sleep,” I say.

  “He was old and sick, Brendan.” She pauses. “Sometimes people are glad to go.”

  I don’t answer, but I know I’ll never be glad to go.

  The phone rings again. This time it’s Shea weeping into the receiver. “We’ll never see him again,” she sobs.

  What can I say, what I can tell her? It’s true. We’ll never see him again. No one will. The Green Man is gone. This time he won’t return.

  I go to my room and lie down. The rain falls, the wind blows. I read, I sleep, I eat a cheese sandwich and an apple for lunch, but I’m not really hungry. I go over every moment I shared with the Green Man. I wish I hadn’t gotten mad at him for pretending to be what I wanted him to be. I wish I hadn’t torn up my drawings of him. But he understood. I know he did. And he liked being our adopted grandfather, even though it was for such a short time.

  That night, Mrs. Clancy and I eat a cold supper by candlelight and use flashlights to find our way around the dark house.

  A couple of days after the hurricane ends, the power comes back. Mr. Hailey and his wife arrange a funeral and burial for the Green Man. It will be a graveside service, he tells Shea and me. As far as anyone knows, the Green Man didn’t go to church and most likely wouldn’t want a Christian burial.

  No, I think, of course he didn’t. Green Men are pagans. Maybe I’m a pagan too.

  Mr. Hailey drives Shea and me to Ivy Hill Cemetery. He parks behind a hearse on the downward slope of a small hill. The rain has stopped and the sun is shining. The sky is the color of the Green Man’s eyes.

  Shea’s hand creeps into mine. Her fingers are small and cold. But strong. They grip my hand tightly.

  Three men from the park are already there, standing together under a tree. Their clothes are old and faded like the Green Man’s. They have beards and shaggy hair. One wears a straw hat and another has a baseball cap with his hair sticking out in a gray ponytail. Their faces are worn and rough and sad. They nod to us but they don’t come closer. They keep their distance and watch.

  The only other people there are two gravediggers waiting to finish their job. One has tattoos on every visible part of his body—Celtic designs, serpents, and stuff. I wonder how much it hurt to turn himself into a work of art.

  A coffin sits above an open grave. Shea tightens her grip on my hand. She turns her head aside. If she doesn’t look at the coffin maybe it won’t be there, and the Green Man will join us, laughing at his big joke.

  Mr. Hailey says a few words and his wife lays wildflowers on the coffin lid.

  “Would anyone else like to say anything?” Mr. Hailey asks.

  The man wearing the baseball cap steps forward. “You were a good man, Ed,” he says in a hoarse voice. “We’ll miss you, buddy. What happened to you shouldn’t have happened to a dog. Rest easy, nothing can hurt you now.”

  He steps back and the other two nod. “You said it for us, George,” one says.

  The other says, “That was a man won’t come our way again. We was lucky to know him.”

  Still clinging to my hand, Shea whispers, “Rest in peace, Grandfather.”

  I say the words I memorized this morning:

  Fear no more the heat of the sun

  Nor the furious Winter’s rages,

  Thou thy worldly task hast done,

  Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.

  I speak in a low voice, just for the Green Man to hear. I feel him all around me. In the breeze, in the sunlight, in the fresh smell of the grass, in the sky above and the earth below. He’ll always be with me, no matter how long I live.

  “He won’t be out in the cold anymore,” Shea whispers. “He won’t be hot and sweaty. Or get wet in the rain. Or be hungry. He’s gone home.”

  The gravediggers slowly lower the coffin into the dark hole. The Green Man’s friends join us to drop a handful of dirt on the coffin.

  “Dust to dust,” Mr. Hailey says, “and ashes to ashes.”

  We stand back and stare down at the shiny coffin spattered now with handfuls of dirt. Shea presses her face against Mrs. Hailey’s blouse and cries. I look up through green leaves to the sky and feel the warmth of the sun on my face. “Fear no more,” I whisper, “fear no more.”

  The man in the baseball cap pats my shoulder. “That was a nice thing you said. Ed loved poetry, recited it all the time.”

  He smiles at Shea and me. ??
?You must be Brendan and Shea. Ed sure was proud of you two, always saying how smart you were and what good kids you were. You gave that man something to be happy about, which is a damn fine thing.”

  He pauses and gestures toward the men under the tree. “That’s Charlie and Joe over there. They’re shy about meeting people. I’m George.” He holds out his hand and I shake it and so does Shea.

  George and his quiet friends wave goodbye. We watch them walk across the cemetery until they’re lost from sight among the tombstones.

  “Come on, you two,” Mr. Hailey calls. “It looks like it’s about to rain again. Let’s get you home.”

  Before we get into the car, Shea and I look back at the Green Man’s resting place. The gravediggers have filled in the hole with a backhoe and are hard at work laying sod over the red earth. We both hate to leave him there. Especially with rain on the way.

  By the time Mr. Hailey stops the car in Mrs. Clancy’s driveway, the sun has slipped behind the clouds. You can smell rain coming.

  “I’ll meet you in the woods,” Shea whispers as I get out of the car. “We need to make sure the tree house is safe.”

  “Okay.” I wade through puddles in the driveway but I don’t go inside. I know I should change my clothes and tell Mrs. Clancy about the funeral, but I don’t want to talk to her. In fact, I don’t want to talk to anyone, not even Shea. I need to be alone in my tree house so I can think about the Green Man.

  I cut through the side yard, hoping Mrs. Clancy won’t see me, but as I skid down the muddy hill to the train tracks, I think I hear her calling me. At the bottom, I run across the tracks and into the woods.

  The ground is soggy, and wet weeds brush my legs, soaking my shoes and pant legs. The air is hot and thick with humidity. It smells of dampness and decay. It hums with gnats and mosquitoes. Tree branches and leaves litter the ground. I see fallen trees leaning on each other like pickup sticks. Mushrooms have sprouted everywhere, some in circles, some poking up from the storm’s rubbish. A breeze shakes drops of water from the trees onto my head.

  At least the rain seems to be holding off. The sky is purple dark, though, with big clouds. It’s coming, I think.

  As I near the clearing, I notice an empty place in the sky. “No,” I whisper. “No.”

  I run through wet bushes and brambles and burst into the clearing. What can’t have happened has happened. The tree is down. Its roots tower above my head. Its massive trunk has taken smaller trees down with it. Its branches are still green with leaves.

  I’m witnessing a tragedy. The tree was a king, almost a god, the real Green Man of the forest. It must have lived through hundreds of storms. And now it’s a dead giant sprawled on the ground, Achilles in his armor dead on the battlefield.

  I don’t know what to do. The place where I belong is gone. The Green Man is gone.

  While I stand there staring at the tree, the rain begins. Soon it’s beating down through the branches and pounding my head and shoulders.

  I run into the woods, tripping and stumbling. Wet branches slap my face and brambles snatch at my legs. Crows caw in the branches over my head.

  I slow down. A voice in the back of my mind asks me why I didn’t wait for Shea . She’s your friend, your only friend, it says. I have no answer. I want to be alone, that’s all.

  Am I going the right way? All the trees look the same. So do the rocks and boulders, hills and valleys. For all I know I’ve been running in circles. People do that when they’re lost. But I’m not lost. That boulder over there—I remember it because it looks like the Green Man’s profile.

  I go on slowly, not sure I’m right until I hear the stream, rushing over stones, almost hidden by trees. I follow it, scanning the bushes carefully, and finally I see it.

  I look behind me, but no one’s there. Cold and wet, I slip through the trees and crawl into the Green Man’s shelter. I know he’s not here, but his spirit fills the place.

  I lie down on his bed, which is as damp as everything else. Why does everything change? Why can’t he be here? Why did he have to die?

  I hear Mr. Hailey say, He was a man like everyone else. Mortal.

  Mortal, I think. Mortality. That’s what mortal means even though you don’t think of it every time you hear the word. We are all mortal. We will all die. Even the Green Man. Even me.

  No, I think, no. Not me. Not Shea. I want to run, like someone in a story trying to escape fate. Gilgamesh, maybe. But you can’t escape. You can’t run far enough, you can’t hide. No matter which direction you go, death is always there, waiting for you.

  I lie still and breathe in the smell of mildew and decay. Rain drips through the roof. I notice that the Green Man put out buckets to catch it.

  The shelter grows darker. The rain falls harder. I know it’s late. Mrs. Clancy will be mad—no, I correct myself, she’ll be upset I’m not there, but she’ll act mad.

  Silence rings in my ears. I’m alone. Like always. Brendan Doyle, boy freak.

  Suddenly there’s a noise in the bushes. Shea crouches in the doorway, drenched with rain, her hair a black tangle of drooping curls. She’s been crying. And it’s my fault.

  “Why didn’t you wait for me?” she asks. “I went to the tree and it was lying on the ground, and everything we had is smashed and ruined. I waited there. I thought you’d come and maybe I could make you feel better, we could make each other feel better, but you didn’t come and you didn’t come and then I knew you didn’t wait for me.” She stops and takes a breath and wipes her nose.

  I try to think of an excuse, but she starts talking before I can say a word.

  “I’ve been wandering around the woods for hours. I thought this is where you’d be, but I couldn’t remember how to get here. And I thought I was lost and I’d never find my way home and I was cold and I was wet and I was scared.”

  By now, she’s standing next to me, shivering with cold. “I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I just wanted to be alone.”

  She wipes her eyes with the back of her fists like a little kid. “Do you want me to go away?”

  “No. Not now. I’m glad you’re here.”

  She smiles a wobbly smile and sits down in the Green Man’s sagging office chair. “No wonder he got sick,” she says. “It’s so damp and cold in here.” She shivers and rubs her arms to warm herself.

  “What will we do without him and our tree?” I ask.

  Shea looks down at her wet running shoes and sniffs. “I don’t know,” she says in such a sad, low voice that I can barely hear her.

  We sit together and watch raindrops plink into the buckets. What is there to say?

  I sigh. “I guess we should go home.”

  “Should we take his box with us?” Shea asks. “I think he’d want us to.”

  “If we don’t,” I say, “someone might find this place and wreck everything.”

  She removes the box from its hiding place and hands it to me. “If I bring this home, Cody and Tessa will get into it. Nothing’s safe from them. I can’t even keep a diary.”

  Together we leave the shelter and fasten the door as best we can. I cradle the wooden box in my arms, close to my chest, trying to shield it from the rain.

  Shea and I walk through the woods silently. I think, This is how it is when you’re with a friend. You don’t need to talk all the time. You can just be together and think your own thoughts.

  EIGHTEEN

  I SNEAK INTO THE HOUSE. Women’s voices float through the kitchen from the living room, which means Mrs. Clancy is too absorbed in the TV to notice I’m soaking wet as usual. Or even to hear me come in.

  I tiptoe to my room and close the door softly. After yanking off my wet clothes, I stuff them into the back of the closet and pull on jeans and a T-shirt. Hopefully I can add my slacks and shirt to the next load of laundry without her noticing.

  Sitting cross-legged on my bed, I open the box. The medals are on top where Shea left them. I lay the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart reverently on my pillow and r
un my finger over the cold metal. The Green Man received these when he was young. When his whole life lay ahead of him. Before he went to live in the woods. Before he grew a bushy beard.

  The medals waver as if they’re underwater, and I realize I have tears in my eyes. I wipe them away. I never cry. Never. But the tears fill my eyes again and I lie down, press my face into the pillow, and let myself cry for the Green Man and the tree and my mother—yes, my mother, who will never come back for me. I cry for her, too, the unknowable, the stranger I could pass in the street and not recognize.

  When my tears finally stop, I blow my nose and look through the other stuff in the box. I find three of my drawings of the Green Man and a carving I made of him. I almost cry again.

  I pick up a handful of foreign coins—Vietnamese, I guess. His expired driver’s license from 1981. His discharge papers, his birth certificate, and his high school diploma are in the box, rolled up, damp, stuck together, too mildewed for me to read more than a few words here and there.

  I put everything back, close the lid, and shove it under my bed. Then I open my door, ready to face the wrath of Clancy.

  When I appear in the living room, Mrs. Clancy jumps and almost drops her coffee. “Brendan,” she cries, “you nearly gave me a heart attack! How long have you been home?”

  “You were watching TV, so I went to my room and I guess I fell asleep.” I yawn in what I hope is a convincing way.

  “You should have poked your head in and let me know you were here.”

  “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “The funeral couldn’t have lasted all that time,” Mrs. Clancy says. “Where did you go afterward?”

  I shrug. “Shea and I got sodas and we talked about the Green Man and then we went to her house for a while and her mother gave us lunch . . .” I let my voice trail off into an embarrassed silence. I really don’t like lying to her, but she’s never known about the tree house and how much time I’ve spent in the woods.

  “What is this about the green man?” Mrs. Clancy asks. “Why do you keep calling poor old Mr. Calhoun that?”