1
Old roots coiled around the torso of the thing under the oak tree in Bill Swickard’s cornfield. When there were leaves on the tree, it offered shade and company, but in November, the oak’s bare branches clawed at the sky, offering nothing but a reminder that all things die.
The thing under the tree had been there longer than the farm. Longer than the oak. If Bill Swickard had uprooted that tree, he’d have thought the thing dead. Perhaps, in nearly every way imaginable, itwasdead. But when Swickard came to rest in the shade, or when his wife, Ruth, brought him a picnic and they held one another on a summer afternoon beneath those branches, the thing wrapped in the roots felt them there. It had long since ceased to think, or even to dream, but there remained some awareness. The thing might feel the weight of a squirrel traveling the branches of the oak and had sensed the presence of generations of laughing Swickard children as they climbed that tree.
Yet it had never moved.
Today, despite the roots that bound it and the earth packed around it, the thing twitched. If it could have been said to have shifted, then it shifted toward the west. Something had changed. Without thought, without dreams as yet, its body felt anticipation. Its bones ached with a history of pain. Beneath sunken lids, its eyes moved.
Without truly knowing, it knew—shewas dying.
It felt hunger.
The music of a child’s laughter carried across the cornfield. Benjy Swickard raced through the ragged, postharvest remains of the crop, pursued by his mother. Ruth chased her boy with arms outstretched, and she snarled, a pretend monster. With agility born of long practice, he dashed to the base of the oak tree and scrambled into the bare branches, daring his mother to follow. At eight years old, he knew that Ruth could easily have climbed the oak, but this was their game.
Buried among the roots, the thing sensed the child’s every movement in that tree, but it remained motionless save for that single twitch. It remained as dead as its nature would allow. But hunger had returned to the thing for the first time since before the tree grew.
And now it began to dream.
2
The process of dying seemed to last an eternity, but here at the end, it had begun to pick up speed. Malcolm wanted his mother to have the peace he knew awaited her, and yet he longed for more time. She’d inflicted a lot of emotional damage over the years, but somehow he still wanted her to see him marry and become a father someday. Wanted her to be a grandmother, if any of her children were ever blessed with kids of their own.
Her breath rattled in her throat, a damp wheeze that sounded slower than it had just minutes ago.
“Goddamn it, Maggie,” he whispered.
How could one woman care so fiercely for her children, worry constantly about keeping them fed and sheltered, and yet make them so uneasy in her company? As the baby of the family, he’d managed to avoid the wooden spoon that Jennie and Elias had often endured. Young Malcolm had often thought the spoon would have been preferable to Maggie’s less physical punishments. The sting and bruising from the spoon faded quickly enough, but the queasy guilt induced by Maggie’s disapproval lingered. The weight of her presence—nearly as heavy as the weight of her expectations—had usually been enough to keep them in line. She loved them, but wanted them tough. One of her favorite refrains had always been “Question the world’s rules, but not Maggie’s.”
He knew his mother loved him, but she’d often made it hard to love her back. Yet here they were—her dying, and him wishing for just a little more time.
A gentle knock came at the bedroom door, and it creaked open.
Violet slipped into the room, sleepless, her rose-patterned robe cinched around her waist.
Malcolm exhaled. “You should be sleeping.”
She looked to the window. “That man’s outside again.”
Irritation rippled through him. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s closer to tomorrow than yesterday, but I guess nobody told our Peeping Tom.”
They’d spotted the man earlier in the evening, after the small dinner Violet prepared had gone mostly uneaten. She had been the first to see him, through the window in Maggie’s room. He’d been across the street, standing beneath a willow tree, watching their house. At first, Malcolm assumed there had to be another explanation, but after nearly an hour, the man hadn’t moved, and his focus remained clear. This house. This room.
Malcolm had gone outside, strode down the front walk, but by the time he’d gotten to the road, the dark figure under the willow had vanished.Retreated, he reminded himself now. For here he was, back again. Malcolm had initially assumed the watcher was some kind of pervert looking for a good view. That hadn’t explained why he’d spent so long staring at this house, but once the man was gone, thewhyhadn’t seemed very important.
“He’s in the same spot? Under the willow?”
Violet hugged herself. “He gives me the creeps.”
Despite the sadness that lay so heavily in the room, Malcolm smiled. He reached for her, and Violet approached him, her footfalls soft as whispers.
Maggie’s labored breathing provided the only other sound in the room. Violet put one hand on Malcolm’s arm, ran her touch down to his fingers. He wanted to object, but when she leaned toward him, he did the same, until their foreheads were touching and they were breathing the same air. Anyone else would have kissed her then, but Malcolm wouldn’t do that.
Not with his brother’s wife.
In the bed, his mother began to cough. Malcolm pulled awayfrom his sister-in-law and went to Maggie’s bedside. The urge to help her felt overwhelming, but first his mother and then her doctor had assured him there was truly nothing to be done. Helplessness curdled in his gut.
