The Man in the Tree (27 page)

He opened the card. The paint had spread and run together in a symmetrical
winged shape; there were veins in it and subtle shadings where the colors
had blended.
"My goodness, that's beautiful!" Margaret said.
"Try it."
Her first attempt made a sort of cabbage shape with yellow eyes. She
tried again, with different colors, and got an orchid. Gene was mixing
colors in one of the bowls to make a brownish violet. He spooned some of
this onto a folded card, then added a little water. When he opened it,
it was a veined brown-violet shape, like a block print, with delicate
traceries around it. "Oh, let me try that," she said.
Irma wandered in after a while, then Pongo, then Linck, and they all sat
around the table until nearly dinner time, making Christmas cards. As
the colors dried, new patterns became visible in them. "Look at this
rabbit," they said to each other, or, "Here's a demon standing over a
tree." When they counted them, they discovered they had made more than
a hundred cards, each more beautiful than the others.
Later Margaret said, "I know I can't draw, and I certainly can't paint. So
where did the beauty come from?"
"Well, folding the card makes the design symmetrical, of course, and
that's part of what we mean by beauty. Then the colors mixing on the
card gave you all kinds of subtle gradations, and the surface tension
of the paint made it form veins and so on. Remember that you chose the
colors, and where to put them; that makes your cards different from
anybody else's."
"Yes, I saw that. Irma's are big splashy flowers, and yours are like
misty watercolors."
"Sure. And Piet's are dark and brooding because he uses so much black. So
don't say you didn't do it, because you really did. But the rest of it came
from just the physical properties of the paint and the card -- if that's
beautiful, it's because the universe is beautiful."
"Like the coquinas?"
"Maybe."
"But what's it for? Just for our benefit?"
"I don't think so. There's beauty in the universe that nobody ever saw
until the invention of the microscope. Crack open a stone, or split a
piece of wood, and you'll see beauty. But what if you never cracked that
stone, or split that piece of wood?"
"Isn't that a little like, if a tree falls in the forest when nobody's
there, is there a sound?"
"Well, is there? Depends on what you mean by sound. If it's just waves of
compression and rarefaction in the air, then the answer is yes -- if it's
what you experience when those waves hit your ear, then the answer is no.
A long time ago I used to think that when we make art we're celebrating
the natural world, praising it, and that's what it's all about. What I
think now is that we're here because we can make a kind of beauty the
universe can't make by itself. The natural world can make a crystal,
or an ocelot, or a poplar tree with the wind blowing through it, but it
can't make a painting, or music, or stories. And there's a kind of beauty
that we create in intellectual things, maybe -- mathematics, physics."
"You don't think that's just there, and we're discovering it?"
"Oh, no. Mathematicians will tell you that mathematics is not descriptive
except by coincidence. It isn't a science. And even physics -- somebody,
I think it was Leon Cooper, once said that when God created the world,
he didn't bother to make any fine structure. A tree was just a tree,
until somebody cut one down, and then he had to hurry up and create
the rings and so on. And when somebody invented a microscope, he had to
create all the fine structure that you can't see with your naked eye --
cells and corpuscles and bacteria. And when we invented more and more
powerful instruments for looking at the insides of atoms, of course he
had to make electrons and protons and neutrons. And now it's quarks and
!eptons and so forth, and that's why particle physics is such a mess,
because God is making it all up as he goes along."
Chapter Twenty-two
Tom Cooley left his job in 1976, moved back to Amherst where he still
had friends, and retired on a small pension. With this and his income
from several rental properties he had acquired in the sixties, he was
financially secure, and for a number of years his health was good. He
went on annual hunting trips with his cronies, did a little fishing and
continued to read "Amusement Business" from cover to cover.
In the fall of 1982, camped in the Adirondacks, one evening he felt tired
and out of sorts. The next morning he missed a clear shot at a six-point
buck; the gun seemed to dip in his hands at the moment he squeezed the
trigger. On the way back to camp with his friends, he slipped and fell
heavily. The next day he noticed that he was having trouble holding
things. When he tried to chop some kindling, the hatchet flew out of
his hand and narrowly missed Al Jacobs' leg.
Cooley realized that something was seriously wrong. When he got back
to Amherst he went to a doctor, who sent him to a V.A. hospital for
tests. In December the doctor told him, "Mr. Cooley, what you've got
is something called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. You may have heard
of it as Lou Gehrig's disease. It's a progressive muscular weakness,
and there just isn't any treatment for it. I'm sorry to tell you this,
but that's the way it looks."
"How long have I got?" Cooley asked.
"I'd say three or four years, five at the outside."
A few months after this interview, Cooley found a notice in the back of
"Amusement Business": "Big John Kimberley would like to hear from carnival
friends, 1964-65." There was a box number in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Cooley's hands were now so weak that he could see the time coming when he
would not be able to dress and feed himself. His legs were also affected;
he could not walk far without tiring. Dr. Seward had been after him to
go into the V.A. hospital again, but Cooley knew that once he did that
he would never get out again.
There was no way he could aim and fire a gun, or use any other weapon. He
thought of letter bombs, but that was too chancy; someone else might open
the letter. He thought of poisons, of fire, of bacterial cultures, and
rejected them all. He slept badly. In his dreams, Gene Anderson was
guillotined, drowned, garroted, crushed by falling trees, and always he
stood up again unharmed.
One evening he called a taxi and went to see Al Jacobs. They talked a
little about hunting; then Cooley brought up his problem in a casual way.
"What are you telling me -- you want to wire some guy's car? That's easy."
"No, not a car. I was thinking maybe under a chair."
"With a timer?"
"No, that's no good. I've got to be there when it happens."
"Right in the same room? You could do it with a shaped charge, if that's
what you want. The explosion goes straight up. You could be sitting next
to him, and it wouldn't knock your hat off."
"How would I fire it?"
Jacobs shrugged. "Dozens of ways. The simplest thing would be just a
wire and a push-button. Or you could use a radio control -- no wires."
"What would it cost?"
Jacobs scratched his chin. "Tom, it wouldn't be easy for me to get this
stuff. The radio control, if you decide to go that way, I'll have to
make that myself. Say five thousand."
Gene Anderson stood at his window, looking down at the lights along the
driveway and in the parking area. The gate was open; here came a car,
black behind the cones of its headlamps. Another was turning off the
highway behind it. He had just finished dressing, in a suit and tie;
it was the first time he had worn such an outfit in more than a year.
Behind him, on his writing chair, were some penciled notes headed "Toward
a New Religion." He had not shown these to anyone, even to Maggie. It was
curious and a little unsettling to think how his attitudes had changed
over the years, as if belief were a function of metabolism. In his teens,
he had dismissed religion as a mental aberration; now, although he found
the answers of organized religion full of absurdities, the questions
absorbed him.
He had one advantage over all the others who speculated about the
unseen world: he knew that it existed. Several times, by accident, he
had managed to bring through from another world some object which was
not merely a copy of something existing in this world. Among these was
a little volume by Marco Pallis which did not appear in any catalog or
index. In this world, Pallis had written many works on metaphysics and
religion, but not "The Phenomenology of Mind."
Gene treasured this book, in its warped boards and faded green cloth,
because it was itself evidence that the author's central postulate
was true: the universe was an infinite manifold in which every
possible thing existed: "God is free to do, and must do, everything
that is possible." Somewhere in that vast flowering of creation, that
n-dimensional dandelion globe of branching and rebranching realities,
there were worlds in which Gene Anderson had never been born, others
in which he was not a giant, others in which he had not killed Paul
Cooley. . . .
He looked at his watch; it was time to go down.
The housewarming party, in his opinion, was an evil of doubtful
necessity. "You can stand them for one evening," Irma had said, but
he was not sure about that. They had invited all the local people who
had had anything to do with the house, and their flowery wives. Little
Larry Einarson, the architect, was there, and Russell Beck, the prime
contractor, along with a crowd of subcontractors; then there was Dan
Ankeny, the real estate broker; Sidney Webbet, of St. Petersburg Trust
and Guaranty; and various friends and relatives whose names he had not
quite caught. The men were red-faced, painfully close-shaven and recently
barbered; one or two of them were already glassy-eyed.
When he stood up, Gene's head was on a level with the heads of people
on the raised portion of the living room, and when he sat down he was
about as tall as people standing beside him, and that should have been
all right, but people were still uneasy in his presence; they came over
one or two at a time and said a few words -- usually the same few words --
then looked embarrassed and went away.
Maggie, in a white dress that showed off her tan, was talking to the
publisher of the "St. Petersburg Times" and his rotund wife; Pongo
and Irma had been here earlier but had disappeared. Hired waiters came
and went with trays of highballs; a few people had brought plates from
the buffet into the living room and were dripping vinaigrette sauce on
the rugs.
"Mr. Anderson, please tell me, where did you get that marvelous wood
carving? Is it one of yours?" The art critic of the "Times," a pale
young man with black-rimmed glasses, was pointing to a modern-looking
piece that resembled the buttocks of a woman.
"No, I got it in the Seychelles," Anderson said. He did not add that the
"sculpture" was the fruit of a Coconut palm.
"Well, it's simply marvelous. I'd like to do a column about it, and of
course, about all the other wonderful things you have here. I know how
you feel about publicity, but -- "
"I'd really rather not. You understand."
"Of course." The critic, whose name was Phelps or Phillips, shrugged
with manly regret and drifted off, munching a canape.
A gray-haired man with a solemn expression was coming toward him. "Hello,
Cliff," said Anderson. "Did you just get here?"
"Yes, my plane was late, but I've got that information you wanted. I
could of phoned, but I thought you'd rather have me tell you in person."
"Yes, of course."
"Can we go someplace private?"
Anderson stood up and looked around. There were people on the balcony,
in the dining room; there were even a few sitting on the benches in the
garden. "Come on," he said, and led the way back through the hall to the
infirmary, where he sat on the end of the examination chair and offered
Cliff Guthrie a stool.
Guthrie said, "First off, I ought to tell you that I had to spend all
the money you gave me. There was the guy in IRS, and then we had to find
somebody in the Veterans Administration, so it was expensive."
"That's all right."
"Well, we located him. There are plenty of Thomas Cooleys, but this
one was born in Portland, Oregon, and the dates match, and he gives
his occupation as retired police officer, so it's got to be him. He's
sixty-nine now. He's living in Amherst, Massachusetts, and he was in a
veterans' hospital for a while last year. Sorry if that's bad news."
"No, it's okay," Anderson said. "Thanks, Cliff."
In the kitchen, the phone rang and Irma answered it. "Yes, it is,"
she said. "Who is this?" She listened a moment, then put the phone down.
"Who was it?" Pongo asked.
"I don't know. Some man asked if this was John Kimberley's residence,
and I said yes, because that's the name Gene used in the carnival;
then he hung up. That's funny."
"Maybe he'll call back."
Margaret found herself standing beside a large gray-haired man with
mournful eyes. "My name is Cliff Guthrie," he said. "I haven't seen you
around here before."
"No, I'm new. Margaret Morrow -- I'm Gene's secretary. Have you known
him long, Cliff?"
"About a year. I was an examiner with IRS. We were auditing his returns,
and I saw him several times. After I retired last March, I came around
just to pay a social call. He was pretty cordial, considering what a
rough time we gave him."
"And now he invites you to his parties?"
"That's right. I've done some work for him, too." He stared at the
highball in his hand. "It isn't the work, though -- that isn't why. I
just like to be around him."
"I know what you mean."
Anderson moved across the living room, past a group of men talking about
fishing:" . . . thirty-five yards of hundred-pound test, and, man, I
mean he
snatched
it . . . "At the end of the raised area Linck was
holding forth to a little group: "Yes, even the pumpkin. Do you know
that carriages and lanterns have essentially the same shape? If you
look at a carriage with two lanterns, there it is three times, one big
one and two little ones. And even in automobiles, up to about nineteen
thirty. Well, it has been shown that this form is based on the seed-pod
of a Chinese plant."