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Fuck this tree—that was a funny thing to carve into the wood.
One of the roots shifted and pressed against his ankle, snaking gently around it. His knees wobbled, and a cold pump of adrenaline hit his bloodstream in a rush. He took a stumbling step back, a scream rising in his throat, and then he saw it wasn’t a root, it was a cat,
Well thank goodness it was a cat lol
He had never lied to Helena about anything. Another of his rules: no lies. He had got around it by simply not telling her lots of things.
Parker Townsend was only ever she when they talked about her, as if her name was a toxic compound, something that needed to be kept safely bottled up.
“Oh, Dennis. I never said you wanted her. You wanted this. You wanted to smash your marriage and your job and your life, all of it, into a thousand shiny little pieces.” “Why would anyone want that?” “Why do little kids break windows?” his soon-to-be ex-wife asked. “Children love the sound of smashing glass. Firebugs love a book of matches.”
in those first minutes of his walk, feeling unaccountably hopeful. His marriage was over. His teaching career was done. And for no reason he could put a finger on, he felt inexplicably liberated, as if he were a schoolboy again and it was the first day of summer. Anything could happen now.
in America, even disgrace could be monetized. Even shame had market value.
Why is this so true ?
The first time he thought the sycamore had moved, it was possible that he had just been confused, misremembering, disorientated.
The cat had not just had its head nearly yanked off, it had been crushed, its insides had been jellied and some of them had squirted out in ripe pink gobs from its rear end.
Lovely imagery there
“You think they did this?” “No, man,” he said, and what came out of his own mouth next surprised him more than it seemed to surprise the old guy. “I think it was the tree.”
“Huh,” the drifter said, and nodded. “That’s probably why it’s moving. The knife wounded it so it couldn’t go anywhere. Now it’s getting better.”
“Hey!” Dennis said, seized by a sudden idea. “What if you hang out here today and keep an eye out? I’d give you twenty bucks to watch this tree tonight.”
Um bad idea . What if it kills the drifter too?!
a lot of it was he-said, she-said, in an era when he-said carried a lot more weight.
You know why it looks that way, don’t you? Dennis Lange asked himself. It’s not just age. That tree was fertilized with poison. The choir director was poison.
Ewan and Troy had gone into the woods to cut down the Bad Tree and been cut down themselves. Maybe the tree of liberty needed to be watered by the blood of tyrants, but the ancient sycamore in the Orono woods maybe didn’t mind so much where the blood came from, as long as there was plenty of it.
He had yanked the thing out of the sycamore and woken the murder tree up—and for what? He didn’t know. The jackknife had mattered that little to him.
The drifter’s weight shifted, and he began to slide over to the left, which was when he saw there was a branch shoved through his back and out his chest.
The old man’s eyes were open. His mouth hung slack, as if he had died screaming, and maybe he had. Maybe that sound Dennis heard in the night wasn’t a fox after all.
“Besides,” he said to his empty kitchen. “It’s going to eat him. Who says anyone is going to find him?”
He was still laughing when he began to saw it back and forth across his leg, and he went on laughing—for most of a minute—before it turned into a scream.
