UP a TREE, page 1
UP A TREE
A Novel
RICHARD M. BROCK
Published by Bogie Road Publishing, Ltd.
Denver, Colorado
Copyright © 2021 Richard M. Brock
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or businesses or entities or happenstances or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020919266
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Brock, Richard M. 1981- author.
Title: Up a tree: a novel / by Richard M. Brock
Bogie Road Publishing, 2021
Identifiers: LCCN: 2020919266 | ISBN: 978-0-9911320-6-5 (hardcover) |
ISBN: 978-0-9911320-4-1 (paperback) | ISBN: 978-0-9911320-5-8 (ebook)
Cover Design by Richard M. Brock 2020
Cover Illustrations by Troy Hoover 2019
www.RichardMBrock.com
www.facebook.com/RichardMBrockAuthor
Advance Praise for Richard M. Brock’s
UP A TREE
“A perfect blend of Mark Twain-style color
undercut by modern humor. Ruby and Quinn are a
Tom and Huck for the 21st century. True brilliance
. . . in the finest American tradition.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Take a little Huck Finn, add in some
Forrest Gump, mix in some wild and crazy
travel adventures . . . and enjoy yourself.”
—NetGalley Review
“Read it as a page-turner, enjoy the
magical realism when it crops up, and
stew on the harder questions posed,
but by all means, buy this book!”
—NetGalley Librarian Review
Praise for Richard M. Brock’s
CROSS DOG BLUES
“Poignant . . . heartening . . . insightful”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This is storytelling at its best.”
—Fortean Times Magazine
“A masterpiece . . . achingly brilliant and touching . . . chilling and profound. This is a book that will rattle your soul, but then will sing it to sleep with a blues melody.”
★★★★★ 5-Star Amazon Review
“Just an OUTSTANDINGLY GOOD READ!”
★★★★★ 5-Star Amazon Review
“Amazing and honest.”
★★★★★ 5-Star Amazon Review
“I can't even begin to tell you what an impact this book has had on me!
★★★★★ 5-Star Goodreads Review
“Perhaps the best novel written about the birth of the blues. Cannot wait for Book 2.”
★★★★★ 5-Star Amazon Review
“A beautifully crafted page turner that really gets under your skin.”
★★★★★ 5-Star Amazon Review
To my mother
Scene: The Adirondack Mountains, Far Upstate New York
Time: A Few More Than a Few Years Ago....
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Testimony of
Ruby Finn Heckler
As it relates to the
FBI Counterintelligence Investigation
Of
Douglas “Lodgepole” Pine
And the “Helical Unfolded” organization
CASE#: 0486280616
Well, I got myself up a tree pretty good this time, and I guess I gotta tell this rotten story. It’s the damnedest thing and not a bit my fault, as you’ll see. But the FBI says I gotta make a statement—which I don’t like and don’t think is true, anyway. But they’re almighty worked up at me and all hollering and whatnot, and they say that if I tell this stupid thing, I can’t get in trouble for anything I did—which, I didn’t do anything anyway, like I said—but still, even if I did, I can’t get in any trouble for any of it. That’s important, and I want it on record. I may only be twelve, but I’m not an idiot. They also say Quinn can’t get in trouble for anything he did either, or any of a number of other folks I checked on and that you’ll hear about—except for Lodgepole, of course, who they’re calling Douglas Pine and who doesn’t care about them anyway. The FBI says I can swear and say anything else I want to, too, as long as I tell the truth, and they promise they won’t double back on me in any other way either, as far as that goes. I don’t know.
Anyway, you don’t know me, probably. Not unless you’ve been up to Hackers Loon, New York, in the last twelve years. It’s a tiny little town in the middle of the Adirondack Mountains and you wouldn’t have much reason to visit. Either way, I go by the name Ruby Heckler. It’s a shit name for a boy—I know it—but it’s mine all the same, and I haven’t figured a way to change it to anything else, as is. Don’t know that I would anyway. That kind of thing can mess with your medicine—the lucky spirits kind. They gave me the name when I was born, my parents, and I’ve had it ever since. I don’t know why they gave it to me, just to answer your question right off. I never knew my mom and dad—they’re dead—so I couldn’t get the story straight from them.
When this all started I was with my best friend, Quinn Hennessy, like I am most of the time, and we were betting on knife throwing at the Diggly Lumber Mill—which is a big lumber mill right through the woods from both of our houses. Quinn had a ripper of a knife his dad had given him, and we were getting good at throwing it. He usually won though, and I don’t mind saying it. Quinn won at everything. He could beat everybody in our grade in running and jumping and stuff, and he could climb a tree faster and higher than anyone I knew, at least.
The real reason we were out at the mill, though, was because Quinn came running into Miss Jane’s house that day all worked up sideways. He told Miss Jane—which is the lady that looks after me and gives me the hardest time—that he was wound up about a fishing hole he found and the huge lunker getting fat at the bottom of it. I could tell right off he was lying, so I played along, and by the time I had my sneakers on, we had Miss Jane talking backwards and were halfway across the yard. Quinn didn’t stop running till we reached the lumber mill.
“What’s chasing you, Quinn?” I yelled up to him as we got to the clearing before the mill, trying to get him to slow.
“Come on, Ruby,” he yelled, not slowing a bit. Quinn was like that when he got something in his head. Quinn was twelve, too, like me, but a little taller, and he had brown hair that was always buzzed, and he was usually carrying a shiner or something on one of his eyes from his older brothers and sister. They were tough. He had a shiner that day, too, but that was from us trying to jump Henderson Ditch on a hand truck.
Finally, when we got to the stacks of lumber, Quinn slowed down and turned back, real mysterious-like. “I got something good, Ruby,” he said, and I knew it must be good. Quinn was always getting into the best stuff. One time, he found an old car flipped over by Tanner Road that was half-buried under the ground and must have been there a thousand years. We dug that thing out and used it as a fort for two whole summers. You wouldn’t believe the stuff we found in there.
“Today’s the day, Rube!” Quinn hollered, slapping me on the back as I caught up to him.
“The day for what?”
“We’ll remember this day forever—forever when we’re cowboys and pirates and bank robbers! This is an important—”
But just as he was saying that, I saw a jackrabbit go bouncing behind a stack of lumber right behind Quinn. I jumped and grabbed my mouth and pointed, and Quinn looked and saw it, too, just as it disappeared. We both ran over and poked our heads around the stack of lumber, and there was that lone jackrabbit standing there with his back to us, sniffing the air.
Quinn turned to me and put his finger to his lips like I was jackass enough to say anything at a time like that. Then he reached down to his knife and pulled it out real smooth and quiet, and I almost keeled over. If he killed that jackrabbit we would be cowboys for sure, right off the bat, and maybe bank robbers, too. And not to mention, I’d own half the jackrabbit since I saw it in the first place, and Quinn was real fair about trades and halfsies and such.
Well, if you want to hear about the worst luck to ever fall on two people, then I’ll tell you what happened next. Quinn had the knife out and lined up just right, ready to throw it into the jackrabbit, and wouldn’t you know, right then at that very second, the whistle in the lumber mill rang out to end all rings, about as loud as you’ve ever heard. That whistle rang at certain times to tell people to do certain things or something like that, like a school bell, and when it rang this time, that jackrabbit jumped up like a jumping bean and turned right toward us, still not knowing we were there. Well, he looked up at us and about jumped out of his skin, and we looked down at him and about jumped out of ours, and then he took off zig-zagging away in the other direction faster than a whip.
Quinn threw the knife, but it wasn’t any use at that point.
Well, we cursed the lumber mill pretty good and got to kicking the dirt. The lumber yard is a great place for cursing. You never see Miss Jane down there. And when you can sneak up close enough to hear the workers talking, they curse just about as good as we do.
Anyway, Quinn cleaned the dirt off of his knife as we bad-mouthed the mill, and since he had it out, that was when we started throwing it at the ends of the s
After a couple of rounds, Quinn yanked the knife out of a board and turned to me. “What the hell are we doing?” he said, slapping his forehead. “Come on, Ruby!” And with that, he took off for the forest.
“Hold on,” I yelled and ran after him.
We ran into the woods and pretty soon found our secret trail and eventually reached our fort. We hadn’t been in this one for long, and it wasn’t at all like the old upside down car fort I told you about. We both admitted it wasn’t up to any decent standard of fort. We hadn’t even camouflaged the outside yet. With all the damn churching and schooling and everything else Miss Jane and Quinn’s parents made us do all the time, we hadn’t had a chance to find any supplies for it. We’d barely get to swing a hammer or kick some dirt before we’d have to run back home for dinner or chores or about a million other things. They never gave us an inch. And because of it, our fort wasn’t worth a damn to talk about. It needled us both.
But that day, Quinn didn’t even stop to look at the fort and shake his head and curse at our bad luck in not having a second of free time to find any supplies for it. He just dove right in and came up a second later holding a real-deal, no-baloney, twenty-two rifle.
“Holy shit!” I said and stopped in my tracks. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.
“Ain’t that the best thing ever,” he said.
And it was. “Is it real?” I asked.
“It wouldn’t be worth much if it wasn’t.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Old Man Chilson’s shed.”
“How’d you do that?”
“He’s gone hunting,” Quinn said, smiling, looking at the gun. “I was over there catching nightcrawlers in the moss behind the shed, minding my own business, when I saw a raccoon prance right on into that old shed like he owned the place, probably knowing Old Man Chilson was gone hunting.”
I nodded because I knew he was right. Raccoons are rascals. Everybody knows that.
“Well,” Quinn said, “being the neighborly sort as I am, I set to rooting that raccoon out of that shed, for the good of the country and all, and I did it soon enough, and chased him off—at great risk to my health and wholeness, don’t forget. So when I was closing up the shed so no other raccoons or critters or folks would take up in it, I noticed this here lonely twenty-two rifle on the wall.”
I scratched my head. “What did the rifle have to do with it?” I said, still not seeing.
“Well, I’ll tell you, Ruby, if you shut your cake eater.”
“Well, go then.”
“I am, Ruby. That’s what I’m saying. I’m saying, I saw this rifle on the wall and figured that chasing that raccoon away was pretty damn nice of me, knowing as we do how nasty raccoons can be when you get to rooting them out of somewhere.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“So, for all my considerable work, I figured it would be fair and square if I just borrowed this rifle for the day, seeing as Old Man Chilson is gone deer hunting with his other guns and doesn’t have any use for it anyway.”
Quinn Hennessey can sure make sense sometimes.
“You get any bullets?” I asked.
“Well, hell, Ruby, what do you think I am, some kind of idiot?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know, huh? Well, I’ll tell you, Ruby. I got sixteen bullets from Mookie Nelson on my way over to your house.”
“You got them from Mookie?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Damn,” I said, remembering the rattlesnake skin I wanted from Mookie. “Did he get them for the snake skin?”
“He sure as hell did,” Quinn said. “That and some other stuff. At least that’s what he told me. From Jeb. Jeb’s dad doesn’t lock up his gun stuff.”
“Shit,” I said. “So, Jeb’s got it now? I wanted that snake skin. You must’ve traded him a heap for the bullets.”
“Well,” he said. “Being that the bullets ain’t much use without a gun, and I was the one with the gun, I offered him to shoot five of the bullets tomorrow morning before Old Man Chilson gets home.”
“That’s a good deal.”
“Yeah, well, Mookie didn’t take it.”
“He didn’t?”
“No, he didn’t,” Quinn said. “You know Mookie. He knew I wanted the bullets bad and set to driving a hard bargain. You know how he does.”
I nodded my head. Mookie Nelson was a hell of a trader.
“Well,” Quinn said. “I wasn’t about to have my hands on a gun and not get the bullets. So, I did some dealing, and we agreed on two bullets for him to shoot tomorrow morning—and the piece of the plane.”
Well, I almost fell over. “What?” I shouted. “You gave him the piece of the plane?”
“Damn right,” he said, just like it wasn’t anything at all.
Quinn had been saving that piece of wrecked plane forever. I couldn’t believe it. He found it up on Bear Mountain—and nobody in the world went to Bear Mountain. Nobody who came back alive, at least. I hadn’t seen a kid yet with the guts to go across Crane Swamp even, let alone go all the way to Bear Mountain. Nobody but one that is: Quinn Hennessey.
Quinn went to Bear Mountain one day when he was hooking from school. He told us all about it the next day under the bleachers, and each and every one of us knew he was the king of the world. We all gave excuses as to why we couldn’t have skipped school, too, but the truth was, none of us would’ve stepped foot over that swamp anyway, not for ten snake skins. But Quinn did, and he found a piece of an old plane that had crashed on Bear Mountain a million years ago. It was the craziest thing ever. He even charged kids a nightcrawler apiece just to see it sometimes—when we needed nightcrawlers—and the kids lined up for miles at a time.
“Can we shoot it?” I asked, staring at the rifle.
Quinn just looked at me like I was an idiot. “What do you think we’re doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“We gotta go farther out, though.”
I nodded and we started walking, and before we knew it, we were past Jackson Creek and all the way to Crane Swamp. Miss Jane had a bell she rang when she needed me for one thing or another, and beyond Jackson Creek was out of bell range, so we didn’t go past there, normally. Or, I guess we did, if I thought about it. We just weren’t supposed to. We almost never went all the way to Crane Swamp, though, and definitely never across it. There was bad medicine across that swamp. Everybody knew that. You could feel it. And leeches in it, too.
“We gotta cross,” Quinn said when we got to the swamp, just like he was saying we had to put butter on our toast.
“Like hell,” I said.
“Like hell is right,” he said. “You ever want to be a pirate?”
“Well, of course I do,” I said, “but I don’t see wha—”
“How about a cowboy?”
“Of course I do. But—”
“You know any pirates or cowboys that never shot a gun?”
I thought about it, and I couldn’t come up with any off the top of my head. “You want to die of snakebites and Indian curses at twelve years old?” I said instead of answering.
“Don’t be a putz,” he said and started down to the water. “I crossed to get that piece of plane, didn’t I? And I’m not dead yet. And this time we’ve got a gun.”
It was a good point, I had to admit, but I didn’t feel much better about crossing. “I don’t know, Quinn,” I said.
You see, about a year ago, we all watched The Curse of the Waller Dog and a bunch of other scary movies about these curses that come at you from every angle if you say something wrong or look down a well or watch a movie or open a door or just about anything else you might do in your day-to-day life. And we’d certainly opened a hell of a lot of doors in the course of our lives, and who knew which ones were cursed. Anyway, we watched about eight of those movies, all in a row one night at Lump Douglas’s house when his parents were still soft on him after his tangle with the guy-line. Miss Jane never let me watch movies like that, and I always complained about it, but when we were watching those scary movies in the middle of the night at Lump’s spooky old house out in the middle of the woods, I was half-hoping some parent might step in and shut the whole thing down. But Lump’s parents were pretty laid back to begin with, and then there was the accident, so they pretended they didn’t know we were up there watching scary movies. And we watched them all.
