The Man in the Tree Read Free Page B

"Hey, Paul?"

He turned his head. "Up here!" Two boys came up the stairs; they were

twelve-year-olds, friends of Paul's. One of them, a tall boy wearing a

baseball cap, was already smoking. "Who's this?" he said.

"That's Feet, he stinks," said Paul, and laughed vacantly. "He took my

matches away and he won't give 'em back."

"Yeah?" The two boys came toward Gene. "Listen, why don't you give him

back his matches?"

"I haven't got them."

The two looked at each other. "Grab him!" said one, and they wrestled

him to the floor. While they held him, Paul went through his pockets,

pulling out a few coins, a wad of string, some baseball cards and a

wadded handkerchief. "Guess I'll keep these for my matches," he said,

and laughed again.

"Lemme see them cards," said the tall one, and they let Gene up. Paul was

backing away, but they tripped him, sat on him, took the cards and money

out of his fist. While Gene was putting out their dropped cigarettes,

Paul got up and rushed at him. He took Gene off balance and fell with

him half out of the window. "You took my matches! You took my matches!"

he blubbered. Gene was pinned by his weight across the window frame,

one arm under him, his head down.

"Get his pants," somebody said. Hands were fumbling with Gene's belt

buckle. He kicked and struggled, but all he accomplished was to force

his body farther out the window. He was crying. Blindly he reached and

turned, felt Paul's weight slip away from him. He heard a shriek, then

a thump below that echoed against the house like a pistol shot.

He grasped the window frame and pulled himself in. Below, Paul lay with

his head on a blood-spattered two-by-four.

The other two were gray-faced. "You killed him!" the tall one said. "I'm

going to tell my dad!"

Their footsteps rattled down the stairs. Gene followed. They were running

down the street toward town; he went the other way. He ran until a pain

in his side forced him to stop; then he went on, weeping and groaning,

up the hill into the trees. It was about three o'clock on a Sunday

afternoon; be was nine years old, and he knew he couldn't go home.

Chapter Two

Dog River, Oregon, named after the stream discovered by Lewis and Clark

in 1805, is situated at the confluence of the Dog and the Columbia. The

river was originally named Labeasche, after Francis Labiche, one of the

expedition's French watermen. (Neither Lewis nor Clark was strong on

spelling.) "Labiche" was taken by many to mean "the bitch," but this

fact apparently has nothing to do with the name finally selected for

the river and the town: it comes, rather, from the experience of some

early travelers who were reduced by starvation to eating dogs.

Dog River lies in a fertile valley largely devoted to apples, pears,

and strawberries. Most of the valley is flat as a table, but the town

itself is hilly; up from the river, the streets rise so steeply that at

some intersections there are concrete steps with pipe railings. Behind

the County Library, the hill is so abrupt that there is no street at all,

only a switchback wooden staircase that rises to the suburban district

sixty feet above.

The business section, which is entirely modern, is four blocks long; here

will be found the First National Bank, the Odeon Theatre, the courthouse,

the Bon Ton department store, the newspaper office, the two drug stores,

the Medical Building, Stein's Meat Market, and the Book and Art Shoppe.

The town is not hostile to immigrants, of whom there are many: Mayor

Hilbert, for example, was born in Germany, and Desmond Pike, the editor

and publisher of the "Dog River Gazette," is English; but it congratulates

itself that its young people are almost uniformly fair-skinned and

pleasing in appearance.

Morris Stein and his family are the only Jews known to live in town. There

is one black family, headed by a man who works as a janitor at the Dog

River Hotel near the railroad depot. Out in the valley, much of the