It was an outing—a strange one, granted, but still a day off from their various chores and jobs—and there should have been talking and laughter, but the women in the trundling line of golf carts were almost silent. The headlamps of the carts came on when they were rolling, and as they went past the jungle that had once been Adams Lumberyard, the thought came to Lila that they looked more like a funeral cortege than gals on an outing.
When the fox left the highway for an overgrown track a quarter mile past the lumberyard, Tiffany stiffened and put her hands protectively on her belly. “No, no, no, you can stop right here and let me out. I ain’t going back to Tru Mayweather’s trailer, not even if it ain’t no more than a pile of scrap metal.”
“That’s not where we’re going,” Lila said.
“How do you know?”
“Wait and see.”
As it turned out, the remains of the trailer were barely visible; a storm had knocked it off its blocks and it lay on its side in high weeds and brambles like a rusty dinosaur. Thirty or forty yards from it, the fox cut left and slipped into the woods. The women in the two lead carts saw a ruddy orange flash of fur, then it vanished.
Lila dismounted and went to where it had entered the woods. The ruins of the nearby shed had been entirely overgrown, but even after all this time, a sallow chemical smell remained. The meth may be gone, Lila thought, but the memories linger on. Even here, where time seems to gallop, pause for breath, then gallop again.
Janice, Magda, and Blanche McIntyre joined her. Tiffany remained in the golf cart, holding her belly. She looked ill.
“There’s a game trail,” Lila said, pointing. “We can follow it without much trouble.”
“I’m not goin in those woods, either,” Tiffany said. “I don’t care if that fox does a tap dance. I’m havin goddam contractions again.”
“You wouldn’t be going even if you weren’t having them,” Erin said. “I’ll stay with you. Jolie, you can go, if you want.”
Jolie did. The fifteen women went up the game trail in single file, Lila in the lead and the former Mrs. Frank Geary bringing up the rear. They had been walking for almost ten minutes when Lila stopped and raised her arms, index fingers pointing both left and right like a traffic cop who can’t make up her mind.
“Holy shit,” Celia Frode said. “I never seen nothing like that. Never.”
The branches of the poplars, birches, and alders on either side were furred with moths. There seemed to be millions of them.
“What if they attack?” Elaine murmured, keeping her voice low and thanking God that she hadn’t given in to Nana’s demands to be brought along.
“They won’t,” Lila said.
“How can you know that?” Elaine demanded.
“I just do,” Lila said. “They’re like the fox.” She hesitated, searching for the right word. “They’re emissaries.”
“For who?” Blanche asked. “Or what?”
This was another question Lila chose not to answer, although she could have. “Come on,” she said. “Not far now.”
4
Fifteen women stood in thigh-high grass, staring at what Lila had come to think of as the Amazing Tree. No one said anything for perhaps thirty seconds. Then, in a high, gasping voice, Jolie Suratt said, “My good God in heaven.”
The Tree rose like a living pylon in the sun, its various knotted trunks weaving around each other, sometimes concentrating shafts of sunlight filled with dusty pollen, sometimes creating dark caves. Tropical birds disported among its many branches and gossiped in its ferny leaves. In front of it, the peacock Lila had seen before strutted back and forth like the world’s most elegant doorman. The red snake was there, too, hanging from a branch, a reptilian trapeze artist penduluming lazily back and forth. Below the snake was a dark crevasse where the various boles seemed to draw back. Lila didn’t remember this, but she wasn’t surprised. Nor was she when the fox popped out of it like Jack from his box and took a playful snap at the peacock, who paid him no mind.
Janice Coates took Lila’s arm. “Are we seeing this?”
“Yes,” Lila said.
Celia, Magda, and Jolie screamed shrilly, in piercing three-part harmony. The white tiger was emerging from the split in the many-boled trunk. It surveyed the women at the edge of the clearing with its green eyes, then stretched long and low, seeming almost to bow to them.
“Stand still!” Lila shouted. “Stand still, all of you! It won’t harm you!” Hoping with all her heart and soul that it was true.
The tiger touched noses with the fox. It turned to the women again, seeming to fix on Lila with particular interest. Then it paced around the Tree and out of sight.
“My God,” Kitty McDavid said. She was weeping. “How beautiful was that? How fucking oh-my-God beautiful was that?”
Magda Dubcek said, “This is svaté místo. Holy place.” And she crossed herself.
Janice was looking at Lila. “Tell me.”
“I think,” Lila said, “it’s a way out. A way back. If we want it.”
That was when the walkie-talkie on her belt came to life. There was a burst of static, and no way to make out words. But it sounded like Erin to Lila, and it sounded like she was yelling.
5
Tiffany was stretched across the front seat of the golf cart. An old St. Louis Rams tee-shirt that she had scrounged somewhere lay crumpled on the ground. Her breasts, once little more than nubbins, jutted skyward in a plain D-cup cotton bra. (The Lycra ones were now totally useless.) Erin was bent between her legs with her hands splayed on that amazing mound of belly. As the women came running, some brushing twigs and the odd moth from their hair, Erin bore down. Tiffany shrieked—“Stop that, oh for God’s sake stop!”—and her legs shot out in a V.
“What are you doing?” Lila asked, reaching her, but when she looked down, what Erin was doing and why she was doing it became obvious. Tiff’s jeans were unzipped. There was a stain on the blue denim and the cotton of Tiff’s underpants was a damp pink.
“The baby is coming, and its butt is where its head should be,” Erin said.
“Oh my God, a breech?” Kitty said.
“I have to turn it around,” Erin said. “Get us back to town, Lila.”
“We’ll have to straighten her up,” Lila said. “I can’t drive until you do that.”
With the help of Jolie and Blanche McIntyre, Lila got Tiffany to a half-sitting position with Erin crammed in next to her. Tiffany screamed again. “Oh, that hurts!”
Lila slid behind the wheel of the cart, her right shoulder tight against Tiffany’s left one. Erin had turned almost sideways to fit. “How fast will this thing go?” she asked.
“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out.” Lila hit the accelerator pedal, wincing at Tiff’s howl of pain as the cart jerked forward. Tiffany screamed at every jounce, and there were a lot of jounces. At that moment, the Amazing Tree with its freight of exotic birds was the farthest thing from Lila Norcross’s mind.
This was not true of the former Elaine Geary.
6
They stopped at the Olympia Diner. Tiffany was in too much pain to go further. Erin sent Janice and Magda back to town to get her bag while Lila and three other women carried Tiffany inside.