Her guide continued up from the ditch that edged Route 31, crossed the cracked and disintegrating road, and entered the blue-green dark of the rising woods on the other side. As the fox ascended, his orange brush bobbed and flashed in the dimness.
Jeanette ran across the road, keeping her eye on the flicking tail. One of her sneakers skated in a patch of damp, and she had to snatch for a branch to keep from losing her feet. The freshness of the air—tree sap and composting leaves and wet earth—burned down her throat and into her chest. She was out of prison, and a memory of playing Monopoly as a girl surfaced: Get Out of Jail Free! This wondrous new reality excised the square of forest from time itself, and made it an island beyond reach—of industrial cleaners, of orders, of jangling keys, of cellmate snores and farts, of cellmate crying, of cellmate sex, of cell doors banging shut—where she was the sole ruler; Queen Jeanette, evermore. It was sweet, sweeter even than she’d fantasized, to be free.
But then:
“Bobby.” She whispered it to herself. That was the name she had to remember, had to bring with her, so she would not be tempted to stay.
3
Judging distance was difficult for Jeanette; she was used to the level rubber track that circled the yard at the prison, each loop about half a mile. The steady southwest climb was more demanding than that and she had to lengthen her strides, making her thigh muscles sing in a way that hurt and felt wonderful at the same time. The fox stopped once in awhile to let her close some of the distance before he trotted on. She was sweating hard despite the chill. The air felt like that knife-edge of time when winter teetered on the edge of spring. A few green-tipped buds flashed in the gray-brown of the woods, and where the earth was naked to the sky, it was squishy with melt.
Maybe it was two miles, maybe three, when the fox led Jeanette around the rear side of a fallen trailer beached in a sea of weeds. Ancient yellow police tape fluttered on the ground. She had an idea she was getting close now. She heard a faint buzz in the air. The sun was higher and it was getting toward noon. She was starting to feel thirsty and hungry, and there might be something to eat and drink at her destination—how perfect a cold pop would be just now! But never mind, Bobby was what she needed to be thinking about. Seeing Bobby again. Ahead, the fox disappeared beneath an arch of broken trees.
Jeanette hurried after, passing a pile of rubble wigged in weeds. It might once have been a small cabin or shed. Here moths covered the branches of the trees, their countless tan bodies pressed together so that they resembled strange barnacles. Which followed somehow, Jeanette thought, understanding innately that the world she found herself in was outside of all she had ever known, like a land at the bottom of the sea. The moths appeared still, but she could hear them crackling softly, as if speaking.
Bobby, they seemed to say. It’s not too late to start again, they seemed to say.
The slope finally topped out. Through the last of the woods, Jeanette could see the fox standing in the faded grasses of a winter field. She sucked at the air. A kerosene scent, wholly unexpected and seemingly unattached to anything, tingled in her nose and mouth.
Jeanette stepped into the open and saw something that could not be. Something that made her sure she was no longer in the Appalachian country she had always known.
4
It was a white tiger, coat tipped with black, fin-shaped markings. It rolled its head and roared, sounding like the MGM lion. Behind it soared a tree—a Tree—bursting up from the earth in a tangle of a hundred trunks that twisted into a looming, sprawling fountain of branches, dripping with leaves and curling mosses, alive with the flitting bodies of tropical birds. A massive red snake, shining and glittering, coursed up the center.
The fox trotted up to a gaping split in the bole, tossed a somehow roguish look at Jeanette, and vanished into the depths. That was it, that was the tunnel that went both ways. The tunnel that would take her back to the world she had left, the one where Bobby waited. She started toward it.
“Stop where you are. And raise your hands.”
A woman in a checked yellow button-down and blue jeans stood in grass that came up to her knees, pointing a pistol at Jeanette. She had come around the side of the Tree, which was, at its base, roughly the size of an apartment building. In the hand that wasn’t holding the pistol she had a canister with a blue rubber band around its middle.
“No closer. You’re new, aren’t you? And your clothes say you’re from the prison. You must be confused.” A peculiar smile touched Ms. Yellow Shirt’s lips, a futile attempt to soften the oddness of the situation—the Tree, the tiger, the gun. “I want to help you. I will help you. We’re all friends here. I’m Elaine, okay? Elaine Nutting. Just let me do this one thing and we’ll talk more.”
“What thing?” Jeanette asked, although she was pretty sure she knew; why else the kerosene stink? The woman was getting ready to light the Impossible Tree on fire. If it burned, the way back to Bobby burned. Evie had pretty much said so. It couldn’t be allowed, but how was the woman to be stopped? She was at least six yards away, too far to rush her.
Elaine went down on one knee, watching Jeanette carefully as she laid the pistol aside in the dirt (but close at hand) and quickly unscrewed the cap of the kerosene canister. “I already spread the first two around. I just need to finish making a circle. To be sure it’ll go up.”
Jeanette took a couple of steps forward. Elaine snatched up the gun and got to her feet. “Stay back!”
“You can’t do this,” Jeanette said. “You have no right.”
The white tiger sat near the crevice that had absorbed the fox. It thumped its tail back and forth and watched with half-closed eyes of a brilliant amber.
Elaine splashed kerosene against the Tree, staining the wood a deeper brown. “I have to do this. It’s better this way. It solves all the problems. How many men have hurt you? Plenty, I imagine. I’ve worked with women like you for my entire adult life. I know you didn’t just walk into prison on your own. A man pushed you.”
“Lady,” Jeanette said, offended by the idea that one look at her could tell anyone anything that mattered. “You don’t know me.”
“Maybe not personally, but I’m right, aren’t I?” Elaine dumped the last of the kerosene onto some roots and pitched the canister aside. Jeanette thought, you ain’t Elaine Nutting, you’re Elaine Nuts.
“There was a man who hurt me, yes. But I hurt him worse.” Jeanette took a step toward Elaine. She was about fifteen feet away now. “I killed him.”