‘You’ll believe what you choose. I don’t care.’
Sandon grunted then finally indicated a stump as though it was a silk-upholstered chair.
‘You were a lumberjack once, I believe,’ said Gamache, sitting on the stump.
‘In the dark days, yes. I’m not ashamed of it any more. I didn’t know any better.’
But he looked ashamed.
‘What didn’t you know?’ asked Beauvoir.
‘I told you. That trees are alive. I mean, we all know they’re living, but don’t really think of them as alive, you know? But they are. You can’t kill something that’s alive. It’s not right.’
‘How did you find out?’ Gamache asked.
Sandon reached into his pocket and brought out a dirty hanky. He rubbed the blade of his axe and cleaned it as he spoke.
‘I was working as a logger for one of the mills around here. Went into the forest every day with my team. Cut down trees, hooked them to tractors and dragged them to the logging road to be picked up. Back-breaking work, but I liked it. Outside, fresh air. No bosses.’
He looked suspiciously at Gamache, his weathered face covered by a red and graying beard, his eyes keen but distant.
‘One day I walked into the woods with my axe and I heard a whimpering. Sounded like a baby. It was this time of year. Best time for cutting trees. But it’s also the time when animals have babies. The crew was just arriving and the whimpering grew louder. Then I heard a scream. I shouted to the guys to stop, to be quiet and listen. The whimpering had turned into a cry. It was all around. And I could feel it too. I’d always felt at home in the forest, but suddenly I was afraid.
‘“Don’t hear nothin’,” said one of the guys and hit the tree again. And again there was a scream. You can figure the rest. Something had changed overnight. I’d changed. I could hear the trees. I think I could always hear their happiness. I think that’s why I felt so happy myself in the forest. But now I could hear their terror too.’
‘What did you do?’
‘What could I do? What would you do? I had to stop it. Had to stop the killing. Can you imagine cutting down a forest that was screaming at you?’
Beauvoir could, especially if the screaming went on all day.
‘But mostly trees are quiet. Just want to be left alone,’ Gilles continued. ‘Funny how I learned freedom from creatures that are rooted in place.’
Gamache thought that made perfect sense.
‘I was fired, but I would’ve quit anyway. I’d walked into the forest that day a logger and I walked out something else entirely. The world was never the same. Couldn’t be. My wife tried to understand but couldn’t. She finally left with the kids. Went back to Charlevoix. Don’t blame her. Relief really. She kept trying to tell me trees don’t talk and they don’t sing and they sure as hell don’t scream. But they do. We lived in different worlds.’
‘Does Odile live in your world?’ Beauvoir asked.
‘No,’ Gilles admitted. ‘I actually haven’t met anyone who does. But she accepts it. Doesn’t try to change me or convince me I’m wrong. She takes me as I am.’
‘And Madeleine?’
‘She was like something beautiful and exotic. Like walking through the forest here and coming across a palm tree. It takes your attention.’
‘Did you have an affair with her?’ Beauvoir asked, more bluntly than Gamache would have liked, but it was his style.
‘I did not. It was enough to admire from afar. I might talk to trees, but I’m not crazy. She wasn’t interested in me. And I wasn’t interested in her, not really. Fantasy, maybe, but not in the real world.’
Beauvoir wondered what exactly Sandon considered the ‘real’ world.
‘Why don’t you like Monsieur Béliveau?’ asked Gamache. It took Sandon a moment to tear his mind away from Madeleine and focus on the austere grocer. He looked down at his massive hands and picked at a callus.
‘There was a magnificent oak on his land. It’d been hit by lightning and a huge limb was hanging loose. I could hear it crying so I asked if I could remove the limb, help the tree. He refused.’
‘Why?’ asked Beauvoir.
Gilles looked at them. ‘Said I’d kill the whole tree by taking off the branch. That was a risk, I admitted, but told him the tree was in pain and it would be more merciful for it to either live healthy or die quickly.’
‘But he didn’t believe you?’
He shook his head. ‘Took four years for that tree to die. I could hear it crying for help. I begged Béliveau but he wouldn’t hear of it. Thought the tree was getting better.’
‘He didn’t know,’ said Gamache. ‘He was afraid.’
Gilles shrugged, dismissive.
‘And the fact he was seeing Madeleine wasn’t part of it?’ asked Gamache.
‘He should have protected her. He should have protected the tree. He looks so gentle but he’s a bad one.’
What had Monsieur Béliveau called himself? Gamache tried to remember. The thing that brings death. That was it. First his wife, then Madeleine, then the bird. And the tree. Things died around Monsieur Béliveau.
The men were silent, inhaling the sweet, musty aroma of moist pines and autumn leaves and new buds.
‘Now I come out here and find trees already dead and turn them into furniture.’
‘Give them new life,’ said Gamache.
Sandon looked at him. ‘I don’t suppose you hear the trees?’
Gamache cocked his head, listening, then shook it. Sandon nodded.
‘Are there any ginkgo trees around?’ Gamache asked.
‘Ginkgo? A few, not many. They’re mostly from Asia, I think. Very old trees.’
‘You mean they live a long time?’ asked Beauvoir.
‘That too, though not as long as sequoias. Some of them are thousands of years old, can you believe it? Love to have a conversation with one of them. No, a ginkgo doesn’t last that long, but it’s the oldest tree known. Prehistoric. Considered a living fossil. Imagine that.’
Gamache was impressed. Sandon knew a lot about the ginkgo tree. The ancient ginkgo family that produced ephedra.
A newspaper was folded neatly at his desk when they arrived back at the Incident Room. It was five o’clock and Robert Lemieux was working on his computer. He looked up and waved as they came in, his eyes falling on the newspaper as though commiserating with Gamache.
Jean Guy Beauvoir stood beside the chief as he reached for the paper. Gamache was reminded of a nature show he once saw about gorillas. When threatened they ran forward, focusing on the attacker, screaming and pounding their chests. But every now and then they’d reach out to touch the gorilla next to them. To make sure they weren’t alone.
Beauvoir was the gorilla next to him.
There, on the front page, was a picture of Gamache looking foolish, his eyes half-closed, his mouth in a strange grimace.
SO?L! insisted the type underneath, in capital letters. Drunk!
‘I see you’re a drunken, blackmailing, pimping murderer,’ said Beauvoir.
‘A Renaissance man,’ said Gamache, shaking his head. But he was relieved. He first skimmed the article looking for Daniel, Annie, Reine-Marie. But all he found was his own name and Arnot’s. Always linked, as though one didn’t exist without the other.
He called his family and spent the next half-hour catching up with them, making sure all was as well as could be.
It was a strange world, he realized as he and Beauvoir made their way back to the B. & B. with their dossiers and yearbooks, when a good day was one where he was only accused of drunken incompetence.