Message on a Tree
By Erica Henry
“The campground should be the next left.” Meredith’s voice wobbled over the phone. Her boyfriend’s blue van filled the side mirror.
“Turn left up there,” I told my husband, Jay. Moments later, he veered crazily without slowing, though he knows such turns make me feel like I’m going to spew. If I’ve told him once, I’ve told him a thousand times.
“I’m car sick,” called Louise from the backseat. I rolled my eyes, then turned to Jay with a look that meant, “I would never take a turn like that.” He, in turn, rolled his eyes, only angrier.
We drove down the bumpy road through fern-blanketed woods to a fork. In the middle sat a wooden hut. A wrinkled little man emerged. “Here to camp for the night?” he asked, his starched tan shirt tucked deep into starched tan pants.
“Yes, sir,” said Jay. “Where are the best campsites?”
“If you take the road up a quarter mile, you come to another fork. Go right. All along there are your campsites. They have trails to a stream the kids’ll like.” He peered into the backseat. “And you might want to pick a spot near one of the facilities.”
“We pay now?”
“Yessir. Thirty dollars.” Jay dug in his wallet and pulled out a roll of bills, handing a couple to the man delicately. “Fill this form out. If someone could bring it back, I’d appreciate it. Take care.”
We waved to Meredith and Billy behind us. Jay yelled out the window that we would scope out the sites. The campground seemed to be empty. There was only one other occupied site, with what looked to be a family with an over-the-top, decorated camper. This was not the REI camping crowd. This was Bud Ice illegal firecracker land.
We pulled into a nice spot a good distance from the other folks. Jay hoisted out the tent and asked Louise if she wanted to learn to set it up. We had plenty of hours before dark, so there was no scurry to fill our bellies with hot food before sleep. I pulled Mae from her car seat and took a tour of the area, peeking at the trail that led to what sounded like a rushing creek. With the use of one and a half arms, I shook out a blanket, laid it flat on the dirt, and placed Mae gently on top, along with a few colorful toys for shaking and chewing. Then I began to unload.
Billy’s noisy van pulled in. Moments later he and Meredith joined. “You sure this is the best spot?” my sister asked.
“You’re going to question me?” smirked Jay, an eyebrow raised. “Check the others out if you need to.”
“Cool it. It’s fine.”
“You see we’re only five miles from the state penitentiary?” asked Billy, pulling open doors on the back of his van where he kept his motorcycle. “Didn’t notice that on the map when Meredith picked this place. But camping is always more fun when it’s a little scary, right?”
“Daddy, what’s a state penitentiary?” Louise asked as she helped thread the fancy orange North Face tent through long retractable posts.
“A prison where bad people go, honey.” Always so honest with children, sometimes to a fault. Bad people, right, I thought.
“Jay, you want to find a liquor store?” asked Billy. “Meredith drank the last beer.”
“After you drank the ten before that!” said Meredith. Jay looked at me. The tent was not finished, but I’d rather them make the beer run before dark and be back to help with dinner, so I shrugged.
Meredith took over tent-building with Louise, and I strapped Mae to my chest. The boys drove off, and soon we were done setting up camp.
“Should we explore?” I asked. “Louise has been begging to take a hike.”
“Sounds great,” said Meredith. She pulled her old Appalachian Trail hiking boots out of the van and sat at the picnic table. “I hope they don’t take forever. Or get lost. I didn’t see anything for miles.” We headed down the dirt road that led into the campground, hoping to find a trail. We were in luck. A sign read, “Look Out,” with an arrow.
“I wish we knew how long this was. How far’s the lookout?” I asked.
“We’ll just turn around when Louise gets tired,” suggested Meredith. We walked through woods, late afternoon sunlight glittering through new summer leaves onto soft forest bedding, berry bushes, and fallen logs. A far cry from Chicago. I watched Meredith point at various plants, explaining things to Louise. This was where she thrived as an aunt.
Going slow with Mae wiggling on my chest, I worried that Louise was enjoying the walk so much we would go too far. At last, I heard her squealing up ahead. “Mom, we made it!” Moments later, I joined them on an overlook. Not an extremely high cliff, but a surprise nonetheless. Better than I bargained for: about thirtyfeet off the ground and looking over what must have been the little river that passed by our site farther downstream. Beautiful. A surprise ending.
“Check out the sign just left of the trail back there,” Meredith said under her breath.
I walked back and came to a large white sign about five meters into the woods on a continuing trail. “Private Property. Federal Prison. Crossing this line is a federal offense.” The sign went on to outline the various fines and years in prison applicable to anyone not complying.
I hurried back to Meredith. “That was interesting. Sounds like you two brought us on another one of your adventures.”
“You never know what you’re going to get with me, do you?”
Louise looked back and forth between the two of us, wanting to understand. “What’d the sign say?” she asked.
“I’ll show you.” Meredith grabbed her hand, heading back to the big white board while I continued to look out at the tapestry of green. Creek water splashed on rocks below. Mae babbled on my chest, reaching her hands as if to grab at trees and sky. I squeezed her, delighted. But as I listened, quietly aware, I thought I heard shouting. I tuned out the idea and returned to my sister and daughter.
“Did you know there’s a prison nearby?” asked wide-eyed Louise.
“That’s what I didn’t want you to see!” I grinned.
“That means there are bad people nearby. What if one escaped?” She looked up at me, imagining.
“So when do you head back east?” I turned to my sister.
“Probably a couple days. We may go to a race in Tennessee, but Billy hasn’t decided yet.”
We headed back to the campsite. My sister and I were so different and so similar, and we had chosen such equally similar and different men. I thought about them now, driving in the station wagon, purchasing as much beer as the other one would not act horrified by. A game of chicken. They both knew the other loved to drink so they were probably choosing far more than either of them would select independently. And Billy would be happy knowing Jay would pay for it. And it would all get drunk. If not tonight, then tomorrow or the next day.
My sister and I were both straight-A students with a love of travel. She’d graduated as valedictorian, and I’d been third in my class. We went to the same Christian college, where neither of us dated. Then she lived in Spain and Chicago, while I finished college and spent a year teaching in Colombia. At long last, our paths converged when I joined her in a grungy apartment in an up-and-coming neighborhood on Chicago’s north side. The plan was to hike the Appalachian Trail together, but I changed my mind because of the boyfriend I’d started dating. I thought it would kill our relationship if I left for seven months, while he climbed the corporate ladder of financial Chicago. I knew if I stayed, we would probably get engaged, which I wanted.
My sister left in early March for north Georgia, a haze of endless sandwich bags of homemade trail mix and dehydrated mushrooms. I rented a place closer to Jay. When she called one late April afternoon as I was taking a blustery walk along Lake Michigan, I told her Jay had proposed, and she cried, I later learned at that same moment, as she stood filthy and tired at a phone booth in North Carolina, she saw a tall young man walk by. Their eyes locked. That was Billy. From there, our parallel trajectories parted. My husband became a financial advisor who worked on the fifty-second floor of a high rise and wore suits and Italian shoes to work while I grew a baby in my womb; she moved into the trailer Billy owned in the northernmost reaches of Maine, where she encountered the Northern Lights and moose and explored the concept of loafing and later sailed to the Bahamas.
But conveniently, our partners were similar. They both hailed from New England, where they’d been raised to love the generally hated Patriots, the Red Sox, independent women, and weed. And they both had the same unfriendly, untrusting edge and demons from the past, which they used beer and whiskey to battle. It worked great when we were together. Together, driving around southern Michigan, they were a perfect pair. They fit into the all-American, white, baseball-hat wearing landscape, even if they were more progressive than they appeared.
Meredith and I returned to the campsite. “They’re still not back!? I should have known they’d take forever.” Meredith seemed more irritated than I felt, accustomed as I was to managing the girls on my own while Jay worked late hours.
She opened the cooler, a lightweight plastic blue model that probably cost next to nothing at Walmart. She set a strange sequence of ingredients on the picnic table, and I regretted I hadn’t stopped at the supermarket or suggested bringing fast food. Thank goodness Jay would be distracted by beer. He hated unappealing food, though I’d been raised to eat anything. Meredith held up half a large onion that was growing a pale blue mold where it had been sliced originally. “Want to cut this up for me?”
“Sure,” I said. Her life on the trail and sailboat and mine of growing affluence required different concepts of freshness. “What are you thinking of cooking?”
“We need to use this chicken. Fajitas?”
“Bahahhhhh!” Mae wailed from the blanket.
I abandoned the knife and went to her. “Mom, I have to go to the bathroom. Bad!” whined Louise. The sky was angelic pink, and in the early summer evening air, there was that je-ne-sais-quoi of rural Michigan. Daylight was indeed dimming. I knew we hadn’t brought flashlights or headlamps, and I doubted Meredith’s lighting stash was adequate.
“Can you make it to the port-a-potty?” I asked, grabbing Mae.
“No, I need to go now!” She held her crotch, face miserable. I visualized collecting her pee-saturated clothes in a plastic bag to take home, only to remember to open and wash it days later, long after the clothing had captured the unbelievable odor of dry urine.
“You should’ve told me sooner. We can go in the woods, over here.” I rolled my eyes at Meredith, who held up bell peppers, too far for me to see any black spots.
I held Mae on my hip, pelvis jutting, as I pulled Louise into a copse of trees. I pulled off her purple leggings, which she was struggling to do in her hurry. I considered suggesting she also remove her shoes for this trial run at peeing outdoors. I showed her how to squat far enough for the stream to flow a safe distance away without splashing on herself.
“You did it!” I offered a high-five. “You get your peeing-outside badge! Just wait until we try backpacking. Then there are really no bathrooms.” She held my leg for balance as she tugged on the pants. I gazed around. I felt recharged by the trees—we hadn’t been camping or outside anywhere other than urban playgrounds in so long. But it was getting dark, especially beneath the shaded canopy. Mae pointed at something and cooed. I followed her fist and stopped short when the spray paint on a tree directly in front of us became obscenely vivid. A swastika. Someone had come here, walked a few steps from view, and spray painted a symbol of hate. My skin began to crawl. I swallowed dryly.
“Let’s go back.” Louise was hunting for a large stick, but my patience and delight had dissipated into the evening.
Sheltered by the big blue van and my sister’s presence, I felt better. “I sliced the chicken,” said Meredith. “You think we can cook over the fire, or should I set up the stove?”
I hadn’t considered the former, which seemed it would take forever. “Let’s use the stove.” I sat on the blanket, trying to get Mae to play with some pebbles. I untwisted the top of a sippy cup and placed the stones inside one at a time. Then I dumped them out and handed the cup over.
Meredith rummaged in the van and returned with the stove. “Usually Billy does this.” Still annoyed.
“Meredith.”
“What? You okay?” She turned to examine my face.
“Go look in the woods where we just were.”
“What is it?”
“Just look.”
“What, Mommy?” Louise echoed Meredith in her high, whiny voice.
Meredith put the stove on the picnic table, trudging to where we had been. “What is it?”
“On the tree!” I yelled. Louise hopped up to follow.
Meredith returned. “You see it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?” Mae, on my lap, grabbed sticks with chubby palms.
“I guess it’s good we’re not Black. Or Jewish.”
“But isn’t that scary? Should we stay?”
She opened the green cookstove and hooked up the fuel. “Let’s ask the guys.”
I cuddled Mae. Louise watched Meredith. “Can I help?” she asked. We ignored her.
“I don’t think it’s that big of a deal,” said Meredith. I didn’t either, but I couldn’t help but think about my friend, Rachel, who regularly said she’d never go camping in Indiana or Michigan. She’s Thai. She said she hardly felt safe half an hour outside Chicago, where the sprawling industrial parks made way for cornfields. I swatted a mosquito. I thought about the faded photograph I’d seen of my grandfather, a little boy, in a miniature KKK robe and hood when we cleaned out a closet in his home. I’d heard that his father had been involved, but seeing the picture was horrifying. That was only two hours away, in Grand Rapids, where our father grew up and his relatives had lived. I thought those days were far behind, the photo a shameful relic of long ago. But we were white. What did it matter to us right now, other than a reality check? And who knew how long ago the symbol had been painted on the canvas of brown bark? What was its purpose? Was it meant to be unifying to some or terrifying to others or both? If we were Black or Jewish or Asian, would we choose to pack up and drive away? I wondered if the man at the entrance knew about it.
“I got it to work without Billy. It usually requires a certain touch to get it started.” Meredith lit a match. A whoosh of gas and fire. “You okay?” Oil sizzled in the pan.
“I can’t stop wondering who did that. What if they showed up?”
Meredith stirred the oil and edged the sticky chicken in, knife scraping the cutting board. “I don’t know why I’m thinking about this, but do you remember that picture of Grandpa Mom showed us last summer?” she asked. We were both quiet.
I spoke finally. “Isn’t it strange that the person who did that is probably out here? And the people in prison are maybe not that terrible?” I told her about a father in our neighborhood who was picked up outside a Menards because his friend, deported the very same day, was using a vape pen. The father had been arrested on the spot and put in a maximum-security prison, because of immigration status. His wife and children were American citizens; his son had just graduated high school, and they’d lived in Chicago for decades. He was the most trusted local contractor in our neighborhood. It was almost impossible to hire him. He was ridiculously busy because he did what he promised and charged a fair price.
“It makes me sick,” she said. We listened to the frying chicken, Mae’s sounds, and Louise’s questions.
“I know, let’s pretend some guys showed up. Let’s make up a story about some big dudes with shaved heads coming here,” I said. I gestured with my elbow at Mae, a very tan baby, skin directly inherited from our Mediterranean mother. “Let’s say they asked about Mae and who her dad is.” Strangers often asked at the grocery store and playgrounds about her ethnicity, and it seemed funny to pretend Jay was not white.
“Then we’ll say we noticed they had big eagle tattoos,” she said. I looked at her inquisitively. “Another neo-Nazi thing.”
I laughed, and the stress left. We didn’t have that much to worry about, even if white supremacists did show up. Meredith bent down to the cooler and pulled out a lukewarm beer. She opened it with a tool from a plastic bag and passed the bottle over. “One more! You keep an eye on that chicken, and I’ll start a fire. I’m very good at that.”
At long last, we heard a car engine and wheels on a dirt road. We hoped it was the boys.
Erica Henry’s (she/her) work has appeared or is forthcoming in Jellyfish Review, Arkansas Review, Lumiere Review, Pithead Chapel, Lit Hub, Zone 3, Raleigh Review, Orca Literary and other places. Raised in Bangkok, she currently calls Chicago home. Find her writing blog at wabisabai.wordpress.com.