Greenwood Read online

  To afford her some time to think during the hike back to the Villas, Jake omits her usual speech about the important riparian area that hydrates the forest. It was only two, she reassures herself. There were no bugs or funguses, and the surrounding soil looked damp and well aerated, so perhaps the two trees are an anomaly. If they are in fact diseased, it’s something she’s never observed on the island before.

  As a dendrologist—a botanist specializing in trees—Jake knows that many tree species suffered catastrophic die-offs long before the Great Withering struck: the American chestnut in the 1900s, the Dutch elm in the 1960s, and the European ash in the 2000s. Insects, funguses, cankers, blights, and rusts: the enemies of trees are many, and include supervillains such as the emerald ash borer, the Asian long-horned beetle, the dreaded fungus Chalara. But no single organism is responsible for the Withering, and most scientists (including Jake) attribute it to the climate zones changing faster than the trees could adapt, which weakened their ability to defend themselves against invaders. Though formal research has surely been done, somewhere, scientists are no longer freely sharing their findings since the rise of environmental nationalism and the end of the free internet. Jake’s personal hypothesis is that Greenwood Island’s local microclimate somehow manages to regulate itself, which allows it to remain hospitable to its trees.

  But could it be that whatever has protected the Cathedral for so long has now shifted, leaving its trees newly vulnerable to pathogens and intruders? But why would the Great Withering strike now, after all this time? It’s more likely something abiotic and noncontagious, Jake tells herself. A nitrogen shortage or a sunscald. Or a good old-fashioned drought-induced flagging. Or perhaps the two firs have simply grown old and, after living in tandem for a millennium, feeding one another through their mycelial networks and conversing through their scent compounds, their plan is to meet their end together, like a couple married for fifty years who die just days apart.

  What I really need is a drink, Jake realizes later, while walking to the staff dining yurt after concluding her final tour of the day. But a drink might tempt her to tell Knut about her discovery. Knut’s botanical knowledge is vast, but she can’t be certain whether he’d help her diagnose the two ailing trees—recording rainfall and gathering soil and tissue samples to examine under a microscope—or whether he might do something drastic. Though he’s brilliant, there’s always been a precariousness to Knut’s sanity, a by-product of a green romanticism that Jake fears can’t possibly survive the real world’s serial letdowns.

  And if the Rangers are now patrolling the old-growth in plain sight of the Pilgrims, then management is clearly already on edge. If they found out about the browning they might do something stupid, like spray the entire island with untested fungicides, or cut their losses and relocate the resort to another of the last scraps of heritage forest that remain—most of them also in Canada, with sprinklings in Russia, Brazil, and Tasmania, the majority on small islands.

  For now, Jake decides, the pair of sick firs will remain her secret. The Rangers are private soldiers with no scientific expertise, so they won’t notice the browned needles. And since the other Forest Guides have prescribed routes and only Jake’s loops around to the east of God’s Middle Finger, there’s little chance they will see them either. Jake knows that Knut often sneaks into the old-growth during his spare time, so he might spot the damage—but his eyes are going, and it isn’t likely he could make out needles that high up. Besides, the soggy bark is impossible to see if you aren’t expressly looking for it.

  So she has time. She only hopes it’s not already too late.

  KNUT

  “THERE’S SOMETHING TRULY repellant about the notion of reducing what is the very pinnacle of natural magnificence to merely a therapeutic backdrop for the wealthy. Don’t you agree, Jake?” Knut is warming up his rant-engine, as he likes to do whenever a group of newly recruited Forest Guides arrives. He’s giving his unofficial orientation over dinner in the dining yurt, his feet propped on the common table next to their microwaved dinners.

  “At least we aren’t hacking them all down anymore, Knut,” Jake says robotically. Though she is usually happy to play her half of their comedy routine during Knut’s orientations, today she’s eager to change the subject. Normally, the Rangers’ security patrols are focused on the island’s coastline, where they repel the ragtag groups from the Mainland that occasionally make landfall to raid the Cathedral’s food caches. But lately, Jake has noticed them patrolling more within the resort itself, where they’re keeping even closer tabs on the Cathedral staff than usual. If they come anywhere near the dining yurt, there’s a solid chance they’ll overhear Knut’s blasphemous remarks. He’s been warned for criticizing the Cathedral before, and if he’s caught again, they won’t hesitate to send him away from the island and condemn him to huff toxic-dust particulate with the rest of non-wealthy humanity.

  “Why don’t you tell them about how John Muir singlehandedly convinced the U.S. government to create their national park system?” Jake says, trying to lead him off topic with one of his favourite subjects.

  But Knut continues his rant as she goes to the freezer, selects a serving of Turnip and Potato Medley over Creamy Potato Stew—dairy products have always turned her belly into a whoopee cushion—then unskins the plastic from her meal before frisbeeing it into the microwave. Awaiting her food, she checks the yurt’s thin plastic windows again, but finds no sign of a patrol. She turns her attention to this newest batch of eight Forest Guides. They’re all in their mid-twenties, with trust-funded Ivy League botany or environmental studies graduate degrees, and quite likely haven’t inhaled as much as a speck of dust in their entire lives. Most of them will work at the Cathedral for a few years to “gain experience” before embarking on fantastically successful careers elsewhere. Their wealthy parents will visit, shelling out the resort’s outrageous fees for just a glimpse of how snappy their offspring look in Forest Guide uniforms, cheering and clapping during their tours. How Jake—with her obscure degree (“The University of Utrecht?” they ask. “Do you need a lozenge?”)—continues to be employed alongside these gorgeous, superhuman children, who’ll work for less money than she could ever possibly survive on, remains beyond her.

  “Do any of you appreciate the unspeakable irony of elite executives and celebrities travelling here to spiritually replenish themselves,” Knut goes on, “only so that they can return rejuvenated to lives that are either directly or indirectly parboiling our planet, thereby further dooming such natural wonders as these very sacred trees they claim to revere?”

  As the bubbling pond of her meal twirls slowly in the microwave behind her, Jake watches the young Forest Guides regard Knut—who is approaching sixty, wears a greying mustache, and has wrinkly skin that remains permanently bronzed though he hasn’t left the Cathedral’s canopy in years—with the wary enchantment one does a newscaster gone rogue. But he’s by far the most knowledgeable and best-reviewed Forest Guide at the Cathedral, which is why their boss, Davidoff, has been reluctant to fire him. Despite his insubordination, Knut’s online approval ratings are the stuff of legend: always hovering at around 4.9 leaves out of a possible 5. But Jake has seen plenty of Forest Guides and other Cathedral staff expelled for minor infractions like complaining about the microwaved staff meals or even mentioning the Withering in passing.

  “But the connection between the Great Withering and carbon emission–driven climate change hasn’t been experimentally substantiated,” one of the new Guides says, a raven-haired female recruit. Great, Jake thinks, now he’s got them talking about the Withering. We’ll all be on a supply barge back to the Mainland before dinner’s over.

  “Most funguses flourish in warmth, do they not?” Knut queries the recruit, who is young enough to be his granddaughter.

  She nods uncomfortably. “Most funguses do, yes,” she says softly, unsure if she’s being tricked.

  “As do insects, do they not?”

 
Again the girl nods.

  Knut takes a theatrical bow. “Consider it substantiated,” he says.

  “Who are we humble scientists to grasp the mysteries of the universe?” Jake muses fatalistically while carrying her volcanically hot and thoroughly tasteless meal to the table. “Now can we all please just shut up and eat?”

  Again ignoring Jake, Knut zeroes in on a particular Guide, a young man whose nametag reads Torey who has spectacularly springy, golden hair. “I mean, tell me, how can it not cheapen something spiritual when you’re forced to watch people pay exorbitant sums to access it?”

  Torey shrugs and smiles uneasily, searching for cues from the others.

  “Simony, that’s the English word for it,” Knut adds, pleased with himself. “And we, my friends, are the resident desecrators. John Muir, if he were alive, would turn us all out of this temple himself.”

  Earlier, Knut had informed the new Guides that he was born in Pforzheim, Germany, a city that lies at the rim of the Black Forest, which his ancestors helped clear-cut and raft down the Rhine to the Netherlands to be used as ship’s masts, though they later replanted many of the trees, founding some of Europe’s first nature preserves. In his spare time he reads Linnaeus in Swedish and he has a religious reverence for John Muir, the first European man to describe the coastal Douglas fir. “And unlike most of you,” Knut told them, “I came to Canada before the Withering. So remember that.”

  “At least we’re doing what we love,” Torey says with unabashed earnestness.

  “Yes, my friends,” Knut declares, placing a benevolent hand on Torey’s shoulder, “the Greenwood Arboreal Cathedral is where good, forest-loving eco-warriors go to die, doing exactly what they love.” Knut makes the sign of the cross before he finally shuts up and digs into his prepackaged cake.

  Dinner progresses from there in silence, and thankfully without a visit from the Rangers. It’s Jake’s turn to clean out the staff fridge, so after the meal she remains behind as the others file out.

  “Everything okay out there in the trees today?” says a muffled voice behind her sometime later. Jake extracts her head from the fridge to find Davidoff standing at the door with hairy arms crossed. Some Guides claim that, pre-Withering, Davidoff had been some kind of Russian special forces operative, but he’s short and flabby with eyes dead as dirty nickels, and Jake has never registered the coiled menace others describe.

  “Really positive engagement for my Pilgrims today, sir,” she says. “Plenty of great questions. And some bona fide epiphanies too.”

  “The new Ranger patrols didn’t get in your way, did they?” he asks with his chest puffed proudly. “I secured some funding to step things up now that the raids are becoming more frequent. There’s concern that the Mainlanders could make it into the resort.”

  “My Pilgrims never even knew they were there, and I feel much safer just knowing they’re around,” Jake says with a tight smile. “But I did note a slight anomaly earlier,” she adds, as offhandedly as she can manage. “A touch of needle browning on some unremarkable firs near the staff cabins. Certainly nothing to worry about, but it should be examined. With your approval, I’d like to sign out a microscope, some rainfall meters, and a soil collection kit, just to be sure.”

  “You won’t be messing around with any of our old-growth trees, will you?” he asks skeptically. “If the Rangers catch anyone out in the Cathedral with a microscope, they’ll be banished before I even hear of it.”

  “No, of course not,” she replies, feeling her stomach twitch with the lie. “It’s not the old-growth at all. Just a few trees around my cabin, and only to satisfy my own curiosity.”

  “I appreciate your interest in our majestic forest, Greenwood,” Davidoff says, with a smile that his dead eyes fail to match. “You’re cleared to sign out whatever you need from the Maintenance Shed. But I need you well rested for tomorrow. You’re booked for a private, bright and early.”

  “Me?” Jake says. She never gets booked for private tours, most likely because she’s ten years older than the other Guides and it’s always male Pilgrims who book them. Her thoughts veer to the celebrity in her group today—Corbyn Gallant—whose visit she overheard a few of the recruits mention breathlessly at dinner. “Who with?”

  “Not sure exactly,” he says. “But some higher-ups at Corporate requested you specifically. So I need you to bring that old Greenwood charm tomorrow.”

  While hurrying to reach the Maintenance Shed before it shuts down for the night, Jake considers the unsubstantiated tales she’s heard of private tours where, following a quick jaunt through the trees, a $5,000 “massage” with cedar-scented oils is provided to a Saudi solar panel prince by an unnamed Forest Guide. And given the fact that by this date next year her ballooning student loan interest payments will swallow her entire bi-weekly salary, she’s ashamed to admit that she’d probably do the same. How different things would be for her if she were afloat in family money like Torey and the rest of the Forest Guides. Because there’s nothing like poverty to teach you just how much of a luxury integrity truly is.

  THE GREAT WITHERING

  WHEN JACINDA GREENWOOD is eight years old, her mother, Meena Bhattacharya—a first-chair violist for the Los Angeles Symphony—is returning home to New York City from a solo concert she’s given in Washington, D.C., when her commuter train slips its tracks and arcs forty feet down onto the busy interstate below. First responders locate her body in the thin greenbelt of trees that divides the interstate’s northbound and southbound lanes, her skull crushed yet her reading glasses somehow still fixed in place. Her mother’s death teaches Jake, too early in life, that the human body is fragile, and that our brief lives can be halted at any moment, as unexpectedly as a breeze blowing a door shut.

  With her mother gone, it’s as though the colour has been sapped from Jake’s world. She seldom eats and speaks only in murmurs. She’s sent to Delhi to be raised by her grandparents, civil servants living in a middle-class suburb on the city’s southern fringe. Immediately, Jake misses the U.S. The neat geometry of its sidewalks, the splat of ketchup on French fries—every memory is like a thorn in her flesh that she can’t extract. But worst of all, she misses the sound of her mother playing her viola in the next room, a soothing warble almost indistinguishable from her voice.

  A week after her arrival in India, Jake finds a cardboard box on her bed, on the side of which her mother has written LIAM GREENWOOD. All Meena ever told her about her father was that he died while working illegally as a carpenter in the U.S. when Jake was three. Perhaps because she’s never seen his face, not even in pictures, Jake has always imagined him as Paul Bunyan–like, nearly a tree himself, with a halogen smile, a carpenter’s burly hands, a plaid shirt, and sawdust powdering his hair.

  As she stares at the name on the box, Jake remembers something her mother once told her while they were riding the subway in New York, her large, unwieldy viola case jammed between them like a bodyguard. “Your father was a troubled person,” she said, with the same kindness that she extended to even the city’s poorest souls, a few of whom were riding the subway car along with them. “But he was a good person. And he tried to make things right in the end. He left you a few things, which you’ll get when you’re older, and some money for your schooling, as well as an old farm in Saskatchewan that I haven’t managed to sell quite yet.”

  So this box before Jake is a revelation, a time capsule sent from a distant, unreachable past. She reads her father’s name again and imagines all the wonders the box might contain, and how those wonders could send away the dark creature that has lived in her belly ever since her mother’s death. Yet when she finally gathers the courage to open it, the box contains no photographs of her father, no stack of letters or diary to explain why he never once took the time to visit her or what her mother meant by “make things right.” Instead, it contains the yellowed deed to a piece of worthless farmland, a few old-fashioned woodworking tools, a dozen unlabelled vinyl records, and a pair
of work gloves that appear to be unused. She growls and kicks the box deep into her closet. While her grandparents have no turntable to play her father’s records, she listens to them a few months later at a friend’s house, and is further insulted when she discovers they’re not, as she hoped, recordings of her mother playing the viola or of her father reading bedtime stories, but instead a series of droning poetry recitations, all done by the same annoyingly over-expressive man.

  Meena was an only child, and because Jake’s grandparents had already launched one perfect girl into the world only to lose her inexplicably, they take a reserved approach with Jake, and direct her out into the large back yard whenever she seeks a playmate. It’s there she discovers the great multi-trunked banyan that spreads across the property, thirty-eight trunks in total, which she learns are all somehow a single living being. Initially, she finds this alien maze of alligator-coloured leaves frightening, as if it’s a monster trying to confuse and devour her. But because the banyan is the closest thing she has to a friend, she soon comes to know its contours better than the interior of her own room. After school, when she’s completed her regular studies, she disappears into the tree with her illustrated botany books and her tea set, and lies for hours talking to it and imagining its roots—a many-fingered claw that must reach so far down that it grasps the very soul of the Earth. After six months, she comes to feel a kinship not just with the banyan but with all trees, and adores them with a fervor that other girls reserve for ivory stallions or honey-voiced Bollywood heartthrobs.