Free McKean S03 The Ghost Trees by Thomas Hopp Page B

of a grove of perhaps twenty cedar trees, but it is obvious to me that every tree in this forest, the cedars, the maples, and even those few scraggly Douglas firs scattered around, has been growing only since the area was logged by the first pioneers in the late eighteen hundreds.”
    “White pioneers,” Franky muttered.
    “And black pioneers, and Asians and more,” McKean retorted, always a stickler for detail.
    “White,” Franky resisted. “That’s the word I use for all you newcomers. Doesn’t matter what color your skin is. Your culture’s as white as a blank piece of paper.”
    “Don’t turn sour on me, Franky. If I’m going to help your friend, then I need your enthusiastic cooperation. Now, let’s make a count of this stump’s growth rings.”
    “Impressive,” he murmured after counting. “One-hundred-thirty-seven years old. Some of the other cedars in the grove are a bit bigger, but none look much older. There’s nothing here like the thousand-year-old giants of the Olympic National Park.”
    “Sure,” Franky conceded. “These are just baby trees. I know that. Duwamish people know their own forest, Peyton. But there’s been cedars here forever.”
    “Cedars’ll be here long after you pahstuds are gone!” a voice called from among the living trees. For a moment it seemed as if the forest itself had spoken, but then a shrunken old man stepped from among the lowest-hanging cedar boughs. He came at us slowly with the aid of a walking staff carved with Northwest native totem art. The old man’s dark, piercing eyes, deeply lined, brown-skinned face, wild head of coarse gray-black hair and sparse, scraggly beard were immediately familiar. “Henry George!” McKean exclaimed.
    George’s derisive grin was gapped where a front tooth had gone missing. His attire was peculiar: a shawl blanket of woven cedar bark fibers covered his shoulders. Shabby blue jeans and an orange plaid flannel shirt covered his body. Nothing at all covered his feet, which were thick and brown like the hand that clasped the cedar cape closed at his chest.
    “Henry!” Franky exclaimed. “How’d you get out?”
    “Cops had nothing to go on,” the old man muttered. “Couldn’t keep me just ‘cause they don’t like my face.’ He nodded at the fresh stump. ‘There’s the real victim, like a thousand others killed by your kind.’ He glowered at McKean and me. ‘Franky, why’d you bring these pahstuds to our sacred place?’
    “To help you.”
    “Don’t need no help.”
    We had met this obstinate old cuss before, when a geoduck digger was murdered near his camp at the mouth of the canyon, where a drain conduit emptied Puget Creek into the Duwamish River. Although George’s intonation of the term pahstud implied disrespect for McKean’s and my European American heritage, McKean ignored the slight and calmly interrogated the man.
    “Franky told me the police found you at the crime scene, singing an Indian song over the body of the dead man.”
    “Body of the dead tree,” George corrected. “I sang to the spirit of the tree. To wish it well in the afterlife. Trees have spirits, you know. Not just people. Cops figured I killed the tree poacher. But I didn’t. Just wish I did.”
    “Tree poacher?” I remarked. “I’ve never heard that term.”
    “Poachers cut down cedar trees without any kind of permit,” Franky explained.
    “Cut ‘em up into shingle bolts to make a little money,’ the old man muttered bitterly. ‘Sell the bolts to cedar mills that don’t ask where the wood comes from. Bad business. Not even legal by pahstud standards.’
    “Real bad by Duwamish Indian standards,” Franky said. “No one apologizes to the trees or thanks them for their lives taken.”
    “What brings you here now?” McKean asked. “I would think this is the last place - ” George cut him off with a dismissive wave of his staff.
    “I come and go as I please. This here’s old Duwamish tribal land.”
    “Yes, of