In 2008 Amazon.com held an international novel contest, in which the customers were invited to write reviews for part of the judging process. Five thousand manuscripts were submitted, and Luke Wallin's The Soul Tree made it into the semi-finals. His novel is still unpublished, but was enjoyed by many. Here is the first chapter, which was the basis for the reviews on this site.

The Soul Tree

Read the first chapter of The Soul Tree

Chapter One

1952

Temptation in the Garden

I'd turned nine — just old enough to wander the dark shady woods behind my house. Beneath old bricks the baby snakes and fat moist earthworms wiggled away while I talked, ever so quietly, to myself. I repeated powerful phrases from my parents, like Father we thank Thee for these and all Thy many blessings. God lived in Mississippi then, all around us, in the spaces between the tall oak trees; and He listened when you spoke in Thees and Thous. It should have been a safe woods with my parents nearby and God in the molecules of air, in the cells of the trees, everywhere.

But one day I came upon a living blacksnake nailed to the bark of a pine. The snake stretched four feet long, fixed in a straight vertical line, and its eyes were black shiny pools. I felt the snake’s tiny trapped soul, crucified and dreaming of the dirt and moss beneath his moving body, and I touched the head of one finishing nail, lightly, carefully, then felt the cool dry skin of the creature’s back.

“He’s waiting for you to set him free,” the high clear voice said, and I jumped so quickly I scratched my finger on one of the nails.

Edwin Fancher sat cross-legged in deep shade, his pellet rifle across his knees, just watching. He spoke with a frightening stillness about him, softened a little by his looks. When he stood up, calmly unfolding his lanky frame, he wore an amused smile. At 15 he was already six feet tall, and growing handsome in a long-faced, strong boned way. He seemed ever so relaxed but tense at the same time. How could that be? I had always known to fear certain people, and that instinct sounded its full alert.

Our neighborhood knew that Edwin Fancher liked to shoot large dogs – collies, shepherds – at the base of their tails with his pellet rifle. When the infection reached a certain point, the heavy tail dropped off. These big, tailless dogs became his trademark, his signature.

I sucked my finger and stared, heart pounding.

“Did you hear me?” Edwin said. He carried authority in his voice, a kind I’d never heard in a boy. Maybe not in anybody.

“Yes.”

Edwin’s people attended a different church than we did, and I might not have known him; but he wasn’t any ordinary fifteen-year-old. His fame had spread around the neighborhood as a result of his meanness to dogs. My best friend Hartley actually liked him – they used to go hunting baby snakes together, turning over bricks in Mud Town across the tracks – and Hart claimed he was misunderstood.

“He’s been waiting for you. Nobody else.” Edwin laced his long fingers behind his blond crew cut.

“He has? What do you mean?”

“He’s been on his cross since yesterday.”

“And he’s still alive?” A sick tingle began in my belly.

“Thinking about his sins. He’d give his little snake soul if he could move again. Just move one more time.”

“You did it to him?” I surprised myself by sounding accusatory. He scared me, but in my family everybody spoke up.

“What’s your name?”

“Jack Henry Callaway.” How I must’ve looked to him, a thin kid with an innocent face and big brown eyes and stuck-out ears.

Well Jack Henry, would you like to be his redeemer?”

I wasn’t sure what he meant — nobody talked this way out of church. I tried hard to remember what Granny June had said about his family’s denomination.

“His savior. Do you want to save his life?”

“I guess. If it ain’t too late.”

He pulled out a long yellow pocketknife and opened it.

“Don’t do it if you don’t want to.”

In the slow moment, insects buzzed on the warm air, and birds whistled in the canopy.

“I should let him go?”

“Begin with his tail.”

I took the knife and felt the deep ridges of the fake antler plastic; then I pried the thin nails out as gently as I could. They weren’t deep. Soon the snake’s body drooped over my left hand, limp as rubber. I lay the blacksnake down in the pine straw where, to my amazement, it started to crawl.

“You saved a life, Jack Henry,” Edwin said.

I handed him the knife and he tapped the blade with his finger.

Enough of this, I thought. “Gotta go now,” I said quickly, turning and putting one foot ahead of the next, crunching the leaves as I picked up speed. Soon I almost flew.

That day my stomach knotted and my mind raced as I tried to put Edwin Fancher into some kind of perspective. But I’d met nobody like him, and it feels now as if I knew then what was coming. It seems like I could feel my childhood and beyond would be shadowed and worried by him, like I already knew the secrets he would tell me and things he’d get me to do would stay like a weight in my heart. Surely I didn’t realize so much that day at nine years old; maybe I just felt his evil, or the souls of his victims.

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I was glad to reach the back door of our house.

“Look who’s here!” Granny June cried. Her round face with the roman nose was fixed in its usual selfabsorption. She managed to dramatize herself in all she did, even as she pretended a passing interest in others.

“He must’ve smelled the surprise,” Granny T said. Dignified and cautious, she showed the strain of living with Granny June.

“What surprise?”

Granny June, Mother’s mother who was master of the annoying little tune, hummed one of them up and down. “Hm hm hm, hm hm. Can’t tell that. Anyway, it’s in the oven, so you’ll have to wait.”

I stared at their aprons dusted with flour, their mess of pans and spoons, and the yellow batter smeared inside the mixers. Granny T caught my gaze. “Think he might like to lick the bowl?”

“It’ll ruin his appetite.” Granny June spoke like a child pouting.

“No it won’t!” I declared this a little too loudly.

Granny T, hands on hips, studied me. “We’re having fried chicken, butterbeans and cornbread. Can you lick this bowl and eat all that?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Well, just be careful.” She loosened the beaters, thick with sugary batter, dropped them into the bowl, and presented it. I carried it to the glass-topped breakfast room table and settled myself. Out the wall of windows I stared at the brick patio, the back terraces, and the woods beyond. In those suburban woods between the houses and the park Edwin Fancher ruled. But here it was nice. Right now I was grateful that both grannies lived with us. My tongue worked carefully between the sharp edges of a beater, tasting the delicious paste of sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg and raw eggs.

While I licked, the grannies piled up their cooking messes into the sink, leaving them for tomorrow morning and the maid.

A week after I met Edwin, two strange boys caught me in the local park. This was on the north side of our town of five thousand people, out where the cornfields and pine hills were giving way to houses. The park was 20 acres of steep hills with tall oaks, and it lay between Edwin’s house and mine.

“Empty your pockets,” the larger one said. I ‘d seen him before, a boy with a runny nose. With these meanlooking young teenagers holding switchblade knives, the main thing was not to get cut.

They took my change, then the uglier one said, “Take off your pants.”

My eyes trembled with water and anger and fear.

“Do it,” the other one said, drawing his blade gently across his palm.

I pulled down my jeans and stepped out of them.

“Now the shirt.”

I hesitated and the kid with the knife stepped closer.

I pulled my tee-shirt over my head as tears leaked down. Then Ugly screamed and grabbed his eye. Blood spurted between his fingers as another pellet caught the second boy in the cheek. Edwin Fancher ran toward us from the trees, rifle in his left hand, a big rock in his right. He never said a word, just came straight with the rock raised in the air, and he caught Ugly on the side of the face. The boy went down, rolled over and jumped up tearing away.

They both ran as if he were the devil.

Edwin touched my chin. “Come with me.”

His family and mine lived a half-mile apart in the wooded hills. Big new ranch houses rose on the ridges, with woods and creeks left wild between them. Edwin’s family lived in an older frame house on the last slope before a busy street and then Mud Town, a black section.

Edwin led to where the hills folded above a small ravine. A massive oak spread its roots over the dry creek bed, and underneath this tree Edwin had his cave. My face twitched as I hesitated at the entrance. But Edwin nudged me, and I crawled on inside, smelling the rich earth and feeling its coolness. Edwin pointed for me to sit down on rabbit and housecat skins, and I smoothed them with my hands, felt their softness, and swallowed hard. One by one, Edwin lit candles in a circle. Roots and red clay made up the walls of the little room, and my eyes adjusted to the dimness. I recognized one of the cat skins – a fluffy orange with white spots that had belonged to a neighbor.A large rabbit hung from the rear ceiling, its legs bound by wire. I caught my breath as I saw it trembling.

Edwin made me sit silently for a long time. I grew fearful and dry-throated and my stomach turned over. Finally he began to mumble, then to ramble audibly. He seemed to address the rabbit. “The Lord gave life as a gift, not a pleasure. But the time comes to an end, it comes to an end. Did you raise yourself into the light? Did you realize for one minute what you had?”

Edwin began to pump his pellet rifle. “Your life is a gift, not a pleasure. Think of Jesus, if you can. He gave Himself for you. Gave his life that you might live.”

He aimed the rifle into the rabbit’s head. “Beat your heart, beat your heart. The sacrifice of the Lord’s only begotten Son took a lot longer than this, fool. A lot longer and it hurt a lot worse.”

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“Wait,” I managed to whisper. “The Lord requires blood sacrifice.” “Let’s don’t kill him. Okay?” Edwin’s air of control filled the cave. “Couldn’t we let him go?” Edwin breathed a long sigh and looked mildly exasperated, as if I were once more spoiling his fun. Then he raised both palms in a questioning way. “You let him go, Jack Henry. You’re turning out to be the redeemer of these woods.” It was hard work, with the rabbit’s strong front legs digging air, its claws raking my arms, but finally I held its neck tightly and unwrapped the wire. When I released the big gray rabbit it dashed out of the cave.

Edwin Fancher’s blue eyes came alive in the candlelight, and pleasure spread across his handsome, suntanned face.

During the next few days I wanted to ask my parents if they’d heard anything strange about Edwin Fancher, but something held me back. I sat at the magnolia-wood dinner table on Sunday, extended by its special leaf, and thought about subjects that could, and could not, be discussed. Both sat alertly, Granny T prim and quiet, Granny June restless and silly, as well as my Uncle Doc, who lived across town. He was what Daddy called a wild card because he might or might not be drinking.

“You’re rather quiet,” Granny T said. Her hair was blue-white. She felt soft in skin and voice and presence, but I always felt her careful mind. She studied me with deep blue eyes.

“I am?”

“Tell us what you’ve been doing this summer?” Uncle Doc said. His red-rough skin, from spending every spare minute outdoors, matched his sandy voice.

“Hartley and me caught some fish,” I said, “before he went to Brazil.”

“Is that so?” Uncle Doc said. He squinted his deep brown eyes, and his face wrinkled up all the way to his hairline. He wore a low, prickly crew cut, and bumps and blue veins showed on his scalp. Uncle Doc was my great uncle, Granny June’s younger brother. She’d told me that he “fell between generations, and nobody understands him.” This was a polite way of referring to his drinking, among other things. We could have been proud of him, because he was a medical doctor, but for some reason nobody understood he mostly helped black folks. People considered it odd.

“Hartley and I,” Granny T corrected.

“Sorry, Hartley and I. Yes sir. I caught a catfish, and he caught a two-pound bass.”

Uncle Doc nodded, unimpressed. “What’s he doing in Brazil?”

“His aunt and her husband are missionaries,” Mother said. “It’s a church trip.” She said this like it explained everything. Mother had the cheerful version of Granny June’s round face, rich black hair and sparkling dark eyes. I thought she could have been an actress, if she hadn’t been shy in public. Her smile would make you smile.

“To the Yanomami,” Granny T added. “Headhunters,” from Granny June. “They killed the last missionaries,” I said. “The previous missionaries,” Granny T corrected. “Yes ma’am.” “Yah-no-mammy,” Granny June said. “Yah-no-mammy.” “What’s Hartley want with a place like that?”Uncle Doc asked. “You’d think it’d be hot enough here in Miss’ssippi for him.” He pulled at his chin and I heard the scratching sound like a kitchen match along his gray whiskers. “When he gets back,” Uncle Doc said, “ya’ll come over to my house and swim in my pool. I want to hear about all this.” “His mother’s sister Allison married Billy Wainright, who went to Southwestern Seminary,” Mother said.

“He was preaching out in Oklahoma for some time, and they have two children.” “All of a sudden,” Granny June added, “the Lord calls him to Brazil.” “They think it’s safe now,” Daddy said. “But I’ll tell you what, I wouldn’t go down there. And I wouldn’t

send a member of my family, either.” Daddy spoke with seriousness. He was tall and slender with a long nose, a handsome nose, smart blue eyes and soft brown hair. I would have given anything to take after his side of the family in my looks, but I was round-faced like Mother and Granny June. They looked fine for women, and Mother was beautiful, but I just hoped I wouldn’t wind up with the plain version that was Uncle Doc.

“Me either!” Granny June said. “I wouldn’t any more let Jack Henry go!” She opened her eyes wide and made a little round mouth of fake concern. Daddy shot her a look of irritation. I thought he was the finest man in the world, with his calm, knowing eyes, his graceful hands. He was like his mother, Granny T, in thoughtfulness. Granny June drove him crazy at the table, and his nostrils would flare, but he rarely responded to her foolishness. Both he and Mother overflowed with patience for their in-laws.

“There was quite a discussion of safety at the church while they were planning this trip,” Daddy said. “The missionaries now are well-armed.”

I straightened up. I hadn’t heard about this, but Daddy looked as if he didn’t want to talk about it right now.

Mother rang her little silver bell, and a distracted-looking Haddie Penrose came through the swinging door.

“Bring us some more peas and rolls, please,” Mother said. Her voice always had a note of concern for anyone she spoke to.

“Yes’m.” Haddie lifted the porcelain chicken tureen, which had contained the peas, and carried it into the kitchen.

I enjoyed the clove-flavored ham, drenched in pineapple juice and Coca-Cola. I also favored the mashed potatoes and field peas, homemade rolls and cornbread, sweet tea with mint from the garden, and finally, to tip me toward a nap, warm banana pudding.

“Goodness,” Uncle Doc said as he struggled to rebutton his pants and stand up, “this was almost overdoing it.”

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Daddy and Mother exchanged offended glances.

I knew Edwin Fancher had too much power for a boy, from some source like a deep artesian well that brought up cold water to the parched summer ground. He could appear in the woods at any time, and it kept me nervous. I was thin and serious, worried about going to heaven or to damnation in hell, and I often felt sad. More normal boys sensed this instantly, and took it as their mission to torment me without mercy.

One afternoon the scouts invited me to a recruiting party at their one-room log cabin in the park. I stood around with other nine-year-olds, cubs for another year, and listened to the scoutmaster talk about honor and truth and loyalty and cleanliness and godliness and patriotism and the rest. The older boy scouts wore tricky smiles, very tricky.

After the speech we played games, horseshoe pitching and dart throwing, and they filled a big washtub for apple bobbing. It seemed strange in the summer, but I forgot myself and laughed as different boys struggled to bite a floating apple. Then my turn arrived. I tried to bite a big, slippery apple at the right moment, the moment in which the scoutmaster had been carefully diverted. They grabbed my head and arms and forced me under, mashing me deep into the tub, jamming my throat against the aluminum edge. I longed for breath until my arms and legs jerked and warm pee spread down across my jeans.

They were experts, knowing just when to release me, gagging and staggering out the door for home. The scoutmaster never knew why I left.

But Edwin Fancher knew. He had watched from the woods behind the scout cabin, looking right through the window, noting each boy with precision, writing down their names on a tiny pad.

He waited until bedtime, then tapped on a window of my room.

I don’t know why I went with him, but I slipped out and followed, full of dread. We walked on trails in the suburban woods down to the park, to the scout cabin, and I smelled something much stronger than pinesap and honeysuckle floating on the summer night.

We squatted behind the empty cabin in the darkness.

“Them that do evil unto me shall I do evil unto them,” Edwin said, as if he were reading. Then he spoke to the cabin: “You could of been a temple of good, or of evil. You have chosen, and you stink with Satan’s stink.” He produced a box of kitchen matches and struck one, handing it to me in the same motion.

“Right there,” Edwin said, pointing. “Put it there.”

I felt I was inside a dream. I lay the match down and jerked back from the whoosh as gasoline-soaked pine straw caught, and a trail of flames raced toward the building. Edwin had poured the gas heavily, and fire encircled the log walls in a fierce embrace.

“Edwin,” I said with a dry throat, “what if somebody’s in there?”

“I checked that,” he said with a smile. “Now come,” and we backed deeper into the woods.

We watched it burn. The crowns of nearby pines were crackling when the fire trucks arrived, and the men sprayed the trees, letting the poor old cabin go. The scout hut became glowing timbers and then smoking shadows. I was horrified.

“This is just the start. We’ll get every one of them. We’ll make them beg us for mercy before we’re done.”

“Edwin...” Don’t you worry, kid.” “Aren’t you scared?” I asked. Edwin fell into one of the long, embarrassing pauses that were his specialty. “There is a crime, and there is a punishment,” he said, grinding his teeth. Then he rested one hand on the back of my neck, gently rubbing, and lay his other hand on my thigh.

“Follow me down, Jack Henry,” he whispered. “I alone will hold you from hell.”

I flushed, cheeks and ears hot with shame and confusion and fear of Edwin. I saw that hanging rabbit, squirming, swinging back and forth, with the burning scout cabin raging behind it. Edwin rose and took my hand. He led the way back to my house, and I felt I’d never draw a full breath again. There was something on my chest, weight crushing my lungs, and when I finally climbed back into my room, scraped my knee on the sill, waved goodbye and sat on my bed, pain throbbed above my eyes. I fell back on the quilt and raised my arms into the darkness. Inside my head I begged Jesus for help. I prayed and prayed, and lay my unworthiness before the cross of Christ. If only I could be in the jungle with Hartley and the headhunters. I asked for deliverance from every snare. But nothing changed. Not the headache nor my sick stomach nor my fear of the scouts and the police. Was Jesus rejecting my agony? Eventually I fell into exhausted sleep.

Every night I lay in bed holding the black leather bible that bore my engraved name. I knew I had reached what Baptists call the Age of Accountability, and if I were to die now – hit by a car like Tommy Meecham –I’d go straight to hell. Nine years old, I thought again and again. And I knew there was only one way out, one hope. I had to find Jesus in my heart, really experience salvation, and be baptized. But the night of the fire had shaken me about this, because that night Jesus hadn’t come. I knew from hundreds of sermons that you couldn’t fake the feeling, you couldn’t just make it up. And what was worse, if the Holy Spirit didn’t move inside you it was your fault. But how much harder could I believe? How much more pitiful could I become in begging Christ for grace? I began to think everyone around me had a gift for faith that I lacked, a trust in Jesus I could never achieve. Maybe I’m a born disbeliever, I thought, so even when I think I’m praying, those little doubts – maybe they’re enough to filter and block and cancel my prayer.

The next time Edwin appeared, I was riding my bicycle through the park. Sunset colors had spread behind the tall pines as I pedaled home from choir practice at First Baptist. I sang softly to myself as I rode.

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Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

he is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

he hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

his truth is marching on.

Edwin suddenly blocked my path and seized me with his eyes.

As if under a spell, I followed him into the woods and down the winding trail to the base of the hill where he’d dug his cave. I’d like to say I have no idea why I followed him, but there was something exciting in his moves, his ruthlessness, that I needed in my boring life. Everything about the bible was so exciting – David’s cutting off penises of his enemies as a brideprice for his first wife, Tamar’s brother raping her and then despising her – the emotions people felt back then were so strong, and they just acted them out. I read the bible every night before bed, and those Old Testament stories filled my dreams. But my family was so normal, making note of every little twitch off the path of righteousness, of every time Uncle Doc used a swear word, or Granny June smelled up the kitchen by cooking with garlic. Edwin acted on his desires, no matter what they were, like some character from the distant past.

Light flickered in his cave from candles left burning, dozens of them. We crawled inside and sat crosslegged on the animal skins, and immediately I saw the change. On the ceiling and across the mud walls, slick magazine pictures of naked women were pinned by sharp, hand-whittled sticks. The women stuck their behinds into the air and offered thick pouty lips of the reddest hue. In the candlelight I glimpsed oiled legs, oversized breasts, uncomfortable shiny eyes.

It took my breath away. “You like my pictures?” “Sure.” “I cut them out just to tempt us, Jack Henry.” The earth smell of the cave was strong. “Jesus never had a woman, did you know that?” “I guess.” “And Saint Paul, he said the kingdom of heaven was coming soon, so there wasn’t any point to getting

married.”

“Well,” I managed, “he was wrong about that.”

Edwin seemed surprised and pleased. “Yes he was. Yes he was. Two thousand years later there’s been plenty of time for the flesh, for lusting after women. You can lust all you want, Jack Henry, but you can only have one, and that’s your wife.”

I stared from picture to picture. They were glossy in the candlelight. Edwin slid out his yellow pocket knife, opened it and began to scrape it on a small whetstone. “You’re supposed to lust, to get ready for marriage.” “You are? I guess that makes sense.” “Have you ever seen a real girl with her clothes off?” Edwin asked. “No.” “It’s all right to look, as long as you don’t touch her skin.”

I was silent.

“You know Melinda Worthington?”

“ Sure.”

“Think she’s pretty?”

“Real pretty.” I wished my voice didn’t sound so young.

“Come with me, Jack Henry.”

He snapped the knife shut and slid it into his jeans.

This time we climbed steeply toward new houses beside the park. Darkness had coated the woods. Sticks snapped beneath our feet, and birds flew from the trees above. As we followed a trail known only to Edwin, my heart hammered and my mind raced over those naked images on the cave walls. Melinda Worthington! It was beyond thinking. And yet, somehow, Edwin had managed to explain this sin of spying on her as part of God’s plan for our lives.

The Worthington’s place was the talk of everyone’s parents, a low modern experiment of a house that wrapped itself into the hillside. We crawled the last fifty yards and lay in leaves, watching a bright window beyond the stone terrace.

“That’s her bathroom,” Edwin said. “They have curtains over her bedroom windows, see? But not the bathroom, for some reason.”

I was shaking.

“It’s almost time,” Edwin said. “She takes off her clothes and walks right by that window, and turns on the water. Regular as she can be.”

I smelled the raw dirt, oak leaves and a cool breeze over the hill. My teeth chattered. I had a fierce erection from anticipation and my cheeks and ears burned.

Then Melinda appeared. Fourteen and a champion swimmer, she had a tall tight body and small breasts with large dark nipples. She moved quickly across the window space and bent low, perhaps starting her bath, then turned our way.

I caught my breath just as white light blasted the patio and the trees all around us. Spotlights mounted high on the walls had been switched on, and a door opened. A man spoke sharply, “Go on, boy. Do your business!” I watched in horror as a large black German Shepherd, tailless and fast, ripped over the flat patio stones and skidded up before us. It cried out once in surprise, then began a snarling bark, the anger of territorial pride.

Edwin led the retreat downhill, our faces slapped by branches, our feet twisted by stump holes and grapevines that rose from the mud and draped every tree. This monster could rip out my legs, I thought as I leapt and stumbled down the pitch of the hill. The huge dog kept coming, less confident, by its barks, the farther into the night it reached, but not willing to quit either. Finally Edwin sensed the moment to turn and grab up a branch and face it down. They taunted each other in the darkness, hurling dog and human curses from their guttural throats, each agreeing not to cross an invisible line between them. High on the hill above, Mr. Worthington shouted and whistled for his dog. The shepherd snorted with indignation, then snatched his chance and trotted home, barking all the way.

I lay in bed that night with every moment of the evening. I returned again and again to the amazing Melinda Worthington at her window. She held my concentration like an apple in her hand. But as Edwin had said, it wasn’t necessarily sin to think about her, or even look at her. As long as it was somehow preparation for your one true marriage. And as long as you didn’t touch her skin.

© 2007 Luke Wallin. All Rights Reserved.
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