The Devil Tree Read Online Free PDF

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contained no instructions on how to save the crew of a small boat about to be tossed into the Atlantic on a dark and foggy night.
    As the strong current swept them along the Manhattan shore, Jonathan could not control the boat. Tired and frightened, he loosened his grip on the oars, and sensing his surrender, Peter screamed and upset the balance of the boat. The boat turned sideways and capsized, throwing the boys into the water amid blades of ice and sloshing waves. Hanging on to the overturned boat, they drifted rapidly, then slammed into a pile of rocks. When Jonathan heaved himself out of the water, Peter was right behind him, but his body was limp. Quickly Jonathan pulled him from the river, and they both collapsed on the wet stone.
    They climbed over an embankment and, cold and shivering, ran to the West Side Highway and crossed it. About two hundred yards down a street on the other side, the neon sign of a gas station glowed through the mist.
    Behind it, high above the other buildings, Jonathan saw other lighted signs—among them the logo of his father’s company at the top of the building that housed its Wall Street headquarters. Twice before, he had visited his father there.
    Dragging Peter along by the arm, Jonathan stumbled into the gas station and asked the attendant to call them a taxi. But the sleepy attendant looked up at Jonathan only long enough to blink. In a loud voice Jonathan told him that he was the son of Horace Sumner Whalen, and pointedout the sign on the building. At that the attendant promptly got up and summoned a taxi, and the two boys arrived home long before Jonathan’s parents returned from their evening out. In the following days, although both boys came down with fevers, neither Jonathan nor Peter mentioned their escapade to anyone. The attempt to cross the Hudson was Jonathan’s first heroic attempt. It failed. Dodging the draft was his second.
    Whalen got back in his car and headed north. At dawn he was driving past meadows and ponds in Connecticut. Turning off the main highway, he continued along a marsh road. The sun dispersed the mist that hung over the fields, and the car’s wheels churned slowly in the sand. Scrub pine grew beside the road, and the green needles filtered the sun and dappled the hood of the car. He felt invisible and secure behind the wheel.
    •   •   •
     
    “Your mother was anxious to keep you abroad, Jonathan. In fact, she was desperate.” The doctor avoided facing him. “In her nightmares you had often appeared buried as the unknown soldier. That’s why she was pleased by your decision to leave the country before a draft notice could be delivered to you. As long as she and the company trustees didn’t know your whereabouts, the draft notice couldn’t be forwarded to you, and technically you were not legally liable. But your mother was very disturbed about not knowing where you were at any given time.”
    “To remain not liable, I had to be on the move, with no forwarding address.”
    “Well, yes, that’s what was so upsetting. She imagined you with long hair and a beard, wearing army fatigues, highon drugs and hitchhiking through Burma, India, or Africa with only a knapsack and guitar.” The doctor scratched his neck. “We tried to keep track of you—the best detectives from Burns took months to locate you, although at times we knew approximately where you were because you kept drawing money from affiliated banks by signing plain pieces of paper.” The doctor grinned and looked at Jonathan. “As I recall, you wrote the last such check in Ankara—or was it Tripoli?—for something like thirty thousand dollars. In any case it exceeded your trust allowance for that period. Still, because you’d lived on less than half that for the previous two or three months, the trustees allowed the check to clear. Then your safari jeep was found abandoned. Your mother was frantic. Fearing you might have been kidnapped, and acting on my advice, she