by Jon Cohen
When you climb a tree, the first thing you do is to hold on tight...
Thirty-four-year-old Harry Crane works as an analyst for the US Forest Service. When his wife dies suddenly, he is unable to cope. Leaving his job and his old life behind, Harry makes his way to the remote woods of northeastern Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains, determined to lose himself. But fate intervenes in the form of a fiercely determined young girl named Oriana. She and her mother, Amanda, are struggling to pick up the pieces from their own tragedy—Amanda stoically holding it together while Oriana roams the forest searching for answers. And in Oriana’s magical, willful mind, she believes that Harry is the key to righting her world.
Now it’s time for Harry to let go...
After taking up residence in the woods behind Amanda’s house, Harry reluctantly agrees to help Oriana in a ludicrous scheme to escape his tragic past. In so doing, the unlikeliest of elements—a wolf, a stash of gold coins, a fairy tale called The Grum’s Ledger and a wise old librarian named Olive—come together to create a golden adventure that will fulfill Oriana’s wildest dreams and open Harry’s heart to a whole new life.
Harry’s Trees is an uplifting story about the redeeming power of friendship and love and the magic to be found in life’s most surprising adventures.
Also by Jon Cohen
The Man in the Window
Max Lakeman and the Beautiful Stranger
Harry’s Trees
Jon Cohen
For Mary
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
1
The memorial service for Beth, Harry Crane’s wife of fourteen years, was held in the Leiper Friends Meeting House in Waverly, just outside Philadelphia. The large, unadorned room was packed with relatives, friends, neighbors and coworkers. A woman’s whisper rose from their midst. “Oh, look at him. Poor Harry.” Grief-haunted and pale in his rumpled blue suit, Harry sat in the front row propped between his imposing older brother, Wolf, and Beth’s father, Stan.
A deep quiet fell over the gathering. In a Quaker memorial service, the mourners sit in ungoverned silence until someone is moved to say a few words, recite poetry or even sing. A long minute passed. The cold March wind clicked a tree branch against the window at the end of Harry’s row. A baby fussed. An old man coughed. Kleenex white as dove wings fluttered into view about the room.
Sandy Maynard was the first to rise. Sandy played tennis with Beth every other Tuesday evening at the Healthplex. “Beth,” she said. She gripped the back of the pew in front of her. “Beth, I want to tell you something. You were a wonderful friend.” Tears streamed down Sandy’s cheeks. “You were a wonderful friend, and I will miss you every day of my life.” Sandy’s husband slid another Kleenex into her hand and helped her sit back down.
Harry stared straight ahead.
Carl Bachman, owner of Bachman’s Deli Cafe, lumbered to his feet. “So,” he said. He paused to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief and clear his throat. Carl was not a man accustomed to oratory. “So, I just want to say Beth was a great customer. And Harry, I know you were a great husband. And this—this is a great tragedy. Obviously. So. So, God who also is pretty great, well, He works in mysterious ways. Thank you.” Carl looked around in a panic as if suddenly thinking, Are you allowed to say God in a Quaker service, what are the darn rules? He ducked back down into his seat.
The mourners turned their gaze back to Harry. Outside, a heavy truck pulled down a side street. The deep engine throb filled the meeting house. Harry shifted and blinked. The room tensed, but he went still again.
A woman to Harry’s left popped up like a meerkat and raised a silver flute into view. “I’d like to play a song for you, Beth. I tried to compose something original but I was too sad to think, so I’m going to play a Beatles song because the Beatles cover every single emotion there could possibly be. I’m going to play ‘Hello, Goodbye.’” She lifted the flute to her lips and gave it a nervous off-key toot. “Um, hold on, I have to adjust. Something.” She fiddled with the tuning slide, gave things a twist, pressed the flute to her lips again. She closed her eyes and played the first note, this time perfectly. The simple pop melody hit the mourners with the emotional wallop of a Bach cello suite. Loud sobs detonated around the room.
But not a sound from the front pew, where Harry sat.
Someone in the back of the room stood and began to speak in a steady, elderly voice. “Well, my name is Bill Belson and I live over on Guernsey Road, and I want to speak a moment about Beth and my Jack Russell terrier, Bud. Every morning, I tie Bud to the cherry tree in my front yard so he can watch what’s going on. And Beth, on her way to the train, would always stop to give him a head scratch or a belly rub. When she’d step into the yard, she’d say, ‘Hello, Bud.’ And when she’d leave, she’d say, ‘Goodbye, Bud.’”
Bill Belson paused. “I’d hear Beth’s voice from an open window or maybe I’d be out back raking leaves, and it brought me pleasure, this little thing between the two of them. This little ‘Hello, Goodbye.’” Bill’s deep sigh filled the room. “I’m sure going to miss that moment. Because that’s why we’re here on this planet. You know? To speak to dogs. To be alive in the world. That’s what Beth was. Alive in the world.”
For the first time since Stan and Wolf had led him into the room, Harry moved. He slowly turned to look at this man, Bill Belson. But Bill had taken his seat.
Harry’s eyes cut to a teenager rising to his feet. Jason Luder. Nice kid, lived next door, mowed their lawn when they went on vacation. “Yeah, well,” Jason began, “kinda followin’ up on what Mr. Belson said, and the lady with the flute. We just read Slaughterhouse-Five in class and there’s, like, this phrase that Billy Pilgrim uses, ‘Farewell, hello, farewell, hello,’ because he’s, like, unstuck in time. So maybe in a way Mrs. Crane’s still kind of here, okay? In a way, she’s just unstuck in time.” Jason sat down.
And Harry stood up. The assembly held its collective breath. Harry was going to speak. He said two words, but in a voice so quiet no one could make them out. He looked at the floor, then at the ceiling, and said them again. “Wait here.”
Two hundred people exchanged furtive, puzzled looks.
Harry stepped past Wolf. Wolf gripped Harry’s coat sleeve. Harry shook free, stood for a teetering moment, then took off down the center of the aisle. He banged open the meeting house doors, ran down the stone steps and out onto the lawn, accelerating toward some unreachable escape. Wolf, large as a locomotive and huffing steam in the cold air, caught him from behind. They crashed to the frozen ground.
“Wait here,” he whispered, and saw Beth standing before him, Beth five days ago, standing on Market Street.
* * *
Wait here.
They’d been hurrying along Market Street in Philadelphia, hand in hand, late for a movie. Waiting for the light on Sixth Street, he turned and looked at her. Exquisite wifely details pierced him. The smile lines at the sides of her mouth. The lock of hair above her right ear set aglow by the late-afternoon light. The pleasure of her hand secure in his. Harry was always most alive when Beth was beside him. He drew her close and kissed her. A good solid kiss.
She leaned back from him and smiled. “Hello?”
“Heads up,” he said. “That could happen again.” He took in the faded Sixth Street sign. “It’ll definitely happen again. Every even-numbered street.”
“Yeah? Like, an OCD thing? Compulsive spousal kissing?”
“Compulsive even-numbered spousal kissing.”
“You’re a very odd man,” she said.
“No, a very even man.” He planted another kiss.
Beth laughed and pushed him away. “You know, you could use a little OCD. I was just thinking about your sock drawer.” They were in front of Old Navy. There were rows of men’s socks in the window display.
Harry shook his head. “Wow. You’re thinking socks while I’m thinking of your amazingness.”
“Your sock drawer’s amazing, Harry.”
“I don’t have a sock drawer.”
“Right. You throw your socks into your underwear drawer.”
“I have an underwear drawer?” He pointed at the street sign again. “Seriously, you’ve been warned.”
Numbers were very much on his mind. Why? He took in street signs, the distant clock on City Hall, the route numbers on the front of the city buses roaring by.
Wait here.
Beth nudged him. “We really do need to hurry. You hate to be late for a movie.”
“Right. Let’s go.”
They went another block. He kissed her.
Her laughter, bright as the sun. “Seventh Street,” she said. “Odd-numbered! You cheated.”
They turned in unison, drawn by a sudden noise two blocks up. Mammoth machines, louder than battling dinosaurs, were tearing down an old brick warehouse. The roar and push of the city—when they stepped off the curb, Harry stumbled. Beth steadied him. “I’m all right,” he said. We’re on our way to a movie, he thought, that’s all. The sidewalk is crowded. It’s cold. They’re tearing down a warehouse.
Averting his eyes as another section of wall tumbled to the ground—the impermanence of all things—he focused again on the miraculous constant at his side. Blue eyes, brown hair, honey scent, white teeth, bright laughter, strong hand. Look at her, in her red wool coat. “The coat,” he said. It was new. She’d gotten it yesterday.
“Too red?”
“No, it’s just—you look so great in it.”
She studied him. “You’re in an interesting mood, Harry. Kinda here, there and everywhere.”
And then his eyes found it. He fixed on the green neon Pennsylvania Lottery sign above the door of a convenience store across the street. It winked at him. Numbers.
“Oh, hey,” he said.
Beth followed his gaze to the neon lottery sign. “Okay, that’s what’s going on.” She tugged his arm. “No, come on. The movie starts in five minutes.”
Harry let her lead him forward. He glanced back at the convenience store. Stopped abruptly in front of the plywood barrier along the demolition site like a stubborn dog jerking its leash. “Just wait here a minute. All right?” he said. He had to raise his voice above the diesel chug of the machines. “All I want is a Snickers. Really. You can never get a Snickers at the movies.”
Beth reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a couple of mini Snickers. They had bought too many bags last Halloween. The golden wrappers glittered in the sunlight.
Harry stared, turned without taking one and peered through an observation hole in the plywood. He looked quickly away as the wrecking ball swung. He didn’t like to watch things fall, didn’t get that thrill you were supposed to get.
Beth reached out and raised the collar on his jacket. “You don’t need a hundred million dollars to open Harry’s Trees.”
You couldn’t hide anything from her. Why did he ever bother to try?
“I didn’t buy a ticket,” he said.
“Great. Let’s go to the movie.”
Harry’s cheeks flushed.
“If you go across the street, we’ll be late,” she said.
“The drawing’s at six. I’ll miss it.”
Beth looked into his eyes. “Skip the ticket. Just this once? Please?”
He felt ill. They cut down my eastern hemlock, Beth, he wanted to say. But he’d told her that already. Another chunk of the warehouse crashed down on the other side of the barrier. Harry heard his eastern hemlock fall. He began to stress, as he did too often, about his job at the USDA Forest Service. How the vibrant trees of his youth had withered in his late thirties into green smudges on satellite maps and brain-numbing data graphics. How his cubicle smelled not of pine sap or oak leaves but the nothingness of plastic. How he’d devoted his life to forest preservation yet worked in a building utterly bereft of wood. Forest preservation? Harry tightened. Who was he kidding? He was unable to preserve even a single tree. Despite weeks of protest, and Harry was not a man to protest, they had cut down his eastern hemlock. Yesterday, in less than two hours, the only tree visible in the small window at the end of his row—the tree that got him through his day—had been chopped, chipped and hauled away in a black dump truck. More spaces were needed in parking lot A-3. Harry sat in his cubicle all morning, a treeless forestry bureaucrat.
“You don’t need the lottery,” Beth said.
Harry tried not to look at the neon lottery sign, flashing so brightly at him now it made him squint. He shook his head. “Nobody quits their job, not these days. They just don’t. It’s a crazy idea.”
She looked into his eyes. “Not crazy if you’re miserable.”
“No, hey, I’m not miserable,” he said quickly. “The job’s miserable...but me, I’m, you know, happy.” Except when the job was on his mind. Which was too often these days.
He looked at her looking at him. No, not at him—for him. Beth searching for her Harry. He’d done the same thing this morning, shaving. There he was in the mirror, but only sort of. He touched at the shaving cream on his face, as if it were a thing obscuring the true Harry. He quickly rinsed his face and looked again, but he was still not...himself. Your good looks, Beth would say to him. It’s all about your eyes. They smile, she said. They light your face. The first time they kissed, long ago, she kissed his mouth, and then she kissed the corner of each eye and drew back from him.
Your eyes, she whispered, bring the whole thing together.
Thing? Harry had said.
The Harry thing, she said. You’re a very nice-looking guy—that dark hair with those wavy swoops, that good square chin, those eyebrows like bird wings—but when your eyes smile. Wow. She kissed him again. His whole body smiled.
But this morning in the mirror: lightless eyes, defeated chin, short and swoopless hair—unhappy Harry, the slumped man who dreaded going to work. The Harry Beth saw now, as they stood on Market Street.
“Really, I’m not miserable,” he said miserably. Blinking and squinting, he tried to make his eyes smile.
Now she was really staring at him. Her eyes reflecting his undenia
ble misery.
“It’s just the job,” he said. When he leaned in to kiss her cheek, he glanced past her to the neon sign.
She turned away.
“Oh come on. It’ll take one second.” He was speaking loudly to make himself heard over the machines. “It’s such a small thing, Beth.”
She spun around. “Small? Hanging everything on a lottery ticket? No, that’s a big thing, Harry. Sweetheart, just quit the Forest Service. We don’t have kids, our mortgage is doable, I’ll work more hours.” Beth was a grant-writing consultant for several city nonprofits, a professional optimist undaunted by long odds.
“You’re not working more hours,” Harry said.
“You’ll work a lot more hours, too.” She smiled at him. “At your new job.”
“At Harry’s Trees,” he said, a hint of a smile in his eyes. Such a great name. So unfussy. So unbureaucratic. In desperate moments at the office he’d lean back in his chair, close his eyes and see the website logo—a big H shaded by the wide canopy of an American beech.
“No,” Beth said. “At Baylor Arboretum. They love you there. And in a few years, with the money we save up, you’ll start Harry’s Trees.”
“Come on. What could they even pay me? Ten bucks an hour? Eight?”
“But it’s a job that would make you happy, Harry. Happy at work. For the first time in—”
The word leaped out of his mouth. “Forever.”
Beth moved close to him. “We can do it. We’ll figure out a way. We’ll do this thing. Together.”
They really would. It was so simple. He could see it. Planting and tending real trees instead of moving them around on a computer screen. Working outdoors, the rich scent of soil and leaves. Tired at the end of the day instead of drained. No more cubicle, no more meetings. And Baylor Arboretum was looking for an arborist. Jim Massinger was about to retire. Harry brightened. Then frowned. No benefits, no government pension, no guarantees. “No,” he said. “It’s crazy.”
“Harry—”
“No. Just. Wait here!”
He didn’t mean to shout, but he did. Against the noise of the demolition, against Beth making impossible things seem possible. He glanced over his shoulder as he crossed the street. She was pressed in her red coat against the plywood barrier, as if nailed there by his outburst.
