Harry's Trees

by Jon Cohen

  She’s able to clear the air, thought Harry. Why couldn’t he? Amanda Jeffers hated deception and deceit, and the only true thing he’d told her since landing in this forest was his name. He had to tell her something more, something real, but he didn’t know how. An immense pressure was building inside him. He was a bulging cargo ship with too many secrets in the hold, about to pop a rivet.

  No, not a rivet.

  A ring.

  His left hand, under its own volition, shot from behind his back, straight out in front of him.

  Amanda stared at his reflection. Pivoted to look at him in full.

  Harry twisted and tugged at his wedding band.

  Amanda stepped back from him. Wait. He’s removing his ring...so I won’t feel so bad?

  “What are you doing? Leave that alone.” What an amazingly touching gesture. And really unnerving. Or no. Me being ringless—he’s not about to offer me his wedding band? Is he? Like it was an umbrella and he could shield me from the rain? “Hey. Stop. I don’t need that.” Wedding bands, she thought anxiously, are nontransferable.

  But events were beyond Harry’s control. He wrenched the ring loose, as if uncorking the pent-up pressure of himself. It shot off his finger, fell to the wooden floor and rolled under the cot.

  Amanda dropped to her hands and knees and fished for it. The first bit of gold she pulled into view was the crumpled Snickers wrapper. She fished some more. “Here it is,” she said. “Got it.” She stood, a little dazed, and held out the ring to him.

  Harry went pale and stepped back. “No, it’s off. It’s finally off.”

  Amanda stared at him. “What are you doing?”

  He went still as a statue.

  “Harry?” she said. “Come on. What’s going on? What would your wife think?”

  He lifted his left hand, stared for a long moment, then said in a whisper, “It’s weightless. The finger. Weightless as a ghost.”

  “Hey. Put this back on.”

  But he wouldn’t take it, stepped back again.

  She thought, How hard did Ronnie bonk him on the head?

  Harry stared at his naked finger, then raised his eyes to meet Amanda’s. “I have something to say. To tell you. I have to tell you the truth. There’s a ring. But there’s no wife. I don’t have a wife anymore.”

  A long beat. Outside, the whip-poor-wills and the owls went silent.

  “You don’t have a wife,” Amanda said. “Anymore.”

  “Her name was Beth.”

  Amanda looked at the ring. Looked at Harry.

  “When the person you love dies,” he said, “when are you supposed to take off the ring? I’ve worn it for a year. Somehow, it just wouldn’t...come off.”

  “Oh my God,” Amanda said. She placed the ring on the kitchen table, beside the kerosene lamp. The light striking it, setting it aglow, made it seem like the only object in the room. The only object in the world.

  “I lied to you,” Harry said. “I lied about why I came to these woods.”

  Amanda hugged herself.

  “I’m not really here for my job. I’m here because I worked for years in a miserable office. Beth would say, ‘Just quit, Harry. Go where the trees are real. You can do it, Harry,’ she’d say.”

  Amanda struggled to make sense of his words. “And she...Beth...she wanted you to come here? Exactly right here?”

  “I really do manage these woods. Did. The other day, I walked out of the office, got in my car and just drove. Drove until I ran out of gas. And arrived here.”

  “Exactly here. In this forest.”

  He nodded.

  Now she was the one who stepped back from him. “Harry Crane. This is a big deal.”

  “I know. I lied, and you hate sneaky-ass behavior.”

  “A very big deal.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Amanda looked into the distance for a long moment, then at the ring, glowing in the lamplight. Working through the enormity of it.

  “Coming here—it’s some kind of quest. This is all about your wife. This is for her. Isn’t it?”

  Yes, but no, Harry thought. He hadn’t come for Beth. He came with a length of rope in his hand. It was only after he crashed to earth that he realized he’d come for Beth. And then, very quickly, it all became so much more—because now he seemed to be here for Oriana, too. And to be here for Oriana...would mean a truckload of nonsense, made-up stories and sneaky-ass behavior.

  The panic began to rise again, but he stifled it. Because at least he had removed the ring. He’d told a truth. He could breathe a little. “Yes,” he said to Amanda. “I’m here for Beth.”

  Amanda thought, I would have done this for Dean. If he’d asked me to, I’d have done it. I’d have come to the middle of the woods and stayed in a tree house. Whatever he asked. She suddenly missed him unbearably. She looked around this place he built, this solid thing that hovered in the treetops of the forest. Her eyes went to his collection of field guides, neatly side by side in the bookcase. A bird guide, a wildflower guide, a rock guide, a tree guide, a fern guide—a guide for everything except for how to go on without him. She didn’t know the tears were there until the room began to shimmer. She blinked them back.

  Harry spoke. She turned to him.

  “Amanda. Will you please let me stay? Even though I’m a lying liar who lies?”

  Her voice carried the weight of a long year. “You’re not a liar. You’re a widower, Harry. Widowers do things. They say things.”

  “And widows?” he said. “What do they do?”

  “They...” she began. They what? They screw Cliff Blair and get filmed? They run around the forest chasing their possessed daughters? “They work very hard to keep their shit together,” she said.

  “I didn’t keep my shit together,” Harry said.

  “Hey. You made it through your first year.”

  “Barely.” Harry felt the rope around his neck. The wind from the wings of a hawk.

  “‘Barely’ is a win.”

  Not a win, thought Harry, but with the help of a girl and this forest, maybe a reprieve.

  Amanda pointed to his ring. “Huge night, Harry. Right? You got it off.”

  “How did you get yours off?”

  “You know nurses—we tear off a bandage hard and quick. That first week, the ring was off and in a drawer. And then, I just kept shedding his stuff. Got rid of as much as I could as fast as I could. As if that would make it easier.”

  “Beth’s toothbrush is still next to mine. I kept everything.”

  Amanda wondered: How did Beth die? Amanda understood death, as a nurse, as a young widow. How it came suddenly, swept everything away in the same moment that it left everything behind. Every object, the toothbrush, the ring, the clothes in the closet, suggesting a return. Every object a permanent reminder of impermanence.

  Amanda was an ER nurse, and she could feel it radiating off Harry—Beth died unexpectedly. Her death still stunned him. Sent him into the forest.

  “There’s no right way,” she said. “No good way. There’s only one way, I guess.” She shrugged. “Forward.”

  “Forward through a land where inches are miles and hours are centuries,” Harry said. He shrugged, too. “Listen to me. Spouting like a poet.”

  The hint of a smile at the corner of Amanda’s mouth. She looked at her ringless hand for a long moment, then slowly raised it, gesturing to Harry to do the same. Harry raised his ringless hand. They stood facing each other, hands in the air.

  “We’re a club,” Amanda said. “The Year One Club.”

  Harry, with his own trace of a smile, said, “Up here in our clubhouse.”

  The night wind picked up. The tree house moved gently back and forth.

  “There’s somebody else in the club, too,” Amanda said. “A junior member.”

&
nbsp; “I know.”

  “The candy? She left it in the woods because she thought Dean was an angel, then a bat, then a bird. Always some winged something. That he’d come back. But he didn’t come back.”

  “Wingless Harry showed up instead,” Harry said. “The candy thief.”

  Amanda said, “But you know what? I love that you’re not anything like Dean. I love it for my daughter. That you’re just some ordinary guy who’s going to inhabit these woods.”

  “You forgot to say boring. Dean—he was pretty amazing?”

  “Oops,” Amanda said.

  “I get it. I had one of those. Beth was beyond amazing.”

  “Did she walk on water? Dean walked on water.”

  “Beth danced on water.”

  They looked into each other’s eyes.

  Harry cleared his throat. “Let’s get a little air,” he said. He walked out onto the deck. Amanda followed. They stood at the railing. The night forest surrounded them.

  Harry took a deep, appreciative sniff of the atmosphere. “The trees,” Harry said. “Smell them?”

  “Yes,” Amanda said.

  “In two days, exactly two, the quaking aspen will open their buds,” Harry said. “One day later, exactly one, trust me, the sugar maples will follow.”

  He made a sweeping gesture at the half-seen trees, like a conductor bringing an orchestra to attention. “One by one, like slow-motion fireworks, tree after tree will burst to life. And the very last tree will be this big guy, the American beech.” Harry patted a heavy gray limb as if he were patting the warm, friendly mass of a great animal. “Beech leaves open so quickly, it’s something you can actually hear. Really.” He smiled. “That is, if you’re a guy who listens to trees.”

  He reached out and touched a sharp apical bud, rolled as tight as a miniature cigar. “Beech leaves have highly denticulate margins and resinous leaf hairs. In other words, they’re really sticky. So when the buds open, two hundred thousand of them all at once, it sounds like the tree is giving a great big, raspy sigh of relief.”

  Amanda was taking Harry in. “Because spring has come,” she said.

  “Because winter’s over,” Harry said.

  They breathed the night forest, in and out.

  “I don’t know kids, Amanda. Beth and I didn’t have any.”

  He didn’t know kids, but he knew that Oriana was a fellow traveler. It scared him, it really did, but he sensed that, inexplicably, she needed something only he could provide. Winter was over, but spring had not yet come for him and Oriana. They were between uncharted seasons, at the cusp of change, but only at the cusp. He didn’t know kids, but he supposed that sometimes a kid needed something she couldn’t find at home, but only in the wild of the forest.

  “For the next few weeks, I’m just going to walk around these woods. Just be here. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  “Perfect,” Amanda said.

  “I’m here to stare at trees.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Believe me, I’m not perfect.”

  “Just keep being Harry Crane. Do your trees. Do your thing, Harry. Because whatever it is you’re doing, it’s already rubbing off on Oriana. Do what you need to do.”

  In a court of law, maybe, in the absolutism of the moral universe, it wouldn’t hold up. But for Harry, on this crazy night, it was permission enough. Besides, there was little choice. He was going to do his thing, not because he wanted to, but because he had to. A spell had been cast—he had been turned into a grum who, in some as yet unidentified manner, following the fairy tale rules demanded by a ten-year-old girl, was about to get rid of four million dollars.

  Harry and Amanda stood together at the railing a few minutes longer, then Amanda said good-night and went home to her bed.

  * * *

  Harry lay on his cot. Drifting into dream (for the second time that night), he watched a gold coin roll down from the top of a great pile of gold coins and vanish into a deep forest.

  Six miles north, dreaming in his bed, Ronnie saw a magic feather turn into a red-tailed hawk and fly in and out of the windows of his cabin.

  Stu, tangled in sweaty sheets, dreamed of Amanda, naked and holding bags of money as she walked into his real estate office, which was the size of a football stadium.

  Amanda dreamed of shimmering fireworks that became blossoming trees.

  Cliff dreamed of cows lined up in unforgiving rows, shaking their heads at him in disappointed unison and lowing mournfully.

  One of Cliff’s cows dreamed of Cliff, and mooed a blissful moo.

  Wolf dreamed twitchily of Harry cowering high up in the beech tree that stood in the front yard of their childhood home as Wolf, growling and on all fours, circled below.

  Olive Perkins called out in her sleep, “Grum! Grum!”

  While all the grown-ups (and cows) dreamed their dreams, Oriana was awake and at work on the computer in the kitchen, tapping the keyboard, quiet as a mouse.

  15

  Harry was up a tree. A young bitternut hickory, to be exact, thirty-five feet tall, base trunk diameter approximately forty inches. He looked at his watch. He had intended to fill his plastic water jug at the spring, head back up the spiral staircase to the tree house and make a cup of coffee. He had not intended to be in a hickory tree at seven thirty in the morning.

  It had been a long night, his first without his wedding ring around his finger. Lying on the cot through the dark hours, he’d fought the urge to put it back on. But he didn’t do it. He’d made it. And a cup of coffee made of spring water would have been just the thing. He would have calmly faced the day. Or at least had a shot at calmly facing the day.

  Instead, as he dipped the jug into the icy waters of the spring trickling down among the mossy rocks, Oriana came bursting into view. She had her school backpack on. Good sign—she wasn’t staying long. But the wildness in her eyes and the huge excited grin on her face—bad sign.

  “Here’s the plan!” she declared. “Here’s what you have to do with the four million dollars.”

  Gripping the water jug with both hands, Harry listened. Blinked. Blinked again and said, “No way. There’s no way in hell I’m doing that.”

  “But you have to,” Oriana said. “You agreed. The way you get rid of the money has to be unsafe. It has to be an adventure.”

  He knew what he’d agreed to. Something unsafe, yes. But this unsafe? This much of an adventure?

  “It can’t be legal,” he said.

  “But it is,” she said. “Give me your phone, I’ll show you.”

  Harry stared at the glowing screen, as she swiped to one site after another. This is completely insane, he thought. He could barely stand to look at the screen. Each time she went to a new site, the screen grew brighter. He grabbed the phone back from her.

  “You agreed,” she said.

  “I agreed to something.”

  “It’s perfect.”

  It was. But he wasn’t going to do it.

  “But I’m going to help you,” she said. “We’re a team.”

  A team? Ha! thought Harry. Wait until Amanda finds out. She’s going to absolutely love The Team carrying out The Plan. His brain had put it into capital letters. It kept growing, became a flashing neon sign. The Plan. The Plan. The Plan.

  “Go away, I’ll think about it,” he said, intending not to think about it. But it had permeated his brain—the dazzling scope of it, the simplicity, the rightness.

  “How long will this thinking take?” she said, eyes narrowing.

  Her phone chirped. Time for school. “How long?” she said again.

  “Go away,” Harry said.

  And the next thing he knew, Oriana was running back toward her house and he was climbing up the bitternut hickory. He was twenty feet off the ground before he even realized he was in a tree. He h
ad been leaning against the hickory trunk to steady himself as Oriana talked, pressing harder and harder against the smooth, tan bark, instinctively seeking the feel of the familiar and the known. When Oriana vanished into the underbrush, Harry turned and, without thinking, went up on his toes and took hold of a low branch.

  So now here he was, twenty feet up. He stopped climbing and sat on a branch. He was panting, his arms and legs throbbed. He was way out of shape. Of course he was. He’d barely moved his body in the last year.

  He took some deep breaths to slow his pounding heart. He nodded. “Okay. All right. This is good,” he said. There was nothing better than a tree. How long had it been since he’d climbed one?

  He took another deep breath, then looked the hickory up and down. It had a strong central leader. No signs of bark beetle or twig girdler. No limb rot.

  “Carya cordiformis,” Harry said. The formal Latin nomenclature uttered aloud was a steadying sound. “You look in pretty good shape. How are things?” The tiny tight catkins dangling from the tips of the branch (they would peel open in four or five days when spring touched them) trembled in the wind, and that was a kind of reply. Trees have their own way of communicating. It was a matter of listening closely, observing and knowing. Trees wanted to show you things. It had been a long time since Harry had looked.

  “Don’t see a lot of you guys in the higher elevations of the Mid-Atlantic Appalachians.” Harry felt a lovely calming sensation. He was in a forest, thinking like a forester. It had happened last night with Amanda, when they stood on the deck and looked over the night tree canopy, and it was happening again now. I am in a tree, thinking tree thoughts.

  He looked down at the silvery water trickling between the rocks. One of the hickory’s lateral roots was curled over the rim of the spring, like a straw deep into a tall drink. “You chose a good spot,” he said. The spread of a young hickory’s roots is double that of its crown branches. In deep summer, sudden intense wind gusts whipped through the upper Appalachians. The hemlocks and spruce might uproot, but a bitternut hickory, with its wide and deep root array, was windfirm. It would stand.

  “Windfirm,” Harry said. Good word. Windfirm.

  He stood up and continued to climb. He climbed until he reached the top. It was a small tree, but for Harry it was exhausting work. He held tight to the leader. The mountain wind blew gently, and with the addition of Harry’s weight, the leader swayed like the heavy pendulum on a grandfather clock. Harry ticktocked back and forth. His eyes closed, and he remembered a moment when he had been in a different bitternut hickory. Fifteen years ago in Chadwick Arboretum on the Ohio State campus.