Harry's Trees

by Jon Cohen

  Thus, Harry grew up with a singular ambition and life skill: Wolf avoidance. Harry spent a lot of time in his tree, as far away as possible from Wolf’s constant and dizzying ping-ponging between being a protective big brother and a soul-crushing oppressor. Perpetually antagonizing Harry, but offering unwanted paternal security, too, like a Mafia godfather. Even the most benign interaction, like calling him in for dinner, felt like an act of aggression.

  “Hey, asshole in the tree,” Wolf would shout from a window. “Time to eat.”

  Safe asshole in the tree, young Harry would think.

  But never safe enough. Now, up in his tree house in the middle of the forest, Harry contemplated Wolf—was forced to contemplate him, because Wolf had just left a midnight voice mail on Harry’s cell phone. Wolf had been silent since their first and only text conversation. And Harry had been unnerved by that silence. There should have been an hourly tirade of texts and messages after Harry had blown him off and gone into hiding. A brooding, silent Wolf was a bad thing.

  But now there was a call. Harry could just delete it. But he could no more delete it than turn off Wolf’s long-ago voice, broadcasting nightly through the childhood heat vent. The voice a threat, but a comfort, too. Because if Wolf was speaking to him through the vent, he wasn’t in the room with Harry—which was a deeply important notion, because sometimes Wolf would creep into Harry’s room and suddenly leap out of the dark onto the bed, put a pillow over Harry’s face, just for a moment or two, followed by a hard pinch on the cheek, all of it happening so fast Harry couldn’t cry out. And then suddenly Wolf’s voice starting again on the other side of the wall, as if nothing had happened but Harry’s imagination bringing the dark to life.

  Harry lay in the tree house. He did not want to hear Wolf’s voice. On the other hand, to not hear Wolf’s voice always held the threat that a silent Wolf was creeping close. Purely psychological, because Wolf could not be close.

  “Wolf, you are not in this tree house with me.” Or out in the night forest or in Susquehanna County or even in Pennsylvania. You are home in your own bed in Virginia. But it was unnerving that Wolf, with that sensitive nose of his, had placed his call on the very day Harry had purchased the first of the gold. Detecting Harry’s move, deeply unhappy that he was actually following through on his threat to unload the money. But that was impossible: Wolf could have no idea where Harry was, or what he had done today.

  Harry’s finger hovered above the delete button. Things are going fine here, he thought. Things are excellent, in fact. Just delete him. And poof, he’s gone.

  Instead, Harry put the phone to his ear and listened to the message.

  “Hi, Harry, it’s your big brother, talking to you through the heat vent.” Laughter, then a thick cigarette cough. “Oh shit, remember those days? Me talking to you. Helping you through the rough and tumble of life. That was fun, though, right? The stories we used to invent.”

  You invented, Wolf. And not for my benefit. Harry looked across the darkened tree house to make sure the vampire with the blood-hump wasn’t crouching. Don’t let Wolf into your head. This is good news, hearing his voice. It means he’s somewhere that’s not here. Where could he be but in Virginia, wrangling through the terminal stages of his divorce. Whatever he has to say, he’s just messing with my head. All he can do is play games. I’m safe. The gold is on its way. I’ll be rid of it, and any last claim Wolf thinks he has on me will be gone.

  “I just want to say, I hope everything is going okay for you out there in the forest,” said Wolf.

  Harry sat bolt upright on his cot. Oh shit. He’s not playing around. Dropping that line like a bomb. Wolf wasn’t guessing. He knows.

  “Yeah, forest,” said Wolf. “You left the office, and you went straight to your little forest hideaway.”

  Phone to his ear, Harry was up off the cot and standing at the large triangular window, peering into the night forest. Wolf had gone to the office, like a private detective. Harry could imagine it. Wolf prowling the cubicles, pressing people.

  “Boy,” Wolf said, “you left some pretty pissed off people at your office. Not pleased at all that Harry Crane jumped ship.”

  Wolf would have gotten to Bob Jackson. Weak, lazy Bob. Harry could just see Wolf pressuring him.

  “And are you up a tree, Harry? Right this minute, you are, right? I know you are. Because you are the world’s most predictable man. Harry sitting in the biggest tree in the forest.”

  “Jesus,” Harry whispered.

  Wolf laughed. “I know my Harry.” Wolf’s voice sounded like it was coming to him through the heat vent, like he was that close, that dangerously intimate. I know my Harry. Every time Wolf’s voice paused in the voice message, Harry, squinting into the night forest, thought he saw him slide from behind one tree trunk and move to another. Wolf advancing.

  “Harry, I know you’re listening. I like a brother who listens. What I don’t like? A brother who runs.”

  Harry stared into the forest.

  “I led you to the money,” Wolf said. “It exists because I made it happen, goddamn it!”

  Harry held the phone away from his ear, Wolf’s voice rupturing the peace of the tree house. “I want my share, Harry!”

  Harry wavered, then shook his head, as Wolf continued to shout. No shares, Wolf, the gold has been promised. The gold is for Oriana. It’s out of both of our hands now. It’s all moving forward and you can’t stop it. You’re bluffing, you don’t know where I am.

  Wolf said, “Your forest is no different than your old bedroom, Harry. You always thought you’d be safe, if you kept very still. But then I’d pounce, wouldn’t I? Out of the dark. I never let you down. You always knew I’d come. And I came.”

  Harry cringed, then swallowed. For a long moment, he heard nothing. And then Wolf’s final whisper. “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the Wolf bite.”

  21

  Oriana in the den on the computer. Amanda in the kitchen slicing vegetables. Oriana listened to the knife, rapid-fire on the cutting board. Clack clack clack clack clack, like a woodpecker. It was after school. Oriana had finished her snack and was racing through her homework. She’d been waiting all day to go into the forest to start her secret mission: find a hiding place. She had one last math problem, which she only pretended was homework. Oriana was a smart girl, very good in math. But this problem was a little tricky. She used round numbers because it didn’t have to be exactly exact. From the internet, she knew the price of gold was currently about a thousand dollars an ounce, and that gold coins weighed one ounce. So, the first part of the problem: 4,000,000 ÷ 1,000 = 4,000.

  Oriana smiled. Wow. Four thousand gold coins! That’s why Harry wanted a wheelbarrow.

  But how much did they weigh? That mattered for the hiding place. “Mom,” she called to the kitchen. “I have to do ounces to pounds. If I have four thousand ounces and I have to make pounds...”

  Clack clack clack. “Okay, think,” Amanda called to her. “What do you have to do first?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How many ounces in a pound?”

  “That’s easy. Sixteen.”

  “Okay, so the next step...”

  “Just a hint. Is it a times or a divide?”

  “A divide.”

  Oh, yeah, of course. Oriana typed the numbers into the calculator: 4,000 ÷ 16 = 250. “I got it, Mom, thanks.” Four thousand coins weighed 250 pounds. A big wheelbarrowful.

  Amanda scooped the carrots and peppers into a bowl. Oriana came into the kitchen. “I’m going to go to the tree house now, okay?” She reached for a carrot and bit into it.

  After Dean died, Oriana fell out of the habit of friends. But suddenly, out of nowhere, Oriana had a friend. Harry. And that wasn’t a bad thing, Amanda thought. You start with one friend, whoever he might be, and that gets you back in the habit. Amanda felt a little guilty,
placing so much on Harry—he had no idea how much. Save Oriana from enchantment. Save Oriana from solitude.

  Was it selfish? Maybe. But didn’t Harry need friends, too? Amanda knew exactly what he’d been through. If she hadn’t had Oriana, the thereness of another human being—Amanda didn’t know how she would have gotten through the year. Oriana was good for Harry. And Harry was good for Oriana. Friends were good. Which was the reason she gave herself for what she had done.

  “Just to let you know,” she said to Oriana, “I invited Harry to Green Gables. For our Tuesday night.”

  Oriana studied her.

  Amanda put her hands on her hips, cocked her head and returned the stare. “It’s the nice thing to do. He could probably use an outing.”

  “But we don’t want to scare him off,” Oriana sad. “He likes it in the woods.”

  “I don’t think Green Gables is too scary. Except for the lettuce in the salad bar.”

  Oriana studied her some more, then she said, “Okay.” She made for the back door.

  Amanda stopped her. “How about a coat, darling girl?” She reached for Oriana’s red coat.

  “Winter’s over, Mom.” Oriana dashed for the door. Running across the backyard, she thought, And red is the last thing you wear in the forest when you are on a secret mission to find a hiding place for four thousand gold coins. It was just a little fib she’d told her mother. She would go see Harry—after she found a hiding place for the gold.

  * * *

  Amanda stood there, thinking: No, we don’t want to scare Harry off. But he’d done something pretty amazing, climbing the beech tree. A simple meal at Green Gables was a perfectly reasonable way to acknowledge what he’d accomplished. And ease him back to the world, a little bit. He seemed ready for that. It was time for that.

  And no, she told herself, inviting Harry to Green Gables had nothing to do with having seen him bathing naked in the stream. She’d almost wanted to apologize to Harry outright, because pure and simple, you do not spy on people when they’re naked. That was Cliff’s specialty. Though she couldn’t get that image of Harry out of her head as she stood at the bottom of the spiral stairs waiting as he came down from the tree house. He was fully dressed, but she blushed as he came into view.

  He was surprised to see her standing down there. “Good morning,” he said. He had two empty plastic milk jugs for toting spring water.

  “Good morning. Sorry, don’t mean to intrude—”

  “You own the place. You’re allowed to intrude.” He smiled. He was trying to act casual. She seemed a little flustered.

  They stood before each other.

  “You had a big couple of weeks out here.”

  “Thanks for the food. You make a mean sourdough bread.”

  “All that climbing. Had to make sure you were eating right.”

  They both stared at the ground.

  “So,” she said. Hesitated.

  “So...are you upping my rent?” He gave her a questioning smile.

  She met his eyes. “No, I’m—we’re—inviting you out. There’s this local place. Green Gables. We eat there every other Tuesday. Tonight, in fact.” She cleared her throat. “It being Tuesday, and everything.”

  He didn’t respond. He was assessing.

  Her eyes met his. “Harry, we need to celebrate. Or, not celebrate, but, you know, commemorate—or whatever the darn right word is—mark the occasion. That you did it.” She pointed to his left hand, at the white band of skin where the ring had once been. Then she pointed up into the beech tree, towering above them.

  Harry said, “You must have been thinking, The guy’s crazy.”

  “Batshit crazy. But. Harry, I don’t quite know what all that climbing had to do with the ring—except I totally do. It was your process. Trees. The wild need to move. Believe me, I know it’s a big deal. I was a crazy person after I took my ring off.”

  “Wait. You said you tossed yours in a drawer.”

  “I did. That’s true. Then five seconds later, I took it back out and put it on again. Then took it off and ran outside and chopped, like, an entire winter’s worth of kindling. After a crazy week or two, it finally stayed off and in the drawer.”

  Harry laughed knowingly. He pointed up into the beech, endlessly tall above them. “Crazy is climbing a tree like that.”

  “But you got to the top. And the ring is still off.”

  “It is,” he said.

  She didn’t ask what he’d done with his ring. And he didn’t tell her.

  “You look better, Harry. Stronger. Healthier. As a nurse, I can see the difference.” But what she really saw was the image of him in the stream, the water beaded on his skin. She had moved closer to him, without even being aware of it.

  But Harry was aware. He took an imperceptible step back from her. “Thank you, nurse. I do feel a little better. Healthier,” he said.

  “Right. Good. So the next stage is—you have to get out of the house. Getting on with life means getting back in the world.”

  She had Oriana in her life, and it had forced her back in the world. But Harry, it seemed obvious, had no one.

  He was going to say no to the invitation. The gold—the last thing he wanted was to be out in the world. A guy who was about to do what he was about to do, doesn’t show his face to the world. He was shaking his head, but then suddenly, he was nodding. Because you do show your face. When the gold started landing, he didn’t want to be the mysterious guy out in the woods in a tree house. “Okay. Sure, yes. I’d like to come.”

  “Great.” She looked at her watch. “I have to run. I’m late for work.”

  But there was something else she had to say, it was on her face.

  “What?” Harry said.

  “So it’s over now, right? The climbing phase. We’re good?” Amanda looked away, then looked him straight in the eye. “The beech tree—you scared me to death. I looked for you up there, saw a snapped limb.”

  That’s why she was flustered, thought Harry. That’s why she keeps blushing. I scared her. And she doesn’t scare easily.

  “And I came running out here,” she said. “But you were okay.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to cause—”

  “It would be very hard on Oriana if something happened to you.”

  Harry nodded.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?” she said. Looking him in the eye.

  “Don’t die.”

  “Correct. Don’t die. It’s one of the rules of The Year One Club. Members aren’t allowed to die.”

  She turned and headed off into the forest.

  And with that, Harry had been invited by Amanda to Green Gables. Out of the forest and into the world.

  * * *

  Oriana was threading her way through the trees, when she suddenly felt the tingle-zing. A tingle-zing (her father had taught her when she was five) was a disruption in the stillness of the forest—an unlikely breeze, a tremble of leaves, the faint snap of a distant twig. A still forest is the opposite of still. It’s noisy and alive, filled with mammalian shiftings and insectal rustlings, bird calls, opossum chitter, bear moans. But sometimes there was a palpable change in that busy stillness, a kind of trespassing. Usually it was a predator—a hawk or an owl whooshing unseen through the canopy. Or a branch, weighted down with a hundred years of lichen, thumping to the forest floor.

  This time the tingle-zing was Ronnie.

  Dumb me, thought Oriana, immediately shifting course to throw Ronnie off. In her excitement, she’d been making a bee-line for the abandoned bluestone quarry. With all its rocky overgrown nooks and crannies, it was perfect for hiding gold. And it was near the old quarry road, where Harry parked his car. You can’t let Ronnie suspect, she told herself. She turned in the opposite direction, east toward the little meadow in the middle of a spruce grove, which was a
favorite spot.

  With all the grum and Harry commotion, she’d forgotten about Ronnie, their ever-hovering guardian angel. He hadn’t been around lately. Oriana scanned right and left. The forest had gone still again. Where was he?

  Then she heard Ronnie’s voice, coming from the spruce shadows to her right, a soft mournfulness in it. “I heard you were gathering up your candy and treats,” he said. He was about twenty feet away, standing in the dim. He was a shy creature. A Boo Radley of the forest.

  He waved a bashful hello and ventured into the meadow. “The grown-ups make you do that? Grown-ups, sometimes they had enough of something. Call it foolishness and what all, make you stop doing it.”

  Grown-ups, thought Oriana. He’d said the word twice. Meaning somebody other than just Amanda. Ronnie was terrible at keeping secrets. But Harry was probably pretty good at secrets. Ronnie must’ve found him. That had to be it. A woodland intruder as big as Harry, Ronnie would spot him. Why wouldn’t Harry have mentioned it, though? Grown-ups are tricky, Oriana thought, even when they’re on your side.

  Oriana plunked herself down in the grass and began plucking spring daisies, white flowers perched on long stems, tiny versions of their big summer cousins. Ronnie sat beside her.

  “Where you been, Ronnie?” Oriana began weaving the daisy stems.

  He got a sly look. “Pratt Library. All day, every day,” he said.