Harry's Trees

by Jon Cohen

  Cheers from the crowd.

  “Everyone’s been asking me, ‘What are you going to do with the money?’ Well, I suppose I could buy a pink Cadillac and hit all the night spots in Scranton. Or I could go on one of those fancy cruises—sit on a ship the size of a skyscraper, drink piña coladas and wave at the porpoises.”

  Laughter and applause.

  “Or hell, I’m old, maybe I’ll just buy a marble coffin and throw a fancy funeral for myself.” She paused and drew on her pipe, exhaled. “Well, Cadillacs move too fast, cruise ships move too slow and coffins move you to a place I’m not ready to go.”

  The crowd laughed and hooted and cheered.

  “So, what am I going to do with my money? I’m going to spend it on an old friend.” She patted the stained marble edifice of Pratt Library. “Like a lot of us, she’s been through some hard times.”

  A reporter shouted, “But aren’t libraries obsolete? Why waste the money?”

  Another called out, “People can download books.”

  Another shouted, “Do you have enough to save it? And how will you get people to come?”

  Olive pointedly didn’t answer. She waited patiently until the questions subsided. Then she called over her shoulder. “Ronnie.”

  The big doors behind her opened and Ronnie Wilmarth, wearing a suit, his hair combed, brought out a large overstuffed chair and placed it beside Olive.

  The crowd murmured, aimed their phones. What was this crazy old librarian up to? Olive smoothed her dress and sat in the chair, looked out at all the faces and serenely puffed on her pipe.

  * * *

  Two days earlier, as was her morning custom, Olive had pulled her down vest over her worn red flannel nightie and gone out on the front porch of her little house to eat her oatmeal and watch the sun rise from behind the Endless Mountains. It was cloudy. Olive was particularly inspired by dawns like this when she could not see the sun. It gave her strength and comfort to know that it was out there, rising, doing its daily job, unthwarted by clouds, rain or snow. That’s the way she liked to think of herself. Against the impediments and disappointments of life, she was a riser.

  Olive found out exactly who she was and what she was made of all those years ago when Alexander Grum had abandoned her. Even though he left a goodbye note, she stood for hours beside the stone wall, holding her leatherette suitcase, a lone passenger waiting for a train that never came.

  How strange and terrible it was to remove the engagement ring from her finger and bury it at the base of the maple tree.

  How awful and lonely to walk out of the moonlit forest, make her way back up to her bedroom on the third floor of her parents’ house, unpack her suitcase, and lie down on a single bed instead of a hotel bed in the honeymoon arms of a new husband.

  She lay in the dark and whispered, “Goddamn you, Alexander Grum.” Goddamn you, she thought, for breaking my heart. But Alexander, I would rather suffer my broken heart, than endure the suffering that is coming to you. What a terrible thing you will carry inside you for the rest of your life. I forgive you, but you will never forgive yourself.

  That morning, all those years ago, despite the devastation in her heart, the sun rose. The world had not ended. Watching the sun from her window, young Olive thought, Now I understand how life works. There are no guarantees, except that every morning, the sun will rise. No matter what happens, good or bad, each day will be followed by a new day.

  Would I rather have loved Alexander, Olive thought, or never have met him? Is it better to stay safe in your bed, forever hidden in a room, or venture, each day, into life?

  Olive got out of bed that morning.

  And she got out of bed every morning thereafter. She let go of one life and began another.

  White-haired and old, she stood now at her front door, oatmeal in hand, and looked out at the Endless Mountains. Even on this day, with the loss of the second great love of her life, somehow Olive had gotten out of bed. She had survived the loss of Alexander Grum, and she would survive the loss of Pratt Public Library.

  No, she would not survive. She had a sudden terrible thought, one she had never had before. She stood there looking toward the Endless Mountains, and for the first time in her life she didn’t care if the sun rose.

  She suddenly noticed. The sun...wasn’t rising. It’s not rising, she thought to herself, because I have died in my sleep. I am in a dark place because I am dead. But why did I fix a bowl of oatmeal if I’m dead? That seems curious. Well, life is so strange, who’s to say death is not even stranger?

  And then she began to cry, because she had died before she had a chance to say thank you. She wanted to thank the sun for faithfully rising for so many years.

  More important, she wanted to thank Pratt Public Library. Thank you, Charles Dickens and Stephen King, Willa Cather and Mary Shelley. A big thank you to historical biographers, particularly Robert Caro. A special thanks to all the writers of children’s books, even the brothers Grimm, who were a morbid pair, but vivid in their descriptive power. And wait, she forgot to thank the poets. There was such a nice little poetry section in Pratt, just behind the children’s books.

  Olive was so immersed in gratitude, she did not at first notice that the night clouds had vanished and the sun was peeking up from behind the mountains. She squinted in the overbright light. Heavenly light? she wondered. Because the blinding light was golden. Golden and, inexplicably, it was rising upward from the front porch steps.

  Olive looked down.

  “Oh,” she said. The bowl of oatmeal dropped from her hands and clattered to the porch.

  An animal had torn open the burlap bag in the night and spilled its golden contents all over the steps.

  “Oh,” Olive said again.

  In among the scattered coins was a note. Olive lowered herself to her knees and reached for it. She adjusted her bifocals and read the penciled words. It will never be enough, but I hope it is something. Love, the grum.

  She stared at the note for a long time. Then she cleared a spot for herself and sat on her top step, surrounded by gold. She faced the bright, spring-green Endless Mountains. “It’s more than enough, sweet grum,” Olive whispered. “It’s everything.”

  * * *

  Now, two days later, she sat in her overstuffed chair on the marble steps of Pratt Public Library.

  The crowd was waiting. Cameras on her. What was the old librarian about to do? What was happening?

  Olive looked at Ronnie, off to the side. She nodded. Ronnie had been holding a book behind his back. He handed it to Olive, then he sat down on one of the marble steps just below her, and looked up, his expression rapt.

  The crowd buzzed and jostled.

  Olive took another long draw on her pipe, then hushed the crowd by giving the universal librarian signal for silence: she placed her raised index finger to her lips and said, “Shhhhhhhh.”

  “Today’s book,” she said, “chosen by Ronald Wilmarth, is Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson.”

  Everybody in the crowd went still. What a sight. All over the nation, and in many parts of the world, people leaned closer to their laptops and squinted at their phones.

  “‘Part One. The Old Buccaneer,’” Olive read out loud. “‘I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door—a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek.’”

  A little boy squirmed out of his mother’s arms and started toward the grand staircase of the library. His mother caught him. Olive smiled and called out, “That’s fine. Let him come. You reporters, step aside, please.”

  The little boy scooted up the stairs and sat beside Ronnie.

  Ronnie whispered to the boy. “I love this next part.”

  The b
oy put his finger to his lips and said, “Shhhh.”

  All of this caught on camera, shared online, instantly bounced from site to site.

  Olive read on. “‘I remember him looking round and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:

  “‘Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest—Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!’”

  More children came up onto the steps. A few grown-ups, too. Tentatively at first, tiptoeing forward, finding a seat on the marble steps, staring up at the librarian whose words were as magic as an incantation.

  Everywhere, people stopped what they were doing, and...listened. Even the reporters listened, transfixed. They pulled out their earpieces, ignoring the producers shouting in their ears. They wanted to hear a story. They wanted to know what happened next.

  When she finished the first chapter, pausing occasionally and turning the book around to show an illustration to oohs and ahhs from the crowd, someone called out, “Don’t stop! Keep going!”

  Olive read three chapters that day. Online, the first hashtag popped up: #SavePrattLibrary. Donation sites appeared. Volunteers came forward.

  It was a good thing that spring had come to the Endless Mountains, because every day, Olive had to sit out on the front steps of the library and read to the insatiable crowds of people. She read herself hoarse.

  Suddenly, Olive Perkins was the librarian of the most famous library in the world.

  37

  Harry sat in the booth with Amanda, looking around Green Gables, as if in a waking dream. On the TV above the bar, footage of Olive Perkins, regal on her chair in front of Pratt Public Library. Around the bar, Cliff, Ronnie, Stu and a bunch of the EMT guys.

  Harry watched Stu say something, and everybody laughed. Stu patted Cliff on the back and signaled Tom. “Another round for the fellas, barkeep, s’il vous plaît.” Tom rolled his eyes.

  Old Walter said, “Stu buying beers. Olive on TV. Don’t know what New Milford put in the water supply but I hope it works on me. I could use a new knee.”

  Ronnie wasn’t drinking beer. He was sipping a ginger ale and craning his neck to watch Olive. He was trying to hear the story she was reading. He’d already heard it, of course, because he was on that TV screen, too, popping into frame occasionally beside Olive. Ronnie Wilmarth on TV, he thought. Can you believe it? And Olive had gotten him on the Library Renovation Committee. Me, on a committee. Can you believe it?

  When Tom delivered the beers, Stu ordered a round for Harry and Amanda, too. He looked across at Harry, absolutely baffled that there were such men in the world. After they’d gotten his bee-stings and poison ivy fixed up, Stu took Harry aside, opened his hand and revealed that he was still in possession of three gold coins from the ones he’d stolen when he’d first came upon the gold (Wolf had taken the rest from him). He’d hidden them in his shoe.

  Harry shrugged and closed Stu’s hand back over the coins. “Our little secret,” he said.

  Stu had almost wept. He looked now at Harry and thought, There sits Susquehanna Santa. And that’s my little secret.

  Cliff was looking over at the booth, too. But at Amanda. She met his eyes and held his gaze, and that was enough to settle his soul. It was not often a man got to right a wrong. The cows in their evening stalls; sitting among friends in a friendly place; Hoop quiet and undisturbed up in the hills—Cliff felt pretty okay.

  Harry looked at the men at the bar, at Olive up on the TV, at Oriana over in the alcove between the restaurant and the bar playing on the skittles table. She bowled the little wooden ball. Pins toppled. She pumped a fist. “Yes!” Then it was her friend Tess’s turn. Oriana had asked if she could invite Tess to dinner at Green Gables. Amanda said, sure, that would be fine.

  Amanda watched Harry watching.

  When Oriana came back to the table, she was chattering with Tess about how it would soon be warm enough to swim at Acre Lake.

  “Are you a good swimmer, Harry?” Oriana said.

  Harry said yes, he was a pretty good swimmer.

  “And how about ice skating? Because in the winter, we always go ice skating on the lake. Do you have ice skates, Harry?”

  Before Harry could reply, she burbled on about how they’d get ice skates for him, if he didn’t have any.

  Harry listening, just as he had in the car on the way to Green Gables, as Oriana had talked excitedly about how next spring she would show him how to collect sap for maple syrup and how she was going to be in the end-of-the-year play and would he come? She went on and on.

  This imagined future. It was unbearably beautiful.

  * * *

  Harry, alone in the tree house. The moon so big and bright. He reached his hand into the moonlight beaming through the stained-glass windows, as if he could take hold of the shimmering reds and blues and yellows. But there was no holding on to it.

  Through the big triangular window, another light beckoned. Harry went out onto the deck. In the distance, a light flickered in the forest. He went down the spiral staircase and walked toward it.

  The light disappeared and reappeared. A flame. He smelled the pipe tobacco and came upon Olive Perkins sitting on the stone wall, smoking peaceably. She regarded him as he approached.

  “‘Are you a Being Natural or a Being Unnatural, O forest-dweller?’” she called. “Hello, Harry. Nice to see you again.”

  Harry had the same sense about her as when they first met: Olive Perkins, veiled in smoke—very witchy. Especially in the moonlight.

  “I’ve been out here, pondering,” Olive said. “This old wall—very good for pondering. I believe you stood right here, not so long ago, and pondered a thing or two.”

  Harry looked from the wall, to the broken limb on the maple tree, back to Olive.

  “And on that day,” Olive continued, “you found a book.”

  “Left by a witch?”

  Olive laughed.

  “Left by an Oriana. Oh, I might have had something to do with it. In the sense that I’m a librarian, and she’s a very compelling reader.”

  “Very,” Harry said.

  “My dear Harry, the hour is late, so let’s not pretend. You’re pretty compelling yourself. In fact, you’re a damn wonder. And on top of everything else you’ve accomplished, you saved my library. So allow me to give you a gift in return. The only gift I know how to give. I’d like to read you a story.”

  She produced The Grum’s Ledger.

  Harry shook his head. “I’ve read that book. A thousand times.”

  “Music to a librarian’s ears! So, tell me what happens.”

  “The grum gives away the gold and he feels better. He’s fixed.”

  “Are you fixed, Harry?”

  “Yes. Good things happened. I feel better. I helped Oriana.”

  “And the money is gone?”

  “The money is gone.”

  “And so the curse is lifted?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s all the story was about?” Olive sighed. “All right. Time to read it again.

  “‘Once upon an endless time in the Endless Mountains,’” she began.

  Harry put his hand over the book. “I know the story. By heart.”

  “Well, there’s a vital word. Heart. Aren’t you forgetting the final scene? He uncovers his love, Harry. He gets the girl, and they live happily-ever-after. And your deal is even better. At the end, you get two loves.”

  “My deal with the grum was the gold.”

  “So we just tear out the last page of the book? We pretend it’s not there?”

  Harry didn’t answer.

  “Ah. You want the guarantee. The grum suffered from a similar affliction.”

  Harry looked in the direction of Amanda’s house. A single light just visible through the trees. “I don’t want an
ything to happen to them.”

  “But Harry. It’s not just that you don’t want anything to happen to them. You don’t want anything to happen to you. And that’s how you turn into a grum.”

  Olive held the book open, and the grum looked at Harry with doleful eyes.

  “The Grum’s Ledger is a tale of regret. In real life, there was no happy ending. Alexander Grum died alone because he was afraid to seize love and risk all the unknowns that go with it. He chose certainty—and it was his ruin.

  “The only guarantee I could offer him—against all the unknowns, all the obstacles—was that we would face life together.”

  The wind picked up. Harry looked into the forest. Looked at Olive, now standing in front of him.

  She placed the book on the wall and stepped away from it. “Take it from an old librarian—there lies a book that need never have been written.”

  Harry put his arm around Olive. She leaned against him.

  * * *

  The wind woke Amanda. When she went to the window, Harry was standing in her backyard. She pulled on her terry-cloth bathrobe, eased past Oriana’s room and went downstairs. She opened the kitchen sliding door and went out into the backyard.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I saw your light.”

  “I didn’t have one on.”

  “A trick of the moon, maybe,” Harry said.

  “I’m not in the mood for tricks. I have a little girl who expects you to be here tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that, and the one after that. An endless string of tomorrows with Harry.”

  “I know that.”

  “Maple syrup in the spring. Ice skating on Acre Lake. Everything she was saying at Green Gables, and you just sitting there letting her believe it. It’s not fair to her. And it’s not fair to me.”

  “I know that. That’s why I’m here. I need to run through my list of guarantees.”

  That stopped her. “Guarantees.” Amanda narrowed her eyes and wrapped her bathrobe tight around her.

  Harry moved a little closer. “Will you, Amanda Jeffers, guarantee that when Oriana rides her bike, she will never fall off?”