The Woodlander

by Kirk Watson

  He returned the next day, and this time the door was answered by a stout squirrel who John assumed must be Sharon’s father. Mr. Payne was dressed in an elegant suit with satin lapels. He held a tumbler of brown liquid in his paw that gave off an odor so strong it stung John’s eyes.

  “What do you want?” Mr. Payne asked brusquely.

  “Is… is Sharon home?”

  Mr. Payne looked John up and down for a long moment, noting his tattered clothes and dirty cap. “She most certainly is not.”

  Mr. Payne shut the door in John’s face. Dejected, John turned and began to walk back to his bicycle. Halfway there, he stopped and returned to the door. He knocked persistently until Mr. Payne answered.

  “I told you,” Mr. Payne said, “Sharon’s not home.”

  “I know you did,” John replied, “but I forgot to tell you something.”

  Mr. Payne stared down at him, taking a sip from his tumbler as he waited, but John just stared back silently. Mr. Payne narrowed his eyes. “Well, what is it?”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  Mr. Payne scowled, slamming the door so hard he spilled his drink on his fine jacket. John listened through the door as Mr. Payne cursed up a storm. Rather pleased with himself, he returned to his bicycle and pedaled home. That night, he could hardly sleep, confident it was just a matter of time before he and Sharon were reunited.

  The next day, he returned to the stately sycamore tree at 1 Orchard Lane. He knocked on the door until Sharon’s father answered. This time, Mr. Payne wore a velvet smoking jacket and held a pipe in his paw. The stout squirrel didn’t say anything, but just stared down menacingly at the young paperboy standing in his doorway.

  “Is Sharon—” John began, but before he could finish, Mr. Payne slammed the door in his face.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow!” John called through the closed door. Once again, he rode his bicycle back home, not the least bit discouraged.

  He returned the next day, but before he could even knock, the hedgehog butler flung the door open. The butler snarled at him, snapping a pair of gardening shears maniacally. John shrieked, running for his life as the butler chased him down the entranceway. John hopped on his bicycle and sped away from the crazed hedgehog, but not before remembering to shout back, “I’ll be back tomorrow!”

  And so he was. But this time, he didn’t even bother with the front door. Eschewing the entranceway, he crept up to the tall hedges surrounding the yard and peeked over. Not seeing anyone around, he began to scale the tall bushes. He had one leg over the hedges when the butler suddenly appeared in the backyard with a garden hose. The butler unleashed a torrent of water that caught John square in the face, knocking him back to the other side. John picked himself up, wrenched the water out of his cap, and placed it back on his head. He cupped his paws and called over the hedges, “I’ll be back tomorrow!”

  Not receiving any reply, he reluctantly pedaled home, his bicycle squeaking pitifully under its drenched rider.

  For two more weeks he returned to the Payne residence daily, and for two more weeks the butler successfully repelled all his advances, defending the castle that held John’s princess with such efficiency that John had to admit he was probably a very good butler. Yet John remained undeterred.

  Then one day at work, Mr. Finn pulled him aside on the loading dock. “John, I’ve been hearing some complaints from a customer. Mr. Payne says he’s being harassed by one of my paperboys. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  John looked down at the ground. “Well, harass is a pretty strong word…”

  Mr. Finn sighed. “John, tell me what you’ve done.”

  “Nothing, Mr. Finn. If anything, Mr. Payne is harassing me!”

  “Now, why would he do that?”

  “Because he doesn’t want me to see his daughter; he thinks I’m not good enough for her, being a paperboy and all. He’s chased me with clippers, sprayed me with a hose, honey-and-floured my head, somehow trained a hive of bees to attack me on command—”

  “Mr. Payne did all that?” Mr. Finn asked in astonishment.

  “Well, no, his butler did most of it. But I’m sure he was just following Mr. Payne’s orders.”

  “And yet you keep going back?”

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Finn. I have to see her again, no matter what her father thinks of me.”

  “I see. The problem is, Mr. Payne’s a very important customer of this paper. And a very influential lawyer. He’s threatened to sue the Post if I don’t fire you.”

  John’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, no, sir! Please don’t fire me. I need this job!”

  “Don’t worry, John, I won’t fire you. You’re the best employee I have. But I am assigning you to a new paper route. I need you to stay away from Orchard Lane and Mr. Payne’s daughter. Do you understand me?”

  “But, Mr. Finn… I think I love her.”

  Mr. Finn smiled at him sympathetically. He took a knee and placed a paw on John’s shoulder. “I know it feels that way now, son. But you’re young. Believe me, a few years from now, you won’t even remember old what’s-her-name. You’ll see.”

  Mr. Finn patted him on the head and walked away. John sat on the loading dock and hung his head.

  “Her name is Sharon…”

  Now, five years later, John sat forlornly in the library, thinking of a girl when he should have been writing his valediction. He stared down at the page:

  Sharon

  How many times had he written that name? Hundreds? Thousands? He had sent Sharon so many letters that the post office soon gave him a bulk rate, but every one had been sent back unceremoniously stamped Return to Sender. He suspected Sharon’s father was behind the rejections, and he couldn’t be sure Sharon even knew he had been writing her, but what else could he do? Both Mr. Payne and Mr. Finn had barred him from seeing her.

  With no other recourse, he continued to write her daily, and the returned letters began to accumulate in the Grey household at an alarming rate. John did not have the heart to throw out a single letter; each contained a piece of him, and he could no more discard a letter than he could discard a vital organ. Instead, he had removed the clothes from one of his dresser drawers and stuffed the heart-rending missives inside until even that was not enough to contain his love for Sharon. Soon another drawer was emptied and stuffed full of the love poems and plaintive decrees. And then another drawer was sacrificed. It wasn’t long before John’s entire wardrobe had been relegated to several piles on his bedroom floor. When the dresser threatened to burst from all the returned letters (much like his own heart), he began to commandeer the use of the kitchen’s cupboards and cabinets, displacing the dishes and cups within to the countertops.

  John’s father endured all this patiently, never uttering a single word to discourage his love-struck son, but they never spoke of it, either. They ate their dinners in silence, sipping their acorn tea and pretending not to notice their home had been infested with love letters. And despite the letters’ unrequited nature, they seemed to be multiplying faster than rabbits.

  But John kept his word to Mr. Finn and stayed away from the Payne residence, though he often rode his bicycle to the meadow outside her gated community and sat on a hill eating lunch, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sharon. But never once did she appear. He began to worry she might have moved away. Panicked by the thought, he grilled the paperboy who had taken over the route.

  No, he hadn’t seen her, the paperboy reported, but he did meet her father once while collecting a bill. Mr. Payne seemed rather displeased to see him, he said, and the wealthy lawyer didn’t tip him at all, which was unusual, since he had been previously known as a generous tipper.

  For one full year John had to content himself with just the memory of Sharon sitting amidst the lilacs, until one day the Langley Post ran a story about Mr. Payne. It seems he had made a rather large donation to Langley’s finest prep school, the Langley Preparatory School for the Gifted and Talented, and in appreci
ation, the school was naming its library The Payne Library. But more importantly to John, the article was also accompanied by a small black-and-white photograph, an expensive rarity for the struggling Post.

  In the photograph stood Mr. and Mrs. Payne, resplendent in their fine clothes, and in between the smiling parents stood a beautiful young squirrel holding a parasol. She was taller than John had remembered, and her cheeks not as puffy as the little girl he had met a year ago, but he recognized her at once.

  Sharon!

  John studied the grainy photograph for hours, poring over it like a detective trying to discern a hidden clue. Sharon had a coy smile, he decided, as if she were in on some secret joke. And she held her parasol at a jaunty angle, an observation that convinced him she could not be a pretentious squirrel, for surely a pretentious squirrel would hold her parasol straight and proper. No, Sharon held hers playfully, indicating she must be a warm and loving squirrel. And the single string of pearls around her neck told him she was not an ostentatious squirrel, unlike Mrs. Payne, who wore several beaded necklaces and gaudy jewels in her ears. No, Sharon didn’t need all that—her beauty came from within. She must be a well-grounded, considerate squirrel, he told himself.

  Convinced he had discerned some insight into Sharon’s good nature, he cut the article from the paper and tucked it into his shirt pocket, a place he would keep it for many years so she would always be close to his heart. Though thrilled to have finally caught a glimpse of Sharon, he was equally dismayed by the separation between their worlds. The article in the Post only magnified these differences. Sharon lived a life of opportunity and privilege only available to the wealthy, while his was a struggle just to make ends meet. He couldn’t imagine how those two worlds could ever collide, especially with Sharon’s father carefully guiding her path.

  Weeks later, John sat on the Langley Post’s delivery dock with his feet dangling over the edge. He pulled the article from his pocket and stared at the photograph. Mr. Finn happened to be passing by as John emitted a sigh.

  “What’s the matter, John?”

  John handed the clipping over without saying a word.

  Mr. Finn skimmed the article. “Ah. Isn’t this the same little squirrel that you got in some trouble over last year?”

  John nodded, staring at his feet.

  Mr. Finn scratched his chin. “I thought by now you would have forgotten her.”

  “I can’t, Mr. Finn. I think about her all the time.”

  Now, to say Mr. Finn was a taciturn fox would be an understatement. Especially during working hours, which he firmly believed were for working, not day-dreaming. And Mr. Finn made sure all of his employees knew it as well. He was well known to snap a book closed with a resounding thump if a reporter dared to doze off at his desk, and he regularly patrolled the premises looking for workers dallying in the back-alley, smoking cigarettes or throwing dice. They could do these things on their own time, Mr. Finn scolded them, but not while they were on his clock.

  But what most of the Post’s employees did not realize was that Mr. Finn was also something of a romantic. They did not know, for instance, that it was Mr. Finn who wrote the poems that appeared in the Saturday edition of the paper (the sweeping odes to love were published under the pseudonym The Forlorn Fox). Nor did they know that before he had entered the newspaper business, Mr. Finn had been a novelist—though none of his books had ever been accepted for publication. “Too predictable,” the rejection letters often said. But Mr. Finn never gave up, a quality he recognized and admired in John. To see the young squirrel now sitting so dejected on his loading dock broke his heart. He took a seat next to him.

  “So, you think about her all the time, do you?” Mr. Finn asked, pursing his lips as he studied the photograph. “Then I guess the only question is: what are you going to do about it?”

  John looked up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s fine and good to think about her, but it seems to me that if you don’t tell her how you feel, then your suffering is all for naught, now, isn’t it?”

  “Mr. Finn, I tried, but I can’t—”

  “Can’t? What is this word you’re saying, can’t? I don’t recognize this word, and I’ve certainly never heard it come from John Grey’s mouth before. Who taught you this word can’t? Have you been hanging around a bad crowd? Just wait until I tell your father.”

  A slight smile appeared on John’s face. “No, Mr. Finn, it’s not that. I just don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to see her, but her father won’t let me anywhere near her, and even you told me to stay out of her neighborhood.”

  “So you’re giving up? Just like that?” Mr. Finn held a paw to his head. “Dear lord, what has happened to you, John Grey? What happened to that young squirrel who waited at my loading dock every morning asking for a job, and every morning when I sent him away empty-pawed, he always replied, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow’? And you know what? Every morning, he did come back, until he got that job. That squirrel didn’t know the meaning of can’t. Tell me, John, what happened to that squirrel?”

  John smiled weakly. “I thought you hated that squirrel.”

  Mr. Finn chuckled, “Well, he was a real pest, I’ll give you that. But I came to respect and even admire him. In any case, this can’t be the same squirrel sitting next to me now. The real John Grey would never give up so easily.”

  “I get it, Mr. Finn, I do. But what would you have me do? Her father—”

  “If her father is the only obstacle, then all you need to do is wait until he’s not around.”

  “But he’s always around, or at least that nasty butler of his is.”

  “Then why don’t you try to see her outside of her home?”

  “I would if I could, but as far as I can tell, she never leaves home.”

  “Never?” Mr. Finn said, handing the article back to John. “It seems to me that the answer you seek is right in your paw.”

  John stared at the clipping, not comprehending for several moments. “Langley Prep? You think she’ll be attending Langley Prep this fall?”

  “That’s where I would send my daughter if I were as wealthy as the Payne family—it’s the best prep school in Langley. That’s where you’ll find her, and without her father to stand in your way.”

  John contemplated this for a moment. “So, you think I should wait for her outside Langley Prep?”

  “No, my dear boy, I think you should attend Langley Prep.”

  “What? Me? Attend Langley Preparatory School for the Gifted and Talented?” John folded up the newspaper clipping and stuffed it back in his pocket. “That’s a laugh. I appreciate your concern, Mr. Finn, but now I think you’re just having fun with me.”

  “Why not you, John? I’d wager you’re more gifted and talented than any student in that school, and certainly twice the worker.”

  “But I can’t afford—”

  “There’s that word again,” Mr. Finn interrupted. “Can’t. Perhaps if I knocked you upside your head you would forget it. Did it ever occur to you that Langley Prep might have scholarships? Have you even tried applying?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?”

  John gave Mr. Finn a worried look. “What if they say no?”

  Mr. Finn stood and chuckled. “I can’t believe I have to tell John Grey this. Son, if they tell you no, then you tell them the same thing you told me: I’ll be back tomorrow.” As Mr. Finn walked away, he called back, “Maybe they’ll have better luck getting rid of you than I did!”

  That day, after he had finished delivering his papers, John rode his bicycle to the prestigious prep school and parked the rusty contraption with meticulous care next to the other students’ shiny new ones. He crisscrossed the manicured lawns, going door to door until he located the administration office, a regal two-story brick building with massive white columns. He climbed the steps, opened the heavy oak door, and stepped into the parlor, noting the peculiar way the plush carpet squish
ed between his toes.

  In the reception area sat the headmaster’s secretary, her desk plaque identifying her as Ms. Sipplan. The attractive young otter wore a white blouse with a large alabaster brooch at her neck. Near her desk was a door bearing a plaque that read “Headmaster Clark” in block letters. Ms. Sipplan regarded John skeptically from behind her horn-rimmed glasses as he approached.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “Yes,” John said, removing his cap. “My name is John Grey. I’m here to see Headmaster Clark.”

  “I see,” she said, checking the calendar on her desk. “I don’t see your name on my list, Mr. Grey. Do you have an appointment?”

  “Well, no. But it’s very important that I see Mr. Clark right away.”

  “May I ask to what this pertains?”

  “I want to enroll at Langley Prep for the fall semester.”

  Ms. Sipplan took off her glasses and set them down on her desk. “Mr. Grey, one does not merely enroll at Langley Prep as if he were ordering a sandwich at the deli. We have thousands of prospective students, many of whom have been on the waiting list for years. I’m afraid it would be impossible to admit you this fall.” She looked the shoddily dressed squirrel up and down before adding, “Even if you were qualified.”

  John squeezed his cap in his paws and gripped the carpet with his toes, fighting to control his temper. “I understand, ma’am, but if it’s all the same, I would like to see the headmaster. It’s very important.”

  With a sigh, Ms. Sipplan put her glasses back on and scanned her calendar. “Very well. Mr. Clark is available three weeks from today at 10:30 in the morning.” She looked at John over her glasses with a tight-lipped smile. “Shall I put you down then?”