For the rest of the day, my brain absorbs nothing. Mr. Gill asks me something, then stands over my desk and glowers.
“Are we having an epileptic episode, Mr. Mawson? A petit mal seizure?”
The class laughs on cue.
I still can’t understand his question.
It’s not until I’m sitting in a Burger Barn booth drinking a chocolate shake that I can reason again. And even these thoughts seem filtered through some sort of whipped-cream cloud. Sam holds my hand across the table. The edge of her foot touches mine.
I can feel people glancing toward us as they line up at the counter for their fries or their Cokes.
Then Sam starts talking about her play, and I forget to worry about the watchers.
“It’s like dunking yourself in an alternate world, you know? I come out of the auditorium sometimes, and I don’t know whether it’s going to be light or dark outside.”
“I feel like that when I’m painting,” I say.
“So you get it,” Sam says. “It probably sounds crazy to everyone else.”
“It’s not crazy. It means you’re completely into it. You’re not thinking about homework or sleep or what you want for dinner. You’re…”
“Immersed.”
Her skin is the same color as my milkshake, and perfectly smooth. When we stand up from the table, she has whipped cream on her upper lip.
I want to kiss her again. But as I’m calculating angles and deciding which foot has to step forward, she’s already heading for the door, waving to friends as she goes.
Still, I might have a girlfriend, I think, after I’ve dropped her at her house and pointed myself toward home. My fingers tap rhythms on the steering wheel, as if I drank a dozen coffees instead of a shake.
•
At lunchtime on Friday, I knock on Judith’s door. She answers wearing boxer shorts and a hoodie.
“Get dressed,” I tell her. “We have to go downtown.”
“Why?”
“Because I need new clothes.”
I looked at my jeans this morning and couldn’t remember when I’d bought them. Yesterday, when I slung an arm around Sam between classes, she wrinkled her nose.
“You smell like the woods,” she said.
I dropped my arm.
“In a good way.”
I’m pretty sure she was being polite.
Judith comes through as I knew she would. Within twenty minutes I’m locked in a change room at a store I’ve never noticed before, as my sister throws more and more “options” over the door. I try on three pairs of jeans and almost get stuck in a shirt with a zipper. A shirt which I am never, ever going to wear, no matter how bad my other clothes smell.
“Stop!” I say finally, escaping the cubicle before she can bury me entirely. “Just tell me which ones to buy.”
Of course she chooses the zipper.
“Not that one.”
I end up at the register with a pair of jeans, a couple of pairs of shorts and four new T-shirts.
When I asked for cash this morning, Mom gave me what seemed like an obscene amount. But fashion apparently costs money.
“Do you want to wear one of these? I could cut the tags off?” The girl behind the register is draped in an off-the-shoulder shirt with hoop earrings that almost reach her shoulders. She’s looking at me with the same slight nose-wrinkle Sam wore yesterday.
“That would be perfect,” Judith says.
So I find myself in the cubicle one more time.
“I’m not going back there for five more years,” I tell Judith once we’re safely on the sidewalk. My heart is pounding as if a helicopter just swept over.
She pats my shoulder. If I were shorter, I think she would pat my head.
“But thank you,” I say.
“Anytime.”
Back at school, Sam notices my new shirt immediately. In a good way.
I think I might wear this one for the rest of the week.
•
On Sundays, Dad preaches. All the words he’s been holding inside his head during the week pour out in a burst of evangelic fervor, and it’s as if he’s talking to the entire forest rather than the three of us.
During the winter we sit around the kitchen table for his services, but when the weather improves, we troop to a nearby clearing — what Mom calls the cathedral. A fallen log provides a bench for her and Walt, and an old stump allows Dad to lean when his back gets sore.
Today I settle cross-legged in the moss, while Hazel and the twins elect to watch from the edge of the trees. I absentmindedly scratch the shape of an earlobe into the dirt, until Dad looks at me sternly, as if I’m a toddler.
“If we’re ready?” he says.
He begins his first prayer. “Thank you, our Heavenly Father, for the abundance of food which you have provided for us. Thank you for friendship and kinship on this day. Thank you for good weather and good harvests to come.”
“Fucking prick,” Walt says.
“We pray you’ll bring healing where needed, to our bodies and to our minds. We pray you’ll help us focus our thoughts on the righteous…”
It’s always interesting to hear one of Dad’s prayers. It’s like a window into his brain. I wonder if Mom, too, waits for Sundays to learn what her husband’s thinking about.
We stand and sing “Awake My Soul and with the Sun.” I’m not a singer, but Mom and Dad both have decent voices. Sometimes, when their notes twine together just right, I can almost see the sound rising into the canopy.
As we sit again, even Walt is quiet. Dad opens his Bible and begins his sermon.
He tells a story about three servants. Their boss goes away and entrusts them each with money. The first two invest their portions and have extra to give their boss when he returns. But the third buries his share. That guy gets tossed.
When he’s finished the parable, Dad motions to the forest around us.
“All this has been given to us,” he says. “We’re meant to use it wisely, to cherish it and to make it grow.”
He continues, and I nod every once in a while as if I’m paying close attention, but in my head I’m still with the servants. The two who invested and the one who buried. Was it really so bad for the guy to bury his gift? He kept it safe, at least. No hasty decisions or wild risks. Those other two could have lost everything.
Back at the cabin, Mom dishes us veggie soup and I take mine to the front stoop. Hazel noses up beside me. Once I’ve finished, I let her lick the bowl like an overgrown puppy. Then she plops down, gazing into the trees as if she’s trying to see what I’m staring at.
Often there’s a feeling I get after Dad’s sermons. It’s as if church puts everything back in balance. For a few hours, the birds sing exactly what they’re supposed to sing, the trees grow just as they’re supposed to grow, and I’m right where I’m supposed to be.
But today I’m still thinking about Dad’s story. About needing to make proper use of our gifts. I know that Dad thinks of this place — our cabin and these woods — as his gift.
When I think of gifts, though, I think of something different. I think of painting.
I make my way through the trees toward the drying shed, where we spread the crop every August. Though it’s empty at this time of year, a pungent waft of Draft Dodger Dark greets me as I unlatch the door. Beside me, Hazel snorts.
I wait for my eyes to adjust. Slowly, charcoal patterns emerge from the walls. One wall is a crowded street scene in San Francisco — shoppers and storefronts and signs. The next wall features an old-fashioned muscle car. The third is a house with baskets of flowers hanging from the eaves.
I once asked Dad if it was Walt’s house, the place he grew up, but Dad didn’t know.
“It’s like looking at cave paintings, isn’t it?” I say now.
Hazel doe
sn’t answer.
Walt can draw. Or he could, at least, before his stroke. He could draw better than I can. But as far as I can tell, the only art he’s created in the last few decades is here in the backwoods, smelling like skunk.
This seems like the official definition of burying your gift. So is Walt the third servant? And what does that make me?
I back out of the shed and carefully relatch the door. Then I nudge Hazel’s shoulder.
“Do you think Mom and Dad will understand if I’m gone a little more often this month?” I ask her.
Hazel grunts. If she has suggestions for life planning, she doesn’t share them.
•
Sam is leaning against the wall again, waiting, when I pull into the school parking lot on Monday morning. She jogs toward my truck and climbs inside.
Before I realize what’s about to happen, she leans across the seat and plants a kiss on my lips. As if we’ve been together for years. As if I’m used to having girls in my truck, or in my life at all for that matter.
I think my new shirts are working.
She shuts the door behind her.
“Let’s get out of here,” she says.
I glance at the school, then back toward her. She’s tough to figure out, this girl. She’s like two or three personalities wrapped into one. When we had milkshakes together, she said only good things about school. She told me she liked Creston so much better than her last town.
Now she wants to ditch. Now she’s the girl who climbed out of her dad’s car and hiked into bear territory for the heck of it.
And let’s not even talk about that poem. What kind of person has the guts to write that?
Maybe women are as unpredictable as bears.
She reaches over and beeps the horn.
“C’mon. Do it, Zac. Start the truck and peel out of here.”
Her grin is like a dare. My keys are back in the ignition.
The passenger door flies open. Lucas stands there, swaying slightly. He’s stoned. I see it, then I smell it.
“What the heck?” I shake my head. It’s not even 9:00 a.m.
Sam’s already sliding into the middle of the bench seat and patting the upholstery beside her.
“Climb in,” she says. “We’re getting out of here.”
Lucas does. He clambers up, slams the door and lets his head flop against the seat back.
I drive.
I guess my subconscious decides where we’re headed. I could go west, over the summit. I could drive east on the long straight highway that leads to Cranbrook, a slightly larger and grittier version of Creston.
But I head north, toward home.
Or rather, toward the campground.
Lucas explores the webbing between his fingers in the glow of the sunlight.
Sam and I glance at each other. I give a small shrug. Just because our lockers are together doesn’t mean I understand the guy.
“Rough morning?” I ask.
“Family issues?” Sam asks at the same time. She’s braver than I am.
I take my eyes off the highway for long enough to see Lucas nod. It’s hard to tell if it’s really a nod, or if his head is too heavy for his neck.
“Anything we can do?” Sam asks.
“I’ve got it covered,” he says. He raises one finger, as if he’s a professor about to lecture. Then he gets distracted by a hangnail.
“There’s a lot of…pressure,” he says eventually. “I generally think of myself as an expert in handling pressure. But sometimes…this morning, for example…it grows more crushing, and I find myself needing a pressure release. A valve.” He really does sound like a professor. Except stoned.
Sam smiles the same crooked smile that got me on the hiking trail in the first place.
“We understand exactly,” she says.
I glance at her again, wondering what made her need to skip school this morning. And I think about Lucas’s word.
Crushing. I don’t feel crushed, exactly. I feel like opposing forces are pulling at me.
Sam’s fingers are resting lightly on my thigh, which is causing a different sort of pulling.
“So…your parents?” Sam asks Lucas.
He shrugs. “My dad feels very strongly about a certain type of achievement.”
Something doesn’t make sense to me. “Isn’t your dad a…”
“Psychologist.”
Sam laughs.
“I know. It’s a classic case.” Lucas turns to Sam, finger raised again. “I have a rationalization. I know that my father’s father was a man prone to violence. Are you following me?”
We’re following him.
“It is my personal belief that Dad became a psychologist to determine where things went wrong.”
“But…” I don’t want to say the obvious.
“Well, he’s trying. He doesn’t always succeed, that’s all.”
When we don’t answer, he turns his head toward Sam a little.
“What profession does your father pursue?”
“He’s a member.”
“He’s RCMP?” Lucas asks.
“Yeah.”
I almost drive off the road. Lucas puts a hand on the dash to steady himself. Sam’s fingernails imprint my leg.
“Sorry. Thought I saw a deer.” I force my hands to unclench a little on the steering wheel.
RCMP. A cop.
I may not know exactly which path I’m supposed to be on, what I’m supposed to be burying and what I’m supposed to be investing, but this is not a good development. I’m in my truck with the daughter of a cop, on my way to the campground nearest my family’s grow-op.
I think I’ve screwed up.
7
It’s hard to drive with my thoughts spinning around like cop car cherry lights, but I manage to get us to the campground. I circle past the first loop of gravel sites, then pull to the side of the dirt road and take a deep breath of the quiet.
Each tent pad here is a perfect square. The sun has finally crested the mountains and steam rises from a canvas tent here and there. An older couple sips coffee near a small RV. The lake glistens through the trees from across the highway.
Lucas has gone silent, eyes closed, but Sam looks around curiously.
“You have a plan?” she asks.
I’m embarrassed, suddenly.
“I thought we might visit someone. A guy who may or may not be living in a treehouse.” It’s not exactly a plan. It’s simply what I’ve wanted to do ever since I heard Mom and Dad talking about him.
I manage to explain to Sam what my mom said about the druid who stayed behind after the convention.
“The thing my dad checked on that day,” she says.
“Right. Because your dad’s a…” My words trail off, but Sam doesn’t seem to notice.
“And this guy lives up a tree,” Lucas says, his eyes open again. Well, one eye, at least.
“Up a tree,” I confirm.
“Impressive.”
“It is a little awesome,” Sam says.
I know where the old treehouse is. This is practically my backyard, after all. I doubt there’s a place on this whole mountain that Judith and I haven’t climbed on or up or into. One dry summer we even climbed through the culvert that shuttles the creek beneath the highway. So we’ve been to the treehouse, though I can’t imagine living there. As I remember, it was a few rotting boards dripping with moss.
I lead Sam and Lucas up the hill above the tent sites, picking through the underbrush and holding back branches for them. It doesn’t take long to reach the platform.
He’s made a few improvements.
Modern druids have the advantage of nylon. He’s stretched an orange tarp in the canopy, one corner tied lower, with a pail dangling underneath to catch the rain. Looking more cl
osely, I can see he’s used a combination of rope and driftwood to reinforce the floor. He’s even lashed a railing around the edge. The bottom of a red sleeping bag dangles from one side.
“Swiss Family Robinson,” Lucas says, staring upward.
“Hello?” Sam hollers.
Though there’s clearly no one on the platform, I somehow expect the druid to float down from the trees. I’m a little disappointed when he saunters from the brush.
“Welcome,” he says, as if this were his backyard instead of mine. He’s bushy haired and bearded, but wearing more Gore-Tex than I would have expected. No robe.
“Welcome, yourself,” I say.
Sam is more friendly. “Nice place,” she says. “Very unique.”
“I would invite you up, but I am not sure it can hold all of us,” he says. “Can I make you some tea instead?”
“Don’t take tea from strange druids. I think there’s a rule about that,” I whisper as we trail after him.
Sam grins and elbows me.
The druid’s name is Amir and he’s originally from Iran. An Iranian druid. Lucas laughs when he hears this, then unsuccessfully tries turning the sound into a cough. He’s still having trouble keeping a straight face when Amir leads us to an old VW Van.
There are lawn chairs. Druid life is not what I imagined it would be.
Within a few minutes, we’re sipping mint tea from travel mugs. Amir lights a joint and passes it to Sam and Lucas, who suck in a lungful each. I wave it away. I don’t usually smoke. For all his pride in Draft Dodger Dark, Dad has strong ideas about the effects of pot on the teenage brain.
“So, I don’t get it,” Sam says after a while, turning to Amir. “You have a van, but you’re sleeping up a tree?”
Lucas can’t hold it in any longer. He starts giggling like a little girl. Apparently the professor act is over.
“For the experience,” Amir says. “To really be with myself in the forest, you understand?”
His pot is a crappy sativa hybrid, left too long on the plant. I can tell by the fumes. He could find himself more quickly if his product weren’t all smoke and no substance.
I’m fairly disappointed. Maybe I was expecting an oracle. Someone with the wisdom of the woods. This guy doesn’t even have the wisdom of ganja.
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