Harry's Trees

by Jon Cohen

  Harry just staring at him. “Yeah? Is that how it was going to go?”

  Wolf returned his stare. “We’ll never know now, will we?”

  “I think we know.”

  “My little brother knows.” Wolf gestured at Oriana and Amanda. “Got your life all figured out now, do you?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Harry with his new life. Harry out here with his trees, all fixed.” Wolf sneering.

  The two brothers stood at the quarry’s edge. Harry looked into the abyss, then raised his eyes and looked at Wolf. His voice was quiet and weary. “You need to go, Wolf.”

  Wolf nodded. Then suddenly grabbed Harry and pulled him close. His mouth at Harry’s ear, his breath hot, his voice a low growl. “After Beth, you’re really going to try again?” Holding him in a suffocating embrace, whispering. “Harry, it’s in our blood. It never works. We’re the Crane boys. It always ends in disaster.”

  Wolf held him and then pushed him roughly away. Harry stumbled back.

  “Harry,” Amanda called to him. “Come on. Harry?”

  He turned and began to walk away from Wolf. Then immediately felt it. Even before he saw Amanda put her hand to her mouth. Before Stu’s and Oriana’s eyes went wide. It always ends in disaster. Harry whirled around.

  Wolf, thirty feet away, had turned to face the quarry. The toes of his shoes over the rocky edge. He’d raised his arms out in front of him, gesturing as if he were asking the quarry some profound question that only the quarry could answer. The arms kept going up. Now Wolf looked like a man on a high dive.

  Running toward his brother, Harry remembered this moment. How brave Wolf was. Long ago, at the town swimming pool—Wolf on the high dive that every kid feared. Maybe they’d jump from that height, but no one ever dove.

  Except Wolf. At ten years old, shoving past a line of teenagers, climbing, standing on the edge of the high dive, the most awful and beautiful sight Harry had ever seen. Young Wolf pushing off his toes, arcing above the water and dropping endlessly. Harry never saw him hit the water because he’d closed his eyes in terror, opening them again only when Wolf rose from the deep and splashed him, laughing at Harry and all the cowards of the world.

  Wolf on the quarry rim tipped forward, his feet leaving the rocky edge just as Harry reached out and caught the back of his shirt. Harry, who had never been so strong as he was right then, pulled on the great weight that was his brother, the unstoppable force that only Harry could stop.

  From behind, Harry’s arms encircled Wolf. Harry held him tight and lifted him in the air, twisting him toward safe ground.

  “Let go of me, asshole,” Wolf grunted.

  But Harry did not let go until Wolf wrenched free and faced him. Harry panting for breath, Wolf’s chest heaving, too.

  Harry stared at him. “What the hell’s wrong with you? Why’d you do that?”

  Wolf grinned. But his eyes showed something deeper. And his voice was not as cocky as he tried to make it sound. “You were there for me, Harry.”

  “What?”

  Wolf patted Harry’s cheek. “Just testing, little brother.”

  He laughed, then turned and walked away, vanishing into the dark of the forest.

  35

  Waiting for midnight to come, Ronnie zigzagged his truck through every square inch of Susquehanna County. He drove 297 miles, up and down back roads, winding through the state roads, hit all the towns, some of them twice. Halfordsville, Kempler, Findlerton, Bass Lake, Forest City, Elkdale. All twenty-seven of them. And when the speed limit signs said thirty miles per hour, Ronnie would go twenty-nine. He did not want to have a conversation with a state trooper.

  “Whatcha got under that tarp, sir?” the trooper would say, pointing to the flatbed of Ronnie’s pickup truck.

  Ronnie trembled at the thought. But he had eluded all the imagined state troopers, had not talked to a soul for the last seven hours. He looked at his watch. It was 11:45 p.m. Fifteen minutes away from destiny.

  Ronnie had never had a destiny. The fate of the world resting upon his shoulders. Or a little piece of the world, anyway.

  Oh, but Ronnie—he could feel Oriana’s voice inside him—that little piece is everything. Because that’s how the world is saved. Piece by piece, every day. Somebody like you has to step up. Somebody like you has to be wonderful.

  But what if I blow it? Fifteen minutes was plenty of time for Ronnie Wilmarth to screw up. His life had been a series of screw-ups. Crashing his truck drunk. Slicing his thigh at the lumber mill. Losing jobs, falling asleep in snowdrifts. The catastrophe of eating a hamburger while Dean Jeffers died alone in a field. Failing to hold Pratt Library together. Powerless to comfort Miss Perkins when her tears fell on The Grum’s Ledger.

  And eight hours ago he’d come so close to another catastrophe—almost losing Oriana.

  Ronnie pulled his truck over to the side of the road and stared wide-eyed into the country dark. Such a close call. Thinking about it, he began to tremble even harder.

  He had been at the library this afternoon, standing in the disaster of fallen bookshelves and leaking pipes. Doom all around him, and the quiet, heart-breaking sight of Olive, wiping her eyes as she wandered lost among her beloved books.

  She looked like a ghost, and Pratt Public Library her decaying mansion. Abandoned by Alexander Grum, her library in shambles, the county inspector closing in. Ronnie had failed her.

  She dropped into her worn-out chair in the Reading Corner, clutching The Grum’s Ledger.

  “Let me get you a different book, Miss Perkins.”

  “No, this is my book, Ronnie. The book of my life.”

  “That’s not true, and you know it. Look at all the books in this place. Every one of them is inside you. And you’re inside them.”

  “Sweetheart. It’s a public library, not my private library. It needs people.”

  “They got out of the habit, is all.”

  “The world has changed.”

  “No, everybody needs a story, Miss Perkins. That’s something that never, ever changes.”

  Ronnie looked at Olive in her chair. And at the rug in front of the chair. He saw himself, way back when, sitting on that rug with twenty or thirty other children. “Miss Perkins. Why did you stop reading to the children?”

  Olive sighed. “Budget cuts, sweetheart. I lost my assistant librarian. I had too much to do, keeping it all together. Things fell by the wayside.”

  Ronnie dropped to his knees in front of her. “Well, right there, Miss Perkins. That’s where your thread began to unravel. Don’t you think?”

  Olive looked at Ronnie, on the rug before her. And she, too, recalled the legions of children. Their faces upturned. Mouths open, eyes wide in anticipation.

  “You’re so tangled up in endings,” Ronnie said, gesturing at the scattered books and fallen bookshelves, “you forgot about your beginnings. Think of all the beginnings that began right here, in this magic place.”

  Olive stared at Ronnie, covered with dust, kneeling on the floor before her. What was it about this man that he was able to snatch such bits of poetic wisdom out of his muddle-head?

  “See, Miss Perkins, the thing is, you just need to get the kids in here again. You read one child a story. And it’s like magic. When they hear your voice, they’ll come back for more. And it’ll spread, Miss Perkins.”

  “That’s a wonderful thought, Ronnie. And the truth in it, indisputable.”

  “We’ll get you a new reading chair and a new rug.”

  “And four new computers, Ronnie, and high-speed internet. And a real librarian, not just an old volunteer. And a building that’s not falling to pieces.” She took his hand. “Sweetheart, it’s not just a rug and chair—we need so many impossible things.”

  “And we’ll get them, Miss Perkins. We will. Don’t lose faith. Don’t let that o
ld grum get you down.”

  She looked at The Grum’s Ledger, looked at Ronnie, so loyal. She tried to smile. But then she looked around at the drooping ceiling and the broken floor tiles and the fallen shelves. “Oh Ronnie. My dear, sweet boy, it’s over. Pratt Public Library is done.” Her words were like a candle going out.

  Ronnie felt the darkness closing in. Dean had guided him here to save the library. Olive had depended on him. Oriana had tasked him. Who did they imagine he was? He sagged beneath the weight of their expectations.

  And then the grum, who knew a thing or two about misery, added a little more weight to Ronnie’s despair. The Grum’s Ledger slid from Olive’s lap and fell into Ronnie’s hands, open to the illustration of the grum. Sitting atop his great pile of gold, he stared up at Ronnie. In the grum’s doleful eyes, judgment: I failed Olive Perkins, and now so have you.

  To every story we bring the story of ourselves. Oriana saw in The Grum’s Ledger a way to move beyond the loss of her father. For Olive, The Grum’s Ledger was a tale of love and remorse. Harry had allowed the grum to lead him toward adventure and redemption.

  Now, it was Ronnie’s turn.

  It was the story that had moved Oriana and Harry and Olive. The words. But it was the illustration sketched by Alexander Grum that seized Ronnie’s imagination.

  What Ronnie suddenly noticed was the mound of gold and the contours of the mountains behind the grum. Ronnie knew that mound. And he knew the shape of those mountains, because a hunter knows the landmarks of his terrain.

  Hunting in the forest, Ronnie had hiked around the old bluestone quarry a thousand times. At sunrise and at sunset, rain and shine. Seen it from every angle.

  The mound of gold beneath the grum was the largest pile of broken rocks in the quarry, and the mountains behind the grum were the Endless Mountains, viewed from the quarry’s northwest edge.

  And there was even a moon in the picture! Olive said it had been a moonlit night...

  Alexander Grum, too, had known the quarry. He had passed by it a dozen times as he went into the forest to meet his love. And on that ill-fated night, when he did not meet Olive by the maple tree, he stood staring into the quarry, the mountains moonlit in the distance.

  And forever after, fixed in his memory, was the emptiness he felt at that moment, the sight of stone piled upon stone, the weight and permanence of a cowardly decision.

  Decades later, haunted by that memory, old and dying, Alexander Grum had created a final sad image of himself—a creature perched on a pile of gold worthless and lonely as a mound of stone.

  And Oriana, Ronnie thought, filling with dread, you know the quarry, too.

  “Miss Perkins. Did Oriana read this?”

  “I’m afraid she did. Why I gave this tragic tale to a child...”

  Ronnie thinking as fast as he could. Oriana, you’ve held The Grum’s Ledger in your hands and you know the quarry. His heart was racing.

  That day in the forest, Ronnie had been tracking Oriana, watching over her. He knew she had sensed his presence, knew she had suddenly altered her course, pretending she had been heading all along toward the meadow. But Ronnie was a hunter, sensitive to paths and patterns. Oriana had been heading straight for the quarry.

  In the meadow, a few minutes later, Oriana had insisted he devote himself solely to the rescue of the library. Had she been trying to compel him away from something, so he would not interfere, not be her guardian angel, not watch over her? Was she up to something dangerous and didn’t want Ronnie to stop her? He had been so intent on his own story, he’d allowed himself to be outmaneuvered by a child.

  “What is it, Ronnie?”

  Ronnie dropped The Grum’s Ledger in Olive’s lap. “Miss Perkins,” he stammered. “I gotta go!” He took off.

  Olive watched him vanish. Her guardian angel—even he had given up on her. Who would not flee this place?

  She called after him. “Thank you, dear! You did everything you could! Thank you, thank you.” Her voice trailed off as the great doors of the library whumphed closed.

  * * *

  Sitting in his truck, waiting for midnight, Ronnie saw himself bursting out of the library, leaping in his truck, running so fast through the forest that when he came upon Oriana in the quarry and saw her teetering on the great mound of stone, he almost had a heart attack.

  To every story we bring the story of ourselves. He had not saved Dean, but he would save Oriana.

  She was turned away from Ronnie, frantically shouting into her cell phone. It slipped out of her hand. The phone fell. And reaching for it, Oriana fell. Leaping like a deer from the precipice to the mound of rocks, Ronnie caught her as she dropped. Pulled her to his chest and fell back on the mound of rocks.

  Oriana screamed and struggled. She thought she was in the clutches of the gold thief.

  “Oriana, it’s okay! It’s me. It’s Ronnie!”

  “Ronnie!” Oriana melted into his arms. She was a girl who did not believe in tears, but for a long moment she gasped and sobbed in the protective embrace of a grown-up.

  There were tears in Ronnie’s eyes, too. Holding Oriana as he had not been able to hold Dean. He looked up, and high, high in the sky, he saw a hawk vanish into the pale afternoon clouds. Ronnie kissed the top of Oriana’s head. “What are you doing here?” His voice was shaking.

  The story poured out of her. Harry Crane. The grum. The gold. Stu.

  Ronnie stared dumbfounded at the little opening to the cave. He had assumed Oriana was up to something sneaky and probably dangerous. In fact, she had been busy turning the world upside down and inside out.

  “We have to get it out of here, Ronnie.”

  “Harry Crane is Susquehanna Santa?”

  “Ronnie. We’ll use your truck.”

  “It’s just all so—”

  “Ronnie, we can’t let anybody get it.”

  “I know but—”

  “Ronnie!”

  “Okay!” Ronnie got a stick, wedged it under the oak log full of yellow jackets, gave it a jerk and sent it tumbling to the quarry floor. Then he used the stick to part the Virginia creeper and poison ivy vines, and Oriana rolled a rock to hold them in place.

  Crouched in the cave, Ronnie stared slack-jawed at the eight boxes, the top one torn open. He didn’t want to touch the gold, let alone move it.

  “So we put it in my truck. Then what?”

  “You deliver it.”

  Ronnie got the same “uh-oh” look Harry got when Oriana made such pronouncements.

  “Santa delivers it,” he said.

  “Santa is Harry and Harry’s not here.”

  Ronnie looked away. He was very scared.

  “You think you never do anything right.” Oriana waited until he looked in her eyes. “You know in the story, how the grum’s life didn’t go right? But in the end he figures it out and turns things around? Ronnie, this is your day. This is the day you set things right.”

  He gulped. Then squared his shoulders.

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  They made three trips to his truck, skittering like mountain goats over the rocks. The Ho, ho, ho note was Oriana’s idea. Ronnie had a carpenter’s pencil and a piece of paper in his truck. Oriana stuck the note inside the cave. Then she took off on foot in one direction and Ronnie took off in his truck.

  * * *

  It was midnight, and now here he was, right where he was supposed to be, on top of Zick Hill, staring at the dark and sleeping little clapboard house. Ronnie got out of the truck. The whole world held its breath. The spring frogs stopped piping and peeping. The owls in the trees stared. The wind went still. The clouds waited, the moon waited, the stars waited.

  Ronnie slid the burlap bag out of the back of the truck. He had to hold it in both arms because it weighed over 120 pounds. Though, to Ronnie, it felt light as a feather.
Ronnie looked up at the sky, half expecting one last feather to come floating down. But the time of floating feathers was over. It was now the time of gold.

  Midnight. The magic hour. And all he had to do was walk a hundred yards to those front steps and deliver the gold. A hundred yards of not screwing it up.

  “I can do this,” Ronnie whispered to himself. Just move your feet, Ronnie. And watch out for tree roots. Don’t trip on a stone. Here you are at the front walk. Here you are at the porch steps.

  It was the most amazing thing. Nothing went wrong. He didn’t screw up. In fact, he was perfect. He leaned down and placed the burlap bag on the top step. The coins plinked and settled.

  Ronnie looked up at the night sky. The owls hooted, the spring frogs broke into a peeping chorus, the wind rustled the leaves in all the trees—for this was the day he set everything right. This was the day Ronnie Wilmarth performed a miracle.

  Ronnie twirled, hugged the moon and threw a big kiss to the stars. Then he ran for his truck, jumped in and got the hell out of there.

  36

  Olive Perkins stood at the top of the old marble steps in front of Pratt Public Library. At the bottom, reporters with upthrust microphones. Behind the reporters, locals and out-of-towners filled Main Street. Despite being four feet eleven inches tall and thin as a blade of grass, Olive had the commanding presence of a general about to address the troops.

  Almost every person in that crowd was aiming a phone at her, taking pictures and videos. Olive was having her social media moment. If ever there was someone made for the internet, it was Olive Perkins. She knew exactly what all those cameras wanted. Cool as a cucumber, she put a match to her big meerschaum pipe, lit it and exhaled a giant plume of smoke, followed by four magnificent smoke rings. The crowd went nuts. The online crowd went even more nuts. An ancient, pipe-smoking librarian who’d just received millions in gold!

  She cleared her throat and began. “As most of you know by now, my name is Olive Perkins, and two days ago, a great big bag of gold landed on my doorstep.”