its impressive reach into the sky. Attuned in this way, we soon discovered that a tree could transfer its thoughts into our bodies without a sound.
Almost always, the first thing a tree told us was its name. Sometimes we had to wait to hear it, but no one would speak until all of us had received the tree’s communication. Then, after counting to three, we would all say the name the tree had told us at the same time. Nearly always, at least two of us would say the same name.
The huge evergreen with the plume soaring up into the belly of the clouds, told us its name was Skybrusher. With its giant bristles, it could brush the clouds wherever it wanted, sweeping them away to leave the sky clean and blue again. We often asked it to clear away thunder clouds when we were planning picnics, and it always did.
The two trees with their trunks pressed solidly together were called The Lovers. As a child, Madge had been fascinated with those two trees and the way their branches intertwined. Once she pointed to some sap oozing down one of the trunks. This was followed by weeks of speculation. Did trees fall in love? Could they have babies? Did they have sex?
As we walked through the grove now, Madge touched a beech tree with a bulbous protrusion erupting out of its side. I smiled. “Remember how I used to think a baby raccoon was living in there, making that bump?”
Madge nodded. “I wasn’t much better. I thought it was a beehive. I never got too close in case a bee would come out and sting me.”
I reached for the next tree. “And here’s Red. Big Red.” I looked up into a gigantic maple. In summer, its muscular limbs seemed to ride the wind like a cowboy.
We walked on until we came to my favourite tree: Candelabra. A magnificent pine with a trunk over four feet wide, its torso rose up mightily for about fifteen feet, then split into four offshoots, each rising straight as an arrow, a tree in its own right. The most remarkable part was that just as the gargantuan trunk divided, there was a little bowl-like sitting place. As children, it had taken all of us together, one standing on top of the other’s shoulders, to hoist one of us up there, but oh, the bliss of sitting in this tree’s giant palm.
Looking at it now, the sitting place seemed unreachable. How did I ever climb up there the night of the rape? I guess when you feel crazy, you can do crazy things.
I leaned back against a tree and breathed deeply. I didn’t want to remember that night now. I let my back fall against the solidness of the trunk and felt calm. “Strange how the older I get, the simpler are my pleasures,” I said.
Madge chewed her lower lip. “I’m the opposite. The older I get, the harder it is to find what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“Right now? Boyd.”
I nodded thoughtfully. Over and over in my psychotherapy work, I saw how people wanted things that couldn’t possibly fulfil them. Strange how you can’t get enough of what you don’t really want.
Madge nudged my arm and we wandered down to the lake. A strong wind breezed across the water, cooling my sweaty skin. The surface of the lake was choppy as if being pushed in too many different directions.
“Isn’t that Elfreda Pepper over there?” Madge asked, looking down the shore.
Following Madge’s glance, I saw a small-bodied old woman walking unsteadily between the trees. My back tightened.
“There’s someone I wish you could work with.” Madge said, looking at me intently.
I said nothing. I made sure my face gave away nothing. Elfreda had called me once, but she’d been drinking, so we hadn’t been able to get very far. It was difficult being a psychotherapist in a small town. In a big city, the lives of clients and therapist seldom interfaced. But in a small community, the boundaries were more difficult to maintain and I was always encountering clients: at the supermarket, at garage sales and social events. Once I’d sat with a client trying to dismantle a debilitating depression, only to be introduced to him an hour later at a dinner party.
“Imagine what that old woman’s been through.” Madge sighed deeply. “Nursing a husband through cancer and then having him and her daughter die in the same month. Cancer and a car crash. What a load. No wonder she wants to drink herself into oblivion.” She dipped her sweat band in the cold water and wrung it out.
“Humbling, isn’t it, what people have to bear,” I said quietly. Bone breaking abuse, life-guzzling addictions, death of loved ones. No one was exempt from the egregious cruelties of life. I knew. I heard about them day after day in my counselling work.
“Did I ever tell you about seeing her sleeping down here?” Madge continued. “She was curled up under a tree! Just like a bag lady. It was pathetic.”
I shook my head sadly. I didn’t know Elfreda well, but from what I’d heard, the woman was exceptional, when sober. She’d championed the opening of a women’s shelter in town, set up a food bank, raised money for needy children. Before the tragedy in her family, she’d organized some of the interesting old ladies in town for outings, discussions and social reform. They called themselves The Granny Group. Over the winter, I had led them in an exercise class once a week, although Elfreda hadn’t been there in a while. When she was, she had the quickest wit of them all.
“I just hate to see such a fine old lady go down the tube like that. Isn’t there anything you can do?” urged Madge.
“I wish. But my mother’s alcoholism taught me well. You can lead a horse away from water, but you can’t force it not to drink.”
Madge adjusted the orange sweat band around her forehead. “Well,” she said unhappily, “we’d better push off.”
We turned to walk back through the trees.
“What the hell is – ”
“Going on,” I whispered. I tried to swallow but my throat was dry. Pickup trucks were parked out by the road and men were cordoning off an area around several of the big trees. Two men in hard hats and steel-toed boots were standing beside Skybrusher. A chain saw was at their feet.
| Chapter 2 |
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Surely in God’s name, they’re not –” My voice died in my throat, along with my hope. Numbly, I watched as one of the men walked around the circumference of the tree calculating its width.
“They are!”
Madge’s words sounded far away as if I’d already begun running across the park. I saw my hand raise involuntarily in some feeble attempt to stop her words from coming towards me.
In front of me the air lightened as if I were standing on the edge of an abyss. My legs itched with an impulse to run away before something dangerous happened. Because something dangerous was close to happening. Very close.
I watched the man lift the chain saw, heard the engine explode into a hard, biting sound and felt Madge grab my arm. A sick dizziness came over me. My legs quivered, caught between running towards the men and running away. Then a great gust of energy thumped against my back and swept me forward.
As
