This story contains themes or mentions of suicide or self harm.
Mom’s a mom. She never picks me up from school, and since I enjoy walking through the woods, two miles is too close for a bus pickup. especially on days in the fall when basketball practice hasn’t started, the air is cool, the flies and mosquitoes are gone, and the temperature is lower. I like silence. I like the walk’s lack of words.
I’m led off the path by a pretty sugar maple with bright orange frills. I get up to pay her a visit. I realize that I sound odd. A boy of sixteen calling a sugar maple pretty. Before he hung himself from a tree, my dad taught me to appreciate them. Dad and trees, I love them even more right now. The oldest maple is five hundred years old, did you know? It’s called the Comfort Tree by them. All trees are comfort trees, according to Dad.
. I search the sugar maple for a perfect orange leaf and plan to press it between two sheets of waxed paper, just like I did as a child, but I can’t find one. It matters not. Even waxed paper is not available to us at home. Things are not saved at home.
To get to the creek, I follow a line of golden, round-leaved aspens, which are clone trees that have grown from the male’s root system. In Greek, aspis refers to a shield, “Dad stated. Aspens protect and encourage bravery. Aspens of bravery Aspens that glow. Do you think it took courage to commit suicide, Dad? Did it bother you to leave me?
The therapist stated, “Depression is a villain.” Your father was persuaded by that villain that the world would be better off without him.
I could have defeated the bad guy. If only I had told my father how much I needed him.
I sigh. I try to breathe more deeply. Cold dirt and fallen leaves give off a pungent aroma that I inhale. Dad smells like a mixture of old blood and decay. When I was a kid, I had no idea what the smell was. What a medical examiner did was unknown to me. Sweet and thick, the smell was sweet. The only thing I knew was that my dad’s scent. Jimmy, a friend of mine, enjoys the scent of skunks.
My backpack is small, with few books and little homework. Teachers don’t add to their piles of ungraded papers now that the semester is over and Thanksgiving is a week away. At a willow, I drop my bag. I remove the leaves from a branch. On a rock, I sit. I play the fisherman.
“Knock. I say, “Knock.” Who is present?”
“Get fish out of water with a hook.”
“Dad? Are you there?”
I reach out to unhook him, but he evades my grasp. How did I let my dad get away from me?
“You weren’t to blame. You could not do anything.” It was said by the therapist. Although I am aware that she does not feel that way, Mom said it.
I keep Dad’s pictures in a tackle box. Even though he smiles, his eyes still appear sad. We both wear matching red hats on our heads in a birthday picture, the kind that look like a paper cone and have elastic bands that dig under our chins. He leans in toward me. His arms enthusiastically embrace me. He focuses on me. I examine the cake. I’m getting ready to blow out six candles with my mouth open. I’m glad. We were content. However, the photograph captures his sadness for me. Perhaps because his smile resembles the one I use in all of my school pictures. Perhaps because his dry lips appear a little too stretched out over his teeth. or because the corners of his mouth do not easily extend into his cheeks.
Seven years too late for more jokes about knocking on doors. I have waited seven years too long to make him laugh, to make him happy, and to give him reasons to stay. I ought to have made him want to stay with us.
Mom is concerned, so I want to tell her that I walk through the woods. Trees and apples, I overheard her say. I’ll try to keep him alive my whole life. She refers to me. Keep me alive, she intends. I want to convey to her that I am enraged, crushed, and flattened by her burden. I’m afraid, so I want to tell her not to worry about me. As if her thought is a foretaste, I’m afraid.
The oak tree in the yard has a black scar on its trunk from where a thick limb once reached upward as I pick up my backpack and follow the creek there. I perch myself on a branch that hangs over the ground. The oak’s branches are all pointing toward the ground. Dad?” I can smell decay and old blood. Dad taught me to notice the scent of vanilla in the old oak tree bark. The old oak’s trunk gives me a sense of strength.
The bowl of red apples, made of white oak, is visible to me in the kitchen. I suddenly realize why the bowl is there. I only now comprehend why my mother keeps the apples in a white oak bowl on the kitchen counter for seven years. Trees and apples. I’ll try to keep him alive my whole life. Dad is the white oak. I am the apple.
Each apple is taken out of the bowl by me. I arrange them in a row on the counter. Seven pears Seven months. I look for blemishes and bruises on each apple. None of the apples had any bruises. It’s a sign from me. I’m an apple that only comes from the best of the tree. I’m taller now. I’m certain. The evil person who was hiding within me has been defeated.
When she comes into the kitchen, I say, “Mom.” You need not be concerned about me.
If you enjoy my content, please consider supporting what I do. Thank you.
