On the Divinity of Second Chances (5 page)

The night the first phase of my tree house was done, a huge thunderstorm set in. I knew a tree was not a safe place to be in a storm like that, so I stayed. I stayed and hoped I would be struck dead. I wasn’t.

The next day, I thought I would check on Lightning Bob. I don’t know how many hours it took me to walk to his tower. When I arrived, he walked out onto his deck and waved at me. His dog, Flash, ran down to greet me and herd me up the stairs.

“Good to see you! Good to see you!” Lightning Bob called out to me. I figured Lightning Bob probably thought it was good to see anyone.

I waved as I walked up the stairs.

“Cribbage?” Lightning Bob proposed.

I nodded. This time I made an earnest attempt to learn the game. Since I wouldn’t talk, Lightning Bob had to read my cards or points for me after each hand.

“Fifteen-two, fifteen-four! You’re catching up!”

I looked at his calendar. Seven tally marks from the night before for a grand total of 544. I held up seven fingers and gave him an astounded look. “Yes, seven,” he said. “I wrote a poem about it.” He didn’t ask if I wanted to hear it. He simply dug out the notebook from under his cot, opened to the last page with ink on it, and read, “ ‘The Big Storm’ ”:

When he was done, I slipped him the piece of paper I had in my pocket and bolted before he could read mine.

Now, I come down out of the tree for thunderstorms.

I work leather with a bone awl and needle. I tanned the leather myself and made my own tools. I’m going to make Jade a pair of moccasins for her birthday this year. It doesn’t feel too early to get started. She hardly ever wears shoes. I like that about her. Sometimes, though, you have to wear shoes, and if you have to wear shoes, at least wear ones where you can feel the earth (or grocery store floor) under your feet. I love her birthday. It’s the one time of year I go into town and stay for a couple weeks. I have two tree houses there. My favorite one is right by the base of the chairlifts. Every year on or around Jade’s birthday, there’s always an outdoor concert going on out there. We have the best seat in the house. Last year, Los Lobos played, and the year before, Buddy Guy. I don’t know who’s playing this year.

I take a porcupine quill off my windowsill and bead it onto the top of the moccasin. I got these quills by throwing my coat on top of a porcupine and then just pulling the coat off him. Many people think porcupines shoot their quills, but they don’t. The quills, like cacti, have barbs that get stuck in anything that touches them. I made this big score yesterday. I thanked the porcupine and offered it some much-coveted cornmeal as payment, just like Grandma’s friend Hazel would have done. The porcupine waddled away from me, mumbling, leaving the cornmeal. Still, the cornmeal was a gesture, and I like to think intention counts.

Just like it was never my intention to kill anyone except a chicken house full of hens.

My moccasins are elk. I skinned some roadkill four years ago. I like to climb trees barefoot, but down there, these moccasins ease my mind with rattlesnakes and all. You have to really watch for babies in the spring because when a baby bites you, it releases all its venom, whereas an adult does not; adults budget theirs. Babies haven’t developed rattles yet either, so they’re easier to step on. I made these moccasins out of elk because elk hide is so much thicker than deer. It offers more protection.

Now, climbing the trees in the winter when the bark is frosty is a tricky proposition. For this, I go ahead and use old spikes. I ripped off the leather strap and the spiked boots from a logger’s pickup down south of here quite a ways. I left him a pair of moccasins, though. Technically, I think it’s still stealing because he didn’t agree to the bargain, but I like to think it helped karmically. Sure, on one hand, it could be argued I really didn’t owe him anything. After all, he takes and never leaves any offering. Ultimately, though, it’s not my job to make judgments about his karma—only mine. Justifying wrong actions just gets a person in greater trouble. I wouldn’t have done it at all, but I just can’t afford an accident this far away from civilization.

I put Jade’s moccasin project down and take a small pan off the shelf. Then I take the jar next to the cornmeal off the shelf and pour some instant rice out of it. I have stored food in jars ever since that unfortunate squirrel infestation. I pour water from another jar into the pan with the instant rice and put it on the little camping stove. I turn the knob, strike a match, and wait. I go outside and climb to a storage shack I built just a little higher than my house, where I store any meat I may have gotten my hands on. Today, grouse. Grouse and rice. Yum.

My house is a luxurious four-by-six structure built about fifty feet up in an old ponderosa pine out of broken branches and thatched grass. From below, it looks like a nest. Over the years, I brought up a lot of newspaper to staple to the walls for insulation. Below-zero temps in the Idaho Rockies are brutal. In addition, the newspaper doubles for interesting wallpaper I can read in my spare time.

I hear the screech of a hawk and peer out my window to watch a pair circle. Hawks mate for life, you know.

I don’t suppose I’ll ever mate for life. Well, that’s what you get when you kill someone, even if you really didn’t mean to. I could be in prison right now married to some guy named Rocko or something like that. Somehow this seems to have more integrity. If I were in prison, I’d have to get meaner just to survive, and I don’t see how that serves society. I don’t see how contributing to the dark energy out there helps anyone. Out here, I live in peace. I feed myself. I’m not a burden on taxpayers. I go to town now and then, where Jade helps me replenish my rations. And I go visit Lightning Bob occasionally, but I don’t talk to him. Jade is the only one I let myself talk to. I don’t know if that’s cheating on my punishment or not, but I figure even inmates are allowed visitors.

My third tree house is in my parents’ yard about five stories up in an ancient fir behind their house. I watch them sometimes, just to check up on them, but I never make contact. I never make contact with Olive either. Olive and I have never really been close. I don’t know why. Maybe our age difference. Maybe just who we are. She’s always been the good one, the one with perfect grades, the Junior Regionals ski race champion, the one who could do no wrong, definitely Dad’s favorite. Unlike Olive, I never liked math much. I think I was a big disappointment to Dad. I’m pretty sure he hoped his only son would follow in his footsteps. I suppose I should have gotten over that by now, but I don’t know—Olive is still perfect and I’m a bigger disappointment than anyone ever imagined. It’s not Olive’s fault. I know that.

I decide to go to town early this year. I don’t know why. It just feels like it’s time. I can swing by Lightning Bob’s, play a little cribbage, and swap poems on the way.

Anna on Forrest
(May 19)

On my way from the back porch to the bathroom every morning, I stop and look at our family portrait, the one taken the Christmas before Forrest left us. I study his face and remember his letter to me. He told me he had done something really bad, but promised me he was okay. I look at his eyes and wonder what he could have done that was so bad, so bad he’d never contact us again. In the beginning, Phil and I speculated about many things, not trusting the perspective of a fourteen-year-old. Teenagers are dramatic. We figured surely he would come around and know that our relief would overshadow our condemnation. He never did, though. Thirteen years.

Shortly after he disappeared, I remember receiving a letter from Mom telling me Willa Meyer had been killed, blown up in her chicken coop. I wondered. Phil assured me there was no way a fourteen-year-old boy could have gotten back to Summerville. I wanted to believe Phil, but I thought of how Forrest was never the same after Moose was shot, and I wondered. Murder is the only thing I can think of bad enough to keep him away for thirteen years.

Not a day goes by where I don’t wonder if he’s all right, if he’s still alive, and where he is. Not a day goes by where I don’t want to take him in my arms and tell him everything will be all right.

He would be twenty-seven now. Twenty-seven. Not just a young man, but a man. I wonder what he looks like now that he’s a man. I wonder what he looked like as he turned from a boy to a man. I wonder if I’d recognize him now. I look at those eyes in the photo. Yes, I’d recognize those eyes.

I collect my box of photos of Forrest that I keep under my bed and take them to Otto’s Office Supplies, where I photocopy them.

At home, I cut maybe a hundred black-and-white pictures of people out of the stack of newspapers in our garage, then put Forrest’s eyes everywhere. This is my life, looking for those eyes in crowds, looking for Forrest everywhere.

Jade on the Complications of Past Life Memory
(May 19)

Aretha loves to go for bike rides. I equipped my mountain bike with this little trailer she can hop on. Sometimes she prefers to run beside me, and that’s okay if we’re not in traffic. I glance back at her. She’s smiling big. Aretha has the best smile.

I like to wear a metallic gold superhero cape with a dark green
J
on it when I mountain bike or do anything else involving speed for that matter. Sometimes I blow bubbles, too. People here take themselves so seriously. I see it as my civic duty to help them lighten up.

We swing by the post office. I pick up my mail and ride down toward the lifts to my condo. I reflect on the benefits of my self-imposed nunnery. It’s my last life. I can’t have any dead weight. Technically I’m enlightened, so who, really, is going to be any kind of match for me? This is okay. I accept this. There’s still so much to enjoy about planet Earth.

I turn off before I reach the lifts into the parking lot for my condo complex. Aretha jumps off the trailer and runs over to a stunning man who walks out of the condo next to ours, the condo that has been for rent. His head is shaved and his skin is darker than Grace’s. His arms are as wide as his head. I look at those juicy arms and think,
He is my Mount Everest
. His eyes look familiar to me. Aretha seems to recognize him, too.

“Friendly?” he calls to me as Aretha closes in on him.

“Very!” I answer. “And so is my dog.” Shit. I finally meet a hunky guy and I’m wearing a superhero cape.

“That’s a nice cape.” Ohhh, and those are some nice lips.

I model it for him, strutting three steps forward, putting my hand on my hip, pivoting, and strutting back. “Thanks, it makes me go faster.”

“Really?” Clearly, he’s a disbeliever.

“Really.” Duh, people are always faster if they’re happier.

Mount Everest walks toward a maroon Pathfinder, but stops to introduce himself. “I’m Josh,” he says, but when I look in his eyes, I finally recognize him.

No, you’re not!
I think.
You’re Nisa! I remember you! Nisa!
“Nice to meet you, Josh. I’m Jade.”
Nisa, you’re a man! You’re even a hunky man! Oh, my God, you really did mean what you said!

“I’m your new neighbor,” he states.

No, you’re not! You’re my old best friend!
“Oh, welcome.” I try to sound casual.

“I just moved in yesterday.”

“Nice.” I look at his eyes for any sign that he remembers me, even on a subconscious level. I think I see a glint.
Don’t you remember me? Don’t you remember me?
I want to shout jubilantly and hug him. I know better.

“Well, see you around,” he says and gets into his Pathfinder.

“See you around,” I reply, as if nothing huge just happened, as if I hadn’t just been reunited with one of my favorite souls in the universe.

Wow, Nisa. How nice to see you again.
I let myself inside my condo and remember the last time I saw her. I remember we were sitting under a tree on a hill overlooking thatched huts in our village below. We were wearing layers of beads around our necks and not much else.

“I’m getting married.” She broke the news to me in Swahili, and began to cry. “My father picked him. He lives to the south.”

“I’m so sorry,” I replied, also in Swahili, and began to cry myself. I knew what this meant. She would be moving away. She was the closest thing I had to a sister in that life, and the severing I felt at her news was gut-wrenching. She rested her head on my shoulder and cried awhile, and I tried to comfort her, but really, there’s no way to ease that kind of pain.

“I wish one of us was a man so we could marry each other and never be torn apart like this,” she said earnestly.

This made me giggle through my tears. “Which one of us would have to be the man?” I asked.

Her offer was more than generous: “You can be the woman. You’re prettier.”

Well, Nisa, here you are to heal old wounds. I sure wish I could ask Josh how the rest of that life turned out, but I know he won’t remember and will only think I’m more nuts than he already must, thanks to the superhero cape.

Olive on Choices
(May 20)

If I could have taken any road instead of the one I took and ended up in a different place or position than I am now, I would have chosen something different—I’m just not sure what. I look around and wonder who I would swap lives with. Is anyone out there experiencing contentment? I look around the bank where I work and don’t see any content-looking people here.