The Finding Tree

Chapter 35 - ...and the truth shall make you free.

"After the funeral, I ran from my Nanna's car shedding clothes as I went. Coat, tie, shirt.  I had to get away. Everything just felt like it was screaming how guilty I was. I wanted to disappear.

Somehow, I made it here, picked up a stick and started beating on this tree. I was so incredibly angry at everything, my parents, Nanna, myself...the world. I remember hitting my face using the stick and my fists. I split my lip and bloodied my own nose. I was yelling and just completely out of control.

I made it around the other side of the tree and saw the bench, and I flopped to the ground and started praying. 'Please bring them back or kill me.'

I was just a kid and I didn't know how to deal with my grief. I was so young, and the things I had said to my folks felt so big and terrible.

Eventually I think I cried myself out, and must have fallen asleep with my knees in the dirt and my face on the wood. Because I heard a sound and opened my eyes to see this on the bench next to me."

Peter opened the lid of the Adidas box and pulled out a small porcelain dog; a Beagle, in a playful crouching position, tongue lolling.

"That dog's smile changed me. I had no idea where it came from...it was like it just dropped out of the sky to appear next to me. It was a gift from the tree or God or something. I remember sitting up and looking around, picking up the figure and wondering where it came from."

He gently put the dog in Janey's hands. "Barney the Beagle," she whispered. She looked at Peter with a watery smile. "My tree gave it to you."

She turned the dog upside down to read the name Barney in the felt tip scrawl of a child. "It really is Barney. I was having a party at my tree that day and I wanted to give a gift to the tree.

"Barney saved my life Janey...I went home to my Nanna who cried and hugged me and tended all my wounds. I told her I was sorry, and that wanted a dog like this one. She found a shelter and had a puppy brought to me a week later. That dog went with me everywhere, especially here at my tree."

"I still wasn't okay, even though the therapy helped some. I started playing with knives. big ones, little ones. I'd use them on myself." Peter raised a cuff of his dress shirt and Janey remembered seeing the small scars on his arms and legs. White and thin like a memory of loss.

"I would spend hours each day out here in the park, and especially at my tree. I started carving and whittling wood too. I found interesting branches and sticks and would make things. The best thing I made was a little fawn." Peter pulled out Janey's wooden fawn from the shoebox and put it in her hand.

"I'm sorry that I smuggled this out of your apartment, but I needed them all together."  Janey trembled at the fawn in her hands and smoothed the wood, as she had a thousand times before.

Peter continued, "I gave this to the tree as a thank you for Barney. I had no idea you'd receive it half-way around the world."

"I'm so glad you created it Peter. It's so beautiful." Janey's baffled expression was peaceful. She had no problem believing this reality. They'd both been in a place where the unbelievable was normal. Magic was all around them, faith was easy.

Peter opened the lid of the shoebox again, and pulled out a big blue and green swirled marble and put it in Janey's lap with Barney and the carved fawn.

"This gift was when I was feeling particularly alone. I was out here moping when this big blue marble came clattering down through the branches and just dropped on the bench next to me. It was like the tree was telling me I had a whole world out there to explore. The tree brought my dog so I paid attention to this symbol. I thought about the world and how big it was, and how much I wanted to see it all... This marble helped me think about the future instead of the past.