The Shape of Footprints
(This short story was written for a fiction writing class at UVA a couple of years ago.)
Hatch watched the last wooden board get shoved into place. He was too far away to hear what the people were saying, but he could tell that they were finished. They took off their sun-faded baseball caps and took a few steps back to admire the completed project. As they took down and folded up the ladders, sharp metallic squeals ripped through the forest before dying with the distance. The father motioned to the others to follow him back to the house, picking up a patched bag full of nails for himself to carry. He glanced back once, smiled, and walked off.
The silence, compared to the rest of the day, seemed unfamiliar to Hatch. The bulk of his afternoon had been spent watching the treehouse getting built, and his ears were used to hammer whacks and hissing saw blades. He hopped out of his hiding spot, a thick pocket of treetop foliage, and started making his way slowly towards the impressive new structure. He passed the leaves and branches that had previously obscured his view and felt the cooling shadow of the massive tree. This was the perfect tree to build a treehouse in, though. The trunk came out like a thick wrist and the branches clutched inwards like fingers, seemingly holding the enclosed wooden box in its palm. Each side had a freshly cut window and the south side had an open doorway. Nobody would have any problem climbing up to it, but a rope covered in sawdust was hanging down just in case. Hatch was surprised as he navigated around the treehouse to see a tire swing on the other side. The light breeze was trying to push it and failing.
"So this is it."
Hatch flew back, visibly startled. He reeled backwards but soon recognized the voice and calmed down. He turned around.
"Sorry," Chase laughed, turning to look down at the grass. He looked back up shyly towards the treehouse, smiling a little.
"They finished it about five minutes ago," Hatch said.
"Yeah I know," Chase said. "I was watching it too."
"Well, we've got to go check it out!" Hatch exclaimed.
They went up by the east side, where the branches curled inwards nicely, like natural steps. They easily reached the main deck and went around towards the front, stopping at the doorway. Chase peered inside.
"Whoa..." he said slowly, pronouncing each letter equally. "Hatch, it's incredible."
The sanded-down walls were decorated with crayon drawings on construction paper carefully scotch-taped around the edges. A single wooden table and chair occupied one corner and another corner served as a hinge for a hammock. A tennis ball and coloring book were carelessly placed on the floor while the sunlight washed the room with an orange brushstroke.
Chase jumped up and down a few times. "Sturdy. Really neat place."
Hatch was looking at the crayon pictures, which consisted of the usual childhood fare of family group shots or dinosaurs. They were all signed AnDReW in dark blue.
"Andrew's lucky to have this place," Chase said as his eyes widened. "What kid wouldn't want a cool hideout like this? What a birthday present."
"Yeah," Hatch answered softly. His gaze was lost on an open coloring book page.
"What?" Chase asked, moving towards him. "What's wrong?"
Hatch was hesitant, his eyes soaking up the surrounding wooden walls. "He's going to grow up here."
"Well yeah, he's a kid, kids grow up." Chase's confused, concerned expression matched his voice.
"But this is the start of something, Chase." Hatch said. "He'll have all kinds of memories in this place. Trading baseball cards with his friends, carving his name into the roof...even his first kiss. And..."
"...and?" Chase blinked a couple of times, tilting his head curiously.
"It's going to get burnt down eventually."
"You saw something again?" Chase asked intently. He shifted his position on the floor.
"I know what's going to happen," Hatch said, staring at the ceiling. "He's in his late teens. I keep on picturing his eyes...they're deep ocean-blue puddles; he's been crying because his mother just passed away. He takes a match out and strikes it, stares at the flame briefly, and tosses it through the doorway. And then he just, just stands there. He'll stay standing there, watching the awful mixture of green and orange until the fire department comes and pulls him out of harm's way. We'll never see him again after that." Hatch took considerable time to say these words, the silent atmosphere seeming like the entire forest was listening. He shook his head.
"I know that I can't change that, no matter what I do. This treehouse is going to become his childhood world. His imagination will turn it into everything it could possibly be. He's always going to smile up here, and the only time he won't will be on that last day."
Hatch glanced at the windowsill, delicately feeling the breeze leaking in from the outside. When he had been alive, he certainly had never believed in guardian angels. Now that he had become one for Andrew, along with Chase, he had just as many questions about life as before. These dreams were his guidelines, sometimes clear and sometimes cryptic. He wished for more answers. Why Andrew? Why with Chase? Now in his fifth year, he figured that one day he would understand, but it tested his patience. This was never what he expected a guardian angel to be.
"You're seeing this for a reason," Chase said. "I've had some strange dreams before but I've never been able to describe them like you. You can see his eyes, you can see the color of the flames."
"But why?" Hatch snapped back. "I don't understand why he's going to burn it down. I don't know what happens to him afterwards. What good is it for me to know now?"
Chase scraped at the floor nervously. "Some reason," he repeated softly. He stared at Hatch and realized that something about him was not right. Something was scary.
Hatch fell to the ground, abruptly and unnaturally. He slammed headfirst onto the wooden boards and flipped to his side, the sunlight catching each speck of dirt as it shifted and jumped into the air. Chase rushed over and propped his head up as quickly as he could. He found himself with the terrible inability to look away. Hatch's pupils were fully dilated. The eyes were flooded in black, featureless. Chase hopped backwards. He was frightened. Hatch lay motionless, his dark vacant expression staring straight back at Chase.
I see colorful wisps of air melting into a painting of reality before my eyes. The treehouse. The leaves have every shade of green, ones I've never seen or imagined before. Andrew's visible through the window. He's showing a couple of friends the Comics Page of the newspaper. The black and white paper contrasts with the colors around it. I have never seen such colors. They're laughing, repeating the lines they just read on the page and letting it all explode out of their mouths, holding back nothing. Their laughter sounds songlike.
Andrew's Mom is walking towards the treehouse carefully balancing a tray with both hands. She calls out Andrew's name; I watch her voice travel and hit Andrew's ears. He jumps up and runs to the deck of the treehouse. She reaches up and slides the tray onto the ledge. Lunch. Three lunches. The two other kids are on their feet too and equally pleased. Andrew and his friends carry their paper plates inside. Mom smiles, takes the tray and walks away again. It's strange because I can see her footprints. They push down the grass and make it change shape.
I blink.
The stars scream night. Darkness is interrupted by a flashlight cylinder of light. Andrew, much older, is running with the light clutched in his hands. Trees appear and disappear from his path. There is only one gunshot but it echoes in my head, a harsh metal buzz gnawing inside of me. Andrew doesn't want to believe what he knows just happened. Climbs up the tree. His mother is inside, lifeless. All the colors are gone. He won't believe it, he can't. He wants his father to take back everything he said that night. He wants things to be like his childhood was. My mind adds cacophonous noises of a son crying, alone. The newspaper headlines will wonder how a mother could take her own life, why it ended in a treehouse. This was her only place of comfort, but the world didn't need to know. The world could think she ran away, never having an abusive husband or a drug addict son. He takes out the match, hoping it will burn the darkness away.
Hatch saw Chase leaning against the wall, shivering.
"What's wrong?" Hatch asked. He felt like someone was pouring streams of sand over his mind.
Chase took his time to answer, alternating forced stares at Hatch and the ground. "Your eyes...black as...they were all dark. Looked like, looked like you landed on your head, you fell really hard, Hatch. Really hard."
"I blacked out," Hatch said, equally scared but hiding it well. His dreams had always been padded by sleep before, never unexpected like this.
Hatch looked around. The treehouse looked bland from the inside. The wood was all the same grade, saturated with repetitive speckles and curves. A nail here and there broke the monotony. The crayon pictures on the wall looked sloppy and very of place. The scotch tape wouldn't hold them up for long, why did they use scotch tape? Even the ceiling was much too low and the walls were of uneven lengths. The treehouse had looked much better when it was hidden behind the leaves and branches.
Chase approached Hatch carefully with short, deliberate steps and gave a half-smile after looking at his eyes. "You're okay. That's good, Hatch. You had me really scared for a second there."
"I saw something again," Hatch said. The words sounded ordinary and natural. "But I think I'm going to keep this one to myself. All right?"
Chase paused but eventually nodded. "Yeah, I think you deserve one to yourself."
"It's so complicated," Hatch went on. "I saw some of the most ugly and beautiful things that I've ever seen during these past few days. Sometimes together even. I don't know how to react to them, you know?"
"Sure," Chase feigned understanding, nodding his head but with visibly vacant eyes. Hatch didn't blame Chase for it. He was piecing the whole thing together in his own mind but was stuck on how Andrew's world collapsed into a nightmare. Surely there was more to the story. Maybe the nightmare, in essence, was just a dream. A dream that a guardian angel would never let come true. Although part of Hatch was curious and wanted the answers, another part knew that he was through with the visions. He longed for normal dreams, where the fragments of his day twisted together into unique and magnificently creative worlds. These last dreams had been too realistic.
***
Andrew ran through his backyard as fast as he could. The wind ran through his wildfire hair as he approached the edge of the forest. He had climbed the tree many times but this time would be different. He wouldn't have to stop at the point where all the higher branches were out of his reach. The pale wood treehouse was his path to an exciting and fresh world. He saw his parents out of the corner of his eye as he swung around once on the tire swing. They kept on travelling from one corner of his eye to the other, one horizontal blur of colors. He jumped off and started to climb.
Small squares were cut into the branches for him to sink his feet into, making his ascension easy. His lightly splintered hands grabbed nearby branches and supported him as he scampered upwards. Finally setting a foot down on the outer deck of the treehouse, he paused and took a deep breath. He waved to his parents below who were walking at a slower pace behind him, returning his waves. He dashed around a corner and peeked through the doorway.
He smiled, then stepped in slowly, speechless and mouth agape. This was his first visit to his new treehouse. The hammock was already being pushed by the wind picking up; the hinges squeaked softly every time it paused to change directions. One drawing had fallen down but the rest were strategically spread out and made the room seem complete. The chair was just his size, carefully resting under the table.
"Thank you," Andrew said to no one in particular.
He was distracted for a second when two birds flew from their windowsill perch to the forest outside. Only for a second though. He reached for the fallen picture and went outside to ask for some more scotch tape.
Thursday, July 31 at 10:15 PM
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