Harley was eight years old the first time she met Eric Winston. School had let out for the summer, and she was spending the day at Pearl Johnson’s house. The first hot day had struck the region, bringing with it a veil of humidity that hung steaming in the air like a sauna. Seeking relief from of the early heat of summer, she found shelter beneath the cool bows of her favorite oak tree, her bare feet splayed in denim overalls, a book in her lap. For hours she sat and read beneath that tree, the June bugs serenading her with hidden songs among tall strands of Johnson grass.
Most days she would have the entire Briarwood neighborhood to herself, except when Angus Pruitt, Briarwood’s famous gardener, appeared from time to time, droning by on his lawnmower or his gray head popping up from a garden hedge to snip at a wayward limb. But for the most part, Angus and Harley respected one another’s privacy, and when they by chance encountered one another on the lawn, they waved politely and went about their own business. Angus Pruitt was a kindred spirit of sorts, Harley had decided. He seemed to go about his gardening as she went about her reading: quiet, solitary, and meticulous.
And that was exactly what she needed to be that summer. Pearl had offered to play with her—board games, t-ball, jump rope—whatever she wanted, but Harley said she just wanted to sit beneath that brilliant oak tree and read her books. “Each person has his or her own method of mourning,” she overhead Pearl telling her husband, Arthur, “and that is Harley Henrickson’s method.”
And that is all she did, day after day that summer. She read, she thought, and she mourned. And in many ways, that old oak tree mourned her mother’s death right along with her, listened to every quiet prayer, every silent sob, every angry cry she sent to whatever power might listen. And by summer’s end, the tree and Harley both had a new ring to add to their trunks, the sign of a shared experience that left an indelible mark on both.
Those sultry summer days passed one after another, July into August, and she had grown accustomed to the symphony of sounds in her secret garden: the chirping of birds, the scampering of squirrels, the croaking of frogs, the creek babbling in the distance. The woodland creatures had become like a second family to her. She had even taken to naming several of them: Squabby Squirrel, Robby Robin, Frank the Frog, Minnie Minnow, Rupert the Rabbit, and Theodosius. He was the slug. She figured she might as well name all of them, being as they were her only friends.
But then someone else began appearing in her little domicile that summer, interrupting the not-so-quiet ecosystem.
A boy. A boy in the yard next door.
From what she had heard about Eric Winston, she knew he was about six years older than her and from a wealthy family in town. He was at the top of his class at the private school he attended in Knoxville and like his father, a prominent surgeon in town, he would attend Yale and become a doctor. The Winstons had big plans for their young scholar.
That summer, she watched Eric a lot, not because he was handsome, or because he read a lot, but because he seemed to have a wounded heart. And wounded souls she understood. She wondered what his story was, why he always seemed so sad. She knew why she was sad. She knew she would never see her mother again, would never rest her head on her mother’s shoulder, would never feel her mother’s soft touch as she brushed her hair from her forehead, would never feel her lips on her cheek as she kissed her goodnight. And her mother would never read to her again.
But why Eric Winston? He seemed to have the whole world at his disposal, yet he seemed to care for nothing or no one in it. He never smiled, he never laughed, he never cried. He was just listless. The one thing he did that summer was take long walks along the creek bank, day after day, his eyes focused and narrowed on something in the creek below him, something invisible. He would trace the water with a branch and intermittently flip rocks to look beneath them or lift the marsh to search for something underneath.
On occasion, he picked up an object from the creek bed for a closer look and after examining it for several seconds, he dropped it back into the water once more. At last, tired from his wanderings, he would lie beneath a weeping willow tree and read a book, a grown-up book by the looks of it, one with small text, thick binding, and an ancient man staring from its tattered cover. Moments passed then his body would relax, and his handsome features would soften into a dreamlike trance.
She decided to leave presents for him underneath the weeping willow, little things to brighten his mood. First, she left an apple, then a string of daisies, followed by a shiny river stone, then a cork from her grandfather’s distillery. Lastly, she left a bookmark, one she had made by cutting a pressed leaf into a heart shape and attaching it to heavy craft paper. Underneath the heart, she had written in crayon: You Are Loved.
What Eric thought of those gifts she never knew. When he came to the tree to collect them each day, Harley ducked behind the hedgerow, hiding from his sight and any reactions he might have had. But, in the end, it mattered very little what his reactions were. She knew she had done the right thing. She had helped someone who was hurting, hurting like her.
Those peaceful days passed one after another in that fashion, the two of them acting as amiable and silent companions, aware of, but not acknowledging the other.
Too bad it was all about to come to an end.
Away from school, away from the playground, she thought she would be safe from the evils that tormented her at school each day. But somehow, some way, they had found her, discovered her shelter, her secret hiding place. And when she looked up from her book one afternoon, she found Kevin Grazely and Spider Buttle standing over her, wicked smiles across their freckled faces.
She sprung from the tree’s bow, only to find her collar ripping at her throat, whiplashing her body backward into Kevin Grazley’s chest. Kevin, big-boned at eleven, held her suspended by her t-shirt as Spider Buttle, skinny and rat-tailed, tore her book from her arms and hurled it into a nearby mud puddle.
“You’re such a freakin’ nerd,” Kevin said.
She kicked Kevin in the shins and took a running slide across the lawn after her book, skidding her knees on the grass. As she blindly slopped through the mud, searching for her book, she could hear the distant chime of the ice cream truck two streets away, its trills matched by the cries of children racing toward their favorite time of day.
Cries came from Harley’s mouth too, but for another reason.
Kevin and Spider pushed her face-forward into the mud puddle, her eyes stinging with mud. “Haha! What a stupid dork,” Kevin said, standing over her.
“Yeah,” Spider said, “and she’s even uglier with all that mud on her face!”
With her knees and palms scraped with blood, her face covered with mud, Harley pulled The Giving Tree from the puddle and stared at it helplessly. A swell of hot tears ran down her cheeks. The book’s green cover had been reduced to swamp, its pages congealed to pulp.
She fell to the grass and hugged the book to her chest, rocking her body back and forth. The Giving Tree had been the last present she received from her mother, the last gift before her death. Kevin Grazely stomped his foot down in the puddle and splattered mud on her face and overalls.
“Yeah, try to read your stupid book now, you stupid weirdo.”
Harley charged at Kevin and, raising her fist, popped him in the eye. He cried out in pain, his hand cupped over his left eye.
But Spider, seizing on Harley’s distraction, ripped the book from her arms. He held it out in front of her and howled with laughter, “What’re you gonna do now, weirdo?”
A red-faced Kevin grabbed the book from Spider and ripped the soggy pages out, throwing them at Harley’s feet.
In defeat, Harley fell to the ground, taking the torn pages in her hands, burying her face in the book’s remains.
“Haha! Haha!” they laughed, then silence fell over the backyard.
A long silhouette stretched across the lawn beside Kevin and Spider, who raised their eyes to towering heights.
A deep voice, deeper and more grown up than Harley had ever imagined, said, “Beat it. And if you ever come near her again, you’ll wish you’d never been born.”