“I can’t apologize for what I’ve put you kids through. There’s no way I can make it up to your mom, and I’m not trying. When I leave the next time, as soon as I can, it’ll be some short and foreign life I go off to try and live.” His father looked at him, and Daniel realized he was crying as well. “I want you to know that you never have to forgive me, ’cause I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Dad—”
Daniel didn’t know what to say.
“I just hope you’ll do everything different than I did. You’ve got this chance ahead of you that I’d kill for. I’m so jealous and proud of you for that.”
“Dad. I’m sorry for some of the things I said to you back then.”
“I deserved worse.”
“I’m still sorry. I wish I hadn’t. I used to blame myself—”
“Oh God, Son.” His father shook his head; his shoulders shook with sobs. “Son, please don’t ever—”
“I don’t anymore—”
“God, Son, don’t ever blame yourself. I was a mess before I made you.” He swiped the tears from his cheeks and wiped his nose. Daniel stood. He reached over and put his hand on his dad’s shoulder, the most and least he could think to do, and his father’s weathered hand came up to rest on it, holding it there. And his father cried even harder. His bent body was wracked by sobs, tears falling through the fingers of his other hand, which he kept over his face as if to hide from his son, or from the world. He cried and squeezed Daniel’s fingers, pinning them to himself, and Daniel could tell what the simple gesture meant.
It made him wish he could offer or mean even more.
27
“Step through this loop first.”
An hour later, faces dry, Daniel’s father held a curl of webbing open at his feet. Daniel stepped through, shifted his weight to that foot, then did the same with the other.
“Now pull it up, just like a pair of shorts.”
“This’ll hold us if we fall?” Daniel shrugged the webbing up over his shorts, tugging down at the hem of them to keep them from getting bunched up.
“You could swing from this all day.”
Zola watched them from the front steps, sucking on a straw punched through a warm juice box. Every now and then, she tried making a call or sending a text. Now, when she put her phone aside with each network error, it was with a practiced calm, none of the frustrated desperation from last night. Her straw slurped at the bottom of the box.
“You’d better be real careful with my boys up there,” their mother said. She stood near one of the log piles, her arms crossed, a doubting look on her face. Daniel smiled at her to try and calm her nerves—and his. Carlton topped up the oil and gas on the chainsaw, then walked over and peered up the ladder leaning against the gutter. Hunter worked his homemade harness of knotted webbing on without their father’s help.
“Knot your line on the other line like this when we get up there.” He refreshed them on how to tie a bowline; the lessons taught on the houseboat years ago came flooding back, and the loss of the boat gnawed at Daniel. He untied and retied the knot several times while their father bent to secure a short piece of rope to the chainsaw. He stood, slung it over his shoulder, and went to the ladder first. The long, extended aluminum sides bent with his weight. He took the rungs slowly, getting both feet in place before reaching up with one hand to steady himself on a higher rung.
Once at the gutter, he lifted the chainsaw to a two-by-four he’d nailed in place across the shingles. He hoisted himself up and tied his webbing off to a loop of rope strung across the breadth of the house, from one side to the other. The loose bowline let him slide left and right and crawl higher up the roof, but should catch him if he slipped. Daniel watched, nerves tickling his stomach, as he waited for his dad to move out of the way. Then he went up the ladder after him.
The slope of the yard made the house feel more like three stories on that side, the unfinished basement letting out on the edge of the house around from where the tree hit. Daniel watched the bushes grow smaller as he went up. He reached the gutter and steadied himself while he tied the bowline. His dad watched while he made the twist, checking to make sure he did it in the right direction.
“Dear God, please be careful,” his mother said.
“Don’t take
Daniel finished the knot and scrambled to the side, the edges of his sneakers clinging to the two-by-four. The ladder rattled as his brother started the climb up.
“Hold this in place,” his father said. Daniel turned and grasped another two-by-four held against the roof. His dad extracted a hammer from his tool belt, shoved a few nails between his lips, and pressed one against the wood. A few expert strikes from his hammer, and one end of the board was fixed in place. He slammed another home, then passed the hammer and final nail to Daniel.
Daniel took his time pounding the nail in. His brother made it to the top of the ladder and worked on his knot.
“Up we go,” their father said.
Daniel took another look down at all the gawkers looking back up. Carlton had started up the ladder, bringing them some more tools. Hunter followed their dad onto the next two-by-four, brushing up against one of the massive limbs bent across the shingles. Climbing up the roof was like ascending a manmade intrusion into a natural canopy. The leaves and boughs were in a tangle across the house that had seemed manageable from the ground. Now that he was up within it, Daniel saw the incredible task ahead of them.
“Here,” Carlton said. He handed up the clippers and handsaw that had been kept busy over the last few days, chopping up anything small enough not to bother with the chainsaw. Daniel took the long-handled clippers and passed the saw to Hunter. The two of them moved to the first limb while their dad adjusted the loop of rope they were all attached to. Clipping the smaller limbs, they let the branches slide down toward the gutter, some of them getting caught up on the two-by-fours. They kicked these off, and Carlton helped remove them from the top of the ladder.
“You might want to get down and take the ladder with you,” their father said. “Go around to the other side and we’ll lower the first big one.”
Carlton nodded and descended the ladder. Daniel and Hunter worked to clean the limbs on the way up, forging a path past their father and over the large boughs leaning against the house. Daniel still didn’t see how the tree was going to be removed. He imagined a large crane would be necessary.
As they climbed, the limbs branching out overhead shaded them from the sun. Now they had truly ascended into a canopy. Daniel passed a fat limb that had snapped in half, the yellow and jagged interior revealing splinters the size of baseball bats. Their father climbed up beside them with a litheness that belied his age. He seemed to have become younger with the transition to a tilted, dangerous world, as if he had lived there much of his life.
“Stop at the peak,” he told them.
Daniel and Hunter clung to a limb at the roof’s apex. Their dad adjusted the rope holding the three of them to their tethered harnesses. He then uncoiled the rope around his chest and tied a series of loops and knots around the massive limb draped over the house. The other end of the rope was wrapped around the main trunk of the tree several times.
“Hold this,” their father told them.
Hunter and Daniel obeyed. They were in their father’s realm. What he said mattered, had force. This fact was as dizzying as the heights.
They each held the rope, which was wound twice around the great trunk, then tied tightly to the limb with complex knots. Daniel leaned back on the rope, testing it and finding security in the way it held him to the roof. Their father climbed up and straddled the peak of the roof. He brushed a small limb out of his way. Daniel looked back and could see his mom staring up at them. She had moved further into the yard to see them better through a
