The Secret of Me, the Tree, and the Beady-Eyed Whatever

The last sight I saw was my mom plucking candied cherries from Great-Grandma’s gray-blue hair while my sister shucked stuffing from her lap. To my credit, I cringed at the holiday carnage, but I didn’t let it slow my escape.

I flew out the door and ran like the wind across the barren bean field behind our house, not stopping until I was deep in the thick woods that buffered our crops from the river. Zigzagging from tree to tree, I ate up the earth this way and that, pulling to a halt only when I was close enough to hear the gurgle of the mighty Mississippi. How I wished for summer so there would be leaves on the trees to help hide me, but the robins had flown and I would have to make do with chilly November bleakness. I’d run over two miles, leaving my grown-up pursuers bent over and wheezing somewhere behind me in the beanless bean field.

Panting, I curled myself into the hollow of an ancient naked oak and stared at my toes. I was quite stupidly shoeless, my Sunday-best Mary Janes left behind under the dining room table. Somewhere during the passing of the cranberry sauce I’d kicked them off to curl my arches and lift my heels in an impressive imitation of Aunt Rita’s beautifully spiked feet. Figuring I was only moments from adulthood, I was eager to trade my little girl buckled flats for snappy, rhinestoned lady’s high heels. Wearing elegant invisible heels under the regal turkey seemed like just the ticket to get me in the swing of things that much faster. But in the face of the pea-roll catastrophe, I dared not stop for shoes as I hightailed it out of there.

I sorely regretted that oversight. It was cold. Remnants of snow still clung to the ground here and there from an early dusting two days earlier, and it occurred to me that my icy feet just might snap right off as soon as they realized they were covered only with thin butterfly-trimmed anklets. Hopefully there would be enough time to figure out my next move before I found myself footless.

Reaching down, I cradled my chilly toes in my equally nippy hands. The sunless forty-nine-degree day quickly triggered the shivers, and I was pretty sure that whatever punishment was forthcoming for the pea fiasco couldn’t possibly compare to freezing to death in a tree. In short order I realized I would just have to go back and face the music. At least I would get warm. All I needed was a good explanation to take back with me, something that made real good sense.

As I sat there, pondering, hugging my knees to my chest for warmth, trying to think up a single believable reason why giving my peas to Uncle Martin was really a kind and generous thing on my part, I heard the splash. It was loud, too loud to have been a flopping fish, and I shot off to investigate.

It took but a moment to reach the river’s edge where a fallen hickory jutted straight out from shore. The tree rode the water as if it was the most natural thing in the world for it to be sprawled out horizontal with its leafless branches forking the river a hundred different ways. Some of its twisted, snarled roots stuck straight up into the sky while others cleaved to the earth in a desperate attempt to draw nourishment to its long dead body. I crawled up the trunk and made my way across the makeshift peninsula until I was over thirty feet from land. The tree was plenty wide, so I had no fear of falling into the fast-moving water as I scrambled toward what used to be the hefty giant’s crowning glory. I reasoned that the farthest reaches of the trunk would provide the most spectacular view of whatever was splashing around out there.

I had barely selected a looking point when another splash spewed frigid river water in a crystal arc up and over the tree, dousing me to the bone. The source of the commotion was right beneath me.

Dropping to my belly, I shrugged off the chills and scooted to the tree’s edge. As with any self-respecting ten-year-old worth her salt, my concern had nothing to do with being wet and cold and everything to do with solving a mystery.

I hung my head beyond the trunk’s curve to stare into the green-brown rippling water only to have my gaze lock onto two black beady eyes staring right back at me.

I screamed. It splashed. I nearly drowned as a thrashing wave tried to sweep me from my perch. The tree I’d believed to be so rock solid began to roll and dip in the water and its last remaining embedded roots catapulted clods of mud and muck into the air as they ripped from the ground. In desperation I wrapped my arms around the closest branch and hung on for dear life, but before I knew it, me, the tree, and the beady-eyed whatever were heading south down the middle of the Mississippi.

I don’t know how long I rode before I dared to unbury my face from the scratchy bark and look up. Even then I wished I hadn’t, for sitting atop the tree watching me was the biggest, maddest beaver I ever saw. He was looking at me as if I’d just skinned his best friend, and it didn’t look like he much cared whether or not I was scared and freezing. His long rusty-colored teeth sawed the air and his dark button eyes gave me the once over as I tried the practical approach. I reburied my face. Maybe if I didn’t look him in the eye, he would forget I was there. That plan worked about as well as the pea-roll idea.

Mr. Beaver slapped his powerful pancake of a tail against the tree trunk as if he were disgusted with my cowardice then took a step toward me. From my prone position, and squinting at him from the corner of one eye, I would have sworn he was a two-hundred-pound blood-sucking monster of fur, teeth and claws instead of the quite normal forty-pound, tree-munching fellow he was.

I realized that trying to hide my face wasn’t going to save me from a rabid beaver attack, so I inched up to a kneeling position, thinking to intimidate the burly guy with my superior height. Once I was upright, he didn’t look quite so gigantic. He didn’t even really look dangerous from my new perspective, and I reasoned that if he had been as ferocious as I’d imagined him to be, he would have already chewed through my arm. I never got the chance to confirm or deny my new theory, for as I was about to try the friendly approach, the tree pitched into rough current and violently lurched to the right, flinging me into the water like an unwanted bird’s nest.

Fishy river water sluiced down my gullet as I flailed about for a grip, finally latching on to a splintered branch. The limb’s tip gouged my cheek, and still I pulled until my arms burned, desperate to hoist myself back up. All I got for my heroic effort was a swirling underwater ride as the tree rolled like a baking pin, over and over, picking up speed with every revolution. The thing keelhauled me like a thieving pirate, and as I think back, it would have been a whole lot smarter to just let go and be shed of that tree, its traitorous branch, and that ornery beaver right then and there. But when a body’s head over heels in murky water, brain smarts just seem to fizzle and die.

Soon the tree quit spinning, leveled out, and began to bob along its merry way. Unfortunately, I’d already been torn clean of the old hickory, and the tree was bobbing along without me.

I was barely functional, my body frozen to the core. Through my open mouth I spit out liquid and sucked in air at the same time as I tried to ignore the ooze of blood trickling from one pierced cheek. I tread water with what little juice I had left and watched my ride drift further and further away.

I squinted several times but didn’t see the beaver near the tree. Somehow that made me happy. At least that cantankerous creature had lost its treasure.

My butterfly-adorned feet hung below me like a couple of useless hunks of frozen meat, no paddle left in them, and though my arms did double-time trying to pick up the slack, I knew it wasn’t going to work for long. My minutes were numbered. I was exhausted and just a skip and a jump from hypothermia. I turned my head left, then right, trying to determine which shore was closer, not that it mattered, understanding at that moment why no one ever called that mammoth moving mass of water the “Mississippi” without the word “mighty” coming first.

I was ten, too young to die, and on Thanksgiving no less, but I was close to giving up the ship. Buckets of tears flooded my cheeks. I couldn’t imagine how far I was from home at that point, but I was pretty sure I would never see Uncle Martin’s beet red face again, or my mom and dad, or my sister, or my rabbit Charlie, or another masterful turkey, or even another nasty pea.

I leaned back, trying to float, but was too weak. Cramps and numbness played tag from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. I wondered what heaven would be like and whether it would be the cold or the drowning that would kill me. I couldn’t decide which one would be less painful. Soon a real fine peacefulness began to flicker inside me, and I liked it a whole lot better than numbing cold and ratcheting fear.

I felt my arms branch out from my sides and my body roll over until I was face down in the water. I heard Grandpa yelling “Shoo!” but that was silly since Grandpa had been dead since I was six. I was confident the rolling over would be the last physical thing I would ever feel. I was wrong.