
Mom works. She never picks me up from school, and two miles is too close for a bus pickup, which is fine by me because I like cutting through the woods. Especially on autumn days, when the air is cool, and the flies and mosquitos are gone, and basketball practice hasn’t begun. I like the quiet. I like the wordlessness of the walk.A pretty sugar maple dressed in vivid orange frills beckons me off the path. I stand to look at her. I sound like a weirdo, I know. A sixteen-year-old boy calling a sugar maple pretty. It was Dad that taught me to appreciate trees before he hung himself from one. I love ‘em even more, now, Dad and trees. Did you know the oldest maple is five hundred years old? They call it the Comfort Tree. Dad said all trees are comfort trees. I search the sugar maple for a perfect orange leaf - I think I’ll press the leaf between two sheets of waxed paper like I did when I was a kid – but I can’t find a perfect orange leaf. It doesn’t matter. We don’t even have waxed paper at home. We don’t save things at home.I follow a line of golden, round-leaved aspens to the creek, a grove of clone trees grown from the root system of the male. “Aspis means shield in Greek,” Dad said. “Aspens are protectors and inspire courage.” Brave aspens. Magic aspens. I wonder, Dad, did it take courage to kill yourself? Did you care about leaving me?“Depression is a villain,” the therapist said. “That villain convinced your father the world was better off without him.”I could have slayed the villain. If I had only told Dad how much I needed him.I sigh. I try to take a deeper breath. I inhale the dank smell of cold dirt and dropped leaves. I smell Dad, the amalgam of decomposition and old blood. I didn’t know what the smell was when I was a kid. I didn’t know what a medical examiner did. The smell was a thick smell and sweet. I knew, only, that the smell was my dad. I’ve got a friend, Jimmy, who likes the smell of skunks.My backpack is light, no books, not much homework. With it being the end of the semester and the week before Thanksgiving, teachers don’t add to their piles of ungraded papers. I drop my bag at a willow. I strip a branch of its leaves. I sit on a rock. I pretend to fish.thanks for readingpart 2 is out now

