17

I spent a summer there once when I was eight, best summer of my life. They lived so close to the tracks that the house rocked back and forth every time the Hiawatha ran past. My Grandma is six feet tall, her hair is silky blond just like mine and she smokes like Betty Davis. She paints landscapes with long purple skies that never have any clouds. I want to be just like her, except for the poor part. My Grandpa calls me his favourite. He let me drink coffee in the morning and when Grandma went to bed early he let me sit next to him while he drank beer. He could play harmonica and guitar at the same time and he loved to tell stories about the Lodge and about the trains. The one he told most often was about the headless trainman. He said a train crashed a few feet down the track and the reason no one ever found the head of the trainman was cause it rolled under their house and the dog ate it. "See that tree there, that's where the dog pooped it out and that old maple grew up, look close when the sun's going down and you can see the trainman's face right there in the knot where the two biggest branches come together." I didn't believe the story of course, but I did look for the face. Sometimes I could make it out, sometime I couldn't.

That was years ago. Now it's spring, my favourite time of year and I'm standing in my favourite patch of woods, just across the field from our house. It's quiet here. No one telling me what to do. No radio, no vacuums or mixers, no fighting. My toes feel divine in the soft fine gray clay. There's a layer of water that reaches barely below my ankles. It's so clear I can see the shadow of the little water bug as it skates across. The bright green shoots of the elephant grass are coming out just below the surface—in a week or two they'll be waving over my head and I'll be able to disappear inside them. Right now, I am one of the trees. I'm a tall thin birch, standing with my roots suckling on the dirt, drinking deep. I can feel myself growing, part of the earth and the air and the water. I hear a rustle, my dog Spot has found me out. I'm going to Italy and Spot is coming with me.

I can't wait to leave this place. I have a special box. Grandma sent it last week for my birthday. There's a Peacock on top, its old and beautiful. Inside there's a note from Grandpa with $500 dollars wrapped inside. I don't understand the note. It says "Look for the face in the tree" then "Forano" and a long number with a funny cross next to it. I didn't show the note to my parents. They'd make me share the money with them and I had a feeling Grandpa meant the note to be a secret. A pair of crows start shouting at each other in the high branches. I look up to see them. The sun is slipping over the edge of the land into another world and I can't wait for it to take me along.