The butterfly tree, p.18
The Butterfly Tree, page 18
~~~
Tavis, concurrently, was tending to another important matter.
A week earlier, he had phoned The Matthew Murphy Memorial Public Library. Initially brusque, the head librarian did an about-face when Tavis mentioned—and summarized—the note a ten-year-old boy had taped to a handsome, and orphaned, antique table seven years prior.
“Can you hold for a quick moment?” Mrs. Kibrick asked, her voice instantly turning sweet as Ohio apple butter.
“I’m back,” she rejoined, no more than thirty seconds later, and began reading: My name is Lincoln Beswick Jamison and this cool table that belonged to my many-greats-grandfather is now mine. I, being of sound mind, wish to lend it to The Bellaire Library to use as a big homework desk until which time I can come back to reclaim it. Thank you, Linc Jamison, age 10. P.S. Please take good care of it for me!
Mrs. Kibrick continued, her own words now: “We framed that precious note and it’s been hanging in the private office ever since. I’ve always hoped we’d hear from Linc again. Please tell him we’ve taken very good care of his lovely table.”
Tavis told Mrs. Kibrick his wish was to reunite Linc with the heirloom—and do so as a surprise. Arrangements were made to pick it up Sunday at noon when the library opened its doors.
Tavis arrived at 11:50, only to find Mrs. Kibrick already waiting outside the double-door front entrance. He smiled, thinking: Librarians must set their watches on Tavis Time, too. A young man on staff helped Tavis load The Butterfly Table, legs up, on a moving pad in the truck bed.
Tavis returned inside to give his gratitude to Mrs. Kibrick and received a most thoughtful surprise in return: a collector’s edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn produced the previous year in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the seminal novel’s original 1885 publication.
“This is for Linc,” Mrs. Kibrick said. “It’s my all-time favorite book. Please tell him it’s the library’s interest payment to him for kindly loaning us his beloved table.”
~~~
“They signed it!” Linc declared, clapping his hands once as punctuation.
“I’m proud of you,” Tavis said with quiet earnestness, then leapt out of the pickup and wrapped Linc in a bear hug.
Next, as if turning down a made bed, Tavis peeled back the blue-jay-blue plastic tarp. Even upside-down, with the butterfly knot and resplendent sheen hidden from view, Linc instantly recognized his cherished Table. Thunderstruck, he looked at Tavis, back at The Butterfly Table, then again at Coach.
“Howwhowhy?” Linc managed at long last, asking three questions at once.
“You know Love—she’s been on me about getting a new dining table,” Tavis said, deadpan. “You don’t mind if we borrow yours, do you?”
For the second time in one day, the tears escaping Linc’s eyes were of joy instead of sorrow.
Mystical Oration
Nearing midnight, on a school night, Linc was the only one awake.
He had a midterm in the morning and was studying at The Butterfly Table in the dining room, but the alchemy of weariness was transforming his eyelids from flesh to lead.
He closed his U.S. History textbook with sleepy satisfaction, slid it aside, turning his focus to studying the Table—his Table, his history. With his right index finger he traced the orange-and-black butterfly knot precisely, repeatedly. Next, he dragged his fingertips over The Butterfly Table’s glassy wood grain, back and forth, lightly, slowly, more slowly still.
Juglone, a toxic chemical released by black walnut trees, strongly repels other plant life from growing nearby. Now the exact opposite effect took place: Linc’s right hand was strongly attracted to the black walnut wood, drawn to it as metal to a powerful electromagnet, as love to a soul mate. His roaming fingertips made smaller and smaller sweeping passes until their caressing stopped and his palm pressed down—was pulled down—firmly on the butterfly knot.
Closing his eyes, an act that heightened his concentration, Linc was certain he could feel a heartbeat in the black walnut.
Through osmosis or mystical alchemy, or perhaps it was a vivid dream that seemed so very real, the wood—the heirloom—communicated with Linc.
~~~
I never imagined I would be a study table in a library, but does anyone ever know the path their future will traverse?
After all, I never imagined being a front door, either.
But what a special chapter for me it was to be in the library the past seven years. Your gift to the library, Linc, was indeed a gift to me as well.
“How so?” you might ask. Well, in my experience people are generally happy when they are in a library. I am reminded of something Holden Caulfield says in The Catcher in the Rye: “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”
People who sit in my company feel like my terrific friends, and when they enjoy a terrific book in my presence it really knocks me out. You are surely wondering, Linc, how can I possibly quote a line written by J.D. Salinger, and the answer is I have memorized every sentence of every book that has ever rested upon me. I think it’s partly the words on the paper pages—a cousin of wood, of course—magically seeping into my cellulose fibers. As well, I have felt the ethereal vibrations of some people’s lips moving while they read mutedly.
Sometimes, the best times really, I could actually hear people reading to themselves, unknowingly, in faint whispers. This especially happened with poetry, Linc, and oh how I loved it! Dickinson, Frost, Rumi, Shakespeare of course, Angelou—a hundred poets, and more, I know and love. As you can imagine, Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees” is one of my dearest favorites—“I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree. Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree.”
You should have seen me when I was a tree! I was not only lovely, I was majestic. I’m not boasting, mind you—“majestic” is how your four-times-great-grandfather Tamás described me before a lightning bolt split me in two more than a century ago. His tall praise made my sap tingle.
As you may know, Linc, I became a front door originally and thereafter this Table. I must tell you, a door does not get to know people as truly as does a table in a kitchen or dining room—or library. A kitchen table learns about people more intimately than even a four-poster bed does. People talk and laugh, argue and discuss, share their lives around a kitchen table. Chefs like to say “the table comes first” because fellowship and communion happens in breaking bread. It still knocks me out to be a conduit for such enchantments.
Mystical Oration, Part II
Metamorphosing from a door to dining table, I believe, raised me to a higher purpose.
And I think that’s how it should be, Linc—we should not be limited to one purpose, but rather grow and evolve to higher and higher callings as our days pass into years and to decades. I dream of my maple legs becoming a concert violin one day—some of the finest violins are made of maple and spruce. Perhaps this desire comes from the ebullient fiddling I heard the night I was felled by the lightning bolt from the heavens that left my surface as hard as Moses’ stone tablets.
As well, I dream of becoming a church pew—about the highest calling I can imagine. The most sorrowful destiny for a tree, on the other hand, is to be used for a lynching—even to become firewood is a far better fate.
Linc, you have probably noticed that one of my legs, near the bottom, is damaged. That’s where Puck—the cutest Dalmatian, belonging to your three-times-great-grandpa Lemuel and his twin brother Jamis—chewed. It’s funny, a big fierce tiger didn’t scar me—now there’s a story for another day!—but a cuddly puppy did.
Here is something else funny—I’m glad that Lemuel, who crafted me from a door into a table, nor any of your forefathers since, didn’t repair my leg. I think there is great virtue in imperfection.
As an example, most people considered Lemuel to be imperfect because his mind worked at its own leisurely pace. But my goodness, Linc, Lemuel was as near to a perfect person as seems possible. He truly loved thy neighbor as thyself, and you are blessed to have his genes and heavenly stardust within you.
From an encyclopedia a boy was reading upon me one rainy afternoon, I learned that the Shakers—renowned for their carpentry craftsmanship—deliberately introduced a “mistake” into each piece of furniture in order to show that man should not aspire to the perfection of God. Flawed, they believed, could be ideal.
This seems a wise lesson for everyone, Linc—instead of focusing on trying to be perfect, whatever that is, far better to take pride in making the effort to do our very best.
Similar to the Shakers, Native American Navajos purposely weave a single imperfection into their handmade blankets. To their eyes this makes the patterned blankets more handsome, not less so, and each truly unique. That’s exactly how I feel about my chewed leg.
Instead of seeing physical blemishes and scars as ugly, I wish people would embrace them as beauty marks—as badges of having survived the difficulties life has thrown their way.
Speaking of appearances, I’m grateful not to be made solely of one type of wood. I feel my black walnut top is enhanced by the diversity of being married, if you will, to my white oak border and maple legs just as complementing woods in a violin make its music sweeter.
Oh, what sweetness I’ve been blessed with, Linc! I’ve seen your ancestors enjoy meals as newlyweds, and celebrate silver and golden anniversaries. I’ve experienced the miracle of childbirth on me; had lives saved on me; had love letters written on me. I’ve savored Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner gatherings around me. I even fondly remember you hunched over me with coloring books and jigsaw puzzles and Legos.
All these experiences, and a million more, have been absorbed into my grain—and now you will enrich my patina further, Linc, during your life journey ahead.
~~~
In the morning, in the twilight between dreams and wakefulness, with his head resting on the history textbook as though it were a pillow, Linc again unconsciously caressed the butterfly knot.
Instead of hearing an apparitional voice speaking about the past, Linc—reminiscent of his five-times-great-Grandma Dika—had a prescient vision of the future. He saw The Butterfly Table covered with blankets, layered high and soft as a mattress, and a young couple atop the makeshift bed making love. Come sunrise, when the newlyweds roused, they were inexplicably a few years older. And they had a child. Actually, they were parents of two toddlers—
—twin boys.
Haiku: Masterpiece Man
When you find yourself at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on for dear life like John Howland did after falling overboard off the famous Mayflower.
The abandoned athletic shed had served as Linc’s rescue knot and just when his hands were cramping and his grip was slipping, just when he was about to let go and plummet into the deep cold rough sea, Coach Tavis Jordan hauled in the lifeline and lifted the forsaken boy to safety.
Thereafter, from that fateful left turn through a red stoplight at an empty intersection, Linc’s life was filled with hope and faith and love—
—and with Love and Fayth and Tavis.
Almost overnight, Linc’s despair became delight, his fears found comfort, his soul was nourished. He not only had a comfortable bed, he had his own bedroom. He had home-cooked meals, clean clothes, a sense of belonging.
He also had new chores, such as emptying the dishwasher and taking out the trash and mowing the lawn, which made him feel all the more like a member of the Jordan family. The thorns in his life were turning to rose petals, juglone to nectar, storm clouds to sunshine. Instead of hollow, he felt full. His emotional tempest calmed and his dulled eyes sparkled anew.
Linc’s joy swelled on the football field as well, as chronicled by newspaper headlines the following four weeks:
Cougars Rally for 31-28 Victory
Cats Continue Aerial Show
Dynamic Duo Baxter & Jamison Shine Again
New High for C-Peak: Win Streak Hits 8
Through all of this winning, for Coach Jordan the most rarefied highlight did not happen on the gridiron under the bright glare of Friday night lights.
Rather, it came to pass beneath the dull-humming florescent tubes in the faculty lounge on a Tuesday noontime. Rhett and Tavis were eating lunch when Mr. Thompson, an English teacher, approached their table.
“Coach,” Roger greeted. “Just the man I wanted to see.” Nodding hello to Rhett, he added: “Mind if I join you two?”
“Please, Rog, have a seat,” Rhett said.
“What’s up?” Tavis followed, expecting congratulations on the team’s winning streak—or, he dreaded, a discouraging heads-up regarding someone’s sagging grades.
His worries metastasized when Roger, looking him in the eye, began: “You won’t believe the in-class essay one of your players wrote yesterday.”
Tavis braced for the other cleat to drop.
“The topic was, Who do you think is the most important person in the world—and why?” Roger continued. “I gave the kids the entire period and Lincoln Jamison wrote fifteen words. Fifteen. Total. In fifty minutes.”
Tavis slumped at the news that Linc had failed the assignment. Worse, that the boy had failed to even try.
“As you might imagine, most of the students wrote about President Reagan or Pope John Paul II,” Roger went on. “Pro athletes—sadly, in my opinion—were addressed by a few kids. Everyone, except Linc, filled page after page.”
From an inside breast pocket of his sports coat, a cliché of camel corduroy with leather elbow patches, Roger retrieved a test blue book, neatly folded in half. Rhett, sitting nearest Rog, opened it and examined the exam. The grade at the top, in red ink, shocked him.
“An A?” Rhett challenged, mystified.
“It’s by far the shortest essay I’ve ever given a passing grade to—much less a top mark,” Roger remarked.
Knocked off balance with relief, Tavis asked: “How can that be?”
“It’s a haiku,” Roger explained. “The Japanese form of short poetry consisting of exactly seventeen morae—syllables—arranged in three lines of precisely five, seven, and five syllables. Like da Vinci said, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
“Linc’s simplicity here is the ultimate compliment,” Rhett opined, smiling at Tavis. “It’s titled, Masterpiece Man. I’ll read it to you—
“The M-V-Person / in my world is Tav Jordan / I love Coach—he cares.”
Rhett handed the exam back to Roger, who graciously slid it across the Formica tabletop.
“Keep it, Tav—I’ll tell Linc I misplaced it,” Roger said. “Just don’t let him know I showed you. He might be embarrassed.”
With care, and with eyes closed, Tavis closed and refolded the keepsake.
The Promise
Tavis pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket, opened it, read aloud.
“Five and five.”
He crumpled the note into a ball and tossed it aside.
“Five and five, gentlemen,” he repeated. “That’s the prediction I wrote down before the season began for the win-loss record I believed you were capable of. Frankly, I think five wins was an optimistic goal considering this program’s dismal seasons lately.”
Coach Jordan audited the faces in the locker room, locking eyes briefly with each Cougar player, one after another after another, stars and starters and reserves alike, optically traveling bench to bench until every last one of them had personally felt his genuine devotion.
“I underestimated you boys—you fine young men—and greatly so,” he eventually resumed. “Five wins? You’re nine-and-one going for your tenth victory tonight. I apologize for underestimating your character and your valor—and your unwavering commitment to each other.”
Forty-eight pairs of eyes looked on, too spellbound to blink, the players hanging on every sentence, every word, every syllable.
“I’m burstin’ proud of y’all!” the coach-teacher-turned-momentary-preacher fairly sang as if it were a hymnal lyric. “Every single one of you. You proved me, and all your critics, wrong. Dead wrong. You have the hearts of champions—”
Another slow panoramic glance over the sea of faces.
“—one more win tonight and you’ll have the trophy of champions.”
Whoops and hollers rattled the metal lockers, echoed off the concrete walls.
We Play Hard! and 9 Wins, 1 Loss was written on the chalkboard behind Coach Jordan. He crossed out the 9 and above it wrote 10 and reiterated: “One more win will make you league champs.”
“One more!
“One! More!
“ONE! MORE!” the players crowed, each refrain louder than the previous.
Coach waited for quiet, then continued: “You’re going up against the Hastings Eagles, our fiercest rival, on their home field, before their rowdy fans. None of that will matter. They also have a coaching legend—Coach Harry McFadden, my ol’ coach—on their sideline. Again, it won’t matter.”
“Won’t matter!
“Won’t! Matter!
“WON’T! MATTER!” came the rising chant.
“Hastings’s strengths are its pass rush and defensive secondary,” Coach rejoined. “That doesn’t matter either. We’re going to pass—all!—night!—long! A great warrior once said, You can beat a foe by defeating his weakness, but you destroy him by defeating his strength. We’re not going to just beat the Eagles, we’re going to destroy them!”
