The good news is that the puppy is scratching and whining at the back door instead of peeing on Marla’s hardwood kitchen floor. The bad news is that it’s almost midnight on a frigid February night. Marla grabs her coat and the leash and heads outside to “the spot” in the partially-fenced back yard. Her sigh freezes in the air and floats to the ground. The puppy roots around, then squats. Marla begins the singsong good-puppy chant, but suddenly there is a loud rustle in the woods just beyond her property line. The puppy takes off, ripping the leash from Marla’s hand.
“Oh, Jesus,” Marla whispers, and follows her dog into the woods.
The trees out here are old and bare, and their brittle spindly branches reach out and scratch Marla’s face and hands. One hundred years ago, this was a mighty forest brimming with life. Deer and foxes, rabbits and raccoons. Woodpeckers, wrens, robins, and crows. Copperheads and garter snakes baked themselves in the summer, when the air was heavy with the scent of wildflowers. In the winter, weak sunlight fell on a soft carpet of dead leaves, and the snowfall was decorated with hoofprints.
Eventually, the grand forest was pared down to make room for townhouses and single-family homes with little treeless yards. Thousands of oaks, hickory trees, and loblolly pines were uprooted and trucked away. Deer populations were culled. Raccoons and foxes relocated to new residents’ trash rooms. By the time Marla moved into her townhouse, the forest was little more than a dense strip of trees and unmanicured bushes meant to give homeowners the illusion that they lived in the woods, surrounded by nature.
And now, Marla is charging through what’s left of the forest looking for her puppy. The trees, having never forgotten their own majestic grandeur, lash out, snatching bits of Marla’s hair and tearing at her bare ankles. They draw blood from the backs of her hands. But Marla is focused on her lost puppy and barely notices. Soon the forest gives up trying to punish her for the trauma they suffered so many years before. It’s not in their nature to be cruel, even to the beings who nearly destroyed them. The branches relax. Marla’s hair falls around her shoulders. She stands still, letting her eyes get accustomed to the dark. She feels oddly safe. Without knowing why, she steps out of her snow booties and feels the cold dirt and soft leaves and pine needles underfoot. The earth seems to fit itself to the soles of her feet. She starts walking.
Not far ahead of her, Marla’s puppy has sampled some leaves and is now examining some slender crunchy sticks at the base of a red maple. The maple drops some especially tempting twigs atop the puppy’s head, done to keep him happily engaged–and stationary–until Marla reaches him and scoops him into her arms. The red maple sighs, and the other trees share that profound contentment that accompanies forgiveness.
