couldn’t see the tops of them. He took a job planting seedlings. He honed his senses. He watched the shadows, he listened to the breeze. Deeper and deeper into the woods Johnny Appleseed went in search of the wildest thickets and the world’s tallest trees.
“Best dinner ever,” Johnny said softly, and walked his dishes to the sink.
Johnny hefted the sleeping boy in his arms and carried him the long route to the barn. Melody hovered behind as he climbed the ladder to the loft. “Nice,” he said, glancing at the changes. He delivered the boy into the bed she’d made for him and straightened the blankets to cover him. Below, Sitka and her pups circled and huffed, settling into the wood chips Johnny had spread for them. “You don’t mind taking care of the dogs while I’m gone?”
“Come back soon, buddy.”
Johnny Appleseed smiled. Melody watched his face soften and grow sober as he gazed at the boy. He put a hand to Wrecker’s cheek and the boy snuffled and turned. Johnny smiled again, but his eyes were sad. Melody waited. “The dogs will be fine,” she said.
“Of course they will.” He gazed at her. “Remember that maple?”
“Up the hill? Where you can see the water?”
“I took him there.”
He’d shown her the tree the year before. The tree stretched horizontally, a broadleaf maple so old, so venerable, Johnny said, it seemed as much a part of the hillside as the rocks and soil. Venerable? She didn’t know, but it was as broad as the back of an ox, and it looked like it had poured itself down the hillside, spurning the sky above in favor of the adjacent air. Its corrugated bark was softened with moss. She’d sat up there and slowly inched her way forward for the view. The ribbon of Mattole glinted past the manzanita, and past that, so far it was no more than a hint of different blue beside the blue sky, was the sea. Melody squinted at him. “Did he get scared?”
Johnny glanced again at the sleeping boy. Not exactly, Johnny said. Melody watched him stumble for the words to describe it. He’d held on to Wrecker as the boy slid his way forward, gripping the ridges of the bark, easing his legs around limbs that branched off, feeling the fresh new leaves brush his face. Soon the ground dropped away. Johnny had hold of Wrecker by the waist, and he could feel him tremble. Why wouldn’t he? He was a little boy in the middle of the sky. It was a different world aloft, humid and softly sussurant, the air buzzing as though the tree breathed with them. A horned owl gave a low hoot, coasting from tree to tree below them in the dusk. The boy’s small back was pressed snug against Johnny Appleseed’s chest, the top of his head tucked under Johnny’s chin.
Melody shut her eyes and pictured Bow Farm the way Johnny drew it, a few roofs scattered across the patchy acreage and Ruth a small figure in the yard of the farmhouse, working the hand pump to fill a bucket. Down the path stood the barn where Melody had set up camp. Past that—they all knew how far, by foot—was Willow’s yurt, a cupcake house planted on the edge of the meadow. Farther on Len’s place with its roofs the color of rusty nails; farther still the rollicking Mattole, the river black and broad and giddy with runoff. And then the forest closed in dense and green. In every direction were miles and miles and miles of trees. And glinting fiercely with the low-slung sun, the sea.
Beyond the sea—
“ ‘Is it there?’ I asked him,” Johnny said. His voice was low and his face half in shadow as he glanced at Melody and then back at the boy. “ ‘What you’re looking for?’ ”
Melody opened her eyes and blinked at him quizzically. “Is what there?”
Johnny laughed softly. “The same sea. How far can a kid swim if he wants that badly to go home?” He turned his head to gaze at Wrecker. The boy sighed in his sleep. “Remember your mother, I told him. Remember everything. It’s bound to be a long while.” He cleared his throat and focused on Melody. “Before he gets back, I mean.”
Melody gave her head a little shake. Wrecker had escaped all that, she said.
Johnny Appleseed dipped his head and flashed an enigmatic smile. “You think it was bad, what he left behind.”
“Wasn’t it?”
He looked at