The Treehouse

By Peter Bowden


The china berry tree leaned a little, as if it had been waiting all these years for this day. The father set down the hammer, the boy carried the bent nails straightened out against a brick. Between them, a pile of lumber scraps, rough edges, the scent of sun-dried wood rising with the heat.

They worked without hurry. The boy held the board, the father drove the nail. Each strike echoed through the branches, scattering sparrows that watched from the telephone wires. Sweat rolled, shirts clung, and the world shrank to the creak of boards climbing skyward into the green shade.

By afternoon, the tree cradled a square room no bigger than a dream. The boy hauled up a bedspread, patterned with cowboys and bucking broncos, and stretched it wide as a roof against the sky. It billowed, a flag of summer, a promise that stories and secrets would be kept there. When evening came, they sat in the high place together, looking out at the neighborhood, the rooftops, the sinking sun—and for a moment, time itself felt nailed into place.


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