Snakes & Ladders

By Shaun Smith

For as long as 13-year-old Paige Morrow can remember, the tree fort in the giant oak near her cottage in Ontario’s Muskoka has been her sanctuary. Now everything is changing. Its the summer of 1971, and she and her little brother, Toby, have been at their cottage with their mother since school let out. But this year, Paige feels more alone than ever. Her father has stopped coming up from the city on weekends, while her mother buries herself in whiskey and writing.

Paige retreats to her tree fort, but becomes concerned when the farmer who owns the property hires a creepy arborist – a "tree doctor," Paige’s mother calls him. Is something wrong with the farms apple orchard or with her tree? When Paige befriends the arborist’s troubled teenage daughter, Janine, and her group of rowdy locals, she is pulled into a maze of dark secrets and shocking truths that leads to a life-and-death confrontation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Jan 12, 2009
• ISBN: 9781554886104

Shaun Smith

Shaun Smith is founder and partner in the consulting firm Smith+Co which works with brands around the world. A thought leader on the subject of customer experience strategy, he has appeared often on CNBC's "Ask the Expert" program.

Book preview

Council.

part 1

"Yes — en I’s rich now, come to look at it. I owns

myself, en I’s wuth eight hund’d dollars. I wisht I had

de money, I wouldn’ want no mo’."

— Jim, in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

chapter 1

Paige!

Paige looked down from her tree.

Paige!

Something was wrong. From where she lay in the boughs of the giant oak, she could see her little brother, Toby, charging through the grass and wildflowers of the field that led from their grandfather’s old house. He ran unsteadily, jumping and stumbling, trying to follow the narrow, mud-packed foot trail. Behind him he dragged a long stick, while ahead his thick glasses threw flashes of sunlight at the tree. Toby was eight years old, but he was small for his age, and each time he strayed from the trail the tall grass, up to his hips, tugged at his skinny legs like matted hair in a comb.

Paige pressed flat against the boards of the tree fort and stuck a finger in her paperback of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. She had been lost in the book, reading the part where Tom takes a whipping for falsely confessing that it was he, not the girl Becky, who had torn their schoolteacher’s anatomy book. Tom had a crush on Becky and wanted to protect her from the cruel teacher.

When Paige raised her eyes from the paperback, it felt as if she had flipped on a light switch. The sky was bright and clear, and she had to squint out across the field to find Toby. There was no sign of the other, older boy she had seen earlier at the farmhouse.

All around Paige the oak tree’s enormous canopy swayed in the warm breeze, its limbs creaking and hissing in a lumbering mass. The large hand-shaped leaves waved as though in greeting to Toby. The summer day was a stark contrast to the imagined misery of Tom Sawyer’s classroom, yet looking out at Toby now, Paige felt a gloom of her own — a very real one she had been fighting for days.

Not again, she said, a lump forming in the pit of her stomach. Then she gazed at the sky where a ghostly half-moon floated as translucent as a jellyfish. Please, not again.

The moon had held much of their attention that week. Years ago, long before Mr. Thorvald had arrived, their grandfather had told them the moon was where people went when they died. They travel all over the universe, he had said, standing on his porch one night, the air ringing with cricket song, but they always come back to the moon to sleep. His axe-like hand had swept across the star fields, with one giant finger halting to point at the moon.

Paige knew he was making it up, but Toby had believed him. "They do?"

Oh, yes, their grandfather had said, the moon is their bed.

Paige’s grandfather had died two years earlier in 1969. He was buried in the churchyard outside Graydon, the nearby town.

Tobias Mackenzie Hartmann

Loving Husband, Father, Grandfather

1898–1969

Rest in Peace

Alongside their grandfather’s grave were those of his wife, Faith, whom Paige had never known, and markers for his brothers, Kenneth and Alec, both killed in France during the First World War.

Every Monday, after grocery shopping, Paige and Toby went with their mother to place flowers at the graves. Except Toby, who always refused to get out of the car.

Grandpa’s not in the graveyard, he would say. Neil Armstrong took him to the moon.

Their grandfather had died on the initial day of the Apollo 11 mission, when men first walked on the moon, and Toby had convinced himself the astronauts had taken their grandfather on the rocket. No one could tell him otherwise. He had even concocted a fantasy that their grandfather was now the man in the moon. At night he talked to him — to the man in the moon — telling him what he had done each day, whispering secrets and laughing at jokes. Paige’s protests that the man in the moon had existed long before their grandfather had died fell on deaf ears.

It was just cheese back then, Toby would say.

On Monday of this week they had gone to the IGA grocery store as usual. When they entered, Toby had run to the newspaper rack, shouting, Paige, look! On the front page of the Graydon Herald, the town’s newspaper, was a photograph of the Apollo 15 rocket blasting off from Cape Kennedy. THREE MORE TO THE MOON! announced the headline. The date was July 26, 1971.

Afterward, when they went to the cemetery, Toby had actually gotten out of the car and come to the graves. Holding up the newspaper, he had said, Look, Grandpa, they’re coming to visit you again.

It was the next day that the moon had appeared in the afternoon sky. Standing on the cottage deck, Toby had pointed over the treetops and said, Something’s wrong.

What is it? their mother had asked, raising her eyes from a book.

The moon’s awake in the daytime.

Oh, she had said, that just happens sometimes, honey, because of how the planets rotate.

Yeah, Paige had said, it’s science.

But Toby hadn’t believed them.

Paige! Toby now yelled again.

Her attention dropped back to Earth. Her brother was partway across the field, running hard. In front of him a red-winged blackbird exploded out of a cluster of goldenrod and darted up toward the oak. It flew straight at Paige, the colour on its wings flashing like emergency lights, then it swooped past her to land in the high, slight branches overhead, singing out its shifting alarm-like call. Today was Friday. In one week Paige would turn fourteen.

They — Paige, Toby, and their mother, Susan — had been up at the Muskoka cottage for almost a month now, since just after school let out. They spent every summer at the cottage. Paige loved their time there together, especially when her father, Donald, who was a lawyer in Toronto, came up on the weekends. They swam and canoed, or read on the deck, or hiked in the woods. Sometimes they went on picnics or picked strawberries to make preserves. There was a drive-in movie theatre two towns over, and Paige loved to go even though she never made it through the whole double feature without falling asleep. Last summer they had seen Airport and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Her parents also had parties, with guests up from the city for the weekend, and Paige always invited some friends for her birthday.

But this year was different. There had been no picnics, no movies. No guests had come up and no plans had been made for Paige’s birthday. Paige’s mother was writing a book. She wouldn’t tell anyone what it was about, and it seemed to absorb all her attention. She had started last winter, and for months all she had done was sit at her typewriter working on her book. Only it didn’t look like a book. It was just a stack of papers held together by rubber bands. She called it her manuscript and kept it in a drawer in her desk. No one was allowed to read it.

The first couple of days after Paige, Toby, and their mother had arrived this year, chores had kept them busy — making beds, sweeping out dust bunnies and cobwebs, cleaning the kitchen. They went into town for groceries and then to the cemetery to clean the weeds off Grandpa’s grave. By midweek, however, they had relaxed into their routines. Paige and Toby played all day, exploring the woods, swimming, lying on the dock, going to the tree fort, or visiting Mrs. Thorvald. Meanwhile their mother worked on her manuscript, pecking away at her typewriter, moving only to shift from her desk inside the cottage out to the table on the deck.

The cottage sat on the side of a steep, wooded hill, and that first Friday evening, when Paige and Toby heard their father’s black Thunderbird arrive, they had both bolted outside, leaped off the porch, and run up through the trees to greet him. He always brought books — real books — for Paige, and comics for Toby. Getting out of his car, he laughed, kissed them, and smiled. Hello, munchkins. Toby took his briefcase, and Paige hugged his arm as they strolled back down the hill.

What did you bring, Daddy? Paige asked.

He stopped under the porch light, opened the briefcase, and handed Paige a paper bag from the W.H. Smith bookstore. She took out three Archie & Jughead comics for Toby and the paperback of Tom Sawyer.

Thank you, Paige said, gazing at the cover illustration of a barefoot boy whittling a stick.

When you’re done that, he said, tapping it with his finger, I’ll bring you a special one that’s even better.

Inside the cottage their mother was sitting at her desk with a drink and a cigarette, going over her day’s work. Hello! she said in a singsong voice.

Their father stopped in the doorway. What happened here?

Their mother looked up, puzzled. Pardon?

Susan, this place is a mess.

Paige glanced around the large open room. For the first time she noticed that the dinner dishes were still piled in the sink, and that there were open books and filthy ashtrays everywhere. Pop cans and coffee mugs littered the dinner table. Toby’s wet bathing suit was on the kitchen floor.

Oh, Susan said, I guess it is. I’m sorry. I was working.

Her husband frowned. Working?

Toby ran over to the desk and hoisted the fat manuscript in his arms. Yeah, look how much writing she got done, Daddy!

Yes, I can see that. He picked up the bathing suit and wrung it out in the sink.

Careful, honey. Susan took the manuscript and began organizing her papers. She looked toward the kitchen. How was your drive?

Her husband didn’t reply.

Don?

The usual traffic, he said, draping his suit jacket on the back of a chair. You know, Susan, the roads are full of negligent fools. He held her gaze, then turned away and started cleaning the rest of the room. Is there anything to eat?

Paige glanced at her mother, who simply stared at the empty space where her father had been standing. I can make you a sandwich, Daddy.

Thank you, munchkin.

Later that night Paige woke to hear her parents arguing outside on the deck.

chapter 2

Toby was now halfway across the field, running hard, then slowing down. That morning he had wanted to visit the duck nest they had found earlier in the week, but Paige hadn’t felt like it. She was grumpy and tired, and there was a weird ache in her chest. Paige had wanted to be alone, so she had taken Tom Sawyer and gone off to the tree fort by herself.

After crossing the turf Mr. Thorvald had planted in front of her grandfather’s old house, and after climbing over the rail fence he had built to separate lawn from field, Paige had avoided the foot trail to cut through the tall grass and weeds. In her grandfather’s day, when Paige was a little girl, there had been no lawn or fence. The field was a pasture, cropped short by grazing sheep, and the foot trail had led up to the house, with a branch heading off to the barn. Her grandfather’s big woolly sheep had wandered wherever they had wanted. Back then, if she was out with her grandfather on the farm, little Paige had always hidden behind his legs whenever the sheep, with their bony white heads and bulging black eyes, had come up to him, bleating for food. She had wanted to pet them but was afraid, and her grandfather had always said she was being silly.

What Paige had loved best were the lambs, especially coming up from the city in the spring to see them being born. She remembered the first time, standing in the cold barn in the middle of the night, her coat on over her nightgown, her breath exhaling in little puffs. Her mother had woken her, whispering, Quick, quick! and they had rushed out through the dark to the barn. A single clear bulb hanging from a black cable had lit the pen. Paige had squeezed her mother’s fingers and watched as her grandfather, down on his knees in the hay on the concrete floor, his sleeves pushed up and his hands shiny with blood, had coaxed the lamb out of its wailing mother. When Paige touched their noses, the little lambs had sucked her finger, tickling it.

This September Paige would enter grade ten. She had skipped grade seven, and as a result was always younger than the other kids in her class. They called her browner, and the girls teased her about her inexperience with boys. The idea of another year of high school was daunting, and it had been made worse back in May when her grade nine class took a field trip to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

The night before the trip Paige and her mother had quarrelled. When Paige returned from school that day, her mother had said there was something in her room. Puzzled, Paige had run upstairs. On her dresser was a training bra.

I’m not wearing that, Paige had said to her mother, who had come into the room behind her.

Why not?

Everyone will see it through my clothes.

Oh, Paige, don’t be ridiculous.

"Mo-ther!"

Well, better they see that than your chest.

Paige had felt her face burn. The next morning she had refused to wear the bra. It was a cool day, but by the time her class had gotten to the museum, the sun had come out and warmed things up. Everyone had taken their coats off and carried them. Paige was wearing jeans and a yellow cotton turtleneck. As her class had toured the dinosaur exhibits, she had noticed a group of older hippie boys with long hair staring at her, whispering, and grinning. She had scrambled to put her coat back on and sweated out the rest of the visit. The next day she had worn the bra.

Now, in the pasture, a long way from the city, school, and boys, Paige felt safe. The pasture was a secret, untouchable place. When she walked through it, she felt her grandfather was with her and she was no longer the Paige who had skipped ahead of all her friends, nor the Paige who needed to wear a bra, nor the Paige who was grinned at by wolfish boys. She was little Paige, who bottle-fed the greedy lambs, who rode on her grandfather’s bear-like shoulders, who one day, when she was about Toby’s age, had climbed up to the tree fort all on her own and couldn’t get down.

How did you get up here then? her grandfather had asked that day, his round, sunburned face rising above the edge of the fort.

I climbed the ladder, Paige said, weeping. The fort was actually a bunch of old planks, like a raft about ten feet square, that he had nailed onto a triangle of beams roped into the tree. He had built it for Paige’s mother when she was young. There was a knothole at the centre through which you could spy on anyone directly below, and a rope ladder hung down twenty feet to the ground.

Did you really? her grandfather said, swinging himself up onto the planks. Paige wanted him to carry her back down, but instead he sat beside her and gazed out over the countryside. My, it’s a long time since I been up here.

Paige was still sniffling.

What you crying about? He untucked the tail of his shirt and wiped her eyes and nose, then pointed across the landscape.