Chapter 100
He was eight (and a half!) when he discovered the great tree on the green in Colonial Williamsburg. The Market Days event in mid-September was one of the biggest events of the year; dozens of units converged on the historical site, and the sea of canvas tents spread as far as the eye could see. Dozens of other kids ran through the wide paths between the tents, dressed in linen shirts and breeches. The cannons were fired regularly, rending the air with their loud booming.
The boiled leather shoes that were considered historically appropriate for children were not the best he could have selected for tree-climbing, but Scooter was eight (and a half!) and he didn’t stop to think about things like that. The tree had huge branches, some wider than a picnic bench. He was more than twenty feet up without even thinking about it, and by the time he found a good branch, he could barely see the ground through the leaves. Perched high, he stood on a branch, playing pirate. He could see the powder magazine from where he was, and no one could see him. It was terribly exciting.
But he’d forgotten about the cannons and when one of them fired, he startled, and lost his footing. The slick leather shoes gave no purchase, and he went down over the side.
He remembered, very clearly, hitting one large branch on the way down. His arm made a sudden, unexpected noise, and he screamed. Oh, he screamed. Hitting the branch slowed his fall. He tumbled the rest of the way down until he was laying flat on the hard-packed dirt under the tree.
Later, the nurse in the ER would tell his mother it was a miracle that he was still alive.
As it was, he broke his arm in three places and spent the next four months in a cast. (He met his best friend during those months. Jason wasn’t allowed to participate in gym class either because he had trouble with breathing, so the two boys sat together on the side of the gym and watched the other children and struck up a friendship.)
Being so badly frightened and injured changed things for Scooter. He hesitated to splash in the ocean, refused to climb even the short scrub pines near home. Stopped running pell-mell down the dock that gave the restaurant its name. Wouldn’t even step up on the stool to help decorate the Christmas tree. He could feel his mother’s eyes on him, but he tried to ignore it.
As soon as the weather warmed, Lorraine took a day off. She put Scooter in their truck and drove them all the way to Williamsburg. It had never seemed so far before, but his ma didn’t say why they were going and Scooter was nine now and he had a sick suspicion it wasn’t a late birthday treat and the ninety minute drive seemed forever
Scooter walked with his mom, all the way down Dog Street (he was a lot older before he discovered that it was really Duke of Gloucester Street, abbreviated by the locals to DoG). He started dragging his feet when she crossed the green, but Lorraine didn’t stop.
“You need to go up again, Winnie Stahl,” she said. She looked at him, stern and kind and scary all at once. “I know you’re scared, but if you let it win, let the tree win, you’ll be backing down your whole life.” She cupped her hands to offer him a boost, and the look on her face said there was no getting out of it.
Scooter cried. He was too old to cry, he knew that, but he cried anyway. His arm hurt where it had been broken. He was going to fall again.
Lorraine merely watched and waited until his panic eventually subsided, then handed him a tissue and made him blow his nose. She cupped her hands again and waited some more.
His ma could have waited all day, Scooter knew. Finally, knowing he had no other choice, he put his foot in the stirrup formed by her hands and she boosted him onto that first branch. With a grunt of effort, his mother grabbed hold of the lowest branch and hauled herself up into the tree, too.
Scooter had been scared, but the sight of his ma climbing a tree startled him out of it. He’d never seen her do anything like that before. She passed him, scaling another fifteen feet or so. “Well, you gonna make me climb this tree all by m’self?”
That first bit, when he let go of the safety of the lowest branch, stood up, and reached, might have been the hardest thing he’d ever done in his short life. But he did it. Hooked his leg over the branch and pulled himself up. And again. And again. His ma kept just out of reach, until they got near to the top and Scooter realized he was right back where he’d been.