Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 81488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 407(@200wpm)___ 326(@250wpm)___ 272(@300wpm)
“Yeah, that’s true.” She leaned against a tree and looked around her as he spoke.
“I had an unsettling, terrible thing happen one time out here.”
She turned her gaze sharply back in his direction. “What happened?”
He paced slowly back and forth, tearing that piece of grass into little bits. “My brothers and I were playin’ hide-and-go-seek. I couldn’t have been more than ten. I went too far… way past where our daddy told us to never wander. Right before that, I was flustered, see? Dakota kept finding me, so this time, I was going to make sure he didn’t. I meandered, out to about where we are right now.” He pointed to the ground. “Daddy had told us to stop playing and settle down, ’cause he was putting things back in his truck, preparing for us to go back home. See, he had to roll up the sleeping bags and put away the tent. We’d camped way over yonder overnight that evening. “She nodded in understanding. “Well, Jordan wanted one more game of hide-and-go-seek since it was takin’ Daddy so damn long.
“So, me and Jordan scattered like roaches,” he smiled sadly, “while Dakota counted by a tree with his eyes closed. I zoomed off like a rocket. I came out this way… the clouds high in the dark sky, just like right now.” He looked upward. “Smelled like rain. Trees looked so big to me back then, in my little bitty eyes. I was so proud of how far I’d run and found such a good spot behind a rotted-out tree, but then I realized what had happened. Reality came and smacked me in the face. I’d run too far.
“Wasn’t nothin’ around here that I recognized, Genesis.” He spread his arms out. “My heart got to pumpin’, baby. Boom boom! Boom boom!” He placed his hand against his chest, and briefly closed his eyes. “After a few minutes I suppose, I came from around the tree, and I looked up at that tree I’d been hiding behind for Lord knows how long. I got a really good, long look at it. Its insides were all rotted out—like lightning had struck it all the way down the middle…but on the other side of the tree, where I’d been hiding, it looked still alive, the leaves and foliage bright green. The tree that hid me from my brothers, suddenly seemed like a monster that was destined to swallow me whole.
“Let me tell you something: It took over two hours, if I recollect right, for my daddy and brothers to find me. I have no idea to this day how I did it, but I ran almost a mile away to go hide, lady.” She shook her head in disbelief. “It didn’t seem like that long, at the time, Genesis. I just remember runnin’, and runnin’, and runnin’. I remember pure adrenaline, and my thoughts scattered like playing cards. I remember thinking about the toys I wanted for Christmas, and the birthday cake I wanted Mama to bake for my birthday, and how I was going to make all A’s on my report card and get that bike that Daddy kept promising me. I thought about how, if I did all of that, and my brothers acted real good, too, Mama and Daddy would have no choice but to start being good to each other as well.”
She hugged herself, blinking back tears.
“I didn’t understand that that’s not how life works.” He chuckled sadly. “Don’t matter how good you are, how smart, kind and loving, someone is always going to throw the salt or pepper shaker across the room. Someone is always going to break the parts of you that were the strongest. Someone is always going to trick you into thinkin’ that they are your protector, when really, they are the predator and you are their prey—a rotten monster in disguise—hiding you from your rescuers on one side, pretending to be kind on the other, just like that tree.”
Genesis’ soul leapt in her body. A dark pain seeped from the locked door of Roman’s heart and made itself known.
“I used to have nightmares about that tree, Gen.” He kept pacing, back and forth, picking more blades of grass, tearing each one to pieces and starting all over again. “I had nightmares all through my teens about it.” He turned and pointed to it, the one he was standing closest to. She scanned it from the base to the top—long, limp, dark limbs with no leaves. It was gray and clearly dead now. Just a little bit of life in one, tiny section of bark where a few coils of green burst against the lifeless, rough canvas. “Every, oh, I’d say six or seven months, that tree would pop up in my mind and get uglier and uglier, taller and taller, scarier and scarier. But then, as I went through military training, I realized something.”