The minute he walks into her office Dr. Anna Costello knows the Psychiatrist’s report is wrong. After thirty years, she has an instinct for people, an eye for seemingly trivial details that reveal a person’s inner character. First clue: Fingernails; clean and trimmed.

They say hello with a glance, a quick nod while he scans her office. Knowing that he’s checking her out as much as she is him, she waits and watches.

A cluster of framed photos and diplomas on the wall draw him across the room. A candid shot in black and white of a mother and daughter mugging for the camera, cheek-to-cheek, tongues sticking out, wide-eyed with dimpled cheeks. Then he reads her diplomas. After a few seconds he looks over his shoulder at the Doctor. She knows what he thinking: How can anyone who graduated twenty years before he was born possibly understand anything worth understanding.

A collection of carved wooden animals on a glass shelf behind her desk catches his attention next – a big yellow bird with outstretched wings, a green grasshopper, a lizard of some type, a monkey and a sheep covered with white fleece.

“I like animals.” he says, turning to face her.

When they shake hands he looks her in the eye, direct and unblinking – her second clue – open, intelligent, curious. The set of his jaw, tense and tight-lipped, tells her he doesn’t want to be here. Who would? What 14-year-old likes to be told he’s crazy? The official report said, ‘. . .anti-social with explosive aggression . . .’ a report she’s already dismissed as typical bureaucratic ineptitude.

Gesturing towards the couch, she says, “Take a seat Llewellyn.”

“Leftie,” he says, “No one calls me Llewellyn.”

“You don’t like your given name?”

“Too difficult to spell.”

There’s the first lie, she thinks.

“Leftie it is, then. You can call me Anna or Doctor Costello, whichever makes you feel comfortable.” She places Llewellyn’s file, the government report, on the low table between them and starts the session: “You know why you’re here?”

“Because the judge sent me.”

“Do you know why he sent you?”

“Because he doesn’t know dick.”

“So why don’t you tell me what the judge doesn’t know.”

“Like I’ve told this story like a million times and no one believes me.”

Second lie.

“You’re talking about the police,” she says, “the firemen, the lawyers and the judge?” – he nods – “We all have jobs to do, Leftie. Mine is to listen to you.”

“I can’t tell you everything.”

“Tell me what you can.”

* * *

Leftie tells Doctor Costello about a vacant lot close to his home, past the hydro lines between the schoolyard and the highway. Twenty acres of rubble. Tons of rock, tree stumps, slabs of concrete, plywood, old lumber, pipes and plumbing. Junk left behind by the contractors after they’d finished building the new subdivision.

The place was like a zoo without cages. Refuge for the rabbits and raccoons, pheasants and squirrels who’d lost their homes when the forest was levelled to make way for new houses.

Parents hated it. Every time one of their kids got a snake bite, a twisted ankle or a gash that needed stitches they got all revved up about rabies and tetanus shots, how someone could die up there, and a thousand reasons why children should play in the playground with its shiny new swings or at the school where they could be supervised. It was like they’d forgotten what it was like to be kids.

Where others saw garbage, tree stumps and broken arms, Leftie saw opportunity. A cluster of trees on top of the hill sparked his imagination. Five trees – ancient oaks, so large that two kids could barely wrap their arms around a trunk and touch fingers. One tree in the middle, the tallest, with thick branches stretched out like cupped hands, was a perfect location for a treehouse.

* * *

“We started harvesting the junk,” Leftie says. “It was summer vacation. We had to do something, right?”

“We?” Costello interrupts.

“Mitch, Mo, Earache and me.”

She tilts her head. “Earache?”

“Eric,” he says. “He’s a talker.”

“Mo?”

“She’s my friend. Not a girlfriend, a friend-friend.”

“And Mitch? I need to know everyone so I can follow your story.”

“Mitch lives across the street. She plays clarinet in the school band.”

Satisfied that she knows who’s who in Leftie’s story, she listens.

* * *

After a filthy hot day of dragging beams, planks and plywood to the top of the hill the four kids were sitting in the shade under the oaks, drinking warm sodas, tossing out grand ideas about their treehouse when Earache suddenly leapt to his feet.

“Ouch!” he yelled, slapping his hand to his forehead. “This is so obvious it hurts.” He paced in a tight circle leaving small clouds of dust in his wake, ranting: “We don’t have any tools. We gotta have tools. We can’t do anything without tools.” Of course, he was right.
“No contractor would leave their tools behind with all the other junk. They’re too valuable. We have to bring tools from home.”

Mo looked down at her feet and shook her head. “My dad won’t even let mom use a screwdriver without a lecture about girls not knowing how to take care of tools,” she moaned. “He’ll never loan me anything. He thinks I should be doing ‘girl-things.’ He calls me MightyMo. Creep.”

“My dad’s workshop is a mess,” Mitch said, with slightly more optimism. “He’s always banging around down there, slamming drawers and swearing ‘cuz he can never find anything. He’ll never miss a hammer or anything. And if he did, he’d just figure he lost it and buy another.”

Earache said, “I can get a pulley-type-thing from my granddad. It’s in his garage. He used to be like, a mechanic, but he’s old now. His hands got all fucked up and gnarly and he can’t work on his car anymore. He won’t miss it.” He pointed at a branch about ten metres up. “We can put it right there,” he said. “Got a big honkin’ hook on one end, too.”

“And nails,” Leftie added, holding his hands about ten centimetres apart. “Lots of nails and spikes, nuts and bolts. As many as you can get.”

For a week they hoisted beams into place, spiking them to the tree, cross-bracing the corners and nailing plywood to the floors, walls and roof. By Friday night all the purloined tools were returned to their proper places undetected and liberated again on Monday morning.

After two weeks of bent nails and bashed thumbs, their design was beginning to look rather spectacular. Treehouse was too modest a word for their sprawling network of rooms, towers, platforms and lookouts spanning three of the five trees.

A wrought iron staircase spiralled up from the ground to the support beam on the first level. Car seats salvaged from the rusty carcass of an abandoned Volkswagen were bolted to the floor around a large wooden spool that had once held coils of electric wiring and now served as their table. Curtains hung over the window frames. Landscape paintings from Mitch’s attic decorated the walls. Mitch and Mo built catwalks between the trees. Long planks straddled the gaps with ropes to hang on to. Twenty metres is a long way to fall.

Their proudest addition was a tiny platform nestled in the uppermost cluster of branches on the tallest tree, accessible only by an extension ladder tied to the tree trunk. From there, through a pair of binoculars Earache borrowed from his grandfather, they had an unobstructed view of Toronto from the suburbs on the northern fringe down to the lake.

In the storied history of treehouses that stretched back to the Neanderthals, no one could remember one as perfect as theirs. There was only one thing missing: a bathroom.

* * *

Costello interrupts – “You installed a bathroom?”

Leftie looks at her blankly as if to say of course.

Even with Earache’s block and tackle – technically, his grandfather’s block and tackle – getting the toilet bowl up to the second storey was a struggle.

“Imagine this toilet ten metres feet in the air swinging like a pendulum,” Leftie tells Costello, “four of us tryin’ to pull it into place with ropes running off in all directions.

“A toilet?” Costello says, holding back laughter.

“Pink isn’t my favourite colour, but hey! it was free.”

They shoved a plastic drain pipe through a hole in the floor, duct-taped one end to the toilet bowl and sloped the pipe away from the tree into a pile of concrete rubble below.

Although perfectly functional as it was, Mitch and Mo wanted walls. Earache disagreed. Everybody knew girls sat down to pee so what was the big deal? The girls argued that certain things had changed. Besides, they had worked just as hard on the fort as the guys and it was only fair that they had equal say on things. So they voted on it. Three to one in favour of privacy.

Earache began to feel that he may have been wrong and the time was right for some diplomacy.

A while back, Mitch had brought a Curious George blanket to the treehouse; abandoned by her baby brother when his allegiance shifted from George to Yoda. Earache threw the blanket over his shoulder, climbed up to the next level, wrapped it around three of the four posts surrounding the pink toilet and disappeared inside to inaugurate the unit. Moments later he stood in the open door, zipped up and proclaimed in his most theatrical voice: “From this day forward, heretofore, forthwith and in foreverafter perpetuity this here treehouse, our treehouse, shall be known as the Democratic Republic of Monkville.”

* * *

“We were just having fun.” Leftie tells Costello. “It’s not our fault how things turned out.”

Costello shivers, as if a cold front had just rolled into the room. Moments ago, she was listening to a young man tell his story. Proud of his accomplishment, surrounded by friends, creating memories, learning about life, developing his character – a young expression of the mature man. Now, all that was gone.

“One day Mo and I were there alone,” Leftie says. “We heard a voice call us from below. All hushed and wispy like Clint Eastwood when he’s mad.”

* * *

“Hey kid,” the voice said.

Mo and Leftie turned around in time to see a greaseball in a leather jacket climb through the trap door. Even though they recognized him as one of the older high school kids in the neighbourhood, they’d never seen him up close before. They shuddered at the sight. Mo eased behind Leftie and peeked over his shoulder. One side of the guy’s face and neck had been burned. His skin looked like melted wax – hard, glossy and rippled.

“I’m talking to you,” the guy said with a lopsided sneer. He jutted his chin at Mo, “She your chickie? Kinda young isn’t she?”

“Compared to what?”

“You fuck her yet?”

“What d’you want?”

“Since you ask, we want the fort.” He called down through the open door. “C’mon up guys.”

“There’s lots of stuff down by the creek,” Leftie told him. “Build your own.”

“We like this one.”

“This one’s ours.”

“Lemme tell you how the world works, kid.” The creep looked back over his shoulders at his two buddies climbing through the trap door, eyes locked on Leftie and Mo like snarling dogs ready for lunch. “Indians took this place from the Cave Men, Frenchies took it from the Indians, English took it from the Frogs, Immigrants are takin’ it from us and we’re takin’ this from you.”

The two thugs snickered at the eloquent history lesson. The hood lit a cigarette, spat a shred of tobacco at Leftie.

“You been evicted, pencil-dick.”

* * *

Leftie looks square at Costello and explains, “It was just me and Mo against three of them. They were older and bigger, so we left.”

Third lie, she thought.

“You just left?” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “Just handed it over to him? This guy, this greaseball, what’s his name? . . .” She reaches for the file on the table between them, pulls out a page. “. . . this Jay Veech. You nearly killed him because he took your treehouse? No. No. No. There’s something more. Something you’re not telling me.”

Leftie’s face flushes crimson. He leaps out of his chair and walks away. “Veech was an asshole!” he hollers whirling around. “He deserved it.”

Costello doesn’t push him for an answer. She watches him pace. Watches and waits. He returns to her collection of wooden animals. Runs his finger along the beak of the yellow bird, over its head and along its neck. It seems to calm him.

“Did you see him again, before the fire?” she asks.

“No.”

“Tell me about the fire.”

“No.”

“You almost killed the guy, Leftie. Don’t tell me it’s because he took your treehouse.”

Leftie flops back into his chair. “I can’t talk about this,” he says, staring at the ceiling. “I promised. ‘Nothing to nobody.’ I promised.”

“Tell me what you can.”

* * *

Veech and his buddies turned Monkville into their clubhouse – a party palace. A place to get drunk or stoned. Fighting and tearing up the hill with their dirt bikes, shooting the rabbits and birds with their pellet guns.

Neighbours complained. The police would come. Everything would quiet down until the last cop disappeared over the horizon and it would start all over again.

One night at the end of August, they had a big party. Some fool started shooting fireworks from the treehouse, aiming at people on the ground. Not the little red poppers, but big Roman Candles, the size of a forearm. A streak of fire would rip through the darkness and bounce off someone’s back in great balls of red, purple and green. They’d all laugh, pour beer on the burning embers and watch the smoke rise. The stench of danger hung in the air, mingling with burning leaves and sulphur from the fireworks.

They could have extinguished the fire while it was small, but they let it burn.

Fanned by the breeze, sparks spiralled into the night and the flames spread through the scraps of lumber up the tree trunks and into the leaves. Soon, all five trees were ablaze. Piece by piece, Monkville collapsed into the fire until only the skeletons of the trees were silhouetted against the blaze.

The fire was visible for kilometres. Everyone came to watch. Cops and firemen were the last to arrive because there were no roads up the hill. They had to walk like everyone else.

Leftie moved to the front of the crowd until the heat forced him to stop.

That was when Veech stepped in front of him. Firelight shone through his greasy hair like a nimbus, glistened on his waxy, scabby skin. Even shit-faced drunk he must have known how much Leftie wanted to punch him. He turned his cheek towards him, jutted out his chin. Daring him. Taunting him. Mocking him.

“C’mon pencil dick,” he said, in a thick slobbering voice, “hit me.”

Leftie stepped back, put his hands in his pockets. Veech laughed. Called him a punk. The stench of beer and tobacco made Leftie want to puke. Firelight reflected in the trickle of drool rolling down Veech’s chin and filled him with a rage he’d never felt before – a snake rising like a fist up his spine exploding in his brain.

He swung at Veech. Heard his jaw shatter like a walnut in a nutcracker. Veech dropped to his knees spitting up teeth and blood. Leftie hit Veech again and again until his eyes rolled up into his head and he fell face down in the dirt.

* * *

Leftie looks at Costello, his eyes red-rimmed and watery. “All I could see was that bastard, his goddam pimply ass, standing between Mo’s legs, grunting like a pig while she screamed. I couldn’t stop him. I tried, but those jerkoffs held me back, laughing all the time while he . . .”

* * *

Leftie was splattered with blood by the time the cops pried a rock the size of a billiard ball out of his hand. They dragged him away, threw him in the police car, charged him with aggravated assault.

Next time he saw Veech was in court a week later. Purple bruises covered his face. His head wrapped in bandages. A wire contraption that looked like a birdcage held his jaw stationary. When the judge asked him a question he had to write his answers on a piece of paper for his lawyer to read. Imagining the creep sipping his next cheeseburger through a straw was the only justice Leftie enjoyed that day.

Veech went free. Leftie was convicted.

* * *

His chin begins to quiver, lips tighten. He slumps forward in his chair, drops his head into his hands and cries, his shoulders quaking with explosive sobs. Costello offers him a tissue. He shakes his head. Wipes his eyes on his shirt sleeve.

Even though Costello knows the answer, still she has to ask: “Mo never told anyone?”

He shakes his head. “And she made me promise not to tell, either.” He points his finger at her. “If you tell anyone I’ll deny it.”

How many times has she heard this story, she wonders. Too many. Girl gets raped, and going through the courts is like being raped twice. Victim stays quiet. Rapist goes free. You can read it in the paper any day.

“So, you’re the doctor,” Leftie says, his voice stronger but still on the edge of breaking down. “Was I wrong?”

Costello thinks a long while before answering. Merciful Jesus! Thirteen years old.

Finally: “You broke the law,” she says. “You almost killed a man. But, honestly . . .” – she darts a quick glance at her office door and lowers her voice – “when I was Mo’s age, in my neighbourhood, we called it Italian justice. Brothers protected their little sisters. And if you tell anyone I said that,” she points her finger at him mimicking his gesture, “I’ll deny it.”

She reaches for Leftie’s file, pulls out a sheet and reads.

“You’re booked for twelve visits, but I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other. So,” – she closes the file and drops it back on the table – “next week, if you can, bring Mo. She needs to talk to someone.”

###

Colin Thornton studied drawing and painting in college, played music for a few decades while he built a career in advertising. Today, his paints are dry, drums on a shelf, marimba locked in its case and his advertising days over, so he writes short stories.

Photo: Stephen Crowley