The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. -Chinese Proverb

Perrie does his artwork with the slugs on the back porch. “One more year,” he told himself as the moon took the stage with a marvelous introduction of orange and purple in the western sky. “And I’ll have my masterpiece.”

The night air was thick and warm. Perrie removed his gray knit cap and rested it on the porch rail, next to the iron ashtray. Then he wiped the sawdust from his fleshy beak, and leaned over to reach into his pocket for a piece of chewing gum. It was the fourth day in the month of July. Perrie’s last hours had been spent mastering the wrinkles on the delighted face of an Uncle Sam portrait he’d been working on for his father; one of those immigrant patriotic types.

The birds were singing. They’d all settled comfortably in their northern homes for the summer, and they finally felt at rest here. So many different sounds. He wondered what level of communication those sounds are really attempting, and how much is successful. There must be an infinite amount of noises they’re able to make, and each chime sounded far more detached from the rest than the blabbering of a foreigner. The tweet, the cluck, the hiss, the caw, and the scream. How annoying those metronomic squawks must be to the childish tunes of a winged choir. A blue jay had once stowed all the way to San Francisco inside the trunk of Perrie’s Chevrolet. There’s no knowing how it got in there, but he encountered quite a scare when he keyed it open upon his arrival.

The sliding glass door screamed open, and Launa peeked her bubbly eyes out into the air.

“What are you doing?”

“The same,” he said, meaning art in general, but she took it to mean the ten foot willow tree he’d been designing for almost a year now. It still lay in a cluttered mess of scraps and pieces, but he had a plan for it all.

“You’re still working on this? I thought we gave up on that a long time ago.”

“Do you need something?” he answered. After a moment he turned his neck to meet her gaze, and the look he received back was one of all seriousness.

“I need your help. Candy’s in the attic.”

“Alright,” but he didn’t make an effort to get up at first.

“I mean now.” She backed inside as he stood up. A snail crushed under his sneaker as he made his way to the door. One of them had once stowed its way inside aboard a broken ashtray and was found the next morning stuck to a fork in the sink. He bent down to give Launa a soft kiss as he passed.

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.” Perrie had three serious relationships under his belt on the day he met Launa. The first was a girl who lived down Milford Street where his house had been for a few years. She was a blonde with a small chiseled smile, and a predatory stare more captivating than a Spanish Dancer. She rode her bicycle gracefully in winding circles around their neighborhood at all hours, and once they kissed as they swam together but never talked about it. Then Perrie moved and joined Kindergarten. The second was a girl who is still a mystery to him. She loved his music and art, even though he didn’t think it moved her at all. She just liked everything about him. They’d had fantasies about each other for years before actually becoming friends. She was his best friend’s little sister, and she was frighteningly beautiful. He held his breath to get a head rush of courage before dialing her phone number. The couple hardly said a word when they were together but he just saw it in her eyes that she was happy. They often told each other they were in love even though both knew it wasn’t true. In the end he left her there in a crying fit for a step up in the social ladder. Someone older, more fashionable, more exciting, more sexual, and she was a goddess. She wasn’t strikingly beautiful in a physical way but Perrie swore to himself she must have been glowing the minute he first set eyes on her. Her energy was so sweet and wild. She was the most emotionally attractive person to look at, and hear, and touch, and love. She may have been an angel or the mother of a new messiah. He was eighteen and she was his first. They had a half love relations, like high school sweethearts. But just as they all do, she got a terrible case of disenchantment and broke it off early on. So you could say Perrie had loved three times, but never been in love before.

“When was the last time you shaved, Pear?” Launa asked as he entered the hallway. Perrie had begun shaving at the age of thirteen, because that’s when his brothers had started. The monthly scraping of skin made his feet feel bigger and his voice twice as deep. Now some years later, he normally shaved every morning.

“A while, hon, not too long. Did I scratch you?” he called back.

“More often please, Love.”

“I like the face hair. It suits me, don’t you think?”

“Don’t start.”

Perrie entered the bedroom, and the conversation could be dragged on no longer. From there he continued to the closet, a magnificent room, where he’d always wanted to put his ping pong table, but was never able to convince Launa of the idea. Hanging clothes covered the right and left walls, and wooden storage boxes lined the floor beneath them, holding a plethora of belongings like photo albums and art supplies, a sewing machine and linens and waste, Candy’s first pair of shoes, a five-foot doll named Pierce and a broken record player. The walls, like most of everything in the closet, were pale white. The ceiling looked as if it were a miniscule smudge out of a Monet that had been blown up to fill the room. Directly above Perrie’s head was a rectangular hole dispersing rays of darkness into the lit room.

“Candy?” he said quietly, and then repeated it in a more sing song call. “Candy.” But there was again no answer.

Perrie removed two trunks from atop a pile and took a seat on one of them in the middle of the room. He reached into his coat pocket to withdraw a small bag and placed it on the other trunk with a small puff of dust. It contained a Ziploc bag of filters, a pack of wimpy papers, a cigarette roller and about an eighth of a pound of Brazilian tobacco. He loaded the roller canal lightly with the brown leaves, and slipped a filter into one end. Snapping the ingredients together, he gently placed a paper into the crevice, gave the belt a spin, licked the adhesive strip, turned a few more revolutions, pounded the filter end gently against his open palm, and clicked the roller open to unearth a perfect cigarette.

“Candy, are you up there? We’re about to have dessert?” There was no reply. “Come on, Candy. You need to answer me now. What’re you doing up there?”

“I’m Pener Pam,” came a screechy voice through the hole, barely loud enough to hear.

“What, buddy?”

“I’m Pener Pam.”

“Well Peter, it’s time to come down now. Captain Hook is here.”

“No! I can’t come down, now,” Candy screamed. “I know he’s here.

I saw him.”

“It’s all going to be alright, buddy,” he lowered to a calming motherly tone. But he could hear the boy crying now. “I promise.”

“You always promise.”

“I’m right here. Just lower the ladder, it’ll be okay.”

“No! I don’t have my sword.”

“I know where it is, you want it?”

“What?”

“Your Peter Pan sword. Come down. I’ll show you.”

This time Candy screamed as loud as his lungs could muster. “No!”

Why did the boy hate him so much? Perrie raised a lighter to his mouth and lit the cigarette. He didn’t inhale the first drag, but spewed it breathlessly through the opening overhead.

“What are you doing, Pop?”

“I think there’s a fire, Cameron, you’d better come down,” Perrie said as he continued to blow smoke into the attic.

“I don’t care. I’m staying here.”

The trick didn’t work, but he still finished the cigarette.

“Listen Buddy, this isn’t a joke. Do you want your mother to come in here? I don’t think so. So if I were you I’d come down. Don’t you smell the fire?”

The boy didn’t answer, so Perrie raised his voice this time. “Give me the ladder.” When, once again he received no response other than a coughing fit, Perrie resorted to stacking up six boxes in a stair-like arrangement to replace the ladder that had stowed it’s way into the child’s little game.

“Don’t you come up here!” was Candy’s desperate attempt to prolong his visit to the dark of the attic. He hadn’t done this for over a year, and Perrie had forgotten how dramatically exhausting the event could be. Perrie hoisted his waist up onto the ledge and he was above the ceiling now. He listened for a breath or twitch as he stared into nothing. It seemed that Candy had ceased to breathe and the room was just as void of life or energy as it was of light. So, he began searching. The attic had no floor. He had to crawl around supported by cross-hatching 2x4s, careful not to slip and make a hole through the deteriorated ceiling. He called out the boy’s name but continued to hear nothing but the slow churn of the microwave sucking life out of Launa’s tea water. He searched with his hands, for his eyes had no power here. But he was good with his hands, dancing across the keyboard, carving a perfect curve, mastering foreplay in the most animalistic way, and finding the light switch at the latest hour of night. He discovered Candy sprawled out with his head bent crookedly against the far corner, one foot resting on a weak ceiling panel. After quick consideration, Perrie hoisted the body onto his back and turned back toward the hatch with some difficulty. The body hung there, motionless, with every bit of weight on Perrie’s four shaking limbs.

“Candy?” and this time he knew something was wrong. There was no air leaving Candy’s mouth and no heat coming from his paralyzed chest. When they were back on solid ground Perrie hoisted the child’s lifeless body into a half-fetal position, hanging from his two bent arms, and carried him to his bedroom, careful not to be seen by the woman of the house.

And on the race-car blanket he gently laid his son down, and performed CPR as well as he knew. It felt so intimate and fatherly. He had doubted his impact on the boy’s life up to that point. He had never been the father he had wanted to be. He had never seen his Cameron come of age, or create a master piece.

After minutes of desperate attempts to awaken him, Perrie sat down on the maple rocking chair at the foot of the bed. There he sat and prayed for the first time in a solid seven months. He didn’t ask for forgiveness or blessings or miracles. He had never been one to speak casually with the lord. This is what he said:

“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

He’d learned that one in rehab. It was the only prayer he remembered anymore.

Launa cracked the door open and peeked her head in.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Just thinking.”

“Is he okay?” Just as she finished the sentence, Perrie’s peripherals detected a sight that could very well have changed his answer, but didn’t. There, under the black metal bed frame, was an empty bottle of Nyquil that had been safely stowed away in the cupboard, unopened, when he had left for work that morning.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “We’ll talk about it in the morning, alright? I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Okay.” She left the scene and shut the door behind her. One tear trailed down Perrie’s blushed cheek as he continued to comb the depths of his mind for the secret compassion to bring the boy back. He decided he had to try one more time, so he returned to the bedside and knelt down. With the first forced breath, Candy’s eyes flew open, and he awoke with a cough. It was a reaction you’d expect from someone who’d nearly drowned and was spewing water from their throat. But what came from his mouth was a thin cloud of black smoke followed by a gushing stream of thin red liquid. It was the most intense feeling of relief Perrie would ever feel.

“I’m so glad you’re awake, Candy,” he said, and fell down onto the bed next to the boy. “I’m sorry. I mean Peter Pan.”

“No, I’m not Peter Pan. I’m just a guy,” Candy said, and Perrie could tell the cough medicine was still in effect due to the more than usual slur in the child’s speech, but he couldn’t help but smile to himself at these words.

“Well, I’m glad you’re awake anyway,” he said. Do you feel like you need to throw up again?”

“No.”

“Do you feel like you could throw up again?”

“No.”

“Good. I love you buddy.”

“I love you too, Dad.”

Candy had always called Perrie Daddy, and it was the first time he’d ever been addressed as Dad. It seemed so official to him, and so fake. He had to work hard to stop himself from crying again. He sang Candy an improvised bedtime story called The Wizard Who Stole the Wrong Juice, and kissed him on the forehead. As he left the room, Perrie stopped and looked back where Candy lay in darkness again. He thought the boy was asleep, but he said, “Goodnight, little guy.”

“No,” was Candy’s quick reply. “I’m not just a guy. I’m Batman.”

“Right. Batman.”

Avoiding Launa for the time being, Perrie headed straight outside and smoked another cigarette. There he stared at the pile of rubble that would one day be his willow tree, his masterpiece. Finally, he knew how to finish it. He flicked the butt over the porch rail into the dirt. Then he walked straight to the bathroom, marveled at the shape of his aging face in the antique mirror, and then took a bottle of shaving cream from the cabinet.