The Little Black Book:

I was 10 years old when the tramp came running through the forest. Older fella, he was, in good in shape, panting, dirty, missing a few teeth. I think I scared him as much as he scared me. We were up in the back quarry, not the running one, but the old one that had been turned into a park with trails up front. We were high on the south ridge where the rock had turned to brush and then imperceptibly turned into an aspen grove with coniferous trees splattered throughout. Up here, this abandoned part, I liked to call my own – nothing but mismatched fox and deer trails. I played up there, making forts out of sticks. Not the fancy treehouse forts built by rich Dads in the movies or the kind you find bought at Home Hardware in the suburbs but a real kid’s fort, with longer sticks leaning teepee style against a larger tree’s trunk in the middle, moss and leaves and boughs matted on top, mud in the cracks.

It was hot that day, middle of summer. No one came up this way in the bush. Down the hill and across the road, ½ mile was my parent’s farm house. But this was where I spent my days. It was quiet, lonesome – a place where the imagination could run wild, free from adult interpretation. We lived on the outskirts of a small town, village really. In the heart of it was a post office, a Pick’n’Pay and an old arena where kids played pick up hockey in the winter. Not much else was here – village, like I said. Not much ran through here and even when someone did, you’d know. Everyone knows everyone around here.

I heard him coming before I spotted him. Stepping out of the protection of the boughs, mud on my face and jeans, needles and burrs stuck to my cotton shirt, we crossed paths as I faced east, him west through the low brush. He stopped cold in his tracks and regarded me for half a second. His steel blue eyes bore into mine. I saw fear, grief, panic and beyond that, a plea for humanity – a look that begged “see me for who I am not for the things that I’ve done.” And in that moment, my heart made a pact with his.

The moment was fleeting though. As if a veil had come over him, his eyes hardened and his mouth snarled. He licked his lips and opened his mouth to speak. He only looked over his shoulder once before shoving a cloth sack into my arms. It was the kind you put potatoes in, the old farm kind -burlap- not the plastic weave you find in stores now a days. It must have been heavy, with what I found in it later, but in that moment I can’t recall the heft of it. I only recalled the man’s face and his plea. I remember my heart beating in my chest and the fear encasing my lungs. I can remember this interaction as if it lasted hours, but really, it was seconds. “Take this. Hide it. I’ll be back. Tell anyone…well…” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. The air between us was enough. “Ya hear?” His voice soft, then oscillating to a biting edge as if he couldn’t decide the type of person he wanted to be. My heart had already made up its mind though. I gave a curt nod. He hesitated, and then took off, out of the trees, down the ridge, headed toward the pit of rock in the open vista. The last I saw of him, was the image of his khakis flying over the orange and brown crest to where the ponds existed below.

It could’ve been minutes; it could have been hours that I stayed that way, holding the sack against my chest, staring out into the space between the trees where the man went over the ridge. I was snapped out of my reverie though when I heard more footsteps approaching. One good thing about living in the country, you get to know the sounds of the land. You also recognize intruders, quickly. Something about the sound of these footsteps, spurred me into action. I dove into my fort, covering myself and the sack with a fir branch. The footsteps passed, but I was sure no one would see me or my fort. It blended enough into the trees that unless you were looking for it, you would never know. I stayed still, barely breathing.

I heard yelling, then a gunshot.

I remember freezing, numb, too scared to move, too scared to look in the sack. I waited a long time, completely invisible from the world. I must’ve dozed off though because when I awoke, the sun was setting. Mom and Dad would be wondering where I was.

It was then that I remembered the sack, heavy against my chest. Looking inside, my forehead creased. Money. Loads of it. More than I could count. Heart pounding, I gathered more branches, more boughs and stacked them on top of the sack. Then, flying, I ran for home.

You’d think I would’ve told, but I didn’t. The next day, I learned that a man named Big Mack was shot in the quarry, by whom, no one knew. For a few weeks, the whole village was up in arms about ‘the safety of our children’ and it was ages before Mom would let me play up that ridge again. My conscience weighed on me but the excitement of what was hiding inside my fort was stronger. How did I even know that Big Mack was the man I saw? What if he was the shooter? What if, 5 years from now, the tramp came back, looking for his fortune and I’d told? Whatever it was – the fear in my 10 year old throat, or the excitement of having a secret all to myself, made me keep quiet.

These are the memories that flood me as, decades later; I climb that same ridge, cane in hand. The pathway to my old hideout engulfs my senses and I’m pulled towards that same tree all those years ago, not by sight but by physical remembrance. The day is the same as it was, hot, humid, shirt sticking to my chest. The trees offer the same seclusion, the same coolness on my brow. The thick air prickles my nostrils and I pause to wheeze. I smile at all the memories here when I was a boy. The journey is heavy, slow, but one I am determined to make. When I finally arrive at my destination, tears fill my eyes and I bend down, leaning my hand against the tree for support, using my cane to push away the debris. Underneath, just as I’d left it, a hole with dried mud and sticks and beneath that, an old, weathered sack and a little black book on top. I smile a half smile and let my body go limp with exhaustion, first falling to my hip, then sitting, legs outstretched in front of me. The tree holds the full weight of my back and I am indebted to its strength. After a few deep exhalations, my hand reaches down and grasps the little black notebook. Hello, old friend. The pages are now yellowed and weathered, brittle with age but the black lambskin is just as soft to the touch. My thumb traces over the embossed imprint of our family farm. It’s the only thing I have ever stolen from my father and I have a moment of remorse. He was a good man and taught me all the things I needed to know in the world. He had used the notebooks on the farm to make records about the coming year, for crops and such around the homestead - an almanac of sorts. But, secretly, I had made an almanac of my own. I brought it to my lips and kissed it gently, closing my eyes, grateful for all that the contents had brought me.

My weathered, shaking hands, opened the pages. My eyes glossed over the entries:

The day I bought bubblegum and a can of pop at the PicknPay, $ 4.34 ...

The day I purchased my first fix-me-upper car for $500 off Stevey Jones...

The day I bought a ring for the love of my life and asked her to marry me under the moon...

The day I bought a tricycle for my baby boy...

The day I gifted a family in town $500 anonymously on their doorstep after the father lost his job and the mother, who was months pregnant at home with a toddler, needed food on the table...

The day I purchased a canoe and took it down river with my grandson..

And a myriad of other purchases, all deducted neatly from $20,000, held in a potato sack up the ridge from my parent’s farm which subsequently became my own. All these small purchases lined up that made a life worth living filled my heart and eased the guilt I had carried all these years, as if the good I had done absolved my silence. No one would ever guess, would ever know how I’d been part of that story of the tramp that’d been shot all those years ago. No questions were ever asked and I’d kept my word. I’d never told a soul.

A rustling from behind me made me turn my head but it was just the slightest hint of wind shaking the aspen leaves overhead, making them swirl like silver dollars in the sun. The day was perfect and I felt lighter. The ache in my bones was lifting. In the distance, I could see the outline of a human before me, coming over the ridge, haloed by bright sunlight. For a moment, my heart caught. I tried to refocus my eyes, remember where I was and steady myself for home. But something released inside me and I realized I already was home. Here, on the ridge, where my life had really begun and I remembered my purpose of this excursion. Forgive me. I whispered out loud. And the stillness that was the hot day was momentarily disrupted as a gust of warmth enfolded my words and carried them away to the people who mattered. Forgive me for my silence, not for the lies that I told but for the truth that I withheld from my loved ones. And the hallucination came nearer. The little black book, the little book that contained both my darkest secret and the fulfillments of my heart, tumbled from my hand and I felt myself being raised out of its shell to join a hand outstretched in front of me. The steel blue eyes, I would recognize anywhere but it was mine now that gave the plea for humanity. The tramp smiled and I felt the absolution of guilt leave and the infusion of love, hope and freedom invade my being as I left this life to begin another. We walked arm in arm over the ridge and I turned back only once to see the shell of an honorable man, worn and old but at peace, leaning in the sunshine beneath the trees, money scattered in a hole at his feet: A man and a little black book, forgiven.