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As soon as Maggie drove over the last rise in the corrugated road, she gasped. All the way down from Dayton, she hoped Estep had exaggerated when he called this morning. Two weeks ago, when she'd walked the Adams County property with the local contractor she hired to remove several trees, the limbs of which threatened the cabin, she'd felt anxious without truly knowing why. It would've cost five thousand to take out only the three biggest oaks that most threatened the two-room bungalow that was her dad's studio. However, by letting Hugh Handy harvest a dozen of the best hardwoods, she'd hoped to earn enough to make the much-needed roof repairs. Estep's voice had been harsh.

"Your men laid waste to the knoll Wright's place stands on. There ain't a thing to keep rain from roaring right down on Cloyd Cluny's place, and mine's the next stop. If George were in his right mind, he would never have allowed you to do this."

There'd been a mistake, she'd said.

"No mistake. It's all stumps and sky where those old hardwoods stood. And they went over your property line and got some of Cloyd Cluny's walnuts. We'll see you in court."

Estep hadn't exaggerated. The loggers had cleared enough space for a modest parking lot, leaving nothing but stumps, dirt and huge mounds of sawdust. Maggie's hands shook after turning off the ignition. She knew now how it might feel when someone you'd struck died from your blow. She opened the door and stepped into a raw new world.

"Mrs. Stanforth, it's all my brother-in-law's fault."

Startled for a moment, she'd been too shaken to see Handy's truck. Turning in the direction of the voice, she saw the man exit his vehicle and walk toward her, arms stretched out before him as if to fend off blows.

"I'm so sorry about this. I'll see to it that you get all proceeds from the sale of your trees, although I know money won't compensate for the loss of your view."

Maggie grimaced. Not hers–her neighbors' view. The country cabin and property had been one thing Maggie had never shared with her father. That had been her ex-husband Mark's job–and pleasure. After Mark's defection to California four years ago, she took over the duty of dropping Dad off at the cabin for weekenders, his vision too far gone to drive. Of course she worried about leaving a man in his eighties alone even for a weekend, but when she picked her father up, he proudly displayed the firewood he'd cut; plus, the cabin was pristine and George himself looked well-fed and relaxed. She always felt relieved but guilty that her father never asked her to stay. Every time she left him there, she wondered whether she'd find him dead upon her return.

"I trusted Al to do the job–but he never got the survey I faxed him and just went by what he thought I'd told him on the phone."

She shook her head. "I should have come down to oversee the job."

"No, ma'am. You trusted me to do it. And I blew it."

He looked so miserable, Maggie resisted the urge to excoriate him, as Mark would've. The teachers' retirement that awaited her in a couple of years wouldn't likely be jeopardized by a lawsuit, but it'd be a nuisance. And she'd have to tell her dad–or Estep would–and her mistakes had already cost her father his son-in-law. Still, blaming the contractor for the same mistake she'd made–thoughtless delegation–would not help, just like blaming Mark for the breakup of their marriage wouldn't bring him back.

The four o'clock August sun scalded the knoll Maggie remembered as cool in the afternoons. The trees had shaded the porch, keeping it bearable inside as well. Realizing she'd begun to sweat, she shielded her eyes to look up the hill at the Big Woods, where, George told her, stood remnants of Ohio's old growth forest. Maggie swiped her brow. She didn't know who she dreaded to face most: Estep, Cluny or her father.

"Please, Mrs. Stanforth, let me give you all the money for the trees."

"I guess I'll need it to fight the lawsuit."

The man's jaw tightened. "Neighbors?"

Maggie nodded. "Your men took out some of Mr. Cluny's walnuts. Do you have insurance, Mr. Handy?"

He shook his head. "Can't afford the premiums." He hung his head, then glanced back up. "You can plant evergreens. They grow fast. The neighbors will–"

"Draw and quarter me. I should've come down to oversee."

"Well, you'll get all the money, every dime, before the week's out. You have my word on it."

As she watched Handy's truck wind down the hill, Maggie thought about going to see Cloyd Cluny (Estep could come later, if ever). Without trees, she could see her closest neighbor's one-story surrounded by locust, oak, maple, even a large willow, but she couldn't yet face the man her dad called "Boone and Thoreau inside one body." Inside the cabin, she fell onto the cot and lapsed into troubled dreams.

She woke so suddenly in the dark, a muscle pulled taut in her neck. Knowing sleep was over, Maggie stood, limbs alive with the need for movement. She put on sneakers and left the cabin. The half-moon's glow softened the stark outlines of stumps. Facing uphill toward the Big Woods above, where her father had spent so much time, she knew the forest was calling her. Enter those woods in the dark? Coyotes, snakes–possibly even bears–could be lurking. But she started up the slope anyway.

Cresting the hill, moonlight on her back, she glimpsed a path next to a dead tree with sprawling branches. More than once, she'd seen her dad emerge from this exact spot. When she asked, he told her the dead tree was an osage orange, and she marveled till she'd realized orange was its color not its fruit.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she entered darkness. Blind at first, within moments, she began to make out shapes as she continued down the twisty path, surprised to find herself calm. Cicadas' ratchet felt almost friendly as she continued. Eventually trees thinned, opening into a clearing. She stopped in her tracks.

Two huge, ancient trunks rose into the sky, as if surrounding trees had stepped back to give the old oaks room (she recognized that leaf, thanks to Mark). Old growth. George had told her about them, trees that had been adolescents when Columbus arrived. Like all of Ohio's forests, this tiny patch atop a hill had been cleared, but someone had chosen, miraculously, to let these two old oaks live. Two old kings, he called them. And she'd never expressed the slightest desire to see them.

Maggie stepped forward warily, as when, a child, she'd approach the altar in church and bow quickly before returning to sit between her parents. The closer she got, the more she felt like genuflecting, saw herself as if from a high branch above: someone bearing a burden, looking for grace. Now she saw what she'd missed earlier: one of the oak's longest branches reached toward and nearly touched the outstretched tendril of his nearby brother. Maggie's breath rushed out of her. These two brothers had survived together. Had they survived because they stood together?

Stopping a couple feet away, she reached out and grazed bark. Coming closer, she laid one, then two hands on the tree's tough crust, imagining heartwood, the rings of years, some larger than others, depending on the cycle of sun, storm, ice and fire. She imagined the sap pooling at the center before rising up the spinal column to vein down limbs like arms and legs.

Then she felt a surge of pulse in her palms. Reeling backward, she stared up, trying to take in the tree's massive sprawl, some branches alive, others without growth. The old oak had touched her back.

Stepping forward, bolder now, she placed her right palm like a stethoscope on the fossilized flesh. Did she only imagine she felt its beating heart? Was it only her own? She took her hand away, waited a moment and placed two fingers to the carotid artery in her neck. Her own blood raced, while the oak's throb had felt slow, steady. Stay, the tree had seemed to say, but though she waited, there was nothing else. Even cicadas ceased while she stood under the stars, watching, listening. Finally, she turned back down the path. Was she insane to think an ancient tree had the power to touch her, try to tell her something? A tree was alive, yes, but . . . sentient?

Back at the cabin, Maggie read, then meditated, trying not to hear Bill Estep's voice. Near dawn, she finally fell into dreamless sleep.

Instantly alert, she realized she'd slept in her clothes. Someone was yelling. Staggering into the front room, brushing hair out of her eyes, she beheld a giant on the other side of the screen door, as if one of the ancient oaks had assumed a man's shape.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said, "but you didn't rouse when I knocked." He jerked a thumb behind him. "Saw the car."

Though this Goliath looked nearly seven feet tall, she wasn't afraid. "Come in." Maggie thrust out her hand. "I'm Maggie Wright Stanforth."

He stepped inside the screen door. His callused grasp was gentle. "Cloyd Cluny."

The name that only yesterday made her knees quake now flicked harmlessly through her. Why? Then, the image of the two kings in the moonlit clearing materialized on her mental screen. (Stay. What did it mean?) Glancing past the man, she looked beyond the doorway at the declining afternoon light. Stumps and sky. Sleep had freed her for a while, but now guilt came roaring back. She had to lean against the table. "I've slept the whole day away."

"Good 'un to miss. Hotter'n blue blazes."

"Have you come to kill me, Mr. Cluny?"

Though his ice-blue eyes smiled, his face didn't. "You can call me Cloyd."

"Maggie."

He looked around as if George might appear. "How's your daddy?"

"Not well. He had a stroke. I moved him to an assisted living facility." She sighed. "I was a fool to think he'd ever come here again, but that's why I had the trees cut"–she ran her hand through her hair–"way more than I'd contracted to be cut. I can't tell you how–"

"Your daddy has a good heart."

"Oh, yes, Saint George."

"He taught me to read," Cloyd said. Solemn, even sad, his blue eyes still gleamed. "And I taught him to track deer." He laughed, revealing a chipped front tooth. "With his camera. So he could paint 'em."

She laughed, too, realizing it was the first time since receiving Estep's call yesterday morning–no, longer than that, a lot longer.

"He was mighty good to Kathleen after her mama died."

"Your daughter?"

He nodded. "George taught her to draw."

And she'd imagined her dad all alone here with his oils and brushes. All the time he'd been forging relationships with new students (connecting, the thing about teaching high school that gave her the most trouble).

"We all liked having your daddy come down here. For so long, this place went empty."

Maggie nodded. "Dad came for as long as he could. No, he came longer than he could. But I thought if he could cut wood–" Cloyd's eyes betrayed him. This gentle giant had probably even cooked and cleaned for her dad.

"Speaking of wood," she said, "I saw the two kings . . . up there. I . . . think they called me."

Cloyd's eyes widened. No trace of a grin. "What'd they say?"

"It's crazy, but . . . I think they asked me to stay."

He nodded. "George told 'em goodbye the last time he was here."

"But he couldn't walk across the room without his canes!"

"I carried 'im. After dark–on a full moon, October it was."

Maggie remembered very well. She hadn't slept much that night, wondering whether her father would freeze to death in the cabin, despite the fire he'd built.

"He should've asked you, you being family and all. But he said, after what you'd been through, he didn't want to cause you no more trouble."

She bristled. "Well, he might've let me know somebody was here looking after him."

"A man shows different things to different people, ma'am. The more you owe somebody, the less you can show 'em, sometimes."

Her anger fizzled. Hadn't that been just the trouble with Mark? She'd owed him too much. A child, for example. They stood in silence for awhile. At last, he spoke.

"You've got to explain to everybody, Mrs. Stanforth. Bill Estep, Buck Thomas, Kyle Clifford. Tell 'em how you were trying to save the cabin for George."

She sighed. "I can't."

"Your daddy would've."

Maggie shivered, despite the heat. "I'm not him."

While he stared, Maggie felt her blood beating in her forehead. She longed to speak but couldn't.

"All right, then," he said. Turning, he was gone.

Maggie barely had time to collapse onto the edge of the cot and begin massaging her temples before a knock brought her back. "You gotta come see this, Mrs. Stanforth."

On the porch, he pointed. "Yonder."

She looked up the hill to see the sunset, smoldering roseate above the trees. The osage orange that stood at the portal of the Big Woods was burnished golden, afire. Alive. When she turned toward him, Cloyd was finally smiling.

"Maybe it wasn't for George, Maggie. Maybe you're fixing this place up for you."

It was as if the two old kings, high above in their clearing, had called her by name. "Tell Estep and the others to come, Cloyd."

"After supper all right?"

She nodded. She'd talk to her dad's neighbors–no, her neighbors–here on the porch where it was cooler. The spirits of trees would be their witnesses.