Paper Maple


We bought the tree with the money I made when I baptized Stan, 
who had nineteen confirmed kills in Viet Nam.  He’s an old man now, 
in a wheel chair, shriveled and pale, and he wanted to be cleansed 
of his sins. “I’ve been in hell,” he told me, “and I want to be free,” 

and though he didn’t talk much, and could hardly move, when 
I started to pour the water on his head, and I began to say the words, 
“I baptize you in name of the Father”—“and of the Son,” he said, 
“and of the Holy Spirit,” and the water dribbled down his face 
and dripped off his chin, wetting the front of his pale, checked shirt.  

We planted the tree on a fine spring day.  The earth was soft 
and warm. We dug the hole, scored the matted roots, and gently 
set it in, then filled the hole with amended soil and watered, 
thoroughly, soaking the ground until the bed had turned to mud.  
It’s a pretty tree.  A Paper Bark Maple, they call it, because 
the bark peels off in curly strips almost smooth enough to write on.


-first published in Ruminate