Fruit of a Poison Tree

IV

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles.

There is a hill not far from town, little more than a knoll, really, that is called Chaplin's Hill. I have no idea why it has this name, and no one I have ever met has a clue as to why, either. So every time I sit there, looking out over the glistening river, I am left to come up with stories of why it was named this absurd little title. This time, as I sit in the late afternoon sunlight, I invent the tale of Louise Chaplin.

She was a seventeen year old girl in nineteen twenty-eight, the height of the Roaring Twenties. She was the kind of girl who loved to have a good time and, if she could not find one, she would make one. She was beautiful as well, absolutely beautiful. So much so that every man in Martinsville wanted to marry her. The premiere one was the grandson of the founder, Caleb Martin, and he loved her so much. One day in April, he brought her out to a little knoll where he showed her the river and the little town. He told her of how he would expand the town, how it would become a metropolis, all for her.

Caleb dropped to one knee right there and proposed to her, offering to make her the happiest, richest woman around. Breathless, Louise said yes and he slipped a family heirloom on her finger. Later that year, in August, they were wed on that same little hill where he proposed to her. As she became Mrs. Caleb Martin, she dubbed that sacred little hill Chaplin Hill, giving her name away to the piece of ground that meant so much to her.

The next year, she gave birth to a beautiful little boy named Henry. With absolute joy in their hearts, the young couple raised the strapping, blond young lad to be athletic, independent, and strong. It did not matter to them that their riches had fallen with the crash because they had love among them. But one day, four years later, when Louise turned her back to talk to Mariah Abbott, her young son darted quickly away. By the time she realized that the pride and joy of her existence was no longer beside her, he was long gone.

They found him floating in the river some hours later. Louise was never the same again. She lost all the happy bloom that had once filled her face when she lost the happiness that filled her life. As she removed herself further and further from the world, her husband did the same. She cried all the day while he drank them away and everyone looked on, helpless and saddened. So one moonless night, after little more than a year had passed, Louise made her way up to Chaplin's Hill, where they had buried her son.

Standing on that piece of ground, she lie down next to the cross marking her son's grave, wishing away all the moments that had happened there. If that hill did not exist, she would not feel the pain that tore her apart. She could go back to being the belle of Martinsville, her heart light and her future ahead of her.

They found her lying next to her son's grave some hours later. Her body was lifeless and Caleb buried her next to their son. With all his strength, he tried to continue on with his life. He even married again, to Mariah Abbott, but nothing could heal the wound made by the loss of his adored son and beloved wife. Less than a year and a half after his wife's death, he could feel himself slipping from life. Maybe it was the drinking that had caught up to him, or maybe he just had no more will to live. But with the last ounces of strength he had left in his dying body, he clambered back up to the hill where the loves of his life were laid to rest.

And that, I decide, is the story of Chaplin's Hill.

A robin flutters by and I watch the bird land lightly on the ground, hopping about around the top of the hill. For a moment, the bird is alone and I feel a kinship to the animal. Then it is joined by another one of its kind I see the absurdity of becoming attached to a bird simply because we sat in the same place at the same time. Realizing that I probably had been left to my own, wandering thoughts for too long, I stand and run quickly down the hill.