Free The Endearment by Lavyrle Spencer

this lax mother of theirs had not bothered to instill in them. Now more than ever Anna seemed but a child to him, a wayward child much like her brother.
    "Here in the wilderness you will not find many pockets to pick," Karl said. "Here, instead, there is much honest work to keep a boy's hands busy from sunup to sundown. It is a good place to forget that you ever learned how to pick pockets."
    Brother and sister both turned and looked at Karl at the same time, then with growing smiles, at each other, realizing they'd once again been forgiven. Anna ventured a brief study of Karl's profile, the nose so straight and Nordic, his burnished cheek, his bleached hair curling like a sun-washed wave over his shell-like ear, his lips that had brushed her own such a short time ago. Oh, he was magnificent in every way, it seemed. And she wondered how a person came to be so good. What manner of man is this, she asked herself, who faces each new hurdle and moves past it with such forbearance?
    He turned a ghost of a glance down at her. In that moment she could have sworn she saw a smile aborning upon his lips. Then he scanned the woods on his far side.
    Some weight seemed to turn to warm, summer-scented air and drift away from Anna's shoulders like a dandelion seed in the wind. She clasped each knee, and smiled at the rutted road. For the first time, she looked around, fully aware of the surrounding beauties.
    They were passing through a place of green magnificence. The forest was built of verdant walls, broken here and there by peaceful embrasures where prairie grasses fought for a stronghold. Trees of giant proportions canopied above saplings vying for the sky. The sky was embroidered with stitches of leafy design. Anna leaned her head way back to gaze at the dappled emerald roof above.
    Karl eyed her arched throat, smiling at her childish but pleasing pose. "So what do you think of my
Minnesota
?"
    "I think you were right. It's much better than the plains."
    "Far better," Karl seconded, pleased by her answer. Suddenly, he felt expansive and glib.
    "There is wood here for every purpose a man could name. Maples! Why, we have maples aplenty, and they are filled with nectar such as you will find no place else." He pointed, stretching a long arm in front of Anna's nose. "See? That is the white maple, a hundred feet of wood and twelve gallons of sap every year. And such grains it has--fiddleback, burl, birds-eye, leaf ..." He chuckled deep in his throat. "When you cut into a maple it is always full of surprises. And hard ... why, it can be polished to shine like still water."
    Anna had never thought about trees as anything but trees before. She was amused at his rapport with them. They drove a little farther before he pointed again.
    "See that one there? Yellow locust. Splits as smooth and true as the flight of an apple falling from a tree. And that chestnut there? Another smooth splitter, to make boards as flat as milk on a plate."
    They passed through a little patch of sun just then.
    Anna shaded her eyes and peered up at Karl. He looked down at her piquantly cocked head, the squint, the crinkled-up nose, the cute smile. He found it all thoroughly delightful, and was pleased she didn't seem to find this subject too profound nor too boring.
    Anna searched all around, with a sudden intuition of how to please him. She discovered a new variety, pointed and asked, "What's that one?"
    Karl followed her finger. "That's a beech tree."
    "And what's it good for?" she asked, following it with her eyes as they came abreast of it.
    "Beech? The beech you whittle. It takes to the carving knife like no other wood I know. And when it is rubbed smooth, no wood is prettier."
    "You mean you can't carve just any old wood?" James interjected.
    "You can try, but some will disappoint you. You see, some people don't understand about trees. They think wood is wood, and they ask of some trees things they cannot do. You must ask a tree to do what it does best, then it