The Madrona Heroes Register: Echoes of the Past by Hillel Cooperman Page A

both and quickly resumed her original
course down the hill.

    §

    Technically, the city owned the
Madrona woods, having purchased the land from nearby homeowners in
the early 1900s. But for as long as most of the current residents
could remember, Caleb Adams – a neighborhood fixture – had tended
to these woods. Caleb owned Madrona Bouquets. By virtue of his
flower shop, Caleb knew everything about everyone – birthdays,
anniversaries, and even when spouses were having fights and flowers
were required to smooth things over. It was one measure of how much
Caleb was respected that his neighbors trusted him with their
wishes for their loved ones.
    Caleb didn’t appear to have a family.
Nobody had ever remembered him being married. So even though he was
busy running Madrona bouquets, Caleb had plenty of spare time on
his hands and a need to keep those hands busy. When he retired and
closed his shop the previous year, he had even more time to focus
on his favorite hobby – taking care of the neighborhood forest.
Dogwalkers, parents with small children, and couples out for a
romantic stroll, would invariably run into him, his battered milk
crate filled with tools and a large black garbage bag he would use
to remove anything he found that didn’t belong.
    Caleb was even taller than his
silhouette made him appear, as his long arms seemed to weigh down
his shoulders, giving him a bit of a stoop as he walked. A faded
blue baseball cap with an embroidered white “S” set in a baseball
diamond sat on top of his close-cropped tight almost white curls.
The emblem on the cap didn’t appear to belong to any particular
team – even the most ardent baseball fan couldn’t identify it.
Under the cap, the dark skin of Caleb’s face was etched with what
seemed like a thousand lines.
    To the kids in the neighborhood, Caleb
seemed both ancient and ageless, like one of the trees in the
forest. While the nearby families flowed in and out of the official
and unofficial capillaries of the Madrona woods, Caleb was rooted
there, unmoving and dedicated to his mission.

    §

    It was really entirely too much. Was
it not enough that her brother was a jerk, her sister was annoying,
and her parents were locked in a room with each other, ignoring
her? Ignoring their job as parents! Did they even care that Cassie
was making friends with strangers and their strange dogs? If only
her parents would get more involved. At the very least they could
punish Zach and Cassie for being so rude to Binny. That would
certainly be a step in the right direction.
    But while her parents, her
brother, and her sister were all avoiding their responsibilities,
that girl next door, with her strange piles of rocks, and her dirty
feet, was forcing her way into Binny’s life. Binny had spent
countless hours playing Cassie’s butler, chauffeur, and all manner
of servant, manager, agent, and fan. Binny said no just this once and all
of a sudden the neighbor girl was taking her place? It made Binny
want to –
    “ Ruvh Ruvh Rrruvvvh.”
There was a dog barking at her. There was one last lone house at
the end of their street before the woods swallowed any additional
pavement. It was built in a “modern style”. She knew that because
her father would always complain about it when they walked by it on
the way to the woods. He would say “who thought our neighborhood
needed all this glass? It doesn’t belong. Why would someone put
this in the heart of Madrona?”
    She wasn’t sure whether it
belonged or not or what the heck her father was so upset about, but
she did finally see where the barking was coming from. It was that
dog. The dog that Cassie was petting. And then it struck her – this
was where that man with the dog lived . Great, Binny thought, another
house in the neighborhood I need to avoid. She wasn’t sure she
could tell the difference between an angry bark and a playful bark,
but it kind of seemed to her like the latter. But she wasn’t about
to test out her