I felt like a child at bat whose father just showed up at a baseball game. I was determined to pull myself out of the mud, to show him what I could do and how much I’d learned. I tried harder and harder, yet the mud kept swallowing me. It came to my waist now. For a few minutes I stopped trying altogether. Perhaps that was what he wanted. But I continued to sink. So I redoubled my efforts to escape, while the churning mud rose to my chest.

Why doesn’t he come for me? I’ve traveled so far; I’m so close to the city. Is this where I’ll end, buried alone in muddy quicksand?

Finally the King got off his horse and approached me. He stopped about twenty feet away. I waited for him to speak, but he said nothing.

“What can I do?” I cried.

“You’re not using all you have to get out,” he said.

“But I am,” I whimpered. I flailed my arms and wrenched my back and twisted my body to prove I was using all I had. The mud was now at my neck. I quaked with fear.

“No,” he said again, “you are not using all you have to get out.” He spoke with infuriating certainty.

“I am! Can’t you see that? What else do I have? What do you want me to do?” I spat out mud with my question. The King I’d come to trust was letting me choke on mud? Why?

“You are not using all you have to get out,” he said, “for you have not asked me to help you.”

He said it slowly and clearly. He gestured to the barren tree with its shaft crossed by the thick ugly branches.

As mud oozed into my mouth, in desperation I cried, “Help me, Lord, please help me!”

As soon as I spoke, he put his left hand on the tree branch and leaned out toward me, one foot stepping into the goo. He stood on the mud, reached down with his right arm and pulled me up.

A moment later I stood on the mud beside him. He drew me to him, embracing me, his white tunic now covered with my mud.

“I’m sorry I got you so dirty,” I said.

“It isn’t the first time,” he said. “I know what it is to be made dirty. I planted this tree for you, long before you were born.”

I looked at his left hand, which had held on to the thorny tree limb. It was covered with red mud. I reached down into my bulging pocket, full of nails. I spilled them at his feet. Maybe I’d find them in my pocket again, as I always seemed to, but here, now, I was determined to have nothing to do with them.