Epitaph for an Oak

Epitaph for an Oak

Nobody knew just how long that grand old oak tree had been there, in the center of that little park in the center of our little town. The local histories alleged that it was twice as old as our country, and one good look at it would cure you of any disbelief. It had to be almost two hundred feet tall and just as wide, and miraculously, it had missed every building within striking distance on its way down.

They'll tell you everyone in a two mile radius heard the impact, as one hundred thousand pounds of timber tumbled from the heavens to the earth, leaving a vast tree-shaped crater just outside the baseball diamond. How they distinguished that sound from the perpetual drumming of thunder they couldn't tell you, but the fact remained that everyone in town had the same awful thought as they cautiously peeped out of their basements and storm cellars – that she was gone, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

We first gathered in the church as we tended to do when anything exciting happened in our neck of the woods. By the time the mayor arrived in his uniform seersucker suit and banded straw hat, we had already long since begun organizing relief.

His fat, puffy cheeks flapped with each burst of hot air he expelled as he dabbed sweat from his forehead, putting on a grand show of straining himself with the task of supervising the hoard of self-governing volunteers.

There was a running joke in town that anyone who wanted to take over as mayor need only appear on the ballot to secure a landslide victory. No one had wanted to take on that most important duty, though, of being a lightning rod for all our ire.

Father was a carpenter by trade, as were his sons by proximity. That meant our immediate task was to cover up any newly formed gaps between the outdoors and the in. We took no great pride in the stolid half-assery of our work, which mostly took the form of boarding up broken windows – any work deemed cosmetic would have to wait.

Trudging through the waterlogged streets in soaking wet jeans, together the three of us melded into one well-oiled plank nailing machine, my brother handing me nails from a box which I then passed to father when his open palm appeared. I had tried convincing father I was old enough to swing a hammer, but perhaps he had been right that this role of Head of Logistical Operations suited me better.

My brother and I watched while we worked, as a human chain passed buckets full of water up and out of the venerable Mrs. Mather’s basement. The Johnson boys, who usually couldn't so much as exist in the same room without inventing something to bicker about, rolled by on bicycles, offering ham sandwiches swiftly rushed out of their mother's kitchen to any volunteer laborers they passed.

My brother and I graciously accepted, and somehow father managed to keep the operation running smoothly without our invaluable assistance.

°°°

By the time the sweltering summer sun had begun to recede, anyone in immediate need of aid had received it in droves. Wellness checks had been executed on all the households from which no one had heard. Nobody had been found dead, no one was seriously injured, and no one's dwelling had been rendered unlivable, nor any businesses inoperable. By all accounts, we had escaped this second “storm of the century” of the last twenty-three years unscathed.

And yet, when the last nail had been nailed, the last bucket emptied, the last sandwich passed out, our idle hands rested in our threadbare pockets as we gathered at our town's center, sheepishly gawking at that fallen giant.

Tiny Tina, younger sister to the Johnson brothers, came strolling up with a butterfly net full of twigs and leaves helpfully plucked from a storm drain. When asked later, she says she isn't sure what it was about the scene that did it, but her netful of soggy leaves hit the ground with a squish, followed by her knees, then her fists, then forehead, as she began to wail and sob.

It's this temerous public expression of overwhelming emotion, I think, which gave the rest of the townsfolk permission at last, to feel humbled and powerless, and to share in the grieving of such a monumental loss.

Old men doffed their caps, women sighed and bowed their heads. My younger brother, Arthur, for some reason, saluted. Father said that tree must have been two or three hundred years old by the size of it, an unfathomably long time to two boys aged five and seven. It set our imaginations on fire with wild and wonderful histories that we reckoned almost had to have happened here at one point or another, given the sheer amount of time available to fill.

The mayor was last to arrive at the scene and for the first time in his career appeared entirely speechless. But then, in an incredible display of political prowess, he too removed his hat, revealing a shiny bald pate as he lumbered towards the front of the crowd, and began to speak.

“I was sixteen years old when I shared my first kiss with my late wife, under the shade of this very tree. I was so nervous I was sweating like, well, like a politician in church.” The mayor paused to let the laughter subside before carrying on. “It became our usual meeting spot, and for three years I watched her grow more and more beautiful until I could take it no longer, and I proposed to her, right here on this spot, right beside our tree. One year later, she chose this place to tell me she was pregnant with our first child, our lovely daughter Beatrice, whom she would be so very proud of today. At the foot of this tree, far too soon, I scattered her ashes and hoped against hope that I might selfishly keep her around in some small way.

“But I know,” he said, dabbing away tears, “that there are many, many more stories which this tree could tell. Given the circumstances, however, I think it may fall upon our shoulders to do the telling. Would anyone else like to share their story?”

With the next election now solidly in the bag, the mayor stepped aside, and offered an ear to listen, and a shoulder to lean on to any and all who might have need of it.

°°°

There were many stories shared as we all took turns eulogizing our tree, but two in particular stuck fast in my memory. The first came from Mr. Sinclair, a grizzled, decorated veteran who had returned from France one leg lighter, courtesy of the German Second Army. We all strained to imagine him as a young boy, back when the baseball diamond was still in the rough, measured out by paces and marked at its corners with rocks or twigs or spare mitts, and when sliding into home came with the guarantee of inciting your mother's wrath over the long green stains it would leave on your pants.

The story goes that at the very bottom of the ninth, trailing by three runs, bases loaded, Mr. Sinclair's cousin had pitched him a real beefy meatball and he gave it a good wallop, sending it soaring just clear of the foul line, heading straight towards the tree.

Unfortunately, Henry Thompson, who returned from France in a pine box, had been ready and waiting in the outfield, and his reputation as the fastest boy in town had been well earned. He tore across the grassy field, sticking himself right where the ball should have ended its flight, and waited with an open mitt. He waited, and waited, and waited a little longer, until it was clear that somehow, the game winning out had eluded his grasp.

When all the runners had finished rounding the bases, a heated debate ensued. Henry cried foul, Mr. Sinclair claimed fair play, and his cousin, the pitcher, no longer interested in the game’s outcome could only wonder, “who's gonna go get my ball?”

Mr. Sinclair and Henry set aside their disagreement to launch their first expedition together, up into the leafy canopy, but regretfully their search and rescue attempt was unsuccessful. To placate his cousin, Mr. Sinclair agreed to hand over the win, deputizing the tree as a temporary outfielder with “one heck of a reach.”

Father wasn't the type to put himself in front of a crowd when he could avoid it, but he surprised us all by following Mr. Sinclair's tale with one of his own:

When he was an angsty adolescent deep in the throes of that all consuming hormonal haze (which my brother and I would soon enough discover for ourselves) father had made a bet with his friends that he could climb to the very top of the tree, a heretofore unattained feat generally thought unattainable, or at the very least, wholly inadvisable. Had Sally Baker, object of his fervent yet fleeting teenaged infatuation, not been present, the cooler of his heads may have prevailed.

Not wanting to look cowardly in front of the girl he was going to marry (a joke which his wife, my mother, did not find funny), he equipped himself with a foolhardy, can-do smile and a sack full of machismo, and up he went.

To keep a short story short, he never did make it to the top, though he may have gotten closer than anyone ever before, as evidenced by the old rotting baseball he carried down with him, snatched from a trio of gnarled, grasping fingers high in her canopy.

Conveniently, he forgot to mention that when he glanced downwards, only to find that Sally had grown tired of the spectacle, he suddenly discovered he had a terrible fear of heights and had to be escorted down a heavy wooden ladder by a ticked off fireman.

I walked the length of the tree alone from root to crown, interweaving imagined histories with living memory, feeling smaller than I ever had. The crowd began to fade into the dusky cool of the evening, as the crickets sang their elegy. It would be a full two months until the last trace of that gentle giantess had vanished from our little park, in the center of our little town.

°°°

Four years later, when I noticed a sturdy-looking sapling which had mysteriously sprouted in the front lawn of the Johnson residence, Peter, the younger Johnson brother, recounted to me this brief exchange between his mother and sister from that awful, wonderful day:

“Tina, honey, what's that in your pocket?”

“A acorn!”