When A Tree Falls

I am in middle school, seventh grade. My parents just told me about this tree down the road in the unowned field. They told me how it has been there for decades, since even before they moved here. But no one dares come down there to the wild fields. They told me it is untamed and big and beautiful and old. And I am walking down the road by myself to see it.

There is no gate—not yet. There is only the fade from short grass and dirt path to flowers and weeds and bushes and fields. I tumble over my feet down the sudden hill, struggling to keep a balance. And in my searching panicking gaze up to the sky, I see the tops of the leaves. I see the dark bark. I am in middle school, seventh grade, and I see the tree that I know will become my home, even if in feeling only.

*

I am a freshman in high school. I am sitting at the tree with my friends—Ness, Aaron, and Levi, who I invited—and my cousin Emile, who I did not. She shouldn’t even be here—this is my tree. Me and my friends’. She wasn’t ever invited. But my parents told her about the tree, and she wanted to see it. And now she always comes.

I am sitting across from her, my back resting against the tree. I glare at her, even as she smiles at me.

*

It is spring break, freshman year of high school. My friends and Emile and I are at the tree. And it’s just now that I realize I’m in love with Aaron.

He is sitting under the shade of the leaves, and I am up in the branches. I am looking down at him and I cannot look away. Everyone else stares at the butterflies around us, the ones floating and swirling and turning lazily with shifting breezes. Emile catches them and shows them to Aaron, who just smiles back. Ness and Levi are sitting, watching the clouds. They are all reveling in the last moments of calm before more work and more school and more boredom. I am staring at Aaron, and I think it. And I wonder why I love him; how this could happen; how I didn’t realize sooner. He looks up at me and I fall from the branches.

*

It’s the summer after my junior year of high school. It’s bright and warm and I am walking down to the tree, carrying apples in a sack. The tree stands alone in the field, and the grass has grown tall since the last time I came here. I think about bringing my dad’s old lawnmower down here and fixing this place up. But it would ruin the rough beauty of it. And this land is not ours—one day it will be sold, and one day it will be gone.

But today I carry the apples down, my feet stomping down the hill towards the tree. The tree that has been here for decades. My friends sit beside it, leaning their backs against the tall wide trunk. We don’t know who else has sat here, has reveled in these moments decades ago like we do now. I join them.

             I am sitting beside Levi and Ness and am trying to avoid looking at Aaron. He’s dating my cousin Emile, who is there too. But I loved him first. That doesn’t seem to matter.

“I brought apples,” I say, because I have. I reach into the bag and I toss them out Aaron, Ness, and Levi. My aim is bad, and I almost hit Emile in the face before Aaron catches it. I pretend I don’t notice. I reach into the bag again, taking out the last one for myself. “There’s not enough for all of us,” I say. I did this on purpose. My cousin Emile frowns, and Aaron looks to her, shaking his head, smiling.

“It’s okay. We can share,” he says to her, who smiles back. Their hands touch as he holds the apple between them. I frown now. He has never done that with me. I doubt he even knows the digging pit in my stomach is there. I doubt he’s ever felt the same.

The apple they hold is from the tree behind my house, red-green and dotted. These might not even be good at this time of year, but my friends all thank me and bite into them anyway. I bite into my own. It’s sour.

*

It’s my fourth year of college, and I’m dropping out.

The years have hit me harder than I expected. This town is different to what it was a few years ago—harder jobs, even harder to get hired. Expensive college classes to even qualify for a future. I can't afford it anymore. And all my friends have left me. For the most part, we have faded from each other’s lives.

I stare up to the blue, bright sky, my body balanced on a thick dark branch low to the ground. I am in our tree. The tree that has cradled me more than my bones, more than any other thing I know.

There’s a book in my hands, worn and red and soft, but I know I have to return it to Aaron soon. It has been in my possession for weeks, and I still haven’t read it yet-- I just carry it around as a reminder. He read it in high school, and it was one of his favorites. I took it because I like thinking about that time when he wasn’t dating Emile. When I thought he could be mine. I only borrowed the book so I could see him again, even just for a few minutes. We’re distant, now, and I hear he wants to marry my cousin. I still love him.

I sit in the tree, trying to remember what it used to feel like. Days with no work, with nothing needing to be done. Days with no longing pangs that will never be fixed. That’s what I’m trying to go back to: times of leisure and wanting things that could always come true later. I can’t rewrite the past, no matter how much I try. And still, I try.

*

I am thirty as of last week. It is dusk, and the air is quickly darkening.

I stand in front of the stump in the field that used to be our tree, and wind blows across my face, stringing my hair along it. My hands, clamped around Aaron’s book, are red and scraped from the metal and the rough ground after having climbed the fences to get here. But it was worth it to come here one last time, even just to see a stump of dead wood. I never got the chance to return his book.

My friends and I grew apart in college, except for Emile and Aaron. They got married. They got married at this tree. I was at the wedding, fighting every urge to burn it all right then. And if the tree wasn’t chopped now, I could probably have seen a cut in the bark of their initials from their ceremony, cutting into the tree that was my home, that I had found. They didn’t even include me in their speeches.

Last summer someone bought the land, and we couldn’t go down here anymore without fear of repercussions. Not that any of us tried, except for Emile and Aaron. They still came here all the time. Even after those owners moved here, they always snuck onto the premises. The owners warned them not to. The owners put up those fences I climbed over a few minutes ago. They almost got arrested, once. And still Aaron and Emile wouldn’t stop coming here. But I won’t get arrested tonight—I’ll be gone soon.

 A month ago, there was a bad storm here. The tree was split in two. The owners then had it chopped down. I don’t know what day it happened, but I have an idea of it. I have a feeling.

I take a step towards it, and my legs are so shaky I fall to my knees.

I stare into the swirling indents of splintered tree-rings. This tree was here longer than I’ve been alive. Now I will outgrow it. I will outgrow Aaron.

             His book in my hands is soft. I never returned it. I won’t ever return it. He died.

I wonder if he died when the tree got cut down, or before. I wonder if the tree died with him. He always had a connection with this place, same as me.

I set the book down. My hands find grass, find dirt, in the blue dark. My fingers dig past it, scooping a hole into the ground, going around the roots. One summer evening, before he and Emile started dating, we sat alone here. We talked about death and what comes after. He said he would like to be buried-- he would rather be in the earth than be burned up into ash. I said I would visit him when he dies, and he laughed. He asked me what I would rather have. I said it didn’t matter. And I guess it didn’t.

Emile had him cremated. I dig in the dirt. This will be his grave.

*

Over the hill, there are lights. Searching and finding nothing. Nothing by the tree but fresh dirt, packed back down into place over the book. I hop over the fence, and I am gone.