It was mid-October. It seemed like the summer’s heat was here to stay so it was unexpected that a cool evening chased the heat away. Everyone was off, doing what people do on a Friday evening. Everyone was gone except William and I — Grandson and grandfather hanging out in the back 40.
Years before when my children were still children and my brother’s children were still children and William was not, we decided the big pine was ready to be harvested for a patch of open sky was lacking.
The fallow farmland gave way decades ago to demanding seeds sprouting for life. Those seeds, tossed by the wind, dropped by passing birds, deposited by nocturnal nomads on the move sprouted where they randomly fell. They volunteered without regard to order or proportion. Having their way, a forest supplanted what once was a farmer’s livelihood. And so they grew until that land was placed into my domain only for a while, it seemed.
Open space was in demand. Grass wanted the warmth of the sun, a football was destined to be thrown and children wanted to run. Now trees come and go and that is good to know. Yet a pang of regret tinges my soul every time I lay waste to a bit of life.
Decades ago, being no more than a sapling myself, I took hold of the axe so many trees ago. Sometimes it seemed like 99 years would pass before the wood would come crashing down, shattering the silence all around. Life comes and grows, gets old and goes. Planting a new tree assuages that ephemeral guilt when a tree comes down. It is good to plant new roots to the ground. It is good to plant more than you bring down.
We took the chain, made it sharp and true. I climbed high into the tree, tied a rope as if a hangman’s noose, to guide the tree to the earth below. The children gathered at the far end with rope in hand to give a pull to help it land.
The chainsaw sputtered, came to life. Sawdust flew, the crevice grew, the children tugged and the tree gave way. We counted the rings, 25 or more. Perhaps it was 20 inches in diameter, not really old. A nice piece of wood to keep out the winter’s cold.
We cut the limbs and trunk into fireplace size, and over the remaining autumn and winter, we split the logs. When the cold came the following years, the children had plenty of wood to feed a fire, roast marshmallows and hot dogs and warm their bones when cold and tired. It is good to plant more than you bring down.
Over the years as the stump slowly decomposed, other trees volunteered and began to occupy the same patch of ground. Grandson William and I got the tree saw, loppers, pick, axe, and shovel and began to work, thankful for that cool October breeze. These trees were small, no older that Will, maybe five or six years of growth. They were nothing like the tree that came before.
Now William is from that ancient seed that came from my son that came from me, that came from my dad and mom and grandparents and only God knows where — A characteristic that makes it easy to take tools into one’s hand and alter the material world. We cut the volunteers down, dug into the earth to expose the roots and severed them to free the stumps. I showed him how to rock the loppers back and forth to bring the blades slowly together.
He liked the rhythm and it made him laugh. He began to sing a simple spontaneous song matching the rhythm of the rocking loppers, his swaying body and happy mind.
We worked on for an hour or so. Worked up a sweat and began to work slowly. Deciding to take a break, we sat on the table near the fire pit. We drank our water as we watched through the wood of Georgia pine in the distance the descending sun.
After a while, I said we better get back to work before the day fades away. William looked at me. It was clear that he did not understand.
He said, “What do you mean the day is fading away?”
“The sun is setting. Slowly it will get darker,” I said. “The light from the sun will fade away until it is dark.”
He understood more than I expressed. I could see his understanding was disturbing his view of reality.
He jumped off the table and ran to the tree that was lightning-struck earlier in the summer. He placed his fingers into the scar left by the lightning and said, “Last summer when we were looking at this tree you wondered if the tree was a goner.”
“Yes, I remember” I said.
“By ‘goner,’ you explained to me that you were wondering if the tree was going to die.”
“Yes, Will, I wondered if the tree was going to die.”
He ran back to the table with tears in his eyes and said pointing back to the tree, “That tree is fading away.”
I nodded my head.
He swept his arm across the horizon and said, “All of those trees are going to fade away some day.”
Understanding his concerns, I nodded my head.
He pointed to the house and said, “Our home is going to fade away.”
I nodded my head. He climbed into my lap. I held him close.
With tears on his cheeks and tears in my eyes, he said, “You are going to fade away.”
I broke his gaze, turned away, nodding.
“Grandpa, take me to the house,” he whispered. “I don’t want to fade away.”
The sun light did fade, though another source cast a light into the yard. Someone was home. We looked at each other and I smiled. I carried him and walked toward the light, for it seemed not to fade and remaining work could wait another day.
r. j. desprez
Tyrone, Ga.
