A Tree’s Goodbye

One by one, cars pulled into cemented driveways, returning from Catholic, Protestant and other institutions of the true faith. The bright noonday sun reflected off car doors as they flung open and children poured out onto the green lawns, each with same plan in mind; wolf down lunch as quickly as possible, and hit the streets. The sounds of hockey nets scraping across concrete, shouts of dibs on positions, and arguments over team members began to reverberate off the antiseptic brick and aluminum walls that lined the secluded cul de sac.

Eight year old Tigger had suppressed his energy and love of hockey all morning, to the level of martyr he thought, through the one hour of Miss Smith’s saintly Sunday School teaching and an additional hour of the Reverend Buffam’s sermonizing. Feeling exceptionally consecrated this warm Sunday afternoon; he was now ready to take on the surrounding kids in some championship street hockey. Chomping at the bit to escape the confines of homework and household chores and to drink in the last dredges of what might well be summer’s final reprieve, he stood poised at the exit door, hockey stick in hand, when he heard the voice from above.

"Tigger!" His father called. "Don’t you take off anywhere. I need your help this afternoon." Too late! His heart sank. Furrowed eyebrows and a stern frown backed up the voice booming from the top of the stairway. A look that had, since Tigger’s earliest childhood memories, demanded his complete surrender and obedience. He knew it was useless to resist. His only hope now was that whatever his father had in mind would be short and sweet, requiring the minimal imposition on him and his plans for this glorious sunny day.

"And tell your brother Jim to get back here." His father continued. "I’ll need his help too." Jim, his thirteen-year-old brother, had already met up with the other neighbourhood teens and started to ‘hang out’.

With rolled eyes and resentment, Jim re-entered the house.

"Now what?" he asked his father, not really wanting to know.

"I’m going to straighten out the Cortland tree in the backyard today, and I need your help."

"Well what I am supposed to do?" Jim whined. Not imagining how anyone could possibly straighten out a tree, Tigger and Jim followed their father into the backyard, listening to his plan unfold.

"Jim," he ordered, tossing him the keys to the car, "you get the car. I’ll tie one end of a rope to the trunk of the tree and the other end to the bumper of the car."

"You’re going to straighten the tree with the car?" Jim asked incredulously.

"Of course!" his father answered. "You don’t think I’m strong enough to bend that tree trunk on my own do you?"

"But Dad," Jim protested, "the tree is in the backyard. How you gonna get the car back there? There’s not enough room between our house and the Hawkin’s to drive a car through there, and that’s the only way you can get into the backyard."

That’s easy!" He replied. "You back the car onto the front lawn, Jim, as close as you can get it to the Hawkins property, without going onto Pete’s lawn. We’ll have to run a rope from the trunk of the tree in the backyard to the bumper of the car in the front yard. I will be at the tree, and Tigger will be the point man. He will stand at the side of the house, between you, and me and the tree. He’ll relay my signals to you behind the steering wheel. Got it?" "Yeah, I guess so." Jim was for anything that would let him drive the family car, even if it was only on the front lawn. Tigger just wanted to get it done. Across the street he could see his friends gathering around the hockey nets, donning goalie gloves and hockey masks. The muscles in his legs and hands twitched as he attempted to stay put on the spot where his father had strategically placed him. He turned one ear to his father’s instructions, the other to the haunting beckoning of wooden hockey sticks slapping against pavement.

"Now when I say, give it some gas, Tigger, you tell Jim to give it some gas. Got it?" Tigger nodded, watching his father tie one end of the thick rope to the bumper of the Chevrolet.

"Hey Greg!" Tigger shouted over his father’s head. "Wait for me, I won’t be long!"

"Tigger! You hear me? You understand?" his father was shaking a finger at him.

"Yeah, yeah! I understand Dad. You tell me to give it some gas, and I tell Jim." He took his eyes from the street game long enough to survey his area of responsibility. To his right, he could see into the backyard. His father was tying the other end of the rope to the trunk of the Cortland apple tree. For years his father had insisted the strong spring winds that swept across their backyard had gradually caused their prize apple tree grow on an angle. Although his father had several fruit trees growing in the back yard, it was the Cortland apple tree that seemed to outdo itself each year, yielding larger and tastier crops. This year, it had produced a bumper crop, the branches of the tree bowed almost to the ground with fruit. They had given away baskets of apples to their neighbours and friends. It was obviously a source of pride for his father.

"Lloyd!" he had heard Mrs. Reiman tell his Dad after church. "Thank you so much for that lovely basket of apples! They were the nicest apples I have ever eaten." He remembered seeing her eyes close dreamily as she tried to described the pleasure her family had derived from his father’s generosity, and the way his father awkwardly attempted to mask his pride with a feigned humility. All their neighbours and friends had reacted the same way when it came to the exceptional sweet, juicy taste of the Cortlands. Even Tigger’s friends had counted themselves lucky when his father had granted them permission to pick an apple from the sacred tree.

Tigger couldn’t understand all the fuss about an apple tree. Anyway, it wasn’t even Dad’s tree. It was one of Grandpa’s trees that he had grown from a twig. Grandpa had apple trees of every variety and size. His grandfather delighted in growing fruit trees, and loved to have Tigger and his brothers accompany him in the early spring when he would carefully explain to them every step as he grafted twigs from prize apple trees onto the trunks of stock trees. Tigger and his brothers enjoyed being with Grandpa in the country, and they enjoyed the tree grafting lessons. They especially enjoyed the fruits of Grandpa’s labours, but on this sunny Sunday afternoon, Tigger could not see what the big deal could be about making a Cortland apple tree straighten up and grow right.

To his left, he could see the tan coloured Chevrolet coup idling on the front lawn. Jim was waiting impatiently behind the wheel, rapping his fingers against the dashboard to the beat of "Rush" blasting from the car radio.

"Tigger-r-r-r!" Greg called from the goal line in front of the net. "Hurry up! We’re losing!"

"Ok! Give it some gas," his father called from the tree. He was gazing intently at the slack of the rope coiled around the trunk of the tree, and he had his arm raised in the air above his head, waving his hand in a forward gesture.

"Be right there!" Tigger yelled back to Greg. "Give it some gas, Jim!" he repeated his father’s instructions The Chevy inched forward slowly, and the rope lifted off the ground and began to tighten.

"A little more. A little more." his father called out.

"A little more. A little more." Tigger relayed.

The car leaped forward and the rope snapped taut. Tigger’s eyes widened as he watched the trunk of the mighty Cortland strain and bend upward. It groaned and creaked under the imposition, like an old man’s knee joints on a steep staircase. The car engine revved under the continued pressure of Jim’s foot, while children screaming "Shoot! Shoot!" punctuated the rock and roll trumpeting from the car radio.

"A little more. A little more." His father continued to wave his hand forward toward him, not lifting his eyes off the taxed tree trunk.

"A little more. A little more." Tigger motioned to Jim. The tree was perpendicular now, almost at a ninety-degree angle to the green grass below it. Surely they were almost done and he would be free to save the game he so loved and long to be playing.

"A little more!" His father bellowed impatiently. Jim was barely touching the gas pedal, and the roped tree resisted every attempt of the car to pull forward.

"A little more, Jim!" Tigger echoed his father’s impatience, but to his eye, the tree was straight and the job was done.

"Tigger! Hurry’ yup!" the team beckoned.

"In a minute!" he called back, watching his father’s hand, anxiously anticipating the ‘woe’ signal.

"Just a little more now." his father continued.

"Just a bit more Jim." Tigger fidgeted in his place. Jim touched the accelerator, the engine roared but nothing moved.

His father’s brow began to seriously furrow, and the frown took on grotesque proportions.

"A little more!" he raised his voice, and waved his hand in an overstated jerking motion.

"More, Jim! More!" Tigger repeated with equal aggravation. The car strained with the effort, but remained stationary and the tree remained still. His father grew more agitated. Although Tigger could not determine exactly who or what his father was angry with, he felt that he and his older brother were definitely in the direct path of his wrath as he began to flail his hand forward in exaggerated angry gestures.

"GIVE IT SOME GAS!" he bellowed out furiously.

Tigger was losing patience himself. The street hockey game was well underway, and his team was suffering humiliating losses. Jim was peering over the dashboard of the car, losing his interest in driving, and losing even more interest in Tigger’s signals reflected in the rear view mirror.

"FLOOR IT, JIM!" He yelled. Exhaust spewed from the back of the car, the rope vibrated with tension, the trunk of the tree moaned in protest. There was a thunderous crack, like that of a gunshot blast, instantaneous with a sudden jerk. The car lurched forward and the rope fell limp to the ground.

The startled Tigger, rooted in shock, stared aghast. His father remained on the exact same spot as before, but now, instead of hand extended overhead, eyes fixed on the rigid rope, he stood frozen, arms dropped at his side, lower jaw resting on his chest, gaping eyes staring in disbelief, desperately trying to process the scene before him, the sight of his prize Cortland apple tree lying flat on the ground, the lax rope still affixed to its trunk, and lying motionless beside the tree. He could see rage welling up in his father, an inhuman scream erupting from his gut and exploding from his chest. He pitched forward and bending over the fallen tree, seized its trunk in both his hands and repeatedly thumped its severed end against the ground, as if he could will the tree back into one piece, as if he could rejoin the dismembered trunk to the broken root where it had so cleanly snapped off.

Tigger, sensing somehow that this was his fault, knew that once his father regained his senses and realized he could not pound that tree back into the ground, any more than he could turn back the hands of time and undo the last sixty seconds, knew that his father’s rage would be turned toward him and his brother.

"RUN JIM! RUN!" he shrieked to his brother, but it wasn’t necessary. Jim, having already drawn the necessary conclusions, had fled the scene, and Tigger ran past an abandoned Chevrolet idling in the front yard, with the driver’s door wide open, rock and roll still blasting from the speakers.

Tigger cowered in his bedroom, and when what seemed like a lifetime had passed, and still his father had not appeared in his doorway with murderous intent on his face, he summoned the courage to peer out his bedroom window.

Cautiously he pulled back the blue and green curtain that matched the spread thrown across his bunk. His window overlooked the backyard, and he scanned it from one side to the other. Snoopy, their old black lab, was sitting quietly in front of his doghouse. His bicycle lay on the patio, where he had left it the day before. It was unusually quiet. Then he noticed, to his astonishment, his father still standing by the fallen tree. He had not moved. His head was lowered, and his shoulders were hunched and shaking. His father was crying. His eight-year-old mind had become accustomed to his father’s angry outbursts, and his brute strength. He understood his father’s hard work ethic, his love of sports, especially hockey, but the man paralyzed by grief over a broken Cortland apple tree was a stranger to him. For a very long time, he remained at the window, puzzled by the picture of such a large strong man reduced to tears over a tree.

"It was in!" a voice hollered.

"It was not!" another screeched back.

The game! He remembered! He grabbed his hockey stick and bolted out the front door.

"Hey you guys! Wait for me!"