The Tree Giver by Ronnie Ray Jenkins

She ran her gnarled fingers through her short, white hair, and stared out over the creek from her seat on an old bench made from two logs and a warped thick board. The old man built it for her thirty-five years ago. It was their favorite spot, just thirty-yards out the cabin door, and down a narrow path. Now, she contemplated on this Christmas Eve, and dredged up memories.

The old man was gone now, four years ago this month, but it seemed liked a hundred to her. Her son, Drake, well, he got his name on a wall down in Washington, and a little plot of land up on a hilltop cemetery just outside of town. She liked to think of him as a hero, but that thought would come and go. Most times, it made her angry. “Played us like fools,” she muttered at a blue heron that lit upon a tall spruce across the widest part of the creek. The bird craned its neck and a round eye shared some sympathy with her, just briefly. Like people did.

She shifted on the makeshift bench, her old bones as dry as the piece of lumber she sat on. She reached into the pocket of her ragged coat, and pulled out a tarnished harmonica. She cupped it around her wrinkled mouth, and played a few notes of, “Taps,” then stopped. She slapped it on her faded blue jeans to clear out the spittle, and watched the heron push off from the spruce’s branch. It flew off, leaving the branch bobbing up and down as if it could paint the sky.

She tested the harmonica again, and it occurred to her that feeling sorry for her wasn’t the best thing to do on a day like today. She thought back when her Drake was just a toddler, and how the three of them would scout out a tree in October, and she’d put him on her back, and they’d follow the old man in December through the virgin snow to chop it down. Why must memories bring pain and joy? She shook the thought from her head, rose slowly, and slid the harmonica into her coat pocket. She walked up the path to the cabin and found the old axe still hanging on the outer wall of the tar-papered shack of a cabin.

A light snow fell, and sifted white upon the curled, dead, brown leaves of beech, oak, and maple. The axe was heavy and her old arms felt its weight, but she trekked off despite the voices of arthritis reminding her of age. She followed the turns of the creek bank, and in the distance saw the tree. It was small, when she reached it though; distance had lied to her eyes. It was closer to four feet tall. She shook its branches with her left hand as if in introduction. She circled it once, her old blue eyes studying the tree, and then, just how to attack its trunk with the dull edge of the axe to drop it as easily as possible. She swung. The wooden thuds echoed in the woods and a great pileated woodpecker seeking grubs somewhere deep and away from her joined in with a version of hammered chopping with his long beak. She chopped, and then paused, to smile at his response.

The tree fell, and she proudly stood resting, and wiping the sweat from her wrinkled forehead with the tattered fabric of her coat’s forearm. Then, she limbed it enough to make sure it would fit in a stand. On first thought, it occurred to the old woman, to drag the tree back to the cabin, but what good is a Christmas tree, alone?, she pondered. Her old white eyebrows rose with thought, again.

She knew where the place was, she’d heard them before, in summers past. Their voices floating through the woods down to her cabin was that of children, and so, she left the axe upon the snow growing on the ground, wrapped her hands around the small trunk, and pulled the tree leaving its branches to sweep a path behind her.

Hunch-backed, her feet burning with cold, she worked her way through the woods to an opening, where she paused. Ahead of her old eyes, a house with many windows looked back, and looking back to join the house, faces. Faces with noses pressed against smudged panes, showing wide wondering eyes above dirty cheeks. There must have been eight children, and she guessed they spanned in ages from three to twelve. Beyond the old house, the sky grew gray calling in the nighttime. She plodded toward, the faces, the house, through a yard scattered with snow covered broken remnants of cheap toys, a lopsided swing set, and black bald tires stacked like cookies.

Her intention changed, she intended to place the tree up at the cemetery, between the old man’s plot, and her son. The dead needed nothing. Today, the living mattered to her, and she let her inner anger free to join the dead.

Inside the house, the eyes watched the old woman as she left the tree at the bottom of a staircase, with aged wooden railings held together by rusted nails. She turned from the house and walked back toward the cabin. She paused where the hilly yard met the woods, turned slowly, and pulled the harmonica out of her pocket. Wide, white flakes dotted the old house, one child slid up an old window, and the woman blew hard on the harmonica, opening and closing her hand to let the notes escape and drift across the yard to the ears at the window. It had been years, since she played, “Jingle Bells.” It was so much better, than, “Taps,” she thought.

The children watched her turn away, and, and the notes grew distant as the old woman melted into the woods. Above the land, stars peeked, and snow fell to erase the small footprints of the tree giver.

?2018 Ronnie Ray Jenkins

The gift of reading lasts forever.