I wasn’t surprised she knew about the wishtree tradition. I’m kind of a local celebrity.
Samar reached up, gently pulled down my lowest branch, and tied the fabric in a loose knot.
“I wish,” she whispered, “for a friend.”
She glanced over at the green house. Behind an upstairs curtain, a shadow moved.
And with that, Samar vanished back into the little blue house.
10
When you stand still for over two centuries while the world whirls past, things happen.
Mostly, by far and away, good things have been my lot in life. My leaves have cooled picnickers and proposers. Beneath my boughs vows have been made, hearts mended. Nappers have napped; dreamers have dreamed. I’ve watched ascents attempted, listened to stories spun.
And the laughter! Always and forever, laughter.
But sometimes things happen that aren’t so good. When they occur, I’ve learned that there’s not much you can do except stand tall and reach deep.
I have, for example, been hacked at, carved into, used for target practice.
I have been underwatered, overpruned, fertilized and fussed over, ignored and neglected. I have been struck by lightning, battered by sleet.
I have been threatened with axes, chainsaws, diseases, and insects.
I have tolerated the sharp claws of squirrels and the nagging pokes of woodpeckers. I have been climbed by cats and marked by dogs.
I have my aches and pains, like everyone. Last year I had a mite infestation that drove me nuts. Leaf blister, sooty mold, oak wilt, leaf scorch: Been there, done that.
Still, trees are luckier than people in one way. Only one percent of a fully grown tree is actually alive at any one time. Most of me is made of wood cells that are no longer living. In many ways, that makes me tougher than you.
So, yes. I’ve seen a lot. And who knows? I may see much more. I could live to be three hundred, five hundred, even. It happens. Red oaks lead long lives, longer than our daintier friends black willows, persimmons, apples, and redbuds.
And yet, a few days after Samar’s tearful wish, something happened that made me wonder if I’d finally witnessed too much.
11
The morning was budding, and I was waiting for warmth. Down the street, a lanky boy was lingering near a stop sign.
Head down, he was hunched over like a windblown weed. In his right hand was something shiny. A tool, maybe, or a pen.
He was smiling just a bit, as if he’d told himself a joke. A joke only he, perhaps, understood.
All day long I see people lost in thought, talking to themselves, grinning, frowning. He was nothing out of the ordinary.
I was in the midst of a conversation with Bongo, who had just pointed out to me that I was a year older. Two hundred and sixteen rings old, to be precise.
“Another sproutday,” I said. “I still feel like a sapling.”
“You don’t look a day over a hundred and fifty,” Bongo replied. “Best-looking tree on the block.”
“I’m really”—I paused for comic effect—“getting up there.”
Bongo, who was perched on my lowest branch, sighed. A crow sigh is unmistakable, like a groan from a tiny, cranky old man.
“Tree humor,” I explained, just in case Bongo had missed it, although of course she hadn’t. Bongo misses nothing. “Because, you know, I’m so tall.”
“Really, Red?” Bongo stretched, admiring her lustrous blue-black wings. “That’s the best you got for me this morning?”
“Maybe you’d appreciate my joke more if you weren’t so sensitive about your stature,” I teased.
“Corvids don’t give a flying tail feather about height,” Bongo said. “Smarts. Wiles. Trickery. Cunning. That’s what counts in our neck of the woods.”
“Corvids” is a fancy name for birds like crows, ravens, jays, and magpies. Bongo says she’s too classy for a label as common as “crow.”
A soft wind tickled my branches. Spring, that old rascal, was teasing us with the promise of warmer days.
“The truth is,” I said, “it doesn’t matter what size you are, Bongo. We grow as we must grow, as our seeds decided long ago.”
“Red. Way too early in the morning for the Wise Old Tree routine.” Bongo gave me a gentle peck. “Although, you’re right. It doesn’t matter how tall you are.” In a fluttery blur, she sailed to a telephone pole far above my leafy canopy. “Not when you can fly, pal.”
At almost the same moment, Samar and the boy who lived in the green house, Stephen, stepped onto their porches. Both had backpacks. Both looked eager to greet the day.
Their eyes met. Stephen nodded—just a flicker—and Samar nodded back. Not a hello, exactly. Just an acknowledgment.
Stephen ran off toward the elementary school down the street, but Samar hesitated. “Hello,” she called softly.
Right on cue, Bongo replied “Hello,” as she did every morning, sounding just like Samar.
Bongo can also do a passable tuba, an impressive Chihuahua, and a fine police siren.
Samar looked up at Bongo, grinned, and headed toward school.
With that, Bongo let loose a hoarse and gleeful caw, and set off to wait for children to arrive at school. She was a regular there. Everybody knew her. She enjoyed annoying the children, and they enjoyed letting her annoy them.
Bongo especially liked to untie shoelaces. While the children were busy retying them, she would snatch treats from their lunch bags.
Every now and then, she would even make a polite request. She could say “Chip, please,” “No way,” and “You rock,” when it served her purposes.
Watching Bongo soar, I considered, not for the first time, my rambling roots. What would it be like to fly? To burrow? To swim? To gallop?
Delightful, no doubt. Sheer joy. And yet. I wouldn’t trade a single rootlet for any of it.
It is a great gift indeed to love who you are.
12
By this time, the lanky boy had walked past me, swiveled, and returned. Glancing over his shoulder, he stepped onto the brown lawn that blanketed my roots.
The air changed, quivering the way it will when people are near, with chemicals, with pulsing heat, with human-ness.
And then it happened.
He dug into my trunk with the object in his hand.
Fast. Deliberate.
Again he checked his surroundings. An elderly woman crossing the street smiled at him and shook her head. She was probably thinking, “How sweet. I’ll bet he’s carving a heart with initials in it. Oh, to be young and in love!”
People are under the impression that trees don’t mind being carved into, especially if hearts are involved.
For the record: We mind.
I’d never seen the boy before. He was big, maybe a high schooler. It’s hard to know with people. With a tree, I can sense to the month, sometimes to the day, its age.
I couldn’t tell what he was carving, of course. But I could tell from the determined way he moved that it was meant to hurt.
Not me. Somehow I sensed it wasn’t meant to hurt me. I was just his canvas.
That said, it’s not exactly a picnic, getting hacked into. Bark is my skin, my protection from the world. Any wound makes it harder to fight off disease and insects.
I wanted to yell “Stop!” To say something. Anything.
But of course I didn’t. It’s not our way.
Trees are meant to listen, to observe, to endure.
He was done quickly. He stood back, admired his work, gave a little nod, and left. As he walked away, I saw the tool clutched in his fist.
A little screwdriver with a yellow handle.
Thin as a twig, bright as a meadowlark.
13
Bongo was the first to see what had happened to me.
She landed at the base of my trunk, head cocked. Dropping the potato chip in her beak, she cried, “I leave you alone for a few minutes, and look what happens! What on earth?”
??
?It seems someone mistook me for a pumpkin,” I said. When she didn’t smile, I added, “Because, you know, I was carved.”
“For the millionth time, Red, explaining doesn’t make things any funnier.”
Bongo flew to my lowest scaffold branch—one of my big, primary limbs. She examined my injury. “Does it hurt?”
“Not the way an injury might hurt you. Trees are different that way.”
“I gotta do something,” Bongo said.
“There’s nothing to be done.”
“You’ve got a major boo-boo. I want to help. You’re the Wise Old Tree. Tell me what to do.”
“Really, Bongo. Time heals all wounds.”
Bongo hates it when I philosophize. She rolled her eyes. (At least I think she did. It’s hard to tell with crows. Their eyes are like morning blackberries, dark and dewy.)
“I just hope my bark isn’t ruined,” I said. “That’s my favorite side.”
“It’s not ruined. Just decorated. Like those tattoos people get.” Bongo nudged me with her beak. “Show me who did this. I’ll get him. I’ll squawk at his window in the middle of the night. I’ll dive-bomb him and yank out some hair.” She flapped her wings. “No! Better yet! I’ll make a deposit on his head. I’ll make a deposit on his head every day for a year!”
I didn’t ask what kind of deposit. I was quite sure I knew.
“Bongo, dear,” I said, “that won’t be necessary.”
Bongo shifted from foot to foot, something she did when she was working out a problem. “You know,” she said, “it’s almost time for Wishing Day. Maybe this is some kind of wish. Just a poorly delivered one.”
“Another Wishing Day,” I repeated. It seemed like we’d just had one. Had a whole year already come and gone? Days have a way of slipping past like raindrops in a river.
“One more round,” Bongo said, “of greedy people bugging you with their needs.”
“One more round of hopeful people wishing for better things,” I corrected.
Wishing Day was always a bit hard on me, and on my residents. Usually the animals and birds stayed away that day to avoid curious hands and endless photographs.
But it was just one day. I understood its history and my role in it. I knew people were full of longings.
A mother tugging a toddler along the sidewalk froze in place when she saw my trunk.
“Mommy, what does that say?” asked her little girl, who was clutching a stuffed toy dog by its bedraggled tail.
The mother didn’t answer.
“Mommy?”
They crossed the lawn. The mother stepped close to me. “It says ‘LEAVE,’” she finally said.
“Like trees have leaves?”
Gently, the mother traced my cuts with her index finger. “Maybe,” she answered. “Maybe like that.”
She looked over at the two houses near me. Shaking her head, she tightened her grip on the little girl’s hand. “Let’s hope that’s all it means.”
14
Those houses. My houses.
One painted blue. One painted green.
One with a black door. One with a brown door.
One with a yellow mailbox. One with a red mailbox.
For well over a century, I’d stared at them. Prim and proper. Same small size, same boxy shape, same pitched roofs and squat brick chimneys. Architectural siblings.
Long before they were a glimmer in some builder’s eye, I was here, right in the middle of things. If my roots stretched past the property line that separated them, well, that’s never been my concern. Roots can be unruly. Mine explored the earth below both houses, pirouetted around their plumbing, anchored their foundations.
I spread my shade fairly. I dropped my leaves evenly. I bombed their roofs with acorns in equal number.
I did not play favorites.
Over the years, many families had called those houses home. Babies and teenagers, grandparents and great-grandparents. They spoke Chinese and Spanish, Yoruba and English and French Creole. They ate tamales and pani puri, dim sum and fufu and grilled cheese sandwiches.
Different languages, different food, different customs. That’s our neighborhood: wild and tangled and colorful. Like the best kind of garden.
A few months ago, a new family, Samar’s family, rented the blue house. They were from a distant country. Their ways were unfamiliar. Their words held new music.
Just another transplant in our messy garden, it seemed.
Except that this time, something changed. The air was uneasy. The parents in the green house refused to welcome the new family. There were polite nods between the adults at first, but then, even those vanished.
Other things happened. Someone threw raw eggs at the blue house. One afternoon, a car passed by, filled with angry men yelling angry things, things like “Muslims, get out!” Sometimes Samar would walk home trailed by children taunting her.
I love people dearly.
And yet.
Two hundred and sixteen rings, and I still haven’t figured them out.
Our neighborhood had welcomed many families from faraway. What was different this time? The headscarf Samar’s mother wore? Or was it something else?
As all this unfolded, busybody that I am, I kept tabs, eavesdropped, observed. I never interfered, though. Trees are impartial observers. We are the strong and silent type.
Besides, what could I possibly do? I had limbs, but they could merely sway. I had a trunk, but it was rooted to the earth. I had a voice, but it could not be used.
My resources were limited.
So, too, as it turned out, was my patience.
15
When you’re the neighborhood wishtree, people talk. It didn’t take long for folks to learn about the ugly word carved into my trunk. People stopped to stare. They gathered in little groups. They grimaced and shook their heads and murmured. By lunchtime, the police had arrived.
I am not, as it happens, a stranger to law enforcement. A pair of calico kittens reside across the street. They love climbing up my trunk to my uppermost branches. Unfortunately, they don’t love climbing back down. In the last two months, Lewis and Clark have been rescued twice by the fire department and three times by the police.
Sandy and Max, the same police officers who’d rescued the kittens just last week, climbed out of their patrol car to check me out. They frowned. They searched the lawn for clues. They talked to passersby and took photos.
“Bongo,” I whispered, “I’m an official crime scene.”
She was not amused.
The owner of the houses—and, therefore, technically, of me—was the one who’d called the police. Francesca, tall and thin, with short, dove-gray hair, lived across the street. The blue and green houses had belonged to her family for generations.
Francesca was also the owner of Lewis and Clark, my intrepid visitors.
With a grim look on her face, Francesca strode across the street to talk to the police. Lewis and Clark squirmed in her arms.
“That tree,” Francesca said to Sandy, who was taking notes on a little pad. “It’s been nothing but trouble for as long as I can remember.”
Francesca has never been the sentimental sort. She likes cats more than trees.
To each her own. I happen to like trees more than cats.
“Oh, but people love the wishtree,” said Sandy. She looked me up and down. “Although I imagine it’s a lot of work for you.”
“Every year, the day after Wishing Day, I swear I’m going to cut that thing down,” Francesca said.
It was true. But I knew Francesca didn’t mean it. She and I went way back.
“The cleanup isn’t the worst of it,” Francesca continued. “The things people wish for! The craziness! Last year someone wrote I wish for chocolate spaghetti. In permanent marker. On a pair of underwear. Tossed it way up high.”
“Chocolate spaghetti,” Sandy said. “I could get behind that.”
“Craziness, I tell you.” Francesca stared at me. “It’s just a
tree, after all. Just a tree.”
“Just a tree” seemed a tad unfair. But Francesca looked tired and angry, so I tried not to take it personally.
Sandy closed her notebook. “People believe what they wanna believe. About trees.” She stared at the newly carved word. “About people, too.”
“What now?” Francesca asked.
“Dunno,” Sandy said. “The tree belongs to you, not the new family, and you’ve been here forever.”
Francesca smiled sadly. “S’pose it could be me they’re hoping will leave.”
They watched Max place a circle of yellow crime scene tape near my trunk, using metal stakes. “Don’t think so, Francesca,” Sandy said.
Max joined them. He stroked the kittens, who purred loudly. “One problem, in terms of prosecuting anyone,” he said, “is the history of this tree. It’s almost May, when people leave their … wishes or whatever. Hard to say for sure this isn’t part of the whole, you know, tradition thing.” He shrugged. “That’s assuming we figure out who did this, mind you.”
“People are supposed to make their wishes on a rag or piece of paper, not carve it into the trunk,” Francesca said. “That’s why, back in Ireland, they called these ‘raggy trees.’ Nowadays, a lot of people just tie a tag around a branch and write their nutty wishes.” She shrugged. “In any case, ‘LEAVE’ is not a wish. It’s a threat.”
“It certainly is,” Max agreed.
Francesca nodded at the cracked and buckled walkways leading to both houses. “Tell you one thing. Wishtree or not, this oak is destroying the walkways. Messing with the plumbing, too. Roots go on forever.” She shook her head. “Maybe it really is time to cut it down. No more leaves to rake. No more Wishing Day mess. No more of this … unkindness.”
Lewis leapt from Francesca’s grasp and dashed for my trunk. Sandy tackled him just in time.
“We’ll finish up our investigation in a day or two, be out of your hair,” Max said. “Then you’ll be free to do whatever you want with the tree.”
“You know,” Francesca said, taking Lewis from Sandy, “my father almost cut this tree down years ago. My mother wasn’t having it. Family lore or some such thing. Soft-hearted nonsense.” She sighed. “Guess it’s up to me.”