The Birth of a Feud

It was the first thing Donna noticed as she walked towards the dock. Her physical reaction surprised her. A hot flush started in her stomach, and the sorrow made its way to her eyes, and rested there. She wasn’t aware that her hands were fists.

Who would do this was her first thought, but she already knew the answer. That beautiful cedar that her grandmother had saved. There was talk of cutting it down when they building the dock. It was right at the lake shoreline interfered with the dock building. Someone mentioned that the cedar was a handy way to mark the boundary line between the cottage properties. In the end, the dock was built just a little to the left of the tree.

Donna’s grandmother, Caitlin, thought of cedars as trees that protected and wanted it to stay. Her grandfather was used to her strange ways and didn’t question it. The neighbours thought she could be a little weird, with her long grey hair and bohemian way of dressing, but they didn’t let on. They loved the vegetables they got from her garden. And she was fun to play canasta with.

The tree was smaller then, with a trunk that curved over the water. The lake was clear, and you could see the roots of the cedar at the lake bottom. The ground around the tree was always so green, and the soil so black. The cedar thrived and was robust and fragrant. It remained after all of the other trees along the shore had been cleared.

And here it was, with one side all hacked off, probably with a hand axe. Like the hand axe the neighbours had borrowed and never returned. Could the cedar survive this?

She made her way back to the cottage. Carl saw her face and immediately asked her what was wrong.

“The cedar tree down by the dock has been hacked pretty much in half” she said.

“What? Who would do that?” he asked.

“Goddamn Johnsons. That’s who” she answered.

She sat down at the large dining room table. The one where her kids and the Johnson kids would play spoons with their friends from across the way while the adults sat around the campfire out front. She looked out the window but didn’t even notice the magnificent view of the lake.

There was a slope from the cottage down to the dock, so the dock was hidden unless you went outside to the edge of the hill to look down. The cedar was hidden too, so it could easily be vandalized and no one would see. Still, Donna knew it was the Johnsons. Who else would come on the property like that, and hurt the tree?

There had never been any problems for the generations that had enjoyed the cottage – Donna’s grandparents Caitlin and George, her parents Jim and Sarah, Donna and Carl and their kids Susan, John and Brad. Not so much as a stolen and returned bicycle, or food missing. Nothing.

The Johnsons had the cottage next door. Caitlin and George had made friends with them all those decades before. Margaret and Dan. It was always Margaret, never anything like Maggie, but Dan was always saying, “Call me D”. It was they who had started the canasta craze.

They never had children themselves, but they adopted. They were nice enough, but the one adopted kid, Gary was a bit off. Probably from a hard start in life. Donna’s mom always told her to be wary around him. She never said why, but Donna didn’t like the way he would look at her. He never seemed to be able to hold down a job.

His sister Marilyn was OK. She turned out alright. While he was dark haired with blue eyes, she was blond with brown eyes. You could tell they weren’t really brother and sister, but no one ever mentioned it. She input data onto punch cards for a living. She got married and had kids of her own, but was never really interested in the cottage and never went there after she was old enough to stay in the city when her parents went to the cottage.

A good balance was maintained for years. Margaret and D were great neighbours, and Caitlin and George would even visit them off season at their home back in Toronto. They raised their kids together.

Donna’s mother Sarah got along well enough with Marilyn and when they were young even tried kissing her and making out, but it was an experiment that went nowhere. Marilyn was older and talked her into it. Donna’s brother Daniel was even named after D. He and his friends got drunk one night and went on a joyride that ended up killing all of them, even the other driver. Margaret and D went to the funeral and it was never spoken of again, at least not when Donna was around.

Donna knew that her brother would have been pissed at what happened to the cedar tree. She remembered her and Daniel decorating that cedar tree with Christmas ornaments when the family came up to check on the cottage in the winter, to make sure the sump pump hadn’t frozen and that the snow hadn’t gotten too heavy for the cottage roof. They hung suet balls on the cedar tree for the birds, too.  

When Margaret and Dan died, they left the cottage to Gary. That increased the sorrow of their deaths. Gary didn’t sell the cottage. It was the only thing he would ever have that was of value. One of his sister’s kids, Charles, decided that he wanted to share the cottage with his uncle, and he brought up his kids a few weekends in the summer. He didn’t trouble himself to come up in the winter and maintain it. But Gary did. He made sure he stayed active in the life of the cottage.

His nephew’s kid Corey broke one of the planks of the dock. He took a hammer down to the dock and said there was a dock spider he was trying to kill with it, but no one believed him. He didn’t care. His sister Sylvia was there with him and just ran away when it happened. Donna’s boy Brad saw what happened and told the adults that Corey had used the hammer to loosen the nails in the board and then jumped on it deliberately to break it.

Donna and Carl agreed. They would have forgiven Corey if it hadn’t been for the deliberateness of it, and the lies that he tried to tell. Their families had shared the dock without incident since George and D had built it all those years ago.

“Maybe it is time we got a new dock” Donna said to Gary and Charles. “We could split the cost” she added.

Gary put his hands on his hips. “No. We can just put a new board in. I’ll do it”.

“It has been 50 years. It’s in pretty good shape, considering” Carl said, crouching down to wiggle a board that was a bit loose. “I think it would be safer for the kids if we built a new one”.

Charles was about to answer when Gary piped in.

“Who has that kind of money? No. Pitch in for a board and I’ll put it in”. Donna and Carl’s eyes met. They had no faith in Gary and what kind of a job he would do.

Carl wasn’t all that handy himself. He could do small jobs around the house, but he knew when it was better to pay someone else to do it. He was getting on in years, too. But he was damned if he was going to pay for the whole thing. He saw that Donna had her mouth set in a line. Gary was in for it.

“We were willing to pay for half” she said, looking at Gary. She turned to Charles “And it was your kid who broke it”.

“I’ll fix it. Just give me half the money for the new board” Gary repeated.

Donna crossed her arms. Gary exploded. “You know what? That cedar tree there is right on the property line. Don’t ever cross over onto my property ever again!”

“Why would I do that when it means I would have to see you?” she answered, and stomped away. Carl and her kids followed her up the hill to the cottage.

She wondered what this meant for her children. She believed every kid should have summers at the cottage surrounded by an extended family that included all of the neighbours. But fuck the Johnsons.