The Tree Song

      “How long did you say it would take to grow Daddy?” Thessa asked. The eight-year-old girl brushed dirt off onto her ripped shorts. The father-daughter pair stood in the front yard of their small house in the middle of a wealthy neighborhood. A one-story family home didn’t belong in a neighborhood with million-dollar mansions.

           “Many years. I might not be here to see it when it’s done.”

           “I hope you are,” the girl said.

           Her father stuck the shovel into the soft ground and smiled at his daughter. “Well let’s do everything we can to make sure I am. If you water it every day, and make sure there aren’t any nasty beetles on it, it might grow just a little faster.”

           “That’s all I have to do?”

           “There is one more thing,” the father said. He squatted down to his daughter’s level. “You have to sing to it,” he said quietly.

           “Sing?” Thessa asked, mimicking her father’s whisper.

           “Yes. That’s the most important ingredient. I’ll teach you the song.” Thessa’s father stood back up and stared at the small pine they just planted. He cleared his throat and started singing the simple rhyme.

           “Listen tree

Heed my plea

           All my love I’ll give

           For your branches to live

           Grow tall and free

           Forever the tree you’re meant to be

Hear my song

           And always… you’ll stay strong.”

           “I’ll sing to it every day, Daddy.”

           The father smiled, “Then I trust it will grow quickly. I dream one day, together, we’ll bring trees back.”

           “Dad come help me finish the mulching around the Pine,” Thessa said. For eight years, hardly missing a day, the girl sang to the tree. The benefits showed. Already the tree was ten feet tall and seemed to grow by the minute.

           “I can’t right now. The news is doing a special broadcast.”

           “Who cares about the news,” said Thessa.

           “If you care about your tree, you should care about the news.” Thessa’s father sounded so serious. “Industrialists have already wiped out half the Amazon. That’s why we planted it. To stop them.”

           But Thessa didn’t care about the news. The real world could wait till she was an adult. For now, she would just worry about teenager things, like passing her driver’s test next week, and making sure her beautiful tree was taken care of.

           She walked back out to the front yard. She could do the mulching herself. Thessa hummed her father’s tune and started shoveling the black chips into the planter bed. She was half done when a voice from outside the small, fenced yard disturbed her work.

           “Are you singing about making a tree grow?” a boy asked. He was wearing a funny looking uniform and didn’t seem much older than Thessa. His hands were shoved in the uniform’s pockets and he swayed back and forth as he spoke.

           “What’s it to you?” Thessa responded. She was not happy about the invasion of her privacy. Most people who walked by just laughed when they saw her watering the tree. Growing plants was just that, laughable. The Industry would take care of them.

           “Growing trees certainly isn’t popular these days,” he said.

           “Well people like the benefits trees give us. Why should I care if it’s not popular?”

           “I like a girl who isn’t popular,” said the boy, grinning as if he’d just made some hilarious joke.

           Thessa scowled. She was tempted to chuck a scoop full of dirty mulch at him, but she resisted the urge. “Why don’t you take your stupid ideas elsewhere.”

           The boy grinned as he started to walk away, “I’m Kian by the way. I’m sure you noticed how short I am. Maybe you could sing a song and I’ll grow taller like your tree.”

           This time Thessa did chuck a shovel full of mulch at him. He dodged it and ran away laughing. She finished mulching and wondered how someone could have so much ego that they would introduce themselves after being told to leave.

           But Kian came back the next day when she was out watering the pine, and the next day. Every day she threw a handful of mulch at him, but he just laughed it off. He seemed genuinely interested in Thessa’s love for the tree.

           Thessa’s father didn’t see Kian’s interest. “He’s one of them, an Industrialist,” he warned. One of the industrialists who stopped at nothing for progress. Every tree would soon be consumed and used to fuel their unquenchable appetite. “You must always protect the pine from them. You must protect all trees.”

           Thessa promised she would but she didn’t think at heart, Kian was like a greedy Industrialist. When he showed up three months later with a guitar and a full rendition of her song, she knew he was something different. He cared about what she cared about, her tree.

           “Would you die for something you believed in?” A twenty-year-old Kian asked a nineteen-year-old Thessa.

           “If I wasn’t willing to die for it, do I truly believe it?” Thessa responded.

           “What if you loved something, an idea, everyone else thought was crazy. Something everyone else only saw as a means to an end. Would you still love it?”

           Thessa looked at Kian. In the bright moonlight, the pine tree’s branches cast a shadow on his face. “If I truly loved something, no one could stop that,” Thessa said.

           “Well said,” Kian agreed, “Not very many people like this tree you’ve planted. They think it’s a relic from a time long past. An item to be used.”

           “One day, people will regret thinking like that,” said Thessa.

           Kian grabbed Thessa’s hand. Thessa almost instinctively whipped it away but she hesitated long enough for him to speak.

           “Everyone thinks you’re crazy, don’t they?” he asked.

           “Probably. My opinions aren’t very popular.”

           Kian grinned at Thessa, “I love a girl who isn’t popular.”

           So Kian promised Thessa he would stay with her and help her protect the tree, protect what she believed in, forever. She couldn’t say no to a proposition like that.

           “I trust she’ll be safe here till I get back,” said Kian. The small house in the wealthy neighborhood was looking worse for wear but it still felt like home.

           Thessa’s father smiled, “She was my girl long before she was yours. I’ll keep her safe.”

           Thessa didn’t cry often but she was having a hard time resisting now. “You talk like you’re going on a weekend trip.”

           “I’ll be back. I promise,” said Kian.

           Thessa was about to throw out a rational argument why he shouldn’t be making brash promises in the face of war, but Kian’s kiss stopped her.

           “The Industry has grown too large, they’re too destructive. I have to help stop them. Remember, fighting for what we believe in,” he said

           Despite how hard she tried, Thessa couldn’t help but let the ugly tears flow.

           “Stay strong, for me and our daughter. I will return,” said Kian.

           He tipped his hat and walked out the front gate. He took a long look at the tall, lone pine standing strong in the front yard. He looked once more at his wife and daughter before walking away.

           “Why does daddy have to leave?” Violet asked.

           “Daddy’s fighting for us, he’ll be back.”

           “I wish he could come back now.”

           Thessa decided distracting the young girl was the best option. “Come on, let’s sing the tree song.”

           Thessa led her daughter to the weathering pine and Violet started singing the words she knew well. Thessa mouthed the words with her, but she couldn’t focus on the tree, only on her husband.

“All my love I’ll give 

           For your branches to live.”

           Kian didn’t come back. Not the next day, or the next week, or the next year. The war continued on, so long that Thessa didn’t think it would ever end. The sky grew darker and the grass grew browner. The air got so thick, so dirty that not wearing a respirator was a death wish. The Industry had won.

One of the last constants for Thessa was the Pine. Despite all the death around it, the tree kept growing. Thessa sang to it every day and she began to truly believe her song was the power that kept it growing. Violet joined her in singing sometimes but no matter what Thessa said, Violet remained infatuated with the Industrialists… the promise of an easier life. Violet fell away slowly, denying her connection to the tree. After all, opposing “progress” wasn’t popular.

Thessa stood anyway, and if nothing else her father would stand with her. He would stand for his dream.

“How much longer is he going to make it?” Thessa asked.

“For an eighty-year-old man…” the nurse said, “I’m not sure. I’m impressed he’s made it this long.”

“You can’t do anything for him?” Thessa grabbed the nurse’s hand, afraid she would leave without answering.

The nurse shook her head. Thessa pushed past the woman into her father’s tiny hospital room.

“They said they don’t know how much time I have left,” Thessa’s father said. He was hooked up to an IV drip. His physique atrophied so much in just a year. Maybe in a cleaner world he would’ve lived longer.

“The nurse just told me,” said Thessa.

“I don’t want to spend my last days in a cramped hospital room being spoon fed sludge that might make me live a few hours longer.”

“If you leave, they won’t readmit you.”

“I don’t care.”

Thessa didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to encourage that thought. She sat down next to the bed, her chair barely fitting in the space between the bed and the wall.

“I want to see the tree,” the father said.

“You can’t leave here. If you leave, you’ll die,” said Thessa.

“I’ll die either way,” said the father, “I told you I’d live long enough to see it fully grown, in all of it’s glory. Let’s go see it.”

So Thessa took her father to see the fully grown pine, the beginning of her father’s dream. They sat down in the dust that once was their green yard and sang the tree song.

“Grow tall and free

           Forever the tree you’re meant to be.”

           Thessa heard knocking at her rickety door. If she didn’t acknowledge the knock, the person would go away. Usually that worked, but not this time. There was a second knock, then a third which was followed up by a woman’s yell.

           “I know you’re in there ma’am!”

           Thessa pulled her aged body out of the fraying armchair. She cracked the door open, trying to keep as much heat in the house as possible. She saw a young woman with a small child on her hip. The woman wore a grey shawl that was too small to be covering both her and her baby.

           “What?” Thessa asked.

           “Please, the Industry cut off my power. I have no heat for me and my son. I just want a couple branches from your tree to start a fire.”

           “No,” said Thessa, slamming the cracked door shut.

           “Please,” said the woman, “I’ll pay you whenever I can find some money.”

           “I don’t want your money. It’s worthless to me.”

           “I’ll give you whatever. I just want a couple branches so my son and I can be warm for even a few days. Before the starvation kicks in.”

           Thessa wanted to walk away, back to her armchair and ignore the world around her, like she always had. But she couldn’t do that anymore. The world was coming to her.

           Thessa grabbed an old rusty saw from a closet and stepped out into the cold.

           “Thank you, oh thank you so much. I’ll never be able to repay you,” the woman said.

           Thessa ignored her and went to the tree. The haze outside was so thick these days that she couldn’t even see it’s glorious top. A tear fell from her eye and she set about cutting off a couple of the lower branches. Human life was worth it.

           “Thank you so much,” the woman said enthusiastically when Thessa was done. She grabbed the pair of large branches and started pulling them away.

           “Wait,” said Thessa. “What is your name?”

           “Miriam, and my son’s name is Levi.”

           “Here Miriam,” said Thessa as she picked up one of the few pinecones on the ground. “Take this and plant it. Promise me you’ll do that, and I’ll consider it payment enough.”

           Miriam grabbed the pinecone. “I promise ma’am.”

           Miriam hauled the two branches through the gate while balancing a baby on her hip, which impressed Thessa. Maybe there were still good people out there. People who weren’t enticed by the Industry’s lies and promises of easy life. That life only led to disappointment and compounded the already irreversible problem their planet was facing.

           Miriam disappeared in the haze. Thessa couldn’t help but notice the figure of a man who also disappeared into the haze, heading the opposite direction as Miriam.

           Thessa woke up that night at the sound of dozens of people outside her house. She jumped out of her bed as quickly as her old body would allow. She peeked out of her curtains and stood horrified by the scene in her front yard. The tree was lit up with flood lights from a couple nearby trucks and dozens of people were standing in her yard around her tree.

           One of them was holding a chainsaw.

           Thessa burst out of the door. “What are you doing!” she screamed.

           The people turned to look at her. Half of them looked shocked that someone even still lived in the house. Thessa pushed through the crowd and stood next to the pine, her wrinkly hand on its harsh bark.

            “Your tree is over a hundred feet tall. If we ration it, we could heat the Town Hall for nearly a month,” the man with the chainsaw said. The way he spoke the word “tree” disgusted Thessa.

           “Why do you need it to heat the Town Hall? That’s what the Industry power is for.”

           “The Industry doesn’t care about us anymore. We have to fend for ourselves,” someone in the crowd said.

           “Well what happens when the wood runs out!” Thessa exclaimed, getting desperate, “What happens when you burn the last tree?”

           No one had an answer for her.

           “You can’t cut it down!” screamed Thessa, “This tree is the last hope of restoring the planet.”

           Thessa picked up a pinecone and threw it as hard as she could at the chainsaw man. He barely flinched when it hit his shoulder. “We have no choice.”

           Thessa turned around and placed her head on the tree’s trunk. She thought of her father’s dream, her husband’s belief, determination, and sacrifice. Her daughter’s rejection in favor of the Industry’s easy life, the woman’s plea and the tree’s life saving branches. All that was radiating from the tree’s bark. But no one else could see that. All they saw was a way to stave off death for a few days longer.

The man pulled the cord and started the chainsaw.

           Its incessant whine drowned out Thessa’s protests. No one was there to help her. Thessa resisted being pulled from the tree but she was too weak. She fell to the ground and watched as she was showered with sawdust.

           From where Thessa was on the ground, she could see her father’s gravestone. The words of the tree song engraved on it. Maybe there was still hope. Maybe one day someone would find the engraving, they would plant their own tree and sing the song to it. Maybe one day humans would stop ravaging their home and see the beauty in the tree again.

“Hear my song

           And always… you’ll stay strong.”