“I SWEAR,” ASHLEY SAID ANGRILY, “if they so much as touch a twig on her branch there’s going to be hell to pay!”
Keeping our eyes and ears open and looking over our shoulders every millionth of a second, we had gone back to Mount Tom the next day after school. Following the line of trees marked with bright red flags led us straight up to our sacred grove. We stopped dead in our tracks.
There She was, wrapped tightly, looking like a big ol’ Christmas present. A red flag around her trunk and another one flapping in the breeze on her lowest branch.
She. Our beloved white ash. A marked tree.
Cutting down trees on someone else’s mountain had never bothered me. I mean, I had never really thought about it before. It was like, “Yeah, whatever.”
Auntie Sadie had been right. Coal and trees. Trees and coal. Logging in Greenfield was a way of life, just like mining.
But there were trees, and there were trees. These were not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill, cut-’em-&-truck-’em trees.
These were our trees.
Sugar Daddy.
Bradley Beech.
Sadie’s Twin.
She.
Ashley was sitting with her arms around the massive furled trunk of the white ash, her cheek pressed against the ridged, diamond-like pattern of her bark. It was like she was hugging her mother, something I had never seen her do in real life.
I had no idea how to age a tree but I knew that white ash was old. Not just old but ancient. A true sage of the forest. You could feel it. Nothing could grow that enormous, that wrinkled, that ashy gray, and not have seen a lot of years go by. I imagined that She was here when Lincoln really was the president, when West Virginia seceded from its sister state and split off to join the Union.
Think of all of the stories She had to tell.
Ashley reached into the backpack she was wearing and brought out a pair of scissors.
She stood up and with one single motion cut the marker flag that was strangling the white ash.
The red flag fluttered to the ground.
“One down” she said, stashing the flag in her pack. “One down and lots more to go.”
She stood up and held out the scissors.
“Ready?” she asked.
I froze. I looked into Ashley’s eyes and I saw that Hollywood director look. A half-squint steely look that made me shudder. A look that was not to be messed with. A look that changed everything.
My mind raced with all sorts of conflicting thoughts cascading down my brain like the Green River does after a heavy rain.
What was the wise thing to do here?
If it’s illegal, does that make it wrong?
Did I really want to co-star in Ashley’s movie?
I was Custard, for crying out loud. Not Belinda. This was not my thing.
“Ready?” Ashley asked again.
There are times, even when they are happening, that you know are really important. Times that define you.
Once, when Ashley and I were in middle school, this girl JoJo Phippen had teased Ashley for a week about not having boobs.
“Flattie!” she taunted. “Boobless!”
Ashley was furious. We snuck over to the girl’s house late one night with a carton full of eggs to throw at her window.
“This’ll teach her,” Ashley said. “She’ll see whose boobless now!”
“Ready?” Ashley asked.
“No!” I said. “No, I am not.”
Flat-chested or not, we snuck back home, leaving the windows unegged.
This time, on Mount Tom, I was still sitting on the ground. The wind had picked up and the ash leaves, so many of them, too many to count, were sashaying in the breeze. I looked at Ashley. She had one arm propped against the tree, and the other one holding out the scissors. I had never seen her so serious.
“Ready?” Ashley asked for the third time.
I stood up, took the scissors from Ashley, gave the bark of She a playful pinch, bowed to her three companions, and continued up the mountain.