AND THE TREES WERE HAPPY

Scott Edelman

 

Scott Edelman's story "And the Trees Were Happy" was inspired by Shel Silverstein's book The Giving Tree. In The Giving Tree, an apple tree loves a boy. As a child, The Boy's needs are simple. He wants to swing from the tree's branches and eat her apples, and she is happy to oblige. As he grows, his desires become more complex. He wants money, so the tree gives him all of her apples to sell. He wants a house, so the tree offers her branches for lumber. He wants a boat, so the tree offers her trunk. As an old man, the boy returns to the tree, wanting a place to rest. He sits on the tree's stump, "And the tree was happy."

 

The Giving Tree has been analyzed in many ways. Some see the story as a shining example of unconditional love. Others see the boy as abusive. Some view the story as a religious allegory, some as an environmental message, and others as a metaphor for relationships between mothers and children. Some people adore The Giving Tree and others hate it. Silverstein refused to elaborate on the message behind the book. "It's just a relationship between two people. One gives and one takes," he said.

 

In Edelman's story, an old man returns to the tree he once loved and is greeted with a response he does not expect. The tree has some harsh truths for the old man, but the love between them remains strong.

 

***

The old man slowly and carefully lowered himself onto the stump—for, after all, everything he did these days had to be done slowly and carefully—and as the ancient wood pressed against his bony flesh, he was surprised by the surge of emotions that brought on a sudden welling of tears. He looked up through wet eyes at the empty air where a tree had at one time towered above him, and recalled how he had once swung effortlessly through branches which, if he had not cut them down so long ago, would now have shielded him from an oppressive sun.

The twinge of pain that traveled through his hips as he connected with the stump surprised him. It was something he would never have imagined, back when he was a young boy, waited in his future.

And yet somehow, as he settled in, he found comfort there, as if it had been carved for him alone. The walk through the orchard had been longer than he’d remembered it being, and his need to sit was overwhelming. But then, most things these days were longer than he remembered. Longer, more difficult, and often filled with an almost unendurable sadness.

Still, he had managed to endure. And unexpectedly, after years—decades actually—return.

He felt a bit foolish to have done so, though, even as he knew the return had recently become inevitable. He’d been haunted lately by ancient memories he found he could not elude, and drawn by them to this orchard close to his childhood home. Drawn, more specifically, to this tree, or the remnant of same, at the site of which he had passed so many of his life’s most important moments.

Many of his memories of this place were cloudy now, and as he sought them out, he suspected, too, that they were surely muddled by an old man’s brain. As a boy, he had spoken to the tree, treated it as a friend, of that he was certain, and he saw nothing wrong with that, for that is what boys, what children, do. But—and here is where he did not believe what he remembered—had the tree really spoken back? Surely that was not possible. He assumed this was only the hot sun inserting those memories into his mind. Because…what else could it be?

He should have remembered to wear a hat. Or should, at least, have brought along some water. For he was thirsty, a thirst which resurrected on his tongue the taste of the apples which had once grown above him, and which had quenched his thirst like nothing since.

But those apples were gone now, first to be sold for money so he could buy toys, then because he needed the branches which bore them to build a house, and finally due to his hewing of wood for a boat. And now all those things were gone as well…money, house, boat…plus the wife and child those first possessions had gotten him.

The wife who would have reminded him about the hat. The child who would have trailed after him to gently place a bottle of water in his hand.

No, now he had nothing, nothing save the clothes on his back and the elusive memories which had brought him here.

The memory of the stump on which he sat. The memory of what it had once been. The memory of what he had once been.

If only he could taste an apple again! If only he could go back. He would do anything for that. But he could think of nothing which could be done. Because there was nothing which could be done. The orchard’s other trees, the other apples, they were not like this tree, those apples.

Which made his return…pointless.

As he wondered why he had bothered, why his childhood had intruded on his life once more in a way he could no longer reject, he noticed that the sun had dropped behind the orchard’s closest row of trees, the nearby branches casting a shadow across his face.

How odd. How could so much time could have passed, high noon transforming into those elusive moments before dusk, without him being aware of it?

But as he looked into the shade-filled gathering of the trees, he quickly forgot that, for he could make out an abundant display of heavy apples tugging at their branches, a thing he’d somehow overlooked before. The weight of them was a living thing calling him, and he wondered…if he rose, if he reached out his hand to pluck one, if he held it to his lips, touched it to his tongue…would it be as sweet as memory? Could anything ever be?

He knew he had to try. He stood, and took a step forward toward them, but then stumbled—for his rear foot had caught under one of the stump’s exposed roots.

He fell to the ground, a pain shooting sharply up his leg. Had he broken an ankle? Based on the ache that remained, it felt as if he had, but he’d endured so many pains in recent years, he couldn’t be entirely sure. He wiggled his foot, which seemed trapped where it had become wedged between the root and the stump, and no matter how hard he tried, could not pull it free.

“How could you do this to me?” he almost said aloud to the stump, feeling betrayed by a thing which he knew could not possibly have the sentience to betray him, but caught himself, silenced himself, before he acted even more foolishly than he already had by coming there. This was no one’s fault but his own. And for whatever reason—a momentary distraction, the clumsiness of his gait, which over the years had turned into more of a shuffle—his foot was stuck.

Out of breath, and unable to pull loose his twisted foot, he lay on his back and looked up at the darkening sky. He wondered how many hours, how many days, it would be before anyone wandered by this remote place who could help, and what they would think of the silly old man when they found him.

Slowly, a branch from the nearest tree grew nearer above him, lengthening into his field of vision, a lone apple at its tip pushing forward to hang tantalizingly close. The fruit pulsed with possibility, and he held out a hand, but could not reach it. The more he stretched, the more tightly the root squeezed around his foot, preventing him from closing the infuriating gap.

“Please,” said the old man. “Please let me have just one more apple.”

As if in response, the branch above him trembled. As if in response, the root beneath him squeezed. And then the tree which had grown toward him impossibly fast to tease him with its tempting fruit spoke, its words all around him, its words in him.

“Do not worry,” said the tree, though as its words filled his mind, the man knew it was speaking, not just for itself, but on behalf of the entire orchard. “The fruit will be yours. If you truly want it, that is.”

“I do,” said the man, embarrassed by his greed and glad no one else was there to hear the naked desire quivering in his voice. “But I can’t quite reach it. My foot, you see. It’s become stuck.”

“We know,” said the tree. “But it hasn’t just become stuck. It’s become trapped. You’ve become trapped. There has always been a part of us that loved you too much. It loved you too much then. It loves you too much now. It wants to stop you from eating the apple that would let you see things clearly. Even now, even after all you have done, it wants to keep giving. But now it’s time for a giving of an entirely different kind.”

The branch shook, its leaves rustling like the wind from another time, and the dangling apple danced seductively at the end of its stem. For a few agonizing moments, it looked as if the stem would hold, and the man dared not breathe, but then the fruit broke free and landed with a plop in his hungry palm.

He held it to his nose, the aroma dizzying. As he did so, he could feel the root pulse against his ankle, and he knew it was urging him to drop the apple. At the same time, he could almost hear it whisper. But whatever it was trying to say was unimportant. He was beyond convincing.

He bit roughly, and as his teeth broke the skin of the fruit and the moist flesh touched his tongue, his foot was released.

And he was young again.

And so was the tree on whose stump he’d been sitting.

Its trunk thrust high above him, leaping for the sky. Its branches bent to offer shade and extend an invitation.

He accepted that invitation. Laughing, he shinnied up the trunk until he could touch the lowest branch. Then he leapt, and swung, and crouched atop it. He jeered the ground so far below, dared gravity to have its way with him, but he knew it could not, for wasn’t he a boy?

He gathered leaves as he had in days past and once more wove himself a crown so he could declare himself king of the forest. Ruler of all he surveyed, he swung from branch to branch until he tired, and then had his fill of the sweetest apples in the world before settling in the shade for a nap.

When he woke, he was…older. A teenager, perhaps? He had grown so old in the world outside this vision that he could no longer gauge the age of the young, not even when he was the one who was young. And as he filled a basket with apples so he could carry them away and sell them to buy things he believed would bring him fun, it was as if he was both doing and observing, and he saw more than he’d experienced when he’d lived through it the first time. Now he could see that the tree was not as happy as it had claimed to be at his taking. No, it was sad, for it had meant the apples to be his alone. He saw that now, and it made him sad to have made it sad. But it was too late to change that. It was too late to change anything.

And then more time passed in the living of a life he’d moved through blindly the first time around, and the tree offered him first its branches, and later its trunk as well, so he could build things and be happy. And he had been happy (or so he’d thought), and the tree had been happy (or so he’d thought as well), only…it was not. It had never been. It wept silently as he’d removed its limbs, not wanting him to see its pain, and he hadn’t, so desperate was he for the things he thought he would die if he did not have.

This time, he winced with each cut. This time, every swing of the axe, every slice of the saw, cut into his own heart as well. But again, he could not change what this vision let him see. The doing of it was done.

And then, a final vision—that day he’d returned after a long absence to sit on the stump for the first and only time up until now, that moment of rest being the only gift the tree had left to give.

But he did not stay for long. He could not. Perhaps, somewhere deep inside and unacknowledged, he knew what he had done, what he did not want to face, so he left to abandon and forget.

And with that forgetting caused the thing that loved him most the greatest pain of all. Until dreams and memories and the call of an angry orchard drew him back.

“I didn’t know,” he whimpered as he returned to the reality of what was left of his life. “I didn’t realize. I thought—”

“What was it that you thought?” said the tree, on behalf of all trees.

“I thought,” he said, pressing his back against the stump which he had made. “I thought that’s what love was.”

“And yet, you are alone,” said the trees.

“And yet, I am here,” said the man.

“And you expect your presence, a presence which would not have occurred without our call, to be enough? You expect your return to make up for what you have done? How would you like it if we were to make of you what you have made of part of us?”

The man’s mind filled with an image of grasping branches tearing his limbs from his body one by one, until what remained was as helpless as the stump on which he’d sat. He gasped, but did not object. Because he was weary, and now knew far too well the revealed truth which he had long fought to keep hidden.

“It would be no more and no less than what I deserve,” he said.

“Then,” said the orchard. “So shall it be.”

Other branches stretched out to fill the sky, joining the one which had offered him the apple. They reached for his arms and legs, and as he raised his head to them, as he held his arms wide, he was ready.

But then the earth around the stump behind him rumbled, and what remained of the tree rose out of the ground, thrust upward by its roots. It walked clumsily on those wooden legs until it covered the man’s body with its bulk, shielding him from harm. And in his mind, the man could make out the whisper he’d thought he’d heard before, but had been unable to decipher.

“Come, boy,” it said as he curled beneath it.

The branches sought him out, but the stump scrambled this way and that, repeatedly blocking them.

“You would do this?” said the trees in conversation with themselves, pausing the attack. “After all that has been done to us?”

“I would,” said the stump.

“But you have loved too much,” said the trees. “You know that. And you have loved wrongly.”

“If I have loved wrongly,” said the stump. “At least I have loved. At least we have loved.”

The branches trembled slightly, their leaves like sighs, and then, after a pause during which the man did not know what decision he truly wanted the trees to make, they retreated.

The stump crawled away and exposed him to a sun that was low in the sky, but no longer hidden, then settled into the earth once more.

And the man rose shakily to his feet, his joints cracking, his chest pained.

He moved closer to the stump, hoping to sit there one more time, but could not reach it, and fell to his knees a few footsteps short. He reached out to rest his hands where he had once so callously rested his ax.

“I am very tired,” he said, gasping for breath. “And very sorry.”

“Well,” said the tree, once again as tall and proud as when the man, then a boy, had first run through the orchard and spotted it in the distance. “Lay yourself down and rest.”

“I will,” said the boy. He stretched out beneath the magical tangle of branches, placing his head softly on a moss-covered root.

As he closed his eyes, he dreamed he was king of the forest.

And then he dreamed no more.

And the trees were happy.