The Tree

By D. S. Johnson

There was a tree in the graveyard near our house where I grew up. It was almost as tall as the church’s steeple and bare all year. It was twisted like in pain and darker in its bark than any other near it. Da told me it was in anguish. He told me those buried near it what was sinners, their souls tried to climb up inside it, trying to escape Hell. All of their suffering was rubbed off inside it making the bark blackened and the Tree twisting in agony, only trees is much older and longer lasting than us so it looks stock still to us.

I remember I used to draw. I liked drawing from in my head most but I drew the tree in the graveyard more than anything else. I drew it looking out of my window and sometimes after church if Da was talking to Father Lewis I’d sit on the bench at the back of the church and draw. Sometimes when I was away from it I’d close my eyes and draw it from in my head, like what I’d draw otherwise, but it never looked much like it like that. No matter how long I waited between drawing it, it never once was moved from when I drew it from there before. My drawings changed but I knew that them was the same branches each time.

I felt sorry for it. I felt sad that something so old living and so big and so beautiful should have them as was sent to Hell climbing up inside it, scratching at it like a bed bug on the inside but more and hot as well. I’d try to think up ways to know which grave was holding a sinner who was hurting the tree. I’d try to figure out how to make them saved or how to make them settled or how to make them move away. The only answer I came to was to dig them out in their boxes and put them somewhere else, in a field or something, but then I thought what if they start climbing up another tree, or inside a grass or a bunch of grass, or maybe even a cow or a farmer. I told my Da and he said we couldn’t move them else we’d be sinners too but otherwise he’d move them to be near gypsies so as they could climb up the gypsies. I hated the idea of them climbing up inside anyone, gypsy or farmer or tramp or whoever. I asked Father Lewis once how to save people what was dead and he said we had to pray for them when they was in purgatory, he didn’t say what to do if they was in Hell.

One Winter there was a lot of wind, there usually was but this Winter there was more. Da said he’d not seen it so windy since he lived two years on a hill in Wales. A branch fell off of the Tree and didn’t hit nobody but both Da and Father Lewis and the other knowing men said it could have and those that was less knowing agreed. They said that the Tree was a potential menace and that if it hit anyone then they would be guilty for not having done something sooner and that they would not forgive themselves should it be a child or woman that was hit by it. I drew the Tree out of my window the evening before they started cutting at it. It had moved. Only a little bit had it moved but it definitely had moved. The arm that had dropped a finger was reaching higher and more straining than before, as though it knew what they was going to be doing to it the next day. I couldn’t leave such a sad old tortured thing as that Tree alone his last night so I crept out after dark when I heard Da snoring and I took a blanket and I took a piece of bread and I took a cup of water.

I was intending on sitting at his base but that was either on a grave at his sides or half on one both front and back so I sat against the nearest headstone and I wrapped up. It was awful cold and windy and it started to rain not long after I got there so I was glad I had kept my dressing gown on and I was glad for the blanket but I wished I had had a flask with cocoa or broth or soup in. The wind picked up more and the Tree started groaning and growling like a scared and injured animal and tears welled up in my eyes and I got up and lay my cheek against the bark on the tree and I could feel how cold it was inside and I knew that even the damned souls had fled in fear of the Tree’s death. I wrapped my blanket as much about the Tree as I could and stood holding it about it, trying to protect the tree from the biting wind and comfort it. I grew tireder and tireder and colder and colder but I wouldn’t let go and then, after how long I don’t know but near sunrise, the rain was joined by blasts of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning. It seemed even the heavens were aware of the pain of the Tree and were sharing in it.

The shivers was pulling me out of my head when I heard a shouting through the ever more frequent thunder. I tried to push back into myself enough to gather my senses but the cold had gotten into my chest and my head and was freezing me out. Things started to fade and I heard the voice of my Da and I felt hands and arms about me and they pressed me against a warmth and another hand was with a mug of hot broth and it was poured on my mouth and I supped from it and I felt a mite of the cold retreat and I opened my eyes to see my Ma looking as pained as the Tree and then came a big flash and the Tree behind her bursting outwards and into flames as the souls of the sinners returned in the Tree’s weakened state to tear him asunder and end his torment and then I knew that they had surely redeemed themselves by seeing their error and taking pity and saving him a thousand more years of pain and I closed my eyes as the shouts and crashes around me blurred and I slept a long and peaceful sleep.