"Sudden Oak Death" by Allison Field Bell
The tree was a source of pleasure for the children. It was their tree, their oak tree. It gave them oxygen, they told their parents. And acorns to throw at one another (Careful careful, you’ll hurt each other). It supplied the branch for their tire swing. The parents appreciated the tree for its shade in the summertime. It lorded over their backyard lawn where they had set a table and chairs, and the father would, some evenings, smoke a cigar. He enjoyed the shadows of the oak tree. His oak tree. The way the moon cast light through its branches. Oak tree shadows. The mother, for her part, did not appreciate the debris of the oak tree. The tree was careless with what it dropped from its branches. She paid the children pennies to pick acorns from the grass.
Each year the tree stood through winter storms. With the high winds, the mother worried the tree would fall, but the father assured everyone that the tree was steady. The tree had been there longer than any of them and would outlast them no question. Small branches would often fall, and the children would gather them up into piles of sticks. One December, a large branch split and broke across the lawn. The father had to use a chainsaw to cut through its length, and the children watched in awe from the back porch. The fresh cut orange center. The heartwood. The tree branch eventually became firewood. The mother, of course, raked the debris after the excitement had subsided.
One spring, the tree—their oak tree—developed a strange rash. This is what the children announced. A rash, a rash. The mother and father examined the tree. Cankers, the father decided. Sores, the mother announced. The tree was oozing from the wounds on its bark. The mother and father shrugged at the children’s worry. We need a tree doctor, the children declared. No such thing, the father said. We can’t afford that, the mother explained.
Many of the leaves at the crown of their oak tree grew pale and then brown and fell to the ground. Their tree was sick, the children worried. The oak tree needs medicine, the children decided. Each child had a way of helping the tree: one child buried pills from the medicine cabinet at its base; the other child rubbed calamine lotion onto its trunk. The mother began to worry about the house. The tree was clearly sick, and it was large enough that, were it to fall, it would cause damage to the roof and structure. The mother also worried over the tree itself. Despite its debris, she had grown to love the tree for being simply what it was: present, alive.
When the arborist was called, the news was bleak: sudden oak death was the diagnosis. Sudden Oak Death. The children cried at the word death—their oak tree! The mother sighed. The tree would have to be removed, and the operation would be expensive. The tire swing, the shade, the oak tree moon shadows. Their oak tree, their oak tree. The decision to remove or not remove was not a decision. It was fact, the arborist said. But the father argued with the arborist. The father said, trees recover. If we leave it, it will live, you’ll see. The arborist explained sudden oak death, the presence of P. ramorum, the inevitability of the death of the tree. The father was stubborn. The mother urged him to reconsider, but he refused to remove the tree.
When the tree did fall, it fell hard. It crashed through the roof and into the house. It took out the china cabinet where the mother had kept the precious china from her mother. Irreplaceable. Pieces of china scattered between oak debris. In the moment of the falling, it was impossible to know if anyone was safe. The children, the mother, the father. Anyone could have been standing at the kitchen sink, washing dishes, washing hands. In the moment of falling, the mother, the father, the children did not know the falling was happening. In the moment of falling, the tree became something else entirely, an unknown unknown. The tree, in the moment of falling, was suspended between falling and not falling. The tree was in the house and outside the house. The tree became the house. The tree became not tree. Not their tree, not their oak tree.
Allison Field Bell is originally from northern California but has spent much of her adult life in the desert. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Prose at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in Fiction from New Mexico State University. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in journals that include The Gettysburg Review, New Orleans Review, The Cincinnati Review, The Florida Review, Ruminate, West Branch, and others. Her nonfiction appears or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hunger Mountain Review, Shenandoah, The Pinch, Fugue, and Witness Magazine. allisonfieldbell.com
