Under Standing Trees

(Sorry for the ultra fail on some formatting things! Blogger hates me when I copy and paste. :P )

_____Sarah stared at the wand in her hand. She had forgotten how long ago she had made it, but the star still went all of the way through the branch, one end to the other. She heard her cue, and walked out of the hallway into the dining room.

“Lady Grace? Pah! Lady Grace no more!” Sarah waved her wand at her friend, and she pretended to faint. The audience of parents gasped, and Sarah laughed evilly as she walked around to the kitchen again. Sarah wasn’t a very good actor, oh goodness, she wasn’t, but sometimes, you just have to go along with odd things on people’s birthdays.

Every day, he would look into the black-specked mirror and straighten his collar. He’d say good morning to his wife and eat breakfast, and head outside to take care of the orchard.

_____Today the orchard was in its prime, with a dozen trees weighed down by ripe peaches, seven trees purple with plums, and eight trees with apples for eyes. The leaves were like bowls to catch the sunlight. He breathed in and smiled. The horses, the sun, the land, and his family all made his life feel like living for another day.

_____“Finally! We’re here!” Sam jumped onto the red gravel driveway with a crunch. He picked up a stick and waved it at his sister, “Lady Sarah, choose your weapon! We will fight to the death! En guard!”

_____Sarah picked up a branch covered with leaves. “Daggers of destruction!” she yelled, swiping at his legs. “No! My leg!” Sam hopped up and down on one leg, still swiping at Sarah.

_____“Ahh! My arms!” Sarah put her stick in her mouth and her arms behind her back, and with one final swipe, cut Sam in half through his stomach.

_____“No!” Sam fell to the ground laughing.

_____Sarah tossed her stick on him, laughing too. “Be gone, fiend!”

_____“Hey!” Someone growled behind them. Sarah shrieked as she was picked up from behind.

_____“Grandpa!”

_____“You two come help me with the apples while your parents unload your things,” he waved his hands toward the orchard.

_____“Apples and peaches and plums, oh my!” Sam ran to the gate, and scratched himself while he scrambled in and up a tree.

_____While Sam was bombing imaginary demons with rotten fruit, grandpa took Sarah to an apple tree. The sky was bleeding, spilling out of the cupped leaves. It made the apples look like they were glowing.

_____“You see that? That’s god smiling,” he pointed to the sky, at the sun, “Smile, because the sun’s good for your teeth,” He said, grinning obnoxiously.

_____Sarah bared her teeth and growled at the sun. He smiled and picked up a basket of dusty apples.

_____The horses, the land, the sun, and his family - all he needs to want to be around for another day.

_____“Here, horsey! Come here, horsey horsey!” Sarah held out the tiny apple in her hand between the graying fence boards. It was hot today – hotter than she could ever remember the sun feeling. It was cooler beneath the fruit trees than anywhere else.

_____“Hey, have you seen Alex anywhere?” Sam asked, picking up a stick and whacking it against an old tin bucket.

_____“Nope,” Sarah held her hand out a little bit farther, and the horse wrapped its lips around the apple and chewed it noisily. “Ew, slobber!” Sarah laughed. “Maybe they went to church,” Sarah wiped off her hands on her jeans.

_____“Oh, yeah,” Sam stabbed an apple onto the end of his stick and went back to hitting the bucket. The apple thunked and popped off.

_____“I could probably ride that one,” Sarah pointed to a miniature horse that was as tall as her through the gate.

_____“It’s too small. It’d fall over if you tried to sit on it.”

_____“No it would not. It’s not too little, and I’m not too big,” Sarah pouted and twirled a long piece of yellow grass between her fingers.

_____“Yeah, right. Prove it,” Sam flung the stick over Sarah’s head. She gave him a dirty look before she threw a rotten apple at his shoe.

_____“Fine! I will.”

_____Sarah marched over to the gate and looked through at the horses again. “Fine, fine, fine,” she grumbled to herself. The gate latch stuck with rust.

_____“Um, Sarah…” Sam started saying to her.

_____“Shut up and help me, if you want me to do it!” She pulled up hard, grunting as it gave a little.

_____Hands grabbed her from behind. “Well, well. What are you doing, huh?”

_____“Agh!” Sarah twisted around and pressed against the gate. “Oh, nothing, Grandpa.”

_____Of course it’s nothing, isn’t it always? Let’s just leave the horses where they are. I think they’re happy enough,” he said, pushing the gate latch back down and walking into the trees again, “Here, you two come help me bring in some more peaches.”

_____“Peaches! Let’s have peaches and cream for lunch!” Sarah skipped through the tall grass, in and out of patches of sunlight after him, with Sam tossing an apple into where the horses grazed, then running after her.

_____She didn’t really feel like riding a horse today anyway.

_____No! Don’t run away, kitty, I won’t hurt you!” The cat ran around a pile of wood and through the grass until she disappeared under the house. Rats! Why won’t she ever let me even pet her before she runs away? Dumb cat…

_____Sarah spotted another cat slinking around the shed, and walked over there. She bent down and held out her hand, very slowly. Cats aren’t as afraid of you if you get tiny, like them, and let them smell you. It’s a good thing that they will smell your hand, and aren’t like dogs that smell your other end.

_____The cat looked at her hand and slowly, slowly went toward it.

_____“Aww, you’re a cute kitty, aren’t you?” She said, rubbing its head and ears as it purred and rubbed against her.

_____“Raah!” Sam and Alex jumped out from behind a rusted car covered in stringy weeds and shouted at the cat, who ran and hid under the house with its mother.

_____“Why do you always do that?” Sarah shouted at her brother and her cousin, who were laughing and high-fiving each other.

_____“Always do what?” Sam batted his eyelashes with fake innocence.

_____“You’re mean!”

_____“I know,” He climbed over the car, and Alex jumped off of the hood onto an old wooden box, cracking it.

_____“What are you doing anyway?” Sarah asked, her hands on her hips.

_____“Looking for treasure. You can help us, but all of the treasure goes to us, because we thought of it first.”

_____“No! I’m not going to help you! I’ll find treasure by myself, and you won’t get any of it. Boys don’t ever find treasure unless they’re pirates. You aren’t cool enough to be pirates.”

_____“Suit yourself. We’ll be rich and you won’t get a penny,” Alex said, shrugging and flipping over a rock.

_____Sarah shifted on her feet. “Whatever. I’ll get rich, and I’ll be the coolest pirate there ever was in the history of anything.” Sarah turned and walked away.

_____“Yes, she’s finally gone!” She heard Alex saying to Sam.

_____“Look what I found, Grandpa!” Sarah skittered up to the circle of plastic lawn chairs under the trees. She held up a rusty horseshoe to his face.

_____“Look, Mom, I’m lucky!” She ran across the circle and held it up to her face too.

_____“Look, Dad! Look, Grandma! I’m lucky! I’m lucky!” She danced around in circles holding tightly onto the horseshoe.

_____“Whoa there, don’t tip it that way!” Grandpa said. “You don’t want any of the luck to go spilling out before you need it.”

_____Sarah’s eyes widened. “Oh. Okay,” She stopped dancing around and cradled the horseshoe in the crook of her arm like it was a glass full of water. “I’m going to put it in my suitcase! So that I don’t lose it or accidentally get it tipped over.”

_____“Guess what, Sam?” Sarah smiled at her brother.

_____“What?”

_____“I found a horseshoe! What treasure did you find?”

_____He grimaced at the ground before he said, “Like I’d tell you.”

_____Sarah laughed and spun away.

_____“Dad, what are these grates for?” Sarah balanced herself on the bars so that she wouldn’t get her shoe stuck.

_____“They’re to keep the animals out, because they can’t walk over them.”

_____“Oh,” She jumped off of the grate, and ran up to the biggest headstone in the cemetery. “Look, Dad! It was an Indian!”

_____“He’s the one that volcano is named after,” He pointed over to the very low mountains. Sarah glanced up and ran off again.

_____Her dad walked around looking at the dates on the headstones, while Sarah ran around picking the dandelions that were still yellow.

_____“There you go, Indian,” he heard her say, placing the flowers inside a hole in the headstone, before she ran around to pick more flowers for the other headstones.

__“What’s Grandpa sick with anyway?” Sarah sat in the backseat of the car. They still had an hour to go before they got to the tiny town to visit him again, and Sarah was feeling restless.

_____“He’s got a problem with his blood,” her mom said.

_____Sarah was quiet for a second. “Does that mean he might be a vampire soon?” Her dad smiled.

_____“No,” her dad said, “It just means we probably won’t be able to see him for a long time after this time.”

_____“Okay,” Sarah stared out the window. The mountains were getting tinier and tinier, and looked like hills.

_____“I wish Grandpa was a vampire,” Sam said in the seat next to her.

_____Me too, their dad thought.

_____“I made this for you, Grandpa,” Sarah handed him a piece of white paper folded in half with multicolored hearts drawn on in colored pencil.

I love you.

Love,

Sarah

_____He smiled weakly up from the bed, “Thanks, sweetie.” His voice sounded weak, but his eyes still twinkled. Sarah blushed and nodded.

_____Her parents started talking with Grandma Mary and Grandpa, but Sarah couldn’t remember what they said. She just stared at the case of blue, gold, and silvery glass figurines, and started to think about vampires again.

_____She gripped the newspaper page with straight fingers, as if it was supposed to be natural. Her pinkies locked, but she didn’t notice. She was trying to forget things as they happened. Her eyes scanned the page - up, down, side to side - still trying to look natural. Natural was a lie, she knew it, but didn’t know that it showed. Her fingers ached. Her eyes ached.

_____“No! No!” She could hear her parents and grandma sobbing and their voices crack as they tried to compose themselves. She didn’t need to try to compose herself. She’d been lying that she was composed this whole time.

_____She glanced over at Sam, who was reading the Sunday funnies too. He looked pale, and quickly looked back at the newspaper.

_____“You win.” Garfield said to Jon. She went back to the beginning of the comic line. What did Jon win?

_____She focused her eyes even more intently on every line Garfield said, but focus didn’t help a thing when her mind could only imagine the entire newspaper being blank and made of clear plastic wrap. All it does is make what’s happening on the other side a little bit fuzzier for your mind. She could see them touching him; she could see them holding each others’ hands with tears in their eyes and red faces.

_____“You win.” Garfield said to Jon. She went back to the beginning of the comic line. What was it that Jon won?

_____She could see him. His head was tilted to the side, and he was shaking. He looked like he was choking. Mostly she could only see Grandma, sitting at his side and laying her hand on his. She could almost see her silent praying as she stifled her cries.

_____But Sarah could see him still. Above himself, his hand on his wife’s shoulder, smiling. He turned to walk out of the house, and looked at her. She was still staring at Garfield. She tried to ignore even him too. Why today? Why now? Stop! Stop. What did Jon win?

_____He waved, walked down the steps, to the left, and down the jagged sidewalk stones. When he was out from under the tree, he finally made noise as he crunched down the red gravel driveway.

_____“You win.” What was it that Jon had won? She stroked the page with her thumbs until the ink was fading.

_____It wasn’t really that bad. Dying, that is. I’d known I was going to die anyway, so it didn’t come as much of a surprise. The doctors told me that I only had so long to live. I was glad to see my family. I expected leaving would be shocking.

_____It was simple. Stop feeling, stop seeing, stop hearing, and stop thinking. If a soul thought their way through this, they would probably go insane. What happens when the soul itself is insane?

_____I was sucked into a pool of ice water, and I knew I was going to drown. It was peaceful, just to know. The water disappeared once I ran out of breath, and by that time, it felt like I had gone through summer, winter, spring, fall, winter, fall, spring, until the old me was laying on the bed in wintertime, and the new me was as warm as the sun itself in summer.

_____Everyone was sobbing. Why were they so sad? This should be a happy time, a happy place. Mary was rubbing her wedding ring in her hand, and holding my old hand with her other. “No! No!” Maybe she could feel me touching her shoulder, or maybe she couldn’t. I just had to hope that she’d let go of me soon. I kissed her forehead, and touched my son’s hand, and his wife’s.

_____I turned to go to the door of our house – it wouldn’t be our house for long; Mary had so many more people to touch in her life that she’d leave soon enough – but stopped when I saw her on the orange couch. She sat there, wide-eyed, staring at the Sunday funnies. Her eyes flicked up to me for an instant, before she stared intently back down at the newspaper. When she looked up again, I waved, and her eyes got wider, and she gripped the paper tightly. I opened the door to leave the brown carpet and ceiling fan for the last time. I laughed as I let myself out.

_____Grandchildren have that effect on dead people.

_____They were making telephone calls now. They still were sobbing. Their voices cracked still. The doorbell rang; they hugged people. They called more people. They got more phone calls.

_____Sarah set the comic down with all of the normalcy that she could muster.

_____“I need to go to the bathroom,” she said to no one in particular. She sneaked one glance at him laying still on the bed as she passed on her way to the hall, and wished she hadn’t.

_____“I was there,” Sarah said to her cousin. Her hands had less of a death grip on the dwindling ropes of the swing than they had on the newspaper that morning.

_____“I know, Mom and Dad told me,” Helena pushed her again. “I’m gonna miss him.”

_____“Yeah,” she kicked her legs forward. “Me too.”

_____It was dark outside, and the fifteen minute drive to the hotel felt like it lasted forever. “It’s all my fault,” Sarah whispered to herself, or anyone who might be a no one underneath the blanket with her. She choked on a sob and bit her hand.

_____Be quiet, she told herself. When she closed her eyes, she could see Grandpa right there in front of her, as real as the sunlight, but then she would open her eyes and see her family, and everything seemed so fake and plastic. She didn’t want her family to know she was crying. She didn’t want to deal with this with them.

_____Sarah held her breath and nearly choked on another sob. She peered out from underneath the blanket. Her parents were two seats forward, talking about something she couldn’t hear. They passed another streetlamp and she could see Sam’s head bouncing as he leaned it against his jacket on the window. He was still asleep.

_____She retreated back under the blanket, and pressed her face into her hands, “All my fault…” She bit down hard on her thumbs to stop herself from making noise again.

_____Sam looked at his sister shaking under the quilt. He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know how to do that. She seemed like she wanted to be left alone anyway. It’s okay, Sarah. I promise, he imagined himself saying to her.

_____The funeral was uncomfortable. Suffocating. Why would people do this? More people gather around at someone’s death than someone’s life.

_____It smelled too calm in the church. It felt like disinfectant, old leather, and fear. Everything was fake. God was fake too. Everyone lined up orderly to look at his body. They all seemed fake.

I didn’t look at it for more than a few moments. I’d seen it before it looked waxy. Before it looked like they could close the casket lid, and it would grow hot enough to melt it. I’d seen him before he looked fake. I liked to know him better with blood on his face than made out of a child’s crayon box. This wasn’t him anymore. He had left that day; I’d seen him.

I cried like the rest of them though. I think I was the only one who faked the crying. And maybe Sam. They closed the lid, and I wonder if it was melting already.

It was even stuffier in the gigantic room. Flowers and wreaths were hung in the front, next to the casket. It took ages for people to cry more, and to talk more. I just wanted to get out of there. It was all fake in here still. The organ stared down at me, unfeeling. Finally, people came to lift the casket and take it away. We all filed in lines to the door again.

The day outside still felt real. When they put the casket down in the hole in the cemetery, that was the most comfortable I had felt in the day. As everyone filed back to their cars, I picked up the big seeds from the trees. I didn’t know what they were, but they were pretty, and made it cool. I formed them in a heart and put dandelions in the center of them, right next to the new evergreen tree.

“When I die, I only want people to cry when they first find out. At my funeral, I don’t want anyone to cry,” Sarah said as she got into the backseat of the car next to Sam. Her parents were still talking to people.

“Why?”

“Because when people just say, ‘well, this person has been dead for days, but we’re going to put him in the ground now,’ and people start crying then, but didn’t cry when they first found out, it is stupid.”

“Okay,” Sam said, “I’ll be sure to not cry at your funeral. Want to play rock paper scissors?”

“Sure.”

It had been a long time since Sarah had gone to that town. At least a year and a half. It was quick to leave too. Clean out the garage so that Grandma Mary could get ready to move, then leave. Sarah walked over to the cemetery one last time, because she didn’t think she’d be going back there soon. There was a headstone now.

Francis Dawes _____Mary Dawes

1932 – 2003__________-__ - -

“Smile; the sunlight is good for your teeth.”

Before they left for that last time, Sarah broke off a stick of the tree in front of the house, to make a wand. Sanding it down when she got home, there was a star going through the center of the whole branch. She sanded it down more and knew that it was because of him. He never really died; he had just left.