Yesterday, I didn’t care much about much.
Back then, there hadn’t been any cars in the parking lot. We didn’t see any muddy footprints stamped into the dirt. Not even the hoofprint exclamations of deer. The weather was partly to blame, but really people stopped visiting the forest once the trees started talking.
“C’mon, Hazel.” Jackson tugged on my arm with a glance over his shoulder. Even a split lip couldn’t dim his smile. “What are you dawdling for?”
“I’m coming as fast as I can.” I hitched up my skirt as much as I could without being improper, trying to hurry up without getting dirty. Momma disliked it when I got dirt on my clothes. She said it wasn’t ladylike.
I thought Momma had disliked Jackson ’cause he was usually messy. She’d pinch her face at him, call him a wild child and tell him to wash up with the hose before coming inside. She’d mutter bad things about his Papa as she retreated inside to mind dinner, iron something for Daddy, or check on the pickling. I didn’t mind her mumbling much because Jackson’s papa wasn’t all that nice.
By the time we got to the tree Jackson wanted to show me, the sun was peeking through the clouds. Light lit the trail, making the fog a little less thick. Jackson knocked on the wood and introduced the big oak as Julie J.
“Why Julie J?” I asked.
“’Cause.” He pointed to a heart carved into the trunk. Julie + J 4ever. I traced the rough ridges of the carved name. There must have been a hundred other names on the trunk. I never asked why Jackson picked Julie J. Jackson added, “It’s a great name.”
“It’s a good name,” I said.
“A great one.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s great.”
“Julie J.” Jackson turned. “Please would you tell us something?”
He didn’t have to ask. Steady murmuring surrounded us. We’d passed purring dogwoods saying things that didn’t mean much. Stilted elms stuttering stuff that was hard to make out. Beeches were being annoyingly loud. All of them together sounded like the crackle of leaves rubbed together, like the creaky groan of strained branches. No wonder they called it the Rustling. Trees never shut the mouths they didn’t have once they began stirring.
But Jackson always asked anyway. He was the kind of person who was considerate to everyone. Even his papa. You could practically hear the blood thumping through that big heart of his.
I think that’s why I loved him.
Julie J sounded like every oak, as pleasant as patience.
“Yesterday,” said Julie J, “squirrel ate. Yesterday, man, woman, dog walked. Yesterday, crow cawed. Yesterday, fish jumped. Heron waited.”
All trees started their tales that way. Everyone remembers where they were when the trees first groaned “yesterday.” My hands were clothes-pinning Daddy’s pants to the line when the sycamore sent a rumble rattling down the line and poured leaves onto us. “Yesterday, it rained.” I buried my face into Momma’s blouse, felt her trembling hands on my shoulders and thought the end had come. But I also remember thinking that the tree had fibbed. It hadn’t rained for weeks.
Quickly everyone realized trees weren’t being literal. Not about the rain, not about the day. Once, I read in one of Ms. Kennedy’s encyclopedias that oaks can live for a thousand years, with classifications based on age, like notable or veteran. Trees' lives are so long that maybe everything seems like it happened “yesterday.” Maybe night and day felt like a blink. The difference from darkness and light so brief it’s meaningless.
“Yesterday,” Julie J said, “man caught fish. Man threw fish to river. Man taught boy. Boy caught fish. Boy hugged man. Fish stilled.”
In the beginning, trees spoke without rhyme or reason, just rattling off, making as much sense as TV channels being constantly changed, which Daddy complained that Momma needed to stop doing and just pick one. Sometimes, they—my momma and the trees—lingered on one thing long enough to get a sense of what it was about.
“Yesterday,” Julie J said, “man sat. Man made fire. Sky made water. Water unmade fire. Man slept. Man stilled. Man served. Man served the crows, the hawks, the vultures, the worms, the mushrooms, the trees.”
“I wanna go home,” I told Jackson, hugging my knees as the grey forest air quilted us. The sun hadn’t lightened the fog, not really. It was still a half-wet blanket no matter how you shook it. Condensation, I thought, trying to remember the definition. Ms. Kennedy would know the right word or have it in one of her dictionaries. Something moist hung from my eyelashes. I palmed circles into my face.
“Awh, Hazel.” Jackson squeezed my hand, his other one flat on Julie J like he wanted us to get along. “Julie J doesn’t mean anything by it. They just saying stuff. Sometimes stuff no one else tells us.”
“I don’t know, Jackie.” I knew I wasn’t going anywhere—not with Jackson’s hand in mine. “They don’t know nothing, really. My momma says it’s no good to put your ears to bark. Only tree huggers do that.”
“They know stuff.” Jackson made a face.
“I don’t know.”
“They do.”
“Maybe a little.”
Julie J rustled over us.
“What’s wrong with hugging trees?”
I shrugged. I had no idea, but Momma said it with the same voice she used to call Jackson’s papa a difficult man as she crushed up beadwood seeds to dab onto Jackson’s bruises. The same voice she used to argue with Daddy as the folks on the news argued about the war. She called Jackson a wild child with the same tone. The only reason she was wrong about that was because she said it like a bad thing. At thirteen, Jackson was sort of a wild child, what with how often he was in the woods, off on his own, skipping rocks and/or school. I didn’t know nothing about tree huggers, but Momma was right about Jackson’s papa, so I believed Momma about hugging trees because sometimes she could be really really right.
Yesterday, Jackson and I sat back-to-bark, a pine between us.
The whole woods smelled like dirt-after-rain instead of dirt-before-rain. Rain sent little splotches of mud up as we walked, spotting up past my knees. Momma would be upset that I got my shorts dirty after she got upset that I wore shorts, but I tried not to worry about that. Not while Jackson was beaming and saying I had to meet Moses.
“Can’t meet him, Jackson.” I said carefully. “He was alive a long time ago.”
“Don’t kid, Hazel.”
“He was, Jackie. A long time ago.”
“How long?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Maybe he was alive just yesterday.”
“I don’t think so, Jackie.”
“Awh, don’t be like that, Hazel. I’m just messing.”
I stepped around a puddle. The ground squelched.
“You know I wasn’t talking about that one anyways. Moses is a tree.”
The pine towered at the top of a ridge. Down the hill, the river muttered muddy green-brown things. The river was high like it got after every rain. High enough that the small shorelines I knew existed had been drowned away. Someone who saw the river for the first time on a day like this would never know it as anything else. Never know that it wasn’t always high and mighty and murky. Never know that there were places for people to rest alongside in times of placid flows. Never know its water could be clear and slow and studded with turtles. Turtles who would dive, shocked into their shells at the slightest sound. Wouldn’t be until the water fell that things could be peaceful again. That day, there weren’t no turtles to be seen. I wondered where they all got to after a storm.
In the woods, rain was good for the water table. Closer to town, stormwater runoff dispersed pollutants. Rain also oxygenated waterways. I really didn’t know it well enough to know how good or bad any of that was, but I knew it good enough for an A-minus on a Ms. Kennedy quiz, so that was good enough for me.
It wasn’t like Ms. Kennedy handed back quizzes with anything but the grade anyway. Once, Tommy Jones’s hand shot up to protest his D. He asked why Ms. Kennedy didn’t just give us the answers afterwards. All she’d said was that the answers would never stick if we didn’t care enough to find them ourselves. Jackson nodded like that meant more than it did over his own E-pressed quiz. Tommy Jones called Ms. Kennedy an s-word-with-a-y teacher and stomped off to the principal’s office before he could be sent.
I didn’t pay no mind to the negative next to my grade. Momma didn’t neither as she pressed it to the fridge. Momma enjoyed natural sciences too. She was always asking about Ms. Kennedy’s subjects, sciences and social studies. She’d thumb through the textbooks with a thoughtful expression, then lay my head in her lap and tell me a story from the Old Testament, stroking my hair until I fell asleep.
Toads croaked under leafy hats while fat raindrops dipped their brims. The woods were a choir of croak and cricket and trees telling tales to the drum of soft rains. My head thumped. I didn’t know how Jackson could stand it. For most, the excitement of the Rustling died like a fad, but Jackson still spent loads of time in the woods. The metal bar guarding the parking lot and the laminated signs forbidding trespassing didn’t do nothing to stop him and his half-rust, half-red bike. Nothing could dissuade me when Jackson asked me to come with either. Nothing except my folks.
At that point, only adults worried about the trees. At first some kids were a little spooked but got curious after no one had gotten eaten or strangled or Bloody Mary’d like everyone gossiped would happen if you went listening. Kids fell into one of two camps. There were the ones who stayed away—they thought trees were boring, or their parents told them to. Then there were those who spent too much time under the leaves. Somehow, I belonged to both groups. I looked down at our locked hands. Jackson’s other hand was dragging a stick through the mud.
“Why do you like the trees?” I asked.
“You don’t?”
“Not as much as you.”
“You don’t like them, do you?”
“I do.” I swept a loose bang from my eye. Jackson squeezed my hand. I got anxious that he was going to let go of me and hurried to say, “I was just wondering is all.”
“You just got to listen a little more,” Jackson said. “You’re the smartest girl I know”—a blush burned across my face—“you’ll love the trees.”
We stopped at a fork in the trail. Jackson miney-mo’ed his stick as he tried to recall the way. When the blood sank back into my body, I realized Jackson hadn’t really answered my question. “Why do you like them, Jackson?”
“Come hear.” Jackson pulled my arm.
At the top of the ridge, Jackson sat me down, facing the river, before he darted to the other side. Pine needles filled the ridge with an aroma as sharp and sweet as the stuff Momma and I scrubbed the counters with.
“Moses,” Jackson’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat. His voice had been doing a lot of cracking recently. He was getting tall too, each inch pulling him away from me. “Moses, would you please share your stories?”
“Why Moses?” I asked as we waited.
“You’ll see.”
I shimmied into the bed of needles, picking and flicking a few off my shorts. My headache was eased by the pit-pat of rain that had gotten stuck on the leaves on its way down. I rested my head against the trunk and gazed up at the amber drops sighing down the trunk. What was sap anyway? The same thing as syrup? I didn’t realize I’d been thinking out loud.
“Maybe,” Jackson’s voice was soft under the rain, “trees cry sometimes.”
“Maybe,” I echoed.
“I think they do.”
“They might.”
A static silence fell over us. Toads circled Moses, listening although Moses hadn’t said anything interesting yet. I didn’t mind toads. I knew how to pick them up and cup them, so their little heads could peek out between my palm and thumb. Momma said touching their skin would make me sick, so I never let her see me do it. Jackson loved it when I caught toads because we did it so differently. He got excited and ran straight at them, catching them quick. I went sort of from the side. Sometimes we’d watch the other flub it, scattering the toads away. We definitely caught more toads when we worked together.
I never told Jackson that I’d practiced catching them just so I could impress him.
Moses spoke like every pine, with a prickly tone so close to annoyed.
I thought their vision must be clearer because of their leaves. Those thin needles reminded me of grey hairs on old heads. Moses sounded like an old man who’d lived to see too much and spoke with the sourness of milk kept too long.
“Yesterday,” said Moses, “many slugs came to be with me. Around twenty.”
At some point, the trees had gotten better at counting. I couldn’t begin to estimate when that was.
“Yesterday, around two hundred men marched. Yesterday, robin laid about two eggs. Yesterday—”
Moses’s blanket-soft bed led me to sleep. I didn’t wake up until Jackson hissed my name.
“—woman swam in the river,” Moses said, “around two men and two dogs chased. Dogs sniffed. Dogs barked. Men yelled. Dogs swam. Woman fought. Around twenty bites. Woman let out red sap. Woman stilled. Woman served. Woman served the dogs, the bass, the bluegill, the crappie, the catfish, the river, the trees.”
“That’s sad,” I said quietly, hugging my knees. An awful cold pressed my skin as the toads groused beneath leaves. “How can you like listening to the trees when they say this sort of stuff, Jackson?”
“It is sad, but it’s important,” Jackson replied. He came around the tree. Soaked clothes clung to his body.
“Jackie!” I gasped. “You’re all soaked.”
“I am. Ain’t I?”
“Why didn’t you sit next to me?”
“Not enough room.”
I looked around. There was some dry space, tucked safely away from the rain, but only where he’d seated me. Everywhere else, pine needles grunted as rain plunked down.
“You’ll get sick,” I said.
“Nah, I’ll be all right.”
“Is it true?”
“Nah. I’ll probably get sick.”
“Jackie! Come sit!” I shuffled into the rain. “I mean the tree. Is it true?”
“I don’t think the trees can lie.”
I glanced sideways. Each of Jackson’s eyes—the black one, the other one—had rain trailing underneath.
“Who was she?”
“I don’t know exactly.” Jackson’s voice cracked like he’d done something wrong, like it was his fault for not knowing. We were in the eighth grade, which meant we knew some stuff, but not too much. Not as much as Momma or Daddy or the preacher or Ms. Kennedy. Heck, given his grades, Jackson might not even know as much as Tommy Jones. Which was all right.
“It’s okay,” I told him. I put my hand over his and he gave a sharp, snotty sniff.
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,” Jackson repeated, wiping his face of rain. “They’re Moses because of that story. I think that lady must have been like him, you know? Just trying to get across some water.”
I bit my lip. Moses—the real one—wasn’t anything like that woman or this tree. She can’t have been a prophet. Trees couldn’t lead people to freedom or deliver commandments. Trees had their own word, sure, but I still didn’t think there was anything inherently good about it. Not like how loving your neighbor or not stealing were obvious right things.
Jackson looked down the ridge and watched the river. I followed his gaze. Muddy water churned around a lone turtle sticking its neck out.
Yesterday, Jackson and I whispered under star-shaped leaves.
The tulip poplar had more sawed-off severed limbs than branches. Daddy had cut it straight and narrow and now it hardly had any of its flowers. Way down the dirt driveway, Jackson’s pickup lurked. Cicadas tsked here and there. Between that and the tree, I struggled to hear Jackson.
“You’re coming, right?” Jackson asked low. Daddy caught us once, sitting on the swinging bench that used to hang from the tree. He lumbered out of the house with a flashlight and a firearm. It was lucky that we had been sitting with a little space between us or my talking-to would have been a lot worse. I folded my arms as I chorused “yes, ma’am” to Momma’s scolding.
It used to be so much easier. Jackson could just climb up the branches of the sycamore tree by the house and tap the glass, but Daddy had taken a lumberjack’s ethic to all the trees in the near part of the yard. Jackson had looked over the piles of firewood with a thousand-yard stare. I hadn’t minded. Although I’d gotten good at tuning them out, sleeping could still be hard when the trees always had something to say. Jackson didn’t have to live with it the same way I had. The trailer park didn’t even have trees.
“You’re coming?” Jackson repeated. “Right?”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t?” Jackson searched my face. “Everyone counts, Hazel.”
“I know,” I said, brushing my hair from my face.
Jackson frowned. “You only do that to your hair when you’re fibbing.”
My ears burned. “I don’t.”
“Hazel.”
“I don’t.”
Jackson’s mouth flattened. My heart fell. Letting Jackson down was like, I don’t know—Upsetting a puppy? Making a baby cry? None of those were really right. They made him seem childish. Like he didn’t know any better. Jackson knew exactly what was right and expected it of others. He was one of those people that knew how to be good even though his papa showed him the opposite. Maybe ’cause his papa showed him the opposite. Probably not—plenty of folks go through stuff like that and end up not half as good as Jackson.
When Jackson heard about something that didn’t sit right with him, he couldn’t ignore it. When Tommy Jones’s older brother came home in a box, and everyone had been really-really extra-extra nice to him but not much else, Jackson put on some black armbands with a symbol on them that riled up the administration and got him suspended. When David came to our school, most kids let him alone like Momma said I should do, but during recess, Jackson crossed the field. I don’t know what was said, but he and David got into it and David gave him a shiner to match the one Jackson already had. I remember pressing a bag of ice to Jackson’s face and telling him that folk like David liked to keep to themselves. Jackson groaned. Through two black eyes, I couldn’t read his expression.
Jackson always wanted to do something. Jackson nurtured his own nature. He nurtured mine, too. Jackson raised me up, thinking me better than I was.
“I can’t make you come if you don’t want to,” Jackson finally said.
“No, no. I want to.” I kept my hands pinned to my side.
Jackson rubbed the crisscross pattern on the trunk. Tulip poplars aren’t even poplars or tulips, they’re magnolias. I touched the tree, wondering if it knew where it belonged? Neither the tree it was named for nor the flower that it looked like. With all its severed branches, would it even recognize itself? I pulled my hand back from the trunk. Bark always reminded me of scabs. Something roughly healed over.
I bit my lip. “I’ll come.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I can tell my mom that I’m going to Caroline’s.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“I’ll pick you up at Caroline’s, then?”
I nodded.
“I knew I could count on you.” He closed the distance between us. My nose filled with the smell of ash as his mustache tickled my face. I tasted something bitter and minty and let my heart go twice as fast. “My girl.”
“Today,” said the tulip poplar, looming over us. Trees had learned a lot of new words. “A boy kissed a girl.”
Yesterday, I lied to Jackson for the last time.
The wood-grain pattern of the kitchen table felt smooth under my fingertips. I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again. Off in the distance, Jackson’s pickup sputtered a soft sound that only I was attuned to. Jackson would have been to Caroline’s and found me lacking. Momma bustled around the kitchen and Daddy held up the paper like how Ms. Kennedy has us put up folders to stop us from cheating off each other.
“What’s the table made of?” I asked.
“Maple,” Daddy said.
“Walnut, dear,” Momma said.
“Are you sure?” Daddy asked.
“I picked it out.”
“You might be right.”
The table looked too pale for walnut. Cherry would have been my guess. I might have known better if I heard it say something.
“The other day,” Momma said, “I had some trouble getting into town. People blocking up the roads. Lord knows why.”
“Protest.” Daddy said from behind the paper. “There’s one downtown again today.”
“Still? I can’t even tell what they want.” Momma rummaged through the cabinets. The hinges squealed as they were shut up. Maple maybe? They should never have sounded like that. Even among trees, maples were talkative, going at you a mile a minute like a friend filling you in on everything. “To lose the war?”
“They don’t want the big tree cut down,” I said, creaking up from my chair to help Momma set the table. It was easy to forget that there was wood beneath the cushion.
“That too,” Daddy said.
“Pretty tree,” Momma said. “It’s a shame it’s being a bother. Such a shame that people are causing such a fuss. Don’t you think, Hazel?”
“I don’t know,” I said softly.
“People just want to go about their days,” Momma said. “Shame they don’t realize inconveniencing other folk ain’t no way to get support. Don’t you think?”
“Shame,” I echoed.
“Don’t you think, dear?”
“Yes, dear?”
Momma repeated herself.
Daddy didn’t look away from his paper. “Dunno.”
“Not you too.”
“It ain’t smart.” Daddy shrugged. “But it ain’t wrong.”
“Good riddance. Trees are always talking nonsense.”
“They can’t help it,” I mumbled.
“They never make any sense,” Momma said.
“You know that ain’t true, dear. Some trees are plenty clear nowadays.” Daddy’s chair creaked. “Protestors might be onto something.”
“Not you too.”
“War’s expensive. Maybe put another man on the moon with that kind of money.”
“I swear.” Momma shook her head. “Your priorities.”
We locked hands as Daddy said grace. Feeling the gentle pressure on my palms, I peeked and watched my parents’ faces. Momma’s crow’s feet disappeared when she closed her eyes and the lines around Daddy’s lips got softer when he prayed. I said Amen.
I pushed around my bacon. Jackson had been boycotting bacon. Said they don’t treat the pigs right. I’d seen Jackson clean the dry burger off his tray on days when corn and peaches just wasn’t cutting it. It wasn’t like he turned down his milk carton neither. So, cows didn’t matter? What about chickens? Shouldn’t he care about all of them, too? I stabbed my scramble. I didn’t care that Jackson didn’t care equally about everything; I was just feeling bad that, compared to him, I didn’t care as much about anything.
I heard his pickup finally pull away. Jackson wouldn’t hold it against me. He never did when I couldn’t make it to the woods.
After breakfast, my parents and I stomped hardwood floors as we moved into the parlor. Daddy sank into his recliner while Momma crossed the rug to the television. It was square and wide, with a wooden cabinet. I wondered what kind of wood surrounded its glass screen. What would it sound like if it had a chance to speak without replaying all the voices inside it? When he bought it, Daddy bragged about what a fine model it was, what with its fine speakers, fine screen, and fine cathode-ray tube, whatever that was. Momma turned the dial and channel after channel flickered by. I never know if it’s more right to say that things are in black and white or if everything is just shades of grey.
“Hmph.” Momma said.
The protest filled the screen. A few folks stood around the historic courthouse downtown, a building with the kind of architecture they don’t do no more. The camera panned to the big tree. Old Archie threw shade over the folks standing with their hands locked like a paper-person chain. Moss-hemmed branches hung so heavy that they rested root-like on the ground before curling back up to the sky. Some people used the branches as benches; others hugged the trunk.
A reporter shoved a microphone into a person’s black-and-white-and-grey face and asked them how long they planned on protesting. Really our speakers weren’t much better than a radio’s and made it hard to tell what the person really sounded like in real life. As it was, it could have been anyone’s voice saying every day.
Old Archie sounded static, with a voice distorted by speakers.
The oldest archangel was the longest-lived oak around these parts. My mind was already on revelations. The great thunder-crack creak. Leaves susurrating like crashing waves stealing shore. Even through static, its voice had a mollifying quality. Angels must say be not afraid because of what they’ve got to say.
“Yesterday,” said Old Archie, “twenty-four thousand two hundred and three cars drove by the boulevard. Yesterday, six snakes hung from my third branch. Yesterday, three grey squirrels buried approximately twenty-four acorns every half hour.”
Trees had gotten better with bigger numbers, with time. It wasn’t odd for a tree, looking down at you, to tell you how many strands of hair it counted on so many heads passing below its boughs on the previous day.
“Yesterday, fifty-three thousand four hundred and two men fought a great war. Can a war be great?”
Silence thickened in the parlor. That was the first time I’d ever heard a tree ask a question. How could the tree even figure that number? My hands slid off the rug and onto hardwood as I leaned forward.
Momma changed the channel.
“Could we go back, Momma?” I asked.
“I think that’s enough of that.”
“For just a second?”
“Just a second should be all right,” Daddy said.
Momma held her hand still over the dial for a long time.
“—two thousand and sixty-one men stilled. Men served. Men served their nation.”
Momma folded her arms. “That’s the first sensible thing that I’ve ever heard a tree say.”
“Men served more,” said Old Archie. “Men served the plains, the sea, the mountains, the mangroves, the mud, the trenches, the trees.”
I didn’t change into jeans, so Momma believed me when I told her I just needed some air. She yelled out to me to close the door tight behind me. As I did, Momma was already launching into Daddy for making us listen to that stuff, telling him to look at how much he upset me. The door shut out Momma’s words and Daddy’s “all right” response. The settled-upon sitcom sounds faded away.
Jackson’s old bike felt all wrong under me. My knees kissed the handlebars, and I had to hold my dress with one hand when it came untucked from under me about halfway into town. Trees said all sorts of things to me as I panted past their trunks. The journey wasn’t comfortable, but there was no other way for me to get where I needed to go.
The news hadn’t done the crowd justice. I stowed Jackson’s bike behind a hedge when I spotted the sea of folk flooding the streets, the big tree and courthouse still a ways away.
The day was the sort of sunny that was too nice to be wasted. I eyed the crowd as I kept to the sides, trying to see if I could spot Jackson. It was hard to make out anyone; there were that many folks. The crowd made a miasma of moving color. I didn’t spot much grey, nor any gradations, black and white starker in contrast. Especially as I eyed the number of police standing by. A tree could have counted them better.
There came a point where so many folks filling the streets and sidewalks made it impossible to get any farther the outside way. The crowded sound of so many voices poured a headache into me. I had long since turned the Rustling into white noise, but this wasn’t something I knew how to tune out. I pressed into the crowd, my head pounding and my heart racing.
“Yesterday,” someone shouted. “I heard from a willow that a man killed a woman who was pregnant out of wedlock.” I flinched, feeling as though I was being yelled at. It wasn’t my fault, I wanted to shout. “Yesterday, a tree told me that a chained man worked rice for twenty-nine years before he served the marshes, but we know who he served.” The crowd boomed into my ears. I couldn’t shrug away that sad stuff like I usually did, not with them going on about yesterday. Yesterday this. Yesterday that. The word started sounding all wrong the more it weighed on me.
I bumped into someone, making them accordion the poster in their hands. N Mor Rch Mn’s Wr. I stammered out an apology, backed away, and bumped into another person who folded their sign. Protect Ear—. Clapping my hands over my ears, I moved aside, careful of where I stepped. Cardboard on all sides gave me a feeling like I had stumbled into a hall of mirrors, papered instead of silvered. The Lord Loves Us Too. With my ears covered, Momma’s voice rattled inside my head, reading as I swiveled every which way. Love Not War. I wasn’t being fair to Momma. They Never Called Me A— I got the way I speak from her, so the voice locked up in my head, held between my hands, was probably just my own.
I dropped my hands and took a steadying breath. I didn’t have to listen to myself and with the noise of the crowd, I couldn’t; so, I didn’t. I’d never have noticed it and felt it for myself if I hadn’t been in the thick of it. The crowd was more than just a group of people. Something electric was making goose bumps break out over my skin. Some great invisible thing rustled with the sound of a thousand cardboard signs, reflected things on paper, moved with a body made of shoulders to shoulders, stomped with a thousand feet getting dirty together.
Feeling the life emanating from the crowd, I remembered one of those things we all learn in school. Maybe before that, though I couldn’t say exactly when. Trees are alive. Trees had always been sort of conscious. The only real change between before and after the Rustling was the trees talking where they hadn’t before. Obviously, people are alive too. Everyone’s conscious and everyone’s got one. Maybe the only difference between folks is who speaks up or not.
In the woods, it wasn’t too hard to think that Jackson was just being Jackson. The kind of kid that cared too much. A kid so good that you could forgive yourself if you didn’t live up to it. But it was harder to ignore the thumping of all those hearts in that crowd. The vitality of their movement. So many voices speaking up had to be saying something. I looked around at all the signs thrust over my head. I’d never known that so many people could care so much about so many things. I guess I figured most folks were like my folks. That was all I’d ever known and I started to feel like most of what I knew wasn’t all right.
I’d heard plenty of trees, but that day I pushed toward the big tree to listen.
Some big kid had left all their toys in the way. Fire trucks and construction vehicles pressed their huge wheels into asphalt. Bulldozers and chipping trucks growled like great beasts as they rumbled forward. Officers stood behind dark shields. It seemed like all too much for one old tree. In front of the courthouse, the stone statue of a man up high on his horse overlooked the scene like a general surveilling a battle. Two flags halfway up a pole thundered in the wind. Folks clung to Old Archie as the live oak made proclamations.
“Yesterday,” Old Archie said, “a seventeen-year-old boy hung from my branches.”
Megaphone-loud police were commanding folks to clear out the way. As I pressed forward through the crowd, a blocky-lettered sign caught my eyes. If The Air Isn’t Clean—How Can You See This? The old man holding the sign didn’t stand out from the crowd, but his fierce expression made me look twice. A woman held up her sign. Why Lose When You Can Win?
I hadn’t known that people protested protestors. I looked back at their signs as though I was returning to questions on a test that I skipped the first time. I didn’t have any answers, but they didn’t seem like fair questions, really. So I searched for statements. Love Our Country. I did a double take at the young boy holding the sign. His mother patted him encouragingly on the shoulder, her other hand airing another message. Only Reds Want Surrender.
“It was not his choice,” said Old Archie. “He was not guilty of the crime that the crowd accused him of.”
“How could it know?” someone asked and I wondered too. The same way I had wondered about the big tree figuring certain numbers, but my stomach turned at their tone. The harsh sound like a devil demanding details. This part of the crowd was still a hall of mirrors, and I didn’t like the reflections of myself that I could find. I bent my head down and fled from familiar voices, crossing into the shadow of Old Archie, a spot several degrees cooler.
“I know,” said Old Archie. A ripple ran through the crowds. I don’t think I’d ever heard a tree talk about itself. “We know—”
“We know,” chorused the bigger trees around the square. “We know,” a patient white oak groaned. “We know,” added a willow oak. Neatly planted crepe myrtles kept on muttering about yesterday—they must have been too young to know. “We know,” agreed other veteran oaks.
“We know,” said Old Archie. “We know because we saw it.”
The firehose hissed like a snake, urging everyone away from the tree with all the kindness of a serpent. The deluge pressed people to the ground; threw legs over heads; forced those hugging trees deeper into their embraces. Screams rang into the sky. Officers drove their shields forward. Canines snarled and strained against leashes. Ear-splitting cries made me want to wail too as the crowd crushed me.
The crowd carried me along and I was fine until I fell, flinging my hand out to brace myself. I cradled my bloody palm close to my chest, stained my dress and all I could think was that Momma’d be mad I got my dress bloody. Looking up, I found an officer standing over me, his hand outstretched. The baton held high overhead split the sun in two. What kind of wood was the club was made of? Hickory? I could have done without hearing the sounds it made and the sounds it made me make.
A thousand splinters screamed into my skin before the pain stopped. Someone had pushed the officer off me and was helping me stand. I didn’t even stop to thank them before I ran. The statue of the man on his high horse blocked my way. I pressed myself against the monument’s base as my chest heaved. All around me, batons rose and fell to meet flesh, their smacking sound like axes to wood. Shields clattered to the ground as people fought back. A loose dog wrenched itself to a man’s thigh. His scream was the loudest sound in the world until a deafening burst made me flinch so hard that I ducked. Daddy owned a few, I’d held a couple, but the sound of a gun always makes me jump even when I expect it and I hadn’t expected it.
Blanks, I thought. Blanks just made sense, because why would they shoot? People fell and didn’t get up, and I didn’t get why they weren’t getting up.
Spotting a break in the crowd, I ran, trying to put everything behind me. Suddenly it struck me where to find Jackson. It was so obvious that I almost laughed. At a time like this, Jackson wouldn’t be running from water or dogs or things going off, even though I thought it was the smart thing to do. Jackson would be doing what he could. I stopped and swiveled and looked for the folks helping. Jackson would always try to help, even if no one asked. Especially, I think, if someone couldn’t.
There was a person by the tree, his hand around a downed man’s, helping the fallen back to his feet. I started moving forward. A different person grabbed a baton mid-swing, stopping the officer from further hurting a grounded man with his hands cradling his head. A protestor-protestor tore at the neckline of someone’s shirt before someone else shoved them away. I was so close to the action now, head telling me to run, but heart making me stay. My heart steadied by the sight of so many people whose first impulse hadn’t been mine. So many people like Jackson. I scrambled over to a young man who was struggling to drag an unconscious man slowly out of harm’s way. I know I’m not strong and I don’t think I was much help, but he thanked me for lending a hand anyway.
As we crossed curb to sidewalk, I looked up and spotted Jackson. He was kicking an officer away from a bloodied man. His shoes thudded against the shield, leaving muddy prints. Jackson was close enough that I could shout out if I wanted. I could almost reach out and touch him. I was close enough that my hearing went out from the explosion of gunfire. Jackson fell to the ground.
When I blinked, I was next to him, my knees pressing into the asphalt. I blinked and his head was in my lap. Momma’d be so mad at how dirty he was getting my dress. I rocked him gentle, the same way I did anytime he fell asleep. Course I wasn’t the only one whose eyelids went heavy under all those trees when we were in the woods. This was like all those other times except my ears were ringing and I couldn’t hear anything Old Archie was saying over us. The big tree just sounded like someone leafing through a stack of papers for something they remembered but couldn’t find. I rocked Jackson more and more and more and more until I hugged my own arms and started rocking myself.
Yesterday, I went to Jackson’s funeral.
He would have hated the cemetery. That field of flat green, broken by stone markers and cut-dead flowers, was in want of leaves. In the past, there had been a lot of trees on the grounds, but they reminded the guests, as the funeral director called us, of ghosts and most folks hadn’t liked that. Especially once the trees started talking about the deceased, saying the sort of things about the dead that we forget to sanctify them. Bad for business, he told me. I hadn’t known there was business in dying. There’s business in a lot of things I hadn’t known there could be business in.
I never heard a mahogany, and the casket wasn’t the first to say anything to me. As I crushed Momma’s hand walking up the aisle, it didn’t chide me, asking me why I hadn’t gone with him. It didn’t groan in reprimand and say things might have been different if I’d been there with him the whole time. There weren’t no crickets or toads or bugs or anything to make noise and give my head something to latch onto besides the silence. No voice rustled up in anger to punish me for lying to him, for letting him down. Mahogany did not tell me if Jackson had been mad or sad or frustrated or disappointed or something else with me. Mahogany could not tell me if he had understood or if he had forgiven me. Mahogany would not say that if he hadn’t forgiven me, then now he never could. No one could tell me if I could ever forgive myself.
My breath came out in ragged gasps as I cried sorry over his casket. Momma’s hand put a soothing circle into my back, and squeezed my shoulder. The lid hadn’t been closed yet and I couldn’t understand Jackson looking the way he did. His cheeks pale and rosy, wearing makeup he’d never put on, dressed in a suit that didn’t fit him. I struggled to remember Jackson passing a note behind a teacher’s back that said he wanted to introduce me to a new tree. Jackson, the wild child others saw, on picture day with his mussed-up bedhead, patchy facial hair, and snaggle-toothed grin hanging above a wrinkled collar. I tried to remember the Jackson I loved because I hated the clean-shaven young man stuffed in a box.
Jackson’s papa came up behind us. The sound of his cane was unmistakable, although it sounded softer on grass than it ever did echoing from inside the trailer. When Jackson and I were nine, he made me promise to never ever come visit him at his home, but one day I got tired of waiting for him and found my way to his trailer anyways. Jackson answered the door with a panicked expression, looked over his shoulders and I looked that same way as a slow thud sounded out. Jackson squeezed into boots, grabbed my hand, and tore us away, his shoelaces flying. I just thought Jackson had been excited to go play. I hadn’t thought twice at the arm pulling mine, ringed in purple.
I remembered looking over my shoulder and seeing Jackson’s papa framed by the trailer door. You couldn’t deny they were kin. What with that same square forehead and same mousy hair, but Jackson’s papa was a lot thicker in the middle and had a lot less on top. He braced against his cane and leaned on the door frame with only one leg to stand on. I waved goodbye like Momma taught me was polite. Jackson’s papa hadn’t waved back.
“What happened to your papa’s leg?”
“He lost it,” Jackson said.
I grabbed my leg.
“He was in the war.”
“What’s a war?”
“A big fight.”
“Did he win?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“You could say that.”
“I’m sorry about his leg.”
“Me too.”
Jackson’s Papa put a hand on my other shoulder and squeezed. Between him and my momma, I felt oddly supported. If either of them said anything, I didn’t hear it over my shuddering. How long I stood there embarrassing myself, I couldn’t say. When my breathing steadied, I took a step away and turned to say thank you. My breath hitched, but I’m not sure why it surprised me so much.
Of course he’d be crying too.
Ms. Kennedy handed back my quiz face down. Lifting a paper corner, a red F peered up at me like a bug. I remember putting pencil to paper and not much else. My gaze kept drifting to the empty desk next to me. It was hard to focus on school when you had other things on your mind. I couldn’t believe that never occurred to me before.
When class filtered out, I stopped at the front desk. Ms. Kennedy was a pretty lady with brown hair that’s neatly curly first block, but frizzy from stress by the end of the day. She looked right on the cusp of frazzled. Ms. Kennedy had a voice that I wished more teachers had, firm but always kind.
“Hazel.” Ms. Kennedy’s gaze was soft. “How would you say you’re doing?”
“I’d say I’m all right.” I tucked a hair behind my ear.
“How can I help you, then?”
“I have a question.” I pressed my quiz onto the desk. “What’s right?”
Ms. Kennedy didn’t touch my quiz.
“Is there anything you’re most concerned about?”
“I don’t know.”
“Knowing that is a good place to start.”
“I don’t think my folks are bad people, not really.”
“That’s not really a question.”
“How do I be a better person?”
“Hazel. Do you remember our class about citrus trees?”
I wobbled my head in a kind-of sort-of kind of way and thought about Tommy Jones calling Ms. Kennedy a bad teacher.
“Take orange trees. In the south, a lot of oranges have lemon roots.”
Around that time, class focused on trees in biology. A lot of citrus trees, at least the ones people grew for commercial purposes, consisted of two parts. Rootstock was the trunk and roots, and the scion was everything up on top. The branches, the leaves, the fruit and all that. When a citrus tree was still a little sapling, it got cut and the bud of another tree put in the wound. I thought it must hurt, having something shoved into you like that.
“I wouldn’t call it shoving it in,” Ms. Kennedy said. “You give it a little of something else and sometimes it doesn’t work, but sometimes it takes. You see, on their own, a lot of citrus trees are no good at producing good fruit. Good, at least the way we think of it, isn’t something that just comes naturally. Let alone the fruit will be lumpy, misshaped, undersized, oversized with rinds as thick as”—Ms. Kennedy dropped her voice—“some of these kids’ skulls.
“But you can give. I’d say give. You can give it something else. Sometimes it takes really well because the roots are great at finding what they need in the soil. The soil, where it’s planted, matters, of course, but good trees can pop up anywhere. But it only works because the rootstock does its part. It tries to look for the right things in the right places. Most of the work is just trying.”
“How does it know where to look?”
“Well, I’m not completely sure,” Ms. Kennedy said. “I suppose they must start close to their roots and reach out from there. But trees don’t go it alone. They talk to each other, you know? Even before the Rustling—trees talked with their roots, trading sugar, transferring nutrients, exchanging information.”
“So I talk and listen …” I trailed off.
Ms. Kennedy nodded the way teachers do when you’re on the right track.
“To other people?”
“That’s one way.”
“How did he just know what the right thing was?”
“You think he only listened to trees?”
Today, I am trying to care more about more.
I read the paper and watch the news. I learn about things around the country. Mothers want trees cut away from schools because they tell their children too many things. The oldest trees look too far back and see too far out, so they’re being mulched because they say far too much. Trees out in the country bray about the occurrences on acres owned over generations. Scientists develop an aerosol that can stop the trees from talking. I can’t sit and listen to Daddy wonder about the science behind it.
I bike to the forest as cars sputter past me. Eyeing their exhaust, I think folks are concerned with the wrong kind of emissions. I lean Jackson’s bike against the trailhead, step over the low metal bar, and make my way down the path. Leaves crunch underfoot and water rushes beside me as I hug the river. A water snake slips into its namesake while a moccasin floats. It’s hard for me to tell the difference until they’re in the water. I know there are folk that can tell with a quick glance, but I’ve never been that kind of smart. Painted turtles dry themselves without their colors fading. The day is so beautiful that it makes me angry because it isn’t fair. It can never be fair that days like this still are, but he isn’t. I stop to embrace Julie J and they accept it silently.
“Please, tell me something, Julie J,” I say. “Please.”
My arms still don’t span half of their trunk. Overhead, a plane whizzes by, two blazes of white in its wake. A faint mist freckles my cheeks.
Some folks say the chemicals could have wide-ranging health effects such as hepatocellular carcinoma or cognitive decline associated with neurotoxicity. The government assures the public that the chemicals do nothing but rein in the Rustling. On television, a man in a white coat hands a small can of Peace & Quiet to a decorated general who applies it like deodorant. I can’t trust anything the government says. How could I? If all this environmentalism stuff is even a little true, then they’re killing the planet. They’ve already taken my whole world.
Planes irrigate battlefields with the stuff. Apparently, the trees didn’t care for the cause and would call out the position of soldiers, their numbers, their ammunition, make and models of their weapons, and such. When they weren’t doing that, they were just telling local history, and the soldiers had some trouble shooting people once they started thinking of them as people.
I bend down, scoop up a few acorns, and shove them into my pants pocket before continuing down the trail. The trail goes a long way and gets less and less maintained the farther I go. At some point, the path is so unclear that I forget the right way, so I need to pay attention to the signs that people have been this way before. I know I’m close when voices reach my ear.
“Back again, Hazel?” Ms. Kennedy smiles at me as I step into the clearing.
I nod. I take a seat on a stump next to Tommy Jones and David, who are talking about the next protest. Looking around, I feel like I don’t belong.
There’s the vice principal who doesn’t really mind the armbands but knows that many parents do. I recognize a few folks from church who don’t like the preacher too much, alluding to sins that they say I’m lucky I can’t believe. Students from the college downtown are big organizers of these woodland chapters. These must be the tree huggers Momma was talking about. I only have to listen to them once to realize that there’s nothing wrong with embracing nature.
They’re kind folks. Too kind. They don’t blame me. They tell me that it’s hard to care about what you don’t know about. I want to disagree—that didn’t stop Jackson—but I’m still not so good at voicing my thoughts. It’s something I’m working on. It’s something they’re good at. Speaking up because their causes can’t. That through voice, visibility; elucidation, education—if enough people speak up, then they can’t help but be heard. And if they aren’t heard, then—I rub my arms and listen to Tommy Jones and David argue. I spot an eavesdropping toad. Would I catch it better by going head on or in a roundabout way?
I listen. I speak up and sometimes put my foot in my mouth. I feel stupid. I learn. Sometimes I don’t agree, and I don’t change my mind. Many times I do. Every day I learn more about something and it feels like I’ve unlocked a new word—suddenly I see the issue everywhere and I can’t imagine how I ever missed it.
Or it’s as though I’m hearing an old word in a new way.
I never really listened to the trees, but I really try to listen to other folks now. They don’t think it’s too late for me to be a better person. For anyone, for that matter. They love this country too, but love other people more. Loving a person more, that I get easy. Loving people more, I’m working on it.
The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the best time to listen to one was yesterday, and the next best time to grow is today.
So I’m starting today.
“Look,” I say, a grin aching my cheeks. I unfold the wet paper towel, holding my hands out as though I’m ready to receive communion.
The little acorn resting in my palm has pushed off its seedy beret and a single thin stalk shoots up like a child’s messy hair that refuses to be slicked back. It ends in a too-big idea of a leaf. I’m surprised it can stay upright with all that weight. Some things, some people, can just carry more. I don’t really think that’s right, so I won’t use it as an excuse.
“Germination,” Ms. Kennedy comments.
“Correct,” I answer. “But this isn’t a quiz, Ms. Kennedy.”
Tommy Jones snickers. Ms. Kennedy throws him a look that shuts him up as though we were in class before she looks back at me.
“It’s nice to see you smiling Hazel,” Ms. Kennedy says. “Where’s it from?”
I shrug. It might have been one of Julie J’s little acorns, but I’d been pocketing as many seeds as I could find. Really it could have been anyone’s child.
“What are we looking at?” someone asks.
I realize, I’m standing too far from the others. I rise from my stumped position and step forward until I’m surrounded by the other folks. Folks that I’m happy I’ve surrounded myself with. I raise my hands up and everyone falls silent. Their expressions ask if they heard it right. I nod hard enough that my hair untucks from behind my ears. I know I can’t have been the first person in the world to have thought of doing this, but I’m glad I can be the first in my little neck of the woods. My lips tremble. Something wet on my cheeks is working to clear the mist.
The acorn has a child’s treble. Squeaky and innocent and hopeful. Struggling to make sense, fighting to be heard.
“Tomorrow.”
Editor: Dante Luiz
First Reader: Aigner Loren Wilson
Copy Editors: Copy Editing Department
Accessibility: Accessibility Editors