To Straighten a Tree

Last Updated May 17, 2010
Second Draft

To Straighten a Tree
By James Hart

Lincoln Elementary school had recently spent some grant money on landscaping and had redone the front lawns of the school. Piles of dirt and been dumped and covered in grass seed to create miniature artificial hills, and young trees had been purchased from a nursery across town. By the time Arbor day came around the grass had fully grown in and the children were allowed to cross it again on their way home from school.

Ashley was carrying the small pine sapling in her hands for which she had great expectations. She walked out of her classroom, her light purple backpack empty and sagging on her back. Each of the children had been given a four inch tall tree in a small black plastic tray to celebrate the holiday. Ashley stopped by one of the young trees that the school had purchased during the renovation and stared at it for
a while.

Mrs. Harrison was standing on top of one of the nearby mounds, watching the children walk home and looking out for anything suspicious. Ashley startled the teacher when she grabbed her wrist and called, “Mrs. Juliet Harrison.” Ashley had gotten the idea somewhere that saying a person's full name was respectful.

“Yes, Ashley?”

“What are those sticks for?” Ashley didn't point at anything or look around, she just looked up at her teacher for an answer.

“What sticks.”

“The ones in the trees.”

“What are the sticks in the trees for?” Mrs. Harrison repeated. Ashley's eyes opened a little more and waited. Mrs. Harrison looked at the trees around her for something out of the ordinary but she didn't see whatever the little girl saw. “I'm sorry honey, I don't know what you mean.”

“All the trees have sticks tied to them.”

“Oh,” the young trees on the lawn were all being supported by tall sticks a few inches away, “Those help the trees grow straight. I think.” Mrs. Harrison questioned herself for a moment and then realized that an accurate answer wasn't necessary. “So the wind doesn't blow it down.”

Ashley looked down at her small tree and then around at the ground.

“Maybe when your tree gets bigger you can tie a stick to it so that it grows straight too.”

Mrs. Harrison patted Ashley on the head and went back to watching the other children escape. Ashley walked over to a stick laying on the lawn and picked it up, then she dropped it and went over to one of the young trees. She sat her pine on the ground and leaned it against the trunk of the tree. There was a lower branch on the tree that was not very big yet and Ashley grabbed it with both hands and tried to break it off. The branch was juicy and soft, and as she wrenched it up and down until she became frustrated. Ashley twisted the branch and pulled it again. She glanced over her shoulder at Mrs. Harrison who was watching the other direction and Ashley felt free to continue. She yanked on the branch again and it pinched off and as she pulled it away a piece of bark, still attached to the tree, pulled a ribbon of skin off its trunk. Ashley picked up her pine again and walked away from the tree, the leafy branch drooped over her shoulder. The smell on her hands reminded her of the smell when she would sit in her backyard and pull up the grass around her.

On the way home the branch became heavy and she realized that it wasn't straight at all. Surely her father had something that would work better, so she left it by the sidewalk.

Ashley got home and went straight into the back yard, dropping her backpack by the door. She rummaged through her father's box of yard tools and found a small shovel and a tool for planting bulbs. She went into the garden and found a patch where some kind of ground-cover was growing. Directly in the center of the patch she used the bulb planter to cut a hole through the vine's roots and stir the dirt which she then shoveled out. She popped the pine from its small black tray and set it into the ground. Her hole was not quite deep enough so she pressed down on the roots of the small tree. The clump of dirt separated and the roots spread out. She thought this would help the tree catch more water. Finally, Ashley shoveled the dirt back in around the roots of the tree, bits of vine and leaves still mixed into the soil.

The tools went back into their box and the little black tray into a garbage can filled with drying grass from the lawnmower which smelled nothing like the green blood of tree at school that still lingered on her hands.

The garage was full of scrap wood from things her father had build. Ashley found a long board that was split at one end and she tried to pull the split apart but it broke halfway down the board and she decided it wouldn't be long enough. She needed something tall, very tall, taller than her, so that the pine would grow straight up into perfect tree, like a Christmas tree. They would never cut it down and use it for Christmas because that would kill it, but maybe they could decorate it at Christmas time.

Ashley found a long dowel rod. It wasn't very wide and when she shook it the rod bent back and forth. If determined, the tree could easily grow out of shape and take the stick with it. But the rod reminded her of a broomstick and so she went to the closet and pulled out the broom. It's wooden handle was long, though not as long as the dowel rod, and it was plenty strong enough to hold the tree. When she twisted it in her fingers she couldn't bend it at all.

Ashley's father was sitting on the front porch reading a book when she came out with both the broom and the rod in her hands and said, “Daddy, can I use the broom?”

“For what, Muffin? Are you sweeping something?” Her father looked up from his book.

“I need it to hold up my tree.”

“What tree.”

“The tree I planted. They gave it to me in school.”

“You planted a tree?”

“Yup.” Ashley said, proud of herself.

“Where did you plant it.”

“In the garden, Daddy. Where else would you plant a tree.”

Her father's face scrunched and he said, “You can plant a tree anywhere, you don't just plant them in the garden. You didn't plant it in my strawberries did you?”

“Nope.”

“Good,” he started to go back to his book and then remembered, “and what do you
need the broom for?”

“I need a good stick to hold up the tree so it grows straight.”

“Well we need the broom for sweeping, honey, so you can't use that. But you can use that dowel rod. Though I think I have some shorter ones.”

“No this is good.” And Ashley ran back into the house.

“You have fun, Muffin.” She heard her father's comforting voice in the background as she rushed away.

*****

The short pine that never grew taller than a foot an a half. Next to the tree was the tall stick, about five and a half feet long. It always made the tree look shorter than it was, if a person noticed it at all. There were three pieces of string tied between the bottom of the stick and the tree, only about an inch apart each. After a few years the stick rotted and fell over and the strings disappeared.

Some years after the house had been sold, the tree removed by new owners, and the stick had disappeared, Ashley met a man named Stephen Pirrip. He was handsome and kind, and he made Ashley laugh. But next to him she planted a stick.