“Hey!” I shouted. “Park!”
He turned from Fred, if the tree man’s name was Fred. Fred had a clipboard in one hand and a pencil in the other. He was so tall that I wondered if he had played basketball in his gone days. What I realized as I put it all together while closing the rest of the distance between us is that they were talking about logistics. Old Park didn’t want the tree falling on his house after it was cut. “Gerald?” he asked.
I put a friendly hand on his shoulder. He’s a small man. Asian. I tower over him like a medieval knight in armor come a calling, though Fred’s height puts me to shame. “I couldn’t help but notice, Park,” I said, as friendly as a man selling insurance. “You seem to be contemplating doing something to this magnificent bur oak that all your neighbors love to death.”
Park shrugged my hand away and moved a few steps to one side so that Fred stood between him and me. “This gentleman is here to cut it down today. His name is Fred. Have you met him?” I could tell that he was determined to be polite.
I nodded at Fred up there above me. “That’s not going to happen,” I said. I pointed to the tree. “That lady is no tramp.” I heard somebody call my name and turned to stare at my deck. My wife, Louise, stood there with a spatula in one hand and Denzel by her side with his arms crossed. She waved the spatula as if it was a wand. Get your fat ass back here is what she was saying. Fire up the grill.
Bobbi and Ava, glasses of Chardonnay in hand, clinked them together. Louise pointed to the grill and squatted next to it to turn on the propane. Latesha was lying in a lounge chair with her head rolled back to take in the last of the day’s sun, which had come out from hiding.
Ava walked toward me. Was she an emissary from Louise?
“Your wife has the right idea,” Park said. “I’m within my rights. The tree has to go. It occludes my view, and its roots could damage my foundation.” He was polite. There was no combativeness in his voice. “I agree it’s a nice tree. If we could dig it up and let you have it, we would do so. Can’t be done.”
“Park, have you ever read Pliny?” I said.
He frowned. “Pliny? I think I’ve heard the name. But no. The answer is no.”
“You haven’t read him?”
“That’s right.”
“Let me share with you something Pliny once wrote. They called him Pliny the Elder. Wisdom in that last word. This is what he said: ‘An object in possession seldom retains the same charm as it had in pursuit.’”
Park blinked, trying to puzzle it out. Fred with his clipboard watched us argue the way a coach at a game studies the cat-and-mouse combat on the court. He looked at his watch. Park noticed.
“This is all very amusing,” he said, “but this man here is on a schedule to keep.” He motioned for the clipboard and pencil and scrawled a signature on the paper. “That gives him permission to work. One of his associates is sitting in the truck and will help with the job.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. “That tree’s not coming down. It belongs to all of us. Not just to you. I love that tree. I’ve lived with it for years, since before you bought this house. This tree is not yours to cut down.”
Ava came up beside Park. “Dudes,” she said. “Dudes. Can we talk this out? Can we just get along?” I could hear that she was imitating somebody. She squeezed the narrow bridge of her nose. “A tree like this should be treasured.” She was a little drunk. Or a lot drunk.
“Hello,” Park said politely. “Your host is making a fuss about something that’s none of his business. If he doesn’t back off, I’m going to call the constabulary.”
“Possession is nine-tenths of the law, Park? That what you’re saying?”
“No, Gerald. I’m saying possession is all of the law. Everything.”
“The constabulary?” Ava said, tasting the quaint word. She closed in on Park and whispered something to him that I couldn’t hear. He squinted. This was none of her business, he was thinking. Fred up there in the clouds didn’t look none too happy about the delay. A glance passed like radar between him and Park.
“Did you vote, Park?” I said.
That stopped him. “None of your business, Gerald.”
Fred had his signature. That was enough for him. He and his co-worker carried a ladder to the tree. They had ropes, pulleys, other paraphernalia required in the tree-cutting business. We all took a brief break from our conversation to watch them install the pulley and rope with an anchor hammered into the ground so that the tree, when it fell, would fall away from the house. “Park,” I said again. “You voted? You didn’t say.”
Ava shivered. She looked sketchy again, hugging herself and squeezing, as if her blood wasn’t pumping through her body right. “Dudes? This is macho bullshit.” She turned again to Park. “Park? If I may? Why not take a night to think it over?”
“Not a bad idea,” I said. It was indeed a smart thing for her to say, but I could tell she was edgy with the standoff. I thought she might be about to blow. I thought it might be interesting if I saw what that looked like.
Whatever it was, her sensible words or her impatient tone, it hit Park the wrong way. He set his mouth in a scowl. “What if you were big with child,” he said to Ava, ignoring me, “and didn’t want the baby? What if a man who didn’t own your body made you learn that he could tell you what to do, make you keep the baby? Would you like that, lady?”
I could see her face turn pale, as if the blood was being siphoned from it. A bad memory, I thought. In fact, a law that would do exactly that was on the ballot. “Oh, dude,” she said. “This is your house. Your land. I get that. You can murder that fucking tree for all I care. You can do whatever the fuck you want. Fuck a duck while you’re at it.” She twerked her pelvis as if fucking. “I get that too. Way of the world and all that shit. Then you can see it die all over again at night in your dreams. You know how awful that is? To watch something you’ve killed die, over and over again, every goddamned night?”
“Lady, I say again. You would do to me and my land what men do to women and their bodies.” He walked away and pulled out his phone. The local constabulary. As if they don’t have enough to keep them occupied in these times. I knew some of the local cops. Which one would come? If it was Peter—Peter Pumpkin Eater, I called him to his face—there might be trouble. There had been some trouble with Peter in the past. He and I had once come to blows. I couldn’t remember over what. Nothing, actually. Nothing at all.
I walked over to Park. Once he shut down the phone, I told him that voting was a sacred rite of passage for real Americans. “What you mean by that?” Park said.
“Take it how you want.” I stepped close, inside his personal space. “No damage done yet to that magnificent oak. Why not stop?” Fred climbed the ladder to lop off some of the tree’s branches. The point of no return was fast approaching.
Ava spoke to me. “Dude, he’s right.” She finished her wine like water, stared at her glass as if she couldn’t believe it was empty, and tossed it at Park’s feet like a bouquet of flowers. She stared down at it. “I can’t believe I did that,” she said. “Macho bullshit.”
“Macho?” I said. “This tree is a wise woman. Nothing macho about that.”
“How does your wife put up with your crap?” Ava said. “Bobbi tells me she might be leaving you soon.” She smirked when she saw me taken aback. I knew it was a lie.
As if on cue, Bobbie and Louise, like cyborgs on batteries, hailed us from my deck. Louise flipped her head to get a loop of hair out of her line of sight, motioned with her glass of wine, calling me back from the brink. Many nights, she and I, pickled with booze, argued for hours about anything that came to mind. “Big Ger,” she would say, “you’re mentally ill.” It was our kind of fun. She had the right to call me out. The mysterious Ava didn’t.
Ava pulled her hair back behind her head into a ponytail. She looked dazed.
“This isn’t your fight,” I said. “Why don’t you go wait with Denzel and the ladies?”
But Denzel had approached without me seeing him and now stood beside me. “Dude,” he said, mocking Ava, “it’s his damn yard. It’s his tree. Let it be.”
Ava hummed a song under her breath, a ditty I could almost remember from the gone days. The gin in my brain was making me hear an echo, a refrain, as if the earth itself vibrated beneath my feet. I swear to God, I’m not a violent man, not by any means, but I wanted to punch her goddamn lights out. Denzel too. “Get thee all to a nunnery,” I said, mocking them both. “Either you’re in this fight to the end or you’re not.”
“Not,” Ava said.
