Treed Read online

  Treed by Virginia Arthur

  This story is set in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, California. Native American tribe information is based on true history. The name of the rancho, though based on Sonoma County land grant history, is fictional. Though the creation of all my characters are influenced by people I have met throughout my life, they are fictional. Any resemblance to specific persons living or dead is coincidence.

  ISBN: 978-1-5323-7736-5

  Copyrighted by Virginia Arthur, Ecological Outreach Services (EOS), 2018

  No part of this book can be illegally copied and/or distributed.

  Dedication

  In the early ‘70’s, when I was growing up in Ohio,

  my mother bought a sugar maple tree from a local nursery

  to plant in our new stark suburban front yard.

  The new house faced south so got hit by intense summer sun.

  (We didn’t have air conditioning then; nobody did).

  Regardless of the practicality, this angered my father because

  we didn’t have a lot of money and she “just wasted some of it on a damn tree”.

  As the tree grew, so did my father’s love for it.

  He could often be found sitting under it,

  listening to his Big Band music and reading.

  He was a quiet man sitting under a quiet tree.

  The two of them seemed to understand one another.

  As if understanding it was loved, though it still had a skinny trunk,

  it developed a large rounded crown to shade us and the house.

  We spent many hours under it,

  be it spraying one another with the hose,

  or later, standing in front of it for prom photos.

  It became a beloved member of the family.

  After my father died, about 12 years later, the house went up for sale.

  Aside from my brother, following thousands before us throughout American history,

  the rest of the family headed west to California.

  Not long after the new owners moved in, my brother called me,

  near tears, maybe even in shock—

  the new owners had cut the tree down.

  We’re still grieving.

  This book is dedicated to my mother and her sugar maple.

  It is also dedicated to anyone who has ever defended a tree, the right of a tree to exist.

  Even after these defenders die, their legacy of life lives on, a true gift to the rest of us.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Woodman, Spare That Tree

  TREED

  Virginia Author

  Valley Oak (Quercus lobata)

  Endemic to California. Pre-asphalt records include trees that were 500-600 years old and over 25 feet in circumference.

  Because it thrives best in open spaces, something in short supply in California, after first noticing the open space, next you notice the tree. It is the one you slow your car down to view, first in the distance, on the horizon, you see it, 100 feet or taller, the rounded crown, the branches of which can grow to be over 70 feet. The tree beckons to you, for shade, serenity. There’s a dirt road to it. You take it. Once under the comfort of its protective crown, you feel enticed to climb up but first you look around. What if somebody sees you? Then you wonder why you’re even thinking like this. Once inside the living scaffolding of the crown, you feel different. It feels amazing. You don’t know why only that the words “comforting” and “free” come to mind. You lean out, holding on to one of the limbs. You can see for miles, the traffic on the highway that you came from—oblivious; scrapes in the earth for new houses around which is a field of wild oat, a coyote padding through it. You lean back against one of the iron-strong limbs and sigh. You’re supposed to be at a meeting. You don’t want to come down.

  This is the tree that has a story even if it cannot speak, the main story being it has survived the pressures of time. Aside from surviving the elements, drought, fire, disease, lightning, it has survived the greatest pressure of all—humankind. For this alone, it deserves our greatest respect and protection.

  “These are the absolute monarchs, steadfast lords of the country-side,

  governing the landscapes in which they reside.”

  Oaks of California, Pavlik et al.

  Or at least once they did…

  It’s the year 1815. A squat, bronze-faced elderly Pomo woman, her hair covered in a patterned cotton scarf, the material the result of a trade with one of the strange new breed of men from the coast in exchange for one of her baskets, spreads a handful of acorns out across a boulder. Dutifully standing next to her is a Pomo boy and girl. The boy is restless, wanting to join a game, while the girl, knowing this will be her job in the near future, is specifically told to look and listen.

  The Pomo woman points to a black oak acorn and says its name. She does the same thing for the blue and valley oaks. She goes through it again. As soon as the boy identifies each type correctly, he is allowed to join the game. Even though she gets it right the first time, the girl is asked to repeat the drill a few more times. The elder Pomo woman then turns around and points to a 100 year-old valley oak growing in a field of California grasses and wildflowers. They walk to the tree where the two of them look at the leaves and gather more acorns to be used for bread and soup. The elder Pomo woman tells the girl the tree will grow to be wide and strong because it is in the open, there is a creek nearby, and the soil is dark and rich. She tells the girl the tree is sacred.

  Within a few years, the elder Pomo woman will die and this particular colony of the tribe will be torn apart by Russian marauders and disease. The boy will be killed in one of the struggles to defend their village, his parents slaughtered. The girl will become the slave of a Russian fur-trader. Miraculously, the tree will go unharmed for another 200 years.

  ***************************************

  In 2015, Pope Francis discussed the state of the world. Global indifference. This is how he put it. Nobody cared.

  Forty two years before this time of indifference, an unassuming couple in their 30’s can be seen walking through a field of native wildflowers in Santa Rosa, California. He is wearing a gentle expression on his tanned face. His eyes are brown, his shoulder-length wavy brown hair lifts in the spring breeze; she is longer-legged than him, about an inch taller. Her blue eyes far more intense. Her long wavy brunette hair is streaked blonde from the sun. She walks behind him. When he bends over to sniff the lupine, she bumps into him. They laugh. They discuss the flowers, the birds, the lizards. They stop to let a darkling beetle cross ‘the road’, its ass in the air. It takes the couple almost two hours to walk a mile but they have no place to be. It’s Sunday and Sundays are good days to amble through a meadow of native wildflowers. They are heading towards “their tree”, a 110-foot tall valley oak, the crown almost as wide as the tree is tall, some limbs spreading to almost 70 feet, the trunk inching toward 20 feet around. Following the drill from doing it so many ti
mes, the woman ‘sets the table’ removing a tablecloth from their picnic basket on which she places cheese, homemade bread, apples, grapes, chocolate, and wine. He pours the wine. Later when they are mildly drunk, they fall asleep and tuck into one another. A harrier gliding low over a drainage turns its head to look at them, then looks forward again.

  Forty two years later, within the time of indifference, specifically mid-May 2015, the woman, her long legs now supported by older, wider hips, is walking in circles, talking to herself, trying to relocate a place that no longer exists. Her husband is dead. She gets back in her older model Cherokee Jeep. All these apartment buildings! She parks and gets out again, her still wavy but now shoulder-length gray hair is still streaked with strands of its original color. She rubs her left shoulder, sore from the drive but she’s strong, a walker from way back. She isn’t surprised she can’t recognize anything. Lost in a sea of buildings, parking lots, she decides it was stupid to try; then she sees it, the wide canopy of a tree, spreading above flat-roofed apartment buildings. Maybe it’s her oak, aged, like her. She cuts through an apartment building walkway, emerging out into the open—and sees it. Her heart skips a beat. Like her, the tree is a little bigger around but still healthy, and also like her, like all of them now, it lives on a small lot surrounded by development, its circulatory system cut off, cut out. Garbage of all kinds is scattered throughout the lot; discarded construction materials, old boards and cement footings, part of a bike, two tires, lots of plastic bags. She spies a few cats cattin’ around, interested in one another, like a gang. Skateboard ramps made from mounded red dirt topped with old boards and plywood occupy one corner. She stands before the tree. The tree recognizes her. She weeps.

  Chapter 1

  “That old lady is hugging Pa Pa’s tree,” a gangly 12 year old black girl says to her 15 year old brother. They peer out the window of their apartment. “It’s kind of pretty, watching her do that.”

  “Too bad it’s not going to be there much longer,” says the boy.

  “Hope she knows.”

  “Of course she knows. Probably why she’s here. To say goodbye.”

  “Sad. It’s not like we need another drug store.”

  “It’s not “we” they’re worried about,” says their mother as she walks into the room.

  Maybelline sank to the base of the tree. How was it this terrestrial vestige was still here? Looking up, she saw the for sale sign—of course, there had to be a for sale sign. A pod of kids playing on ‘skateboard corner’ stopped what they were doing to stare at her. A discussion ensued. One kid flipped a plywood ramp off its mound and when he fell, all the other kids laughed. This deflected some of the attention but they returned to staring at her. She prepared herself but they stayed put, maybe choosing to make fun of her. She couldn’t tell. She would return the next morning. She had to go back to her hotel, let her emotions go, let the grief in. She didn’t have a choice.

  “It’s for sale,” she thought as the smell of bleach from the hotel pillowcase filled her nose. A bit uncanny, the lot being for sale right now, while she was in town. Finishing her glass of wine with a gulp, she dropped off to sleep, “it’s for sale” still in her mind, framing the backdrop of her dreams. “It’s for sale,” she thought upon opening her eyes in the morning. It would have been so much easier if the tree was gone; this is what she was expecting. That it was still standing in the middle of a city, still so majestic, sublime, divine…She could just gather acorns from it and plant them in different places throughout Santa Barbara then move on, try to get on the Senior Hostel trip to Costa Rica. She had been wanting to see Costa Rica for years.

  “Damn it,” she growled into the air of her hotel room. Angrily kicking the stiff hotel sheets off her legs, she got up in a start. She looked out the window of her room. “What am I going to do with an undeveloped lot in Santa Rosa?” she thought. Then again, it would probably be too expensive for her. She would call the realty office and ask the price. It would be exorbitant, she would laugh, hang up, collect some acorns then go home—all respects paid, both to the tree and to Jay, Millicent, Ted—pay her respects to that time when the biggest stress of the day was finding the picnic basket.

  She went to breakfast and read the local paper, hoping the desire to call about the lot would pass…

  She called the “Bock Realty Company”.

  “I had friends back then, early 70’s, with the same last name as your agency, Millicent and Ted.”

  “This is Millicent,” said a gravelly voice.

  “Millicent?”

  “This has to be Maybelline Emmons because you were always the only one to call me “Millicent” (versus Millie) plus I can still hear Minnesota in your voice.”

  Maybelline was startled into realizing the painful fact that very few people were left in her life that would know this; that in 1954 when she was 12, her father moved the family, her mother and one sister, out to California to take an electrical job at General Dynamics. Her sister had long since returned to Minnesota.

  “Oh my God.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Myyyyyy God.”

  “Who would think?”

  “It’s been what, 40-some years?”

  “Somethin’ like that. Lord. Are you wanting to move here? Where do you live now?” Millicent felt a wave of emotion hit her.

  “Still in Santa Barbara. It’s about a day’s drive.”

  “Santa Barbara. And Jay?”

  “Left me a few years ago.”

  “Left you? Jay? I can’t even imagine it, and so late in your marriage. Younger woman? It was always “Jay and May”. Nobody ever said “Jay” or “May”; just “Jay and May”, like it was one person.”

  “Oh, no,” Maybelline chuckled. “I meant he left me here on earth. He died just a few years ago, stroke, the second one. He lived to be 81. We had a good life.” She paused. “Gosh it was a crazy couple years, living here with Jay’s cousin and his wife. We had nothing and I mean nothing in common. She was a traditional girl from the south. She could never wrap her head around my business degree and the idea that Jay and I would run the locksmith business together. When Miles would show something to Jay, I insisted on learning it too. She had such disdain for me because I wasn’t carrying-out my wifely duty—having babies. After Jay learned the ropes from Miles, that uncomfortable time with them, my dad started dropping hints. He was so lonely after mom died so we moved to Santa Barbara and there we stayed. I’m still there but sold the business, the house. Now I’m on one side of a duplex. It’s okay. I miss Jay and the dog, Lockey, ha. I lost them both the past few years. It was very hard.” She paused then added, “still is.”

  “When was that?”

  “When was what exactly?”

  “That you and Jay left Santa Rosa?”

  “1974.”

  “1974,” Millicent repeated, marveling. “Long time ago.”

  “Somehow, yes, it became a long time ago,” Maybelline repeated. They paused.

  “You wanna’ cat? I know where you can get a damn cat! Two, three!”

  Maybelline laughed. “I know! That lot comes with a few, huh?”

  “How many did they have when you two were living with them? Five?”

  “Cats?” Maybelline asked

  “No, kids, sorry. We’re going all over the place. Been too long.”

  “Four but by the time Jay took over Mile’s business, it was five.”

  “It’s was Women’s Liberation then, remember? What a crock,” Millicent coughed-out.

  “I think we women had a harder time with one another than we did with the men.”

  “I’m sorry about Jay and your pup, Maybelline. You two were the only couple I thought would stay together for life. You had each other, as best friends. So no kids I take it?”

  “No. That was a conscious decision. He got a vasectomy when he was, I don’t know, 35?” Maybelline laughed. “Our kids were dogs from the pound.” She
paused. “There are days, Millicent, when I don’t get out of bed…This is your agency then?”

  “Not anymore. I’m actually just covering for my daughter-in-law. I turned it over to my son, Jim, and his wife. I think she’s about to make her first big commercial sale and in fact—” Millicent stopped herself. She started again. “I still do a little on my own but for the most part I’m retired.” She paused. “I remember that land too. Gosh it was pretty. The wildflowers. A lot of big oaks then too. Hundreds. Thousands maybe.”

  “Our picnics. It was so lovely. So simple.”

  “How could I forget? Now if we tried it, we’d probably get arrested, and anyway, there’s no land left to sit on. Whatever happened with Jay’s family farm in Oregon? They sell out? Everything covered in houses now like here?”

  “No, no. It’s quite wonderful, really. After Jay’s father died and his mother went to live with her sister in

  Seattle, Jay’s younger brother and his wife took it over and now their kids are running it, doing organic farming, large scale. It’s doing well. I think it will stay in the family. They want the land left open, undeveloped. It’s so refreshing. I still visit when I can, and help out.” She paused. “I remember you and Ted divorced—”

  “Lord, at least 25 years ago now. I was in my 50’s. It’s so stereotypical, I can’t even talk about it. It’s too embarrassing. Younger woman and all that crap but he’s moved on since her. I’ve lost count. I always thought you were after Ted,” Millicent chuckled.

  “What? Nooo—”

  “Or maybe I was worried Ted was after you. I bet you’re still beautiful. You might actually find him attractive now, Maybelline. He might be in between women too. Guess he’s playing tennis at his retirement place in San Diego. You want his phone number?”