In the backyard of Lester Vance’s dilapidated country house, the tree had always stood like a lone sentinel, tall, imposing, and motionless. As they went by, kids muttered about it.
Adults looked at it again but remained silent. Lester, too? Lester protected it as if it were made of gold, growling at his own brother and anybody else who approached too closely.
The tree was not mourned when Lester passed away. However, the quiet it left behind started talking as soon as it dropped.
Before the funeral, Silas Vance hadn’t seen his brother in more than two years. As children, they were almost inseparable, but pain and time tend to erode that bond.
Lester was a calmer, darker man after his time in Vietnam. Once-rivulets of conversation gave way to trickles of forced politeness and awkward nods. Then silence, finally.
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Silas, however, was always concerned.
With his hat in hand, he stood beneath the bleak sky and watched as his brother’s casket vanished into the ground.
Just a few neighbors and veterans paying their last respects—no wife, no kids. Silas, the last to depart, stayed and gazed at the icy stone bearing Lester’s name. It seemed both too early and too late.
The deed to the house, which was now his by default, was given to him later that week. Silas felt the weight of regret and nostalgia as he drove up to the property.
The green paint was flaking, the gate was dilapidated, and the porch creaked as it had twenty years ago. And that tree was there. larger than before.
It was about twenty feet away from the back porch, its roots raising a portion of the brick path surrounding it, and its bark damaged with age. Silas scowled. The tree still radiated something, a past, a vitality.
He recalled how, as a youngster, Lester had forbidden him to play close to it. Even as an adult, his brother became furious at the mere suggestion of taking down the tree.
Lester once snarled, “Leave it alone.” “You have no idea what’s keeping it together.”
Silas had thought that was a metaphor, perhaps a lyrical reference to his state of mind. He wasn’t so sure anymore, though, as he stared at it by himself.
The garden still needed to be cleared. Silas chose to completely renovate the house before selling it because he had no intention of staying there for the long run.
No matter how magnificent it was, the tree had to go.
