Short Story: The Tree

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The Tree

His drive home from seeing the specialist in Edmonton takes Matt Campbell past the old hobby farm he grew up on. His older sister, Michelle, and her family live there now after taking over the place when their mother, Carol, died ten years past. Matt hasn’t been back to see his sister or his old stomping grounds since his mother’s funeral.

He wouldn’t stop that evening if he had better news or someone waiting for him at home to talk to about his prognosis. He’d keep driving, except he sees four apple trees standing in the orchard on the farmyard where there should only be three. The sight forces him to pull his Jeep over to the side of the two-lane highway, do a U-turn, and drive onto the yard.

Matt drives past the house and down the gravel driveway to the small orchard where he and his father, Rob, planted seedlings when Matt was eight. He was so excited that day they returned from the nursery. He helped plant the “Goodland” apple trees on their ten-acre property. Dad warned him that it would take two to four years before the trees would produce fruit, and, in the meantime, it was Matt’s responsibility to keep them watered and watch for any signs of disease, like fire blight. It was a responsibility young Matt took seriously. Daily he inspected the trees and ensured they had enough moisture for growth.

Parking the Jeep along the driveway’s edge, Matt walks through deep grass, ignoring the ankle biters. The sun is setting in the west, creating a rosy glow in the sky and over everything around him. A warm September breeze rustles through the leaves on the heavy boughs of the four twenty-five-foot-tall trees. Four. And the one that shouldn’t be there stands the tallest and the fullest, the most laden with bright pink fruit just about ready to be picked.

He hears the rustling of her feet in the grass and smells the scent of her fabric softener before he hears his sister’s voice.

“It’s been a long time, brother.”

He turns his head to look at Michelle. She’s ten years his senior but doesn’t look it, her curly, red-dyed hair pulled back in a ponytail. Soft green eyes are glassy with tears, and behold him, a smile toys at the corners of her mouth. She carries a travel mug in each hand and hands one to him as if she expected him to show up.

“When did you plant a new tree here?” he asks, disapproving. No question about how she or her family are doing. Not even a hello.

Michelle looks at the branches and shakes her head. “We didn’t.”

“Had to have. I cut it down just after Dad died. Blight.”

The same day Matt saw the first apples forming where blossoms were dying off on the quartet of trees, he found signs of blight on the favorite, the largest and seemingly most robust—that same day. Rob came home early from the field, feeling sick. A week later, he and Carol sat Matt down to tell him the bad news: his dad had pancreatic cancer. It was terminal. Michelle wasn’t there to hear the news. She’d run away from home five years before. Matt had to process it alone.

As Rob vainly battled for a few extra months with his family by taking toxic chemotherapy, twelve-year-old Matt battled the fire blight on the tree. First, he treated the blossoms still in bloom with streptomycin, which only slowed the blight; it didn’t get rid of it. The tree was already infected. Despite it being too late to do anything to save the tree, Matt continued to fight, using biopesticides and copper sprays. They helped prevent the disease from infecting the other three trees but didn’t cure the sick one. It was doomed. It was only a matter of time before Matt was forced to cut it down to save the others.

“Then where did this tree come from?” Matt asks. “It shouldn’t be here.”

“It grew out of the stump,” Michelle says. “A miracle, I guess.”

“Couldn’t have. It wouldn’t produce good fruit from the original root, but it is. Impossible.”

Michelle shrugs and loops an arm around his. “We’re sitting down to supper. Come in and join us. Please.”

His first impulse is to beg off, climb into his Jeep, and drive home, but something compels him to accept her invitation. Maybe it’s the burning curiosity over the tree and his hope to learn more. Perhaps he needs someone to be around right now to talk to. Uncertain of his motivation, he nods anyway and follows her into the house he grew up in.

The décor changed over the years, but the house’s bones remain the same and bring back many memories, many of which he would like to leave untouched. The large country kitchen is essentially the same, with the dining nook where Pastor Ned and his wife Sylvia sat talking with Matt’s parents after the diagnosis, as Rob grew weaker and more deeply tortured with pain. Matt remembers standing outside the kitchen where he couldn’t be seen but heard every word of the adults’ conversation.

Pastor Ned shared the Gospel with Rob, who’d never been much of a churchgoer and usually stayed home Sunday mornings when Carol dragged Matt and Michelle to Sunday School with her. After Michelle had run away, just Matt went to church with his mom. But as Pastor Ned shared, Rob listened silently while holding Carol’s hands. Then he prayed the Sinner’s Prayer, following Ned’s lead, speaking in a voice softer and gentler than Matt had ever heard him before.

Fall turned into winter, and winter to spring. The following April came, with most of the snow melted away by the third week, neither Rob nor the tree did well. Matt had cut off limbs with blight on them, but he knew that soon all the trees would blossom, and he had to cut down the sick one before it infected the healthy trees. Matt put it off, delayed action out of his love for the tree, but couldn’t delay any longer. He turned bitter.

May first, Rob died. A week later, his mother held the funeral at her church, with Pastor Ned officiating. It was the strangest, most moving funeral Matt attended.

Matt sits at the dinner table with Michelle, her husband, Cory, and their youngest of three children, Sally-Anne. The other two children have grown and live in Edmonton, from where Matt has come before his unexpected stop at the farm.

“The meal is great,” Matt tells his sister. “Thank you.”

She smiles at the compliment.

“What brings you by after so long?” Cory asks, never one to tiptoe around sensitive issues. “You’ve driven by many times without stopping in the past. Why tonight? Not that we’re complaining. Glad to see you again.”

Matt isn’t one to beat around the bush, either. “I just came from seeing a doctor in Edmonton. I have pancreatic cancer. I’m dying.”

Silence is around the table momentarily as everyone takes in what he said. Michelle’s tearful eyes meet Matt’s and hold their gaze. “But Matt, you’re not ready yet.”

Those were Pastor Ned’s words to Rob during that visit around the same table years before. Rob responded by making sure that he got ready.

A few months later, Matt followed his ailing dad to the orchard. Rob was determined to go, and Matt went along to ensure he didn’t collapse somewhere between the house and the plot where father and son had planted those trees.

Rob stood tall but frail, a wisp of the man he’d once been, and stared at the blighted tree condemned to die. He didn’t seem to notice Matt standing there with him when he talked to the tree as if conversing with an old friend.

“Well, we’re not gonna make it, are we? Sorry. I fought hard. I know you did, too. I’m ready to go now. My ticket to glory’s been punched. How ‘bout you?”

The next morning, Carol found Rob dead in their bed beside her. His train had left during his sleep.

“Dad was ready,” Matt mutters sourly, pushing his half-eaten dinner aside. “He said his prayer. God supposedly gave him life, then let him die anyway. It didn’t save him.”

Michelle shakes her head and places a gentle hand on Matt’s. “But don’t you see? It did. God did. And because Dad said that prayer, I was saved, too. It rescued both of us.”

Michelle ran away from home at seventeen when Matt was just seven. He learned as he grew older how she got into heavy drinking, partying, and addicted to heroin. It broke his parents’ hearts. But she saw Rob’s obituary in the Edmonton Journal and attended his funeral. Her life was changed by that day. Matt saw it happen.

Rob’s funeral was unique among those typically conducted at Carol’s church. People talked about it for years following. Before he passed, Rob had asked pastor Ned to have an altar call at his service. Matt hadn’t known what that meant until he witnessed it that rainy day in May.

Pastor Ned waited until after the eulogy and testimonials to give the Gospel message Rob had asked for—the message of Jesus’s death on the tree at Calvary to pay for the sins of humankind and his resurrection three days later to pave the way for those who place their faith in Him to share in eternal life. Ned asked anyone who wanted the forgiveness and life eternal Rob had found to come to the altar to pray, to repent, to be saved.

Ten people left their seats to stand next to Rob’s casket and receive Christ’s gift. Michelle was one of them.

“I’d still be hooked on one drug or another, or more likely, I’d be dead and in hell,” Michelle says from across the dinner table as Matt and her family listen. “But Daddy found Jesus, and Jesus took Daddy home. And when that happened, I came home, was saved, and was set free.”

Matt looks away from her to stare at his glass of water, to think. Michelle’s life was saved by death—first Christ’s, and then Rob’s—is that what she’s telling him?

“Kinda like your tree,” Michelle adds, looking out the window into the night toward the orchard where four trees stand when logic dictates only three should.

“You chopped that tree down,” Cory informs Matt to break an uncomfortable silence that has descended on the kitchen, “but sometimes trees will grow back from the stump. And your cut was above the graft union of the original seedling, so that’s why the new tree that sprouted has produced good fruit. It’s now the healthiest tree in the yard.”

Dinner ends, and Matt thanks Michelle and Cory and heads to his Jeep for the rest of his drive home. He lives alone and has never married. No woman has ever had the patience for the bitterness Matt holds in his soul that’s been there since Rob—and the tree—died.

But is it possible Michelle and Cory are right? Is the tree that grew back some kind of sign? And if so, of what?

Matt walks past his vehicle and returns to the orchard. He kneels at the base of the tree. His favorite tree, resurrected, it seems.

Abruptly, Matt understands.

Rob’s cancer cut down his diseased body, but it couldn’t end his life because that had been grafted into the body of Christ, life eternal. The cut happened after the graft, not before it, just like Matt’s tree cut happened after the graft union, not before it. So, the fruitful tree grew back, only healthier than before. The old tree’s death allowed for the new tree and good fruit. Rob’s death allowed Michelle to come home and be saved. Grafted into the eternal tree of life. And, by looking at her family, her life produced good fruit.

Matt weeps, hiding his face in his hands. Bitterness kept him from understanding until now—now that he is losing everything and needs from God, everything. He wants to be grafted in, too. He has blight. Soon his body will be cut down, thrown into the fire. But is there a chance he might be resurrected, too—that from his life will come good fruit?

A hand rests on his shoulder. It’s Michelle again. She’s on her knees beside him.

“I want to live,” Matt whispers. “I want to produce fruit. I don’t want to die forever.”

“Pray with me,” Michelle says.

And Matt prays the same prayer Rob prayed and that Michelle prayed. And the graft is made again. When they end the prayer, Matt looks into his sister’s eyes.

“Promise me; you’ll have an altar call at my funeral?”

Michelle hugs him close. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”