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By Root 738 0

hickory, walnut, and red oaks towering to the sky, and underfoot the May apples, Dutchmen’s britches, wild ginger, poison ivy, shooting stars, and trillium. The canopy overhead protected the wildflowers from the sun, and the wavering golden light that came through was laced with swarming insects. I thought of the other deaths I’d lived through: There had been my mother, my father, my Aunt Kate, and a woman I’d known slightly in college. Grieving for those people had entailed also a general wonder and fear of death, for one’s own death, for the inevitable end as dust. Lizzy’s death, a child’s death, I considered, should be at remove from oneself, the grief more pure. I wished I could forget her for just a minute so that I could take a walk or be with the girls, or cook a meal, or wash my face, without feeling the weight bearing down on my shoulders, the leaden yoke around my neck, so heavy I felt I must stoop.

I came to the stand of sumac in what used to be a clearing. Beyond lay the orchard that had not been pruned or cared for in fifteen years. Howard had thought each spring that finally he would have time in the coming season to trim and spray and pick the existing apples, as well as plant new varieties. He was forever optimistic, forever deluded. The twenty trees seemed to lean toward me, their gnarled, bent forms like old men gathered together in the village square, whispering. They were judging me, I was sure they were. They frightened me, until I looked straight at them, at the flaking bark, at the denuded spots where deer had nibbled. There had been no discipline, no guiding hand in the trees’ rampant growth, each bough greedy for light and space, suckers spearing through to the heights, all a tangle, a glut of regeneration. I didn’t ever want to go back to the house, to Nellie and Howard. Better to stay in the orchard and be judged by the old trees who thought themselves stern but were ineffectual, temperamental as brats. I pulled myself up into the crotch of what I thought was a McIntosh, and then I climbed to a higher limb. I tried for the thousandth time to think where I could go to get better, where there might be someone or something to receive me if I ran away. I could at least sleep in a sling, hang it from a branch like an outlaw, and wait until the morning, when Nellie would be gone. There was a wood thrush in the distance, singing its love of beetles and berries, summer and twilight, and there came the faintest breeze in my face. The apple tree felt hospitable, and for just a bit I didn’t feel quite so sick. I didn’t hear anything but the bird and the rustle of the wind, and there was peace because it was hours before I’d have to go home again. I didn’t hear the twigs breaking, didn’t hear the tread of feet over dry grass. The noise of the cry struck and rang out in whorls through the night. No word, but terror was in the center of it, and even as it rippled away the sense hung in the air. I slipped, caught myself for a second, before I saw Theresa, and when she came clear I actually fell, spreading my arms out and sliding, scraping my back to the ground.

She was about ten feet away in the next row. Her open mouth was twisted, but she had made her noise and the quiet was like the silence after a car accident, when there’s nothing but smoke coming from the wreck.

She’d scared the bejesus out of me with her scream but I wasn’t going to let on. I stood up, absently dusting myself off, my mind racing, trying to think what to say, something about running from the funeral, about Mrs. Glevitch, something about how I was always thinking of Theresa, always thinking of Lizzy. That was what I was doing, always thinking of them.

“I—” I began.

“You scared me,” she said with tears in her voice. She was walking around in circles, patting her chest, breathing so heavily I thought she might hyperventilate. “I’m not up to a fright like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said meekly.

She dug in her shorts’ pocket and produced a pack of Camel Lights and a folder of matches. That Theresa carried cigarettes around was as unlikely