THE APPLE AND THE OAK
There is something infuriating about an Apple tree and it is
likely that, given a choice, the old Oak would have ignored her completely. The
fecundity of those short, gnarled branches spewing forth their sweet,
sickly-smelling fruit year after year after year was an offense to the slow,
measured gentility of the Oak; the calm, timely dropping of acorns; and the
steady sureness of his long, surging breaths.
Yet the closest
respectable Oak was over a mile away, and if he wanted any communication at all
beyond the intermittent messages sent with the birds, the apple tree was the
best available in the broad, grassy expanse of land broken only by shrubs and
the occasional Pine—which was, of course, entirely out of the question.
Evergreens, proud in their year-long foliage, were insufferable.
So, Apple it was,
and Apple it remained.
At first, the Oak
merely tolerated the young Apple’s insistent prattle as preferable to the
endless swishing wind and skittering squirrels and myriads of scratching,
boring insects. In time, though, he came to begrudgingly enjoy it, and to see
something of the value of the Apple’s impulsive, tempestuous ways. He began to
appreciate the joy contained in the exuberance. Their friendship grew and
deepened and then—to the surprise of both of them—began to take on a richness
that perhaps would not have been possible between just two Apples or two Oaks.
And so it
happened that the Apple—racing through life at what had once seemed to the Oak
so irresponsible a pace—grew older, faster than the Oak could quite comprehend.
Inevitably, the Oak began to muse to himself on the nature of mortality and the
separation it entailed, as year by year and season by season, the Apple
produced fewer and fewer of her luscious, wet fruit. Her branches, always
gnarled and bent, grew ever more crabbed, as rot invaded and death began to
show itself, bit-by-bit, along her tired, mottled branches.
The Oak was
hesitant to broach the subject to his smaller companion. One autumn month,
however, when the end seemed dangerously near, he finally mustered the courage.
When he spoke, it was with the same calm deliberation as ever, pacing his words
over weeks. “You know,” he said, “a Cardinal once told me that death is a
punishment. That if you die, it is because the Green Earth has seen how you
have lived, and disapproved.”
He paused, as
another week passed.
“And time was,”
he continued, “I would have agreed, and thought this fading of your life a just
and well-befitting thing, considering your ways. But now…?”
The question hung
in the air for months, as the cold wind blew the last of both their leaves to
the ground, and their sap slowed and settled into the shortness of the
ever-coldening days. The Apple, who in her earlier years had been too full of
the excitement and vigor of life to pause in such morbid contemplation, began
at last to turn in upon herself. She grew quieter, even, than winter demanded.
She was trying to think... fighting against the slowing of the times and
careful, for once, to formulate just the right response to the question
drifting, still, in the frosty air.
Then one day—a
storm.
It was by no
means the strongest storm either the Apple or the Oak had ever faced. Storms
were wisps, barely registering in the long, pacing consciousness of trees. But
this storm was different. It blew with steady insistence for a full week and
the Apple, still lost in thought, barely managed to hold on by her roots. For
the first time, she became unsure of the inevitability of herself. She
wondered, as the storm raged, if this might be the end.
And then, on the
storm’s final night, the impossible happened. The Oak began, in a grinding,
tearing groan, to rend and bend and fall and then—in a fraction of a fraction
of an instant—to crash to the ground in a thud that shook and loosened the
Apple’s deepest roots. She felt the worms and grubs and insects in the ground
below writhe their displeasure; but the Apple was not afraid, only... confused.
For the Oak,
however, the terrible moment of realization was inescapable as he felt himself
torn from his connection to the Good Earth, and then the slow rise of an ache
that burned through every fiber and every cell. He was, like every tree before
and since, alone in the long, slow time of death. From the Oak there broke
unbidden a groan of such pain and inchoate anguish that the Apple was unable to
gather any thoughts of any kind, nor to make any sense of what had occurred.
Her confusion grew and grew as the Oaken death-cry rumbled through the air and
soil and sky. For weeks this went on, and although the Oak’s cry grew softer
and began to fade, the Apple’s confusion remained.
She had long
found comfort in the Oak’s rumbling paternalism, an amusing steadiness
anchoring her fiery demeanor. But now, that comfort was gone. She was alone,
and the endless chittering of the shrubs and the steady buzz of the grass was
no consolation. If the Cardinal had been right—if death was always, in fact, a
punishment—then the Apple could not understand what the Oak might have done. He
was alive... he was a friend... and he was gone. It made no sense, at all.
And then, spring
came.
Steadily,
inevitably, life began to burst forth until one day, the Apple felt a tickle at
her roots. She heard, then, a strangely familiar voice—but younger, more
foolish, more brazen—rising in her shade as an acorn, tossed by that final
Fall, began to crack and break and release its green messenger toward the sky.
Although this did
not replace the old Oak, or answer the Apple’s questions, she nonetheless chose
to thrust up a root on either side, to protect the young tree from the whirling
blades that scythed the grass so close. She spoke to it, then, in calming
whispers, and told it of its place in the long, fibrous tapestry of life. She
told it of the old Oak, and of the wisdom that surged with sap through Oaken
wood.
The Apple
continued to hold on for years. And the little Oak grew. And life, as ever, was
there.
