The Apple Tree My Neighbor Cut Down

Chad and Amber were there too, not because of the tree, but because Chad had been telling anyone who’d listen for weeks that he was thinking about getting his real estate license, and Founders Day was exactly the kind of event where a man hoping to sell houses in this county in a year or two wanted to be seen shaking hands and smiling for the newspaper. Carl, who edits our little weekly paper and always covers Founders Day for the front page, was standing near the podium with his camera when Nora stepped up to the microphone.

She read through the first five trees quickly. An oak behind the old mill. A sycamore at the elementary school planted the year it opened. A pin oak in front of a farmhouse that’s been in one family since before the Civil War. Polite applause each time, a photo, a family stepping up to take their plaque.

Then she got to the sixth.

“Our final registry tree this year was a Grimes Golden apple tree on Fairview Street,” Nora said, “planted in 1976 by Joyce’s grandmother, and documented for us this past year by her grandson Logan as part of his school project. I want to be honest with everyone here, because I think this town deserves honesty more than it deserves a tidy ceremony. That tree was cut down eleven days ago. Not by storm damage. Not by disease. It was removed by a neighboring property owner while Joyce was out of town at her sister’s hospital bedside, without her knowledge or permission, after it had already been accepted onto this registry.”

I heard the crowd shift, that particular rustle a crowd makes when it goes from half listening to fully listening at once.

“I’d like to invite Logan up,” Nora said, “because I think what he has to show everyone matters more than anything I could say about it.”

My grandson is not a person who enjoys being looked at. He walked up those courthouse steps with his shoulders up around his ears, phone already in his hand, and he did not make a speech. He held the phone up to the podium microphone and pressed play, and Chad’s own voice came out over the courthouse square speaker system, tinny and clear. Free money for a tree I was going to have to pay somebody to take down anyway. Old lady’s gonna have a meltdown when she gets back. What’s she gonna do, cry about it to the historical society ladies at church.

I have never in my life heard two thousand people go quiet that fast.