Forty Trees on the Nursing Home Lawn

“That’s two thousand six hundred dollars,” she said. “Cash. That’s what I owed you. I’m sorry it took me till December.”

Hallie took it. She didn’t open it.

“I sold my new baler back to the dealer in Wausau,” Joanne said. “Took a loss on it. I’ll run the old one another year. Duane says he can keep it going.” She looked over at Grandma. “Dad ran that old one twelve years. I can run it one more.”

Grandma Irene didn’t say anything. But she nodded, the same slow nod she’d given Hallie the night the lights went on.

“There’s one more thing,” Joanne said. She was still standing in front of Hallie. “I need somebody to shear next summer. Four thousand again, maybe a few more. I’d pay a dollar a tree.”

Hallie looked up at her.

“I’m not asking you to forget what I did,” Joanne said. “I’m asking if you’d come back. You’re the best I’ve had. I’d be lucky to have you.”

The room was quiet. You could hear the television going in the room next door, a game show, and the cart squeaking in the hall.

Hallie looked at me. I didn’t nod and I didn’t shake my head. It was hers to decide. It had been hers to decide since June.

She looked at Grandma Irene, at the branch in the glass on the windowsill.

“Okay,” she said. “A dollar a tree.”

She stood up off the edge of the bed. She put out her hand. Joanne took it, and they shook on it, a real handshake, the second one between them. Right there in front of Grandma.

And Grandma Irene reached out from her chair, with those thin hands, and took hold of both of theirs where they were joined. She held on. She didn’t say anything at all. She just held their hands together in her lap and looked out the window at the trees, and nobody moved for a long time.

On the second Saturday of January, Pam called to say it was time.

Matt and Cole pulled the posts out of the frozen ground. Hallie wound the lights onto spools for next December, because Pam had already asked. And Hallie and Joanne carried the trees.

They took one end each, Hallie at the butt and Joanne at the top, and walked them up the lawn to Joanne’s farm truck parked by the curb. Forty trees. Two at a time would have been faster. They carried them one at a time anyway, down the rows the way they’d stood, and laid them in the truck bed.

I stood at the end of the lawn with a thermos of coffee and watched them go back and forth. They didn’t talk much. Every so often Joanne would say something, and Hallie would nod, and once I heard Joanne say “hand span and a half,” and Hallie said, “I know, Aunt Joanne,” and they both smiled.

I looked up at the building.

Grandma Irene was at her window on the east end. The aides had wheeled her there after lunch, the blanket over her knees. She had one hand flat on the glass, the way she’d had it the night the lights went on.

In her other hand she was holding the branch from the north block. It was dry by then, and some of the needles had dropped, but she wouldn’t let them throw it out.

She was watching her daughter and her great-granddaughter carry the last of the trees off the lawn together, one at a time, the way Walt would have done it.