Soul of Oak

Word has come to me that I am to be demolished. Torn down. My beams and hinges are to be stacked and discarded.

I only learned of it yesterday, when the developers stepped through my entryway. There was a cluster of them. All men. They seemed joyful at the thought of my destruction.

“It’s spacious, I’ll give it that,” one of them said. “But it’s an eyesore. Just awful.”

“Actually, this is a perfect place to lay out a pool,” another one added. “If you head around back, you’ll see that the land tapers off just before the tree line. So guests could have a nice view of the countryside as they swim.”

“I’ll take that under consideration. It’s not a bad suggestion,” the first man answered.

I did have at least one defender, who spoke kindly on my behalf. “This barn is nearly three centuries old,” he said. “It weathered the Revolutionary War and then the Civil War. It was a way station on the Underground Railroad at one point. It was a barracks during the First World War, and the USO even used it to stage dances for soldiers on leave from World War Two.” He counted these points off on his fingers as he spoke. “It would make a hell of a tourist attraction,” he added.

Then a third man spoke up. ”People don’t care about that stuff,” he said. “They want swimming pools, alcohol, hot lifeguards, fun.”

“But there’s plenty of places to build a pool,” the man countered. “Why here?”

“I don’t care if a pool goes here or not,” the first man suddenly said. “But this barn really has to go. It’s as ugly as it can be, and a safety hazard to boot. First time some kid wanders in here and gets hurt we’ll be sued clean out of business.”

And I naturally found this talk hurtful. How ignorant men can be in their dreams and ambitions. I take it they have some kind of plan for these grounds, something that doesn’t involve the use of a barn.

But to tear me down? Have they no inkling of my story? For centuries, I have withstood the elements. I have watched humans come and go, standing over them like an ever-faithful sentry, giving them shelter in times of storm, housing their livestock and storing their grains. Ghosts have moved in and taken up residence within me, finding comfort in my immutable silence.

Pennsylvania Dutch I am. Hewn from white oak and raised by settlers’ hands. Painted a rusty red and originally decorated with folkish hex signs, I have withstood the tribulations of time. Fire could not fell me, nor could the earthquakes of previous centuries. When my builders sold me off, I passed into Amish hands, serving those stalwart and hearty people who painted over my hex signs and used my innards as a carriage house and stable. Then my underground basin went dry, and there was no more water in the wells. My new owners dug and dug, but human thirst propelled them to venture on.

Before I was a barn, I was a tree. White oak, as I have said. But before I was a tree, I too was a man. I was Munsee of the Iroquois Nation, vigorous and in my prime, a warrior and a hunter, a giver of warmth and sustenance for all who looked to me.

But then the settlers came, pale in countenance and fearful in aspect. The very sight of my kind drove them to frightful tremors. They burned our corn, slaughtered our deer, and waged ceaseless war upon us. They took what was not theirs and, on one bloody afternoon, a youth with a shock of yellow hair felled me with a blunderbuss, its flared muzzle flashing white as it bored an iron round into me.

I might have moved on then, at the moment of my death. Except I was angry and wanted vengeance. I refused to go to that place where spirits travel. I ignored the summons from beyond and made my home in the wooden heart of a great white oak. I was hoping to bide my time and take possession of a passerby, any passerby really, someone I could drive to madness and use to inflict great suffering on an enemy settlement somewhere.

Only I was felled a second time, before I had the opportunity to find my human vessel. My limbs were sawed and my trunk was planed. I was passed from hand to hand, with pieces of me being fashioned into crossbeams while other parts became support slats and door panels. Still, I remained wood bound, insistent on my cause, determined to birth more suffering on those who had brought it here in the first place.

And then, suddenly, before I even understood what had happened, I had been reassembled into the shape I occupy now. The men who raised me congratulated each other on a job well done and celebrated late into the evening with steins of drink that made them loud and boisterous.

Yet as I overheard their enthused descriptions of my shape and form, the perfection in my peaks and gables, I found my anger at last subsiding, and a wish to serve began unfolding in me. These were not the same settlers who had murdered me, after all. They bore me no ill will or animosity. Indeed, they found me beautiful and sang my praises for days on end. Countless travelers even made their way to me, some of them laying their heads in my loft for an evening’s rest. I kept them safe from wind and rain, channeling the light from the distant stars into their slumbering dreams.

The community that grew up around me loved me without reserve. I was declared a thing of beauty, an emblem of prosperity and wellbeing. I could no longer hate the pale travelers who had encroached upon and then taken our lands from us. I was one of them now, a central figure in their daily labors, the very emblem of what they had come to accomplish.

Now, centuries later, I learn I am facing extinction. I am to be disassembled, all memory of me to be wiped clean. But what these developers don’t know, can’t know, really, is that I have a recourse of my own. It comes in the form of Edith Mock, who is my actual and legal owner. She inherited me, along with the parcel of land upon which I sit, some decades before.

In her girlhood, little Edith took refuge beneath my rafters. Shy by nature and friendless by disposition, she spent a succession of days and years moving from stall to stall, tending to the livestock and passing whole afternoons hiding in my lofts, absorbed in the pages of one massive tome or another.

Gradually, I found my way into her mind. Burrowing beneath her layers of thought, I uncovered a hidden history of shame inflicted upon her by her own grandfather, a stifling tyrannical overlord whose hideous deeds merit no repeating. It was vile, the pain he visited upon her, perhaps even unforgivable. Slowly I worked to replace the shame with my own affections, buffeting Edith with the bulwark of compassion. I did it subtly, without notice, so that the young girl came to love me in return without even understanding why.

In time a link was forged, one that allowed me to read Edith’s thoughts, even from afar. I came to know the rhythm of her moods, the constant rise and fall of her emotions. I could even communicate with her if I so chose. I could reach out to her in her dreams and send along impulses of hope and optimism.

The link we’ve had - no, continue to have – is a solid one despite the passing of so many years. Edith is old now, nearing her final stretch of days, and yet I am just as able to comprehend her thoughts as if she were still the same ten-year-old girl who once took shelter inside my oaken walls.

And so I have been calling out to her, summoning her in her dreams. Replaying for her the images of the developers standing in my doorway and discussing my inevitable fate. I know they will anger her. I know the depth of emotion she bears for me. I know how she will respond to the thought of my being demolished. I need only to wait upon her good graces for my survival.

“Help me,” I have called out to her. “Don’t let this happen to me. Save me from this destruction.”

And so, today, they are back, these developers. They stand outside my walls, not deigning even to come inside. I can hear their trenchant whisperings all the same, their mumbled plots to destroy me.

“It’ll probably take about a week to knock the structure down and haul away all the lumber,” one of them says. ‘

“Well let’s not waste any time,” another one says. “We need to get this thing pulled down right away.”

But then, in the distance, there’s the sound of a car pulling up along the gravel driveway. There’s the distinct crunch of gravel under tire as the vehicle draws to a slow.

“Wonder who this can be,” one of the men says vacantly, shielding his eyes to peer across the field. The sounds of a dying motor and a slamming door echo across the expanse, carried on the wind the way a song moves in the air.

In the distance, a man approaches. He’s carrying a bag of some sort slung across his shoulders.

“I guess he’s looking for us,” one of them remarks.

“I reckon so,” says another.

Gradually, he approaches. The men stand in a semicircle, facing him and waiting for him to draw near.

“Help you?” one of them finally shouts.

“I’m looking for an Everett Mock,” the calls back across the field.

“That’s me,” chimes another. He keeps his arms folded as the man approaches.

“Mr. Mock, I’m Harvey Lamb,” the man informs him, reaching across the semicircle to shake hands. “I represent Edith Mock, your grandmother. She called me just this morning and asked me to draw up these papers, which, in essence, are an application to grant this barn historical status.” Here he points to me. “While the application is pending, this structure is to be left completely intact. Mrs. Mock also has stipulated that removal of the barn will result in invalidation of the development grant. While my client is aware of the complexities this building presents for a resort project like your own, she also views the barn as being historically significant and will countenance no efforts at its removal.”

“So, you’re a lawyer?” Mock asks him.

“That I am,” he says. Here he produces a card and hands it across. “Any questions you may have can be directed to my office or one of my associates. Just please see to it that this structure stays intact.” And with that, he nods slightly and moves back across the field towards his waiting vehicle.

“Well, son of an orangutan. If that don’t beat all,” Mock says between his teeth. “Which one of you told my grandmother about this?”

The others simply stare at him, ashen faced. “Well come on,” he demands. “Somebody did.”

“Wasn’t me,” one of them answers. “Me neither,” says another. Then, suddenly, an effusive barrage of denials makes its way around the circle of men.

Now is when I want most the ability to speak. If only I had the voice, I would tell Mr. Mock in the plainest language possible: “It was me. I told her. I went to your grandmother and pulled her from her dreams and troubled her slumber. I reached across that chasm and saved my own life once more.”

“You cannot destroy me,” I would say. “I am eternal.”