Deadwood

Tryin’ to sort out the muck in my brain. I got too much to do, too little help, too little time.

My brother tells me to tear down the half dead tree. He yells and yells, but I got other things to do. Keeping up with your half dead mother who is waiting for the pear tree to die before she does, just says softly and painfully something I cannot possibly say out loud. We tried to make our fortune going to California but we ain’t found nothing but dried up land and half dead things.

“Welp!” My brother comes scratching his neck and sitting next to me on the couch. “That tree sure is a goner. When will you tear it down? I can’t plant a new one till you do it!”

My mother starts crying from the other room.

We look at each other, quietly asking the other to go check on her.

“We’re already in debt up to our ears, Jay. It don’t matter anymore. Nothin’ does,” I say.

Mother is yelling now. “Dan! Get over here!”

Jay smirks, as she is calling for me.

I remember the good old days when mother would boost us up on the pear tree and tell us little stories. Of how we will be rich one day and not have to worry about anything.

We didn’t have a father. He left long before we were born, as we were born twins, born August 22nd, 1955.

Our little family has always been broken. Not like that pear tree. It used to bear fruit. Our family, it never got past the sapling stages.

That pear tree felt more like home than this little place we lived in—our three person house was rotting from the inside out.

I saw my mother and I tried to console her.

She was in pain(not physical, possibly imagined).

“Did you do the scratch test? That’s how you check if a tree is dead,” She mumbles, turning over in bed. “It’s also got a lean to it too,” she laughed humorlessly. “That’s how it tells you something’s wrong.”

“Yeah, just like you do, ma,” I gently say, patting her back. “You gotta lean a bit when you walk.”

She laughs softly, and I smile.

“Hay Dan! Hay!” My brother yells.

I go over and ask in an annoyed voice, “What?”

I think to myself I should just move in with my girlfriend Marlene already. I’ve had enough of this shit.

“Look at that!” He is standing by the sliding glass door by the kitchen, pointing at something.

I go over, sighing heavily.

But, as I look—I do see something.

“Look! Am I crazy? Is that—is that a little hanging fruit?” My brother asks, clearly astonished.

I squint and notice that yes, he’s right. There’s a tiny little flowering nub of something growing on that godforsaken pear tree.

My mother suddenly gets up, and starts walking toward us, like a mummy arisen from a long, deep death-like sleep. A mummy with her eyes open and her mouth open, too.

Then my brother, who was more of a hillbilly than a scholar, recites out loud this story like poem:

This pear tree sat here, the middle of

Our house, the middle of our hearts,

Like a second breath to our dying

Gasps.

We all tried to call for it to be alive, yet we were the only ones needing to be resuscitated—-a second too late

We sat around our home waiting for revival

But here within each other, we got our best chance.

The pear tree that showed us life,

In God and all it’s majesty.

My mother stood up straighter at the end.

My brother and I went outside.

“Hay! That sure was some class A poetry!” I say, giving him a solid thumbs up.

“Sarcasm does not look good on you!” He says, shoving me.

We keep shoving one another until Jay shoved me so hard, I fall into the tree.

My whole life flashes before my eyes as I see something fall from it’s low branches.

It’s another pear! A bigger one.

It hits Jay on top of his head, and as we taunt each other again after, I realize that yes, this pear tree is home, even if it’s just a stump left.

My family is here, too, and that’s everything to me.