“I didn’t know,” she said. “I want you to hear that from me. I was at work Tuesday, and I came home and they were down. I about got sick.”
“I believe you.”
“He hasn’t slept. I’m not telling you that so you’ll feel sorry for him.” She wiped her nose with the back of her wrist. “The loan people called the house three times last week. He’s had a wet year, and there’s a man over in Green County who still owes him for a building pad. He wouldn’t let me tell you and Ray. He said a grown man doesn’t go to his mother for a machine payment.”
“So he went to her trees instead.”
Kim shut her eyes. “Yes, ma’am.”
I made her come in and drink a cup of coffee. Being angry at Kim would have been like being angry at the mailbox.
We have had Sunday dinner at my table after church for as long as Darren has been married. Ray’s sister Linda and her husband Jeff come too.
“Are you all coming tomorrow?” I asked her.
“Do you want us?”
“I want the children. I want every one of you. And Kim, after church I am going to walk Mason and Lily out to those stumps and show them how to count the rings. I’m going to tell them about their great-grandfather. I won’t say one word against their daddy. I’m telling you first so you’ll know it.”
She looked at me a long moment.
“And if they ask?”
“Then it’s his to answer. Not mine.”
She turned her cup around on the saucer. “That’s fair,” she said. “That’s more than fair.”
Ray got in off the route about two. He ate standing up, and then he went out to the shop and came back with a drop cord and his belt sander.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“A chainsaw leaves a face like a washboard. You can’t read rings through that.” He was already walking. “If those young’uns are going to count, they ought to be able to see.”
He knelt at the middle stump and sanded a path about as wide as his hand, from the bark all the way in to the heart. It took him the better part of an hour and three grits of paper. When he was done he wiped it down with a wet rag, and the rings stood up out of that wood as clear as the lines on a ruled tablet. The outer two inches were pale, almost cream. Everything inside that was dark chocolate with a purple cast to it, and every year of it was there.
Ray sat back on his heels and looked at it a while.
“Your daddy never said ten words to me the first year I courted you,” he said. “Then one January he handed me that pole saw and pointed at these trees. I figured that was him saying yes.”
Forty-three years married, and I had never known that.
Sunday came up clear and cool, with frost in the low places. We go to a small Baptist church three miles up the road, the same one I was carried into as a baby. People had heard about Joan and they were kind. Nobody had heard about the trees yet, and I didn’t tell them. Darren and Kim sat in their usual pew with the children between them. Darren held the hymnal open and didn’t sing.
Lila Hart is a dedicated Digital Archivist and Research Specialist with a keen eye for preserving and curating meaningful content. At TheArchivists, she specializes in organizing and managing digital archives, ensuring that valuable stories and historical moments are accessible for generations to come.
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