Fred’s Pine
It stood crookedly majestic, arching over an old house. The tree’s powerful branches bore clusters of long, flawless needles. Its perfect imperfection entrapped my attention and made me marvel at its shape every time I saw it. But I was unable to photograph it because it always felt as though someone was watching me. Was there a deliberate effort to discourage neighbors from admiring the tree? I convinced myself it was a trick of the mind influenced by the neighborhood’s layout and my aversion to attention — especially from those on front porches scrutinizing every movement.
Determined to confront the unsettling sensation that always thwarted my attempts to photograph it, I decided to stand next to the pine and wait.
I heard a rustling noise, and there she was, a mere twenty feet away. Her expression was somber and unyielding, as if daring me to continue my admiration of her arboreal deity.
“Hi,” I said. No reply.
“I like your tree!” Still no reply.
“I want to take a picture.” No reaction.
As I pulled out my phone, the shriveled figure extended her stick toward me, remaining motionless and silent. My hands refused to obey my brain’s command to press the screen. She whispered something, or perhaps the tree itself had developed an immunity to being photographed. My phone slipped back into my pocket, and my feet carried me away, abandoning the mission.
That night, as I accidentally cut my thumb while making a salad, I realized I had never been as intimidated by anyone as I was by that eerie rug of a woman.
As the week progressed and the moon turned round, my restlessness swelled until I felt ready to confront the witch directly.
I knocked on her door. No reply. Knocking harder, I watched some paint flake off. Still no reply. Then I did the unthinkable — I pushed the door open and entered unannounced. There she was, sitting in her chair like one of those eerie dolls next to a yellow light. Her deadpan expression showed no sign of surprise or hesitation.
“What’s your name, ma’am?” At that moment I realized she was blind.
“Are you Fred?” she asked softly.
“No, not Fred, ma’am. I’m your neighbor, Fedor. I would like to take a picture of your lovely pine tree.”
“You have an extra letter in there,” she said. “ ‘O’ is round like the moon, the greediest letter of all, like in the word ‘mOre’.” She accentuated the ‘O’ mockingly.
I was ready to explain my fascination with the pine so majestic in the moonlight. I didn’t want her to mistake me for a thief.
“Oh, don’t you dare, Freddie.” she said calmly, grabbing a white stick from behind and trying to reach out with it.
“Please, ma’am, don’t be upset.” I pleaded. “I only need the photograph to make sense of my feelings. I’m your neighbor and — “
“Fred had his feelings well sorted out,” she murmured.
“Who was–”
“It’s Fred’s tree,” she interrupted, “not mine! Before he died, he made me promise to never let anyone scrutinize it intently.”
I realized the gravity of the situation I had stumbled into and was about to leave, but she kindly asked me to sit down by her side. I abided.
“Don’t worry about it,” she whispered. “Do what you need, just keep in mind that it’s not an ordinary tree.”
“What makes it extraordinary?” I whispered back.
Silence ensued. She fiddled with her stick for a minute before replying.
“That tree was uprooted in 1983 by a powerful wind. Many of the neighbors’ maples and willows were ripped out of the ground and scattered. Fred found his pine far from the house. He stuck it back in the ground and said it would grow.”
“And it grew?” I asked, finding it very hard to believe.
“I told him it wouldn’t grow. The roots were broken, the branches missing — the neighbor’s kids must have played with it long before Fred realized it was the remnant of his pine.”
“Mind you, adult coniferous trees cannot be transplanted.” She added.
“I’m sorry to hear —”
“He set up his tent by the crooked stick and sang to it every night” She interrupted again, “until one of the neighbors called social services. We then had a young lady come over weekly with paperwork. As soon as she started the whole diagnosis talk, I kicked her out.”
I then asked if she replaced the pine with a healthy sapling to make her husband feel better.
“No!” she growled. “That bloody thing sat in the ground all season like some medieval lamp post. Fred hung a candle lamp on its crooked end, and then one morning, he woke me up to show me the new growth. Can you believe it?”
“Oh, so it started growing?!”
“I didn’t believe it at first either,” she admitted. “I thought he had stuck a little pine bud in its side to cheer himself up and to bug me in the process. But as time went on, that green joke-of-a-bud developed into a shoot, and then into a beautiful little branch.”
“So it did survive, thanks to Fred’s relentless efforts!”
“Not so fast, young man. A decade or so later, when the pine had finally established, another windstorm came and started wrecking havoc again. All the young trees the neighbors replanted years ago were gone in no time. I saw countless branches swirling in the air.”
“And the pine?”
“The poor pine swung wildly, starting to uproot, but Fred dashed over with superhuman speed, hammering several more stakes into the ground. I watched as he clung to each stake, securing extra rope. I had to drag his mad ass inside, thankful it was the dead of night, saving us from becoming the neighborhood’s entertainment.”
She shifted in her chair displaying signs of irritation and I assumed it was a subtle invitation to leave, but how could I.
“What happened next? Tell me, please.”
“It survived. But it became even more crooked. And you know what?”
“What?” I said.
“To my shock, Fred decided not to straighten it even though half the roots were sticking out of the ground!” She leaned over and whispered while giggling.
I couldn’t contain myself and laughed.
“Why didn’t he help it?” I asked.
“He didn’t fix the bloody thing because he developed a special connection with it. He claimed the tree told him to leave it alone and just keep singing.”
“Unbelievable!”
“What?”
“I mean, I believe you, ma’am, but it’s such an unusual story.”
“I told you it was an odd fucking tree, and you asked me to take a picture?! How much money are you willing to pay?!”
I was taken aback by her sudden aggression toward me. “Um, I, I, I can offer $100, ma’am. Would that be enough?”
“Take that money and buy yourself a brain,” she said calmly. “Fred would only appreciate genuine effort, so long as you don’t turn the story into some mockery like that asshole from City Landscaping or whatever.”
“Who?”
“Years ago, he offered to cut it down for free because I am an old widow. I told him I’d rather stick a pine cone up his fat ass than let him come near that tree.”
“But why did he want to cut it down?”
“Well, he used to make a pretty penny cutting down problematic trees and such. People would call him all the time because he saved quite a few roofs from being crushed. Someone apparently told him that my tree was at risk of falling on the house.”
“The pine does lean quite a bit,” I remarked as I peeked out of her living room window.
“Fred’s pine may seem unable to withstand another windstorm, but do you remember last year’s storm? It lasted only an hour, and many trees were knocked over— except Fred’s. Just look at that thing. It has aged and developed an enormous root system.”
As I stood before the window, gazing at the tree outside, I couldn’t help but notice the enormity of its base, its surface roots spreading and deepening into the subsoil. These flexible anchors undoubtedly helped the heavy trunk maintain its stability, offering a steadfast defense against violent storms.
“It sure did develop an usually intricate root system,” I admitted.
“Most pines have surface roots and are not as thick,” she concurred. “Now go ahead and try to take a picture. Let me know if you spot Fred hiding behind the tree, telling you something funny.” She spat out before breaking into the most irritating laughter I had ever heard.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”
“Just go!” she growled at me.
I thought I’d snap a quick shot of the beautifully illuminated pine on my way home. To my surprise, the phone was unresponsive.
That night I dreamt of Fred singing to his pine tree, treating it like his own child. In the morning, I wrote down everything I could remember from the conversation the day before, still pondering over some of her riddles and how my phone refused to cooperate as though it was somehow more sensitive to the situation than the left side of my brain.
The following week I returned with a box of blueberries to compensate for the last weeks invasion of her privacy, but the old lady was nowhere to be found. The door was locked. Week after week, I kept returning until one day, I saw a realtor installing a for-sale sign in the front lawn. He informed me that the lady had passed away several years ago and that her son had put the house up for sale.
I waited for him to leave, then slipped in through the back to search for the lady. The house was clearly abandoned; no shoes nor clothing, the fridge was disconnected and dusty, the cabinets mostly empty. In a bedroom drawer, I found a note that read: “Fred predicted your arrival”.
Was it directed at me? I certainly wanted to believe so.
An hour later, I was on the phone with the realtor.
“Oh, I do have the money, sir, and I am free to view it anytime,” I claimed.
The next day, I got to look at the pine from all angles. The property felt like home as I envisioned a vegetable garden in the farthest corner and a dog house right next to it. I even came up with a name for my future dog but the money just wasn’t there. I had lied.
But how could it be? How could I return without being able to afford it? I wondered.
Then it struck me — how could there be any hint of fate in buying the house when even the most basic questions couldn’t be answered?
Question after question plagued my being:
Who was the lady?
Why did the realtor claim she passed away years ago if I had spoken to her a mere month ago?
Some neighbors’ trees were older than the pine, casting doubt on her story’s accuracy.
Was Fred a real person? The realtor lived in town his entire life and had no idea the lady lived with another person.
Why did she call me “greedy Freddie”? Was it because I documented a magical tree in no need of superficial interpretations?
If fate suggested I abandon journalism for something subtle and intrinsic, why buy a physical house? Living next to a pine might have nothing to do with the allegorical revelation, except for the resemblance of a name with her late husband. My name might have had an extra letter, as round as the moon that made the encounter with an apparition possible, but the letter ‘O’ was more closely related to the fat $0 down-payment on an old dilapidated house in need of total renovation. Besides, if the tree really wanted me to care for it, it would have related some lottery numbers to me so that I could afford the house, but the powerful pine was in no need of care. Even if its enormous root system didn’t yet have the chance to confront a freaky weather phenomenon, I was convinced it would weather any storm without my intervention. Nor any remedy to snapping branches existed to my knowledge, thinking of singing as an effective means of empowerment were as distant to me as the financial freedom to be buying houses in a middle-class neighborhood.
I felt frustrated with my own gullibility. I’ve always been prone to impulsive decisions, like when I bought a $4500 Persian carpet in the early 2000s from a dealer who convinced me carpets only appreciate in value. But he never told me about their tendency to rip and their impractical weight for transportation. Not to mention the countless broken vacuums, ill-equipped for handling large, heavy carpets often clogged with pollutants and pet hair.
The pine tree needed me as much as I needed that stupid carpet, which eventually ended up in the garbage after it proved more practical to discard it than to replace the cheaper vacuum cleaner with a more expensive one. However, I did need the tree to teach me a lesson, to help me establish my own root system. So what was the tactic the pine was trying to impart? I became fearful of misinterpretations.
Fred might have predicted my arrival. But wasn’t it the arrival of renewed awareness, through me, that was the primary suspect? Something broad and conceptual? Wasn’t it the awareness of self-development, lost among writers like me who wouldn’t see the forest for the trees?
His pine’s blinding majesty must have eloquently symbolized my life as I have been underestimating my abilities as a forever-aspiring writer, filled with doubt and fear. Fred was the better version of me, leaving me an invaluable lesson, an opportunity perhaps: to love my writing process as much as he loved the undying perseverance of his tree!
That odd tree made a human worship it and then me, an outside observer, caught in its majestic beauty long after the death of its worshiper. The tree was compelling me to write! The more I thought about it the more I felt like I was becoming the embodiment of that strange tree.
I may never make the ends of the ghostly lady and the intricately depicted details of her tale. Perhaps a blind person couldn’t manage an eccentric husband, and tornadoes weren’t known to hit our neighborhood. But the house and the tree were turning into potent symbols, despite turning into mere objects for sale. The new owner would likely clear the yard, and the tree would vanish from view forever but the significance of its tale would linger in my interior forever.
In hindsight, I’ve come to see the pine tree as a powerful teacher for those of us facing struggles — a lesson in unwavering resilience. It shows writers how to endure doubts, as our deep-seated beliefs give rise to endless fears, like the irrational worry of misclassifying less conventional stories as unsuitable for memoir rather than fiction.
But what truly separates fiction when it’s woven from memories and emotions? And what’s left of the mundane when stripped of its deeper significance?
I now seek meaning in my daily routines, navigating the delicate boundary between fiction and reality. I often observe how objective interpretations fail to inspire, starkly contrasting with elusive sensations that unexpectedly converge to reveal profound themes.
