Down to the Old Oak Tree

Down to the Old Oak Tree.

 

I remember it well. Malley was on my left, gripping tightly the tree branch she was straddling with one hand and holding a camera to her eyes with the other. She was smiling, squinting down the viewfinder and craning her neck, trying to photograph the leaves above us. And on my right was Hewitt. He sat against the trunk of the tree, leaning back, one leg dangling, looking completely at peace. His eyes were closed, his mouth turned up at the corners in a slight smile, and the sunlight shone warmly upon him through a gap in the leaves. I was sitting on the branch with my back to the house, swinging my legs below me. At that precise moment in time, we were thirteen years old, blissfully unaware of the world around the old oak tree that watched over the house from the back of the garden.

Malley was always a character. Loud, excitable, keen. She never left her house without her camera, and she was almost obsessed with the way light played on surfaces, on fabric, on faces. She sometimes tugged on our arms and ordered us to pose for her. I don't think we ever refused; how could we? She always looked so eager, hazel eyes sparkling and her grin wide. That grin never faded, as long as I knew her.

Hewitt was different. He was my best friend, a calm and kind-eyed boy. He seemed content to sit and watch the world go by around him, when Malley was continuously pushing for a new adventure. He found peace in simple things; I remember he once told me about the cupboard in his kitchen which was filled with tea and how it always made him feel happy when he smelled it. I remember we laughed at him. He had laughed with us.

He used to talk about death, and he talked like it was a friend of his just as the spirit of adventure was to Malley. Hewitt wasn't suicidal, by any stretch of the imagination. But he was unusually thoughtful. Unlike most children, he understood completely the concept of death, of dying, of never coming back. It never frightened him. It frightened Malley and me, though. The concept of dying is a difficult thing to comprehend. We brushed it off, because we were children and that's what children do: block out frightening thoughts with fizzy drinks, mud-stained jeans, the old oak tree at the end of the garden.

When we were sixteen, we spent a warm summer night sleeping under the stars. We lived in the countryside, but our parents wanted us safe and kept us within the confines of my back garden. We didn't particularly care. We set up a campfire and roasted marshmallows and did stupid dances around the flames. We went down to the old oak tree put up a tent beneath its branches, which remained empty. We slept around the campfire under the open sky. It was around this campfire that Hewitt told us something I'd never forget.

My best friend, Hewitt, was a boy who always knew he would never reach thirty years of age. There was no illness, no diagnosis, no depression. Just a feeling. But it was a feeling he had had since he was a little boy, since before I knew him, he said. Malley had grown angry at him, as had become her way when she felt frightened. Her blonde hair was short; she had cut it herself in front of the bathroom mirror after getting into a fight and having its length used against her. It looked nice, no longer getting in her way while she was trying to work a camera. She had moved on to video cameras now and took rather wonderful films of nature. Her hair was a furious, almost flame-red in the campfire’s light. She shouted at Hewitt, convinced that he was leaving out some vital information, but he hadn't lied to her. It really was just a feeling. She eventually calmed down and told him he'd get over it, and Hewitt knew better than to argue with her. The rest of the night was easy; no one wanted to remember the argument so it was forgotten. We counted stars. We listened to sheep mewl and bay on the distant hills. We fell asleep as the campfire burned brightly between us.

What Hewitt didn't know was that he would live forever. He never said anything, even if the notion had crossed his mind. And I know it hadn't. Malley had said it when we were around the campfire, saying that Hewitt was healthy and that he would live to see seventy, no, eighty, no, ninety, no - he'd live forever and he'd turn old and grey and with a funny laugh like her grandfather. And it was possibly because Malley had said it in a fit of anger, it had been dismissed as a childish notion and was simply wrong. But it was true, so very true.

In Spring 1998, when Hewitt and I were eighteen and Malley was just a few weeks away from it, Malley fell from a tree which was far too thin to climb in the first place - but somehow she had managed to get higher than we expected - and broke her arm. That was the first time we went to the hospital together. Hewitt drove us in his father's land rover. If anything, the trip to the hospital strengthened Hewitt's belief in his early death. I remember as he and I headed to the cafeteria he glanced into all the corridors we passed. He stared into one, which looked to me no different from any of the others, for longer before turning to me with his trademark half-smile and saying, "Farrow, I feel it. It's all around us. Here." He was talking about the scent of death, and to be honest I felt it too. An ominous sort of feeling. I looked at the sign; the morgue was this way. I laughed softly, told Hewitt he was only eighteen.

Career paths were one thing we practically never talked about. As the years passed, what Hewitt had said to us at the campfire when we were sixteen had started to feel frighteningly real. We genuinely believed he was going to die before he saw thirty. When school ended and we got our final results and left, Malley told me she was going on a special course to learn to make documentaries. A learn-on-the-job thing. I was going to get experience designing theatre sets. Hewitt also didn't go to university, but we didn't know what he was doing. We spent most of our free time together, with or without Malley who was by now travelling all over the world to film.

There was something that happened just after Hewitt's 22nd birthday, which almost proved him right about his future and called a terrified Malley away from a job in Iceland. We hadn't seen each other in weeks, with Malley and I both too busy to meet up, so the call was a surprise. I remember her phoning me at three in the morning, frantic. She sounded on the verge of tears. She'd heard about it before me and had come as soon as possible, and had barely stepped off the plane before calling me. Why didn't Hewitt call me? I kept asking myself. I was going to meet Malley at the entrance of the hospital, the same place Hewitt and I had taken her when she broke her arm. Why didn't Hewitt call me? Wasn't I his best friend? Did he not want me to know? Did he not want me?

He was a sorry sight, lying in the bed with the blanket pulled up to his chin. He was white, so incredibly white, and he barely looked human. His hair was too dark, his silver eyes too bright, his body too frail. There was a tube sticking out of his arm. I didn't look at it too much, couldn't take my eyes off his face. Malley was at his side in an instant. I just stood there. Wondered what had happened. Smiled faintly at his father as he passed me on his way out the room. Hewitt called me over, silently. He looked pale. Had he lost a lot of blood? I don't remember if he told me what happened.

We thought he'd change his mind now. He had almost lost his life, so maybe, just maybe, we could convince him that whatever accident he had would have been the thing to kill him before thirty. Malley's attempts at convincing him failed. Hewitt just shook his head and she left the room. I asked him then, asked him why he hadn't called me, why his smile - which had grown when he spotted Malley in the doorway - had faded slightly when he saw me. I asked if I should go. He told me he didn't want his parents to call me because he didn't want me to see him like this. Didn't want to worry me. Didn't want to upset me, so soon after my grandfather's death, which happened only a couple of weeks ago. His parents hadn't known if he was going to be okay at the time they called Malley. He had, thankfully, improved by a mile by the time Malley had returned from Iceland. Malley had phoned his parents before phoning me; she wanted to talk to me. Hewitt had been right, I wouldn't have been able to handle it, and I could do nothing but hold onto his arm and stare at him. I wanted to say thank you, tell him to get better soon, ask what happened, but I stayed silent. The words caught in my throat.

When we were twenty six we went camping. We camped on the hill outside my garden walls and looked back down on the house. I was the only one of us three whose family had remained living in the little countryside town. We did it like we did it before, in a summer long ago. A small campfire, ringed with pebbles; toasting marshmallows, horror stories, stupid dances. And Hewitt, lying propped up on his rucksack and elbows with his feet stretched out towards the fire, speaking to us again in that same tone he used ten years before. He looked across the campfire at Malley, who grinned back at him and snapped a photo. She was still carrying one of her early cameras everywhere. Hewitt laughed and pulled a face and she took another photograph. But when he turned to look at me I saw the flames flickering in his eyes, turning them deep and blue and green. Hewitt's eyes kept changing colour with the light, with his mood. We always said they were the colours at the end of the universe. Malley loved to photograph them. Hewitt told us he was writing a book.

Malley, of course, was interested and pressured him for more information, as did I, and Hewitt smiled. Coughed once. Told us to wait and see. When we heard the sheep mewl and bay in the fields opposite us we bayed back, imitating them, calling them, pretending we were having a conversation with the sheep that probably didn't know we existed. Then Malley decided one particularly loud sheep was insulting her and barked at it. We were sent into hysterics and laughed for several minutes. The summer sun set late, the sky going a strange dusky pink chased by navy blue. Malley took a lot of photographs, and she was thirteen again, tugging on our sleeves and ordering us to pose. She set the camera on a pile of our bags and set a timer. We sat across the fire from it, hardly bothering to pose and heading straight back to having swordfights with marshmallow-adorned sticks through the flames. We sat huddled next to each other, still vaguely conscious of the camera until Hewitt told a joke and we roared again with laughter. The photo that was taken then when the shutter clicked has been printed and sits in a frame on my desk.

Hewitt's health had begun to deteriorate rapidly by the time he was twenty eight. He coughed, he took long rests when we went out walking together, and he hardly ate. None of us knew what was wrong with him. If he had gone to see a doctor he didn't tell us. He told us he gave up on his book.

During this time Malley moved in with her boyfriend. I had my own place now, an apartment in a larger town. We had our own worries and things to take care of; the theatre company I had been working in for years now was closing, and I was searching for another job. But Hewitt was my top priority. He might not live to see thirty, just like he said. It frightened me terribly, and kept me awake countless nights. Malley, too, was trying to put on a brave face but I could see right through it. I'd known her too long to fall for that.

We were walking together in the rural countryside of our childhood when Hewitt fell. He staggered on the path and tried to steady himself on a tree. He put his hand out, missed, collapsed. We took him to the hospital in the land rover his father had given to him. I drove this time.

Hewitt had a weak heart, the doctor told us. Heart failure. Advanced. He gave Hewitt medication to take and I persuaded him to move in with me so I could be sure he took it. Hewitt was starting to look scared. He didn't want to die. He wasn't giving up. He took his medication, did everything he was supposed to, and Malley and I took it upon ourselves to help him. We were determined to help him live past thirty, at least. He said he was going to finish his book.

Hewitt died when he was twenty nine. Not three months from his thirtieth birthday. Malley drove me home. I had never seen her cry before, but I saw it frequently after that. She had broken up with her boyfriend after he cheated on her, and was still living in my apartment even though Hewitt was no longer there to look after. Trying to pretend that everything was normal. Laughing during the day. Crying at night. Neither of us able to fill in the hole that Hewitt had left in our lives.

In April, there was a phone call. The person on the other end introduced himself as a Mr. Ross, and requested we met with him in person. He was a publishing agent, Hewitt's, apparently, which came as a surprise as we had no idea that he had finished the book, let alone submitted it for publishing. Mr. Ross told us of an email Hewitt had sent him. The book was only to be published after his death, he had said. He showed us the book. Malley cried.

Down to the Old Oak Tree.

That was what it was called. It sold amazingly quickly after it hit the shelves. I kept a copy on my desk, and I read it with his voice in my head. My name and Malley’s were written on the third page in.

My best friend Hewitt was a boy who knew he would never live to see thirty. There was no illness, no diagnosis, no depression. Just a feeling. What Hewitt hadn't felt, what he hadn't known, was that he would live forever.

Reviews

[Wolfwind]

Absolutely fantastic! You created a tale here that peeks the curiosity, reels us in and then leaves us with a sense of sadness, as well as thoughtfulness that lingers in the aftermath of the words.
I will have to agree with Mina. This is one of the best things I've read here on the WC.

Great Ink!
Aaron

[Patrick]

Wonderful simplicity about this short story - some of the turns of expression you use stood out - the one about the navy sky chasing the pink - loved that.

Very touching piece and would lend itself to a novel where you could develop the characters and their bonds more. I notice you tend to insert incidental remarks quite often - they work at times but on other occasions they distract - only a minor remark though.

Brilliant :)

[MoriartyMesa]

Worthy of a tot of brandy and fire in the belly of the readers

[Wendy Seames Garner]

A very beautiful story you have written R. J.! It does seem that those who are destined to die young, have a premonition of it - my own daughter did. I love the way you ended it, with him living forever through his book.

[xx]

This is hands down the best mini-story I have read on WC.

I was never a fan of stories with tragic endings, but as the speaker - Farrow? - said, Hewitt "would live forever" - and as risky as it was to use an expression so overused in popular literature today, you fashioned it into a shape all your own and gave it fresh meaning, breathtakingly poignant. I feel as if I've known Hewitt and Malley all my life; I feel the pain of Hewitt's death as keenly as if I had known him all my life; I feel the heartbreak Malley experiences as my own. You characterized all three characters as thoroughly and deeply as I have ever - never, I think - seen yet on WC (at least that I can remember).

You have an amazing eye for detail and storytelling, and I hope to see more demonstrations of your writing skill in the future. I've added this work to my library - the first! - and given it a 100/100.

Please do keep writing! :)

-Mina