The envelope that arrived in the mailbox of my father in law a month later was heavy cream stock with a green seal, and in the corner, in dignified black letters, it said City of Chapel Hill, Office of the Town Attorney. He opened it on his front porch in Raleigh with a butter knife, the way he opens everything, and my husband, who had arranged to be sitting in a car across the street, told me later that he saw the old man read the first line and then lower himself onto the porch swing as if the air had gone out of his legs.
The letter was a Notice of Violation. It cited Section 5 of the Town Heritage Tree Ordinance, which protects any tree older than eighty years on a residential lot, and it named the person who had ordered the removal, not the owners of the property. My husband had made certain of that. He had spent the whole month working through the file like a lawyer. He had sent the city a sworn statement that we were away at a wedding, that no permission had been given, and that we had never authorized anyone to cut the tree. He had attached the receipt from the lumber crew. It bore the signature of his father.
The fine was fifteen thousand dollars, as promised, and the letter did not stop there. The ordinance also required restitution for a replacement. The arborist for the town had calculated the value of the oak as a mature specimen, taking into account its age, its canopy, and the shade it gave to four houses, and the total came to a figure that made the mouth of my father in law move without sound. Eleven thousand dollars more. There was a line at the bottom. Failure to remit within thirty days may result in a lien upon the property of the responsible party.
A tree that takes a hundred years to grow can be felled in an afternoon, but the law keeps a longer memory than a chainsaw.
He called us within the hour. My husband let it ring three times, which is the number he allows, and answered in the calm voice. His father was shouting, then pleading, then bargaining. He said it was only a tree. He said the neighbors had complained about the leaves. He said he had meant to help. My husband listened to the whole thing without a word, and when it ended, he said, “Dad, I am going to tell you what I told the city. I did not ask you to do it. I was grieving a tree. You cut it anyway.” Silence. “I am not going to pay your fine.”
I want to be fair to my father in law, because he is not a cruel man. He is a man who has spent seventy eight years believing that if you can fix something, you should, and that a thing that is in the way is a thing that needs removing. He had ripped out my roses, he had cut down our oak, and in each case he had been honestly puzzled by the tears that followed. It had never occurred to him that a thing could be beloved precisely for what it cost to keep. We needed him to understand that, and the town attorney helped.
My husband met him on the porch that evening. He did not go in anger. He sat down beside his father on the swing and handed him a thermos of coffee. Then he said, quietly, “Dad, do you remember the apple tree in Garner?” His father went still. Fifty years ago, in the yard of the little house where he grew up, there had been an apple tree that his own father had planted. When the house was sold, the new owners had cut it down for a parking pad. His father had stood at the fence with his hat in his hands, and had never spoken of it since.
“That tree was mine,” the old man said at last, in a voice I would not have known. “I was nine. I used to sit in it and read.” My husband nodded. “The oak was mine,” he said. “That is where I asked Ellen to marry me. It was not about the leaves.” His father covered his eyes with his hand. For a while they sat there, two grown men on a swing, listening to the crickets, and neither said anything at all. When his father finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “I did not know,” he said. “I truly did not know. I only wanted to do something nice.”
The town was kind. The attorney, a patient woman named Ms. Okafor, agreed to a settlement. My father in law would pay the fine and the restitution in installments, and the money would go to the town tree fund. In addition, he would complete forty hours of service with the public works department. That summer, in a hat and gloves, at seventy eight years old, he planted trees. He planted maples at the library and sycamores on Franklin Street, and he learned to tie a stake and to water in a ring. He came home sunburned and sore, and strangely quiet and proud.
In October, the city delivered a young white oak to our front yard, twelve feet tall, a gift from the tree fund, and dedicated it with a little brass plaque. My father in law dug the hole himself. We all stood around in the cool, and my husband tamped the soil with his boot, and the old man wiped his hands on his trousers. He said it would take a hundred years to match the other. My husband said, “Then we had better get started.” He put one arm around the shoulders of his father, and the two of them stood looking at the slender trunk in silence.
I planted new roses along the fence that spring, and my father in law pretended not to notice. He drives down on Sundays now with a shovel in his trunk, asking if there is anything that needs doing. Mostly we say no. Last week I found him at the edge of the yard, staring at the stump, which we left on purpose, with a bench built around it. He had a small bag of acorns in his hand. “For squirrels,” he said, not meeting my eyes. I said that sounded like a fine idea. In the morning, there was a little ring of them, pushed gently into the soil.