This is an older story I never did anything with. Please offer some thoughts, suggestions, and critique. Thanks
Thanx' Giving Day
You?d think a person would notice such things.
Thirty, actually twenty-nine, beautiful Leyland Cyprus trees were bursting from the ground in a perfect line separating the emptiness of one open field from the other. The green tips were racing toward the brilliant autumn sky and leaving deep emerald contrails that dissipated into a mixture of brown grasses. The trees swayed in the gentle morning breeze as they stretched upward to be the first to touch the gold of the morning sun.
Just six years ago they were saplings, barely knee-high, when I put them in the ground. The first spring, I nurtured them. Watered them. Checked them every day.
Since then, they?d become invisible, lost in my hectic fury to survive. I've driven past them at least twice a day, mowed the fields below them, and not given them a second thought ? until this morning. Today, their magnificence would shock me; no different than had a mongrel dog darted in front of my car.
The trees had grown into such splendid individuals with one exception. It was the shortest of the group. The light of day easily looked through its sparse branches erasing the deep richness of color possessed by its peers. Planted in their trail, it had been molested by deer. Its snapped brown branches sagged, standing out like gray hairs on a black blazer. Being the closest to the road, it appeared to be cast out by the group. Not accepted for one reason or another, I don't know.
When did they become trees?
I drove on. Work beckoned.
So did the epiphany.
It's natural for things to change I guess, but why did I not notice before? Why today?
Yes, things do change. But then again, do they really?
Throughout the day, I became more disturbed; awed by the things I must be missing. The allure of those trees stayed with me.
The trees are much like the stories of our lives; their 'saplings' planted long before anyone takes notice of them.
Take a murderer. Long before the murder or killing sprees, they were nurtured by a tyrannical parent, endured pain beyond expression, and sifted through our world unnoticed.
That is the tragedy; had someone noticed the 'trees', the pain may have never blossomed into death.
Leaving work, I realized why I had noticed the trees today. It was that time of year again.
With each November, the effect that Sydney Franks had on my life grows more powerful. More than twenty-five Thanksgivings have passed since, but she continues to haunt me around this time of year.
For this ? I am woefully thankful.
She would invade my thoughts on the long drive home; eastbound on I-26. The morning sky that was made so translucent by the crisp autumn air had given way to gray clouds altering a tolerable day into a cold, drizzly evening. Without the radio on, the solitude of the ride put my mind to work.
Focusing on the road, it took over my thoughts. I began to compare the highway to life; seemingly endless and yet aware of its finite structure. The continuous effort of peaks and valleys, the metamorphosis of passing and being passed, and the option to exit at any choosing were all convincing parallels.
In a quick stroke of the wipers, I was swept back to the Monday before Thanksgiving 1976. The beginning of this story.
When I arrived at Berkeley High, I was paged directly to the office. I had not done anything, at least this past week, and I entered the main office with a certain defensive attitude. Immediately, I was hastened to a private office.
I was introduced to an investigator who I did not know, re-introduced to the chief-of-police who I somewhat knew, and acknowledged the principal who I knew well. With the exception of Chief Dempsey, we all took a seat at a small wooden table.
"How did you know Sydney Franks?" The investigator began without explanation.
"Is she in trouble?" I put on my best poker face.
He leaned up on the table from his chair and his fists hammered the table. His face took a hard stance, "Just answer my question."
I raised my eyebrows and pulled back, "Whoa! Everyone in school knows Sydney."
The thought of her forced an uncontrollable smile. She was beautiful and a beautiful person, a rare combination. I instantly saw her shoulder-length mahogany hair dancing around her face in gentle waves, her bright green eyes that sparkled life into everything they viewed, and her olive complexion that accented her sharp features magnificently. She was tall, but not too tall; slender, but not skinny. She was blessed with shape that blue jean designers made their product to fit. Sydney was cool water on a hot summer day.
Beyond that, she was welcomed by every 'clique' at school and often drifted from one to the other, never attaching herself to any of them. Everybody liked her direct, honest personality that seemed to cut through all of the pretentious bullshit that dwells in high school as every adolescent learns to jockey for his or her position in this universe. She had a certain grasp of the world that escaped the rest of us.
"Tell me how you met her." The investigator raised his hands that he had dropped on the table earlier. He propped his sharp chin on them. I could see my image fixed in his solid brown eyes.
"Just walkin' to class."
I twisted on the back of my chair to satisfy a sudden itch in my back.
It was strange that 'we' met at all; for everything that Sydney was, I was not. Her family was prominent in the community; we were poor. She was so fortunate and I was a displaced northern teen-age boy living in a small southern town that was still fighting the Civil War. I was antisocial, and for the most part, a loner angry at the world, stuck in the mire of my social inferiority. I was the product of an abusive stepfather, who was long gone, and an alcoholic mother who drank to forget about her own Hell. The entire world was better than me... and I knew it!
He leaned back in his chair. He rolled his right hand, prompting me to elaborate.
Chief Dempsey walked over and leaned against the table to my left in order to watch my face.
"Yeah, we had to walk to the Annex everyday after lunch period," I answered.
The Annex was about a ten-minute walk from the main building and very few students were required to make this trek.
My mind drifted back to our first meeting.
"Michael... Michael, wait up!" she had called.
I turned and Sydney raced up to me.
"Can I walk with you, Michael?"
"Sure?" I answered with surprise and skepticism. I thought to myself there wasn't a male in this school that wouldn't want to walk with you.
"I'm..."
"Sydney... Sydney Franks," I interrupted, "Everyone knows you."
She laughed and we began to walk and talk. I was instantaneously at ease in her company. She had that affect on people. Suddenly, I felt equal. From that day on, our walk was a dedicated meeting; an oath that we silently swore to uphold. We had wonderful discussions of the world, the future, or whatever. I looked forward to our ten minutes more and more every day. Before I ever realized it was happening, I had become 'accepted' throughout the school just by association with Sydney. Really, everything seemed better.
"Did she talk to you about her home? Or her family at all?" The investigator?s heavy voice brought me back to the school office again. The room seemed darker. When it wasn't flickering, the fluorescent light was absorbed by the cracks of the dingy, green walls. The conversation veered toward an interrogation.
"No? not really... actually, we never talked much about ourselves at all. Mostly just about stuff. You know... I don't know, just goofy stuff really. Why?" It had dawned on me that I still did not know why were discussing this.
The investigator's face grew stern and hard again. He looked directly at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable, "Do you know what happened, Michael?"
How could I know? I only saw my few friends at school. We didn?t get a paper. Hell, we didn?t even have a telephone.
I caught a look in his stare. This wasn?t about skipping school.
I felt the jellyfish numbness that you get in your chest when you anticipate news that you know you do not want hear.
"No." I was suddenly cautious.
The room grew extremely heavy. He looked down to the table, "Sydney is dead."
I held my hands toward him and waved for him to stop. Apparently he wasn?t aware of his mistake, "No ? no she's not."
He paused and looked back up, "She shot herself Friday night."
There he went again. What?s wrong with this guy? I looked up to Chief Dempsey. Nothing.
"We know she was supposed to meet you at the dance. We thought you might could help us clear up a few little details."
"What details?" I was devastated, but unable to openly express my pain.
"Are you absolutely sure she didn't say anything? Anything at all?"
"No, I mean yeah, I'm sure," now I just babbled to fend off the reality, "She didn?t say nothin? at all."
I thought back to Friday. Our conversation had been more sullen than usual.
"Michael," kicking at the gravel, "would you sacrifice your life for your brother? I mean, you know, if you had to ? to save his life or somethin'."
"What kinda question is that?" I laughed.
"Come on, I'm serious. Would ya do it?"
"Yeah, I guess I would if I hadta." I thought for a second, "I guess anyone would for their family, ya know."
"Why?"
"Why! Are ya serious?" I looked at her and she was.
"Yeah, why would ya do it? For real."
I stared at her. I could tell she wanted an answer and not just some crappy shot-from-the-hip answer. I thought I saw tears in her eyes for a moment.
"You okay, Sydney?"
"Yeah sure. I just read somethin' and I was kinda thinkin' about it. You don?t hafta answer. I was just wonderin'."
"No, I'll tell ya." I felt bad that I had made fun of the whole thing, "I love my brother, you know, just like you do your sister. I think things will be better for him than they were for me. So I'd save 'im. Just so he'd get a chance to ? I don't know, I guess a chance to be better. I don't know what I mean really."
I felt my face blush. She smiled, and then kissed my cheek, but with a melancholy effort, like the kind you receive at someone's funeral.
"You're really a sweet person, Michael."
Anxious to change the subject, I asked her why she never dated anyone. Why she never went out? She brushed me off by asking me the same question.
The investigator cleared his throat and once again I came back to the room.
I didn?t want to be here. I wanted to run somewhere and scream. He wanted an answer.
"We decided to meet at the dance Friday night. We wouldn't see each other for a while. The holiday break was coming up, ya know. Her dad didn't allow her to get any calls. This would be our only chance to see each other again."
"Did ya see her after school?"
"No."
The investigator shuffled through some papers in front of him. He had a puzzled look. He rubbed his jaw with his thumb and index finger, "People said you called her 'Thanx', is that true?"
I couldn't help but smile, "Yeah... yeah I did."
"Whyssat?"
"Well it's kinda weird. We were talking one day and she said 'Thaaanks' in kind of a funny southern drawl. It struck me odd and I was in one of those crazy teasing moods, so I just started callin' her 'Thanx'... Sydney 'Thanx?, ya know, instead of Franks. It just kinda caught on between us and became her private nickname. Didn't know many people knew that though."
The investigator looked to Chief Dempsey for approval. Chief Dempsey nodded his head.
"We're gonna let you read this, Michael. It was a note she left." He slid some folded stationary toward me.
'Please give to Michael Richter' was written across the middle-third of the paper. The writing was Sydney's, but it was scrawled, unlike her normal deliberate handwriting.
I hesitated and took a deep breath before beginning. I saw each of her handwritten words on the paper. I thought of each one as her last expression, yet I could not bring myself to believe what I read.
The words cut into me as if I was slowly dragging the serrated blade of a knife across my chest.
'? Michael, I love my mother and sister dearly. I cannot express in words how much I loved her, but I'm sure you know.'
She was talking about her mother who had passed away several years ago. She spoke of her alot.
'? I think my father misses her too. He always tells us how much we look like our mother. At first, he would just ask me to sit with him to comfort him. I would because I felt bad for him. After a while, he would kiss me intimately. Then he raped me. He told me I could never tell anyone. He told me it was my fault because I looked so much like her. He said he would hurt Ashley if I ever told anyone about 'us'. He had me sleep in his bed with him every night. I grew to hate him more and more every day.'
My eyes teared up. I could barely see the writing. I could not tolerate to read this. I could not bear the thought of her life as less than perfect.
'? I knew it wouldn't last forever. I knew I could move out soon and be rid of him. I've grown to hate him so much and I hate myself too. I hate being here. I just want to go to college and forget him. I wish so hard for that day.'
I read on, slowly absorbing each thought.
'? now, he's started to have Ashley sit with him, just like he did with me. She was getting to be about the age I was when he started. I'm getting scared for her. I cannot let this happen to her too. Last Tuesday he told her that she was becoming such a beautiful woman. That is when I decided I had to do something to save her. I wanted to tell you this Michael, but I was just so scared. Scared of him and scared of what you'd think of me. I'm so sorry. I am really so sorry.'
I laid the note down and rubbed the moisture from my eyes with the palms of my hand. What did she have to be sorry about? Why didn?t she just tell me?
'? Michael, I loved our time with each other. I was happy being with you. You made me feel safe and comfortable. You never judged anyone. I think that is what I really liked about you. I wish we could have been together more, but, well you now know, why we couldn't. I'm sorry that I won't meet you at the dance. I know you'll think I'm being mean. Ha ha!'
I would always kid her about being mean when she didn't tell me what I wanted to hear.
Her note ended with, 'Michael Rickety, Thanx luvs ya! You are very special to me.'
'Rickety'. I forced a laugh to stop my tears. That was her answer to the nickname I gave her. She said it was because I was always on the edge of disaster, like the rickety wheel of an old wagon.
I just laid the note down on the table.
I dared not say a word because my grief was strangling me and should I have tried to speak, I would have broken down. Principal Johnson told me it would be okay to go home if I liked. And I did. I walked home via the Annex from the main building.
My head is throbbing as I pull into the driveway.
I think back to that Friday night and the ragging I took from my friends. How my 'girlfriend' stood me up. How Sydney was too good for the likes of me. You know... they were right. She was too good for a lot of people. I still feel the anger when I think of her father. How could he have created something as beautiful as Sydney and then destroy it. I am still amazed at the amount of courage that it must have taken to raise the barrel of the pistol to her chin and then to pull the trigger. The selflessness to save her sister from the same fate. It truly was her 'Giving Day'.
It is still drizzling when I pull up to the house. I don?t stop. I drive across the field to the weakest tree and feature it in my headlights.
I stare at it for only a moment, then jump out and grab my clippers from the bed of the truck.
I indulge in a deep breath to fight off the cold of the rain, and then begin pruning the dead branches from the frail tree.
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