The Maple That Moved
Two days before I turn thirteen, my mum’s maple tree disappears from our yard. I search for signs of sawdust, but there is nothing—only a large hole in the ground.
Sprinting to the barn, the school bus forgotten, I search for my parents. They are milking, Dad on the machine, Mum herding cows through chutes.
“Mum, your maple. It’s gone!” I shout.
They stop, glance at each other and then at my stricken face. Together, we run to where the tree used to be.
Mum planted the maple before I was born; it reminded her of her family home in Vermont. “Your father rolled his eyes when I planted it,” my mum whispers to me when I’m seven, “but, you know, Jake, he still watered it twice a day until he knew it would survive.” She smiles at him, blowing him a kiss across the room. He grins, pretends to grab it out of the air and puts it in his pocket. They work on the farm together every day, milking, moving stock, birthing calves, feeding out. She left her family farm for him, letting love lead her across the ocean to live on this little wind-buffeted island in the Pacific. She calls New Zealand her home, but each fall I watch her pick up the red maple leaves. She dries them, ties them in bundles and hangs them from the kitchen rafters. They gradually fade, disintegrating to dust as the year passes.
My parents search around the hole, just as I did, but there is no sign of the tree. Mum stares at the ground, and I stand next to her, reaching out to hold her hand. Dad stalks the yard, kicking the dirt. At the edge of the lawn he stills, eyes on the distant hills.
“There!” He points. “Look!”
On the farthest ridge of our farm, shine the bright red leaves of Mum’s tree. There are no other trees like it on our farm, nor on any of the nearby properties. Mum’s maple is the only one of its kind on the West Coast.
Mum races for the quad bike, revving it hard, barely waiting for us to jump on before speeding up the farm track. I hold on tight to Dad’s waist, pressing my face into the rough wool of his jersey. As we draw closer, Mum slows, staring fixedly at the tree. It is her maple, standing tall and proud in the far corner of the top paddock. Totally unharmed. Jumping off the quad, we walk around the trunk, studying the ground. The ground is settled and undisturbed. I touch the trunk; it is the same ridged, rough bark I pat every day.
“Huh,” Dad grunts.
My mum weaves her arm through his, and they stare down at the tree. I stand next to them and gaze across the farm and towards the coast. I am the first to see it. A distant hump of water on the horizon, far out at sea. Blinking, I try to clear my eyes, but the hump continues to move, growing. I point, nudging my dad hard in the side.
“A whale?” I ask, but they don’t respond.
The bulge of water stretches along the horizon. It expands, absorbing the regular sets of waves. A mound of water, ever-growing, is now speeding towards our coast. A dull roar builds in the air. I can feel the thrum of power in my chest, mixed with my panicked breaths.
Instinctively, we reach for each other, holding tight. I wrap one arm around the maple’s trunk. The water is building faster now, a thick wall of blue, topped with white spray. Rolling forward relentlessly, towering higher and higher. Below us is Westport township. Single-story shops and houses, laid out in neat grids less than a kilometre from the coast.
Looming high, the mountain of a wave sweeps over them. Relentlessly, it surges across the roads and paddocks. The roar of the water mixes with the crack and snap of wood, the frantic shrieks and cries of animals. Cows thrash in the churning water. Our house and barns are engulfed, and still the wave stretches on. As it nears the fence line below us, the water starts to slow and stutter. Suddenly, the wave pulls back to the coast. The now brown water seethes and churns, spewing up debris. Our neighbour’s old blue car founders amongst a mix of broken trees, animal carcasses, and fence posts.
We stand by the maple for hours as the waters rush back and forth over the land. No building on our farm remains standing. I look out towards Westport.
“Do you think anyone is left?” My voice is a whisper.
Mum reaches for my hand, squeezing it hard. “We will go down and see, see what we can do, see who is left.” She lets go and wipes her face with both hands.
Dad pulls both of us to him. We stand there, holding each other. I feel them breathe, the bones of their ribs against mine. He finally lets us go, placing a shaking hand on my shoulder. “Mind the broken bits down there, Jake, can’t afford to get an infection now.”
As Mum drives the quad bike down the hill, I glance back up at the maple. It stands tall and straight, the red leaves waving.
****************
The next few months are a blur of broken homes and broken people. I lose count of the number of bodies I help lift into body bags in those first few days. Westport is destroyed, and there was no warning. When the wave hit, students were studying inside their classrooms, people were pushing trolleys in the grocery store, children were playing on the playground. A few lucky ones were able to grab hold of something and keep themselves afloat throughout the pounding waves. Of Westport’s 403 residents, only 28 of us survived.
The death of so many of our friends and neighbours makes the loss of our farm seem trivial, but when we have a moment, we still mourn. The old farmhouse is in pieces; only the fragments of its stone foundation are left. Our milking shed is ripped partly open, with a gaping hole in the metal siding. The police try to convince us to move into one of the spare rooms at the Inangahua pub, forty minutes inland, but my mum refuses.
“Over my dead body!” she rants.
And, because we have all seen enough dead bodies, the police don’t argue. She won’t leave our farm; she won't leave the maple. So we make a camp up on the ridge. We drink from the stream that runs out of the hills. It isn’t contaminated with dead bodies like all the water down in the valley. We all continue to help with the clean-up, pulling down condemned buildings, burying bloated cows, and slowly trying to pull our minds back together.
****************
“Happy birthday, love.” Mum holds out a cake, white frosting with a red maple leaf stuck in the middle.
Grinning, I put the hammer down. “Hey, Dad, looks like it’s morning tea time.”
He climbs down from the house framing, joining us at the workbench. We all perch on sawhorses, eating the carrot cake with our fingers, drinking hot tea from the thermos.
“So, 18.” Dad pauses, clears his throat. Then shakes his head.
I won’t be going out with any school friends tonight. Most of them drowned, and the few remaining moved inland with their parents years ago. Everyone who survived moved, except for us.
“Yeah, 18.” I echo, trying to keep my tone light. I glance at Mum, but she’s staring off into the distance, looking toward the maple tree.
Every evening since the wave, she goes to the tree. She’s been spending more and more time there, leaning against the trunk, gazing out towards the coast, watching the steady sets of waves wash onto the beach. Some evenings, Dad and I take dinner out to her. She seems to forget that she is hungry, seems to forget we are there.
I lick my fingers and drink the last of my tea. “Back to work?” I ask Dad.
He looks at Mum, but she’s still staring, uneaten cake in her hand. “Probably best.” He hands me my hammer, and we walk together back towards our unfinished house. Before he climbs the ladder again, he turns. “You can leave, you know. That job in Murch, they would love to have you on their farm. You are a good worker, Jake.” His eyes are almost hopeful.
“But Mum,” I murmur.
Sighing, he nods. He doesn’t ask me again.
****************
Over the next twenty years, Dad and I build up a small herd of well-bred Jerseys, and Mum uses their milk to make specialty cheeses and yoghurt that sell for ridiculous prices in the big cities. Gradually, people move back to the area, not down in the valleys but perched up on the surrounding hills like us. We rarely go to the coast, even when the sea is flat and calm. Instead, we turn to the hills, hunting through the lush West Coast bush. Some days I find myself staring out at the water, waiting, but the steady sets of waves never change. The maple continues to grow and flourish, its bright red leaves drawing the local children to collect them in handfuls.
I never have any children of my own. There are a few girlfriends, but when they inevitably ask about what happened that day, I can say little. And then I say even less until the relationship gradually fades away. Once, after a bottle of wine on a starlit night, I tried to explain to a girlfriend about what the maple did that day. But in the morning, between kisses, she giggles about the crazy story I made up.
When my mum dies, she is sitting by the maple looking out at the coast. We scatter her ashes at the base. I miss her quiet presence, but I realize that I have been mourning her absence for years. Dad has a chance to leave, but he doesn’t. Instead, he takes her place, each evening going out to sit under the maple and watch the distant waves. We maintain the farm, hire workers to make the cheese and yoghurt that have become so popular. The maple grows, the trunk thickens.
****************
I wake early on my seventy-first birthday. Through my window I can see stars, just fading into the dawn. No one is on the farm yet. The house Dad and I built together is empty but for me. With a cup of coffee in my hands, I wander barefoot onto the damp lawn. The maple isn’t there.
I scan the ground, but I know what to expect this time. The deep hole, bigger than last time, the rest of the surrounding earth barely disturbed. I look around me: down to the coast, up in the hills behind the farm, until I finally spot it, barely visible on a small hill south of the farm. The red leaves wave, just like they did so many years ago, signaling me to safety. Sinking to my knees, I bury my face in my hands. There is no one to run to, to shout for. My father died years ago.
Hillary McDonald lives in the South Island of New Zealand. She teaches secondary students outdoor skills. Hillary loves spending her free time exploring the outdoors with her family, reading and writing.
She has had short stories published in takahē magazine, Inglenook, Penelle Magazine, Emerald City Ghosts, and Folklore Review.