the cherry tree

The Cherry Tree.

The cherry tree was large and green and red. It was green from its beautiful leaves, and red from fresh cherries when it carried them. The tree stood in grandma and grandpa’s back garden, and each day all the little children from the neighbourhood would come out and play underneath its broad branches and spread-out leaves. They played all manner of games in the old people’s back-garden underneath the tree with grandma looking on, and with grandpa sitting on the back porch and smoking his pipe.

But one day while sitting there smoking his pipe and looking at the happy scene of children playing, grandpa grew discontented with the situation. ‘Look at all them dang leaves and wasted cherries messing up my back yard. And after all these years of hearing children yelling and screaming, I’ve grown sick of it. The tree’s got to go, then the children will have no choice but to go and play elsewhere’.

So grandpa stooped off to his shed to go and sharpen his axe on the grinder. Grandma just happened to be passing by the window while he was inside grinding his axe on the grindstone and she overheard him mumble; “the tree’s gotta go, the tree’s got to go…”

Shocked, she realized this meant that he intended to chop down the cherry tree. She would have to act quickly if she was to try and save it. She ran to the pantry and got her little bottle of cyanide and poisoned his afternoon tea with it. After coming in from the shed and having his midday tea, grandpa went to lie down for his afternoon nap and he died in his sleep. The coroner ascribed his death to natural causes due to heart-failure. The day was saved.

Grandma and the children continued to play underneath the broad branches of the cherry tree each day, and close by, overcast by the shadows of the lower branches, stood grandpa’s grave. It was always strewn with leaves and rotting cherries, and the shouts of children playing were always heard close by…