NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
“Quercus alba, look at those deep sinuses.” Bel Vionnet examines some dead leaves uncurling one with her fingers as she identifies the tree. People are gathering to see the aftermath of its dramatic fall in last night’s icy gale.
These once prophetic leaves caught the first rays of dawn sunlight, before it came up over the hill and the roofs of nearby houses. They held on through autumn into midwinter sheltering starlings and grackles, which started their chat at first light. They rustle and scratch in the windy silence after snow, vocalizing, but what they are saying falls unrevealed to the ground. The top of the tree is now spread out across Wickett Street after tipping over from the drenched ground and upending its root ball in the air. Though the air is well below freezing this morning and light snow sparkles as it blows out of the surrounding trees, there’s a pool of dark water filling the hole left when all the earth and roots were torn out of the ground and rose into the air. The huge ragged lump spreading out at the bottom of the trunk looks like a picture of the noise it made tipping over. Several major roots dangle with clumps of earth weighing them down. It was about seventy feet high with scales of ash grey bark along the trunk. Thick branches with lichen growing on one side have dug into the ground like bent elbows with bare limbs sticking up holding more brittle dead leaves bunched here and there.
“What was that bel?”
“Quercus alba, or white oak, that is what’s blocking the road, one of our biggest. Probably killed by all the machinery compacting the ground around its roots.”
“That’s really too bad, they made an effort to save this tree when they dug the new well.”
A black Humvee pulls up on the other side of the tree.
“Can you see who that is bel?” Bel parts the branches in front of her.
“It’s Albrecht Intaglio and I don’t know who, and there’s Boyd Nightingale.”
“What did you say bel?” A chain saw starts up after a few coughs and the exhaust blows over to us. Diddlie coughs. “I hate those fumes!” Albrecht is shouting orders at Boyd who starts cutting the top most branches from the trunk. Another saw starts and the third man begins to cut through larger limbs further down the trunk from us, where it has crushed the hedgerow, and revealed the remains of a rail fence. Albrecht shouts further directions over the noise, Boyd stops his saw and drives off in the Fauxmont Militia’s Hummer. Albrecht comes towards us around the end of the tree.
“Keep back there. We are throwing the brush over here.”
“What?” Lark walks towards him. Albrecht repeats himself. Lark walks up close to him and says something in his ear. He smiles and they continue in a short conversation we can’t hear. Lark is frowning as she walks back, but grins at us as she gets close enough to be heard over the noise.
“Self important little twerp!”
“What did you say to him Lark?”
“Never trust authority Didd., remember that from the old days.”
“Is that what you said to him?”
Albrecht joins us, and Lark doesn’t answer. “Good morning, see, here’s your community at work, not yawping for the government’s help! You all want to pitch in and move some brush?”
Lou appears from down the hill behind us, and Rank Majors and Marshall Rundstedt drive up, squeezed into the cab of Hank Dumpty’s chalky blue F150. They too have chain saws in the back and Albrecht walks over to them.
“This will be interesting, folks.”
“Lou, I can’t see Hank taking direction from Albrecht.”
“Look Fred, Marshall is talking to him.”
“Fred, you got a saw?”
“I’ve got a pruning saw.”
“There’s enough saws at work already.”
“There’s a lot of tree Lou.”
“Right enough bel, but they’ll end up in each other’s way if there’s too many.”
“Oh look, Hank has driven off!”
“Hank’s seen enough Lou!”
“Looks like Albrecht is trying to turn this little project into a political statement, like everything else in his life.”
“Well Lark, some one’s got to take the lead.”
“Why Didd.? why couldn’t these neighbors just come here to clear the road because they choose to, because they need to get by?”
“That’s probably what’s going on Lark.”
“The spirit of Fauxmont Lou”
“Right Fred, besides, leaders can’t take anything we don’t give them.”
“Oh no Lark? What about tyrants? Look at Stalin or Mao.”
“Bel they had to have a lot of people supporting them to have done what they did.”
“Yeah, and if you opposed them you were as good as dead.”
“Too true Lou! There were plenty of enforcers and killers at work.”
“So what did the dead give them?”
“Nothing Didd. … I am talking about the followers, and those who were dragged along by fear.”
“In a sense these leaders were false gods bel.”
“Like the ancient kings who ruled by divine right, or take Nero for instance who declared himself a god.”
“So Lark, you don’t think we should follow leadership.”
“No, no Didd. Not exactly, its more a matter of what you give them.”
“What do you mean by “give them”, bel?”
“Cooperation, willing cooperation which is a mark of autonomy because it reserves one’s will for oneself.”
“That’s what I mean bel, not blind obedience, or mindless compliance where people give up their will to another.”
“Why would any one do that Lark?”
“Maybe they are prisoners.”
“Lou, they may be in the military.”
“In the military respect for rank is obligatory.”
“The outward sign of respect is obligatory Lou,”
“Right and that’s some times all there is Didd.”
“Did you see the paper the other day? They have a crisis on their hands now.”
“Oh! you talking about that ‘toxic leadership’ story Lark.”
“Leadership is generally so poorly understood.”
“Yes Lou, but some people want to be led. It’s a relief. They don’t have to make so many decisions.”
“Yeah Fred, maybe it is a relief, I guess it could be, to give up one’s responsibility to one’s self but …”
“Yeah, what’s left Lou?”
“That’s it bel, without decision not much.”
“You’re spirit can’t move you without your will. So you are not so much a person as a slave to some one else’s will.”
“Amen bel.”
“Well Lark, ‘there’s leaders’ and ‘there’s leaders’. Hitler told the Germans what they wanted to hear in the thirties and the majority supported him at first, even though he told a lot of lies.”
“I think the thing about leadership is really respect. When subordinates respect their leader they’ll follow.”
“What about tyrants who force people to follow them?”
“For tyrants the respect of their subordinates isn’t as important as keeping them in fear.”
“Lark, I mean we can give our respect or withhold it.”
“Exactly bel, that’s the meaning of autonomy, freedom if you like.”
“Makes the difference between tyrants and what I am calling real or true leaders.”
“Real because they are morally true and don’t rely on fear and coercion.”
“That’s it Fred.”
“So isn’t that what Albrecht is advocating? Less government and more independent action?”
“Lou, less government means more corporate power and I have never heard him or my son say a word about that.”
“He’s very articulate for knowing nothing Lark!”
“Fred, he’s been taken in … and he has snookered Boyd too.”
“Look out over there!” Albrecht and the other man have started throwing brush into a pile nearby. A chunk of rotten wood falls out of a nearby red oak into the pool under the root ball of the fallen white. It breaks the thin coat of ice that had formed in the shade.
