Dyan Sheldon - The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

This is not an opinion they are going to have for long.

They arrive at the entrance to the campus within seconds of each other. Like dogs trained to associate the clinking of a metal bowl with supper, the sight of the school immediately makes both Maya and Sicilee think of Cody Lightfoot. Out of habit rather than hope, Sicilee pauses at the bottom of the drive to smoothe out her skirt and check her make-up in the tiny compact she keeps in her pocket. Also out of habit rather than hope, Maya glides to a stop behind her, getting off her bike and smiling to herself as she takes off her helmet and shakes out her hair.

It is as she’s about to stride past Sicilee that Maya notices Clemens and Waneeda, walking slowly in the wrong direction. Where are they going? Neither of them is likely to have a game of tennis or a run around the track before the first bell. And then she sees the men and the machines over at the edge of the school grounds.

“Do you see that?” In her surprise at what it is she sees, Maya forgets that she doesn’t usually speak to Sicilee unless it’s snidely or totally unavoidable. But the sight of the stump grinders, saws and cranes is as shocking to her as finding a bunch of white men on their land must have been for the Lenni Lenape. Unlike the Lenni Lenape, however, Maya has a pretty good idea of what’s likely to happen next. “They’re going to cut down those trees.”

Sicilee looks over. “But they can’t do that. We all signed Clemens’ petition. The town’s going to have a vote.”

Maya tightens her grip on the handlebars. “Then what do you think those chainsaws are for?”

“But they can’t be going to cut the trees,” Sicilee says again – as if just the repetition will make it true. She is experiencing one of those moments when even though you know what is happening, you don’t want it to happen with such an intensity that you refuse to believe that it is. “There must be some other explanation.”

“And what’s that? They’re going to mow the lawn?” In the distance, Waneeda suddenly starts to run. By now, Maya, too, has heard enough of Clemens’ arguments for saving the trees to have been persuaded. She rolls her bike forward. “I’m going to see what’s going on.”

Sicilee snaps her compact shut. “I’m coming with you.”

Clemens is talking to the foreman, a large, bored-looking man in a yellow vest and matching hard hat. Waneeda stands beside him, looking like a gypsy who is working on a curse. The other men in the crew, likewise dressed in yellow vests and matching hard hats, lean against their trucks, drinking coffee from paper cups and looking amused.

Clemens’ voice, though calm, is strong and clear, as though he is not a skinny boy in baggy corduroys and a faded flannel over one of his homemade T-shirts, but a grown man himself, bursting with righteousness and reason.

“You’re not listening to me,” Clemens is saying. “These aren’t just trees. They represent every single thing that we’ve destroyed on this planet. Every animal, bird, fish, insect and plant that’s vanished from the Earth for ever because we thought it was our right to do whatever we wanted with them. Because we wanted to wear their skins to show off our wealth. Because we hunted out of greed, not need. Because we wanted the land where they lived to build something that we’d then rebuild in twenty years.”

“Whoa … whoa…” The foreman holds up his hands, palms out. “I think you’re getting a little carried away here, son.”

“You’re the ones who are getting carried away,” says Clemens. “Look at you!” One hand sweeps across the huddle of trucks, equipment and men. “You look like soldiers. Man used to be in harmony with nature, not at war with it. These trees are a reminder of that. They’re a symbol. They’re a warning. They—”

“I know, I know.” The foreman’s sigh is as heavy as the thud of a felled oak. “I heard you the first time. But like I’ve been trying to tell you, none of that crap cuts any ice with me or my men. We have a job to do.”

“But they promised to reconsider,” Clemens fairly wails. “We got thousands of signatures. The town council agreed to have another meeting.”

“Well, I guess they had their meeting without you,” says the foreman. “Because I’ve got my orders. Those trees are coming down.”

“Do you always follow orders?”

Clemens and Waneeda turn around to see Sicilee, looking like a walking garden in her floral suit and matching shoes, striding towards them. The foreman, of course, has only to raise his eyes over their heads to see the unlikely source of this outburst.

But the next outburst comes from Maya.

“Would you follow orders if you were told to burn down the school?” she says, wheeling the pink-and-blue bike to a stop beside Waneeda.

The men leaning against the trucks snigger softly; the foreman gives another of his dead-tree sighs.

“Look, ladies,” he says, “as I’ve been trying to tell your friends here, I’m not the one you’ve got the beef with. I don’t make the decisions. I just carry them out.”

“But you can’t cut down these trees.” Sicilee doesn’t come to a stop, but continues walking until (because the shoes decorated in flowers are four-inch platforms) she is staring the foreman right in the eye. “Do you know how old these trees are?”

“Five hundred years. At least.” The foreman sounds so weary you’d think he’d been alive for those five hundred years himself. “And before you get going, I know all about how if they could talk they’d tell us all about the Indians and the pigeons and what Paul Revere looked like and how we should eat berries and not McDonald’s and stuff like that. But they can’t talk, honey. No matter what your friend thinks, they’re just trees.”

“There is no such thing as ‘just trees’,” contradicts Sicilee. “Trees store carbon dioxide. Every time you cut one down you release those emissions into the atmosphere. You—”

“Don’t you kids hear right? They’re going to plant more trees. More trees than we’re taking down.”

“But these trees are special,” snaps Waneeda. “They’re living history.”

“Not for much longer they aren’t,” says the foreman.

All the other men laugh in a way that even those who love them most would call unkind.

Although Dr Firestone may see Clemens as a hotheaded activist, in reality he has always been more of an eco-worrier than an eco-warrior. He watches the documentaries and reads the books and articles; he makes T-shirts and writes letters and instigates petitions. But, except for joining one climate change march last spring (carrying a sign that said: THERE IS NO PLANET B), that’s all he’s done. Until now.

“Oh, yeah?” What’s the sense of only talking if all your talk is going to get you is lies or laughter? “We’ll see about that.” And Clemens turns and hurls himself at the nearest tree, wrapping his arms around it as far as they’ll go.

The crew erupts in whoops of laughter.

“Whoowhee…” shouts one of the men. “Looks like we got ourselves a real tree hugger here.”

“Too bad you can’t get your arms around it!” shouts another.

“Ah gees…” The foreman groans. “Don’t start with this crap, sonny. We can pick you off that tree like you’re no bigger than an ant.”

Waneeda takes a step forward – a step that might seem more menacing if she didn’t look as though she should be carrying a crystal ball or a tambourine. “We know our rights,” says Waneeda. “You lay a hand on him and we’ll have you for assault.”

“Christ…” The foreman pushes his hat back on his head and wipes his forehead with his sleeve, as though he already knows just how long and difficult this day is going to be. “Look, girly girl, we don’t want no trouble. Just come away from the trees and go to your classes and we’ll forget this ever happened.”

“Forget what ever happened?” asks Sicilee.

“Nothing’s happened – yet,” adds Maya.

The foreman pulls his phone from his pocket. “I’m gonna have to call the cops, you know.”

“What are they going to charge us with?” asks Clemens. “Trespassing on school property?”

It isn’t the police who are called first, but Dr Firestone.

He marches across the campus in his dark grey suit, brightened by a tie that is a tumble of flowers startlingly similar to the pattern on Sicilee Kewe’s linen suit. As this is a serious matter calling for all his years of professional experience, Dr Firestone isn’t smiling, but he looks no more worried than a man whose breakfast has been disturbed by the buzzing of a fly. Dr Firestone doesn’t want to call the police. Police at a high school never make parents or school boards feel good about the school or the way it’s being run. And now, of course, is an especially delicate time, with the new budget coming up for a vote. Dr Firestone, however, is sure that there’s no need for law enforcers. It is, after all, only Clemens Reis, born troublemaker, going off at the deep end as usual – once more disrupting the smooth running of the machine that is Clifton Springs High School (as well as the machines that have come to bring down the small grove of oaks). Clemens, though a thorn in Dr Firestone’s side, is a thorn he feels he can pull out by himself.

The foreman walks out to meet him, and he and Dr Firestone stop together some distance from the target of trees, the yellow hard hat leaning towards the principal’s greying head as they discuss the situation in low voices.

By now, of course, the situation is a little more complicated than it was originally. Instead of one scraggly boy plastered against the trunk, Clemens has been joined beneath the ancient oak by Waneeda, Sicilee, Maya and Maya’s bicycle. Dr Firestone had assumed from what he’d been told over the phone that Clemens was by himself. A lone voice crying not in the wilderness but at the tennis courts, easy enough to drown out. Still, although he hasn’t looked at them closely, Dr Firestone can see that the three other figures under the trees are all girls. Girls, in Dr Firestone’s opinion, do not lead rebellions; they do the cooking for them. So no problem there.