Leaving the Land

“I don’t think anyone is coming, Charlie.” The girl whispered the words into the winter air. The wind whistled.

“If they were coming, they would have been here by now.” She clutched the little black notebook to her chest, like it was the only thing keeping her standing.

“Charlie?” She paused pensively, and started walking up the long, abandoned driveway. “Fine, then, I’ll just go home alone.” Taking a long look over her shoulder, she started up the rocky road.

There was a tree just beside the house, with arms that reached up to the sky and turned to descend deep into the earth, and then, still needing more places to go, the tree stretched outward, gently caressing the house and even tapping the driveway. In a place near the tree’s center, there was a tiny little crook of a branch, that bent down so a small sort of person could sit and dream and hope there that the world was something else. And that was precisely where Lilah went to sit. She had always gone there to be free in her thoughts; she would write for hours, creating a new world with every brush of her pen; it was the only place where all the world’s devils fell like lightning and justice shown like the sun. Writing in the notebook her father gave her, she felt connected to him, like he was sitting there beside her like he had done before he disappeared like all the others. But today was different, when she sat in her chair crafted by nature and blessed by the rain, not a word came to her mind.

“Charlie.” She said his name out loud, or maybe only in her mind. It didn’t matter much either way because Charlie had not followed her back to the tree. “5,000 dollars isn’t an awful lot of money Charlie.” She wondered if she kept on talking, maybe he would come over and wouldn’t stay so far away. “But it was enough for them, I guess. Enough for them to leave–

“Oh, I know, there wasn’t much to stay for, but I mean it belongs to us… belonged to us. Now look at it all, falling apart… ” The leaves nodded in agreement, and the birds sung their accord. “... but there’s still the sun shining, and this tree. And as long as we stay here, even if nobody comes to help, at least no one will be able to take it away from us?

“Don’t be like that Charlie. They’re not coming. They promised. They wouldn’t do that.”

But had they? She looked down the long road that led out of her Eden. The truth was, no one had offered her a bit of money because they didn’t think she would take it anyway. Abandon her father’s land? for people to come in and desecrate and flatten it so you couldn’t even see the earth? And then once Charlie–

“Common, they’re so far away anyway, it’ll be forever till they come back.”

She heard the crunching of rubber on rocks and felt the tree reach out to protect her, bending its leaves like a covering. She breathed out “Everything will be fine.” But the leaves didn’t nod and the birds didn’t sing. The black SUV seemed to take years to reach her, teetering over the un-driven path. When they finally did, a man said something to Lilah, he didn’t get out of the car, and a woman said something more.

She looked past them up the driveway: “10, 000 dollars isn’t an awful lot of money Charlie. Not enough to leave.”

The man stepped out of the car, a woman in a white doctor’s coat following suit.

“Who’s Charlie honey?” she tilted her head.

But the man remembered. He’d been here before. His face fell as he whispered something into the woman’s ear. Then to Lilah, “with 20,000 dollars you could forget what happened to him.” He cleared his throat, “your father took less. You could be with him.” The woman looked back into the car and nodded her head. Two more men stepped out. “We can take you to him.”

Her father had sold himself for a lie, angels, not devils had fallen like lightning, and Charlie had paid the price. Tilting her head toward the arms of the tree that went up into the sky forever, she understood what they were saying. They spoke with money and not with truth– she was the only one left, they thought, so they would offer her more money, or maybe her father. But either way she would have to leave. And they felt guilty because he couldn’t leave. Charlie had to leave for them to have the land, but his spirit was intertwined with the land; there was only one way for him to go.

Charlie had to die.

So they had made it so.