Page 12 of If You Give a Grump a Christmas Tree Farm
“Sure.”
Rebecca follows me out, and we walk toward the barn. Swinging the big double doors wide, they stick on the dirt, and I have to drag them open.
“Great. These are going to need to be shaved down if we’re going to use the barn.” Studying the loose boards and leaning posts, I huff, thinking of all the work the barn needs.
The musty smell of the place wafts out.
“Think of the possibilities.” She scans the place with a sparkle in her eye. “This could be turned into a gift shop or aplace we sell apple cider and baked goods or even turn it into a wedding venue. Honestly, the possibilities are endless.”
I wish I could see the place through her eyes, because when I look around all I see is a money pit.
“I can help you do the work.”
“You know how to repair a barn door?”
There’s a tractor sitting just inside, and after wandering farther, I spot the old machinery Gramps used for the business. I run my hand over one of them.
“What’s that?” Rebecca asks.
“The shaker,” I say. “It’s used to shake the trees of any loose pine needles. And this one is the netting machine. You run a tree through it, and it bags it up in a net for the customer to take home on the top of their car.”
“Oh.” She looks around at all the junk piled up everywhere.
Beside the tractor is a flatbed. I gesture to it. “I remember he’d haul cut trees on this thing. I’d help him set them up out in front of the cabin for those who didn’t want to cut their own.”
She nods. “He always had lights strung around the area.”
“Right.”
There’s a black Chevy pickup truck parked to the side of the tractor. The name of the business is painted on the door. I glance inside, wondering if it still runs.
I know Rebecca has a manilla envelope with labeled keys for every piece of equipment, and I turn and hold my hand out. “You got the keys to the truck?”
She digs in the envelope and passes them to me.
I slip behind the wheel and insert the key. Surprisingly, the engine fires right up, and the radio comes on, playing Johnny Cash’sRing of Fire. I smile, then turn the key off.
Something makes me flip the visor down—a distant memory perhaps. And there it is, the photo of my grandmother banded to the other side. It’s a shot of her as a young woman,probably from when they first met. I remember my grandfather flipping that visor, and pressing two fingers to his lips, then pressing them to the photo. Every damn time he started the truck up.
A memory floods over me of the two of us bouncing along the rutted dirt road into the fields, Gramps looking over at me and laughing, telling me to hold on.
I climb out and shut the door. “You want to check the fields?”
“Sure.”
I close up the barn, and we walk down the dirt road and over the hill. Wind blows through the trees and ruffles my hair.
“It’s been twenty years, and yet it seems like yesterday,” I murmur.
Rebecca studies the side of my face. “I’m sure he missed you.”
It doesn’t make me feel better. In fact, it makes me feel like an asshole for never coming to visit. Any animosity I felt toward my parents had nothing to do with my grandparents. I was a fool to let all that drive us apart. I should have come back years ago.
Regret floods me, but it’s too late now, and that’s the worst of it.
We clear the rise, and a valley opens in front of us. Rows and rows of various types of trees spread out in long lines, all of varying years of growth. White Pine, Blue Spruce, Fraser Fir, Cedar.
It’s obvious, even to me, they haven’t been tended to. The branches are scraggly on some, and many have brown dead spots. From what, I haven’t a clue.
