Pine as Noun and Verb

short fiction about first love

Photo by Jay Mantri on Unsplash

---

My high school girlfriend, Beth, sent me a postcard. She must’ve gotten my mailing address from my mother. I hadn’t seen or talked to Beth in thirty-seven years. On the front of the postcard was a closeup of a single stalk of wheat rising beside a two-lane highway. It was roadside wheat, the accidental grain that grows from the seeds dropped by passing trucks. Behind that stalk of wheat, in deep focus, was a thick pine forest. The trees made sense. Beth and I grew up in a logging town halfway up a mountain. But that lonely wheat was puzzling. On the back of the postcard, Beth had written, The plant grows in every direction but the root remains.

Beth and I dated all through high school. Then, after graduation, she went to Cornell in upstate New York while I went to Pepperdine in Los Angeles. We were smart kids fleeing our little town. Beth and I wrote weekly letters to each other during that first semester of college but neither of us could afford to come home for Christmas break. Then she dropped out of Cornell and hiked the world for two years. Her letters to me got shorter and shorter. And then the letters stopped. We were twenty and our love was done. I was hurt but I wasn’t angry. We were both on our way to becoming something beyond the pines.

The plant grows in every direction but the root remains.

After her worldwide hike, Beth went back to college, earned multiple degrees, and is now an English professor in Maine. Over the years, she’s published three short stories in The New Yorker. I’m relieved and disappointed that none of those stories contain any character who resembles me. Just like her, Beth’s stories never leave the Eastern Time Zone. She’s married to another English professor. They have two adult children who aren’t English professors.

The plant grows in every direction but the root remains.

I’m not a writer or professor but I think I know what Beth meant by sending that postcard. She wanted me to know that she was happy with her life, with all the directions in which she’d traveled, but that I remained foundational for her. I was a good memory. At least, that’s what I hoped she meant.

I still live in Los Angeles. I was married to Susan for twenty-two years. Then she died of breast cancer. I haven’t fallen in love since I buried her. Our son and daughter live with their families in San Diego, just a few hours down the coast, depending on traffic. I visit them at least once a month. I think I’ve been a good father. Probably a better grandfather. If nothing else, I think my mistakes are forgivable.

The plant grows in every direction but the root remains.

I design board games for a living. You probably know the one where you alternate between playing a beekeeper and playing a honeybee in the hive. I’m sure you know it because, at various points in the game, you have to stand and do a honeybee dance. You can see videos on YouTube.

It’s a family game. Kids love to dance like honeybees but they love it even more when their parents dance.

The plant grows in every direction but the root remains.

If we’re lucky, we get to spend decades with our dearest ones. I was lucky to have more than twenty years with my wife. I wish I could’ve enjoyed more but maybe we’re destined to get only 8,000 days with our dearest ones. Or only 800. Or 80. Or even just eight days. Good things don’t need to last a lifetime in order to be good.

The plant grows in every direction but the root remains.

I like to imagine that Beth dances like a honeybee with her husband, kids, and grandkids. I imagine that she says to them, A long time ago, I loved the boy who invented this game.