Jacob's Garden

Even before the autumn came, the leaves fell into Jacob's garden. It wasn't a particularly windy September and neither was it warm. The sky stayed blue and the clouds away, but the air gnawed like November.

"It's dying," he said, looking up at the oak tree. "Almost dead."

Mark followed Jacob's gaze to the top of the tree expecting to see some evidence of Jacob's feeling but he only saw the oak, bare of leaves, a shock of branches against the late summer sky.
"Maybe just an early season Jacob, feel how cold it is today. It's in the air." Mark hugged himself as he walked across the grass to stand beside Jacob.

"Perhaps, but....." Jacob sighed. "I think this one will go."

Jacob walked up to the oak and nestled his feet between the roots overflowing from the ground around the base of the tree. Still a yard or so away from the trunk, he reached forward to lean one hand against it.

The rough skin of his palm made a rasping sound against the bark as his hand rubbed carefully across seeming to feel for the signs of life he was sure had gone.

He swung his other arm around and now both hands were pressed against the tree shoulder width apart, taking his weight. He put one leg forward finding a new stable foot place between the roots and bent his knees slightly. Behind him Mark was anxiously rocking from one foot to the other, flicking his gaze between the top of the tree and Jacob's back tilted against the trunk.

There were seven oak trees still standing in Jacob's garden and this is where it had all started.
The garden as it was known was two hundred acres of woodland in the Forest of Dean, bought by Jacob shortly after the accident. For most of the small group of people, six men and four women standing by a pond thirty foot or so away, this was their first visit to Jacob's garden but not their first time. They huddled closer together, each face lit with anticipation and excitement, but from somewhere deeper, a yearning flushed their skin scarlet.

The feeling never diminished for Mark. Despite witnessing it so many times before, he never grew tired or any less than overwhelmed by being with Jacob, and once again his stomach flutters as he hears him start to inhale deeply and his back expands beneath his coat.

And each time as before, at this moment, Mark tells himself that it looks like Jacob is actually trying to push the tree over. Then, as the ground heaves and things begin to crack and groan Jacob expels a giant breath and Mark holds his in silence. And the tree begins to fall.

Jacob skipped backwards and jumped clear of the roots rising up out of the ground and as the oak descended it clipped and flicked the branches of other trees and the air rushed away from beneath its falling weight with a deep booming thrump. Finally it came to rest and the sounds thinned to a whisper.

The oak was dead.

*****

Mark met Jacob shortly after Maria died and he was the first. In the four years since they had become close friends and now Mark travelled with Jacob to the trees. Jacob had bought a large leather bound journal and in it he'd written the names and telephone numbers of those who had contacted them.  Whenever a call came in they would let everyone know before throwing a couple of overnight bags into the car and heading off to whatever part of the world the call had come in from.

Secrecy was a problem in the beginning. There was an understandable scepticism towards Jacob when he'd first started to make contact with the various parties about the trees, and of course whilst he offered his services without charge he didn't reveal his methods during the first exchange. The extraordinary truth was only made known when they had witnessed it first hand with their own eyes. Mark had argued that Jacob could have asked for privacy as part of the deal but Jacob had said he really didn't mind and wouldn't want to draw attention to himself or raise suspicion before he'd actually carried out the work. Mark soon realised it was all part of the process for Jacob needing a witness, someone who was unfamiliar and nonjudgmental.

For Mark, without Maria everything made sense to be here, even if he couldn't yet fully understand why, and ultimately what the consequences of everything would be. His family, or rather Maria's parents as Mark had no living relatives to speak of; they told him that it was time to start rebuilding a new life without her. They loved him and prayed that he found some happiness again. Enough time had passed. For what though? To forget? To begin believing he could have a life without her. This was his life without her and it began one moment in the dark four years ago whilst he slept, and wouldn't end until he was finally and eternally delivered into the light.

After seeing such a fantastic feat, those who'd led them to dying trees became very protective and wanted to keep their involvement to themselves. As time went on Mark began to realise the effect their work was having on those who witnessed it for like himself they found it a powerful and cathartic experience.

He started inviting each person who had led them to a tree to come along and watch the next time it happened. This is how the group grew to around ten or so people, and those that could travelled to wherever Jacob and Mark were heading, to whatever place the call came in from.

Inevitably, about three months after they'd first begun, there was a farmer in Suffolk who valued a few pounds and even fewer minutes of fame, over the privilege of watching Jacob, and had sold a story to the local press. Being such a preposterous idea, Mark had easily dismissed it arguing that he had been there too, and seen Jacob standing next to a diseased and rotten tree when it fell. The real story Mark said was in fact how lucky Jacob was to avoid serious injury. The original whistleblower didn't pursue things and the story died as quickly as the speed in which he'd no doubt spent his money. The Suffolk Herald ran a small piece about the incident with the headline 'Timber!"
Mark had learned how to deal with the press after Maria had died. After the initial reporting of the accident they had latched on to his developing relationship with Jacob. When Mark was unable to give them any specific reason, they concocted their own, some even suggesting sinister motives.
The cruel series of events didn't seem story enough for them, and most resisted the simple conclusion that here were two men whom had both lost their wives, so undoubtedly and unexpectedly they now had much in common. The reporters focussed on the twist, the element that sold their newspapers for nearly two whole months after the accident and it trapped Jacob, under a daily microscope of intrusion that no polite requests to desist could stop.

Mark had become the spokesperson for the both of them, by default really, because of Ellie. Sometimes Mark struggled to reconcile his loss with Jacob's. He was actually asked in one interview whether he felt Maria's right to justice and his own loss had been usurped by the tragic circumstances of the accident. Mark had lost his wife, but poor Jacob, with Ellie already gone, had now lost his whole family.

Ellie was Jacob and Jenny's daughter five years ago just three days before her sixth birthday, she had emptied out the contents of the refrigerator, a fairly old free standing unit in the family kitchen. She removed all the food, jars of sauces, the odd nail polish and placed them neatly, regimentally on the floor. Beside these she stacked the two wire shelves, egg tray and plastic thermometer. She had then climbed inside and to make herself fit would have sat with her chin tight against her knees. No would ever know what new game she had invented, but once inside she had pulled the door shut and even as the light went out, as it would have done, she hadn't attempted to get out again and it was there in the darkness and the cold that she died.

Jacob had been working in the garden for most of the morning. He had walked into the kitchen and filled the kettle before he noticed the contents of the refrigerator neatly ordered on the floor. He shouted for Jenny as he continued to make tea. She appeared in the kitchen yawning and rubbing the back of her head.

"Oh. I fell asleep. Is Ellie in the garden." She frowned and chuckled at the food on the floor. "Oh no, is the fridge playing up?"

No one asked why Jenny had turned the steering wheel that night. She was the one who had bent down and opened the refrigerator door. The one who had felt the weight of Ellie's stony body slump across her feet, ice against her shins. Jenny had said later that she didn't know, didn't have an overwhelming feeling and really expected to see an empty fridge, and for Ellie to skip into the kitchen explaining with innocent sincerity and in great detail why on earth she had dismantled the contents of the fridge.

Jacob knew. He was already sitting on the floor trembling and pushing himself back between the corner cabinets with his feet. His socks kept slipping on the tiled floor as he tried to stop himself falling into the giant chasm which was unfolding before him.

The coroner's report stated that based on calculations of available oxygen inside the refrigerator, Ellie probably lost consciousness after around two to three hours and asphyxiation would have occurred shortly after.

Whilst Jenny was found to have caused death by dangerous driving, there was little other evidence to explain her actions that night and she quickly became another victim in the whole terrible story. For Mark this left Maria's death somehow unexplained. Not that he didn't understand, hadn't agonised to truly accept the circumstances behind the accident. He just needed a reason, something to keep inside, a place to go where it could all be explained. On those days when suddenly nothing made sense again, the only answer he had to wrap around himself was someone else's grief, and it just wasn't enough.  Jacob understood this and when they met, he had told Mark that despite Jenny's fragile mental state, he acknowledged with a heavy heart that she was directly responsible for Maria's death.

They had spoken at length about how they were both coping, and Jacob had told Mark about the day he'd first pushed over an oak tree in the woods behind his house some four weeks after Jenny and Maria's accident.

Mark initially thought Jacob must be speaking metaphorically because he recognised the anger he was describing, the debilitating emotions which at times rendered him mute with anger. But in those woods Jacob had placed his hands upon the tree and the things he couldn't say, the feelings he wasn't able to communicate had burgeoned and unravelled with such a ferocity. Three weeks later Jacob found another tree and Mark was standing beside him when he did it again.

Though the trees were dying, their roots shrinking away from the soil around them, there was no doubt about the extraordinary force required to rip them from the ground and whilst Jacob's strength appeared superhuman it didn't manifest itself in any other situations irrespective of his emotional state.   Mark had thought a lot about the symbolism of the trees and what they must represent to Jacob. Was he simply ridding himself of death, clearing away reminders of the tragedies that had devastated his family or perhaps it was just a simple act of frustration.  Jacob had bought the forest land so he could continue to push the trees, but Mark wondered how much Jacob was doing it for himself now rather the others in the group whom had come so quickly to rely on him.

Ted came because he missed his wife and they had argued the day she died. Mrs Rowe, their newest member lost a son in Afghanistan and Rachael Everett's seven month old baby was never born.
Jacob lost his beautiful daughter and hurt everyday because he couldn't understand why she had chosen to sit inside that dark unfriendly place until sleep and finally death consumed her.  Jenny his wife finally surrendered to the demons which had hunted her since the day she herself fell asleep and wasn't there to save her baby.  Her desperate action that night on a country lane three miles from her home unwittingly changed Mark's life forever. 

***

Jacob was looking at his hands and he walked back towards Mark.  The group of people were also walking over,  some milling around and inspecting the giant mesh of the oak's root bowl which out of the ground stood much higher than any of them.

Mark shook Jacob's hand.  "Thank you Jacob," he said. The others in the group had now joined them and they repeated the gratitude,  some patting Jacob's back and rubbing his arms.

They slowly made their way out of the garden, through the trees and to the road beyond.

By Darren Seeley