There was a whimper from Jonathan’s bedroom. A quick gentle hand on her cheek, “I’ll check on him,” and Bill was gone.
Andrea faced, as if anew, the knowledge that her own happiness and sense of right made no difference in the dance of life and the cycle of the generations on this planet. She could remain a self-righteous misfit, or she could begin to let go of her pain.
With a sad smile, Andrea wondered whose side she was on.
Maybe it was time to give up childishness. But it wasn’t fair. It hurt.
Andrea put her hand to her cheek. Bill’s touch had been warm and kind. His pain at losing Anna had been no less than her own.
Quietly, very alone and for what felt like the very first time, Andrea cried for Anna, and for her own lost youth.
The dinner had gone well. Jonathan had been the center of attention. He got the reptant’s liver, the mighty hunter’s reward.
Andrea felt relaxed and Bill gave her a proud smile at every opportunity.
The tree, now outside getting acclimated to its place in the backyard, had already formed a few berry-sized Earth Apples exactly where the baby reptant had marked it. And, responding faithfully to the winter solstice, the tree had produced a single perfect red flower. Cindy and Jonathan had awakened with the dawn and tip-toed downstairs, excited, like children getting their first look at their Christmas presents—
No, Andrea corrected herself, like children looking at the first reptant blossom of the season.
After dinner, everyone assembled outside around the new tree. Bill and Jonathan lowered the new sapling and its biodegradable pot into a newly-dug hole. Bill removed the dried reptant skin “angel” from the top of the tree and placed it into the hole, making this ritual as much funeral as celebration of new life.
Then the Sayings.
Using a small gardening shovel, Bill took a scoop of soil and, before throwing it into the hole, said, “This is for the one who found, the twenty who followed, and the two who survived.”
Another scoop of soil. “This is for the tree that sustained them, and the guardians that killed them.”
Another scoop, “This is for all those who followed since the last and first man and woman learned the secrets of the reptant plant and animal.”
Bill handed the scoop to a noticeably more mature Jonathan. Andrea saw, reflected in his face, the earnestness and sincerity in Bill’s. Andrea wondered how she could possibly deny them that belief, based, as it was, on well-documented events. Belief based on knowledge… was that concept necessarily self-contradicting? On this brave new world, perhaps not.
Jonathan filled the scoop and embarked haltingly on his part of the Sayings. “This is for Phoenix, which… eh… humbles us.”
Scoop, “Which rejected the twenty as an… immune… system rejects… foreign… organisms.”
Scoop, “This is for the eighteen who died, eating the poisoned… bounty of Phoenix.”
Scoop, “Or who fell to the sharp fangs and claws of the reptant.” Scoop, “This is for the Earth Apples, the only native fruit we can eat, and for the guardian reptants, our… nemesis, and, as we learned in the fullness of time, our salvation.”
Jonathan looked intently at the new tree, wrestling, Andrea could tell, with the now enriched meanings of the Sayings. Good, son. Don’t let what you believe degenerate into meaningless gestures. Don’t ever let your mind hide behind empty forms and obedient posturing. She felt herself pleading silently with him, surprised at her own feelings.
It must have shown in her face. Bill gave her one of his everything-OK? smiles.
Jonathan handed the scoop to Cindy. Too young to participate fully in the Sayings, Cindy still had a role to play. She began resolutely shoveling dirt into the hole, while answering questions.
Bill asked, “Cindy, why do we plant these trees in our backyard?”
With mock exasperation she said, “So we can eat, silly.” She giggled, balancing an especially large load of dirt on the scoop.
Jonathan asked, pointing to the two large reptant trees standing at the east end of the property, “Why do we have those two big ones over there?”
“One’s for Mommy, and one’s for Daddy!” Warming to the exercise she continued, pointing with her free hand to the other trees, “And that one’s for you, and that one’s for me…” and lost her momentum as her delicately balanced pile of topsoil collapsed onto the grass.
Andrea looked past Cindy, past the fence, to the large reptant tree beyond. The grass around it was taller and a healthier blue/green color thanks to the nutrients that rained sporadically down on it from above. Anna’s blood had helped fertilize that ground.
Andrea thought about all the years she had pleaded with Bill to fill a tranquilizer dart with poison and kill the guardian reptants there. All those years he had refused. His beliefs, once so attractive to her, had made it impossible for him. She knew he was in pain, but her own pain had left her bereft of compassion for his. How I must have hurt him, she thought.
Andrea’s eyes strayed to the spot near the house where another reptant tree sapling had once stood. She remembered how it had gone sterile for lack of spraying. She watched, again, as the ghost of a younger Bill tore it out of the ground when his frustration had boiled over, climbed the fence and, as if hypnotized, marched unarmed straight to the tree where Anna had died. He had returned to his senses only when Andrea, sensing clearly for the first time in five years what she had and what she stood to lose, had sprinted past him and turned, taunting him. “Let the monsters fertilize their tree with both of us then! Is that what you want?”
Bill had swept her up as from before a runaway train and carried her all the way back to the house. There they had fought savagely. They had released the demons that had patrolled their hearts for so long, and finally, after an ocean of tears, they had emerged as a new man and woman. Resurfaced, Andrea realized now, but not completely reborn.
“Cindy, how do the Earth Apples grow?”
Brushing fugitive dirt into the hole with her hands, Cindy rolled her eyes at her dad. “That’s easy, Daddy. You spray the trees with stuff you get at the Chemplex. The more you spray the more apples we get to eat.”
Andrea was struck by the simplicity and innocence of her baby’s answer. And yet, Cindy too would someday face the dark underside of the miracle of human survival on Phoenix; the slaying and skinning of baby animals, the messy, traumatic dissection, the deciphering and registering of chemical formulas and a life-long dependence on tree sprays. Some day Cindy too would take a child of her own to the reptant nursery (with fewer qualms, certainly, than Andrea had had). But could any mother be totally untroubled by the bloody ritual? At least for Cindy it would not serve, Andrea prayed, as a frustrating reminder and unsatisfying revenge for the death of a child.
The silence, the break in the rhythm and flow of the Replant Ceremony, woke Andrea from her musings. It was her turn, and they were waiting. Be here now, she admonished herself.
“Tell us what you are thankful for, Cindy.”
It was something new and unexpected. Something Andrea wanted to add to the ceremony; something she could call her own. Bill took it in stride. Jonathan squinted in thought and then shrugged. Cindy didn’t miss a beat.
“I like my new teacher, and my friends on-line at school. And I love Earth Apples!”