a story Doc would've no doubt enjoyed... Merry Xmas, everyone!!

The Christmas Tree Man 

By Cynthia Rylant 

His house is far out.  Farther out than you can imagine anyone living. It’s small and clean and white most summers its cool; most winters it’s warm. 

It’s a good house for a man alone. 

The man himself is a small man, and skinny.  He has never married.  He has no one.  And each year, he grows older. 

He didn’t know he would live his life alone.  When he was a boy, and his name was Garnet Ash, he lived with his family on a street in a town not too big.  He was a regular boy.  He played football and out in his backyard.  But because he loved being at home most of all, he had few friends and spent most of his days with his parents.  Each night he fell asleep listening to their soft voices moving from room to room. 

But before Garnet Ash had barely grown up, quite suddenly, his parents died.  And Garnet Ash didn’t know what to do with himself, with them gone, his family.  He hadn’t had time to find a wife.  And with no family to whom he could bring a wife, with suddenly no father who could build a nice kitchen table for her, with suddenly no mother who could give summer roses to her… with suddenly no one at all, Garnet Ash didn’t know what to do except go on having no one at all. 

He couldn’t live in his small town any longer.  He missed his father and mother too much.  So he found a small white house far out, and he moved away, further out than you can imagine. 

And he found an occupation that kept him living, that has kept him living so many, many years. 

Garnet Ash is a Christmas Tree Man.  Now, few people know him by his real name.  They know him only as the Christmas Tree Man. 

All around his small white house grow those Christmas trees.  Garnet Ash plants them and he raises them like children.  Some fat, some lopsided, some strong like rocks and others too weak to try anymore. 

Like anything else, his trees bring him joy and sorrow. 

At certain times of the year, Garnet Ash will dive his old truck out and into the town to get groceries and fertilizer and kerosene and saplings.  But apart from these few trips into the world of groceries and farmers and nurserymen, Garnet Ash lives out each of his years alone. 

In March, when purple crocuses spurt up through the sow, he stands and admires them alone. In June, when hornets build a nest under the eaves of his house, he stand and worries alone.  And in October, when the moon is giant and orange, he stands and whispers to it alone.  He often thinks of his parents. 

And all this time, his children are growing. 

But Garnet Ash, who spends his birthdays alone, who eats Thanksgiving dinner alone, who watches the beginnings of each winter and spring and summer and fall alone—come December, he will be surrounded.  

They drive out from the towns in their cars to find him.  The cars are shiny and white and red or red or yellow.  In them there is always more than one person and usually there are three or four or five. 

They are families.  They need a Christmas tree.  And they have come looking for the Christmas Tree Man. 

Garnet Ash expects them.  Every year.  And even after all these many years of seeing them drive up to his small, clean white house, he has not grown tired of them. 

On the first day of December Garnet Ash is full of anticipation.  He trembles with it.  He stands before his mirror and trims his hair, combs his beard, plucks his brows a bit.  He reaches into the back of a drawer and pulls forth his best red reindeer scarf. 

He is looking forward to the company. 

The people park their shiny cars and the doors open and out they climb, mothers and fathers and children and grandparents, and they are filled with life, with hope, with wanting a tree. 

The Christmas Tree Man in the red reindeer scarf welcomes them and they say hello, how are you, getting cold isn’t it, do you have a good crop this year? 

And Garnet Ash gestures to his fields, he introduces his children, he says, “I have a good crop.” 

So the men and the women and the children and even sometimes the dogs they have brought with them will hurry into the rows and rows of sleeping green trees, quiet green trees.  The snow will crack under their boots and the mist of their breathing will rise up to the sky and they will prowl through the fields of The Christmas Tree Man. 

Garnet Ash is happy.  He is proud.  He says, “Merry Christmas!” and waves to them as the drive off, their shiny cars sprouting bushy pine tails.  Sometimes a boy will lean out of a car window, waving, and the eyes of Garnet Ash will soften and his smile will slacken he will think he is waving to himself.  To himself and his family, driving off in that car. 

The cars will keep coming, every day, and at night, too.  Everyone looking for the Christmas Tree Man.  And when all of his best trees are gone and there is nothing to offer but a lopsided tree, a skinny tree, a short tree, Garnet Ash will give the people bags of hot chestnuts to ease their disappointment. Eating chestnuts, they’ll decide a lopsided tree isn’t so bad, really. 

Finally, on Christmas Eve, there will be only one or two cars. 

Then, Garnet Ash will be alone. 

Very late in the night on Christmas Eve, he will walk thought his fields, among the stumps and the trees left behind. 

“So, not pretty enough for them, eh?” he will say to one of his children.  “Well, lucky for you, I’d say!” 

He will walk through the stumps and the trees, and the moon will be large and white and the sky clear and deep, and the rabbits will watch him from the edge of his fields. 

Garnet Ash will walk until he finds the weakest tree among those left to stand, the sorriest tree.  And he will unwind his red reindeer scarf from around his neck and he will drape it on the top boughs of his ugly child. 

Then, very late, Garnet Ash will walk back to his small, clean white house and he will smile to himself and think what it is to be a Christmas Tree Man.