Catching Benjamin
by Justin Shepperson
The leather like flesh of the tree clung desperately to the remaining portion of the old branch - the only thing separating Benjamin from life and his now impending certain death plung from the top of Witchwood Oak. Though he hang still without pulling or thrashing about, the bark slowly caved its will to gravity. Inch by inch it peeled back giving way each time to another quick jerk from the weight of small boy dangling at it's end. I watched Benjamin move his head back and forth, up and down, slowly, precisely, trying his hardest to calculate a way out. All the while he kept it tucked like a pig skin and grasped it just as tightly as if it were and he were making the dash for the last score of the game proclaiming he and his friends victorious. Even in the most dire of straits, staring death in the eyes, it was more important to him to keep it safe than it was for him to use that arm to help himself up and delay his final moments on earth.
Everyday on our way home from school, Benjamin and I would walk along the long ornate wrought iron fence clanging a stick, or pencil, or even our hands on the bars one by one. The constant, steady yet empty iron wane of each bar being struck drowned out by the laughter of nonsense made by children without concern or the time for concern of such dimly lite events such as dying. Still, everyday we passed it. The place where Benjamin, my brother, would fight for his life and I, his younger sister, would watch helplessly hopeful.
Everyday for 3 years we would look over the fence at the solemn old dying tree we called Witchwood Oak. We called it Witchwood because the old lady who inherited the land and the small yet still qualifying mansion despised children. She went out of her way to ensure we knew it too. That's why we'd bang on her fence everyday. Why we called it an oak I'll never know. It was an apple tree though admittedly it was likely the world's largest apple tree and it seemed as though it required a panoramic action from your neck to view it tip to tip.
Witchwood was most certainly dead. In all the years we walked past I couldn't recall a single day where leaves or fruit were visible. That is, except for the one and only time which sparked such an enthusiastic response from me that it caused Benjamin, my hero and champion of a brother, to pursue the retrieval of it's yield. That day, a single apple appeared at the highest branch I could see. An apple on the world's largest and deadest tree. I was plagued with hunger. Since father passed away mother had tried her very hardest but there were still days that my brother and I had to share a school lunch consisting of a swing of milk and half of a Peanut Butter and Jelly. We could share the other half when we got home. Mother was very stern about how much we ate and how often because if we ate too much early off we'd have to spend the whole day starving after it and it made her feel horrible to watch her kids starve.
"So, you hungry for an apple?" he smirked as he flipped his backpack over the iron fence. I wish I had said no. I wish I had told him it's okay and I didn't want it but I was hungry for an apple. I was hungry for anything. To this day I can still remember as I watched him hop from branch to branch, scaling the wooden giant, thinking of how good it would taste. I thought of my teeth fixing themselves in position over the shiny red skin before gnashing deeply into the fruity flesh. I felt the juicy tang of the sweet tart juice pouring over my tongue and splashing against the back of my severely neglected and on it's way to malnourished throat. I hadn't even actually had the apple yet but in my mind I feasted on it and the more I did the less I thought about the safety of my brother. I wish I had said no. I wish more, that I wasn't hungry.
I was so lost in my thoughts of the delicious apple I was about to devour as a pack of wolves would a caribou that it took the thundering crack of splintering wood to snap me back into the moment. My eyes were unfocused and I forgot where I was standing. I next heard a great thud followed by more splintering and finally I was able to regain my full and focused attention on the world around me. Fear struck my heart after my mind put the sounds together but I was relieved to find a large branch shattered on the ground where the thud came from. It wasn't a very long second of peace that I had experienced because it only took a moment for my eyes to pan up where I could see my dearest friend and brother, Benjamin, hanging by the mostly dead bark of an old tree. The next thud I heard, would be the fear that gripped my heart a mere instance ago.
I had no words. I could think nothing. I could do nothing. I was too short to even climb the fence in a timely fashion though I began to try. The time it took to convince my arms to pull hard enough on the points of the ornate iron seemed like forever but I was persistent and eventually was able to conjure enough strength to slide myself over the top. I wasn't even able to feel the cuts it made on me. My cuts didn't matter. All that mattered was catching Benjamin.
"Get out of the way, I'll just crush you!" he yelled from high above me. I managed to get under him but it seems he was thinking more clearly than I was in this situation. What could a 11 year old wet-paper-bag-weighing little girl do to stop a fall by a 13 year old growing-into-a-man boy from that height? I raced to the trunk of the tree and began leaping and swiping at the lowest branch. It was pointless but I continued. Benjamin was over 6 inches taller than me and made climbing this tree look easy. I couldn't even hardly touch the low hanging limbs of the giant wood.
"Just stop, you're making me nervous and I'll get down, don't worry!" was the last thing he said to me while he was on that tree. He didn't want me on those branches, risking getting myself into a similar position. As usual, Benjamin was right. I decided to sit helplessly hopeful while he scanned the tree around him for a way down safely.
Imagine your zipper being made of bark from a tree. Imagine opening the zipper quickly. That's the next sound I heard. As the skin of the tree tore from its flesh with a crackling whip I saw my brother now in free fall without a single branch between him and the hard ground. Dashing towards him I had resolved to attempt a catch against both of our better judgments. I'd rather be crushed trying to save him than to tell everyone I just sat there. Try as I might though, it seems as though gravity is better at applying force than my scrawny underfed legs and Benjamin landed on his back solid as a lead brick dropped in a fish tank just a foot in front of me. The force of his body assaulting the ground so hard for a moment I could feel my feet leave the ground as it shook back in retaliation of the blow.
There he lay now, hand still grasping at his harvest. As the life slipped from Benjamin his hand opened revealing a single apple blossom. There was never any fruit at all and the last thing my brother said to me using his dying breath was this: "You can have my half... from now on."
~Fin~
So sad! I love it, though. Good job!
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