The Peach Tree in the Valley

Chapter One

Life isn't something you can take back. There isn't any way to place the soul back into a being. Once the light leaves, it's gone forever. Death is as permanent and unchanging as the cycle of the moon. Even in nature, everything has its cycle; it's purpose. Somewhere, a peach gets caught by a gust of wind, separating it from its mother tree and smacking it hard into the Earth. The peach is suddenly pushed away from the safe wiry branch and into immediate danger, just by being as it was. Even though it isn't a punishment from some unforeseen hand, it feels like it. But once the fruit is consumed, devoured by some gangly animal with no insight into its own actions, its seed will finally be able to find the Earth again. The new tree will be big and beautiful and will remain much longer than its harvested brothers and sisters. It'll endure longer than the racoon that dropped it the valley. It'll have visitors from time to time that will take solace in its shady branches, but as with all things their hair will grow coarse and grey, and they'll never return again. It will see its own peaches fall and be powerless, a bystander in its own existence, but it will know nothing but peace. After all, it is only a peach tree.

At the end of the tree's life, a girl began to visit. She was lean and strong, not unaccustomed to the farmland surrounding her. Her hands were callused and stained orange from tobacco. Despite these characteristics, which supported a more boyish girl, her hair was a lovely straw color...and her cheeks were always freckled and pink.

This girl had a penchant for lighting a match on her teeth to light her pipe. She plucked the grass with her knuckles, a nervous habit that could lay waste to any field if she let it. Eeen the clothes she wore were thin and breathable, too comfortable for someone her age to wear in public. All of these things said out to someone, almost purposely, "I am perhaps too comfortable."

The tree didn't know it, but her name was Jean. She had lived on this land her whole life, and fully expected to die and be buried on it. Her family, the Mooney's, were Irish. They migrated and somehow managed to find themselves married into the French autocracy. The very same autocracy that ran the biggest indigo and cotton plantation in the county. That wealth wouldn't last forever though, and by the time Jean was very young, she began to understand what horrors had actually occurred on the family farm. She knew that the cabins settled amongst the redwood trees had housed; slaves. She knew her grandfather used to work the people that lived there till their bones were raw, and only allowed them to leave after a whole war. Even then, most stayed because they truly had nowhere else to go. They were robbed of their real home too long ago for them to be able to return.

Once her father inherited everything, he gave the slaves wages.It's what's right, he would say, pulling the money straight from the vault and putting it in their hands. Eventually, they sold the candelabras, the chandelier, and all of the fine china and crystal. No matter how much money they lost, he insisted that they would not be sharecroppers. They'd lost the war for a reason. God meant for it to be this way. Still, things were changing. The amount crops they were able to harvest each year grew smaller and smaller, and it was mostly only family left doing the work. This was the reason Jean was just a bit rough, just a little bit around the edges, and it was that she had been in the fields almost her entire life. They did this because Father insisted they must. It was their family's comeuppance, in a way.

She was never alone though. Her parents were able to have five other children besides her, and all of them helped. There was the oldest, Howie, as well as the older girl, Mary. Then, Neve, Jean's younger sister, and Baby. They were all so much alike it made their differences more obvious.

There were others too; the occasional friend of her father, and sometimes even the occasional neighbor boy. They all wanted to marry Mary; you see. The years of work and sun didn't roughen her in the slightest. In fact, it almost softened her out, gave her a sense of humanity. Something approachable, otherwise she would be too pretty to talk to. They'd sweat far too much. Jean, although old enough, wasn't seen this way. She wasn't forgotten per say, she just was a bit more of her father than her mother. They had the same black beady eyes.