The oak was on Glen’s side of the property line. The leaves fell on Howard’s.
Not all of them. Maybe sixty percent. The prevailing wind came from the northwest and the oak leaned slightly southeast and between those two facts, Howard’s side of the fence got the majority of what the tree dropped every October.
He’d done the math once, bored on a Sunday. Eleven bags. Seven from the oak. Four from his own maples, which were smaller and more considerate with their debris. The seven bags were the oak’s production allocated to his yard by physics — by trunk placement and wind direction and the modest lean the tree had developed over decades that no one had caused or intended.
Glen had never mentioned the leaves. Howard had never mentioned the leaves. They talked about other things. Weather, mostly, and sometimes the road construction on Depot Street, and once, in the first year, about the previous owner of Howard’s house, who had apparently been a nice enough man with a loud dog.
Fifteen Octobers.
Howard raked on Saturday mornings. He started at the back fence and worked forward in rows the width of the rake. The leaves went into paper yard-waste bags that the town collected on alternating Wednesdays. He wrote “Howard Moss, 412 Locust” on each bag in black marker, which the town did not require but which he did anyway.
He’d thought about it, early on. Saying something. But what would the sentence be? Your tree drops leaves in my yard. Glen knew where his tree was. He could see Howard raking. The sentence would contain no new information. It would only add a claim — that the leaves were Glen’s responsibility — and Howard wasn’t sure that was true.
The tree had been planted in 1987 by the people who built Glen’s house. Glen bought the house in 2005. Howard moved in next door in 2009. The tree was older than either of their residencies. It was arguably more native to the block than either of them.
In the seventh year, Glen came out while Howard was raking and stood on his side of the fence and said, “That tree makes a mess, doesn’t it.”
Howard said, “It does.”
Glen said, “I thought about taking it down when we moved in. Janet liked the shade.”
“It is good shade,” Howard said.
That was the entire conversation about the leaves that they would ever have. Glen went back inside. Howard finished the row he was on. The oak stood between them doing what it had always done, which was grow toward light and drop what it no longer needed.
Janet died in the eleventh year. Howard went to the service. He brought a casserole dish that his wife Kay made, because that’s what you did, and he stood in Glen’s living room and looked at the oak through Glen’s window and saw it from a perspective he’d never had before. From Glen’s side, it was enormous. A cathedral of a tree. The canopy filled the entire window and the light came through it green and shifting and the room was like being underwater.
He understood the shade.
The twelfth October, Glen didn’t come outside at all. Howard raked both yards. He didn’t decide to — he finished his side and the leaves continued past the fence line and he followed them. Eight bags from his yard. Five from Glen’s. He wrote “Glen Tierney, 414 Locust” on Glen’s bags. The town collected them without comment.
The thirteenth year, the same. The fourteenth. Howard was sixty-seven. His knees reported the work more loudly than they used to. Kay suggested he hire a service. He said he’d think about it, which was his way of saying no to things he’d already decided.
The fifteenth October was warm. The leaves came down late and all at once, after a hard frost in the second week of November. Howard was raking Glen’s front yard when Glen opened the door.
He looked thinner. He was holding a mug in both hands.
“Howard,” he said.
“Glen.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
Glen stood in the doorway for a while. The rake made its sound — the particular scrape of tines on grass that is the most patient sound in the world.
“You want coffee?” Glen said.
Howard leaned the rake against the porch railing. “Sure.”
They sat in Glen’s kitchen. The light through the window was the green undersea light of the oak. The coffee was instant, made too weak, in mugs that hadn’t been used in a while. Glen washed them first. Howard didn’t mention this.
They didn’t talk about the leaves. They didn’t talk about Janet. They talked about the road construction on Depot Street, which had been going on for three years now and which neither of them believed would ever end.
When Howard left, he finished raking the front yard. Nine bags total. He wrote Glen’s name and address on five of them, carefully, in black marker.
Walking home, he passed the oak. He put his hand on it briefly. The bark was rough and cold and older than any of the decisions that had brought him here.