Remolachas del Fuego

By Rachel Clemens

The grove of manzanita trees has stood there since before the small California town was ever built. The seemingly muscular branches covered in smooth red bark reached toward the sun for nourishment and had been doing so before humans built buildings tall enough to block its rays. He was in awe of their unpretentious grace, their stoic stature. Always had. When he was young, he would sit between their trunks to soak in the sun alongside them and a peaceful feeling would wash over him. He felt like he was a part of the forest. He loved these trees. And that is why he fought so ugly to save them.

A farmer from another part of town was looking to expand her operation and had, thus bought land that overlapped part of the grove. She intended to tear down the manzanita trees on her property to grow, among other crops, beets. “They are pretty much the same as manzanita trees. Red stalks and green leaves. You won’t miss them,” she said to him one day. That peaceful feeling washed out of him. He was incensed at this statement and she knew it.

Tom and Martha had both grown up in the area and had known each other a long while. They were never close, but this spat was morphing into something wholly toxic. The rest of the town just watched as things escalated between them and eventually became white hot. Some of them didn’t know quite what they were witnessing, others derived a sick pleasure from it. The bartender was taking bets from townsfolk attempting to predict the outcome. Nearly everyone lost.

One day, while Martha was at the new plot of land, Tom drove over to one of her other farm properties and ran his truck over several rows of seedlings, crushing their bright green cotyledons into the dirt. A couple farm workers went out to chase him off the farm, but when they saw the crazed look in his eye chose to live another day instead.

Martha was not innocent in any of this either. For example, she made sure to let him know when she planned to finally tear out his beloved trees. In doing so, she would be destroying about a quarter of the grove. She wanted him to swing by and cause a scene. They taunted each other this way until finally one day when tragedy struck.

Tom had gotten the bright idea that Martha could not mow down a forest without her tractors. So, he decided to destroy some of the equipment. In the night, he stuck some gasoline-soaked rags into the gas tank of a couple trucks and gleefully lit them up. He didn’t merely want to disable her equipment, he wanted to obliterate it. It was an act of violence from a tree-loving hippy that would have surprised someone who didn’t know any hippies.

There were potential consequences to blowing up anything in the middle of summer next to a parched forest, he may have attempted to accomplish this task by employing a slightly different method. Sadly, what anyone else would have predicted happened - were they not at war. As the rags began to smoke and heat in the gas pipe, Tom eagerly waited. And when the first truck exploded, he jumped and danced and hooted in celebration. He was not watching as an ember from one of the rags floated on a gentle breeze toward the edge of the manzanita grove. At some point, however, it did register that something had changed. Tom slowed his gyrations to watch as his beloved sacred place began to blaze. Someone must have called Martha to tell her something was going on at her new farm. She showed up to find Tom trembling on his hands and knees on the ground, in anguish like someone who had unexpectedly lost a dear friend. Martha, who was on fire herself at the sight of her farm equipment having been blown to hell, tore into Tom as he lay in the dirt, defenseless.

The fire department eventually came and were able to stop the fire eventually, but not before nearly half of the manzanita grove had gone up in smoke. The police arrived shortly thereafter to take witness accounts and Tom into jail.

With time, Tom and Martha started to cool off. Partly because they both realized how stupid they had been and partly because Tom’s fire took care of all the trees that Martha would have otherwise torn down. Then, throughout the court proceedings, Martha and Tom learned about the other. There was plenty of mud to sling around and after a while they both recognized they each were covered in it. Martha was touched by how much the forest meant to him and provided refuge for him during a less-than-idyllic childhood. Tom came to respect Martha’s vision for the town and strength as a businesswoman. Prison then gave them both time. And while Tom served a short stint at San Quentin for arson, Tom and Martha corresponded. Eventually, they worked together to petition the local government and get the remaining grove designated as a nature preserve, saving it from additional threats of expansion.