Tidings. William Wharton

and I splurge with a 1976 Pouilly Fumé. The dining room is all ours; heads of deer, sanglier mounted around us. The restaurant is called La Fin de la Chasse and its main clientele are local hunters.

      We walk down in the overwhelming dark and get home at about nine o’clock. I push the wood around in our fire to get it burning again, throw in another log, slip on my boots and prepare myself for the great adventure. Ben knows what I’m about to do but doesn’t volunteer. I don’t press; who wants to spend the evening of his fifteenth birthday in a French jail, and besides he’d probably spook me with his jumpiness. I’m bad enough, myself. With Ben along we’d probably wind up jumping into each other’s laps simultaneously.

      I take our car key from the nail over the mantel, pick up a flashlight, let myself down into our cellar through the trap door, grab the saw from where I’ve hung it over the wood pile. I go out the door and slush my way through mud to open the door into our garage.

      This time I wouldn’t mind too much if the car doesn’t turn over; but that engine has its ear tuned directly to the starter motor and coughs into life on the second try. The engine has become as easy to arouse as a nymphomaniac. But how would I know? My sexual experience so far indicates that even a certified nymph would just ho-hum me into insignificance. But I can get that Fiat going now, maybe it’s a good sign of things to come. That’s an accidental joke.

      I get out to open the big doors, hoping the motor will conk while I’m doing this, but it keeps humming away. I back out slowly, maybe I’ll get stuck in the mud, but those tires grip like tractor wheels. All the omens say I’m in for it.

      I drive up through Vauchot and out toward Corbeau. Five miles along I turn toward Monçaron. On my left looms a young pine forest, trees planted about two feet apart, mostly only about twice the size of the tree we already have, but several approach my ideal. I turn down the car lights to just parking indicators. It’s dark. I can scarcely see the road. I shut off my motor and coast the last fifty yards or so. This is a road with practically no traffic. Just ahead is a bridge so narrow one car can barely pass over it.

      I sit there in the dark. I roll down both windows and listen; nothing but wind in the trees, the dripping of water from branches, and, now and then, the mew of a night hawk or the whoo-whoo of an owl. Maybe we should just use that Nevers tree, tie Monsieur Boudine’s tree to the top for extra height.

      I reach back and get the saw. I let myself quietly out the car door, gently easing it closed.

      I have Ben’s flashlight in one hand. It’s still so dark I can’t see anything. I’ll need to do everything by feel. I stumble, creep, crawl, crouch, my way off the road between trees. I try not to step on the smaller ones, while feeling left and right for high trees, higher than my head. I can’t be sure of anything.

      I stop and listen. Would anybody actually be hiding in these woods in this wetness, in the dark, just to stop a failed philosopher from snitching a tree? I believe it! But I’ve got to flash my light. I should have come out earlier and marked a tree as usual, but with that damned Monsieur Boudine and his branch there wasn’t time.

      I put my hand over the flashlight so just a beam escapes through my fingers. I spin slowly around, carefully scanning for a proper tree. I see one, just the right size, and bushy, twenty yards to the right. I switch off my light, expecting a voice from the dark, or the sound and feel of buckshot. I work my way over, doing the last ten yards on all fours. I hand gauge the thickness of the trunk, give one quick flash to make sure. It’s the right one, over ten feet tall. I scrape and clear away pine needles, dirt from the base of the tree, till I’m below ground level. When I’m finished cutting, I’ll spread dirt, pine needles, leaves over the ground-level stump, expert testimony to years of experience in knavery.

      I pull out my saw, then lie on my back quietly, listening, looking up into the gloomy night. There’s nothing to be heard but those hawks, owls and the wind. I start sawing. It’s soft pine and not more than four inches in diameter; I saw through in less than a minute. Nothing like when we took down the last one, a veritable ship’s mast. That time, Mike and I took turns cutting and leaning back on the tree to keep our saw from binding. We were definitely pushing our luck. When we got home, Mike, vehemently, almost in tears, swore he’d never go treenapping at Christmas again.

      As the tree starts to wobble, I steady it with my left hand and take the last two strokes one-handed. It falls over easily – right onto me. I lie back and smell greenness, feel cold drops of water, ice and snow drip onto my face. I’m totally sweated up, not so much from exertion but from nervousness. I’m also experiencing a sudden, deep sense of depression. Why am I here, what fear of life drives me on with this ritualistic fantasy? Where did I lose contact with reality as others perceive it? What can I do to make things right or, at least, learn some tolerance when they seem wrong to me? I drift back to my real situation under the tree. I’m trying not to cry.

      I’m not even sure just which way it is to the road. I think it’s slightly downhill but I’m not positive. I can’t make out anything in the dark. How am I going to stuff this monster tree into my tiny car and drive home without anyone seeing me? I’ll take the back roads, past where Mike’s Geneviève and her family have their home.

      I start crawling through the small trees, dragging my tree behind me like Little Bo Peep’s sheep’s tails. I flash my light once to make sure I’m going downhill. I’m totally lost and am convinced I’m going deeper into the forest.

      Finally, I feel a strong decline and know I’m coming onto a road, some road at least. But the car isn’t there! I must’ve come out at a different angle from the one I went in. I can’t imagine anybody stealing that car without my hearing them start the motor. Yes, right, I even have that thought. I might be the world’s biggest worrier, the least effective one too. Or maybe I don’t worry enough. I know Lor is convinced I don’t pay enough attention to things; I probably don’t.

      Is the car to the left or right? Is it even on this road? I peer into darkness. I stash my tree in a ditch. It’s most likely getting smeared with mud but I’ll wash it off later.

      I peer and think I can make out a dim shape to my right. I walk along the road in that direction till I’m sure it is the car. Then I come back for my tree. I can’t find it. Right here is when I make my final decision never to go in for bank robbery, or murder, or anything serious.

      But, I do finally find the tree, a bulge in the ditch, without flashing my light. I drag it and the saw behind me in a low crouching rush to the car. Now I’m vulnerable. If a car comes along, or anybody turns a flash on me, there’s no excuse I can think of for being out here running to my car along a road with a fresh-cut tree in one hand and a saw in the other.

      I have no rope for tying this tree onto the car roof; that’s my kind of careful planning. I open the offside door and push the butt of my tree back in; over the seats, as far as I can into the back. I bend the top of the tree so it sticks out through the window and I can close the door. I carefully squeeze all the branches in, then ease the door shut. I lean the door tight closed and the inside floor light of the car goes out. I’m in the dark again.

      By feel, I know the tip of the tree sticks out three feet past the windshield. I start edging around the other side to get in; I trip over my saw where I’ve left it leaning against the car. If I hadn’t tripped over it, I’d have left it there, driven off without it. Two wrongs do sometimes make a right, like negative numbers in algebra; that is, if stealing a Christmas tree can ever be considered a right.

      I start the car, no problem, thank God, or whomever. I drive a hundred meters with just my parking lights on, then turn up my highs before I get to the narrow bridge. Now I’m away from the scene of the crime. I’ll just blind anybody who gets in the way with my highs. Ruthless, that I’ll be.

      I cross the bridge, turn off onto the back roads, only slightly more than paths; twist, turn, up and down through what we used to call the enchanted forest, a veritable fairyland of ancient, hoary, moss-covered oaks, now a barren wasteland of three- or four-year-old Christmas trees. The shutters at Geneviève’s house are closed as I go by; but the grange door is open