The Witness Tree

"Do you know what a witness tree is?"

Tim shrugged. "Yeah. You know, I grew up in Oklahoma City. There's a Witness Tree there, at the memorial."

He fixed me with that familiar stare, which meant, "get to your point, girl." At the best of times, Tim isn't the most patient man on the planet. That moment was not the best of times.

"This witness tree is not that kind of Witness Tree. Most likely, this tree didn't have a 4,000-pound bomb go off just yards away from it." I pointed at the large, deep X that had been carved into the tree's bark. "Still, that 'X' really does mark the spot. It's centered on the corner marker of an old property. If you dug into the ground at that spot, you'd probably still be able to find the survey marker."

Tim cautiously touched the smooth lines of the scar in the rough tree bark. He looked up, taking in each inch of the trunk that towered above us, as if looking for other hints that might tell the tree's story.

"Weird that they'd use something like a tree for a survey corner. Trees die."

"True enough, but the tree doesn't mark the corner itself. The center of the tree just marks where the survey marker is buried. Those three scars, on that side of the tree, show the side of the corner that is being marked."

Tim thrust his hands into his pockets. His gaze traced the trunk down to the ground beneath the tree, to the exposed roots and seedlings at its base.

"Let's go," he said, not raising his eyes to me. "It's cold. I'm hungry and in need of adult beverages."

I put my arm through the crook at his elbow, patting his chest with my other hand. We started back through the trees, along the narrow path that we'd found. We still had comfortable familiarity then, as we walked apace toward the road.

"We'll order a pizza when we get back to the car," I said. "I have an app on my phone. I have a couple of beers in my fridge, if you want to go to my place. Is that okay?"

"Yeah. That'll do just fine, if you're buying. I'm a little light this week."

Tim was always "a little light." I was used to it. It was why, after several years of dating, that we'd never become engaged, why we never even moved in with each other. We enjoyed each other and felt comfortable in each other's company, but that was as far as it went. In a world of "friends with benefits," it seemed as if our reimbursements were starting to fall more heavily to one side of the balance sheet. I patted him a second time.

"That was the plan, bud. You'll get the next one, okay?"

He laughed and returned my affectionate gesture. Whatever spell had come over him moments before was broken. He pulled his arm from around mine.

"Race ya!"

We ran until we were breathless, then walked the rest of the way back to the car. After a brief discussion of what to order (Meatlovers, extra mushrooms, extra cheese), we were on the road.

"I know you said you were looking for land in this area," Tim said, suddenly serious again, "but I think that you should look somewhere else. I have a bad feeling about this."

"You have a bad feeling about anything other than pizza and beer right now," I joked. "There could be a diamond mine on that property and it wouldn't make a difference."

He laughed, but I could feel another of those "seriously?" looks burning into the side of my head. I wasn't in the mood to pursue it, so I just joined in with the laughter and continued to drive.

~*~ ~*~

After Tim had left, after the last of the pizza and beer had been placed into the refrigerator, I sought out the listing for the property online. It wasn't currently listed but had been. The price had been dropped to almost ridiculous depths by the owner before it had been pulled from the market. I should have stopped there. I had no business seriously looking, let alone at a listing that I had little chance of purchasing. The listing, however, held 29 photos, each more intriguing than the last.

It was a good-sized piece of property, for anyone who was interested in such a thing. It was larger than the corner marked by the tree implied. One edge abutted the state park, casting a broad footprint of what had once been a farm over nearly fifty acres of pasture and woodlands. Tim and I had not walked far enough to come to the abandoned homesite, which featured on the listing. The photos were brutal in their honesty. An abandoned barn stood open, its door hanging wide. The roof on a second barn was collapsed, the wire field fences surrounding its pastures decayed in some areas, missing in others, as brush overwhelmed the roads between them. Wires and utility poles marked where the cabin had once stood, its footprint now empty.

A little more research outside the listing showed that conjoining properties had been purchased and added to the square footage around it until its corner nestled firmly inside the boundaries. According to local legend, a mysterious woman who never showed her face had purchased it, had built the farm, and had just as mysteriously disappeared in the night.

"She rode her horse into the park as she usually did," one park ranger was quoted as saying, "but her behavior seemed odd. When we went to check on her the next day, she had disappeared."

But that wasn't the end of the mystery. According to this same ranger, she had taken her horses with her, wherever she went, as well as her little dog. The goats had been left behind, with no explanation. What was more, ruins that no one had ever seen before had appeared on the grounds. Ruins that had become a house. Ruins that had disappeared again, before disappearing about the same time that she had.

I had no business owning fifty acres of land. Heck, even five acres seemed an expanse far too great to keep mowed at any given time. Even so, I reached for the phone. Something about Priscilla's farm intrigued me, more than it had any right to do.

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For anyone who is interested:

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/head-tilting-history/witness-trees

https://memorialmuseum.com/experience/the-survivor-tree/the-survivor-tree-today/