The Three Fellers
Posted: Sunday, July 05, 2009
by Lin Stone
Tale Wins
The last time I hunted Terry up we went into the dives where you have to be careful rats don't get a chance to nibble on your feet. Terry was ashamed to be found. His eyes glowed with resentment at being found where he was. We spoke eye to eye and man to man for some time. His eyes quit glowing, his head ducked and he nodded. Yes, he needed to make drastic changes. Yes, he would make those changes.
In Church today we were instructed on the subject of how important it is to find the lost sheep, to bring our brothers back to where we can nourish them; Terry's name wasn't even mentioned. His name didn't come up in my memory either, so long ago had I gone hunting for him.
But when I came home my wife explained how she had made an appointment on this particular day of the month to see someone about trimming two of our trees whose limbs were posing a threat. "On a Sunday?" was as far as we had gotten when a knock came at our door. There stood Terry.
I did a double take, as did he. There stood a tall, clean, proud Terry. "Come in, come in."
He came in reluctantly, perhaps wondering if I still remembered where I had seen him last. But he did come in and I did coax him into a chair and I was inquiring into his good fortune when my wife entered the room and recognized him as the tree trimmer.
Somehow it was an unwelcome shock to discover he had not come looking me up as a brother, but was only there on business and had found me by accident. So we went out to discuss the trees and I met his crew. A deal was struck, not just to trim the trees but to remove them. His price was about a tenth of what I had been quoted before, and this was a new, tall, clean, proud Terry.
My wife had not known the Terry of old therefore it required little discussion to decide that we would be glad to pay that price. There was another brief discussion with my one neighbor that might be impacted by the chance of a tree falling the wrong way, and then I went out to watch Terry and crew bring down the easiest tree, on the other side of the house.
The new Terry was a man of courage, skill and knowledge. He donned climbers and went up the tree far easier and faster than I could have come down the tree 50 years ago. I pushed any little niggling doubts in my mind down into the marsh of yesterday. This was a new Terry, I reminded myself.
He went all the way to the top and began trimming the limbs off with a swing line that let the men on the ground lower them gently to the ground. Terry was doing a top-notch job as he worked his way down. But the little niggling doubts climbed out of the marsh and like dark shadows, waved before my eyes; his crew on the ground was not professional, nor were they quick to respond to his guidance.
Terry came down for a break, he said. But he huddled with his crew, far enough away that I could not hear how well his pep talk was being received. Then he came over to confer with me. At this point I could have stopped the work, paid off whatever amount I owed, and called it quits. But, my thoughts turned traitor on me because I wanted Terry back in Church. When he asked how it had looked to me I responded that HE was doing quite well up there. Perhaps he chose to ignore that inflection. But this was my well-beloved house that was in danger here, so I inched a little ways forward and asked: "How long have you had this crew?"
He turned and faced me, like a man. "They are my brothers. We have only been working together a short time."
Terry paused, turned away as if to leave, then turned back, like a man. "We got together one night and we decided that we had to make drastic changes in our lives. No more drinking, no more drugs, no more dodging the law when we couldn't make our child support payments. We put every penny we had into this enterprise, and it is going well. We are clean, we are sober, and we are going to make it."
And I knew right then that Terry had not knocked on my door by accident. He had knocked on my door, looking for help to keep his little business moving so that he and his brothers could stay clean and sober.
Carrying one lost sheep down off the mountain is a heavy burden. I should have admitted to myself that carrying three of them at one time was a burden too heavy for me to bear without stumbling. I let Terry climb back up the tree and go to work.
Guessing where the fulcrum is found on a wild and swaying limb is an art requiring courage and a long arm. Even as Terry tested his weight on one of the first larger limbs, I heard it crack. A shout rose in my throat, but I choked it back. He was tied off; his chain saw was tied off, Terry was safe. Well, Terry thought so too and Terry crept out farther and farther on the limb. Ominous cracks followed his every shift.
At last he stretched forward and secured the swing line to the limb, backed up and began cutting. First the limb fell that he had been cutting. The man on the ground let go the rope and that limb crashed into my roof with a boom so solid that my whole house shook. Then the limb beneath Terry cracked and splintered. The man on the ground was unprepared for the sudden double weight on the line that held Terry safe from harm, and he let it go slack just at the crucial moment. Terry made it back to the tree trunk only by the feat of walking on air. I'm sure he was praying harder than I was.
Terry paused to drag deep a gallon of air, then looked at me as if appealing for judgment. Again, I could have stopped the operation and everyone would have been safe. But life isn't about being safely sprawled on a dark barroom floor. I thought about losing the roof of my house and weighed the cost of losing my brother to the darkness of drugs and addiction, and I nodded my consent for the operation to continue.
Terry came down for another pep talk and even from a distance I could see that the urgency of his words were deeply appreciated. Then he climbed back up the tree and finished his trimming.
It takes time to make a crew. Each team member has to face up to the dangers and recognize his own strengths and inadequacies, and then find ways to compensate. This crew was using its time wisely. The tree came down exactly where Terry aimed it to, and they soon had all the sections loaded onto the trailer for hauling away. I brought out glasses of ice water and let a social setting calm them down. "What is the name of your company?" I asked.
They glanced at each other, then back at me. "Three Brothers," Terry replied.
I looked at each of them in turn and gave my only advice of the day. "That name is good and it says something important to you." I paused to let the pride set in as a new company was forged. "But you need something that speaks to the homeowners. How about The Three Fellers?"
They didn't get the connection at first, so I pointed it out by adding: "Every time a tree falls you will know it is another job well done by three fellers."
They laughed about it, and grinned at each other.
Three hours later, I have a picture of them poised there, frozen in time, three fellers that wanted above all else to stand firm, straight and tall for an example and a support to his brothers. I wrote out the check and they didn't know which one should accept it. This was the first time they had felled a tree together. This was their first job.
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