Tree Symphony

by Gina Marie Wylie

  “Irene sort of hinted that it’s as expensive as a college.”

  “Like we care, at this point?” Dad said. “Scholarships, yes. We are almost done with the deal for your symphony, Kira. Low six figures, less after we pay your agent and a lot less after taxes, but still -- right there, more than enough for a couple of years.”

  Except for the piece I’d done for Rachael, I’d been careful to follow Rachael and Mr. Gora’s advice about not attempting to write more music until I knew more. I contemplated saving trees and six figures. Soares and Marshall, I’d learned, had paid $490,000 for the land with the trees. What would they consider a good profit? I decided I’d ask Dad after we were back. In the meantime, I curled up and napped in the back of the car, leaning lightly against the cello.

  XI

  The hearing wasn’t good. There were two lawyers from the developers present. No matter what anyone said to object, they had a smooth answer. There weren’t many who objected, plus there were a number of people who testified to bugs, frogs croaking all night long and “lost” teenagers. When the lawyers were asked why Mr. Richard Soares or Mr. William Marshall weren’t present, we were told that they were “busy men” who had other, important, things to do. I got the sense that in saying that, they lost more than they had gained in all of the bug stories put together.

  A few days later there was another meeting in our living room, the same men from the music company back again. This time Taylor Ford wasn’t there, but a man of about thirty-five who had met with my dad earlier during the day. When he was introduced, my dad said, “This is Peter Emery, of the William Morris Agency, Kira’s agent.” The men had shaken hands, and the conversation that followed was mostly Greek to me.

  Mr. Emery was quick and smart, I could tell. He read through the proposals the men had offered up the first time, asked a few questions, then nodded. “Mostly okay. Two small things. The smallest, least thing: it says here that included with the rights, are the rights to the original. Don’t be daft: the composer always gets to keep the original manuscript.” He started drawing lines through the clause on the half dozen copies, initialing each one, then passing the copy onto the two, who also initialed the change.

  “And of course, the other little thing.” He pointed out a long section. “You are going to publish sheet music, you aren’t a recording label. You have no rights in that respect. Nor do you get exclusive rights to Miss Kinkaid’s work for the next twelve years. Or for seven years or one year or her next work, period. We would be willing to grant you the right of first refusal to publish her next work. That’s it.” He lifted an eyebrow and the two men traded glances before nodding.

  Big X’s this time, almost a page was removed; again there was the ceremony about initials. Then Mr. Emery wrote a sentence at the end, just above the signature blocks, and again the ritual. “Mr. and Mrs. Kinkaid, your signatures.” He signed it too, then the two men signed. Then there were handshakes and the men left.

  I was surprised when Mr. Emery waved us back to our chairs. “A few words.” He looked at me, a very serious expression on his face. “I have represented a number of minor actors, never a minor composer. As I’ve always told the young actors, I regret the system where you quite literally have no say in what happens to your work. You can’t even put your signature on the contracts, and even if you did, it would be meaningless.”

  He waved at the papers on the coffee table in our living room. “That represents a hundred and ten thousand dollar advance on royalties; the check will come in the mail sometime in the next few days. It will be made out to the William Morris Agency. We will deposit it in our account, deduct our fees and write your parents a check for the remainder with the phrase: ‘For the use and benefit of...’ followed by your name, Kira. Your parents will endorse it and put it in the bank. The courts assume anything your parents spend the money on is for your use and benefit, Kira.

  “You will most likely have to wait until you are eighteen before you can get any sort of legal handle on your financial affairs.” He lifted his eyes up to my parents. “I say this to everyone, and you have the right to be offended, any or all of you as you wish. Kira, many kids have great and wonderful parents who put the money away, are careful stewards and everything is as it should be.

  “But not always. I can’t tell you folks how to live; I don’t even want to try. You need to sit down amongst yourselves and come to an agreement on how to arrange Kira’s financial affairs. You owe it to Kira and yourselves.”

  Dad sighed. “I’ve read some of the stories. Who hasn’t?” Mr. Emery nodded. “I can say I’m not like that, and that my wife isn’t either. But there are some, aren’t there?” Again, Mr. Emery nodded. “Kira’s music means more to her than just about anything. And Kira means more to me than anything, anything at all.”

  Dad turned to me. “You can ask me any time, what you’ve got and I’ll tell you. Ask me any time for an accounting and you’ll get it.”

  I looked at the agent. “Mr. Emery?” He turned to me, and nodded for me to go ahead. “An advance on royalties. Does that mean I can make more?”

  I was surprised because he chuckled. “Publishers aren’t in the business of taking much in the way of risks. It is my understanding that they have been negotiating with several orchestras; three in Europe, one in Russia, one in Japan and one in Australia are interested. There are probably at least that many in the US. A year, at most, and you will get your first royalty check. We’ll be careful and watch how it goes. You can never take royalties for granted until the money is in the bank, but eventually you’ll get a good feeling about what to expect.

  “Further, the Arizona Symphony recorded it, video and audio. I am in negotiations with them right now for your rights in that regard.”

  “How much money, in the next year?” I asked, pressing for a specific number.

  “Honestly, there is no way to say. Few composers get a six figure advance on a symphony, even if it is very low six figures. You will probably get ten or twelve thousand a year from it, although not for a few years. Something similar from recording royalties, although frankly the video concept is a long shot. Odds are they’ll lose money.”

  He paused, and grinned. “And of course, if you write more music, pardon me while I salivate.” Everyone laughed. “There would be more. But, nothing is guaranteed.”

  I’d been thinking that I’d just buy the trees and that then they would be safe. But I knew how much Marshall and Soares had paid for the land -- almost a half million dollars. A million, I thought, they would take a million. But this wasn’t that. I needed three times as much as I had to be able to afford the payments. And there was school, saving for the future... it was all very complicated.

  There had to be a way to save the trees.

  There wasn’t, because I couldn’t think of an answer.

  I thought I’d been devastated when I saw the sign... but the series of hearings and meetings as May turned into June was worse than I could have ever imagined. It was like I didn’t exist and towards the end, when I would stand to speak, they would ignore me. They would pretend I wasn’t there. And when my father hired a lawyer, he was allowed to speak once and then they too pretended he wasn’t there. Complaints from the people in the audience, complaints from anyone seemed to cause them to yawn and say, “Ho hum! We can’t hear you!”

  The one bright spot was my trip to Irene’s school in Sedona right before school was out. I got to see Irene again and we had a lot of fun as she showed me around her school. Professor Dwight Marblehead, aka Marblebrain, laid on a special “Humming Bach in the Rain” game just for me. I’ve never had more fun in my life, except for when I played the cello. Not even the warning that Red Bluff Academy was year round bothered me in the slightest.

  It was an odd thing, when we were driving home. For the first time in my life I realized I had friends. Rachael, Mr. Gora, Mr. Ford... and Irene. Even my dad was my friend. The trouble before, I thought, was that I’d met the wrong people
and with the right people that I’d met, I’d been looking for the wrong things.

  We got home around six at night and my father dropped my mom and I off at the house saying he had to run an errand.

  Later he handed me a book. He was very serious; looking very concerned. “Kira, I didn’t want to do this, but it’s not fair for you not to know some things.”

  I looked at the book; it was a thick book, the autobiography of Gandhi. I had no idea what my father was talking about it, so I started reading the book right after I practiced for a few hours.

  In two days I was finished, so I read it again. It was clear what my father’s goal was. Civil disobedience. Doing things that are illegal because they are right and the laws are wrong. Things that don’t hurt people, but the government made illegal anyway.

  I didn’t know what to do.

  Then one day there was a series of shrieks in my mind and I rushed out to find that there were bulldozers among the trees.

  I raged.

  There are no other words for it. Rage unbound.

  “There are still planning meetings!” I tried to tell the foreman. He ignored me. “You can’t do this!”

  He flashed a sheet of paper at me. “I have a work order, the equipment and operators are paid for. Now, girlie, get out of here before you get hurt!”

  I looked at the wreckage of a half dozen trees, murdered by the machines and I simply walked and stood in front of one the bulldozers. “You shall not pass!” I said dramatically.

  That worked for about a minute, then two men picked me up and dragged me away. When they let me go, I rushed back. Eventually the police were called. I didn’t care, as soon as there was no hand on me, I rushed back and stood in front of the machines.

  That worked once more and after that, they never let me go. But by then the police cars and the activity had drawn quite a crowd and it was clear that the mood of the crowd was against what was going on.

  Eventually the work stopped and there were a lot of hasty conferences.

  My parents were called; my mother came and led me away. I didn’t want to go, but she insisted. I was angry about that, too. I’d never, ever, been angry at my mother before.

  Eventually I was in my room, left to myself. I listened to the trees; I listened to their laments; I listened as the laments soared off into glorious music of life and triumph.

  I was being distracted -- I knew that was what they were trying to do. They wanted me to play the cello, they wanted me to write and conduct music. The trees considered that far more important than themselves.

  I was up very early. I went into the garage, normally a place I went only when I was supposed to help clean it. I took the bicycle lock chain from my father’s bicycle. He didn’t ride it often, but once, a few years before, he’d told me the combination and I remembered it.

  Armed then, I walked down the street to the place with the trees, now hideously scarred by machines.

  “This isn’t the way of things,” I was told by the trees. “What you do isn’t the way things work.”

  I ignored the voices in my head, marched up to the biggest bulldozer and ran the bicycle chain around a huge eye that it had. It was then I realized I had messed up again. The machine had something I could secure the chain to. There was nothing about me that I could use. I stared at it with angry frustration, using words I’d heard, but never uttered before.

  A voice behind me spoke mildly. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

  I turned around and almost jumped out of my skin. It was a policeman.

  He gestured at the chain. “They have bolt cutters. That would have stopped them for about a minute, even if you tied it through your nose.”

  “Go away,” I told him. “I’m just walking.”

  He grinned. He was younger than most policemen, I realized, perhaps in his twenties.

  “You don’t know who I am, do you?”

  I shook my head. “A policeman.”

  “My little sister plays in the youth symphony. I was there for your first concert. She made me go. That was one very fine piece of music you performed.”

  I wrapped my hands around the bulldozer’s eye. “I’m not going to let go.”

  He chuckled. “Are you ticklish?”

  I glared at him, but inwardly I was terrified. Yes, I was.

  “My little sister told me you were playing downtown at Symphony Hall. I’m not a symphony hall kind of guy, you understand? But I went.”

  “I’m not ticklish!” I told him emphatically.

  “No ever one is, if you ask them,” he dismissed my concerns with an airy wave of his hand.

  “I was here the next day when you played your cello under the trees. They called me and I came out and I listened and listened. I got an official reprimand for being out of contact for so long. I couldn’t tear myself away.”

  “I’m not going to let go.”

  “Girl, if you wrap yourself up on one of their machines, we cops have no choice: we have to get you out of the way.” He waved at the trees. “Do you like one of these more than the others?”

  I waved at the cottonwood.

  “Trust me or not, girl. But they’ll cut a bicycle chain without a qualm. Now these...” he waved a pair of handcuffs, “are official. They will have to think twice; they will have to call around to decide if they dare. It won’t buy you much time, but a lot more than a bicycle chain will.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to handcuff you to the tree, of course.” He held up the handcuffs. “I know I’m asking a lot, but you have to trust me.”

  The trees were no help at all. They were talking and talking; none of it to me. I was on my own.

  “No,” I said, unsure.

  “It’s all you have, girl. Trust me or not. They’ll be here in a few minutes. Then it will happen quickly.”

  I wanted to cry. This couldn’t be! This was my world, the world I loved! I couldn’t walk away! I couldn’t give up!

  I walked towards him, wary and ready to run. When he looped one of the cuffs around my wrist I steeled myself. I was willing to risk my life for the trees. I would risk anything for the trees. Anything at all. I looked the policeman in the eye, daring him to do his worst.

  “Put your arm around the trunk,” he told me.

  It was a good thing I was tall, because it was a big tree. It was a good thing there were some links between parts of the handcuffs, because all of them were needed so I could hold my arms around the tree.

  He grinned at me, then tossed a silvery key in the air. “This is the key to the handcuffs.”

  I wanted to kill him.

  Then he took a step, seemed to stumble, and the key flew through the air in a glittering arc. “Oops! I lost it! Oh my! What can I do! I have no way to unlock your handcuffs! I’m so bad!”

  He smiled at me. “Is there another tree you want to save?”

  I jerked my head towards one of the oaks. He grinned, slapped part of a pair of handcuffs around one of his wrists. A second later he was chained to the oak.

  “I’ve been a policeman for three years,” he told me, looking me in the eye. “It’s like trying to empty the ocean with an eyedropper. Nothing works. Music works for me. My sister told me that no one from the youth symphony takes drugs, gets pregnant or robs old people. You have no idea how much that means to someone like me.”

  “I love music,” I said simply.

  “And I love music, too. I love music a whole lot more than I like this job.”

  It wasn’t really that long before workmen began to arrive.

  Soon, the foreman from yesterday was screaming at me, screaming at the policeman.

  The policeman didn’t seem at all fazed by the angry invective. He smiled, in fact, and answered the man’s question. “Who chained me to this tree? Sir, please! There are two people here! Her and me! It was either her or me! Use your imagination and figure it out yourself!”

  A little later a van arrived, a van wit
h the logo of a local TV station. I recognized the man who was standing there, talking into a camera. He was one of the anchormen in the evening. I took a little heart.

  The foreman was arguing with a man in police blue, wearing three stripes on his sleeve. The policeman was polite, but a little angry, I thought, at being told what to do by the foreman.

  Then I saw my dad.

  I met his eyes, trying to tell him this was something I had to do. He looked away, talking to someone standing next to him. I looked for my mom, but I didn’t see her. There were quite a few people now gathered at the construction site, it took a minute to check carefully that Mom wasn't there.

  Then the news reporter was standing in front of me. “Miss, can you explain what you are doing?”

  “I love these trees,” I told him. “There are many places in Phoenix these days with apartment buildings. There aren’t very many places with trees. I think we should make an exception here and let the trees stay.”

  He smiled at me. His expression was superior, supercilious and grated against my feelings. “Miss, do you own these trees?”

  I steeled myself and looked into the camera a few feet away. “My name is Kira Kinkaid. Mr. Marshall and Mr. Soares, I promise you I will raise a million dollars and give it to you, to buy this place.”

  The newsman laughed this time. It was a good thing I was chained to the tree, because for the first time in my life I wanted to punch someone in the nose. “Where would you get the money, girlie?”

  “Actually,” my dad said, speaking quietly like he always did, ”Kira has put up ten percent herself, and I have firm pledges to bring that up to a third.”

  The man next to my father spoke up. “Miss Kinkaid is correct. Phoenix has a lot of apartment buildings and not very many places with old growth forest in Arizona.”

  There were titters in the audience. Even I knew that Phoenix didn’t have any kind of forests, much less old ones.

  The man next to my dad smiled politely at the newsman. “I’m here to say that the City of Phoenix is going to take this project under advisement. For one thing, Marshall and Soares do not have a construction permit as yet. I have asked the city attorney to look into that and file charges if there are no permits. Further, I’ve added this to the city council agenda at our next regular meeting on Wednesday of next week.”