The Crazy Things Girls Do for Love

Chapter Forty-Three Last man standing

After Dr Firestone (muttering threats and promising to make Clemens regret his rash behaviour) storms off to confer with the foreman again, Clemens climbs a little higher, demonstrating a physical agility of which only Mrs Huddleston, who has seen him scamper over her back fence on more than one occasion recently, was aware. He’ll never get back down without help or breaking a leg, of course, but that’s a small price to pay for the annoyance he’s causing. Serves them right for being so untrustworthy. From his perch, Clemens can see Dr Firestone and the foreman, standing side-by-side, both holding their cell phones as if they’re grenades. Dr Firestone has been on and off his phone any number of times since he took up his position next to the foreman. Who did he call? The police? The National Guard? Mr and Mrs Reis? Come and get your son out of this tree or the only college he’ll get into will be in Peru?

It isn’t long before a crowd starts to gather. People walking past stop to see what’s going on. Neighbours, noticing the groups of onlookers, come out to see what they’re looking at. Passing cars slow down and then pull over. Within mere minutes, the number of people with dogs, toddlers, their bedroom slippers still on or leaning against vehicles on Greaves Road could be in the Guinness World Records. Clemens looks down through the lacework of leaves on the growing throng and smiles. An audience is what he needs. Publicity. Witnesses. Complications. It’s too bad he didn’t think of this before.

Clemens leans against the trunk, more being held than holding on, enjoying the feeling of being in the sky – wondering who else has sat up here to think or dream and what they saw. Not someone arriving with a tray of coffees in paper cups and a box of doughnuts for the men determined to destroy this tree, that’s for sure.

Clemens sighs. It really is too bad that he didn’t think of it before. There are a lot of good things about spontaneity, but now he realizes that there are a few drawbacks he didn’t think about in the heat of the moment. There have been tree sit-ins that have lasted over a year, but those demonstrations were planned in advance; based on strategy, not impulse. Clemens, of course, acted on the spur of the moment. He’s made no preparations. He has no plan. How long does he really think his demonstration can last? It could get a little lonely, sitting in a tree – no matter what its age or how many its memories – not to mention uncomfortable. He has no food or water; no toilet; nowhere to sleep. What happens if it rains? What if, in this age of climatic uncertainty, the temperature suddenly drops or a freak tornado hits Clifton Springs? The girls have positioned themselves close to the base of the tree as guards, but Clemens knows that, if he leaves the tree even for a few minutes, when he returns Waneeda, Sicilee and Maya will have been taken away and there’ll be no getting back up. Making his great act of rebellion no more than an empty gesture.

And then he sees a tall, lean figure, coatless and bagless, nonchalantly strolling across the school grounds.

Clemens leans down through the leaves. “Here comes Cody!” he hisses. Clemens is so used to being a minority of one that it didn’t even occur to him that as soon as Cody heard about what was happening he’d walk out of the building and join him. Thank God. And Cody always has some scheme or angle. He always has a plan. “Here comes Cody!” The cavalry is on its way.

The girls have been standing close together, tense and angry and uncertain, not knowing what to expect and not knowing what to do should anyone try to move them away. But at the sight of Cody they immediately relax. Like Clemens, they think that Cody is here to help.

Sicilee claps her hands. “I knew he’d show up. He’ll make them understand.”

“Dr Firestone listens to him,” says Maya.

“Dr Firestone likes Cody,” says Waneeda.

Cody gives them one of his loose, hey-man waves as he ambles across the lawn, and they all wave back.

But he doesn’t so much as glance towards the trucks, where the principal and the foreman are smiling slightly over their coffees.

“Doesn’t he have to talk to them to make them understand?” Waneeda asks as Cody fails to make the crucial change of direction. “How come he’s coming over here?”

“Maybe he wants to talk to Clemens and us first,” suggests Maya. “You know, so he knows where we’re coming from.”

Waneeda frowns. “Shouldn’t he know that already?”

Which is, of course, a good point.

The reason Cody doesn’t go directly to Dr Firestone to dazzle him with his logic and persuasive eloquence is because he and the principal have already spoken, in some detail and at some length. After Clemens took to the tree and the girls gathered at the base, Dr Firestone had Cody pulled from his homeroom to speak to him on the phone. “Clemens is your friend,” said Dr Firestone. “See if you can’t talk some sense into him. The last thing I want to do is have to bring the police into this. Tell him that. Make him understand that I’m thinking only of him. This kind of thing isn’t going to look good on his record, you know.” Dr Firestone would hate to see Clemens’ future ruined over something as childish as climbing a tree. Cody Lightfoot is not someone whose view of the world is ever obscured by anyone else. His interest in the Environmental Club has always been as much about what it could do for him as what he could do for it. And so, as he approaches the huddle by the tree, what he’s thinking about is the other thing Dr Firestone would hate to see happen besides the destruction of Clemens Reis’ future. “You’ve put so much time and effort into the Earth Day preparations, Cody,” added the principal. “It’d be a real shame if that was jeopardized because of a stunt like this.”

As he nears them, Sicilee, Waneeda and Maya surge forward to meet him, all talking at once.

Can you believe that they’re doing this…? They lied through their teeth… They’re, like, totally going back on their word… Thank God you’re here… You have to help Clemens… You have to make Firestone listen to reason…

“Whoa, whoa, whoa…” Cody laughs, good-humoured and affable even in a crisis. “I know all about it.”

“Who told you?” asks Waneeda. “Has the rest of the club heard too?”

Although two questions have been asked, Cody answers neither. “You know what they say,” says Cody. “Good news travels fast, but bad news travels faster.”

“People are always sitting in trees in California, right?” asks Maya. “What do we do next?”

“I think you should talk to Firestone,” says Sicilee. “See if you can’t get him to call a truce.”

Cody shakes his head. “The man I want a word with is our brother in the tree.”

“But Sicilee’s right,” protests Maya. “If you talk to Dr Firestone first—”

“We’re counting on you to make him change his mind,” interrupts Waneeda. “He listens to you.”

Cody raises his hands like a speaker trying to still the applause. “What we all have to do here is be reasonable and calm.” He lowers his voice and winks in such a way that each of them thinks he’s winking at her. “We wouldn’t want Clem to fall out of that tree.” And then he pushes through them until he is standing directly under the branch where Clemens sits like a very large squirrel. “Hey, my man!” Cody gazes up. “What’re you doing up there?”

Clemens stops smiling. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“You’re missing first period, that’s what you’re doing.” Cody laughs so Clemens will know that he’s joking. “And you’re annoying the hell out of Dr Firestone and those dudes with the trucks.”

“Good.” Clemens doesn’t join in the laughter. “Because they’re absolutely annoying the hell out of me.”

Cody nods, but it is not, of course, a gesture of agreement. “Thing is, bro,” he says slowly, almost drawling, “that I think you kind of have to look at it from their point of view, you know? The reality is that they’re not against you, dude. They’re just doing what they do.”

Clemens’ eyes narrow. “Which means?”

“Which means they’re not persecuting you or your trees. They’re just doing their jobs.”

“They’re just doing their jobs?” repeats Clemens. Now he does laugh. “So I take it you didn’t come out here to join me, is that right?”

“No can do.” Cody makes a helpless gesture, not a million miles away from the one made by Dr Firestone not so very long ago. “I’m not saying that I think you’re wrong or anything, Clem. You’re right in the footsteps of a noble tradition. Civil disobedience is part of our history, right? It’s one of the things that’s made us a symbol of hope for the downtrodden and the oppressed. That whole no-taxation-without-representation scene… The suffragettes… Martin Luther King… But it’s not always the coolest thing to do. And I think this is one of those times when you have to go with the flow, not swim against the current.”

Although Cody isn’t looking at them, Waneeda, Maya and Sicilee are all looking at him. Sicilee and Maya, who have hoisted Cody on a pedestal of dreams, are clearly shocked to watch him not simply fall off, but jump. Even Waneeda, whose feelings for Clemens have made her critical of Cody, looks surprised and somewhat shocked.

“Excuse me.” Waneeda taps him on the shoulder. “Are you saying that you think we should just give up? After all the work Clemens put into this?”

Cody doesn’t turn around. “Don’t think of it as giving up,” he says to Clemens. “Think of it as recognizing that this is one of those times that you just can’t win.”

“Wait a minute.” Maya moves closer. “What happened to protecting the Earth being the most important thing anyone can do? What happened to that?”

Cody still doesn’t turn around. “You can always fight another day,” he shouts up through the leaves. “But you’ve got to pick battles you know you can win.”

“Excuse me,” says Sicilee. “Maybe I misunderstood you, but I could swear I heard you say that principles are more important than opinions.”

Even the fact that Sicilee is standing on his foot doesn’t make Cody glance over at her. “I mean, let’s be practical here, Clem,” he goes on. “You have no food, no water, no shelter, no toilet… So you have to come down from there eventually. Probably sooner rather than later. And then it’s going to be boom, boom, chop, chop, adiós ancient vegetation.”

Maya grabs him by the arm. “But that’s no reason for us just to give up right away,” she insists. “The least we can do is put up a fight.”

Cody finally looks over at her. “I like your spirit,” he says, sounding remarkably like an adult telling a child that he really likes the necklace they’ve made out of pasta tubes coloured with poster paints. “I really do. Just like I admire Clemens’ spirit. But you’re missing the dock here and going straight into the marsh.”

Only yesterday Maya would have said that Cody Lightfoot could never irk or annoy her. She would have been wrong, of course.

“Why can’t you just speak English?” she snaps. “What’s ‘going straight into the marsh’ supposed to mean?”

“It means that you’re not looking at the bigger picture.” Cody himself is looking at Clemens again. “There’s more at stake here than a couple of trees.”

“Fifteen,” says Sicilee. Fifteen trees that were old when her great-great-grandfather, just a child, was getting on the ship to America.

“Fifteen trees that can never be replaced,” adds Waneeda.

“What bigger picture?” says Clemens. Cody’s face gazes up at him like a reflection in a pool, but it isn’t the reflection of anyone Clemens recognizes. It’s certainly not a reflection of himself. “These trees are symbolic of the thousands of trees being cut down every day all over the world. How much bigger can the picture get?”

“Think of the club, man,” Cody urges. “Think of Earth Day. All the work we’ve done … all the goodwill and support we’ve built up … all the publicity. Everybody loves us.”

Some people are starting to love him a little less.

“Loves us?” sneers Maya. “What happened to loving the planet? When did we ditch that?”

“Earth Day?” repeats Sicilee. “The bigger picture is Earth Day? I thought the bigger picture was the Earth.”

Waneeda doesn’t tap Cody’s shoulder this time. She thumps it. “What are you talking about, all the work we’ve done? You haven’t done any work. All you ever do is talk. Just like you’re talking now.”

It’s as if Waneeda has knocked down the first domino in the wall that made Cody seem perfect.

“Goodwill? Support?” Sicilee’s laugh is stretched and high. “It’s me and Maya and the others who’ve gotten all the support. All the goodwill. I didn’t see you trudging all over town getting donations.”

“And I got just as much publicity as you,” says Maya. “I’m the one who had her picture on the front page of The Clifton Springs Observer.” Supporters Rally Around Plastic Girl. “I’m the one who was ridiculed and almost arrested.”

But it’s as if all their words are no more than the rustle of leaves.

“Can’t you see that it’s going to mess up everything if you don’t get down from there?” Cody pleads. “You’re making us all look like a bunch of lunatic Earth Libbers, Clem. You’re making us look bad.”

Clemens gives a strangled laugh. “No, you’re making us look bad.”

Cody ignores him. “We’re going to lose everything here.” He has never sounded so passionate nor so sincere. “Dr Firestone’ll shut us down faster than you can say, ‘ecological disaster’. Don’t you care about the club?”

“Don’t you?” asks Maya. “OK, maybe you don’t want to get up there with Clemens, but you could at least give him some moral support.”

“Like what?” Cody’s laid-back charm has started to fray. “Hold hands around the tree with you guys, singing ‘We Shall Overcome’?”

“Don’t worry, you won’t be holding hands with me.” Although Waneeda has been described as a large and lumpen girl whose movements bring to mind the bear more than the chimpanzee, she suddenly grabs the lowest branch and swings herself into the tree.

“Or me!” Maya scrabbles after her.

“You guys aren’t leaving me down here.” Sicilee, the girl guaranteed to be voted most sophisticated of her graduating class, hauls herself up after the others in her one hundred per cent organic linen designer suit. The floral platform shoes fall to the ground, narrowly missing the head of Cody Lightfoot, the only one left standing under the tree.

“That’s it!” Dr Firestone comes running towards them, waving his cell phone. “Now you’ve really gone too far. I’m calling the police.”

“That’s fine by me,” says Sicilee.

“Me, too,” says Maya.

Each of them already holds her own phone in her hand.

“For God’s sake,” groans Clemens, “can’t you two go a few minutes without calling someone? What are you going to say? That you’re in a tree?”

Sicilee ignores him. “I’m calling my mother.” Her voice is loud and clear, and her smile is lodged on Dr Firestone like a laser beam. “She knows a lot of people in the media.”

“And who are you calling?” Dr Firestone demands of Maya. “Don’t tell me that your mother knows a lot of people in the media, too.”

“No, not one,” says Maya. “But her brother’s a lawyer.”