He saw the first tree shudder and fall. far off in the distance Then he heard his Mother call out the kitchen window: “James! inside. Now."

He had never disobeyed the order to hide even if he clearly didn’t know the reason for it. Even as a baby, barely able to walk in the backyard's tall grass, he had somehow understood the fear that her Mother's voice carried whenever she called for him. But on this day, the day they began taking the tall trees away, he hesitated. A part of him hesitated to go back even when he could understand the fear and the urgency in his Mother’s voice. James felt like he was losing a part of himself and if he went back inside, it would all become real. He took one last breath of the fresh air, scented with clover and honeysuckle and coming from far away pine smoke. He laid his hoe down gently, and savored one last moment of feeling warm soil beneath his bare feet and the smell of…… outside.

He reminded himself, "I will never be allowed outside again. never again as long as I live,” as a mantra inside his mind. He turned and walked into the house, as silently as a shadow in the night.

“Why?" he asked at the dinner table that night. It wasn't a common question in the Carter house. There were plenty of like how much rain the backfield get? How's the planting going? Even ‘whats’—What'd Billy do with the five-sixteenth wrench? What's Dad going to do about that busted tire? But "why" wasn't considered much worth asking.

James asked again. "Why'd you have to sell the woods?" James's dad harrumphed, and paused in the midst of shoveling forkfuls of boiled potatoes his Dad had brought back this morning, into his mouth.

"Told you before. We didn't have a choice. The Government wanted it. You can't tell the Government no."

Mother came over and gave James's shoulder a reassuring squeeze before turning back to the stove. They had defied the Government once, with James. That had taken all the defiance they had in them. Maybe more. Now they had no more of the spirit of rebellion inside of them anymore.

"We wouldn't have sold the woods if we hadn't had to," she said, ladling out thick tomato soup. “The Government didn't ask us if we wanted houses there." She pursed her lips as she slid the bowls of soup onto the table.

"But the Government's not going to live in the houses," James protested.

At twelve years of age, he knew better, but sometimes he still pictured the Government as a very big, mean, fat person, two or three times as tall as an ordinary man, who went around yelling at people, "Not allowed!" and "Stop that!" or “Don’t do this!” It was because of the way his parents and older brothers talked about the Government: "Government won't let us plant corn there again." "Government's keeping the prices down." "Government's not going to like this crop."

"Probably some of the people who live in those houses will be Government workers," Mother said. "It'll all be city people."

If he'd been allowed, James would have gone over to the kitchen window and peered out at the woods, trying for the umpteenth time to picture rows and rows of houses where the firs and maples and oaks now stood. Or had stood—James knew from a sneaked peek right before dinner that half the trees were now toppled. Some already lay on the ground. Some hung at weird angles from their former lofty positions in the sky. Their absence made everything look different, like a fresh haircut exposing a band of untanned skin on a forehead. Even from deep inside the kitchen, James could tell the trees were missing because everything was brighter, more open. For someone who had spent all his life up until now in closed and dark places, that image of bright open lands, scared him.

"And then, when those people move in, I have to stay away from the windows?" James asked, though he already knew the answer.

The question made Dad explode. He slammed his hand down on the table.

"Then? You gotta stay away now! Everybody and their brother's and sister’s are going to be tramping around back there, to see what's going on. They see you—" He waved his fork violently. James wasn't sure what the gesture meant, but he knew it wasn't good.

No one had ever told him exactly what would happen if anyone saw him. Death? Death was what happened to the runt pigs who got stepped on by their stronger brothers him now. his first chance all day to sit down? It was a question James always heard the end of from the other side of a door. Today, skittish because of the woods coming down, he scrambled up faster than usual, dashing for the door to the back stairs. He knew without watching that Mother would take his plate from the table and hide it in a cupboard, would slide his chair back into the corner so it like an unneeded spare. In three seconds she would hide all evidence that James existed, just in time to step to the door and offer a weary smile to the fertilizer salesman or the Government inspector or whomever else had come to interrupt their dinner.