Fence Post
Fence Post
Admiral Biscuit
I was not always a fence post. I started out as a tree—well, I guess I started out as an acorn, and then a little sprout. . . . Anyway, I was an oak tree once, near the edge of Sweet Apple Acres. I am not the whole tree, of course; my sisters stand in line with me.
One day, a big storm came, rocking my branches and shaking my leaves. There was thunder and lightning, and apples falling all over the orchard. It did not feel like a worse storm than any others I had experienced, not until the lightning struck me.
There are no words that can accurately describe that bolt of agony, that terrible sensation of sap boiling and flashing over to steam inside me. That feeling of bark blowing off my trunk and crisped leaves falling, and when it was over everything felt different and wrong.
The storm finally passed, and the next morning Granny Smith and Bright Mac came out and started clearing the damage. They worked their way through the apple orchard first, picking up fallen sticks and the apples that could still be saved, piling the brush along the fence row and the apples in their carts.
It was two days before they noticed me. Granny Smith walked around my trunk and studied the damage intently. She put her hooves on my bark and I could feel the soothing flow of her magic. It helped a little bit, but it was not nearly enough, and she shook her head because she knew it too. Maybe things would be different if she had not been spread so thin from working so hard in the orchard, but I could not fault her. The apple trees were her livelihood, and I was just an oak.
Throughout the rest of the summer, my remaining leaves started to turn brown and fall off. My branches began to dry out and weaken. I was sure that by the winter, my life would be over.
I was certain that the ponies knew it, too, but they left me alone until after the apples had all been harvested. I thought that they had forgotten about me, or were going to leave me to fall on my own, to rot alongside their field, which would have been a shame. I could still serve them—if nothing else, I could still provide a fire to keep them warm through the winter or cook their meals.
Then one day late in the fall they came out with saws and axes and wagons and by the end of the day I was a proud oak tree no more.
My smaller branches were loaded onto wagons, while the large parts of my trunk got wrapped round with chain and hauled off by Bright Mac and Burnt Oak.
I expected to be taken up to the farmhouse and then cut into shorter lengths then split for firewood, but that was not what they did. They dragged me across town, all the way to the sawmill.
That was when I got made into a fence post, although I did not know yet that was what I was going to be when I went through the mill. When they were finished cutting me up, I got put out under the drying shed and that is where I stayed all winter.
It was strange to not feel sap flowing and buds forming as the chill air gave way to spring. All the ponies were working hard to wrap up winter as they always did, but for me it would be a spring without nests placed tenderly on my branches to welcome the migrating birds back.
I felt abandoned and forgotten.
I was so happy when Bright Mac finally returned with a wagon. He took me and my sisters back to the farm, where we had to sit in the darkness of their barn for a week before he hitched back up to the cart and took us back outside.
I got carried through the orchard and across to a new part of their land where I had never been before, and then Bright Mac started planting us in the ground, one-by-one, as if we could somehow take root and grow anew. It was very confusing and I did not understand the purpose of it.
Once he had finished planting us, he came back through, this time with a brush and a bucket of paint, and he gave us all a beautiful coat of whitewash. Still, I did not know what the future held for me until he returned again, this time with spools of fence wire and boxes of staples.
It took a couple of days for him to string it and nail it to all the fence posts, my sisters and I, and when it was all done he stood back to admire his work before returning to the farmhouse for the evening.
There was not a whole lot of purpose to fencing an empty pasture but I was confident Bright Mac would not have done all that work for no reason.
Sure enough, about a week later, he and Granny Smith came back to the pasture leading a herd of cows to their new home, and thus began my new service to the Apple family. No longer did I provide shade and acorns and branches for birds, but I kept the cows safe.
Seasons passed by and storms came and went and I stood fast. Sometimes birds perch atop me and while it is not the same as having a nest, I enjoy their company.
Every few years we got painted again. First it was Bright Mac, and then one year he was gone and the task fell to Big Macintosh.
Now I am old, splitting at the top and rotting in the ground. I know one day I will finally be too old to serve any more, but until then, I will remain, standing tall and proud.