Tree, Spare that Woodman by Dave Dryfoos

And she? 'Very pretty,' she'd said, and stuffed the tag-end of fear back into the jammed, untidy mental pigeon-hole she used for all unpleasant thoughts. But, Ted, come to think of it, had seemed withdrawn, his face a careful blank. In the past year, Mazda had become Richard's home only Earth could surprise him. They're around the cabin, now.' He'd been interested, not surprised. Suddenly he'd stopped, pointing with a finger she distinctly recalled as needing thorough soapy scrubbing. Richard was running ahead like a happily inquisitive puppy. The three of them had topped the rise that hid Cappy's farm from their own.

Three of those tree-things had swayed over Cappy's spring for a far longer time than Man had occupied this dreadful planet. Something like the hoary mountain hemlocks she and Ted had been forever photographing on their Sierra honeymoon, seven life-long years ago. Gnarled blue trunks, half-hidden by yellow leaf-needles stretching twenty feet into the sky. Besides, I didn't know for sure, till we saw the tree-things around 'I couldn't have kept you home without-without saying too much, worrying you-with the Earth-ship still a year away. 'You insisted on coming,' he reminded her gently. 'How did you know what we'd find here? And why didn't you tell me, so I could keep Richard at home?' She saw Ted start, scalded by the splash of her self-directed anger, saw him try to convert his wince into a shrug. 'Why did you tell Richard to stay outside, just now?' she demanded. Watching compassionately, Naomi was suddenly struck by the matter-of-fact way Ted examined the body. Annoyed-while the old man pulled a blanket over his head, turned his round face to the wall, and died. She'd been annoyed when Cappy failed to show up with the present he'd promised Richard. But they'd been laughing and singing in their own cabin only a mile away, celebrating Richard's fifth birthday. She and Ted could at least have been with him, if they'd known. And to have let Cappy die alone, in this strange world. She'd walked over with son and husband, expecting nothing more shocking than an ostentatiously stolen kiss. Her mouth had been set for a sip of his home brew, her eyes had pictured the delight he'd take in and give to her little boy. To her little boy, Cappy was a combination Grandpa and Santa Claus to herself, a sort of newly met Old Beau.

She'd come to call on a friend, she reminded herself, a beloved friend-round, white-haired, rosy-cheeked lonely because he'd recently become a widower.

After all his wire-pulling to get into the First Group, and his slaving to make a farm on this alien planet, dead in bed! Naomi's mind circled frantically, contrasting her happy anticipations with this shocking actuality.

Tree, Spare that Woodman by Dave Dryfoos