You live with someone ten years you think you know them. Then something happens that is so shocking you find yourself wondering whether you really know them at all.
We were addressing some much deferred maintinence at our little cabin in the woods. The ancient pine trees in the front yard had grown into the power lines and when the winter snows came, the limbs would be so weighted down that they stretched the lines to near snapping. I swore I would take care of it in the Spring, and then the Summer, but I always ended up putting it off. But now, with Fall in the air and snow on the way (perhaps as early as this week!) there was an urgency to addressing the issue.
I contracted with some local tree trimmers on the mountain and the plan was for them to arrive "mid morning" on Saturday. "Mid morning" for them ended up being 8:30 am. The foreman, the man I had met with the week prior, was a burly looking white guy in his 40's. He showed up in a pick-up, trailed by another another truck with a two man crew and a massive arsenal of chainsaws. I looked at the chainsaws and thought of the boyfriend, peacefully sleeping upstairs and realized immediately this wouldn't end well.
I spoke to the foreman and stressed how conservative I wanted to be. I wanted the trees left as natural as possible while yet clearing the power lines. We spoke of being "surgical" and "judicious" and "thoughtful". He claimed to understand what I wanted and promised that they cared deeply for the trees. He then gave his marching orders to the crew, in Spanish, and hopped in his truck, off to another job somewhere on the mountain.
I went inside to get a cup of coffee and heard the first chainsaw rip into action. And looked up fearfully at the ceiling.
Didn't take long. Within a few seconds I heard the boyfriend jump out of bed and go stomping along the ceiling to the stairs. He stormed downstairs, he was not happy. I swore to him I had no control over it, that they said they were coming later, that there was nothing I could do. He poured himself a cup of coffee, slowly waking up and calming down. Together we walked out onto the deck.
And saw the carnage.
It's amazing how quickly you can wreck havoc with just a chainsaw. They hadn't been at in more than a couple of minutes and already the largest, oldest pine was missing four of it's largest limbs. It looked like a quadriplegic.
I was shocked, to say the least, and then I looked at the boyfriend, face as red as a tomato, the look of hate in his eyes.
And then it happened.
"¿Qué estás haciendo? Usted está masacrando mis árboles! ¡Basta ya! ¡Basta ya! ¿Dónde está el gran jefe? Tengo que hablar con el gran jefe inmediato. No toque otra rama. Soy furous!"
I was stunned.
The boyfriend speaks Spanish?
Where the fuck did that come from?
In ten years, the only time I've heard him speak Spanish was at a Mexican restaurant, and even then he sounded like a white boy. Where the hell were these bi-lingual skills when we truly needed them? Like all the years we suffered through Teresa the lazy housekeeper?
I turned to the boyfriend, gobsmacked.
He looked at me sheepishly. "It's just something I picked up back when I worked in food service."
It was too late to save our one pine tree, but el Jefe Grande returned in time to sort our aesthetic issues and the other two trees were spared the barbaric trimming of the first. Hopefully the damage isn't life threatening to the poor tree, which has to be at least a hundred years old.
So now I find myself wondering is I really know the boyfriend at all. What other surprises await? Will he break into Mandarin the next time we order Chinese? Or are his secrets deeper, darker. I guess only time will tell.
Or, as the boyfriend might say, "sólo el tiempo lo dirá."
