What leaves usually turn brown during the fall season? And how dark do they usually get? I was holding a yellow leaf with dark stippling up to my eyes. Leaves littered the park beyond what I’d expect for mid-March. I wasn’t sure if this is from a Live Oak or Rio Grande Valley Fiddlewood, but I was sure that leaves didn’t fall like this. They don’t look like this putrid yellow color either. A trick to any other eye that came upon this crunch beneath their feet. The crunch sounded right, but it was a lie. A usual afternoon no longer seemed likely today.

My husband and I normally took a walk in the late afternoons. We savored the fresh air and the quiet beauty of nature at our small park in San Benito. Flat grass and a few scattered trees stretched across the park. This modest piece of preserved nature suited us perfectly. I looked to the sky, and just beyond the huddling of houses and small businesses in town, a black cloud of smoke was rising into the air. The closeness of the black smoke to town shocked me more than the leaves. I had heard an oil refinery was thriving on a large piece of property just outside of town. The black smoke told me it wasn’t far enough.

“Anna, you ok?” I felt my husband’s hand on my shoulder.

“Yes, just…look.” I gestured to the leaf-littered trail below us.

He stared at the smooth little leaf in my hand. When unsure, his eyebrows would furrow over his hazel eyes, a habit that ceased once he determined the correct thought. He rubbed his hand across his bearded chin. He was thinking hard. I looked for my thoughts in his. The yellow tint in his hazel eyes sharpened as he focused.

“It’s not even close to Fall yet,” he finally said.

I felt a sense of pride that his deduction matched mine for once. I offered him the leaf I was holding as a reward. He held it up to the sunlight just as I did and studied it.

“What are these black dots?” he asked and handed it back to me.

We’ve stepped into action as uncertified field analysts.

“I don’t know,” I replied, studying the leaf once again. “They’re like the ones at your mother’s house.”

He grunted in response. These black dots had plagued the lemon tree in my mother-in-law’s backyard for the past three weeks. It even got into her lemons. The lower Rio Grande Valley air had been kind to her plants all these years. And now her lemons were turning black. Though they were small stipples, the dark spots reminded me of freckles, painted on without regard to a perfect dot. We assumed the tree was overly fertilized at the time. Sick from the lawn food that my father-in-law fed to the grass. I imagined the city park’s office didn’t use the same lawn food, and might bring some comfort to my poor father-in-law, who was riddled with guilt.

The leaves had not yet covered the entire walking trail, but they lay littered around us. It resembled an old oil painting from an antique store. Painted with such delicacy, but sitting in an uncomfortable, unchangeable stillness. I didn’t want to walk over them, so I gently nudged them aside with my shoes. My husband got to his knees and picked up another leaf. This one looked completely brown.

“This isn’t good,” he said. “It’s out of order.”

Whether it was intuition or a high school science book I read, I turned to the black smoke once again. Graceful in it’s ascent skyward, yet I remained unfooled.

“It’s gotta be the oil refinery plant,” I said.

Last week’s news report about smoke pollution pressed on my mind. Holding the evidence of climate change in my hand made it more real. My husband cleared his throat, signaling disapproval.

“That’s a pretty serious accusation,” he replied.

He tracked my argument.

“I bet it’s true,” I argued.

He stood to meet my eyes, “I didn’t say it wasn’t.”

“Caleb, this is serious,” I insisted, bending down to pick up more leaves.

I needed more evidence.

“Anna, that company owns more land than City Hall,” Caleb said. “Challenging them would end badly for us.”

“It doesn’t hurt to try,” I held out the leaves to him. They are darker than the first. Caleb rolled his eyes and stuck out his hands to take them.

“You have been itching to fight with these people since they first showed up on the front page of the newspaper,” he groaned.

“We have to fight now,” I urged. “These trees might not survive if we don’t.”

“You don’t even know what these trees are called,” my husband smirked.

He dropped the leaves back on the trail, and I huffed. My husband was always the cool-headed one. He preferred reason over action. I was always ready to jump.

“I should still get that chance to find out, don’t you think?” I shot back.

My husband’s eyes swept the bare trees around us. A hollow silence crept closer. It quickly felt like we had stepped into a Tim Burton movie. With their branches bare, the trees looked unnaturally long and strangely contorted. Half expecting Johnny Depp, I imagined his pale face among the dead and fallen leaves. Ghostly yet alive, the trees were struggling to survive. This planet is dying and we are the cause. The leaves are only the beginning.

A gust of wind made the leaves dance. We watched them in silence. The clouds now matched the dark color of the smoke. I didn’t prepare for this today. The sky began to cry and I felt every drop.

Editor: Lucy Cafiero