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Kevin Carstens hacked away at the brush on his land in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. It was warm for a Sunday afternoon in early January, even for Clarkesville, Georgia. But Kevin loved being outdoors amid the blackberry and wild rosebushes with a view of distant mountains.It had been a good day for his wife, Sharon, too. They spent the morning on their deck, talking and drinking tea. Sharon felt strong and focused enough to cook, starting a pot of homemade soup -- a task that would have been nothing a few years ago, but was a little triumph for her now. Her illness had left her weak, often confused.
While the soup simmered, Dusty, the family dog, sat nearby, and Kevin chatted about dropping a teetering tree in the old cemetery adjoining their land. It needed to be chopped down before it toppled and destroyed some of the grave markers.
After lunch, Kevin loaded a chain saw and ropes into his van and took along his cell phone and a knife. Then he drove through a grassy field into the forest not more than a thousand feet from home. A rugged five-foot-eleven, with muscular arms and legs built in a career as a cabinetmaker and installer, Kevin stepped carefully among the toppled tombstones. This was a slave cemetery. The markers were little more than rocks tilted at odd angles in a shady gloom, like jagged bits of teeth sticking up from the earth.
Kevin crossed through the scrub to the huge oak. He wound the rope around the trunk and expertly knotted it. Kevin had dropped trees many times before. Sharon used to help him with such tasks -- but that was before her illness. She had been so healthy and vigorous when they first met working at a Florida wildlife sanctuary 25 years earlier.
From the start, he'd liked her long, thick hair, feisty sense of humor and fearlessness. When she bragged she wasn't afraid of snakes, he asked her to hold a boa constrictor during a class he was teaching. She grinned and did it. After they married, they fished for shark together, canoed on wild rivers.
Sharon was the take-charge person in the family. She was seldom sick until 1997, when she began suffering terrible headaches. One day at work, colleagues said she didn't look right and urged her to go to the hospital. She rose from her desk and collapsed. She could hear voices, but couldn't speak. It looked as if she'd had a stroke.
Other stroke-like episodes followed. She had difficulty walking. She ran a fever all the time. The headaches never stopped. She and Kevin spent all their savings on doctors' appointments and medical tests.
In 2000, physicians determined Sharon had brain damage that left her with episodes resembling dementia. Once, she visited a familiar store and couldn't remember where the exit was. Another time, she was making spaghetti, but didn't know what to do after the water boiled.
After seeing specialists, Kevin and Sharon came to believe that exposure to mold had caused Sharon's condition. Her world was certainly shrinking. At times she needed a wheelchair. The woman who never liked asking for help was essentially housebound and dependent on her husband.
From the dead tree, Kevin uncurled the guide rope, anchored the other end to his van and pulled forward to tighten it. Then he took a second rope -- one used to tow cars, with large hooks at both ends -- and hooked one end to a loop on the guide rope. He wound the other end around a poplar and hooked the tow rope onto itself. With the guide rope now held by the tow rope, he unhooked his van and drove it out of the way. Finally he anchored the guide rope to a large pine tree across the road.
Kevin stepped back a few feet to survey what he'd done. It had taken more than an hour, but he always took extra precautions when he was working with a chain saw. At last he was ready.
He pulled the starter, the chain saw roared to life, and he began cutting through the old oak. In minutes it fell, right where he planned. Now all he needed to do was dismantle the ropes, and he'd be done. He strolled back to the poplar, flipped the hook off the tree, and let the rope drop. When he turned, intending to untie the rope from the pine across the road, he heard an odd gnawing, swishing sound behind him. It was the tow rope.
Kevin had made one miscalculation. The oak had dropped downhill, putting more tension on the rope than he expected. When he released the tow rope, the hook whipped around the poplar and flew toward him. The steel hook hit him on his wrist, collided with his left shoulder -- and lodged in his neck. The line pulled him chest-first against the poplar. The tension on the line was tremendous. Kevin felt his neck bulging as the hook lodged deeper, tugging on muscle. The pain was searing. He grabbed the rope with both hands and tried to loosen it, but it wouldn't budge.
Choking, he screamed for help. His voice came out stifled, rasping. It took tremendous energy to form words. He could barely breathe. And Sharon didn't expect him back for some time. He was trapped and horribly alone.
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