Treefall

A Suburban Dreams Story

By

Robert B. Schofield

     The tree is gone, like the spark.

     Meg sees the tree the same time I do.  Or rather, doesn‘t see it.  The big box elder that has been in our front yard for five years, but alive for closer to a hundred, in a green field before this became a subdivision, is somehow, inexplicably, gone.  A short stump near the ground remains.  It looks as though the tree has just somehow been cleanly snapped off at the base and clandestinely removed by some tree worshiping cult which is very careful about their activities.  There are no signs of cutting, fire, or traffic accident.  No tracks, splinters, sawdust, stray limbs or leaves.  Somehow, it is just gone.

     Sticky eyes, sticky nylon, polyester, cotton-clothes, sticky car seat; ninety degree hazy Sunday morning, two hours after a sleepless night on the red-eye from Memphis, another thirty minutes from the airport in Meg‘s Z-28 convertible, with the top down.  The fact that the tree is gone is unreal.  Memphis is unreal.  So is thinking about the spark.

     We look at each other on that muggy morning, our clothes clinging to us like wet silk, and we look a resigned shrug at each other.  Meg punches the garage door opener, and pulls the Z in, expertly angling to miss the Lawnboy.  She shuts off the ignition and asks innocently, “What’s going on?”

     “It was time for the tree to go,” I say.

     Meg has a thin frame, with auburn-red hair, pale green eyes, and a button nose that doesn’t quite fit her face.  Her eyes stare at me for a second, then turn to the car ignition.

     “I’ll be upstairs,” she says, turning off the car and climbing out.

     I watch her exit the garage and my heart starts pounding.  It was time for the tree to go.  Just, time to go.  I sit in the car and listen to the engine tick as it cools.  Ticking like the beat of a heart, with only a limited number of beats remaining.  How many?  A lawnmower starts up somewhere down the block.

     Our neighbors are new.  He is young and quiet.  She is old and quiet.  They have a perfect front lawn, and continually work on their landscaped back yard.  He trims the hedges, which are technically ours, I think.  I feel bad about that since I have never given him more than a smile and a wave.  They might know what happened to the tree.  But I don’t want to walk over and ask.  I don’t want to get too close, a smile and a wave driving past is fine, but not Christmas cards.

     I have two recurring dreams: one, I am back in High School but I can’t find my locker, and I don’t know my class schedule.  It is a panicy dream, trying to find my locker, and then remember the combination.  I am late for class, and I don’t remember my schedule.  Sometimes I am in the middle of a semester and have missed half of the classes, and I’m trying to catch up.  I could get there and catch up, if I could just find my locker and get into it.  I knew where it was, and the combination, just the other day, when I was a boy in High School.

     In my second dream I can fly.  It is like swimming through air.  I have to work at it a bit, but I can soar.  I pump my arms and I sail up into the sky, flying over bad things, destruction.  It is a glorious dream, every time I have it.

     I think both dreams are about death, which is nothing you can control, right?

     We wake up and I climbed out of bed to make coffee.  As I pass the window at the top of the stairs I look out.  There is a pool of blood in the driveway, and an elongated gray shape is in the front yard.  It is a small animal.  I squint, a rabbit.  I have seen rabbits hopping through our yard, under the back fence, for a while before the trip to Memphis.  Or maybe there is just one rabbit -- was one rabbit.  And there it lay, headless, in the front yard.

     Meg is still dozing in bed.  She turns over.  She does not like to wake up.

     I have to leave for work in thirty minutes.  But I can’t leave a decapitated rabbit on the lawn.  The Department of Public Works handles dead animal removal, I discover after a quick online search, but probably not at 7:00am, so I leave a message.  The phone rings five minutes later, just as coffee starts brewing.

     “There’s a dead rabbit on my lawn,” I say.

     After a pause: “Oh?”

     “I’m not sure that a cat could have done it, maybe a dog.  Should I call the police?”

     “What does it look like?”

     “I think it’s missing its head.  Can you come get it?”

     “What’s the address?”

     I give it to her in a calm voice.

     “Where is it again?”

     “In my front yard, by the driveway.  Do you know how to get blood out of a driveway?”

     “Maybe some bleach and water?  I’ll radio it in.  So it’s in your yard?”

     “Yes.”

     “We can’t come onto private property.  If we did that this one time, everyone would want us to.”

     “I understand.”

     “Can you carry it down to the curb?  Do you have a shovel?”

     “Yes.”  I pull back the curtain and look at the remains in the front yard.  I put on slippers and go outside in a robe with the shovel.  The blood is in a pool, with a thick trail of entrails leading to where the headless body lay.  The day is already starting to heat up.

     I scoop and carry.  I am pulling at a grey string leading back into the yard with the shovel when a white truck pulls up.  It stops, then backs up with a beep, beep, beep.

     “We were in the area when the call came in on the radio.  You have a...”  He looks at the shovel.  “Glad I already had breakfast.”  He climbs out.  He puts the remains in a thick, black plastic bag as I stand there.  A bead of sweat runs down my back.

     “What did this?” I ask.  “Any idea?”

     “Hawk,” he replies.  “Three of them live on the golf course over there.”  He points.

     “You sure?” I ask.

     “Yeah, look at the feathers.”

     I follow his finger to a clump of white with brown striped feathers lying on the ground where the head should be.

     “Do you think it got the tree too?” I ask, nodding at the stump in the front yard.

     He nods and laughs.

     It was time for the rabbit to go.

     I take a cup of coffee up to Meg.

     She is leaning over the counter naked, putting on makeup.

     “Is someone mad at you?” I ask.

     “What?”

     “There was a dead rabbit in our driveway.”

     “What!”

     “A hawk, from the golf course, got a bunny on our driveway, Public Works said.”

     “You’re kidding?”

     “No, they just picked it up, after I carried the headless body down to the curb.”

     “Headless?”

     “I guess the hawk took the head.”

     She puts down her makeup brush, and walks to the bedroom door.  She peeks around the door, and through the big window at the top of the stairs.

     “What is all that?” she asks.

     “Blood.  You wouldn’t think a small rabbit would have so much.  I’ll have to get to it after work.  What do you think, bleach?”

     “Tide,” Meg replies.

     I return from the lab at 5:30 to find the stain in the driveway gone.  As I walk over to where it was, I glance at the stump in the front lawn.  The tree, the rabbit, the stain; Just time to go.  Then I lean down and notice the stain is not gone, just camouflaged.  Something the color of the driveway is covering it up.  I kneel to take a closer look.

     “Cat litter,” Meg says, calling from the front door.  I walk to her, carrying my laptop bag.  “It happened to a friend at work,” she says.  “A hawk got her Pomeranian while she was drinking tea.  Do you believe it?  Cat litter soaks up the blood.”

     “I’m sorry for your friend.”

     “She got another dog, gave it the same name.”

     “Really?”

     “Actually, it’s the third dog she’s given that name.”

     “You’re kidding?”

     “Same name, same breed, actually, from the same breeder.”

     “A little odd, don’t you think?”

     “Guess they don’t care.”

     “Hmm.”  I step into the house, the cool air conditioning. 

     I put my arms around Meg.  “Look, about Memphis—“

     “It’s fine.  I had a great time.”

     “But, Graceland…”

She looks away and sings, “There’s a pretty little thing, waiting for the king, down in the jungle room.”

     She breaks free of my grasp and sets the laptop bag in the office.  “Saw the ghost of Elvis,” she sings.

     “Of course I didn’t see him,” I say.

     “Oh, no?”

     “No.  I just met her.”

     Meg makes a spinach soufflé that night.  Garlic mashed potatoes, and asparagus.  We eat by the pool, near the copper fire pit, but it’s too hot for a fire.

     Afterwards, I pull the thermometer from the pool.  “Seventy-eight degrees,” I say.  “A lot cooler than it should be.  I’ll turn up the heater.”

     She nods.  “How about a swim?”

     “Ok.”  I’m surprised.

     Meg changes clothes.  She bounces in the pool.

     I dive in, mostly watch her.

     Afterwards, wrapped in a towel I say, “Elvis overdosed.  He bit through his tongue, and choked on it sitting on the toilet.”

     “How about the pretty little thing?” Meg asks, bouncing in the shimmering pool light.

     “You know.”

     I sleep in the basement that night with the TV on.  I awake to an ad that says:  “Never diet again!  Have your vital organs placed inside a lifelike plastic shell!”  A plastic surgeon from Los Angeles, advertising with a sense of humor.

     I like it.

     I didn’t see a plastic surgeon in Memphis.  But I did see someone else.

     I went to see her in Memphis, while Meg was shopping.  Meg didn’t know, at the time.

     It was a dark, dingy room, incense burning, and a single, red candle.

     It smelled musky.  Shadows flickered.

     “Hello.”

     “Ah!  Glad to see you!”  She reclines on a couch, sits up as I enter.  Her eyes brighten.

     She has goose-pimple ebony skin, and fat, red lips.

     I step into the flickering light.  “I just have one question,” I say.

     “No one will know,” she replies.

     She stands, and her gauze top and silk skirt shine in the candlelight.

     “Good,” I say.

     “What do you want?”

     “Use whatever you want,” I say, “tarot cards, rune stones, tea leaves, chicken bones.”

     She nods.

     Just tell me one thing.  “When am I going to die?”

     Her brow wrinkles, and her face turns hard.  She lights more candles.  She moves about the room, doing things.  I watch, but don’t understand.

     After a while, she shakes her head and says, “You don’t really want to know.”

     The spark is gone, like the tree.

     When will it end?  Where?  Dead, in a driveway, blood pooling, to be cleaned up by cat litter?

     Where is the big box elder that has been in our front yard for so many years, and now somehow snapped off and removed?

     It is Wednesday, so I wheel trash out to the front curb.

     A white city truck drives by, and stops.  It backs up with a beep, beep, beep.

     “Hello,” I say.

     “Hi,” the driver replies, waving.  “Sorry about the marks in your yard.”

     “What?”

     He points.  “That was a heck of a storm.  Never saw lightning knock a tree down like that before,” He says.

     I look, and see faint tire marks, charred wood.

     It was time for the tree to fall.

     “So you got it?”

     “Sure.  That’s why you’re paying taxes.”

     “Oh, yeah,” I say.  “Thanks.”

     “You didn’t even know, did you?”  He smiles as he drives off, waves.

     I say nothing.

     I didn’t know.

     It was just time.

     It was time for the tree to fall.

The End