Trees

by Alice Cross

Ethan escapes as soon as Russell erupts. He remembers to grab his jacket, so he should be okay later when the temperature drops.

He knows what he would see if he dared to look back: their parents frozen in fear and shame. This  bullying boy is their son, the product of their union. They await what they see as their due, their punishment for somehow failing him. Soda has been thrown in their faces. They will be grateful it was not the can.  

Their family trauma is always both private and known. Til eight months ago, the neighbors had ignored the commotion they must have heard once or twice a month. But finally, someone had had enough or grown concerned enough  to call the authorities. But it was their father who was questioned, whose knuckles were examined, whose credibility was doubted. Russell stepped in, calmed the policemen’s worries–it was all a lot of noise. See. No bruises. No harm done.

Still, Russell was spooked. He might terrorize his parents and his brother, but nosy neighbors were beyond his menace. So he changed his playbook. No more shouting expletives, no more throwing plates or books or lamps, aiming at or near someone’s head, at someone’s back.

Now he is stealth Russell. Quiet. Smiling. Dinner can begin a pleasant affair with everyone talking about their day and end suddenly when Russell reaches across the table and shoves his father’s face into his dinner, then laughs and directs  his gaze at Ethan and their mom. Better smile. Better find Potato Face amusing.

Last week he stepped behind his mother as she sat reading in her rocker and gave it a good tip, sending her sprawling on the floor. Ha ha, Ma. Did you lose your place?

Most common of all, if he is in “the mood,” it is Ethan he turns on. Ethan who is five years younger and small for his age. Ethan, who mostly gets trapped in what his big brother refers to as the Hug of Death– his arms a vise so tight around his little brother’s  chest he cannot breathe. Lighten up. He wants Ethan to fall limp on the floor and will keep on squeezing the air out of him til he collapses dutifully.

But there is one thing Ethan has over his brother: speed. He is quick on his feet and knows just where to run. He takes an indirect route across the lawns, swerving across the street and then back.  Five properties down from Russell and the Hug of Death, there is an old tree house, a bit rickety, missing two rungs to its entrance.  He has been here many times, and  has begun to store everything he needs on these overnight flights: toothpaste and brush, some protein bars locked in an old coffee can,  a jug of bottled water, the sleeping bag from his dad’s hunting days. The splintery floor Ethan has spruced up with a small rug someone put out with the trash.

Ethan feels nestled here, under this canopy of trees, which are under the canopy of the firmament, whose infinite unknowable vastness  he finds reassuring. No fury, no surprises. Nothing but the night and the trees.

Ethan swears he hears them breathe. Or perhaps what he senses–almost beyond the range of what a human can experience– is the trees talking to each other. He knows from school that they communicate through their roots. Why not also through their branches, their leaves, their thrust-towards-the-heavens tops as well?

He hopes one day he will be able to understand. He will create a Rosetta Stone of tree– the dialects, the variations in syncopation, in decibel of sighing leaves–and translate the swishing voice of crabapple,  the fluttering of birch, the creaking of this massive oak that houses him in his desperation.

He knows there are hundreds of fellow critters who depend on this tree as much as he does. He has seen  squirrels and chipmunks feast on its acorns, has watched as butterflies or moths, startled by his movement on the tree limbs, explode into the darkness.  Once he awakened to find a caterpillar settled on his sleeping bag, snoozing just as he had been.

Sometimes he hears a bird cry. At night it is a barred owl, perched  somewhere near. Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?

And quietly, so no one, especially Russell who may be on the prowl, will hear, he offers his whispery reply, I do. I do. This is his best bird speak, and the owl seems to take no offense at his poor imitation. It keeps on singing out, Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?

By early morning, other voices will pipe up, urging Ethan to wake and ready himself for school. He especially loves the cry of the titmouse, Pita, Pita, Pita. Ethan sounds sufficiently native, so that the bird will keep speaking to him. Pita, pita, pita, they sing to each other.

*

But for right now, he is quiet.

His brother is too heavy to make his way up the rungs, but it would be like him to keep watch below. Stealth Russell. Waiting, arms itchy with outrage, for this brother who has outfoxed him.

Ethan has worked out a way of escape, should he spot his brother cross into this yard and the vicinity of this hideout. The oak is part of a stand of gigantic trees: maple, black locust, an elm that has somehow managed to avoid the dreaded disease that has caused the deaths of so many of its kind. Their largest limbs overlap, forming a tree highway he can traverse if he must.

Come down, you little creep. Ethan feels his brother kick the tree. I know you’re up there. Gravel comes pelting upwards. The first toss, too low, only rattles the leaves; the next, on target, stings Ethan’s knees and ankles.

He must move. The oak’s limbs hold steady as he scrabbles branch to branch. He feels their slight sway, the sussurus of leaves cheering him on.

He has this.  Only another eight  feet–the black locust  branch  to cross– and he can jump down and head for the 7-Eleven a few blocks away. It is always open; Russell will not attempt any violence in public.

The limb creaks and buckles,  as if channelling  the boy’s distress.  He clambers forward.  Almost there. Almost there.

A sharp crack catapults Ethan outward and downward into soft darkness.

He lies, stunned, unable to rally himself.

Where are you, you colossal jerk? I hope you broke your neck! Russell brushes by him, rummages through the broken branches, swears, then lopes on towards the streetlight and the houses beyond.

How did Russell miss him? He was only inches away. Ethan could have reached out and tripped his brother, toppling him into the debris. The thought makes him smile.

He should stand up, brush himself off as best he can, then figure out where he could possibly go now. But he remains resting. He feels safe here, snug in this bed of earth, this garden of Ethan.

As if in welcome, a shimmer of fireflies hovers above him.  Vines unfurl, tickling his legs. From somewhere beyond his vision, in the beyond of night, seed pods explode, dusting his face and hair.  He wonders if he has died, and finds he doesn’t mind.

*

The morning sun and a chorus of birdsong assure him that he is still here, though blanketed in soil and vines.  Planted on this planet.

He listens.  He is being summoned. Pita, Pita, Pita. Get up, get going.

So Ethan stands, shakes the pollen out of his hair, the dirt off his clothes. He is a mess. So, no school.

Can he risk going home? Will Russell be there? Probably not. But his parents will be, and they will not be happy. They will accuse him of stoking the fires. Why didn’t you just let him have his way? As a rebuke, his mother may point to a bruise on her arm.

Ethan turns his attention to the rubble from his crash. He gathers up the small branches and scatters them on his earthen imprint.

He sees now that the large limb that sent him flying is partially rotted. The gash  high on the trunk where it has snapped is ragged and raw. The tree is dying.

Ethan  has always loved this black locust, loved the flare of its roots clamping outward  like massive lizard toes,  loved its white blossoms that fall to the earth like snow. He apologizes for the injury he has caused, then sets about cleaning up.

He stays in the shadows, so that no classmate, no neighbor and certainly not Russell, will spot him in his filthy, smelly state.

He is hungry. He has no money. Russell has seen  to that. How much has he taken from them over the last few years?

His mother’s gold necklace. His father’s fancy fishing rod. Ethan’s cell phone. And its replacement. Cash from jackets, purses, bedside tables. Where does it all go?

No one can ask. Instead, Ethan himself is often blamed. His missing phone– why are you so irresponsible? And Dad’s wallet–minus $50– stuffed behind the easy chair cushions. Was that you? 

These accusations are offered in front of of Russell, who may be lounging on the sofa, or rummaging through the fridge. But they never are directed at him. He is inviolate. Unassailable.

Ethan drags the heaviest limb, thick as a man’s torso, to a grassy area at the edge of the property. He sits down and gives the splintered wood a pat of farewell. He promises to visit over the next months.

He sets out on a search for something, anything, he can eat. He roams manicured yards, slips under pergolas rimmed with late season roses, crosses streets he has known all his life. No one steps out to chastise him for trespassing or ask if he is okay. Perhaps he has become invisible. Not a bad state, he decides.

He used to play Little League at a nearby park. Maybe he will find some castoff candy bar or bag of chips under the bleachers.

No such luck.  But he does spy an old friend–a weeping willow he used to sit under after games, chewing on orange slices with his teammates, making jokes and flashing orange rind grins, like in The Godfather.

Ethan does not have much upper body strength, so he gives himself a running start, and lobs himself onto the  lowest fork in the tree. From here he can climb easily, up and up, til he finds a perch.

Before him, below him, he sees  his small world anew.  He creates a map of today’s journey, not by streets, or yards, or neighbors’s houses, but by trees. He begins with the oak, elm, and wounded black locust. Next are the dogwoods and redbuds, the birches  and sugar maples, the Eastern white pine and blue spruce. Eventually, they lead–because there is no place else to go–to this tree, whose leaves are crinkling, and rustling, readying themselves for their fall.

*

At dusk, when he is sure is sure his dad will be home, he will climb down and slowly head back.  Everyone will be smiling again. Family harmony will  have been restored.

Ethan will slip in the front door and up the stairs where he can take a shower and change out of his dirty clothes.

He will wait in the hall until he hears the scraping of chairs in the dining room.

That will be his cue. He will appear at the table. His father will give him a nod of acknowledgement. Just in time.

Russell will be sitting at the head, carving a roast lamb his mother has made as an offering to her fiery son. He will pile high his plate, then serve smaller portions to each parent.

Grace will be said.

Only then will Russell cast a glance at his brother, and ask, Are you hungry? 

And Ethan will nod, and hold out his plate to receive whatever is allotted him.

 

Alice Cross is a retired high school teacher and college instructor who has published film reviews and interviews in Cineaste, personal essays in Pittsburgh Magazine and The New York Times, and articles on teaching in English Journal. During COVID, she began writing stories, one recently published in Persimmon Tree. She was a 2024 Linden Place Resident Writer.