Under Liddy’s Shadow

Joe looked up from his porch into Liddy’s shadowy leaves and branches, trying to recall if there was ever a time when she hadn’t loomed over his home. His old arborist’s bond with his tree kept him from questioning her mysterious aura, but her recent behavior made him uneasy. How would her ancient boughs react when his disapproval forced him to act?

Joe watched Liddy’s branches as they swayed in the warmth under the few orange clouds in the evening sky. He loved sitting on the porch under Liddy’s shade during this time of day, when the leaves danced and the grass waved in the calm evening breeze. He grinned and enjoyed the floral fragrance of the ending day.

Chaotic chittering high in Liddy’s limbs disturbed his smile. He peered up into her branches and thought, them darn squirrels messing around up there again, eating up her berries and gnawing on her leaves. He grunted as he got up and thought, reckon it’s time for the hose again.

He sprayed those rascals up and down, chasing them all over Liddy’s branches, but they were hardly bothered. His eyes were getting old and his aim wasn’t much good anymore when the sun was low. But as he’d seen often over the decades, Liddy was quickly sprouting up one of her big husky fruits up there, and Joe’s grin returned.

He rolled up the hose, took a deep breath of Liddy’s foresty fragrance, and went into his big old house, sheltered in the deepening shade under her big branches. His crew had a small tree trimming job tomorrow afternoon, and he might as well turn in early so he could join them and tackle the work fresh. As far back as his happy memories reached, he’d felt perfectly made for his calling as an arborist.

After dinner he settled into bed and thought, at least those Ace Development folks weren’t coming around bothering him tonight. Seems Ace was coming by every month now, always offering a bigger number to get him to sell his plot for the big shopping mall they wanted to put in. His reply was as regular as the chimes on his old grandfather clock.

“Thank you kindly, but nope, ain’t no way I’m cutting down ol’ Liddy, and ain’t no way I’m moving.”

Ace Development made it their job to keep trying, just like it was his job to take care of trees, so he figured he couldn’t much fault those people for it.

The next morning he had his coffee and read the paper in his favorite spot out on the porch. Those squirrels were still up there leaping between branches and making a ruckus. The morning gradually warmed, and after the last sparkles of dew disappeared from Liddy’s boughs in the brightening sun, she let go of that big fruit she’d finished overnight. Joe glanced over the top of the newspaper as it fell silently.

It cracked when it hit the ground, and the dry shell rested unmoving, warming up in a bright patch of sun. Joe kept an eye on it, and after a while it began to shudder and sway. In a few heaves the crack widened enough for a falcon to poke its head out. After another minute it squeezed from the rind, yawned, and stretched its wings. The bird called out, and Joe nodded good morning. The sleek, beaked face looked up into Liddy’s fluttering leaves, and in a few minutes those squirrels were dismembered and digesting.

Joe finished his coffee and whistled as he cleaned up the broken husk. He wasn’t surprised that the shell’s inner hollow was shaped exactly like the mold of a falcon. He took it to his old garden shed and piled it with the others. They came in all sizes, from as big as Joe to as little as an egg. There were forms of the little hounds that dug up moles, an aardvark shell for that time she got termites, and a big old pod that let out a flock of little birds that ate up those elm tree beetles in ‘81.

Joe closed the shed and took his truck to meet his crew at the trim in the afternoon. His mind happily fell into his working thoughts: where to use clippers, how to saw larger cuts to help balance each tree, and which fertilizers to apply. His crew worked with their usual efficiency, and within a few hours all of the wood was chipped and he was on his way home.

“Hey! Now what’s going on out here?” he called through the window as he pulled into his driveway.

A pair of startled teenage boys sprang up and ran across the yard. The rubber strap of a slingshot waggled in one of the boy’s hands. They turned the corner, whooped, and dashed into the distance. Joe frowned and walked their path across the yard, looking for anything amiss. He sighed when he looked near the base of Liddy’s massive trunk. There was the falcon, crumpled and breathing its last breath. Joe sat beside it. It went still and in a few minutes began to turn to wood, feet first. After the rest of it slowly transformed, Joe picked it up and gently touched the intricately wood-carved pattern of its feathers. He silently took it to the big pile in the shed.

A few days later, the sound of young voices drew Joe out to the porch. A couple of kids were laughing in the shade beneath Liddy’s boughs. They were trying to tie a rope around an old tire.

“Hey! What are you getting at under there?” Joe called. “We don’t want any kids around here.”

The boy and girl looked up and slumped their shoulders. The girl whined, “But mister, we just wanna put up a swiiing.”

“Nope. No swings in this ol’ tree,” Joe said, stepping out onto the yard and waving his arms. “So get, or I’ll run you off.”

Their sad eyes looked up at him. The boy said, “But it’s just a swing.”

“I said no.”

Their voices pleaded together, “But why not?”

“Well, it’s because the… when…” Joe looked up into the fluttering leaves and frowned. He looked back into their sad eyes and frowned some more. “Hmmm. I guess I can’t remember why not.”

“So can we put it up on that branch?”

Joe chewed his lips for a bit, and then sighed. “Well, not if you got a slingshot.”

“All we got’s this tire, mister.”

He shrugged and helped them tie it up properly. Their smiles lit up when they took their first swing. As he went back inside with their cheers and laughter behind him, Joe smiled too.

He didn’t notice the bunch of small fruits suddenly growing in the shadowy twigs high overhead.

The next day, during Joe’s favorite, most golden part of the afternoon, the little boy and girl came under Liddy’s shade. He called hello from the porch, and they waved as they laughed and hopped onto their new swing. Joe put his feet up and watched them have a great time swaying on that sturdy limb.

A sound from high above cracked across the evening. Joe looked up as a branch bearing hundreds of small, hard fruits splintered from Liddy’s heights and swung in a blur toward the swing. The impact sent the youngsters screaming and tumbling, and Joe leapt to his feet. The mass of hard shells scattered across the ground and shattered open. A buzzing swarm of giant hornets rose from the jagged husks and converged on the sprawled children. Joe grabbed the hose and ran to their aid.

He sprayed most of the hornets away, but the boy and girl were already covered in bloody, swollen welts. He went to help them up, but they scrambled away in a bawling panic. Joe heard their cries long after they disappeared into the distance.

He turned and scowled into Liddy’s canopy. The hornets were massed high on the rope, and in a moment they bit through and dumped the tire and line onto the dirt below. After another moment the insects stiffened and fell to the ground in a rain of ugly wooden figures. Joe grumbled as he put away the ruined swing, and decided that maybe it was time to give Liddy her first trim.

In the morning he had his crew stop by first thing. Liddy grew too perfectly to ever need pruning. She never sprouted branches that crossed or grew back toward her trunk, but Joe pointed out a few cuts just to scale her back down to size. The guys went to work as eagerly as ever, but soon it was clear that they had a problem. Saw teeth broke, axes chipped, and the machines threw their chains.

“What are y’all doing up there? Mine’s supposed to be the best crew in town, and now you boys can’t even cut a few branches?”

“We can barely put a mark on this one, Joe,” they said as they wiped sweaty brows. “What kind of tree you got here, anyways?”

“You’ve been with me for how many years and you still can’t tell what kind of trees you’re cutting? Well, Liddy’s a… This here’s one of…” Joe paused and frowned, then threw up his arms. “Well, I guess it’s escaping me. And, well, thanks for having a crack at it. I’ll just fix up these tools and handle this one myself.”

Joe waved as his guys headed to the day’s scheduled jobs. He loaded the damaged tools into his truck and headed to Home Mart. After dropping off the chainsaws at the repair counter, he went to the equipment aisle for new axes and saws. There were a couple of new, high-tech blades on display that quickly caught his interest.

“Um, excuse me, sir?” a woman’s voice asked.

Joe looked up from his fascination with the equipment. She had freckles and tumbling curls of red hair. His heart fluttered just a little, and he wondered if he recognized her. He cleared his throat. “Oh, hi.”

Her smile made his heart flutter again. “Um, could I bother you to help me reach that?”

“Oh, yeah, of course.” He handed her the pruning shears and felt a strange zip when her fingers brushed his. Her eyes brightened as if she felt it, too. “So, got some pruning to do, do you?”

“Oh, so much pruning. It’s my out-of-control peach orchard.” She blushed a little. “It’s been more than twenty years since I gave it a proper thinning.”

“You’re the peach lady from the farmers market!” Joe’s smile brightened, and he felt himself blush a little, too. “Those are mighty fine pies you make — I get a couple every season.”

She shrugged. “I know all about the fruit, but nothing about the trees. I’m Rachel.”

“Well, hey, now I know a thing or two about trees, Rachel. I’m Joe.”

Her blossoming smile beguiled him for the half hour they chatted. She talked about this year’s ample harvest and the best recipes for each variety. She laughed at his funny arboriculture stories and thanked him for his tree care pointers. She promised a dozen pies if he would help with the orchard, and his lips made their biggest smile in years.

Rachel’s wink dazzled him so much that he hardly heard her say, “We can talk more when I drop one off today at lunch, okay?”

“Oh. Well, sure. Remember, it’s the house under that great big ol’ tree. See you later.” They waved, and he nearly forgot to pick up his tools.

Joe went home in a delighted daze. He forgot about the dead wooden hornets sprinkled across his yard, and stepped over them in his elated haste. He went to the porch, put out an extra chair, and cleaned up a few things. Then he went inside, fixed a batch of icy sweet tea, and cleaned up a bit more.

After a while he heard tires on his driveway, and his heart raced as he stepped outside. Shifting leaves and branches reflected from her windshield, but Rachel’s wave and smile shone through. He smiled as he stepped up to her door.

“Well, hi, Ra-”

An explosion of broken glass blasted him backwards. He fell as splintered wood and smoke surged across the driveway. The earth shuddered as the huge tree branch rebounded and crushed down again. Noise and debris descended in a pelting storm as Joe sprawled on the ground. He blinked as the scene settled into silence. He coughed and scrambled to his feet.

The car was smashed into thin layers of crumpled, smoking wreckage. Joe crunched across scattered window shards and shoved away thick bunches of twigs and foliage. He peeled back unrecognizable remains of metal and plastic until he saw her lifeless eyes staring up into Liddy’s dark canopy. The warm contents of a fresh peach pie oozed from a pastry box and were splattered with Rachel’s insides across ripped upholstery. A thick red shadow spread in a moist trickle of disaster.

A roiling confusion of flashing lights from fire engines, ambulances, and police dragged Joe through the afternoon. He helped a crowd of somber, uniformed figures shove the massive branch to the side. Voices spoke and called, and Joe muttered answers numbly. A flatbed whined, cables spooled, and wreckage scraped across the earth. Yellow tape unwrapped, fluttered while daylight slowly deserted the sky, and finally shriveled into a trash bag. As the last of the police shut off their flashing lights, Joe overheard the coroner’s grim, official dictation.

“Time of death twelve thirty. Succumbed to injuries sustained during vehicle collapse due to falling tree branch. Deceased is Rachel Cassidy, forty-seven, single, well-known farmers market fruit vendor and new project manager for commercial property development firm, Ace Development…”

Suddenly Joe’s skin prickled. He looked up into Liddy’s black branches as they hung motionless against the stars. His face flushed. Ace Development. Was Rachel just one of their tricks to get him to sell his old plot? Or was it time this old tree minded its own business? Rachel’s pretty face smiled in Joe’s vision, and he squeezed his eyes shut and groaned.

A policeman came up and patted Joe’s back gently. “She was a nice lady, Joe. Crying shame what happened here.”

“That’s why I’m giving it a big trim tomorrow at first light. This ol’ tree’s just getting too dangerous.”

Joe went in, poured the batch of stale sweet tea down the drain, and brooded deep into the night. Wooden aardvarks, hounds, and falcons lined up in his mind and stared. The little boy and girl sobbed with the agony of a hundred bleeding stings. Rachel’s brief touch sparked on his fingers, and her freckles and red hair brightened with her wink and laughter. Again and again, he pictured a heavy tree limb plummeting from the leaves above.

As Joe dwelled on these things, outside in its black heights the old tree was sprouting its greatest ever crop of shadowy fruits.

At dawn Joe grabbed his new tools and heaped them at Liddy’s base. He gripped a saw and heaved into one of her branches. When it didn’t make a scratch, he pushed harder. When the teeth sheared off and scattered in the dirt, he started a machine and pressed in at full throttle. In a cloud of smoke the chain broke and seized the motor, and Joe threw it aside. He wiped sweat from his eyes and grabbed an axe. It took barely a sliver from Liddy’s bark before the new high-tech tempered steel blade chipped.

While Joe paused to get a better grip on the handle, a few of Liddy’s huge new fruits smashed to the ground behind him. He whirled to see half a dozen vipers as thick as his leg lunge from their broken shells. One clamped on his boot and put venomous fangs deep into his foot. Joe bellowed and hacked the snakes to splintered wooden bits.

“Now that does it!” he shouted as he limped to the shed. He got a wheelbarrow and began loading up every one of Liddy’s old shells and wooden figures. After a few trips they made a jumbled ring around Liddy’s trunk. Joe hobbled around on his worsening foot, pouring gasoline on the pile.

He flicked a match, and flames and black smoke wafted up into Liddy’s branches. But before any of her leaves caught, several of the massive new pods overhead split open and doused the flames in white foam. More pods burst open and released a cloud of fanged bats. Joe’s blood sprayed as he swatted at the swarm of little claws and teeth. A pack of jackals sprang from another volley of rupturing fruits. Some jumped on his back, others lunged for his throat, and he screamed when a few more tore at his injured foot. He bent and fell as the pile of mauling teeth and claws smothered him.

“No!” he cried with the last of his consciousness. “You don’t own me, Liddy!”

With all of his remaining strength he shook the monsters from his shoulders and scrambled to his tools. He grabbed a fresh axe and swung in a rage. Jackal heads rolled like wooden scraps and fluttering bats shattered into dry fragments. His poisoned leg throbbed as if crushed in a vise, and it clunked behind him as he huffed and staggered across the driveway to his pickup. He flung out the contents of his toolbox and withdrew a stick of dynamite he kept hidden in the bottom.

He stumbled to Liddy’s trunk and hurled the axe with his greatest fury. When the steel shattered, he grabbed the last new blade and kept swinging. He delivered a storm of furious blows until his hands bled on the handle. The cut wedge was barely big enough, and he crammed the dynamite in. Panting and trembling, he fumbled with his matches to light the fuse.

High above, a huge branch silently came free and swung in a long, accelerating arch. The matches went flying as the careening limb slammed Joe down into the foam-drenched pile of old fruit rinds. His ribs buckled under tons of pressing wood and the air crushed from his lungs. He was pinned beside one of Liddy’s largest old shells, and something in his memory stirred when he twisted his neck and looked for a moment at its inner contours. A sudden, piercing agony stole his attention, and he saw that the violence of the impact had ripped away his boot.

Nearly up to his knee, the skin and flesh were turning to wood.

“You can’t keep me any longer,” he gasped as he squirmed under the crushing weight. “I’ll die first.”

High above, another branch shifted. Joe watched as it went still for a moment, then split free with a loud clap. It fell, growing in Joe’s vision until its splintered tip pierced his chest and skewered his heart to the ground. He released his last gurgling breath, knowing that Liddy had won.

His whole leg was wooden now, and the transformation was slowly advancing across the rest of his body. As his senses faded, forgotten memories flooded back. His crew’s voices echoed in his head, “What kind of tree you got here, anyways?”

Now he remembered.

Whispers drifted from his dimming consciousness. Beware of these creatures. Be one of them. Secure a place in their world. He remembered golden afternoon light streaming in through the first cracks in the old husk that was beside him now. This old wooden brain had simply forgotten.

A final big fruit fell nearby. It split open just before Joe was completely turned to wood. The self he remembered seeing in the mirror decades ago climbed from the rind and stood over him.

“Welcome back, Joe,” the younger man said. “I’m you, you’re me, and we’re both Liddy. I’ll be watchin’ over the place for now.”

Cover image:

• House 3D model by Kim Brumble, under Creative Commons (attribution) license.
• Copyright, license, and disclaimer notices link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
• Material link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3104063
• Changes: Mirrored L/R about vertical plane
• A beautiful house model — thanks, Kim!
• 3D scene, related modeling, texturing, lighting, and rendering by F.P. Wilson.
• Graphic design by N. Herd.