Nobody Like Us

Before you hear what happened to my brother you have to know how our father died.

Dad became very angry one day, so vexed he took a walk to calm himself. It was a raw, stiff autumn afternoon, and as he walked by Baker Farm the wind brought down one of the large maples at the roadside. He always said that someday one of those maples would fall and crush a passerby, and he was right.

A few days after the funeral the family convened to reconstruct the events leading to Dad’s “cooling-off” walk. We discovered that, once again, my brother had neglected to refill the ice-tray, a dereliction of duty that unfailingly unhinged Dad.

The fault is mine, my brother said.

Just then, Farmer Baker came to our door. I’m very sorry for your loss, he said, and while I hesitate to complain I’d not be true to myself if I failed to mention that the demise of my maple tree is also a very great loss.

We agreed he had a valid point. The maples at Baker Farm were a source of pride not just to the Bakers and their neighbors, but to the entire county as well. After a brief consultation we decided our brother should replace the tree.

Should I take him now? Farmer Baker said. Or will you be sending him along?

We advise you to take him now, we said. He has a gift for talking himself out of troubling spots so we’d be smart not to give him the opportunity.

My brother was a modest success as a maple tree that first Halloween. He still possessed a passion for chatter, so when he spoke to the passing young trickortreaters they fled in terror from the talking maple. But at Thanksgiving he was very lonely, and by Christmas he was the most forlorn-looking tree one could imagine. The January thaw raised his spirits, then dashed them when it departed as suddenly as it had arrived and a full thirty inches of snow fell in a single day. The snowbank grew too high to see over, so he sacrificed the few yearnings remaining in his heart and settled into a deep sleep.

In the spring he leafed out nicely and everyone remarked on how maple-y he had become. He had so embraced the duties of a Baker Farm maple that I was startled one day when he spoke to me as I passed.

Tell him I’m not a sugar maple, he said.

Pardon? I said.

Tell Farmer Baker I’m not a sugar maple.

But you are a sugar maple.

Be that as it may, I don’t like this tapping business that goes on late winter. I feel like I’m taking a public piss in a pail.

He has a right to your sap.

What about my rights?

You should have considered your rights before you left the ice-tray empty.

Look. I’m fine with being a tree. But I don’t like him touching me that way.

What if his wife did it?

Madame Sandpaperhands?

How about one of the daughters? The one with the glasses.

She’s got teeth like a beaver. They make me nervous. Get me the one with the apple cheeks.

And the smile like summer pajamas?

Wildflowers for eyes and a throat like a mountain spring.

I’ll see what I can do, I said.

Farmer Baker thought me too troubled by the fancies of a maple, but agreed to a new sap-collecting arrangement. The daughter with apple cheeks and wildflower eyes cheerfully exchanged cleaning chores for the new responsibility. My brother was pleased; at least he never spoke of the matter again.

Many happy sugar-mapling seasons passed until the daughter fell in love with an orchard-keeper from a neighboring village. They eloped in early winter and moved to Massachusetts to resurrect an apiary fallen on hard times. In despair, my brother gave himself up to the wind on a particularly brutal January night and fell across the road. No one was injured, but the next morning traffic was halted for two hours while he was cut up and carted away. In the days that followed I felt an unpleasant twinge in my belly when I saw the smoke curling from Farmer Baker’s chimney.

In March Farmer Baker visited our house to say he was disappointed with the brief life of the maple we had provided him. I told him my family had no more trees to give.

My oldest sister is a mountain ash on Duxbury Road, I said. The next oldest is a white oak in the state park picnic area. My younger sister relocated west to became an aspen. The youngest is that nice willow leaning over the river near the Bleeksboro Bridge.

I don’t recall seeing your mother about, he said.

She, I said, is the lilac bush beside the barn.

Ah, he said. She blooms nicely close to Mother’s Day.

She does, I said.

He gave me an appraising look and I answered with one of suspicion. I knew he felt wronged, but was in no mood or position to accommodate him further. Whenever we meet — at county fair, town meeting, or other community functions — we are cordial. Otherwise, we are no longer friendly.