The Walnut Tree

My wife was worried about the dead limbs in our backyard walnut tree. It hadn’t really dropped many limbs, but there was one huge dead limb that loomed over the back porch and the kitchen. If it decided to let go, there would be a lot of damage. And it was a huge tree, easily the biggest and oldest on the block, closer to two hundred years old than one hundred. Maybe it was time for an arborist to have a look at it and clean it up. 

There was a time, twenty-five years ago, when I was broke and I wondered what a sawmill would pay for it: “Nothing,” the guy from the lumberyard told me. “It’s full of nails. Nails damage saws. City trees are always full of nails.” So the tree was spared. Sometimes in the fall when I was sweeping leaves off the roof, I’d trim the ends of branches that had grown down to scrub against the shingles. That’s about all the trouble I gave it. Some years those lower branches would be ten feet away from the roof—some years they touched. That’s the way I could tell the tree was growing. Maybe it was doing jumping jacks.

“We have money—why not spend it on the yard,” my wife said.

“No one can see the tree. It’s in the backyard.”

“That’s because you never invite anybody to the house.”

“You don’t either.”

“Why do you think that is?”

I thought maybe I should change the subject. “I suppose it’s really a safety issue. That dead branch could squash the kitchen.”

“I think I’d rather have a new kitchen,” my wife said thoughtfully.

I quickly wrote out a check for the amount of the estimate. The arborist said he could send a crew of climbers to trim the dead limbs. This was after I had tried to wave him away from the front door. I was working. I’m a writer. If I’m not moving commas in a story or a poem, I’m reading student work. I teach creative writing, mostly online. And my office is in the front of the house. My wife didn’t tell me she had called an arborist—I think I was expecting him to try to sell me The Watchtower. That’s probably why his estimate was so high. I did apologize. I’m sure I didn’t mention The Watchtower. Almost entirely. While I was pointing out the dead limbs that I thought were troublesome, an oversize walnut fell on the copper birdbath in the middle of the backyard, knocking it over and denting it. Falling walnuts had cracked and ruined the last one—fancy fiberglass isn’t designed to resist mortar attacks. That walnut tree gives us close to a thousand walnuts every fall. I gather them up, the ones I don’t throw into my neighbor’s backyard, fully intending to shell them and have a cash crop. They end up in a blackening pile next to the back fence where they are raided by squirrels, and their smashed and chewed shells are strewn all around the neighborhood, on the walkways, the front porch and the back porch. 

“That’s a handsome tree,” the arborist said. “Too bad about the nails.”

I looked back. We had been walking away from each other. Maybe he didn’t say that. I hear things.

A week later, a two-man crew showed up and walked around looking up at the tree. It’s hard not to step on hostas and other bedding plants when you’re looking up in the air and walking backward. The crew consisted of an older Hispanic guy and a younger guy sporting a lot of beard—both of them seemed extremely fit. 

The first thing you do when you plan to climb a big tree is to throw a weighted line over a high limb. The line is carefully arranged on the ground in front of the thrower. It’s kind of a cross between the harpooners in Moby Dick and the sling in David and Goliath.

Back when we still had a maple tree in the front yard, I tried climbing up the trunk to get to a dangerous looking branch so I could saw it off. I know now why the arborists use lines and ropes. The tree bark sanded and planed the skin off my chest and arms—but I did get to the bad branch. When I sawed it off, it fell to the ground, hit on the springy branches at the end, bounced back up in the air, and landed on the hood of my car, the very car I had backed down the street to avoid the disaster I had just created. Then I scraped the rest of the skin off my chest and arms getting down to the ground.

The bearded arborist swung the weighted line back and forth, carefully judging distances, adjusting trajectories. Think major league pop up. The weight soared up and out of my range of vision. (I was looking out a window on the back porch and the roof overhang obscured my view of the top of the tree.) I let myself out the back door and I could see the line leading up to a point near the top of the tree, nearly a hundred feet. Then the bearded arborist, who had introduced himself as Dan, gave the line a few gentle pulls. A dozen walnuts came crashing down—none of them got Dan, who wore a hard hat, anyway, but one of them landed at my feet with a startling report. I dashed back through the back door, upsetting the dog, the dog then upsetting me. From the outside, I merely seemed to disappear from view in the window of the back door—something like the bobber that once was floating over a baited hook seized by a barracuda.

When I had righted myself and determined that neither I nor the dog had any broken bones (the dog seemed to have enjoyed herself), I let myself back out the door. The arborist tugging on the line was the sturdier Hispanic guy—if he had introduced himself, I missed it. He had wrapped the line around his body and was backing across the yard (well, also a bed of hostas)—something was not yielding. It became apparent to me that the weight was snagged in the top of the tree. Both arborists pulled on the line—either the weight was going to release or the tree fall over. But neither happened.

Dan sheepishly climbed the back stairs and explained to me that the weighted line had snagged and it was the only one they had brought. They were going to have to come back another day. Dan shook my hand as if we two had accomplished something. I watched the two arborists carefully stow their ropes and harnesses and carry them across the ruined hostas to the back alley and their get-away chipper. 

“We’ll be back,” somebody called from the alley, I could swear in an Austrian accent.

About a week passed and student work poured in more copiously than falling walnuts. Students love to center their poems and while I discourage rhyming, they love to rhyme them, too. If Robert Frost had seen these poems, we might not have heard that remark about playing tennis without a net. 

I looked up from a particularly ardent centered love poem, beginning “Roses are red”, to see a pair of short and fit men in hard hats on my front porch. They introduced themselves as Alan and Jorge. They were dead ringers for Dan and his companion, but I may have that problem Oliver Sacks has. 

“What was that line hanging down from the tree?” Alan wanted to know. 

“It’s a tough tree,” I said. Several walnuts fell around us. Not having a hard hat, I retreated up the back steps. The line hung from the tree like Ahab’s harpoon.

I returned to my work. I have not mentioned the stories yet. There are almost as many stories as poems. And I’d have to be fair and say their quality is somewhat higher. These stories feature mostly zombies and vampires—there was a time when I refused to read zombie stories, but I’ve come to agree—nothing blows up like a zombie. And if your story sags, just add some more zombies. It’s a lot like cooking. In the story I was reading that day, the zombies had taken over a sports bar and renamed it the Medulla Oblongata. Everybody was shuffling to Prince. 

After several single-spaced pages, I heard the dog scrabbling in the back of the house. She was running from window to window, enjoying Alan and Jorge. I decided to join her. Alan was about five feet off the ground, entangled in the hedge that ran along the property line—it wasn’t really a hedge, it was more like an assortment of saplings, bushes, and thorny vines. The birds perch in it and seed the next generation of honeysuckle, Rose of Sharon, children of the maple in the front yard, and of course, baby walnuts. Alan was strapped into a harness and the hedge was trying to tangle with him, grasping and thwarting. Alan was grunting with the effort of trying to pull himself out of the hedge. I thought of my adventure in the maple tree in the front yard. Alan didn’t look very professional. At least I got my revenge on the maple tree a few years ago. I watched it fall in a heavy rainstorm. I had just been standing in the doorway watching the rain, something I have always enjoyed doing. Then the maple just fell like a rock. Wow, I thought. Who gets to see something like that? It was only later that I discovered it fell on my car.

“The medulla oblongata is connected by the pons to the midbrain,” I read back at my desk. There was nothing in Wikipedia about whether it was tasty. Another suspicious scrabble from the dog turned my attention to the back of the house. This one sounded like her routine for squirrel on the bird feeder. I decided the zombies deserved a break.

This time I couldn’t see Alan at all. I crowded myself between the dog and the back door and let myself out again. If she got out the door, I knew from experience she would run six blocks before looking back. Looking toward the top of the tree, I saw Alan, a mere shadow against the bright sky, slowly turning and hoisting. Jorge had in the meantime tossed another weighted line and was rigging another rope on the other side of the tree. I noticed all the walnuts I had cleared from the center of the yard were piled in a dune at the base of the hedgerow. A squadron of squirrels glared at me from the shadowy foliage. If it were not for the huge squirrel-eating humans hanging from ropes above them, they would be swearing at me in unmistakable Squirreleze: My walnuts! (I hesitate to translate the expletives I’m sure I heard.)

Alan had found footing on a slender limb far above—I watched him tending to knots and fastenings. He pulled up another line, a pruning saw with a ten-foot handle. He wasn’t so much standing on the limb as growing out of it. When he touched another branch with the extended pruning saw, the branch collapsed in several pieces and fell on some more hostas and an ornamental Japanese maple growing out of the foot of the walnut tree. I slipped quickly back through the door. Thinking it was another game, the dog danced away, then ran to get her throw-toy. As I backed away from the door, I could see Jorge slowly turning as he hauled himself up into the mostly bare branches. The hackberries still had most of their leaves. But the walnut tree had only her remaining walnuts (and, of course, Alan and Jorge). Maybe these guys take it personally when a tree snags their throw-lines. “Thou dam-ned tree!” Ahab would have said. What do they tell their buddies over beers when a tree has dived with their last harpoon?

I returned to my work, leaving the tree guys to theirs. My students continued to lament lost love in more rhymed and centered poems. Justify the left margin and they look ragged, like war flags. Love is mostly sad. Nobody is nice to anybody anymore.

I realize I’m afraid of heights. The dog will stand, front paws resting on a tree trunk, in the direction where a squirrel disappeared. Where has it gone? Dogs can’t imagine heights—still, they’re smart enough not to climb trees.

It’s hard to keep my concentration. I imagine looking down from the tree. I don’t climb up on the roof anymore, but I remember the view was great. I could see the dog running away on several occasions. Sweeping leaves and debris, I would work myself closer to the gutter. With each inch of proximity, a strange feeling, like a whirlpool, arose in my gut. I would have to back away, toss the broom into the backyard and listen to the sickening thunk as it struck hard earth. Then I’d approach the top of the ladder, my hands tingling, every other part of me alert, disturbed.

The dog dropped her toy at my feet. I picked it up, then, the dog swirling around me snapping at her toy, I walked to the kitchen in the back of the house. The dog dashed toward the front of the house, expecting a downfield pass. Staying in the pocket beside the refrigerator, I provided it.  

Before the scrabbling had died down, I let myself out the back door again. Alan, growing from branches high on my left, was starting a small chainsaw. Directly in front and above, Jorge was rocking a branch back and forth—or maybe he was sawing. Then I saw a third figure above the two hauling himself farther upward. Well, it’s a big tree. Maybe they needed reinforcements. Several branches struck the ground and shattered—I remember thinking they must have been dead for decades. Zombie branches.

The dog made a whining sound on her side of the back door. It was excited, very much like the noises she makes when she sees a cat. I grasped the porch railing, feeling a bout of dizziness.

The branch I was standing on was glistening with damp. The rich green of the moss growing on it startled me.

No. The dampness came from the wet dishrag I was drawing across my face. I could see between me and the back door: dog toy, an offering; behind it, the dog, sitting and panting, tail in overdrive.

Now all of this has become a story. I will throw the toy to the front of the house again. The dog will run after it. And I will see from the back porch four, or maybe five figures in the tree, sawing and throwing down branches.

And then I will see from the highest point of view I have ever seen, dog running down the back steps, through the yard, out the back gate without stopping, down the alleyway. And cheers from the men around me, walnuts falling, the moss a too-bright shade of green. And then I will fly up from the tree—no poem is perfect as, no poem is lovely as—no. . . I can’t remember. I can’t remember which way is up. I should put all this in lines. Then center it. That’s the ticket. The broom strikes the ground. Center it.