“Come along,” the swami said. “You don’t want anything in there.” But, in the end, he found himself buying an expensive bottle of French perfume with a vague idea of laying it before the holy tree when he finally arrived. Not that a tree of such power would be swayed for a moment by such a trivial gift. Still, it is always pleasing to receive a present, and many a hard heart has been softened by such means, the swami thought.
By now the followers had read all the magazines and run down the dog’s batteries. They were ready to leave the boutique. How exasperating to find the swami in the midst of buying more presents! For no apparent reason, he had picked out a gigantic tube of lavender-scented bath oil. As the followers watched, he tried to decide which of two ridiculous-looking paperweights to buy.
One was made of see-through plastic and showed the Eiffel Tower in a snowstorm when shaken. The other was made of metal and molded into the shape of an elephant foot. Or was it a tree stump? The swami peered at the paperweight closely while the loyal followers looked at their watches and then at each other in a long-suffering way.
“Come along, Holy Master. You really don’t want those paperweights, do you?” one follower dared to suggest.
“If we are going to fly stand-by, it would be best if we stood by the gate, don’t you think?” another inquired.
It was then, under the pressure of sixty impatient eyes, that the swami inadvertently dropped the elephant foot on his toe.
“Yee-oww!”
The toe was crushed. The swami could hardly walk.
“We will carry you!” cried the followers, eagerly. “We would be honored to carry you to the gate.”
Without waiting for the swami’s consent, they picked him up and took him off on their shoulders.
What an excellent way to travel! Not for the swami, who was rather uncomfortable, but for the followers. Now they could go wherever they wanted, stop whenever they wished, speed up, slow down as their own needs dictated.
They were at the gate in a matter of minutes and before long had reserved themselves first class seats on the next flight to America. Without the swami, it was all so easy.
The followers shook each other’s hands in triumph. They looked up at the swami on their shoulders. He had fallen asleep. The poor fellow was all tired out. His head had dropped back against one of the followers’ strong necks, and his turban was coming unwrapped.
The loyal followers tucked it back in. They smoothed his hot forehead with their hands. The swami looked so dear when he was asleep. The loyal followers decided to send out for pizza and cold drinks while they waited to board the plane.
“Do you think there is anything to this holy oak tree business?” one follower whispered to the group while the swami snored softly overhead.
“Probably not,” a second answered. “The swami’s imagination is like a team of wild horses, always running away with him.”
“Still, there’s no harm in going to look at the tree, is there?” a third follower asked.
No harm at all, they all agreed. They ate their pizza,
prepared the goats and peacocks for baggage class, and
finally climbed aboard the plane. As the seven-hour journey
across the Atlantic Ocean began, the followers fell
asleep in their seats and dreamed about their cozy cave
near Bombay. Their dreams were so real that
they thought they were home, and that
the fantastic trip to America
was a dream
instead.
Long after midnight, in the dark hours before the dawn of his eightieth birthday, the farmer rose up in his bed with the shocking thought that he had forgotten to write his will.
This was a mistake. The farmer had written a will just last year. It lay in the files of a lawyer in town, signed, dated, official in every respect. The lawyer had been instructed to bring it out upon the farmer’s death, to read it to his family and to see that the terms were followed.
But the farmer recalled nothing about this document. He might recall digging for pirate treasure seventy years ago, but he could not remember giving instructions to his lawyer much more recently. All of a sudden he sat straight up in his bed and his heart gave a wallop. He thought:
“I have forgotten to write my will!”
It wasn’t easy for the farmer to get up at such an hour. Where was the light switch? Where were his slippers and bathrobe? His knees turned stiff and unmanageable in the cold room. Where was the blasted heater? He tripped over it and almost fell down on his way to the bathroom.
“Don’t break your neck, old fellow,” he warned himself.
Lately, he had gotten into the habit of talking to himself, of standing apart from his old man-ness and giving it advice, or helping it through difficult moments. After all, he, the farmer, was not an old man. He was the same as he had always been: strong, hard-working, a good storyteller. His old man-ness was like another person who had come to live with him since his wife’s death, a person who must be looked after and given special treatment.
“Put up those old legs of yours and take a rest,” the farmer would tell the old man. “No need for you to go worrying yourself. Things’ll come out all right. They always do. You make yourself a nice cup of chocolate and sit down.”
This matter was more worrisome, though. Forgetting to write a will is a serious business. A family has got to be told what to do when a person dies, otherwise it might do the wrong thing. It might get into a fight. Land might get sold for a bad price. An important tree might get chopped down.
“Chopped down! Good heavens,” muttered the farmer. “Why have I never thought of that before?” He sat hurriedly at his desk and took out paper and pen.
To Whom It May Concern, he wrote with a wobble at the top of the page. It didn’t sound quite right. The electric heater was purring like a contented cat beneath the desk, giving off thick waves of heat. Ah! It felt so good. What was life really but a matter of having enough heat on a cold night? The farmer sighed and crossed out what he had written.
To My Dear Family, he wrote warmly.
A storm had been raging outside but now seemed to be passing. The rain came lightly against the bedroom windows. The farmer felt so cozy in his room. It was hard to imagine that he wouldn’t always be here. But he wouldn’t. He had to face facts. He was getting on. Tomorrow was his eightieth birthday. He was expecting a surprise party from his grandchildren to celebrate.
Or was he?
“The trouble is, I can’t be sure,” said the farmer, looking at the matter squarely for the first time. “They live so far away. Travel is so difficult. Telephone lines can break. Letters are lost in the mail.”
He cocked his head and listened for the dry winter rustle of the oak down the hill. He imagined it standing out in the dark like a sentry, guarding the countryside, weathering the storm, waiting for morning. That was a comforting thought, all right. The tree had stood by on the day he was born and it would go on when he left off, weathering, waiting, “Guarding my memory,” murmured the farmer.
“And my memories,” he added, casting his mind back across the scenes from his life that he had recalled and relived during the past weeks.
“And guarding the old stories,” he went on, thinking how they were the oak’s real treasure, uncovered all these many years and shining in the sun.
“But who will guard the oak?” asked the farmer, picking up his pen again. Suddenly he knew the answer and, crumpling up the paper he had written on, he took out another piece.
To My Dear Family and To the Fine People of Dimpole, he wrote.
Then, he proceeded to set forth the terms of his will, which were practically the same as the terms that lay in the lawyer’s file in town except for one thing.
After the farmer had left his farmhouse to his first son, his land to his only daughter, his furniture and china to his second son and a small chunk of money to each of his grandchildren, he left his great tree and its field to t
he people of Dimpole.
In hopes that all of you who have grown up with the tree will see fit to care for and protect it, as I have cared for it and loved it all my life, he wrote. (He wondered if the town would erect a monument to his family. Or would a memorial plaque be better? As long as they didn’t try to screw it into the side of the tree!)
In hopes that your children and your children’s children will play beneath the tree and listen to the telling of its old stories, the farmer wrote, with the heater blazing away. (He wondered if he should order his ashes buried between the oak’s roots. It was pleasant to think of how the children’s feet would patter overhead. On the other hand, what with all the recent digging for pirate’s treasure, perhaps he would feel safer in a regular graveyard.)
In hopes that …
But here the farmer slumped in his chair. He had been
just about to give out his rule—thinking fondly of
Dexter—that anything anybody found lying on the
ground or in the ground near the Dimpole Oak,
well, it was the finder’s property.
The farmer fell back in his
chair, and a night deeper
than the night outside
swept around
him.
As the last of the storm passed over the farmer’s house and headed for the sea, a dark silence fell upon Dimpole. The houses of the town huddled soundlessly against the valley floor and inside the houses the people slept without moving in their beds. Dogs lay still on door mats. Canaries hung motionless in cages. Cats crouched unseen on window sills. (But Miss Hand’s black Loopy had run off during the evening walk and not come back. Most likely he was hunting mole.)
Everything lay hidden under cover of darkness and sleep, and the Dimpole Oak was at the center, as silent and invisible as if it had never been there. Only in dreams did it rise up and show itself. Then it faded or changed into something else and the long, silent hours rolled on.
Would Saturday morning, October 25th never come?
It came—a prickle of light along the western horizon. Then the colors: pink, rose, lavender, lilac. Then a surge of brightness and finally the sun itself, nosing up over the hills, moving faster than expected and catching Dimpolers in various stages of waking up:
Mrs. Trawley, heaving herself mountainously out of bed and into a hot bath: “Ah-h-h. It’s Great Dimpole Oak Day at last! ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, I do not intend to bore you today with flowery language or metaphors on the nature of things …’”
Mr. Glover, the lovebird crooning over his coffee: “George Washington rode underneath that tree and nodded to it. I know it as well as I know that Shirley Hand kissed me there last night. Oh, what a beautiful morning!”
And Shirley Hand in her tiny apartment, her heavy-lashed eyes just opening on the day: “What a romantic place! What a romantic man! But Loopy has run off. I think he was jealous of Harvey. Will we ever find him? Will we?”
And Dexter and Howlie—Howlie peering through binoculars at the oak across rosy-colored fields:
“Can you see Bulldog?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure he’s coming?”
“Never said he wasn’t.”
“Have you got your blood bag on?”
“Yup.”
“Have you got your knife?”
“Yup.”
“Are you scared?”
“Nope.”
“Are you still mad at me, Howlie?”
“I’m deciding.”
5
MR. GLOVER WAS RIGHT. THE MORNING that rose over Dimpole that day was clear, blue and perfectly beautiful. Anyone would have agreed, even someone who wasn’t in love with a gorgeous, talented, lavender-scented teacher named Shirley Hand.
The storm had vanished and there was no sign of how it had raged across the valley. Or rather, there seemed to be no sign while the light remained weak. But when the sun’s full rays struck the land, one difference could be plainly seen. The Dimpole Oak was stripped of leaves. The last of its crop had blown off in the wind. The tree’s great arms mounted bare and black against the brightening sky.
“Holy cow. Look at the oak,” said Dexter Drake on his stomach in the field below the tree. He handed the binoculars to Howlie.
“Not a leaf left on it,” Howlie said. “It looks sort of sad or embarrassed standing out there with nothing on, don’t you think?”
Dexter snorted. “There’s nothing sad about that oak. If you ask me, it’s got an evil streak in it. You should have seen it last night waving its arms around and creaking. I had the strangest feeling it was after me for some reason. Even now, it looks kind of horrible, like a black hand stuck down in the ground.”
“You’re weird,” said Howlie.
“You know what? I bet there are diamonds buried under the tree,” Dexter went on. “There’s probably a lot of other stuff, too. But nobody will ever find anything because the tree wants to have it for itself. It’s sitting up there on top of everything keeping watch, and anyone who comes too close gets the treatment.”
“What treatment?” asked Howlie.
“The scare treatment. You think I’m kidding but you weren’t there last night. The whole tree came alive.”
“You’re beginning to sound exactly like the farmer,” said Howlie. “Next you’ll be telling me there’s human blood in its branches.”
“There is,” said Dexter. “And human sweat and human tears. The farmer is one hundred per cent on target. This oak is on the look-out for human parts. It’s standing there waiting to get its hands on them.”
“Well, maybe it got all of Bulldog Calhoun at once,” said Howlie, bringing the conversation back to business. “I don’t see any sign of him.”
Dexter took up the binoculars and surveyed the area.
“Something else is funny,” he said. “There have been lights on upstairs in the farmer’s house since before we got here.”
“He probably gets up early,” Howlie said.
Dexter shrugged. “It seems strange for him to have all the lights on so early in the morning. And why hasn’t he turned them off by now? The sun is pouring through his windows.”
Dexter peered through the glasses again.
“I can’t see any movement in there,” he said.
“Maybe he’s watching TV.”
“Howlie?” said Dexter. He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I know you’re going to kill me for this.” He raised a finger to his forehead and shot himself. “I don’t want you to think I’m running out on our fight-to-the-death plan.”
“Oh no, not again,” Howlie said.
“It’s probably nothing, but the farmer didn’t look too well yesterday when I saw him. I think I should go check him out. See, he’s got nobody. Not even a dog. It hit me when I went to see him about the treasure. He pretends he doesn’t care but he’s all by himself. If anything happened …”
“Not now,” said Howlie. “Please don’t go now.”
“I’ll be right back, honest. When Bulldog shows up, just keep him talking until I come.”
“You want me to keep Bulldog talking?” Howlie said. “When was the last time anyone ever talked to Bulldog?”
“I’ll be right back,” yelled Dexter as he ran toward the farmhouse. “I’ve just got to do this one thing.”
“Dexter Drake you are an oversized rat of the hairiest kind!” Howlie howled after him. “If I’m dead when you get back, I’m holding you personally responsible.”
Dexter hadn’t been gone more than five minutes when Howlie began to hear noises coming from the direction of the main road: car doors slamming and a burble of voices. He rose to his knees and swung the glasses around to have a look.
Bulldog was nowhere in sight, but down on the road people seemed to be arriving. Howlie focused the binoculars and leaned forward. They were parking their cars on the edge of the pavement and getting out. Some were laughing and shaking hands. Others stood apart and gazed up the hill tow
ard the big oak tree. Howlie ducked. A great fear swept over him. He knew who they were looking for.
Every minute, more people arrived. Whole families were unloading from station wagons. Tiny children were being buckled into strollers. Larger children galloped between the cars. Someone pulled a whole bunch of helium-filled balloons from the back of a van. When the children saw this, they galloped over with hoots and squeals to surround the balloonman. Then:
“Boom! Boom! Boom!” Howlie shot to his feet and panned the roadside. Far down the ever-lengthening line of parked vehicles he saw two people carrying a big bass drum. While he watched, one person helped the other person put on a chest harness and attach the drum to it.
“Boom! Boom! Boom!” The person wearing the drum hit it with a padded drumstick.
“That’s the bass drum from the high school,” Howlie said out loud in horror. He turned around and began to run toward the farmer’s, shouting.
“Dexter! Help! They’ve come to watch us fight!
People are here. Wait up!
They’ve even got
a drum!”
When Mrs. Trawley heard the first boom of the bass drum she’d ordered up from the high school, her plump cheeks trembled and she had to blink her eyes quickly.
“Hear that?” she asked the group of volunteer workers standing around her. “It’s the drum and it’s here right on time. I said to be here at 8:30 sharp and it is.”
“On time?” murmured the group.
“That may sound funny to say,” Mrs. Trawley went on, “but I can tell you from experience that things don’t always go so smoothly in organizing. There you are juggling a hundred little details and then something gets out of line and oh, what a mess. What a mess!”
Mrs. Trawley wiped at her eyes as if some specks of dust had blown in them.
“Do you know that there have been times during the last week when I didn’t see, no, I honestly didn’t see how Great Dimpole Oak Day would ever get off the ground,” she confessed with a quiver in her voice.
The volunteers stepped back and looked at her in amazement. Could this be true? No, it couldn’t. How could Mrs. Trawley, the one-woman powerhouse, their fearless leader, have doubts? She was being modest. She was overtired. The volunteers glanced at her nervously and hoped she wasn’t losing her mind.
Great Dimpole Oak Page 7
