Great Dimpole Oak

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  “I’ll tell you something else, too,” Mrs. Trawley said, while the volunteers took another step up the road away from her. “I would never have come through except for the thought of the terrible farmer and his neglect of our dear tree. Always I kept this before me: the Dimpole Oak is in grave danger. I must save it. I must!”

  Her words were punctuated by another series of booms from the bass drum, giving them an extra ring of importance. The volunteers heaved a sigh of relief. They moved back to surround her. Here was the Mrs. Trawley they knew. She was in command. Now the march could begin.

  And in a matter of minutes it did begin. It had to begin, for by now some three hundred Dimpolers, men, women and children, had arrived and the roadside could no longer contain them all. They spilled over onto the road where they would have been run down or caused a traffic jam if the Dimpole Police had not been there to control them. Really, one had to hand it to Mrs. Trawley, she had thought of everything.

  “Boom! Boom! Boom-bumpa-boom!”

  The bass drum set the marching beat. Hundreds of feet fell into step. The most direct route to the oak seemed to be up the farmer’s driveway. Was he watching? Fortunately, his farmhouse was located up the slope from the tree so no one would have to march under his very windows.

  “Boom! Boom! Boom-bumpa-boom!”

  Some of the marchers’ posters were quite ingenious. One read: “Free the Tree!” and showed a picture of the Dimpole Oak with wings on, escaping from a giant bird cage.

  In another, a figure closely resembling the farmer was chopping down the oak with an ax while a child stood by weeping. Underneath, the caption said: “Once upon a time there was a nasty old man who lived all by himself on the edge of a town.”

  Another sign proclaimed:

  “We’ll guard our oak

  Until we croak.”

  “Boom! Boom!” The marchers tramped up the driveway, two and three abreast. No sooner had the first in line reached the tree than Mrs. Trawley’s voice could be heard rising above all, ordering the speaker’s podium put down there, the popcorn booth set up here, and so on. Not one detail had been forgotten. Not one bottle of soda was missing. Every volunteer had performed his or her job (although many had needed extra prodding). But—where was Miss Hand, who was in charge of the Special Entertainment? Mrs. Trawley looked around and could not see her.

  “I hope Miss Hand has not overslept,” she said to a passing volunteer. She did not have time to worry because suddenly a host of other problems bore down upon her:

  The ground under the oak tree was unaccountably riddled with holes and strewn with dirt piles, which made walking there all but impossible.

  The leg of an important card table fell into one of the holes and snapped off.

  A box full of little American flags to be passed out after the speeches was missing.

  The screws for the Abraham Lincoln plaque were still in Mr. Glover’s possession and he was missing, too.

  “Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” Mrs. Trawley massaged her temples and gazed up, as if seeking help, into the branches of the great tree. There her eye caught sight of a large, black, furry animal watching her from one of the lower limbs.

  Oh, help! Even as Mrs. Trawley opened her mouth to scream, the black panther rose on its haunches and prepared to spring.

  “Help! Help! Oh, help!”

  Mrs. Trawley fainted. She collapsed neatly

  onto the top of one of Dexter’s dirt

  piles. How convenient,

  after all, to have

  it there.

  “Harvey, my love. What is that strange procession coming toward us?” said Miss Hand, as she looked across the fields that swept up to the Dimpole Oak.

  “Where?” asked Mr. Glover. He was bent over locking the car door. They were only just arriving at the rally, half an hour late, due to a number of long, passionate unforeseen circumstances in the post office that morning. Also, they had forgotten the cat cage, which would be needed if Loopy should reappear at the tree, and they had gone back to Miss Hand’s apartment to get it. This had led to further circumstances, admittedly more foreseeable by this time.

  “Over there.” Miss Hand shaded her eyes from the sun. “It looks like a herd of something, and some peacocks, and people wearing turbans.”

  “What?” exclaimed Mr. Glover, turning around.

  “And they are carrying something. No. Someone,” Miss Hand went on. “Let’s go see who it is.” She started walking across the stubbly field.

  “Yoo hoo! Over here,” Miss Hand called. The herd was making a bee-line for the rally and was about to pass in front of her. It came to a halt and, swaying like a parade-day float forced to pause in mid-course, waited for Miss Hand and Mr. Glover to come up.

  “Are you lost, by any chance?” Miss Hand called politely as she approached.

  “Can we help you with directions or an address?” asked Mr. Glover with more menace in his voice.

  Immediately it became clear that none of the group spoke English, unless perhaps the white-bearded fellow being carried aloft. But he was sound asleep and would not wake up, even when the others shook him. Miss Hand did not know what to do next. She wondered if she should resort to sign language.

  “Have you come very far?” she asked, gesturing shyly at the horizon.

  There was every indication of a difficult journey. The travelers were all bone-thin, and their toes, which stuck out from the ends of their worn sandals, were caked with mud. Further, they were not dressed warmly, considering the day’s coolness, and their clothing, fascinating though it was, did not look very clean.

  “I can’t imagine who they are or why they have turned up here, of all places,” Mr. Glover told Miss Hand in a low voice. He eyed one of the goats with distaste. “Someone will have to be notified. They can’t be allowed to wander aimlessly around the countryside like a traveling circus.”

  “Traveling circus!” exclaimed Miss Hand.

  “Or a gypsy caravan.”

  “Oh!” Miss Hand looked at the group with new interest.

  “Actually,” said Mr. Glover, drawing her aside protectively, “they look like a bunch of snake charmers to me. I’d be careful of my purse if I were you.”

  “Snake charmers!” cried Miss Hand. “Oh, Harvey, what a brilliant idea. It’s just what I’ve been praying for. They are the perfect Special Entertainment. Look at them. I am saved!”

  Before Mr. Glover could advise her against it, Miss Hand began to tell the herd in vigorous sign language that it was invited to a party. Everyone was invited to the rally taking place that very minute under the big oak tree. And the drinks and popcorn were on the house. (She made gobbling and gurgling noises and rubbed her stomach.) And the goats could graze in any field they wished. (She lowered her head and pretended to chew grass.) And the peacocks were free to peck and scratch or do whatever peacocks do. (Miss Hand had never been sure what they did.)

  “Follow me!” she cried at last, setting off with her arm hooked through Mr. Glover’s.

  The vast float of animals and people started to move across the field again. It went slowly to begin with, hobbling and wobbling in places. But gradually it gathered speed, and with speed its size appeared to increase and its expression grew fierce, and the earth shook as it thundered along. Meanwhile, at the tree, the townsfolk heard a rumbling noise and turned around just in time to see a furious throng of wild-eyed, cleft-footed, feathery barbarians sweeping down upon them.

  Oh, help!

  Luckily, the impression lasted only a few seconds. Then, Miss Hand could be seen detaching herself from the throng, smiling in triumph and introducing the newcomers. Mrs. Trawley, who had been on the verge of a second faint, came forward to congratulate her, and to start organizing before anything could go wrong.

  “You may set up your tables and equipment over there,” she told the groggy swami, whom she had mistaken for a fortune teller because of his turban.

  The swami had been awakened by the wild dash across t
he fields and was just opening his eyes to look about.

  “Over there,” Mrs. Trawley insisted, pointing to a patch of field on the farmhouse side of the oak. “And let me remind you,” she added, glancing at him shrewdly, “that fifty per cent of whatever profit you make from your show must be donated to the Great Dimpole Oak Preservation Fund. I don’t want to put you out of business, but money is a consideration here.”

  The swami rubbed his eyes and stared at Mrs. Trawley as if she were herself a feathery barbarian. Then, his gaze shifted and he focused for the first time on the enormous trunk of the tree in back of her.

  “So,” murmured the swami in a foreign tongue that made Mrs. Trawley’s eyebrows furrow with suspicion. “We have arrived.”

  “Holy Master, this place isn’t bad at all,” the loyal followers chorused. “They have offered us free food and camp land. We’re starving, so if you don’t mind we’ll just dump you off here and …”

  The swami raised his hand. “One moment, please,” he asked them. “I must first make my presence known to the tree.”

  Then, up and up his eyes went, following the lines of the great limbs, the curves of the slim branches, the fingers of the littlest twigs, up, up and endlessly up to the blue sky overhead and the horizon far away. (He thought of Bombay.) And his eyes came down with tears in them and swept across the valley, across the fields, across the farmer’s house, his barn, back to the oak’s trunk again. Here, the swami noticed in passing that he and his loyal followers were not the only ones who had come to worship. Who were all these people? And dressed so oddly. And staring at him with saucer-shaped eyes. He signaled his followers to put him down.

  The moment his feet hit the ground, the swami’s eyes flashed like an ancient wizard’s and he felt his old power rise up in him and take command. Oh, it felt so good! Apparently he was forgiven everything, even that outrageous behavior in Paris. The swami lifted his arms in thanks toward the great tree. While his followers munched popcorn and every other man, woman and child at the rally looked on with amazement, the swami bent in two and kissed the ground.

  The holy red current was everywhere. He saw it flickering in the earth under the tree, surging through the roots, crackling along the branches. Good heavens, the place was thick with it. It was dangerous to stand in one place for too long, he discovered, lest the soles of his feet become scorched.

  The swami mopped his brow and began to chant. It seemed the only way to control the current’s force. He raised his arms like a powerful bird about to take flight. He walked underneath the tree. Dexter’s holes did not bother him in the least. He went across them as if they had never been dug, as if they were solid ground.

  While the whole crowd watched, the swami performed a daring series of athletic movements designed to focus his spirit and to exercise his double joints. (He was showing off just a little, for the benefit of the oak.)

  He took a small box wrapped in gold paper from beneath his garments and laid it down between some roots.

  The swami walked in a circle all the way around

  the oak, chanting as he went, filled up with

  new holiness, his high-pitched voice

  streaming out single-

  mindedly across

  the valley.

  Meanwhile, at a second floor window in the farmhouse above the rally, curtains parted and the glassy eyes of a pair of binoculars looked out.

  They zeroed in on the action under the tree, focusing first on the singing swami, next on the hypnotized audience, on the goats grazing, the peacocks fanning, on Mrs. Trawley beside the podium drumming her fingers, on Mr. Glover and Miss Hand sneaking off together behind the oak, on some children giggling in a hole and, finally, on a large black cat carrying a large dead mole into the bushes.

  “So, this is Great Dimpole Oak Day. Unbelievable. Everything known to man is going on down there,” Dexter Drake said to his friend Howlie Howlenburg. “And look. There’s the cat I saw last night. That makes me feel better. I thought I was seeing things.”

  “Talk about seeing things, those goats look amazingly like the wild Tibetan mountain goats I wrote my report on last week,” said Howlie. “But how could that be? Dimpole is thousands of miles out of their range.”

  “Stranger things have happened,” answered Dexter. “For instance, at this very moment Miss Matterhorn is riding the root.”

  “Where? Let me have those binoculars.”

  “She’s not very good, but not completely terrible either,” said Dexter. “It looks as if she may have had some practice.”

  “Practice!” Howlie put his hand over his mouth and wheezed.

  “If you’re talking about Gertrude Matterhorn, she used to be one of the best root riders in town,” said a voice behind the boys.

  They turned around. “Are you kidding?” said Dexter.

  “No,” replied the farmer from his bed. “No one could ride the root the way Trudy could. I used to stand out and watch her, same as I watched all you kids to make sure you didn’t crack your heads open. She was bigger than all the boys, of course, and she had a pair of legs that would shoot her straight up in the air like a grasshopper.”

  “She’s still got them,” said Dexter, peering through the glasses. “Who would have ever guessed?”

  “I’d better get up and take a look after all these years,” said the farmer, raising himself from the pillow! But the boys were beside him in a flash.

  “Don’t get up!” ordered Dexter. “You’re supposed to stay quiet till the doctor gets here. He told us on the phone.”

  “We almost lost you once and we’re not going through that again,” said Howlie, laying a hand on the farmer’s shoulder. “Do you know we thought you were dead when we first came in this room? You were all crumpled up in your chair with your arms dangling down. It really scared us.”

  “Dead!” The farmer gave a snort. “I got an overdose of heat is all. That blasted heater is supposed to turn off when it gets too hot in here. It never does a thing it’s supposed to do. Anyway,” the farmer went on, raising himself once again, “I’m getting up whether you like it or not. I’ve got a right to see my own party, haven’t I? And besides, I’ve got an announcement to make.”

  “I’m not sure it’s your party, exactly,” murmured Dexter, while he and Howlie glanced at each other over his white head like a pair of worried surgeons.

  “Of course it is!” the farmer said. He shuffled across to the window in his pajamas. “And look at all the people!” he cried. “The whole town has turned out for my eightieth birthday. You can’t beat that. Look at the balloons. Look at the streamers. Is that a peacock scratching in my garden?”

  At this point, the farmer opened the window and began to call to people outside and wave to passing children. Immediately, Dexter and Howlie reached to draw him back inside before he discovered the true nature of the rally. But the old man pushed them away and refused to be quiet.

  “What’ll we do?” Dexter whispered to Howlie. “This rally looks like a lot of people having fun, but underneath it’s pretty nasty. Have you seen the signs and posters?”

  “There’s nothing we can do,” Howlie answered, “except hope the farmer goes on thinking it’s his birthday. You know how it is when you get an idea in your head. Maybe he’ll never guess.”

  “It is amazing what you can talk yourself into,” Dexter whispered back. “There I was yesterday believing that a bunch of diamonds was talking to me!”

  “That’s right,” said Howlie. “And what about me this morning? When I saw everyone getting out of their cars on the road I was sure they were coming to watch us fight to the death. The real death, while the drum rolled. Isn’t it strange how you can see things in different ways?”

  Dexter nodded, then said: “I’ve been watching that big woman, Mrs. Trawley, hanging around the platform they put up down there. She’s getting ready to give a speech, and when she does, it’ll blow the whole birthday party idea to pieces. If we could just get the farmer
back in bed before it starts …”

  “Or somehow interrupt the speech …” Howlie put in.

  “Great idea! Let’s wait and see what happens.”

  The boys went back to the window to stand protectively behind their invalid, who was not acting very sick and was certainly not bothering to wait for the doctor. He had struck up a conversation with the singing swami, who had wandered up toward the house looking for a higher point from which to view the great tree.

  “… It all came up the trunk, it did, from things that happened right there under the tree,” the farmer was telling the holy man.

  “Really?” the swami replied. He sat down and rubbed his foot soles.

  “See those branches up there waving in the wind? There’s blood in them, yessir, family and blood.”

  “Blood!” the swami exclaimed. “That’s a new idea, all right. You wouldn’t happen to have a pail of water around somewhere, would you? I’m scorching to death out here.”

  “I’ll be right down,” said the farmer. “I’ve got an announcement to make anyhow, and I’d be glad to fill up a pail. Where are you from, if I may ask? I’m so pleased you could make it to my birthday party.”

  At this moment, the drum from the high school sounded: “Boom! Boom! Boom!” The crowds, which up until then had been milling vaguely around the swami’s loyal followers, began to assemble with more certainty in front of Mrs. Trawley’s podium. Since there were no chairs, people sat on the grass, or on a root, or they leaned against the oak tree munching popcorn.

  “Boom! Boom!” The goats were terrified of the drum. They bolted whenever it was beaten and ran off in a thunder of hoofs. And when the goats stampeded the peacocks became upset and screamed, which in turn made the smaller children weep with fright. Altogether, quite a lot of noise came up from the rally, so that when Mrs. Trawley finally climbed the podium and asked for silence, several minutes passed before she got it.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen!” cried the tireless woman.