The Dragon Tree (10 page)

But Emerald shook her head. She was too eager to tell her story. Her face had been torn by bristling twigs and her left side was bruised from shoulder to
knee, but she looked around the table and laughed. She had seen only the tops of their heads before, the man and the woman and the little girl. But she had clearly seen the intent face of the redheaded boy whenever he climbed high in the tree with tools in his pockets.

“I was polishing the silver,” began Emerald, but then she was overcome with another burst of laughter. Of course there had been terrible danger and she had been horribly afraid, but all that was over now. Laughing felt strange and new, and she couldn’t stop.

“My dear,” said Aunt Alex, looking at her with concern, “you’re overexcited. Surely you should lie down.”

“No, no,” said Emerald. “Really, Mrs. Hall, I’m fine.” She started her story again. “I was polishing the silver in the pantry and I heard them talking in the kitchen. I was afraid they’d open the door and see me, but they didn’t, and I heard everything they said.”

“Like the boy in the apple barrel,” said Georgie, beaming at Emerald.

“Apple barrel?” Uncle Fred was bewildered. “What apple barrel?”

“Oh, you know, Uncle Freddy,” said Georgie. “Remember in
Treasure Island
when Jim was in the apple barrel and he heard the pirates, and they didn’t know he was there?”

“Oh, Georgie, kindly shut up,” said Eddy.

But Emerald smiled at her and said, “Yes, it was just like that.” Then she stopped smiling and twisted her hands in her lap. “After that I listened on purpose.”

“Listened to what?” said Eddy. “What did they say?”

“Eddy, dear,” said Aunt Alex sternly, “I do think that people who have fallen out of trees should lie down and rest.” She shook her head, astonished. “I can’t believe neither of you broke a bone. I mean, you fell so far.”

“Not really far,” said Eddy, who had figured it out. “The tree kept catching us. We didn’t fall, we just sort of slithered.”

“I’m not really hurt at all,” said Emerald. “Well, except for a bump on the head.” Gingerly she
touched the lump under her hair.

“Oh my dear girl, thank goodness,” said Aunt Alex.

Emerald had stopped laughing. Soberly she went on with her story. “Before long I heard about the terrible things my stepfather had done.”

“What things?” said Eddy quickly.

“Killing people.” Emerald felt in her pocket for the empty folder of matches. “He killed my father.”

At this Uncle Fred, Aunt Alex, and Georgie fell silent. Eddy leaned back in his chair and gazed at the green-eyed girl with yellow hair, the sleeping princess he had awakened by a trick from a storybook.

A
FTERWARDS
U
NCLE
F
RED
pieced it all together, not only from what Emerald had said, but from things that came out later—newspaper reports and bitter confessions—after Mortimer was at last tracked down.

It was the usual pitiful story. Mortimer complained that it was all the fault of a father who had slapped and beaten him. There had been no way for poor little Mortimer to fight back. He could only stumble away and kick the dog.

No, instead of lavishing affection on his miserable little son, Mortimer’s father had loved trees—
trees in the woods, trees in the city, trees in the countryside. And he had doted on one tree more than all the rest, the magnificent maple tree that shaded his house. Mortimer’s father had been photographed beside it again and again.

There were no photographs of Mortimer’s timid mother, nor any of Mortimer. Instead there were endless pictures of the maple tree in every season of the year, in the delicate leafage of spring and the rich green foliage of summer, in the blazing colors of autumn and white with snow in winter.

Mortimer had grown up in the shadow of the tree, hating and resenting it. Then one day when a crew of men appeared in the woods to clear a trail, his resentment found an outlet. He watched as the screaming chain saws toppled all the pines and oak trees in the way of a power line. Now the proud trees were nothing but trash to be hauled away.

That night Mortimer crept out of his father’s house and stumbled up the hill to the place where the men had left their heavy machines. Aiming his flashlight this way and that, he pounced on a chain saw in the back of a truck and carried it, exulting,
back down the hill to the tree that rose in front of the house, spreading far and wide its universe of leaves. Then, lifting the powerful saw, he set its savage teeth against the bark and pressed the switch. Bracing himself with all his might, he crouched over the heavy chattering machine as it screamed its way to the other side. And then, while his father sprang out of bed and scrambled to the window and bellowed in rage as his beloved tree trembled and pitched sideways and floundered to the ground, Mortimer fled.

It was the first of many runnings away. For the next ten years Mortimer moved from one New England town to another, showing up in fresh new places, oozing friendliness and goodwill. In one of the towns he met a pretty woman named Margery, just married to a widower with a young daughter. It turned out that Margery’s new husband, Jack O’Higgins, was the owner of a lumber yard. But then one day—how sad!—poor Jack was careless with a chain saw, and suddenly Margery O’Higgins became a widow. Oh, how she had wept as she ran away with Mortimer Moon! And, oh, how kind she
had been to bring along Jack’s orphaned daughter, Emerald! And, oh, how ungrateful that wretched child turned out to be! How stubborn and embarrassing!

Embarrassing? Yes, dreadfully embarrassing, because Jack O’Higgins had left everything to Emerald, not Margery. Stubborn? Oh, yes, the crafty child was horribly stubborn, refusing to sign a simple piece of paper, an ordinary transfer of property from child to guardian. Therefore the tiresome girl had to be dragged along wherever they went, from one town to another, in the hope that sooner or later she could be induced to write her name.

Little by little Uncle Freddy uncovered the long and sorry history of their travels. He learned that Mortimer Moon had been hired by the public works departments of three New England towns, one after another. Each time he had turned up at just the right moment when the town fathers were desperate for a new tree warden. Why? Because the old one had suddenly died. And each time—how strange!—no sooner did Mortimer take over the job
than the trees in the public parks began to disappear. In all three towns it had taken the Selectmen a few weeks to notice what was happening. Then of course, too late, they threw him out on his ear.

Emerald told the rest of the miserable story to Uncle Freddy and Eddy as they sat on folding chairs in the dim transcendental air of the old schoolroom.

“I didn’t begin listening behind doors until this summer,” murmured Emerald, gazing through the door into the hall, where the bust of Henry Thoreau seemed to be cocking his plaster ears. “And then I heard my stepfather brag about what he had done to those poor men in Granite Falls and Mohawk and Tansyville. When I heard him snickering about the clever way he had killed my father, I couldn’t stand it. I screamed, and they threw open the door and found me.”

Eddy’s freckled sunburned face turned pale. Grimly he whispered, “So then they locked you in the attic.”

“And after that, my dear,” said Uncle Freddy softly, “you were in terrible danger.”

Emerald laughed. “But then the storm saved me, and so did the tree.”

The storm and the tree? Was that all?
Eddy opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again.

“And of course,” said Emerald quickly, grinning at him, “so did Eddy.”

A
ND THEREFORE
Emerald O’Higgins, the former maid-of-all-work for Mr. and Mrs. Moon, was free to settle down with the family at No. 40 Walden Street. When high school began in September she walked down the road with Eddy and enrolled in the junior class.

“Hey, you guys, guess what?” hollered Oliver Winslow, spreading the news. “Eddy Hall’s got a girlfriend.”

Eddy just laughed, and Emerald blushed and pretended not to hear. On the first day of school the gym teacher handed her a hockey stick, and she
began racing up and down a sunny field with a bunch of other girls. And then the music teacher presented her with a trombone. “Oh, sorry,” protested Emerald, “I don’t know how to play the trombone.” But Mr. Orth said there was nothing to it, she would catch on right away.

At home she worried about the empty house next door. “What will happen to it?” she asked Uncle Fred. “I mean, it belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Moon, but they’ve run away. What if they come back?”

“They’ll never come back,” said Uncle Fred.

“It’s your house now,” said Aunt Alex. “After all, you’re next of kin.”

“My house!” Emerald thought of the rooms she had cleaned, the floors she had scrubbed, the attic where she had been imprisoned. “But I don’t want it,” she said quickly. “I don’t want that house at all.”

“Then you must sell it,” said Uncle Fred.

“I’ll call the real estate person,” said Aunt Alex. “I forget her name.”

Of course it was Annabelle Broom. Annabelle
came at once. But then she was dismayed to hear that it was not No. 40 Walden Street that was for sale, but the house next door.

“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry,” said Annabelle, snatching up her pocketbook. “You’ll have to call another realtor. When it’s a matter of wickedness overload, my firm wants nothing to do with it.”

B
Y THIS TIME THE
enormous tree was famous all over New England. All over the world! Botanists came from near and far to study it.

One was the famous Princeton professor Aristotle Socrates Teasdale. Professor Teasdale crawled around the tree and clambered over the massive roots. “A new species, I think,” he said, inspecting a twig with a magnifying glass. “I shall call it
Arborea teasdaliana
.”

“Vy, no,” said Professor Donkbinkel from the University of Zurich, peering at the rugged bark. “Ziss tree iss zhurely a new zort of valnut.” He
coughed modestly. “Let uz name it
Arborea donkbinklia
.”

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” said Uncle Fred, “but both of you are wrong. This tree is none other than
Arborea paradisa
.”

“Vot?” said Professor Donbinkel.

“The tree of paradise,” explained Uncle Fred.

“How ridiculous,” said Professor Teasdale.

“How abzurd,” said Professor Donkbinkel.

The three of them huddled among the mossy roots in heated argument while over their heads the tree seemed contented to be itself, whatever that might be.

In October it littered the neighborhood with acorns. One fell in the front yard of Donald Swallow and buried itself in the grass near the stump of his old beech tree.

Next day, while Mr. Swallow was raking leaves in his front yard, he noticed a swelling in the ground. “Goodness me,” he said, “that wasn’t here before.” Then to his astonishment the little mound burst open and a tiny sprig popped up, unfolding a pair of fresh green leaves.

Other acorns fell in Monument Square and along the banks of the Mill Brook. Soon the whole town of Concord was once again bushy and green with trees.

But the tallest and most magnificent was the Dragon Tree. On a warm day in Indian summer, Eddy and Emerald climbed all the way to the top. From there they could see the whole broad countryside.

“Look,” said Eddy, pointing south, “there’s Walden Pond.”

“And the ocean,” said Emerald, pointing east.

“And church steeples all over the place,” said Eddy, waving his arms north, south, east, and west.

Then,
pop
, there was a small explosion. Looking up, they saw a spray of leaves erupt from the topmost twig. Then another and another.

“More stories,” said Emerald wisely, starting down.

“Right,” said Eddy, groping for a lower foothold. “People never stop writing stories.”

From her bedroom window Georgie watched them move slowly down from branch to branch.
She sucked her pencil as they slid to the ground. She heard the bang of the front door as they walked into the house.

Georgie could not see the metal lady on the newel post smile down at Emerald. Nor could she see the bust of Henry wink one of his plaster eyes at Eddy. She was too busy gazing out her window at the grand old tree as the freshening breeze ruffled its leaves, showering the ground with a carpet of gold.

All summer long the tree had grown past her window, stretching taller and wider against the sky. For months it had been her green and growing neighbor. Therefore her story began in the only way it possibly could—

Once upon a time there was a tree.

T
HE
D
IAMOND IN THE
W
INDOW

T
HE
S
WING IN THE
S
UMMERHOUSE

T
HE
A
STONISHING
S
TEREOSCOPE

T
HE
F
LEDGLING

T
HE
F
RAGILE
F
LAG

T
HE
T
IME
B
IKE

T
HE
M
YSTERIOUS
C
IRCUS

T
HE
D
RAGON
T
REE