Great Dimpole Oak Read online

  The swami’s calculations took place entirely inside his head. For months he had sat motionless in the doorway of his cave, showing no more sign of his labor than an occasional puff of smoke out the right ear.

  His face was blank. His eyes were turned in. His hands lay furled and forgotten in his lap. Under his turban, however, his brain sparked, hissed and ran at a high rate of speed. Great plains of human knowledge were crossed, steep cliffs were scaled, canyons were probed, and dead ends were averted with screeching, last-second turns that left streaks of hot rubber in their wake.

  It was following one of these hair-raising turns that the swami’s mind suddenly jumped its track and crashed headlong into the ghostly figure of what appeared to be an enormous oak tree.

  Outside, the swami did not bat an eye. Inside, his mind spun around twice, saw stars and finally lifted itself to its elbows (so to speak) to peer at the object before him.

  It was a tree, all right. And unless the swami’s five-hundred horsepower intelligence was mistaken, this tree had an unusually large amount of holiness packed into its trunk. Deep red waves of holy current poured from crevices in its bark, and every twig was surrounded by a paler, but no less amazing, crimson halo.

  The tree dazzled the swami’s inner eye. It was beautiful. It was elegant. Its bark was a soft gray color. Its long branches swept the ground. A fleeting aroma of—what was it? lavender perhaps?—rose to the swami’s nostrils. Temporarily, he swooned.

  Several hours passed before the holy man could begin work on the practical aspects of his discovery. Even then, his progress was slow. After a great struggle with the tree’s powerful red current, he managed to compute the oak’s longitude and latitude. He measured its height and breadth, its age, the average length of its branches and, in a bonus rush of brilliance, conjured up the picture of a tall, bony, bearded man in a black top hat lying asleep under the tree while a crowd of people gathered nearby whispering such words as:

  “Look! Our President!”

  “That oversized rat. Did you hear his last speech?”

  “Well, I think he’s wonderful.”

  “Well, I think he’s weak-kneed.”

  “He’s a devoted father.”

  “He’s a sick man and ought to be in a hospital somewhere.”

  The swami could make sense of none of this, so he returned to his measuring and calculating.

  At length, the swami figured the voltage of the oak tree’s extraordinary red current to be the greatest and holiest on earth. With this information, and by now practically leaping with joy, he decided to visit the tree immediately. He therefore began the difficult (and rather nauseating) process of rising out of himself. He swiveled his inward eyes outward. He pried his hands open. He took control again of his facial expressions: mouth curved down wisely, nostrils flared nobly, eyebrows furrowed patiently.

  When he had done these things, he stood up out of his two-year crouch (but how thin his legs had become!) and teetered off down a mountain path to inform his loyal followers, who were camped in a lower-level cave, of the great expedition that lay before them.

  2

  “WISK-BUZZ-SLAP! WISK-BUZZ-SLAP!

  What was that strange noise?

  “Wisk-buzz-SLAP!”

  Was it someone chasing flies with a fly swatter? No.

  Was it a small twin-engine airplane whose fuel lines had clogged in midair? The engines wouldn’t start! The plane was falling!

  No.

  “Wisk-buzz-SLAP!”

  Was it a giant, flat-footed Viking walking down the middle of Main Street, planting oak trees left and right?

  No, no. What an imagination!

  It was only Mr. Glover’s xerox machine hard at work in the back room at the post office. While Mr. Glover dozed and dreamed in his chair, the machine was turning out—“Wisk-buzz-SLAP!”—hundreds of bright red leaflets announcing the coming of Great Dimpole Oak Day, on Saturday, October 25th, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

  “Rally round one and all,

  Or the great tree will fall.”

  The idea for Great Dimpole Oak Day had come from Mrs. Trawley.

  “We must raise enthusiasm for our tree. And money,” she said at a meeting that she and Mr. Glover called not long after their first conversation in the post office.

  “Great Dimpole Oak Day will be a chance for families and friends to come together to celebrate history. I will give a speech,” Mrs. Trawley announced. “In addition, we will have balloons, games, refreshments, and perhaps some Special Entertainment.”

  Mrs. Trawley had taken the project rather into her own hands, Mr. Glover couldn’t help noticing. It was she who had written the threatening jingle about the great oak falling—soon to be distributed far and wide, to her great satisfaction.

  “Not that a tree that size is in any danger of actually falling,” Mr. Glover pointed out a little peckishly.

  “I was thinking of it falling into the wrong hands,” Mrs. Trawley replied. She gave him a piercing look.

  “I see,” said Mr. Glover through tightened lips.

  “I was thinking of the farmer,” Mrs. Trawley told him impatiently. “That boastful farmer who has given our tree such a bad name.”

  “And terrified our children,” said Miss Hand, who was also present at the meeting.

  “The farmer believes our oak to be his personal family heirloom, can you imagine?” Mrs. Trawley added in disgust. “I will never understand the bull-headedness of some people.”

  “What kind of Special Entertainment did you have in mind?” asked Miss Hand. She had just had a vision of a matador with a red cape and the farmer on all fours charging madly around a Spanish bullring. “Were you thinking of music, dancing, a magician … ?” She trailed off doubtfully.

  “My dear, I leave that entirely up to you,” said Mrs. Trawley, organizing ruthlessly.

  “Me!”

  “I’m sure with your quick, young brain you will think of something.”

  And, although Miss Hand was not sure she would think of anything (even if she had time to think, which, with all the hours she spent teaching, she usually did not have), Mrs. Trawley slipped like a greased pig to the next order of business. This concerned the monument to be erected at the base of the great oak.

  “Monument!” exclaimed Mr. Glover, lurching forward in surprise. “I should think the tree is monumental enough in its own right.”

  “Well, we could have a memorial plaque screwed into the bark,” Mrs. Trawley conceded. “But we must have something to remind us of exactly what the great oak stands for.”

  “Which is?” Mr. Glover’s feathers were ruffled. Ordinarily, he would not have asked such a question. If only Mrs. Trawley didn’t feel that she had to climb into every driver’s seat in sight!

  “The oak stands for liberty, equality and Abraham Lincoln resting in peace,” interjected Miss Hand. “Its roots made a pillow for a great head.”

  “I can take issue there!” Mr. Glover cried. “George Washington’s head is the only great head that has passed beneath the oak. I have checked the town records. And he did not do anything so foolish as to doze off in plain view of everyone. He rode underneath, proud in his saddle, and it is said that his eyes traveled up the massive trunk and that he nodded as he passed, in the way a great warrior might nod to greet and acknowledge an equal greatness.”

  Mr. Glover glanced triumphantly at Miss Hand, whom he suspected of secretly admiring him. Then he looked at Mrs. Trawley. The fat woman shook her head.

  “My dear Mr. Glover. How could we raise a monument to something so small and unnoticeable as a nod? And surely Miss Hand is right. I myself remember learning in school all about President Lincoln’s noble sleep; how he drew strength and courage from our tree, and rode forth with a new plan to save the nation.”

  “That is unfounded rumor,” snapped Mr. Glover.

  “My own idea,” Mrs. Trawley went on, “is for a cast bronze monument. It would show the weary figure of Lincoln laid down, cradled, if
you like, at the foot of our tree, the mother oak.”

  Miss Hand nodded eagerly.

  “Mother oak!” screeched Mr. Glover. “You want to turn our old warrior of a tree into a defenseless mother! And reduce a great man to a gurgling baby? What on earth would Lincoln say? And poor George Washington. He would weep if he could see his magnificent nod fallen so low, and in diapers no less. Mother oak! That must never be!

  “Why, she is mad,” Mr. Glover said, speaking toward Miss Hand with a hopeful look. He glared at Mrs. Trawley. “You are mad and should be taken to a hospital before it’s too …”

  “I see we have a small difference of opinion,” Mrs. Trawley interrupted, icily. She licked her lips and knotted her right fist into a threatening lump.

  “Wisk-buzz-CRUNCH!”

  Mr. Glover woke suddenly from his nap in the back room at the post office and found, with relief, that he had only been dreaming. Mrs. Trawley was not really about to punch him in the nose. Still, as is often the ease with dreams, much of Mr. Glover’s dream was true. He was just beginning to wonder what part of it was real and what part he had merely dreamed when …

  “Wisk-buzz-CRUNCH!” It came again. “What is that awful noise?” said Mr. Glover, leaping to his feet.

  His eyes fell upon his xerox machine, which seemed to have stopped working. A thin tendril of smoke rose from what might have been the machine’s right ear, if it had had one. (Mr. Glover’s copier had a weirdly human look around its control panel, especially a pair of small, green eyes that seemed to glow almost evilly at times.)

  Now, at last, Mr. Glover understood the meaning of the scene before him. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of red leaflets lay at his feet, shredded beyond recognition. Something terrible had happened to the xerox machine. Strips of paper dangled from its slot-like mouth. One green eye was out while the other blinked mindlessly, like a broken traffic light.

  “Idiot machine!” shouted Mr. Glover. He slumped in his chair. The bulky figure of Mrs. Trawley loomed before his inner eye: “I suppose you can do the xeroxing,” she had told him. “Xeroxing is not very difficult.”

  Mr. Glover sighed. More annoying still, he began to see how Abraham Lincoln, carrying the problems of a nation on his shoulders, might have succumbed to sleep beneath the Dimpole Oak.

  Mr. Glover felt his head sag back against the chair cushions. He looked up to where a complicated network of plaster cracks branched and sub-branched across the ceiling.

  He shut his eyes against all problems

  and tormentors—even the delightful

  Miss Hand—and dropped

  into a deep

  slumber.

  While Mr. Glover and his xerox machine snoozed side by side at the post office, half-buried in scarlet shreds, another pair of conspirators were wallowing in another red heap several miles away.

  Under the Dimpole Oak, submerged in a pile of fallen leaves, Dexter Drake and Howlie Howlenburg looked at each other unhappily. A week had passed since they had sworn to take action against the bully, Bulldog Calhoun. So far, they hadn’t been able to think of any plans. The trouble was Bulldog himself, who was so mean and crafty that any ordinary plan looked weak beside him. The boys were forced to consider acts of evil far beyond their abilities.

  “We could bury him alive,” Dexter had suggested.

  “But then we’d need equipment. Shovels, air hoses, food and water, rope to tie him up with and handkerchiefs to stuff down his throat,” sensible Howlie pointed out. “Besides that, we’d have to find a box big enough to put him in. Or build one. Have you ever tried to build a box? It’s not easy.”

  “We could poison him,” Dexter had gone on. “You know, inject an orange with cyanide solution and put it in his lunch box.”

  To illustrate this idea, Dexter picked an orange out of thin air. He peeled it, divided the fruit into four parts, placed a quarter in his mouth and chewed. Then, with a single dramatic retch, he keeled over and died. Howlie applauded.

  “Or we could scalp him,” Dexter went on, when he came to. “We could stick his feet in a tub of wet cement and …”

  But all these ideas were clearly beyond the scope of two ten-year-old boys, even boys fired up by the oak tree’s long and unwholesome history.

  “How about asking the farmer?” Howlie said, on this day of the leaf pile. “He’s got stacks of gruesome ideas stored away.”

  Dexter looked across the field and up toward the old man’s house. As on most days recently, they had the tree to themselves. The weather had turned raw and cold. Whether because of this or some more personal reason, the farmer kept indoors. Occasionally, they caught sight of his shape standing at a living room window. Perhaps he was feeling gloomy about how few children came to play under the tree in such weather.

  It seemed to Dexter that the farmer had grown older and shakier this year. His eightieth birthday was almost upon him, it was said. Lately, he’d taken to clutching people’s shoulders when he told his wild tales, as if he were afraid they might run away from him.

  “I don’t know about you,” Dexter told Howlie, “but I got kind of tired of the farmer’s stories this summer. Four times in one month, he told the one about the two greedy pirates stabbing each other to death at the foot of the tree. And every time he thought he was telling a brand new story he’d just remembered.”

  Howlie nodded.

  “And all those things about the tree having special powers and human blood in its branches, I used to believe them but I don’t anymore,” Dexter continued. “You get to a certain age and you just can’t believe things like that.”

  “I know,” said Howlie.

  “It’s dangerous, I mean. People would laugh at you,” Dexter said. “You’ve got to know the difference between what’s real and what’s made up or people will think you’re strange.”

  “Or sick in the head,” Howlie agreed, tapping his forehead.

  “Or stupid,” said Dexter. He stopped and snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute. That gives me an idea.”

  “What?” cried Howlie.

  “We’ll be pirates. We’ll fight each other with knives. We’ll circle each other slowly and greedily, then we’ll reach out and stab each other right through our hearts.”

  Howlie gazed at his friend in horror.

  “Stab each other? But why?”

  Dexter crowed with delight. “For Bulldog Calhoun! Don’t you see? He knows the story about the pirates and their chest of diamonds as well as we do. He’s heard it from the farmer twenty times, just like us.”

  “And he’s never believed it,” Howlie said. “We don’t believe it either—we were just saying so.”

  “So what? We’re going to show him how it could have happened. We’ll fight to the death right before his eyes. Not for real, of course,” Dexter added, seeing the alarm on Howlie’s face. “We’ll fake it. Bulldog will think it’s real, though.”

  Howlie shook his head. “Listen, Dexter,” he said. “You’re good at acting out things like that. You’re brilliant, in fact. But I’m not. How could I pretend I’m dead? For that matter, how could I kill you?”

  “Anybody who tries can pretend to be dead,” Dexter said. “And there’s some red paint in my garage. I saw it when we cleaned the place up last time.”

  “Red paint! What for?”

  “Blood,” said Dexter, coolly. “Isn’t there a way of making it spurt out when we need it? Come on, Howlie. That’s your department.”

  “Well, there’s plastic bags,” Howlie answered reluctantly.

  “Plastic bags?”

  “That’s how they do it when they need blood on the stage. They pour the stuff into a plastic bag, seal it up and hide it under their shirts. Then, when they need to bleed, they stick a hole in the bag. I read all about it.”

  “Well? Couldn’t we do that?” said Dexter. “We could stab each other’s plastic bags. Let’s do it! Let’s do it this Saturday.”

  “What will Bulldog do when he thinks we’re killed?” Howli
e asked.

  “He’ll scream and run like a scared cat,” Dexter replied. “Or maybe he’ll pass out. Whatever he does, he’ll look stupid, especially when we come back to life without a scratch on us. We might even decide to haunt him for a few days.”

  “Maybe he’ll cry,” whispered Howlie.

  “Cry!” Dexter whispered back. “Oh, great. Great!” The friends grabbed each other and began to dance in the leaf pile, with shrieks and leaps that sent up leaves like volcanic eruptions.

  “What are those boys up to?” Mrs. Trawley murmured to herself as she maneuvered her enormous car over to the side of the road and stopped. She had been passing by the historic oak tree on her way up the road to deliver leaflets for Great Dimpole Oak Day when her eye had fallen on the frenzied dance.

  “Here! Boys!” Mrs. Trawley called out the car window. “Stop that at once and come away from there. That’s right. Come here. You’ll just get into trouble in this place.

  “What on earth were you doing?” asked Mrs. Trawley when the two came up to the car, somewhat shamefaced. “In you get,” she added, opening the back door with one of her long, fleshy arms. “You can help me deliver these leaflets. One to each mailbox. They’re to announce Great Dimpole Oak Day next Saturday. You’ll want to come yourselves. It will be such fun. Games. Lemonade. I am giving a speech. Mr. Glover is a helpless fool. I’ve had to do everything myself, even print up these announcements. Do you know I found him asleep in the post office this afternoon? And all his leaflets were ruined.”

  Mrs. Trawley chatted on but, sitting side by side in the back seat, Dexter and Howlie didn’t hear a word. They were catching each other’s eye and grinning wickedly.

  Once, Howlie pulled out an invisible knife and

  pretended to stab it into Dexter’s heart.

  This sent them off into gales of

  hysterical—though absolutely

  silent—laughter.

  The morning sun was just rising, hot as a bowl of Indian curry, when the swami set off downhill for Bombay with his loyal followers, thirty strong, and an assortment of goats and peacocks.

  The swami was in a bad humor. He had not slept well the night before. He had tossed and scratched on his bed of nails. He had thought about the great oak and he had thought about himself. He had come to certain uncomfortable realizations.