stories

The leaves above him turned over silver in the early spring breeze. There was no evidence yet of the seed pods filled with the cottony fibers that gave the tree its name, pods that had his neighbors on both sides of the cul-de-sac urging him to cut this tree down. It made for some uncomfortable Saturday night bridge games. As indirectly and politely as possible they let him know they considered the tree a nuisance. The neighbors planted ash and maple, polite trees with compact leaves and minimum yard mess. There weren't any other cottonwoods around with their unruly seeds scattering in the wind without regard for property lines and easements. The wild trees had all been chopped down long ago.

A small cloud passed over the sun, and he was glad he was wearing his college sweatshirt that must have shrunk over the years: a little roll of his goose-bumped stomach hung out from beneath it. Over this he wore an open red windbreaker, his blue jeans, worn through at the right knee and running shoes in which he'd never run. Strapped over his jacket was his black backpack that contained most of the materials he would need for the nest.

"Gerald? Gerald? Where are you?" she called.

He could see Mary Pat now as he peered around the trunk of the tree. He remained silent and studied her while the shadow of an annoyed look crossed her face. His wife stood between the lawn furniture and the gas grill on the square block of concrete they called a patio, their burnt sienna brick ranch house sprawled around it on either side. She was dressed for tennis, all in white. He took out a handkerchief and cleaned his bifocals when she went back into the house. A few minutes later he heard the garage door rumble open and her silver car backed down the concrete drive. It was time for him to go back to work.

When he was young, he'd been in plenty of trees. His favorite had been a catalpa along the street in front of their house in Franklin Park. Its orchid-like flowers produced seedpods resembling giant string beans, or when dried, cigars. Empty and tied to the wheel of a bike, they created the satisfying clicking sound of a motor. Once when he was five or six he'd heard a sound and kneeling on his bed, looked through his window at the catalpa in the moonlight. The broad leaves had become the gnarled faces of old men, talking among themselves, occasionally looking at him. He stayed awake, afraid to move, watching them as long as he could, holding his breath. He looked for them first thing the next day, tried to find them other nights, searched for them in other trees, but he never saw them again.

He kept climbing. He was almost two thirds up the tree, above the asphalt shingles of his house. The branches were thinning and he stayed in close to the main trunk for support. It was exhilarating to see his house reduced from here; smaller, less and less central to the landscape. His foot slipped on an elastic branch and he flung his arms around the main trunk. The sweat began trickling down his armpits in earnest. It wouldn't do to fall, not now. He rested again, feeling his heart pound and thinking of his elevated blood pressure. There was a movement a couple of branches away and it was then he saw the bird. It was looking at him with its head cocked to one side, large and blue-black. He struggled to come up with its name, not big enough to be a raven or a crow, and then he realized: starling. A weed of a bird; like a pigeon, legal to poison in Illinois.

He was almost at the top now, too far for him to look straight down without feeling dizzy. Instead, he looked above his house and the houses of his neighbors to the horizon where the subdivision ended abruptly against a farmer's field, plowed to a deep umber in long neat furrows. In summer he shopped at this farmer's vegetable stand where he bought ears of bi-colored sweet corn, heirloom tomatoes and golden fingerling potatoes. Each spring, one by one, the nearby farmhouses had been turned into construction offices. Crops disappeared and subdivisions sprouted in their place. Sometimes the farmhouses remained, transformed into clubhouses or community centers, anachronisms caught between swimming pools and tennis courts. He knew it was only a matter of time before this farm was sold to make way for more houses since there was more profit in selling the land than farming it.

The starling had kept up with him, hopping from limb to limb, out of reach, just a little ahead of him. Testing the branches Gerald decided he could go no higher. Rustling silver leaves surrounded him. Steadying himself, he wrapped his legs around the trunk, opened his backpack and removed his drawing of the nest. Drawn to scale, it would be five feet in diameter when it was completed. He did some quick calculations and measurements of nearby branches and made notations to his drawing with a yellow pencil. He looked at his watch and noting he had about five hours of daylight left, took the bucksaw out of the backpack and began cutting. The noise attracted the starling and it returned, again not within reach. As the limbs gave way, he collected them and started weaving them together.

He unpacked putty, straw and cotton from his backpack. The starling moved closer. It was getting warmer now, and he removed his jacket, carefully tying it around a branch. The sweat stains under his arms were growing and he stopped to wipe his brow with the back of his arm. He felt the sun on his face and it occurred to him that he rarely took the time to be outside unless it was some kind of planned activity. Weather had become important only in how convenient it made commuting to and from the office.

The garage door clattered open, but the sound was more distant this time. Soon, he thought. And then Mary Pat was standing below. Her faded brown hair had been pulled back with a silver clip into a semblance of a ponytail. She squinted myopically up at him with watery blue eyes. She had changed into her navy blue matron's outfit; a cardigan with a kind of Nordic print around the neck, a long shapeless navy wool skirt and thick matching socks that covered her legs to just over her knees. Her arms were crossed tightly over her chest.

"Gerald, what are you doing?" she yelled up.

"Dancing with the universe."

"You're crazy."

"Maybe." He certainly was feeling dizzy looking straight down at his wife. His chubby fingers were turning white with his effort to hold on to the branches around him.

"The Wilkersons and the Bakers just called. They hope you're getting ready to cut that thing down."

"No such luck," he said shaking his head.

Her frown deepened.

"Then what are you doing?"

"Building a nest."

"For the birds?"

"No, for me."

Her shoulders sagged in defeat.

"Gerald, I don't know what you're really doing up there, just don't be too long. Remember we're going to the Wilkersons' tonight for dinner. We can't be late." The last statement sounded more like a plea, like most of her statements lately. He wondered what had happened to them over the years to make them both so tentative.

A cool breeze came up, carrying the scent of mud and fecund earth, causing him to pull on his jacket again. He'd spent the better part of an hour weaving a few of the smallest branches. He studied the nest; dark branches woven in a filigree, held together by bits of silver wire and gray putty, yellow straw filling the sides, its bottom lined with soft white cotton batting, chosen because it was forgiving and would last forever. The nest encircled the tree and the reassembled cut branches mimicked the upward motion of the surrounding limbs.

The starling was still around, occasionally flying off and then returning. Once it came back holding a fat worm in its beak, another time with some paper, possibly a gum wrapper. He hoped that the starling would leave something he could use in the nest but each time the bird flew off carrying whatever it had found with it.

He liked the smell of the newly cut wood. It reminded him of the projects he made in grade school. His dad had been so proud of him then, the wobbly table, a birdhouse, an inlaid wood box. They had worked on some things together, but as his father grew sicker, Gerald did more and more himself. By the time he was a teenager, he'd taken over the responsibility of all outside maintenance and most inside chores too. They never asked him to do it, never asked him to get the grades he did, never insisted he study, he just did it. Neither parent showed much interest in their yard once they had relinquished the responsibility for it but they were both easy targets for ads in the magazine supplement of the Sunday newspaper. Based on the name, the written description and a drawing of a large leafy tree they'd ordered a "Tree of Heaven" sapling. Gerald did some research and found no reference to this kind of tree in any of his books. When it arrived, he studied the leaves and voiced his suspicions but his father planted it anyway. As it grew Gerald was proven right; it was a sumac, just like the wild ones surrounding it in the weeds that threatened to take over the yard. By the time he left home for school it was indistinguishable from the other trees, lost in the saplings that had never been culled out. He'd found his father outside one day in the midst of the sumacs smoking a cigarette. With a sardonic smile he'd turned to him and said, "It's just a weed, Gerald. I bought a goddamn weed. The story of my life."

His father died not long after Gerald graduated and he helped his mother sell the house in which he'd spent eighteen years. On a recent business trip, he'd gone out of his way to drive by the small white frame ranch house. The empty lots next door and down the block had been replaced with three story apartments and white brick office centers all encircled by asphalt parking lots. Once the lots were prairies filled with thistles, rye grass and ragweed large enough to be used to build playhouses. In early mornings they were spotted with blue chicory, yellow-white morning glories and punctuated by stalks of milkweeds holding promises of monarch caterpillars. The new owners of his house had removed almost all of the trees: the overgrown junipers in the front and every sumac in the back of the yard had been cut down. The catalpa alone still stood out front.

He climbed down and walked toward his house. The lights glowed yellow inside and Mary Pat and his teen-aged son Peter formed a tableau framed by the picture windows. He hesitated at the garden by the back door. The bulbs were at the end of their season, caught somewhere between life and death, frozen in poses with heads tipped up and down and sideways. The miniature jonquils hung down from their stems in the shape of wasps, their dried blossoms as translucent as wings, ribbed with veins, unforgiving in their delicacy. Summer was coming, first the lilacs, then the irises would bloom. Petunias and geraniums would claim this spot until the first killing frost. And when the snow had barely melted, these bulbs would be back next spring.

He turned around and looked again at the cottonwood, an India ink drawing silhouetted against the watercolor wash of a red-orange sunset. He could see the nest, now a part of the tree. In just minutes, dusk gave way to night, the clear sky filled with stars. Looking up, he knew he was viewing ancient light, what he saw may or may not yet be there, but the stars still appeared to shine in the midst of vast nothingness. The North Star had risen over the cottonwood. There wasn't much light and it wasn't very certain, but it was enough for him to see by.