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The sound brought us all off our porches and out into the street–some in rumpled work uniforms, some in pajamas, some in less. Mrs. Dawkins toddled out in a wide floral housedress, rickety chicken legs stuck into slippers, clearly past her limit for the night even though it was only 9:30.

“I saw sparks,” she said. “Coming off the power lines. Sounded like somebody dropped a bomb.”

Not really, I thought, but maybe her hearing was amplified. Maybe vodka could do that.  I’d have to test it.

“Somebody needs to call the power company before the whole neighborhood burns up!” Ms. Dawkins said.

I got to see my neighbor George’s smooth chest and shoulders–even better than I had imagined–sculpted by the streetlight, and the ratty gray USMC sweatpants he’d pulled on at the last minute, which was all great until I noticed a woman’s head peeking out of his front door. She swished her long dark hair out of her eyes just like a horse swatting a fly with its tail, but I knew other people would consider her sexy. Looked like George did.

“What the hell?” she said. “George?”

“Sounded like a car running into a pole,” I said.

“No, that wasn’t it,” Liam said. “It was more like a tear, you know, like something ripped apart.”

He lived cattycorner to me, and had been called Will until last summer when he began his dissertation on tree frogs and decided Liam sounded more intelligent because it might mean he was British. I still haven’t figured out what the Brits could know about tree frogs that a boy from South Carolina could not, but hey, he was good to me, took my recycling to the curb sometimes, so what the hell, now he’s Liam.

“Like something was unearthed,” Liam said.

The pin oak stretched across three houses. They were small bungalows. The one that got the brunt of it was a duplex, but still—three. Erin, who’s as pregnant as you can be without popping, swollen in every way, said she was sitting next to the window in her half of the duplex watching some TV reality show when a long spindly arm of top branches smashed through the window and grazed her shoulder. She had to do Lamaze breathing to keep from going into labor. The tree was still pointing its leafy fingers toward the TV in the living room. I could see it now from the street, the wall opened like a diorama.

The neighbors gathered round it like it had crashed through the stratosphere from another planet, marveling at how lucky we were to still be alive, which I had doubts about. Almost everyone was accounted for, except Lou. He was usually home, but now his house was dark. Most days he only left for work and, sometimes, not even then.

“Did somebody call him?” Erin asked.

“It’s not my job to disturb people,” Liam said. “Sylvie, you do it.”

“He’s fine,” I said. Why did he think it was my job?

“Please.” Liam was tilting his head slightly now, like a child or a dog, the universal gesture for begging.

“You people are useless,” I said, dialing Lou on my phone.

It rang five times, then his message came on. This is Lou. You know what to do. Lou was a grown man who had been in the Peace Corps, so I figured he could survive a tree falling on his house. He was some type of organizer now, but I wasn’t sure who he was trying to organize. He was the kind of guy who sunbathed naked in the backyard in full view of Mrs. Dawkins’ kitchen window. The guy was fearless. He didn’t look bad naked, either.

We walked closer to the tree and around it, into Lou’s back yard, to look at how the roots reached up and out. The tree had left a hole in the canopy. Moonlight shone in the space. The branches poked through Lou’s back door like long, arthritic fingers. Everyone else started to walk away and gather in the middle of the street. I decided to take the tree on. I climbed up onto the higher tilt of the giant trunk. It was maybe five feet around. From here the ragged roots looked a mile away. I wanted to touch the roots that had been attached to the dirt and had started it all.

“Get down, Sylvie,” George said. “The power lines are tangled in the branches.”

I had made it halfway up the trunk, guided by the moonlight and the soft glow of the streetlights in the rest of the neighborhood. I looked down toward George. Just above him black lines wove through the thousands of tiny leaves, which had only recently sprouted and were still a pale shade of green. I guess I should have thought about the power because it had flickered off in my own house for a minute or so before my microwave started blinking zeroes at me. I had climbed up pretty high, almost to where the roots were upended.  

“Jump,” George said.

I wasn’t scared; I just did what he said and landed so hard I fell back on my ass.

“You ok?” he said.

“Sure, I think so,” I said, dusting myself off.

If I had been alone, I would have cried, at least from the shock of the impact, but I wasn’t going to break down with the whole block watching.

“That’s gonna be a nasty bruise,” the girlfriend said.

I could tell from her pale skin that she bruised easy and probably burned bright red every summer.

A woman I didn’t know well—at least she never came out at night–came down the street carrying a flashlight. She didn’t need it with the moon and all the streetlights surrounding our street, but maybe she taught elementary school. They’re always prepared. She probably had a whole toolbox marked EMERGENCY KIT ready to grab when she heard the wood crack.

“Anybody seen Lou?” she said, panning the street with the flashlight. Her brow pulled together in a fan. How did she have the right to be worried? I didn’t even know her.

“Hey, Casey, nobody’s seen him yet. Sylvie called and got no answer,” George said.

How the hell did George know her? She was at least four houses down and across the street from him. She looked at me like this must be Sylvie because I know everybody else. Ok, I admit, sometimes I hole up in my room and read for a few days until I have to go to work again. After days and days of talking to people and their dogs at the pet store, cleaning up the messes, and all the bright packaging screaming at me, well, I need a break.

“I’m Sylvie, “ I said.

“We’ve met, remember? At Lou’s birthday party?”

I did not remember, not even a tiny bit.

“Oh yeah,” I said, “Casey.” She nodded.

I had lived on Elmwood for three years and either she was lying, or I was losing my mind, which could be the case, given all that’s happened.

“That is a fine specimen of a Quercus palustris,” Casey said.

“Then why did it just crash to the ground?” I said. “There wasn’t even a breeze.”

Casey stared at me. I guess she had never been challenged on tree information before. For all I knew, she was a damn tree scientist. We were just a mile away from the university.

“Everybody knows these trees have a lifespan of a hundred years. The Methodist Ladies’ Auxillary Club planted them about that long ago. They’re just done. Finito. They’re going to come down one by one.” She smiled, clearly satisfied at my ignorance. Definitely an elementary school teacher. I looked up and down the street. There was a Quercus palustris in front of every house, including mine. Our street was like a giant tree house. I was too big to climb them now, maybe if I ever worked out I could, but as a kid, I lived in a pin oak in the backyard.

“Well, show’s over,” Liam said. “Some of us have work to do. The power company will come in the morning. ”

“Come on, George, we’re missing the movie,” Horse Tail said.

“See ya,” he said.

I pretended he was talking directly to me, but the elementary teacher waved to him like it was her he wanted.

The street emptied out. I sat on my porch steps and watched everyone say goodbye, then disappear behind dark doors.

An owl sometimes came and sat on the wire that linked my house to the others. It must be a good spot to hunt from. I sat on the stone steps of my walk and waited for him, but he never came. The wind finally started to blow, but it was a soft breeze and did not explain anything. The lights went out in George’s house. I thought of knocking on Liam’s door, but his back window was the only one lit up, which meant he was probably up writing about tree frogs.

I sat there for an hour or so. There was so much to do inside, all the cleaning my mom used to do every Saturday, and so much I didn’t want to think about.  She died last year, and technically, according to the grief books, I should be over it, but I’m not. You can’t tell people that. They think grief is a temporary thing. If you tell them why you are still sad six, eight months out, they will suggest therapy, or offer to buy you a drink, or worst of all, they’ll just tell you to cheer up. Then they go call their moms.

I had always been a climber, according to my mom. At eighteen months, I climbed out of my crib and toddled across the hall to my parents’ room. She woke to me patting her cheek. I don’t remember that. It was her story. I do remember climbing the pink crepe myrtle in the front yard until Mom told me I was too big and would break it. I built a fort in the oak tree in the back. It really was a hazard, more than a quaint house, a lawsuit waiting to happen, my mom said. Nobody ever got hurt there though. It was protected by birds.

 

Outside was easier when no one was in it. I decided to check on the tree to keep it company. Up close the tree looked as big around as a baby pool. The limbs that had snapped were daggers. The roots–who ever knew how tangled those had grown in our yards, reaching across the street to each other up under our houses? The tree’s roots had rotted. It had been held up by a few weak threads, like a loose tooth. The trunk was ground to sawdust inside. On its side, the trunk came up to my shoulders. This time I was careful to step around the electrical wires. I climbed onto the trunk and sat up. From this height, with the glow of streetlights in the rest of the neighborhood surrounding this dark spot, I could see the lighted windows of my neighbors’ houses.  It was different on this side of the street. For a while, I watched George and the girlfriend watch a movie. It’s not as boring as it sounds if you look like those two. They pulled the curtains before anything got too interesting. Liam was writing at his computer at first. Then he lit something and started smoking it. That was no mystery.

A couple I didn’t know walked by with their brindle-striped pit bull. The dog trotted my way.

“Come on, Prunie,” the woman said, “get away from there.”

Prunie did as she was told. Good dog. I had a special spot in my heart for pit bulls. It wasn’t fair how everyone was afraid to touch them.

I had thought about getting a dog, but then I would have a hard time leaving it to go to work. I couldn’t stand to see anything lonely. A few cars went by, slowing at the sight of the downed tree, the smashed houses.

“Move it along. Nothing to see here!” I shouted at them.

I don’t think they could see me from the street, but they could hear me. They drove off with confused looks, as if the tree was the one who had scolded them. I lay down on the tree, staring up at the branches of its brothers and sisters.

“Psst!” the pin oak next to the fallen tree said. Even with the moonlight, it was hard to make out one leaf from another.

“Sylvie,” it said.

I sat up.

“It’s me, Lou. Come on up.”

Lou was hanging upside down by the knees like some kind of trapeze artist. As if I was going to take his hands. He could never pull me up like that.

“You’re crazy,” I said. “How’d you get up there?”

“Climbed.” He righted himself and climbed to sit on the limb.

“I figured that much, but when?”

“Right before the big one fell. Maybe I had something to do with it?”

“That tree was a goner. All the roots were rotten. It was held up by mush. You didn’t do anything. I’m not sure that one is any better.”

“It’s fine. Come up. I’ve got a little perch up here. You can see everything for a couple of blocks.”

“Ok, how?”

“From my back deck, you can get on my roof. From there, you can reach a low branch and scoot over until you get to here.” Here was a wide bowl where the big branches came together.

“Everybody’s worried about you,” I said.

“But you’re the only one who called. Let them wonder. I’ll have to come down when the tree service gets here.”  

The deck was still standing strong. I climbed up, as directed. Lou coached me a little to the right, a few inches to left, then up. The moonlight was enough to guide me. I was able to make my way, though not exactly gracefully, to Lou’s little nest in the tree.

“Welcome,” he said.

“Do you sleep up here?”

“Sure, sometimes. I like to be up here where I can watch the owl.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“All the time. Hasn’t everybody?”

“Oh, I thought it was just me.”

“Up here, you can see everything he does. I think he’s used to me.”  

From the nest, the ground looked far away. To either side, I could look out and follow jagged rooflines and tree limbs to the main road. Some restless smokers sat out on porches, the scent of their cigarettes made it all the way to our perch.

“I want to stay here,” I said.

“Sure, until the tree people come,” Lou said. “I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”

“No, I mean forever. Up here, I’d have the place all to myself. And you could visit me.”

“You’d get sick of it after a while.”

Lou didn’t know that I would never get sick of it, that I really did plan to stay. If not in his tree, then in one on our street. Who would notice?  

“Do you think George loves that girl?” I said.

“Why do you care?”

“I just do.”

“George is an asshole,” Lou said.

He leaned in and kissed me. I held onto a branch for balance. This wasn’t a bad idea, but I hadn’t thought of it much, not like I’d thought of George.

“You won’t fall,” he said.

He put his hand on my shoulder. I hadn’t been up this high in twenty years, maybe since I was ten. I was shaky.

“I might. You can’t know that for sure.”

“What can you know, Sylvie?”

I let go of the branch and scooted deeper into his nest.

We drifted off waiting for the owl. He never showed. I guess he was hunting on some other street. I felt safe in the sturdy boughs, but what if Casey was right and all these trees came crashing down at once?

I woke to the morning birds–not just their song, but the swish and ruffle of a mockingbird lighting on a branch above the nest. Lou was gone. I heard someone that sounded like him down below, talking to someone about firewood. The morning dog walkers were already making their rounds. Quietly as I could, I climbed out on a big branch that crossed the branch of a big maple that led to the adjoining backyard and beyond. I couldn’t help but scare off the mockingbird, but it wouldn’t tell anyone where I was.

I made it up and down through a couple of back yards into a tree at the intersection of Elmwood and Green Street. I figured no one would find me there. I needed food and a bathroom, my knees and arms were scraped like a kid’s, but I could wait a little longer. I didn’t want to go home, even if the neighbors worried. I wanted to know how long it would take them to find me. Would they come up to me, or would I have to come down?

Even from here, in the top of another huge pin oak, I could hear the chainsaws starting up. I plugged my ears with my fingers and tried to sing to myself, but I didn’t know all the words to anything except “Happy Birthday.”

Around noon, I slipped down and squatted in someone’s yard to pee. That’s one of those human problems that proves trees are better than us–less needy. No one was home, so I tried the doors. The back door was unlocked and it opened into the kitchen. I grabbed a loaf of bread and stuffed an apple into my jacket pocket. I made it back out and into the pin oak before a single person came by. I guess the world was at work and the dogs were inside. Maybe they just couldn’t stand the sound of the chainsaw either.

By the time the sun turned orange, I already felt the night coming fast, anxious to cover everything. Nobody had missed me or had happened on me by chance. I had my answer. The wind blew steady now, but the trees held their ground. I climbed down and walked right down the middle of the street back to my house, invisible. A few stray neighbors, the ones who worked the late shift and slept in and missed everything, were gathered around the fallen tree seeing the spectacle for the first time. They trudged through the sawdust, marking their paths. They took some of the cut limbs for next winter’s fires. I looked up and saw Lou in the perch of a tree next to the fallen one, scanning the tree line for owls.

Who? Who? He called.

Me, I called back.