THE HEAVEN TREE

I

Garbage cans banging woke me up after midnight.

I lay still, hoping they wouldn’t do it again.  But they did, louder, with a lot of muffled giggling.  I sat up and looked into shadows cast by streetlight through backyard trees and bushes.  In the shadows pale figures moved.

“Shhh!” I hissed, loud enough to be heard in the next block.  But they didn’t hear—a garbage can lid rattled to the ground, and a giggle became a laugh.

“Stupid--“ I hissed.

A window shot up next door and a ringing screech drowned out my feeble warning.

“Get out of there! Get out of there this minute or I’ll call the police!”

Startled silence followed by attempted quietness exploded into more giggling.

“Just you wait, you devils,” screeched Mrs. Nicholson, and slammed her window shut.

I sighed and went downstairs. By the time the rotating blue and white lights pulled silently up to Mrs. Nicholson’s curb, I had smoothed the long side-hairs over my bald spot and tied a robe over my belly.  I stepped out onto damp front lawn grass.  The leaves on my maple tree were perfectly still, and the street was quiet, dark except where a large moth fluttered around Mrs. Nicholson’s porch light.

A policeman was climbing Mrs. Nicholson’s porch with heavy steps and a jingling of handcuffs.  The screen door opened, there was a low-voiced argument, and then the policeman stumped back down and across to my lawn.

I met him there.  “Hello, Alan,” I said.

“Hello, John,” he said quietly, not slowing his long steps toward the walk that runs past my electric meter and forsythia bushes.  I fell in behind him.  A lone cricket creaked under the bushes.

“What are you going to do to them?” I asked.

“Arrest some or all of them for vagrancy and disturbing the peace.  This is the third night this month.”

The uncut grass of the backyard tickled my ankles.  Streetlight speckled Alan’s broad back.

“They didn’t make much noise, Alan.  And it was my garbage cans, not hers.”

“Disturbing the peace is disturbing the peace, no matter whose garbage cans they are,” said Alan, holding a tree branch so it wouldn’t whip back on me.  “Look at this place.”

Beyond the sagging link fence separating my back yard from the Langley place, tall weeds cast spiny shadows on crab grass; skunk cabbage and wild rhubarb mingled shadowy leaves under untrimmed tree branches; ivy twined around the columns of a leaning back porch and poked into the darkness of broken windows.

“Place ought to be condemned,” said Alan, stepping over a trampled down part of the fence.  “Someone ought to call the Health Department.”       I followed him, trying to keep my slippered feet off thorns.  The weathered boards of the back porch creaked under us.  Frightened whispers came from the darkness inside the open back door.